but that’s not racist because Jon’s a comedian?
Archives for June 2011
TIME: Don’t know much about history
When it comes to the Constitution of the United States, TIME Mag’s cover article by Richard Stengel flunked, big time:
Aaron Worthing took Stengel’s article and beat it with a big stick by finding Thirteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengel’s Essay on the Constitution (And I Am Looking for Your Help) (Update: My Letter to the Editor)
So this time, we are going to focus solely on the factual errors. There are thirteen of them and like the lawyer that I am, I will start off with his most egregious error and end with the least egregious. Here are the thirteen errors, in short:
- The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.
- The Constitution is not law.
- The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.
- The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans.
- The original Constitution declared that black people were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.
- That the original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.
- Inter arma enim silent leges translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”
- The War Powers Act allows the president to unilaterally wage war for sixty days.
- We have only declared war five times.
- Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.
- Social Security is a debt within the meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Naturalization depends on your birth.
- The Obamacare mandate is a tax.
Read it all, it’s worth it.
Update,
Link corrected, with my apologies.
The Invisible Hugo post of the morning: the speakerphone call
Hugo Chavez has been absent from Venezuela for 18 days now, so I’m opening a new category of tags, The Invisible Hugo.
The first post of this series:
The speakerphone call to his political party (link in Spanish).
Yes indeed, Hugo called the leadership of his party, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) “to give us instructions”, according to Diosdado Cabello, who promptly tweeted about it.
As you can see from the photo, everybody was simply thrilled to hear from him.
Hugo Chavez’s brother Adan, who has become more visible as time wears on, has already said that Hugo’s expected back on July 5, to head the 200th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence from Spain. The chief of Caracas’s Capital District says that over 119 million bolivares have been spent on infrastructure preparations for the bicentennial.
He better show up then.
The army generals also want him back soon.
Elsewhere, people are speculating as to what exactly is going on, possible scenarios, and what the consequences may be on oil prices.
The “how’s Hugo” Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean
The big news this week is not actually news, it’s the rumors surrounding Hugo Chavez’s stay in Cuba:
His brother Adan tells the hoi-poloi to take arms if necessary to keep Chavismo rolling
More on that at The Devil’s Excrement and Babalu.
Hugo Chavez Death Rumor: Another Bad Copy from the Castro tyrant handbook?
Daniel of Venezuela News and VIews has an article on power & Chavez
Mary O’Grady sends A Get-Well Card for Hugo Chávez
Venezuela would be better off if the ailing dictator lives and is held responsible for his misdeeds.
LATIN AMERICA
Foreign Countries Look to Latin America for Food
ARGENTINA
Argentine leader picks Boudou as running mate
Boudou, appointed as economy minister in July 2009, has emerged as one of Fernandez’s most loyal cabinet ministers. In his previous job as head of the state pensions body, he won her trust when she nationalized private pension funds in 2008.
Argentine politics
Just in time
PERU
“Siomi”, el asesor clave y futuro hombre fuerte del gobierno de Ollanta Humala
VENEZUELA
Miles de venezolanos piden asilo en EEUU
Hugo Chávez’s Scary Anti-American Campaign Takes to the Skies and Stops Off In Teheran
The week’s posts and podcasts
ATF Gunwalker fast and furious roundup
Venezuela’s sponsoring terrorism, and Brazil gets hacked
Does Hugo Chavez have prostate cancer?
Mexican drug cartel kingpins: Dead or caught roster
Hey, Hugo, how are you doing?
In Silvio Canto’s podcast
Mexico’s Hidden War
Watching The Bandwagon
Carlos Eire goes to Cuba Nostalgia
Yes, I also heard heavenly music from a distant past, reinterpreted in many ways. Some bands were better than others, but many of them seemed to love the same mystic refrain from the song “ El Bodeguero,” which I kept trying to decode: “ Toma chocolate, paga lo que debes.”
Drink chocolate, pay what you owe. It seemed an encoded message of sorts, a summation of the karmic debt that brought all of us Cuban exiles together in this extreme corner of Miami, so close to the Everglades, so far from our past.
Bodeguero. This word conjured up all that we lost. Bodegas were stores that sold all sorts of goods. They weren’t supermarkets: you had to ask the storekeeper, the bodeguero, for the items you needed. Most bodegas were on busy street corners. They had slow-moving ceiling fans and a radio or jukebox, and music was part of the ambiance. Some had bars, and all of them seemed to be owned and run by some neighbor.
The song “ El Bodeguero” celebrates the effervescence of that Cuba killed by the Castro mafia, a prosperous Cuba where goods were readily available in an atmosphere unlike any other in the world, where neighbors dealt with each other as kin, and mere buying and selling could turn into a party.
El bodeguero vailando va, the storekeeper dances as he goes,
y en la bodega se baila asi, and in the store we dance like this,
entre frijoles papa y aji. in between the peppers, potatoes, and beans.
Fidel confiscated all the bodegas, handed out ration books to everyone, turned off the music and also transformed the chocolate, peppers, potatoes, and beans into inaccessible luxuries for most Cubans.
I found no chocolate to drink at Cuba Nostalgia. But even if I’d found some, I’d have passed it up. I needed something stronger and colder, something that would steady my gait in this torrential confluence of past and present, which was overwhelming.
Babalu had Carlos’s extended article two weeks ago.
More rumors on Chavez
Nice Deb has a roundup of links on the latest rumor on Hugo Chavez, which was started by a Wikileaks AR tweet,
Don’t believe it.
Two things:
1. There is absolutely no evidence to support this rumor.
2. Any of you who believe the rumor are being punked.
I defer to Ace’s wise observation,
I know for a fact there is an effort to punk the media. Maybe the blogosphere too.
Be on the lookout for tantalizing tips. Do not take the first level of verification as authoritative, because they’re putting enough thought into this at least pass the first level.
ATF Gunwalker fast and furious roundup
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