Governor Brownback Needs To Fire His Communications Director

Governor Brownback’s communications director, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, has taken a 100% certified molehill—an indecorous tweet from a bored school kid who happened to be in an audience in front of the governor at the time—and turned it into a textbook example of how to build a mountain of negative public opinion for your boss overnight. Could you imagine Governor Chris Christie’s staffers making a decision like this?

Ms. Sullivan didn’t actually make any critical comments in person, but the tweet, sent out to a following of about 60 people (though it’s over 800 now), somehow caught the eye of the Governor’s Director of Communication, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, during her daily monitoring of social media mentions of Governor Brownback. Shocked – shocked! – that a teenager’s tweet about a politician was “disrespectful,” she complained to the high school. “It’s also important for students to recognize the power of social media, how lasting it is. It is on the Internet,” she said.
High School Student Punished For Joking Tweet About Governor Brownback

It is on the internet, Ms. Jones-Sontag. The internet, the one the rest of us uses when people like you aren’t clogging it up with press releases you and your staff are bulk emailing by the thousands to people who aren’t reading them, actually thrives on these David versus Goliath narratives. And when I put a link to this article on twitter, Ms. Jones-Sontag, I will be sure to give you and your minions your own hashtag: #HisUnderlingsBlowALotToo.

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Governor Brownback Needs To Fire His Communications Director | Resurgence | Big Think

History Is Everywhere On Big Island Of Hawaii

Usually on Thanksgiving I put on a sweater, crank up the heat, eat some turkey and watch some football. This year, I am trying to decide between kayaking along the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island or simply slipping on one of the many Hawaiian shirts I’ve packed, cracking a beer and just enjoying the view. I started out with good intentions towards keeping up a steady stream of blog posts this week, but the temporary office I chose, a picnic table on a outcropping of volcanic rock thirty feet above the waves, probably wasn’t the best choice for getting my creative juices flowing. And my body still has no idea what time it really is.
One of the unique things about Hawaii is the prominence the islands give to the stories of those whose lives shaped the nation’s 50^th state. To have the equivalent kind of heritage displays in a continental U.S. state like say, my home state South Carolina, you would have to have a tableau of the Dred Scott decision, a replica of a slave auction block, and a depiction of juju in every rest stop in the state.
History is everywhere here. You can go to one of the numerous state parks and see Hawaiian tikis. You may be in the middle of a shopping mall and see a sign that says “0.3 miles to the petraglyphs”. Here in Keahou, at the Kona Surf and Racquet Club just south of the Kona commercial district, there are two or three heiaus, sacred places surrounded by large piles of black lava rock, scattered throughout the complex where we are staying.

History Is Everywhere On Big Island Of Hawaii | Resurgence | Big Think

Controversy Thy Name Is Cain

The Republican Party has a big problem right now, and his name is Herman Cain. He can’t win the nomination, he won’t go home, yet he makes all the other presidential candidates look like also rans, mostly because he is very, very good at speaking through the TV cameras to right wing America.

The GOP brain trust has got to be wondering right about now how to graft Herman Cain’s effusive personality onto Mitt Romney, who is going to turn into a yellow stripe if he gets any more middle of the road. Aside from Jon Huntsman, who came off yesterday like he was an applying for a job as a teaching assistant in a college philosophy department, and Rick Perry, who needs a stunt double for any comment over two sentences, the rest of the field of Republican presidential hopefuls are a chorus of Negative Nancy’s whose palpable disgust at the idea of Barack Obama sitting in the White House has turned them all into grotesque caricatures of themselves. The pessimistic drumbeat of their gloomy rhetoric is so depressing it overshadows any constructive ideas any of them may have.

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Controversy Thy Name Is Cain | Resurgence | Big Think

"Our Blacks Are So Much Better Than Their Blacks”

 

"Our blacks are so much better than their blacks. To become a black Republican, you don't just roll into it. You're not going with the flow..."
Ann Coulter on the Sean Hannity Show, October 31^st, 2011

“Volcanic” is probably too gentle a word to describe the Mount Vesuvius that raged within me as I tried to process this sentence. I will leave it to someone like Melissa Harris-Lacewell to deconstruct the tone of ownership in Coulter's voice that jumped right off the screen and smacked me and countless other African Americans dead in the face. To Ann Coulter, and her surrogates, all I will say is this—there is no need to apologize, or walk this statement back, or tell me that I am “taking it out of context”, because I got the message loud and clear the first time. This is just the kind of thing that makes black people yank out their credit cards, pull up www.barackobama.com, and click the "Donate Now" button.   

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"Our Blacks Are So Much Better Than Their Blacks” | Kris Broughton | Big Think