Republican Party Shrinking

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×5557282

Here is a fun and biased article regarding the right-wing 

Abortion Powerpoint

Kerby and Hunter.ppt

I apologize about the delay, there was a miscommunication between Kerby and I.  Nonetheless, here is our powerpoint. 

After the End of the Death of Conservatism

Is conservatism dead?  Yes, says Sam Tanenhaus.  No, say George Nash and Thomas Frank.  Depends on what you mean by ‘conservatism’, explains newly christened NYT Op-Ed Olympian Ross Douthat (can ‘post-conservatism’ be far behind?). Well, if by conservatism you mean ‘the conservative intellectual tradition’, huffs Columbia political theorist Mark Lilla, then it’s dead–and Sarah Palin killed it.  Nuh-uhhh!, say some conservative intellectuals.  Time to go grade, says I.

Pecha Kucha: Lefebvre on the Right to the City

Slowly catching up on the PK backlog…

PowerPoint: Case for Gentrification

Gentrificationblog.pptx

Tide Shifting?

Could the 2008 election be the beginning of the shift away from the situation Frank describes, where folks in poorer Congressional districts tend to vote against their economic interests?  The New York Times featured an interesting article on how folks in Indiana (which went for Obama by a very slim margin in November) are planning to use their stimulus money.  Are smaller, High Plains towns starting to turn back towards the Democrats?  As the local Republicans note in the article, they believe that “the furious pace of spending in Washington could complicate Mr. Obama’s re-election efforts in three years.”  When in actuality, the entire point of a stimulus package is, in fact, to spend money.

Article about Dharavi slum in Mumbai

Here is a link to a National Geographic article about the Dharavi slum in Mumbai. This article gives a deeper look into life in the slums and the families that live there, and also describes one plan to rebuild and “fix” the Dharavi area. This gives closer to a “worms eye view” of the slums, and also shows many of the problems and challenges of improving the slums. 

I Am Everyday People

Hah!

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

When Toilets Fly

Herewith a couple of links following up on our discussion today:  Richard Pithouse questions the accuracy of Mike Davis’ bird’s-eye view and castigates ‘struggle tourists’; Robert Neuwirth waxes enthusiastic over the informal economy of the slums.

A Nation Divided Against Itself …

This article caught my eye on CNN.com today.  It’s about the waning bipartisanship in Congress.  A lot of what we talk about in class comes down to the “the Right vs. the Left.”  Aside from its relevance to SOC 238, this article is an interesting assessment of the current atmosphere in D.C. right now.  I often wonder if articles like this one, reporting the collapse of bipartisanship, effectively justify that collapse, thereby catalyzing a collapse of bipartisanship on its own.