The GOP, Purely Political

In the Rove era, the Republican Party’s election playbook consists of energizing the base (i.e. right-wing nutz) and going for the 50% plus 1 vote to win.  And I suppose it worked while the country was still doing ok after Clinton’s two terms that we now look back fondly as “the good old days.”  But now our country is reeling from an economy built on corporate greed and corruption.  Our country is reeling from two unfinished wars, one of which was based on lies and has cost over 4,000 U.S. dead and 30,000 wounded.  Our country is reeling from an $11 TRILLION debt.

With 4 out of every 5 Americans saying our country is on the wrong track, the public yearns for responsible governance.  The GOP’s problem?  They’re the ones who spent the last 30 years whining “government IS the problem” then setting about diligently to prove it whenever elected to public office!

But what does all this mean from a purely political point of view?  Rove has painted the GOP into a corner with the evangelical crowd.  He sold the party’s soul to the devil (if you’ll pardon the expression) to win a few election cycles.  But what has this “culture war” given us?  A political party that:

• deems major population centers “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” 
• sneers at the educated, calling us “elitists, latte-sipping, effete”
• deploys subtle (and not so subtle) racist tactics and fear-mongering of ALL minorities.  Ok, maybe not Asian… I suppose they’re “good” minorities, huh?

Now if you’re one of these right-wing nutz you’re probably thinking “hey, cool!”.  But the rest of us wonder how you win elections by insulting half the electorate?  And make no mistake about it, the Democrats now enjoy HUGE favorability margins among women, Hispanics, Blacks, under-30 and urban voters.  That leaves white rural voters for the GOP.  Not exactly a coalition for the ages, huh? 

Conservatives, particularly the Ron Paul smaller government faction, have good substance to bring to the ol’ American pot luck.  But if the GOP continues to use the politics of lies, hate, divisiveness and fear, those voices will never be heard.  And as we face the possibility of our first $1 TRILLION deficit in 2009, that’s a shame.

Treehorn~

Sarah Palin, What’s your function?

Here is some interesting video on Youtube of some still pics of Sarah Palin’s daughter; Bristol.

Why would I forward on such are thing, and why is it important to see?

1) it has a that cool song from “school house Rock” …. “Conjunction Junction”

2) I am very much be a proponent of dismissing any actions of adult children of a candidate

3) I am also a proponent of dismissing any single action of minor children of a candidate…kids go crazy things no matter how you raise them.

however,

There is a ton of publicly available evidence of young Bristol palin behaving in an illegal and immoral behavior for a teenager.  There’s a double standard here because nobody would expect much on this from the democratic candidate, but for a Republican candidate to have a teenager who is regularly boozing, and engaging in unprotected sex…at a very minimum, it doesn’t speak well of the candidate’s abilities to manage even the closest and more dear parts of their life.  Particularly since she works at home partly or from a proxy office in nearby Anchorage so that she doesn’t have to travel to Juneau.

When you add that she spends the state’s money to send her kids to places which they have no function or were not invited..spending $21,000 on their airfare and a luxury hotel, then you have to wonder if there’s any responsibility there at all.  And it’s not just irresponsible.  It is Illegal to charge the state for personal or family travel for anyone that does not have official state business.

Election Fever

I just wanted to take a moment to mention for the record that currently I have no idea who will be the next president of the United States….McCain or Obama.

Right now Obama has a pretty solid lead in the polls…about 303 electoral votes to McCains 175.

The country is pretty heated up.  There’s a gigantic government bailout package right at a time when people can’t be affording to bail out millionaires.

Its ominous times late in October of 2008 with am election right around the corner

I Dig Chicks….Chick Tracts, that is.

Do you know those little comic books that people leave near phone books?

you know that ones that tell you how you are going to burn in hell, etc?

 

they are made by a company called chick publications, and they are called “chick tracts”.

http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp

 

for a while, I amused myself by scanning those into a my computer, typing new text into the dialogue bubbles,

and photoshopping the images, slightly.   I printed a few, cut and folded them, and started leaving them in the library,

at atms, phone booths, etc.

 

the three I worked on so far were my favorites:

 

1) Flight 144 – which shows a loving old couple who lived a selfless life of good deeds, and still burned in hell due to a technicality….while the guy who was sitting next to them on the plane….( who admitted he was an alcoholic cook on an oil tanker who killed a guy in a drunken brawl) made it into heaven.

Flight 144
A couple spends 50 years on the mission field, trusting in their good works. But when they die and stand before God, they learn that good works can’t save… only Jesus can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) Tiny Shoes – Juan was all the time getting drunk and didn’t buy little Juanito his tiny shoes.  Juanito stepped on some glass and got an infection.  Instead of healing Juanito, God decided he efforts were better put to destructions, and he struck down Juan’s favorite ”Gambling Saloon” with a bolt of lightning.  Which, too little too late, scared Juan into buying the much-needed shoes for Juanito.  But alas it was too late, little Juanito had died and so Juan felt very bad. Tough Shit Juan, that’s what you get.

 

Tiny Shoes
When his son died, Juan turned from drinking and gambling to serve Christ.

 

 

 

 

3) Big Daddy – An impossibly handsome young man is badgered by his ugly and slightly hippy-ish professor into
   sytematically breaking down the modern theory of evolution by misrepresenting data in a pretty deliberate fashion.

For example, James Chick, in another publication, cites a true example of scientists aging a *living* mollusk at 100 million years old by carbon-dating the shell of said mollusk.   The inferred logic is that because of this error, Carbon-13 data is obviously flawed and therefore Christianity is the truth, the light, and the way……and was right all along.

 

Not even directing attentoin toward the crazy-ass logical reasoning skills the author doesn’t have……why would said author pick this one example of the aging of a living mollusk out of literally tens of thousands of carbon-13 samples?

Well I’ll tell ya.  it is because he knows that mollusks make their shell from diatomaceous earth, consisting of the fossils of long dead diatoms.  And diatoms were unicellular creatures that lived from 45 million to 300 million years ago.  Their fossils literally lining the ocean floors.

 

Big Daddy?
A student proves evolution is full of holes.

 

 

 

 

Flickr and Memories of the 1980s

 Flickr, is really one of my favorite social networking sites.   It’s a lot more than a place to upload photos, it really is a community….and they are now allowing members to upload video, too.    I especially love geotagging photos as it is really cool to see yourself in the background of someone else’s photo.
It really gives you a feeling of being connected.

The diversity brings out the people with odd tastes, too….naturally.    So when searching for “comic book art”
I ran across this image of She-Ra and Rainbow-Brite, whom many of you will remember were toys from the 1980s.
(and, strictly, I had completely forgotten about Rainbow-Brite but a vague recollection of She-Ra rattled around somewhere in my 80s memories)

However, who knew there was a He-Man group on Flickr?  I mean….really???

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frances_purple/161086365/

and while we are taking a trip down memory lane, why don’t we look at the Sears 1985 Christmas Catalogue and pick out something that we really wanted from that year and never got!

http://flickr.com/photos/wishbook/sets/72057594129032698/

Toys start on page 7

Presidential Poll

link

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Taxes, Senators, and Money Plans, oh my!

The Tax Policy Center has done an analysis of the tax proposals of Senators McCain and Obama. A lot of it is way too complicated for any of us (particularly, me) to understand — and maybe even for Johhny-M and Baracky-O to understand, too — but here’s the bottom line…

Although both candidates have at times stressed fiscal responsibility, their specific non-health tax proposals would reduce tax revenues by $3.7 trillion (McCain) and $2.7 trillion (Obama) over the next 10 years, or approximately 10 and 7 percent of the revenues scheduled for collection under current law, respectively. Furthermore, as in the case of President Bush’s tax cuts, the true cost of McCain’s policies may be masked by phase-ins and sunsets (scheduled expiration dates) that reduce the estimated revenue costs. If his policies were fully phased in and permanent, the ten-year cost would rise to $4.1 trillion, or about 11 percent of total revenues.

And here’s the next-to-the-bottom-line…

The two candidates’ plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those whose taxes fall would, on average, see their after-tax income rise much less. In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise.

There’s a lot more to be read here, including a PDF of the entire report…but those are the money quotes.

Anyone here surprised? The Tax Policy Center is somewhat partisan for sure, but I don’t see anything that isn’t true. I usually don’t see many who disagree strongly with their projections like this. If you see another analysis that seems to, let me know….or better yet post it here!

-RJM

Old and Busted: “Spaghetti Westerns” New Hotness: “Spaghetti Sci-Fi”

 

 

“Senate States The Obvious” or “How Can We Stop This Ourselves”?

Here is an interesting Fred Kaplan column at one of mt favorite online periodicals: Slate.com

This one’s about the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on how information was ignored, misrepresented or simply wrong in the run up to the Iraq War.

Kaplan asks what can be done to prevent this from happening again.

I have a suggestion he omits: Elect better leaders, but of course that’s easier said than done.

What is YOUR suggestion?

Here is the press release on the actual report.  <<LINK>>

The actual report is available, too as a PDF, HERE

Bill O’reilly vs Bill Moyers?

This is great fun but not of any political significance.  Its interesting to get a behind the scenes view of reporter activities.

http://blip.tv/file/972042/

Bill O’Reilly sometimes sends his producers out with camera crews to “ambush” folks who won’t come on The O’Reilly Factor.

At the National Conference for Media Reform 2008, one of O’reilly’s guys — a hapless fellow named Porter Barry — confronted the PBS host Bill Moyers and…well, you’ll want to watch this for yourself. Moyers handled the guy in a polite but firm manner and made the ambusher wish he’d never ambushed.

But that wasn’t the end of it. After Moyers was done with Barry, other reporters began ambushing the ambusher, peppering him with questions in the same way he’d hectored Moyers. Always nice to see a troublemaker getting a dollop of his own medicine…