Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos
A safe place for moderates in a polarized world
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The Q&Q For 4/27/24
The Quote and Quiz has moved to Saturdays to give you more time to ponder your answers as well as the deeper meaning of the probing questions. This week’s quote comes to us from Eugene Roddenberry, son of Gene Roddenberry, the man who launched Star Trek. “After a long journey, she’s home,” Mr. Roddenberry wrote on social…
The Spring of Reason
It’s springtime and it’s starting to feel like the American middle is having a rebirth. Let us review. Speaker Mike Johnson is turning out to be just what the doctor ordered. When the Freedom Caucus took down Kevin McCarthy I argued that Democrats should have saved him, not because I liked McCarthy but because it…
Do Protests Work?
I’m a free speech advocate. So, as campus protests over Gaza heat up, I sympathize with college administrators who have to balance the right to protest with the necessity of keeping their campuses safe and allowing normal campus life to continue. But, when push comes to shove (and there’s been way too much of both…
Showtime Messes With Moscow
I loved “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. I both read it and listened to it as read by Jim Flemming on Wisconsin Public Radio. So, I was excited when I learned that Showtime/Paramount had turned the novel into a short series. And, in fact, it’s pretty good. Ewan McGregor is a perfect fit…
Save the Planet, Support Line 5
It’s Earth Day, so let’s celebrate by hugging a pipeline. For those readers not familiar with the controversy, here’s a quick recap. Line 5 is a 70-year old oil pipeline stretching from Superior through northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and down to Detroit. (I’ve got a place in the U.P. and I probably get…
The Q&Q For 4/19/24
This week’s quote comes to us from none other than our former President, the much indicted Donald J. Trump, who said: “I was PRAYING not sleeping!!!” A) At a prayer breakfast. B) At a Yankees games. C) In his golf cart on the 18th tee. D) During jury selection at his hush money trial. 2.…
Reading the MU Poll Tea Leaves
There’s a new Marquette Law School poll just out and, like always, there’s lots of good stuff in there. Let’s check it out. Still a dead heat. The race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump remains, as expected, neck and neck. Trump has a two point lead which is the same as what he had…
How to Fix NPR
Imagine what would have happened if a Muslim editor at NPR had accused the network of a pro-Israel bias. Imagine what would have happened if a transgender editor had accused it of being insensitive to transgender issues. Imagine how the network would have reacted if a female editor had charged that it was biased toward…
Biden And Black Voters
The warning signs for Joe Biden just keep piling up. Poll after poll for the last three years has shown Biden’s weakness in swing states and among groups that should back him strongly, including women and young people. Now comes a poll from the Wall Street Journal that shows him losing ground among Black voters…
The Catchup: Bradley’s Graceful Exit
Lovely weekend. I got out and enjoyed it, but I did catch most of the final round of sports’ most pretentious event, the Masters, where the fans are “patrons” and the course is “the property” and elevator music suffuses the broadcast. The best thing about this year’s tournament was Tiger Woods. A guy who shouldn’t…
The Q&Q For 4/12/24
This week’s quote comes to us from NPR editor Uri Berliner, a 26-year veteran of the NPR newsroom. In a piece for The Free Press, Berliner wrote: “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist,…
What’s the Deal With NPR?
Give Uri Berliner credit for courage. The NPR veteran business editor wrote a long, scathing and accurate piece about what’s become of his employer. It appeared yesterday on the site The Free Press. NPR bigwigs wasted no time in dismissing it out of hand, as opposed to maybe looking within to see if some of…
What’s a Moderate To Do?
Last week the centrist, bipartisan organization No Labels labelled its attempt to find a unity ticket a failure. No Labels had hoped to push the two major parties to the center by threatening to launch a third party campaign if they gave us another round of Biden v. Trump. But the parties did just that…
Biden Shows Up to Push Me Away
Pres. Joe Biden campaigned in Madison yesterday. He showed up in my town to give me reason to want to vote against him. Biden’s message was about how hard he’s trying to get around a Supreme Court that has told him that a president — any president — doesn’t have the power to do what…
The Catchup: NPR’s Bias
Wisconsin will get 89% of an eclipse today, if it isn’t cloudy. Eh. I can’t get excited about it, but if you still have doubts about Einstein, you could use this event to prove to yourself that he was right. On the other hand, the ending of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” represents the total eclipse of…
The Q&Q For 4/5/24
This week’s quote comes to us from New York State Rep. Charles Levine, who introduced a bill to repeal New York’s law making adultery a crime. Referring to what he called a handful of “religious nuts” who oppose his bill, he said: “This is not the first time that I will have been called a…
Spring in Wisconsin
I was worried that Wisconsin would give her the wrong impression. My wife’s niece, a high school junior, is visiting this weekend to have a look at the UW. She’s from California. In fact, she lives a stone’s throw from Stanford. In Menlo Park, 45 degrees counts as “cold” and a day of rain registers…
A Good Day For Moderation
Yesterday’s elections weren’t going to be earth-shattering, but the results were still encouraging. Let’s review. Biden out-polled Trump. While it was a foregone conclusion that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would win their primaries, Biden got about 20,000 more votes than Trump. In a state where the last two elections have come down to 20,000…
Poison Ivy
All of the churn over the Supreme Court’s overturning of race as a consideration in college admissions is really only about a handful of schools. The vast majority of colleges admit pretty much all comers. But a degree from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and a few other selective schools punches your ticket to the higher echelons…
The Catchup: RIP, Joe Lieberman & YSDA
The other day we passed 1,000 blogs here on YSDA. That got me to thinking. A nice round number like that just seems like a good one to go out on. So, today, we’re filing our last YSDA blog. Thanks to all of you for reading, for providing your insightful comments and even for taking…
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