Faida Hamdy, a 45-year-old municipal inspector in Sidi Bouzid, a police officer’s daughter, was single, had a “strong personality” and an unblemished record, her supervisor said. She inspected buildings, investigated noise complaints and fined vendors like Mr. Bouazizi, whose itinerant trade may or may not have been legal; no one seems to know.So a woman humiliated a man...
On the morning of Dec. 17, when other vendors say Ms. Hamdy tried to confiscate Mr. Bouazizi’s fruit, and then slapped him in the face for trying to yank back his apples, he became the hero — now the martyred hero — and she became the villain in a remarkable swirl of events in which Tunisians have risen up to topple a 23-year dictatorship and march on, demanding radical change in their government.
The revolution has rippled beyond Tunisia, shaking other authoritarian Arab states, whose frustrated young people are often written off as complacent when faced with stifling bureaucracy and an impenetrable and intimidating security apparatus. That assumption was badly shaken with Mr. Bouazizi’s reaction to his slap...
Chicago might have more skyscrapers than Green Bay has elevators. And while the Second City overflows with magnificent museums, five-star restaurants and renowned universities, in Green Bay, life centers around much simpler pleasures like Friday night fish fries and 25-cent rides at the Bay Beach Amusement Park.Go to the link for lots of colorful details about the rivalry, which has been relatively "civil" in recent years, partly because since the mid-1960s "when he Bears have been good, the Packers have generally been bad, and vice versa." This year, then, is a momentous exception — especially exciting for the people of the northern half of what — look at a map — is properly termed the Wisconsin column of the United States.
Many Chicagoans would tell you that the differences basically boil down to urbane vs. hick.... But... Green Bay's shoulders might not be as broad as Chicago's, but both are Midwestern cities built long ago on paper making and meat packing by a wide range of European immigrants. They sprouted, albeit on different scales, as heavily Catholic, blue-collar and bibulous strongholds.
Then there's the other kinship they share: football....
I would think that if Abercrombie is gonna [say he'll produce the birth certificate], he's not the Lone Ranger. He's gotta be calling the White House, "Okay, look, we have a potential problem here. I want to find this thing and I want to make it public." If that happened, somebody at the regime did not say, "No, don't do it," because Abercrombie is still alive. If they had said, "No, don't do it," and Abercrombie is still doing it....So Rush thinks the birth certificate is there and the delay is about trying to get Obama's opponents to go on record spouting birtherisms that will make them look stupid and mean-spirited when the birth certificate is finally whipped out.
I can't imagine Abercrombie being a free agent on this. Abercrombie gets inaugurated governor and out of the blue says, "Ah, you know what, I'm worried about this birther thing, they may have something there. I gotta find that birth certificate, and I'm gonna release it, I'm gonna prove it once and for all." Then he says, "I can't find it. Oh no, I'm in trouble. I'm really embarrassing myself here." And that's the hook and the bait, the unsuspecting and the beguiled are expected to chomp on that hook, line, and sinker and be reeled in.
"You're free to decline to answer," [the hospital receptionist] said, and added that it used to be really hard for her to ask this question.Is this meaningless bureaucratic collection of information, possibly useful for medical reasons, or something more nefarious?
I said that I was, quite obviously Asian, but apparently that was not precise enough for the requirements of the new health reform act. It was necessary for some reason to classify me as not just "Asian" but "Chinese."
Klein ... misses the point.... What makes it racially invidious is not the underlying argument or the rhetorical inelegance with which Santorum makes it. It is the implication that because Obama is "a black man," he is obliged to agree with Santorum.
The notion that the range of acceptable opinion is narrower for a black person than for a white person (or for a woman than a man, or a homosexual than a heterosexual) is a pernicious form of bigotry. It is usually heard from left-wing multiculturalists, as when they attack Clarence Thomas for being black and taking the position that racial preferences are unconstitutional....
In previous years, members of the minority party have turned to new, young governors to present a fresh face to the country during the brief response that is shown on television after the president’s speech. But that has not always worked.Example given: Bobby Jindal,
Instead, this year, Republicans are turning to one of their senior members who has been given broad authority by Mr. Boehner to use his new position on the budget committee to drive the Republican fiscal agenda through the House.
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