As the xmas holiday approached I was somewhat hopeful that the political stalemate might finally get resolved... that is, until the GOP backed out and tried to submit their "Plan B" to the House. I was surprised that they would do this at this late date knowing that the Senate wouldn't pass it anyway, and that Obama ...
http://froomkin.tumblr.com/post/38236975112/why-including-social-security-in-a-deficit-deal-is-a
Source of above link was provided by economistsview.typepad.com.
Too bad we can't prosecute the Bush II GOP administration for fraud, huh? ...
Jonathan Chait writes an article that is probably as close to the real truth about the spending cuts debate as any I've come across, left or right, over the past year.
But is his article rational and objective?
Chait "...is a commentator and writer for New York magazine. He was previously a senior editor ...
Looks like the Filibuster Rule used by the Senate is finally being heard by the court as a constitutionality issue. While the constitution expressly allows the Senate to decide it's own rules, at each election of Senators, the question before the court is whether the Filibuster Rule is actually unconstitutional, since it ...
Two of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have been kicked off the House Budget Committee, a rare move that could make it easier ...
http://robertreich.org/post/36748734666 In fact... .his stratagy would fuck the GOP in the 2014 mid-terms if they don't chose to go along... more-over, and importantly, it would probably force a clear and perhaps watershed split between the two coalitions now comprising the GOP... moderate ...
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary - H. L. Mencken.
His quote may have been preceded by some other similar description by some other wise man before him. I thought it apt ...
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary - H. L. Mencken.
His quote may have been preceded by some other similar description by some other wise man before him. I thought it apt ...
Contrary to what the far right would have one believe, almost all pollsters were biased toward Romney... not toward Obama.
Read it and weep. http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Nov23.html#item-1
Article in NYT today provides the source of inception for "starve the beast" GOP (conservative) ideology. It was put forth by Greenspan in 1978, then used by Reagan for his "Reaganomics" propaganda in 1981. It turns out though that all the data shows that "starve the beast" doesn't work at all to reign in spending... to the ...
In my note the other day ( "Remaking" the GOP. Not!, 11/17/2012 ) I said:
As the GOP's loss on Nov 6 now gives them reason to begin contemplating their navel and then publicly airing what they did "wrong", it's becoming clearer that it's not a change of policies they believe they have to make, but more ...
As the GOP's loss on Nov 6 now gives them reason to begin contemplating their navel and then publically airing what they did "wrong", it's becoming clearer that it's not a change of policies they believe they have to make, but more propoganda targeted to the demographics that voted against them.... specifically targeting hispanics, ...
Despite the populist arguments he espoused, & his incumbent status, he only won by 5% of Ohio's voters. That's only 2% better than Obama did nationally. One has to ask therefore, why 45% voted against him at all? What is it about the "promises" of the right wing to gut social spending, ...
One of the most significant results of the election are the racial demographics... especially that as it relates to the white vote.
The white vote in this election comprised 72% of all votes cast, and it's been traditionally and generally true that in presidential elections the conservative party garners more of the white vote than the ...
One of the most significant results of the election are the racial demographics... especially that as it relates to the white vote.
The white vote in this election comprised 72% of all votes cast, and it's been traditionally and generally true that in presidential elections the conservative party garners more of the white vote than the ...
All the rhetoric cast by the GOP... the party platform, the debates, political campaign slogans, candidate policy statements, etc. etc....leads to all the things we've been hearing for years. Mostly it's always about:
- Small Govt --- how small is small enough?
- Lower Taxes --- this is just in support of 1)
I read this article in Truthout today, wondering, because of the title, what it was about. The title was The Presidential Election Exposed, Again, the Death of the Liberal Class I suggest reading and digesting it if you haven't already. It doesn't say it in so many words, but essentially it says the U.S. is a ...
Viewed from the historical perspective, there's been a continual shift to larger coalitions of nations since the 1800's. One of these failed -- the USSR was a militarily enforced coalition of several formerly independent states. It failed economically before it collapsed entirely.
The last ...
One of the most significant results of the election are the racial demographics... especially that as it relates to the white vote.
The white vote in this election comprised 72% of all votes cast, and it's been traditionally and generally true that in presidential elections the conservative party garners more of the white vote than the ...
With the virtual 50:50 split of the popular vote but a 3:2 Electoral vote tally, there's inevitably going to be another call for constitutional convention to abandon the Electoral College and use the popular vote to determine presidential election win.
The electoral college is a fundamental form of a federated form of gov'...
GOP ==> Angry Old White Men personified:
Independent of who won / wins, the most obvious result of this election is that nationwide the overwhelming majority of urban voters vote with the liberal party, with a slight edge to liberal votes in suburban U.S, while the overwhelming majority of rural voters go with the conservative party.
This of course stands to reason since rural ...
I was curious about the size of the US states relative to electoral votes... and red v blue states as of Electoralvote.com poll composites through Nov 2.... 4 days prior to election day. It's well known that the US coasts are heavily democratic. It is even more apparent though when you size the states by ...
In an Op-Ed in the San Jose Mercury News on Oct 26, 2012, Charles Krautheimer (a Washington Post columnist) makes several claims related to Romney's assertion that we have fewer ships than in 1917, and that we need more ships than we have now, to which Obama responded with the now famous quip "...we also have fewer horses ...
This article suggests that to get Kansas (figuratively for midwestern political persuasions) to vote/flip to Democrats the Democrats would have to preach the god and country propaganda.
Let's face it, though. It's very hard to imagine the Democratic party putting this obviously logical strategy into ...
A couple of decades ago or so the concept of gay marriage was more or less only on the gay rights agenda's "some-day in the far future" wish list. Over the past decade and more recently it has become a real political possibility... even highly probable. I can't say with certainty when gay marriage emancipation will ...
Obama's retort was apt of course but not specifically on target. If Romney had used any common sense at all in his statement then he'd never have made it. So we can conclude that he didn't use any common sense or if he did he ignored it entirely and tried to influence those who are even dumber than he is.
Romney ...
I don't know which alarms me more.... that a candidate for the Senate believes or thinks from the Middle Ages,or that anybody still thinks this way.
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, "that's something God intended."
&...
I don't know which alarms me more.... that a candidate for the Senate believes or thinks from the Middle Ages,or that anybody still thinks this way.
Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape, "that's something God intended."
&...
I was scanning through the electoral maps for each presidential election in the US to see how the nation's states have shifted and when .. mostly looking at the mid-west and south's shift to the GOP with my interest in looking at Ohio and Indiana's historic voting record in a geographic sense of neighboring states voting records. ...
I came across the article in the New Republic How the GOP Destroyed Its Moderates It describes the political history of the GOP party's shift to the radical right wing over time... beginning with Goldwater, thorough Nixon, Reagan, & H.G.W. Bush administrations., ... and the eventual consequence to the ...
One must wonder somewhat about the constituency of elected representatives to a State's legislative body who favor succession, slavery, and confederate ideology. This one (Loy Mauch (R-Bismark Arkansas)) just happens to have been caught be in the public light, but there are a multitude of others just like him who aren't ...
This article on a voter registration tactic being used by GOP registration drives nation-wide to selectively screen out Obama supporters from becoming registered apparently falls under the heading of all's fair in love and war (and this election is deemed a "war") and a confirmation of the GOP policy that the ends justify the means.&...
I'd urge you brush up on each state's probable representative count by party affiliation if you want to figure who the next president will be. I'd also suggest you pay careful attention to the make-up of the new Senate if you want to know who the next VP will be.
Pursuant to the ...
What Romney was really saying is that those citizens who don't pay federal income taxes shouldn't be able to have a vote.. because they're always going to vote for the party that supports them... and Mitt represents the party that opposes supporting those that don't pay federal income taxes ... like the working poor, the aged retiree's, ...
The GOP is currently split into two camps ...the old school GOP, or moderates, and the new upstart far right wing (tea-partiers and other extremists). These essentially dissimilar political groups have had to form a coalition to counter the democratic party, since without coalition, neither group has sufficient votes to ...
I don't know about you, but from my perspective and admittedly limited experience (my lifetime and a bit of prior history) it appears to met that the US political divisions since Obama's election and the subsequent surge in the far right wing's influence over the rest of the GOP (tea-party, far right social conservatism, ...
I won't go into why US gov't's always need an enemy to be perceived by the country's citizens, but when you need to generate one it's not very hard.
Propaganda can materialize a perceived serious enemy in nearly no time at all. But, as ...
I break down the states into small, intermediate, and and large in terms of population size... which is proportional to the state's electoral votes. Within each group I find the proportion that are red states and the proportion of electoral votes represented by them. The electoral vote state groupings are Small =<7; ....
I'm wondering if or when one or more of the US major Newspapers will finally have enough balls to call a spade a spade in a big, bold, black, front page top headline calling Ryan and Romney the outright liars they are.
We see plenty of this statement in blogs and opinion pieces in national news publications, but never on the front page ...
Read this article -- very interestig questions on how to make democracy and corporations mutually inclusive. The article's title is Can Corportions be Made to Fit Democracy Theory & Vision? My answer is that they cannot... not with the current chartered definition of Corporation, since by defintion they are entites for ...
The nation will change dramatically if the right wing succeeds in electing Romney-Ryan. It will
- regress dramatically (aka "taking America back") to the level of the pre-Great Depression era... encroaching on if not virtually eliminating anti-trust laws;
- resurrect state's rights by circumventing constitutional
While it's interesting to see the national popular vote polling results develop for the presidential election, it matters not at all in the real world since it's only the electoral college votes that count.
Electoral votes come from each state and are proportioned by each State's population... so the states with the greatest ...
I read this article about the Pennsylvania court decision upholding Pennsylvania's Voter ID law and I was both troubled by it, and then became depressed. The article describes not only the specifics of the court's reasoning in upholding that law, but several other cases and implications of legal ...
The blogs and talking heads are focused on fiscal conservancy issues that Ryan is supposedly now bringing to the table as the vp, and on the riskiness of the pick for GOP, etc. This was also my initial take. But these focal points all presume that the Ryan for vp choice is all about the GOP winning the ...
Rasmussen polls heen and continue to be highly biased to the conservative candidates. This is not just my observation (from the 2008 pre-election polls, but by others and the data comparing polls with one another in the same regions at the same time). Electoral votes needed to win = 270. See both electoral maps ...
Listening to 60 Minutes interview tonight with Romney & Ryan tonight I was struck by how often the phrase "...back on the right track." was used.
Romney described Ryan as a person who "wants to get the country back on the right track." Romney said this several times (I didn't count, but more than 3 times). e.g. ...
Looks like my other note today on Ryan is pretty much the same take that Reich has on Ryan (here)... he even uses the same terms I used.
More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today?s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog ...
Romney's going after the far right wingers with Ryan ... duh!. This ought to stimulate the centrists and liberals to get out the vote though. My bet is that this was on net a bad move for the GOP presidential nominee. A desperate last ditch effort. Romney's just a bought and paid ...
As we already know, Starve the Beast has been the driving force behind GOP since the New Deal. Thoma's article just reminds us of this again. But the advances of Starve the Beast strategies have been increasingly successful starting with Reagan and since Bush II's regime its arguably advanced at an even greater ...
This says it all.... about who's defining what 'merican is:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?8dpc, from his blog entry Al Green: Threat to the American Way of Life, citing an article by Gary Silverman
...from a well-known supporter of Mr Romney ? Suzy Welch, former editor in chief of the Harvard Business Review, and wife of Jack Welch, ...
If you use electoral-vote.com, and then look on that site for the list of polls by date for each state (here) you find that the 2nd most recent poll was taken by Project New America... and then look for the actual polster's formal statement and data (that data which they actually released), it's takes awhile to follow the links ...
There are many examples of failed nation-states over time. In the US though we have a good example of the same thing (were it not for federal subsidies) in Mississippi... which for all intents and purposes has all the characteristics of a failed state... high rates of impoverishment, poor health, corrupt political system, ...
Norway Intervenes to Avert Oil Industry Closure
http://news.yahoo.com/norway-intervenes-avert-oil-industry-closure-005718546--sector.html
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's government ordered on Monday a last-minute settlement in a dispute between striking oil workers and employers in a move to alleviate market fears over a full closure of its ...
Some things never change (emphasis below is my own).
There is no exaggeration in the assertion that among the citizens who enjoy political rights the number of those who have a lively interest in public affairs is insignificant. In the majority of human beings the sense of an intimate relationship between the good of the ...
"... all the factors of public life speak and struggle in the name of the people, of. the community at large. The government and rebels against the government, kings and the party-leaders, tyrants by the grace of God and usurpers, rabid idealists and calculating self-seekers, all are ?the people,? and all declare that in their actions ...
Krugman ends his NYT May 3 Op-ed Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity with this statement:
...Krugman ends his NYT May 3 Op-ed Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity with this statement:
...http://robertreich.org/post/22204212722
I'm rooting for constructive reforms... but history says my hope is on the wrong side of realities.
Brooks' op-ed in NYT yesterday was about the GOP's march to maddness (my words) and it's far right agenda. But neither he, nor the comments I've seen so far about his piece address the reason for this rightward surge.
As I read the op-ed yesterday (in San Jose Mercury News) the first thing I ...
Article describes 4 elements of conservatism... and that at least 2 must be present to be a conservative. Poorly written, imo, but content is worth the read.
http://www.princeton.edu/~jmueller/JPI-Conservatism-JWMueller.pdf
"I think we need to have a government that respects our religions," Gingrich said, appearing visibly agitated. "I'm a little bit tired of being lectured on respecting every other religion on the planet. I want them to respect our religion." (...
Kudlow in his last paragraph of blog entry entitled "GOP Needs a Bolder Growth Message":
...I won't link to that blog entry directly (since it eats into my free 20 entries/mo.into NYT), but you can get there without using any free entries to NYT by clicking on "go to Krugman's blog" instead of clicking on any of the individual blog entries... use this link..
Anyway, the ...
I was curious about GDP growth and Federal Spending when broken down by Presidential party from Eisenhower's administration through Bush's... a period of 56 years since WWII. Based on my years of hearing that the GOP was a better fiscal steward of federal policy toward GDP growth and lower spending, I was under the strong ...
I have previously postulated that IF all voters were to take classes to realistically appraise real economic consequence of voting choices --- candidates for federal office-holders, congressional bills, etc., that they would overwhelming vote in their own best interests, and that this would forever tilt the political and economic ...
- One is based on Calvinist religious doctrine --- which I summarize as "work ethic" morals. This is the basis for most of the early colonial period which became
http://news.yahoo.com/gop-
At the end of WikiRebels, Iceland TV journalist, Kristinn Hrafnsson concludes, ?Democracy without transparency is not democracy.?
The 28: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi,
The lawsuit claims the federal government has failed to ...
"The only budget battle that matters is the fight over what kind of "compromise" the White House cuts with Republicans to get the continuing resolution extended" -- Andew Leonard ...