Posts tagged politics
Serving the robot community since 2011
On same-sex marriage, Romney has shown a similar kind of willful amnesia. Over the weekend, Romney assured his commencement audience at Liberty University that marriage has long been, and will always be defined as “a relationship between one man and one woman.”
Except, in the case of his great-grandfather Miles P. Romney, whose idea of marriage was between one man and five women. Or his great-great grandfather Parley Pratt, one man who married twelve women.
(Source: The New York Times)
If presidential campaigns are M.R.I.’s for the soul, as David Axelrod, President Obama’s political strategist, likes to say, vice presidential vetting this year will be a body-cavity search.
(Source: The New York Times)
Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi writes about what’s really going on in the Republication presidential primary and it’s not pretty. Years of conservative finger pointing and quests for holier-than-thou orthodoxy have brought the party to the point where it is hunting for traitors to the cause within its own ranks, he says.
Taibbi writes:
This is the last stage in any paranoid illness. You start by suspecting that somebody out there is out to get you; in the end, you’re sure that even the people who love you the most under your own roof, your own doctors, your parents, your wife and your children, they’re in on the plot. To quote Matt Damon in the almost-underrated spy film The Good Shepherd, they became convinced that there’s “a stranger in the house.”
This is where the Republican Party is now. They’ve run out of foreign enemies to point fingers at. They’ve already maxed out the rhetoric against us orgiastic, anarchy-loving pansexual liberal terrorists. The only possible remaining explanation for their troubles is that their own leaders have failed them. There is a stranger in the house!
It’s sad and, as Tabbi writes, “remarkable to watch.”
The Obama Memos: The Making of a Post-Post-Partisan Presidency
Ryan Lizza from The New Yorker provides a unique and fascinating view of how decisions have been made inside the Obama presidency. This is essential reading for all those liberals who think Obama hasn’t done enough and for those conservatives who think he’s too radical. Lizza had access to hundreds of memoranda written inside the White House that provide insight on how Obama has adjusted his policies to meet political realities. The short version: It’s not as easy to get things done as you’d think, even less so when the opposition party is determined to stop you at every turn. Obama’s goal of changing Washington, D.C.’s toxic partisan atmosphere seems farther away than ever, but he has still had many significant accomplishments.
Mr. Gingrich welcomed the endorsement of Mr. Perry, and tried to use it to persuade conservative voters to join his candidacy. But a critical megaphone for news — talk radio — was consumed with a debate over whether his alleged request for an open marriage would harm him. It should not, said Rush Limbaugh, because he had at least asked permission.
Moralizing's High Cost
A New York Times editorial calling Newt Gingrich to task for his hypocrisy over personal morals.
He basically thinks destiny saved him a seat on the bus.
(Source: NPR)
Almost without exception, every proposal put forth by GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates is intended to preserve or expand tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans. Most of their plans, which are presented as commonsense measures that will aid all Americans, would actually result in higher taxes for middle-class taxpayers and the poor.
“Doonesbury” is quoting selections from Joe McGinniss’ upcoming biography of Sarah Palin this week. Fictional Fox News correspondent Roland Hedley is tweeting the book and trying to give it the appropriate spin. Funny but not a pretty picture.
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
