At our gracious host’s suggestion, I’ve thrown together a roundup of (hopefully useful, or at least interesting) info on what may be the last stand of the Badger state’s middle and working classes. (All due credit to Meteor Blades and the other folks at Daily Kos, David Dayen at Firedoglake, and the Milton Education Association, Milton WI.)
TomT
47 Articles
TomT will be posting under his real name here (at least part of it), in spite of the fact that this site already seems to be crammed-full of Toms. He is a suburban husband and dad doing Union work within public education in the Chicago area. Once in a great while he also posts diaries under the name “Skitters” on Daily Kos, and—during football season—he does his best to chronicle the dark history of a fairly-vicious fantasy league.
TomT
1 Min Read
The answer is (thanks to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman), not without helpful corporations. Vodafone-Egypt (under a UK parent) used language worthy of a Nuremberg defense in a press release explaining its actions: “All mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas. Under…
TomT
1 Min Read
It has to start somewhere.
As reported by Christopher Ketcham at Alternet and on Democracy Now: On the eve of the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s shameful and terrain-changing Citizens United decision, a call has come from the Vermont Legislature to restore a measure of political balance through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning “corporate personhood.”
TomT
2 Min Read
Chris Hedges at truthdig recently criticized the liberal tendency to retreat into lofty conferences as the America of our imaginations becomes harder to square with an increasingly disturbing reality.
TomT
4 Min Read
For a brief moment following the shooting in Arizona, it really seemed like a consensus was forming within the liberal (and parts of the mainstream) media and blogosphere; that the violent rightwing rhetoric which has become standard feature of our political discourse had finally gone too far, and that we as a nation were finally due for some rhetorical climate change.
TomT
1 Min Read
Sportswriter Dave Zirin had this take on violent political rhetoric, reminding us of Sarah Palin’s March 2010 attempt at a satirical defense: The point is that Palin revels in the idea that “reloading” against those she doesn’t deem to be “real Americans” is a completely legitimate part…
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TomT
1 Min Read
Displaced Aggression — Final League Report A hush fell over the northwest suburbs on Sunday, as Dingobros and the Turduckens faced eachother in our Championship matchup. The ensuing action was less-than-pretty, but the outcome was not unexpected; It seems that, at least this time, the…
TomT
1 Min Read
Displaced Aggression League Report — Playoff Week 1
Round 1 saw our little corner of the world turned topsy-turvy, as the three top-seeded teams and a former champion/perennial spoiler were pitilessly eradicated by an assortment of malicious Cinderellas. In the end, grief counselors had to be bused in, and our League’s brightest and best were reduced to pointing out exactly where on the doll their opponents had touched them.
TomT
1 Min Read
Let’s start with the obvious: all of us are, or should be, thankful that Portland’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony was not bombed by a would-be terrorist. Other facts to put on the table: the young man harbored strong anti-American feelings, he communicated with and attempted to visit a friend that moved to Pakistan, and, most importantly, he believed his actions would lead to the detonation of a bomb at the tree-lighting ceremony.
But there’s another important point that may not be as obvious to those of us reading the news reports this week: there never was a plot to bomb Portland’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony, nor was there ever any danger of such an attack.
TomT
2 Min Read
Displaced Aggression League Report — Week 10
An Irish friend once shared the story of a neighbor who went to a pub to see a girl he was seriously smitten with. He downed pint after pint to steady his nerves as he waited for her to arrive, and when she finally did, he barfed all over himself while trying to ask her out. As my friend sadly put it, the young man was skundered.