January 7, 2012

So, he believes in "science" when it comes to conception

but not when it comes to global warming. Alrighty then!

January 7, 2012

What really kills me is not so much that they are talking out of their a***s when they make comments

like that but that they are NEVER expected to elaborate or prove what they say (and they know it). It is just enough for them and their supporters that they said something mean and ugly about President Obama, which is what they know their audience wants.

Another thing that has started irritating me is that they seem to believe that everytime Obama talks about some thing he wants to do to help people (i.e. college), you'd think- the way right-wingers talk- Obama was making something mandatory.

January 7, 2012

I thought

That conservatives hate government "paying" people to have more children?

January 6, 2012

Republicans can perpetrate some of the worst abuses of power without a fig leaf of remorse

including things like indefinite detention without charges/trial, torture, illegal wiretapping, etc. yet the instant a Democrat tries to implement health care reform or create a new consumer watchdog agency, the Republicans gasp and faint in outrage at the Democrats' "Chicago-style politics" and socialist tyranny!

January 6, 2012

I'm disappointed as well

though I suspect it has more to do with "politics" and less personal belief. It took a long time, of course, for (viable) Presidential candidates just to be able to publicly support Civil Unions. Hell, even gays in the military and repealing DADT used to be too hot to touch ever since Clinton got burned back in 1993. It will probably be a little while longer before major-party candidates for public office feel like they can openly support same-sex marriage and, yes, I do believe that it is somewhat cowardly not to be able and willing to stand up for it now, particularly at this point in time when more and more states are moving on from Civil Unions to full marriage equality for same-sex citizens despite ongoing pushback from the right but I believe it will eventually happen. One of the biggest problems for proponents of same-sex marriage is that same-sex marriage is (wrongly IMHO) viewed by the public more as "gay rights" than "human rights".

January 6, 2012

There's no rational basis for opposition to it IMHO

The only basis that anybody EVER puts forward about why same-sex marriage should be illegal/not allowed is always rooted in religious belief but since we are (theoretically) NOT a theocracy and people in our country are free to practice whatever religion they want (or none at all), religious beliefs are (theoretically) not supposed to form the basis of our public policies. I have yet to hear a sincere, rational reasons for why it would in our country's best interests to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, mostly because I suspect that there are none.

January 6, 2012

I did too (initially)

I thought that his (P)residency would be a one-term blip and that we'd regroup and retake Congress and win the WH again in 2004 and I still tend to think that, absent 9/11, we just might have given his mediocrity and general laziness. Bush's first few months in office were pretty disastrous for him politically and, aside from getting his tax cut plan passed, most of his agenda was stymied by Congress and the Dems and the Dems had, in fact, been able to recapture the Senate briefly due to Jim Jeffords' defection. I don't think that, without 9/11, he would have ever been able to get the invasion/occupation of Iraq off the ground either. I also thought (or maybe hoped) that due to the divisiveness of the election caused by the recount and it being thrown into SCOTUS that he might govern in a more bipartisan fashion, which, of course, never happened, especially after 9/11 and especially after he and his party went on to smear Democrats running in the 2002 midterms. Once he was practically coronated as "the decider" or "commander-in-chief" following 9/11, I actually began wondering if our democratic form of government would even survive or if it would die "with thunderous applause".

January 6, 2012

Steve Benen: A Misguided Appeal For A Moderate Mitt

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2012_01/a_misguided_appeal_for_a_moder034545.php

I agree with Benen's piece that argues against this odd notion that is apparently floating around among the punditocracy somewhere out there that if Romney were to win the GOP nomination and somehow manage to defeat Obama that he is somehow likely to govern as a moderate "Massachusetts Mitt" as POTUS. After witnessing the power that the Tea Party currently wields over the GOP in terms of being able to threaten and intimidate Republicans- even supposedly "moderate" and reasonable ones like the Maine twins and my own Senator Lugar- into totally refusing to cooperate with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, there is nothing to suggest to me that, aside from teabaggers simply vanishing after November or the "moderate" Republicans (all 2 or 3 of them) staging a successful coup and grasping control of the party back from the teabaggers, a Republican in the WH in 2013 will be under considerable pressure to kowtow to the Tea Party agenda in terms of judicial appointments, appointments to federal agencies, and decisions about bills passed by Congress that land on his desk. Should the Republicans maintain control of the House AND capture the WH and Senate (a nightmare scenario if I ever heard one) in November, such pressure to cater to the Tea Party would only increase on a President Romney and he would risk severe alienation and loss of political capital if he disappointed them (though I'm sure he wouldn't). Put more simply, it would be a HUGE mistake to give Mitt, who has adopted increasingly harsh Tea Party rhetoric during this campaign, the benefit of the doubt that he might transform into "Mr. Moderate GOPer" if he were to win the WH. I'll take that one step further and argue that we MUST assume the worst of ANY of the potential GOP candidates if any of them were to win in November and work to ensure their defeat of their nominee in November.

January 6, 2012

I think that that's partly true

He might not have had to bend so much to Blue Dogs and Republicans had the Republicans not been so lockstep obstructionist and a few more Republicans had been willing to vote their consciences but there have been a few things that I haven't necessarily agreed with too - though nothing that I would consider a "deal breaker" and I'm not sure that there is anything that Obama could do that would ever be as horrendous as what the Republican Tea Partiers could and would do control WH for 4-8 years (with Congress to boot).
I think that this "strategy" (if you want to call it that) is mostly effective with the low-information voters whom don't fully understand how the federal government (WH & Congress) operate and believe that the President can just get what he/she wants and that if they don't, then they're somehow a failure as a leader. The way George W. Bush was perceived to have governed seems to reinforce this myth though a.)He didn't get absolutely EVERYTHING he wanted and b.)He got most of what he wanted due to Republican control of Congress for six of his eight years as POTUS and those Republican Congresses rubberstamped virtually his entire agenda, including the wasteful and ineffective Medicare Drug Prescription Plan, budget busting tax cuts before and during two simultaneous wars/occupations (one of which was clearly a "war of choice&quot . The Republican Tea Party essentially counts on most people being too ignorant and/or oblivious to realize that even though one party can technically control the Senate (i.e. the Democrats), the other party (i.e. Republicans) can actually gum up the works so badly that the body can't even proceed to a simple up-or-down vote on a bill (let alone ensure its passage) without a supermajority (which is not technically how it's supposed to work but most people aren't even knowledgeable enough to know THAT either).

January 5, 2012

As a politician

why waste your time and do the hard work of studying complex problems and coming up with solutions to those problems on your own when you can just plop down member fees and just get right-wing/crowd pleasing/corporate interest-tailored/cookie-cutter "model" bills from ALEC?