{"id":573882812,"date":"2012-02-09T20:52:55","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T02:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573882812"},"modified":"2012-02-11T03:10:52","modified_gmt":"2012-02-11T09:10:52","slug":"the-cleverness-of-mississippi-lawmakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2012\/02\/09\/the-cleverness-of-mississippi-lawmakers\/","title":{"rendered":"The cleverness of Mississippi lawmakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gulf of America<\/a>, nee Mexico?<\/p>\n

A retiring Mississippi lawmaker says there’s a method to his madness in proposing a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”<\/p>\n

Mississippi Rep. Steve Holland in a phone interview that he authored the bill in order to fight “a litany of assaults on immigrants and poor people,” introduced by the Republican-controlled Mississippi Legislature.<\/p>\n

“I just thought I’d give them some more red meat to throw at their base,” Holland said, adding that the bill would give Mississippi residents “no reason to ever have to refer to someone who looks different from us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Step 1: Come up with a concept that toes the line between novel and sublimely ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Never mind that you’re a state lawmaker who has no power to change the name of an international body of water. You’re retiring. Who cares?<\/p>\n

Step 3: When you get a little more blowback than you anticipated … reach for any old talking point that you’ve heard your colleagues talk about the last few days and make a tenuous connection.<\/p>\n

In other news, legislators in Mississippi have solved all of the problems in their great state and have moved on to international waters. So that’s a nice development.<\/p>\n

Grading today, and read a bit. Managed to ride for a while. Spilled my milk after I got finished. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Milk is so expensive these days you almost have to cry, no? And it wasn’t even milk, but chocolate milk!<\/p>\n

Made my Valentine’s Day plans: Waffle House<\/a>! <\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Not really. Though a waffle does sound good. (And you have to love that there are three shots of the jukebox in the first 13 seconds of B-roll. The man knows his Waffle House iconography.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gulf of America, nee Mexico? A retiring Mississippi lawmaker says there’s a method to his madness in proposing a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Mississippi Rep. Steve Holland in a phone interview that he authored the bill in order to fight “a litany of assaults on immigrants and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573882812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","category-thursday","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573882812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573882812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573882812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573882815,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573882812\/revisions\/573882815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573882812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573882812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573882812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}