There are fundamental differences between the VISIONS of the left and the right. Visions are the basic beliefs about humanity, human nature, the role of government and more that lie BENEATH policy -- that LEAD to policy -- and the Democrat and the Republican are fundamentally at odds.
The left, seeing all judgment as prejudice (since anything you believe is tainted by your own circumstances such as skin color, nation of birth, religoin -- or lack thereof -- economic status, etc) believe the only way to eliminate the evils of bigotry is to never think at all. To the Modern Liberal, rational and moral thought is believed to be a hate crime. To them, "discriminating thought" is the evil of having discriminated. The Right, on the other hand, believes that discriminating and moral thought is, while clearly flawed, utterly essential and, in fact, the only way to make a better world.
This leads the Left and the Right to very different places with regard to policy. Because of these diametrically opposed visions, the Right seeks to help people live better lives by encouraging them to engage in the better behaviors. The Left -- rejecting the discriminating thought required to RECOGNIZE the better behaviors -- does not create policy designed to promote these better behaviors and, in fact, seeing the recognition of the better as acts of bigotry, actually works to promote the lesser behaviors which they see as "under seige" from the bigots.
At this point, when their work to undermine the promotion of the better behaviors -- and, their efforts to rehabilitate the image of the lesser behaviors -- lead as they have and must to greater suffering and failure, the Democrat THEN steps in with policy designed for no other purpose than to help mitigate the consequenes of the behaviors that they themselves have made prevelant.
On the institutional level, one sees the institutions of the Right -- from the Church to the Boy Scouts -- promote better lives by working to encourage people to better themselves. The institutions of the Left -- from the ACLU to the radicacl feminist movement -- do seek not to help people become better, but only to force society to accept and REWARD people AS THEY ARE, unchanged.
On the policy level, one finds that the Right seeks to promote those behaviors that best help people to achieve their goals. The Left works only to undermine the recognition of those bettter behaviors and then to legislate policy that seeks to (somewhat) mitigate the consequences of the failure to engage in the better behaviors.
For example, the Right recognizes that childhood abstinenec is a behavior that improves the child's chances for future success. To us it's a no-brainer that unwanted pregancies, grisly abortions and being infected with sexually transmitted diseases makes less likely the child free to achieve as much with their lives as they would like. The Left, on the other hand, sees the promotion of the better behavior as a form of bigotry, calling it the work of "religious fanatics" or the "sexually repressed," and, in turn, work to rehabilitate the image of promiscuity in their movies, TV shows, schools and the legislatures they control. When this promotion of the destructive behaviors lead -- as they have and must -- to the undermining of the child's future success, the Democrat then seeks policies designed to lessen the suffering that they themselves induced.
So, where the Right Thinker promotes childhood and teenage abstinence (knowing full well that it won't work 100 percent of the time, as NOTHING works 100 percent of the time), the Democrat promotes promiscuity and then advances policies like easy and free abortions to mitigate the consequences of childhood and teenage promiscuity. Similarly, when their policies lead -- as they have and must -- to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases amongst the children of America (with fully one out of four young girls in New York City now infeccted with at least one or more STD) -- they then put forth policy that forceably injects ALL children with one vaccine or another to make less likely the chance of contracting one of the STDs that now run rampant.
The problem, of course, beyond the mere moral destruction of our society and the theft of the innocence of the youth of America, is that, while some of these vaccines -- injected into even the children who act in the better ways -- may prevent ONE of these diseases, it does nothing to prevent a whole range of others.
Another example of this paradigm is the Rights' insistence that immigrants learn to speak English. It is self-evident to those of us on the Right that the ability to speak the language of the majority is a big plus for those immigrant who wish to accomplish their dreams in America. Clearly, if an immigrant is a salesman, he can sell to more people if he speaks the language of the majority. If the immigrant is a scientist, he can apply for a job as a scientist at AMGEN or Johnson and Johnson. If he DOESN'T speak the language of the other scientists, the ONLY job he can get is one where his communications skills are of minimal importance, such as the minimum wage job of janitor.
The Left, on the other hand, sees the insistene that one learn the language of the majority as a form of bigotry. Some have gone so far as to call it an attempt by the Right to commit "cultural genocide" of the immigrant. For this reason the Left works to undermine efforts to encourage the immigrant to learn the language of the majority, guaranteeing that they will be locked into minimum wage jobs, and then hop into action to mitigate the suffering of those they have forced to suffer by insisting upon a raise in the minimum wage.
It gets worse. Since the immigrant has rights, in order to satisfy these rights, the majority must learn the many, many languages of the immigrants. Voting documents must be printed up in hundreds of languagess while police departments in every city and town must learn to speak Spanish (etc) in order to properly "Mirandize" suspected criminals.
In other words, once again, the indiscriminateness of thought that is the defining trait of the Modern Liberal movement leads the Modern Liberal to create an Orwellian world where their subjects suffer, while a cultural genocide IS taking place -- against America and against our children.
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The right siding with good:
Isn't It Right Wing Radio and Television That Makes Threats of Violence Against Obama "Acceptable," As In This Case in Maine? "And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into 'The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,' saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. 'Let's hope we have a winner,' said the sign, since taken down."
The Left siding with evil:
Obama Pledges To End Torture To Help ‘Regain America’s Moral Stature In The World’
The right siding with gooooood:
"The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool."
If Obama had been white, this would have been one of the most massive landslides in history, instead of just a very decisive win.
I like when he talks about evil liberals lurking in alleys with black hats and depraved looks on their faces.
The Right Being Good:
Swastikas and Semi-automatics: What's Wrong With Gun Show Culture
The Right Embracing the Policies that Create Success:
Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions. That's $4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation.
lol...this is fun
The Right Being Good:
Right Wing Radio Talk Show Hosts: "To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners."
Ha. The posters on this site, who call Evan on every little bit of intellectual dishonesty that he passes off as punditry, are the only reason anyone would bother showing up here at all.
My, my, my. This post certainly has set off your pair of brain dead liberal triumphalist trolls, Evan. Had they any ideas of their own worth listening to, I'm sure their blogs would get more than the zero hits they currently get. But since no one will volunatrily to listen to them, they feel obliged to steal eyeballs from you. It's a pity really. Their Chosen One won the election, but the only contribution they have the ability to make is to denigrate his political opponents. They've absolutely NOTHING constructive to add to the conversation. Sad, sad, sad.
Oh, it looks to me that they made some very good points on the relative ethical and construvtivity of the two parties...then we get your standardized and totally useless carping.
Sarah Palin will never hold national office nor will any Republican at the presidential level
for a long time to come.
Why? Because America has uneducated jerks in it but is not a nation
of uneducated jerks. The Republicans are done, hoisted on the petard of their own "southern strategy."
The Republican Party is only a step away from becoming the fringe of the fringe, identified more
with cross-burning weirdoes wearing hoods, folks like the Alaska secessionist party, all those
gun owners stocking up on assault weapons before the "Socialist/United Nations/Obama/Muslim"
conspiracy comes to fruition, than with anything remotely like a serious national political force.
The Republican Party is now the toy of the Rush Limbaugh windbags. These folks include
outright crazies (such as Sarah Palin's Assemblies of God pals who are waiting for Spaceship Jesus
to rescue them and/or rooting out "witches" from their midst), white racists and a few not-very-bright
attention seekers, including Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity etc
George W Bush is still the President of the United States of America.
Some people are starting to goose step a little prematurely if you ask me. LOL!
Sarah Palin will never.... blah blah blah.
Get a grip.
"On the institutional level, one sees the institutions of the Right -- from the Church to the Boy Scouts -- promote better lives by working to encourage people to better themselves. The institutions of the Left -- from the ACLU to the radicacl feminist movement -- do seek not to help people become better, but only to force society to accept and REWARD people AS THEY ARE, unchanged."
Bingo.
Excellent post, Evan.
Why the Economy Grows Like Crazy Amid High Taxes
Economic Policy
by Larry Beinhart | November 17, 2008 - 9:21am
article tools: email | print | read more Larry Beinhart
The real-world effects of tax policy are counterintuitive.
They run exactly opposite the conventional wisdom. They defy what the Heritage Foundation calls common sense and what the American Enterprise Institute calls logic.
Reality laughs at the Laffer curve, calls Ronald Reagan wrong and says George W. Bush is a loon.
High marginal tax rates correlate with economic growth.
Examples include World War II and the Truman-Eisenhower years, when it was around 90 percent, and the Clinton years, when it was high relative to the preceding and following administrations.
Tax rate increases are followed by real economic growth.
Examples include Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt in 1936 and 1940, Bush the Elder in 1991 and Clinton in1993.
Moderate tax cuts are followed by a flat economy.
This is a generalization from one example: Johnson in 1964.
Large tax cuts are followed by a boom, a bubble and a crash.
1929, 1987 and 2008 are examples.
These are covered in more detail in the first part of the article "Tax Cuts: The B.S. and the Facts."
Why do high taxes create a stronger economy?
I used to run a small business -- a commercial film production company.
Every time we took a dollar out as personal income, it instantly turned into 50 cents.
If we didn't really need the money, that was an incentive to keep it in the company and to find ways to spend it that took it out of the taxable profit column but increased the value of the company.
High taxes create an incentive to reinvest profits into long-term growth.
With high taxes, the only way to retain the bulk of the wealth created by a business is by reinvesting it in the business -- in plants, equipment, staff, research and development, new products and all the rest.
The higher taxes are (and from 1940 to 1964 the top rates were around 90 percent), the more this is true.
This creates a bias toward long-term planning.
If a business is planning for the long term, it wants a happy, stable work force. It becomes worthwhile to pay good wages and offer decent benefits.
Low taxes create an incentive for profit taking.
It is easy to confuse profitability with wealth creation.
They are not the same.
President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. There is no doubt that this gave the country an asset of great value, one that was very productive. It created great "wealth." But, aside from the construction companies that contracted the work, it was not profitable.
Selling subprime mortgages, trading in derivatives, packaging mortgage-backed securities and "flipping" condos were all very profitable but did not create wealth.
The theory is that if the rich can keep their money, they will invest in businesses that create jobs, more businesses, more tax revenue and greater "wealth" for the nation.
That sounds like logic and common sense. But is it, in practice, what happened?
Once tax cutting began, the culture of business changed.
It was no longer enough for a business to be a reasonably good business, making steady, reliable profits.
Indeed, that became a very bad condition for a business to be in. It made it a target for takeovers by people who were willing to milk them of their profits.
Among the ways you can get more profit out of a going business are:
Cutting the workforce -- possibly sacrificing long-term productivity
Cutting salaries -- who cares if the employees are unhappy? The balance sheet improves.
Selling off assets -- who cares what happens in 10 years? We can take the money now.
Outsourcing -- which sends the "wealth" somewhere else.
A whole host of devices were developed to do all of the above: junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, greenmail and the like.
Lots of money could be made that way -- for a small number of individuals. But it doesn't produce "wealth."
An environment in which profit-taking is cheap creates the conditions for a bubble.
Once you've taken your profit, and you have the cash in hand, you look for a place where you can get profits quickly, then again and again. Instead of examining how sound a company is, how well it's run, its debt load and its long-term prospects, other things become important -- such as the speed at which you can profit and the ease of entry.
Instead of investing in business -- which is difficult, slow and complicated -- investors go into markets.
They look for sectors that are hot. When investors find such an area, they flock to it. It heats up even more. People are seen making money, quickly and easily, simply by buying and selling, and they don't want to miss out.
Then there's a bubble -- which is followed by a crash.
Proponents of tax cuts take the position that taxes take money out of the economy.
That's flat out not true.
Governments don't keep the money they collect; they spend it. It goes right back in. It just takes a different route. It goes to different places.
The places that government puts money are important. More to the point, they are important for business.
All infrastructure is an invisible subsidy for all business.
It's easy to understand this when we're talking about roads.
It doesn't matter if your business doesn't ship anything by truck or even by bicycle. The fact that you can get to your office quickly and easily, that your mailperson can get to you without traveling on the back of a mule, is a subsidy of your business.
It's a little harder to see that when we're talking about soft infrastructure.
Laws, regulations and their enforcement. Social Security, unemployment insurance, public health and welfare. Education, research, support of sports, arts and culture. Parks and playgrounds. All of them create a society that is safer, more stable, and more able to produce and consume. They produce a better place in which to do business.
Tax cutters also claim -- and I paraphrase the essence of the argument -- that the money government gets disappears in wasteful stupidities.
There's some truth in that.
They might point out all sorts of cultural and scientific projects, like a museum for the Woodstock Festival, counting the fish in Waldon Pond or studying the sex life of prairie dogs. I would point to the Star Wars missile defense shield, farm subsidies, the ethanol program, the privatized non-reconstruction of Iraq and all of Halliburton's contracts.
But it is also true that businesses spend money on all sorts of wasteful stupidities.
I am sitting here wondering how anyone -- in fact, a succession of people -- could run a company with the power and resources of General Motors into the ground.
In the mythological marketplace, they should fail and suffer for their faults. In the real world, the arrogant fools who ran the place will walk away with millions, and the hundreds of thousands of people who worked for them and their suppliers, who offered services and goods to those in turn, will be the ones who suffer.
The point is that relying on the magic of the marketplace is like relying on any other kind of magic.
There are things that are necessarily done for the common good.
Clean water, sewer systems, garbage collection and public health initiatives create a healthy population, able to work and consume. Take those away, and we return to the plague years. Imagine what that does to business.
Polluted air, toxins in the groundwater, viruses and bacteria jump the borders of even the wealthiest communities.
Bad health created by lack of care for the common good becomes an economic drain on society.
This is not to say that a full-out, state-run economy is better than capitalism. It's not.
That produces different problems that are even worse.
It is not even meant to imply that all "sound" investments in "real" businesses stopped with tax cuts. They didn't. Start-up money and venture capital were relatively easy to come by. Lots of new and good businesses were built in low-tax environments.
But low taxes produced great excesses of negative activity as well. There is a propensity in business, and as a nation, to hollow out our businesses, and mortgage and sell off our assets, in order to grab short-term profits.
A sound economy is based on a mix of market and government actions -- and a host of other factors as well.
These explanations are speculative, a search to explain what is observed in nature, if you will.
What is certain is that tax cuts on the top brackets, and in particular on unearned income, do not produce healthy economic growth. Contrary to all expectations, tax hikes seem to produce the desired growth. All the explanations in the world, funded by all the right-wing anti-tax think tanks in the world, won't change that reality. If these explanations don't suit you, then supply a better one that will.
Great post on taxes...and all verifiable and evident, but these morons see the GOP failures over and over and just keep repeating the same old garbage.
This is why the medieval conservative embraces failure and the policies that lead to failure every time.
Only a sad bunch of little pricks like these left in the joke of a party.
Yes, let's tax our way out of this "recession".... first oil from the ME and then tax mfg imports from China!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
The Right Siding with Good:
Protesters say racism is behind latest Texas dragging death.
The Right Siding with Goooodniss:
Church sign: Obama win is 'sin'
The Left Siding with Eeevil:
Obama vows to lead world on climate change
The Left Siding with Evil:
What a Difference an Adult Makes.
Obama makes a surprise speech via video this morning to the Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles.
The Left defending a little old ladies right to peaceful protest.
ANd here's what the Left thinks of their opponents civil rights...
Conservatives do good (this is a fun game!):
JUSTICE -- RECORD NUMBER OF FELONS SEEK PARDONS FROM BUSH: As President Bush enters his final months in office, a record number of felons are seeking presidential pardons or commutations from him, causing "one of the largest backlogs in clemency applications in recent history." In fiscal year 2008, which ended on Sept. 30, more than 2,300 people applied for a pardon or commutation, the largest number for any single year since at least 1900. An additional 103 people have applied for pardons in the last month. The list of those applying for clemency includes a number of "high-profile felons" such as John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, and Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former California congressman who was convicted of tax evasion. In his presidency thus far, Bush has "taken a stingy stand on pardons," granting fewer of them than any president in modern history. But Bush's use of his clemency powers has not been without controversy. In 2007, Bush commuted former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby's two-and-a-half year prison sentence for lying to federal prosecutors. Though Libby has not submitted a pardon request, "speculation is rampant that Libby's allies will press Bush for one."
Lefties doing evil:
TORTURE -- OBAMA PROMISES TO END TORTURE TO HELP 'REGAIN AMERICA'S MORAL STATURE': Recently, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies," including torture. Last night, Obama put those concerns to rest, in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes. CBS's Steve Kroft asked if Obama planned "to take early action" on changing interrogation methods and shutting the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. "Yes," Obama replied unambiguously, "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world." Recently, CIA senior deputy general counsel John Rizzo, who had been a strong advocate for torture under the Bush administration, said that the CIA detention and interrogation program must be "dealt with immediately." "We do not have the luxury to wait and muddle through," Rizzo added.
Repudiated rightists come clean!!!!
RADICAL RIGHT -- CONSERVATIVES ADMIT AMERICA IS CENTER-LEFT...or further:
For the first two weeks after the progressive victories on Nov. 4, leading conservative pundits and politicians appeared to be in denial, falsely claiming again and again that the United States remained a "center-right" country. This week, however, some conservatives admitted that the country is, in fact, "center-left." Hoover Institution fellow and former informal adviser to the McCain campaign Tod Lindberg explained in a Washington Post op-ed, "It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. ... The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats." Other conservatives now admit that, in recent years, they have failed to respond to issues that matter to Americans. In an interview with the Washington Times, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) said, "Where we have really fallen down is, we have lacked the ability to be relevant to people's lives." "It's the roads...It's education, it's health care," he explained. Cantor is expected to be House Minority Whip in the next Congress.
Righties REEEEEALLY EMBRACING FAILURE...here's the leading architect of Great Depression II, McCain's advisor, Phil it up with horseshit Gramm:
Former senator Phil Gramm, who once said subprime loans were "the American dream in action" and declared recently that America has "become a nation of whiners," has no remorse over pushing deregulation throughout this career. Rejecting "this idea afloat that if you had more regulation you would have fewer mistakes," Gramm told the New York Times. "The markets have worked better than you might have thought."
hhhhhhhhhhahahahahaha
Huckabee on Mitt Romney:
Huckabee writes that the former Massachusetts governor's record was "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president." He notes that Romney declined to make a phone call of congratulations after Huckabee beat the oddsmakers to win the Iowa caucuses, "which we took as a sign of total disrespect." He mocks Romney for suggesting, during one debate, more investment in high-yield stocks as a solution to economic woes. "Let them eat stocks!" Huckabee jokes.
Fred Thompson:
"Fred Thompson never did grasp the dynamics of the race or the country, and his amazingly lackluster campaign reflected just how disconnected he was with the people, despite the anticipation and expectation that greeted his candidacy," Huckabee writes.
On Conservative Christian Leader Gary Bauer:
[Had] an "ever-changing reason to deny me his support." Of one private meeting with Bauer, Huckabee says, "it was like playing Whac-a-Mole at the arcade -- whatever issue I addressed, another one surfaced as a 'problem' that made my candidacy unacceptable." He accuses Bauer of putting issue of national security before bedrock social issues like the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. hahahahahaha...who cares about national security if some dumb fucks get divorced?
On insane, vicious, violent, Christian Crackpot John Hagee:
Huckabee speaks to Hagee by phone before the McCain endorsement, while the former Arkansas governor is preparing for a spot on Saturday Night Live. "I asked if he had prayed about this and believed this was what the Lord wanted him to do," Huckabee writes of his conversation with Hagee. "I didn't get a straight answer."
The Club For Growth:
"I don't take issue with what they believe, but the smugness with which they believe it," writes Huckabee, who raised some taxes as a governor and cut other deals with his state's Democratic legislature. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument."
UPDATE Mitt Romney has fired back:
Asked to respond, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said Huckabee was acting small.
"This type of pettiness is beneath Mike Huckabee," Fehrnstrom. "If we're going to move the party forward, we need to offer more than personal recriminations. Unfortunately, in this book, Mike Huckabee is consumed with presumed slights, and he seems more interested in settling scores than in bringing people together."
Lol...hilarious what the reich has descended into.
Misfortunatly, Stephenslost in Alaska so Palin willn't be able to apoint herself as congresspersson.
Maybe she could anoint herself as something.
No, Stevens was defeated by Mark Begich, the Democrat; the Democrats are now up to 58 seats in the Senate. Palin has nowhere to go.
Isn't this comment thread instructive in light of Evan's piece! The hard core leftists idiots have to strain at gnats in a lame attempt to distort reality while the rest of us simply recognize the elephant in the living room for what it is.
Isn't this comment thread instructive in light of Evan's piece! The hard core leftists idiots have to strain at gnats in a lame attempt to distort reality while the rest of us simply recognize the elephant in the living room for what it is.
Isn't this comment thread instructive in light of Evan's piece! The hard core leftists idiots have to strain at gnats in a lame attempt to distort reality while the rest of us simply recognize the elephant in the living room for what it is.
The landslide grows:
President-elect Obama Now Over 67 Million Votes...
by Jed L
Wed Nov 19, 2008
...and John McCain under 46%. Here's where the numbers stand right now:
Obama: 67,065,042 (52.7%, 365 EVs)
McCain: 58,420,587 (45.9%, 162 EVs)
Remember how things looked on election night at around midnight ET?
Since then, Barack Obama's margin of victory has grown from 5% to 7% and his vote total has swelled by 12.6 million (compared with 8.5 million for John McCain).
The crazy thing is, it's still growing, bit by bit.
Leftists Embracing Evil:
Barack Obama reaffirmed on his much praised appearance on Sixty Minutes that he would close Guantanamo and return America to respectability again.
Rightists Embracing the Policies that Lead to Successfulment:
Biggest Drop in Retail Prices Ever.
Where will the DOW be when the lame moron and his wrecking crew finally vacate the Whitehouse?
I'm betting around 7000, and not much left to save, or much chance to save it.
There is far too much time left with the fools who gave us this mess still in charge.
Obama must be allowed to take over NOW in this time of crisis.
What about the 10 votes I cast for Obama? Were they counted?
Barack Obama reaffirmed on his much praised appearance on Sixty Minutes that he would close Guantanamo and return America to respectability again.
Closing Guantanamo will make America respectable again? Respectable to who, America's friends or her enemies? Releasing the Gitmo prisoners will turn us into the biggest JOKE on the planet in the eyes of the jihadi's currently attacking us. They RESPECT a gun pointed at their head and little else. They laugh at the apostate Obama.
Republicans Embracing the Policies of Success... for Medieval Alchemists:
Study: Republicans stymie sensitive medical researchRAW STORY
Published: Wednesday November 19, 2008
The Financial Times:
"Important US research to reduce HIV infection may have been prevented in recent years because scientists have censored their funding requests in response to political controversy, according to a study published on Tuesday.
"Writing in PLoS Medicine, the academic journal, Joanna Kempner from Rutgers University identified a "chilling effect" on researchers seeking grants from the government-backed National Institutes of Health after their work was questioned by Republican lawmakers and Christian groups.
"The findings suggest politics influence scientists' willingness to conduct research, and raise warnings at a time of continued sensitivity over medical research topics from sexual behaviour to stem cells.
"Among 82 researchers polled by Ms Kempner, who had received money from the NIH, almost a quarter had dropped or reframed studies around sexual behaviour they judged to be politically sensitive, and four had made career changes and left academia as a result of the controversy.
What more is there to say about the obama voter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8
Rightist Doing Good:
Quotes
"All the hunters gather up, we have a nigger in the whitehouse"
-- former Texas Longhorn football player Buck Burnette on his Facebook page.
That's so illogical and so like an ignorant reichsmonkey.
No way in hell Texas could win a single game without their Black players
and this little piece of shit doesn't like Black people?
Now, instead of possibly playing for the national championship,
he's the racist prick who is no longer playing football.
Think how dangerous they could be if they could think.
GOP luddites still in denial:
NOAA: Oct. Temperatures Second Highest on Record
Global temperatures last month were the second-warmest since recordkeeping began, while Arctic sea ice fell to its third-lowest level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. (Bloomberg)
Here's a rightist embarassing America:
http://greatscat.com/2008/11/where-is-love.html
Thank gar, he's on his way out and the nightmare is over.
GOP embracing failurementation, AGAIN:
New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.
16 year high...get it?...since the last Bush administration.
One of the GOPs worst Hit Men, Roger Stone, Regrets GOP Evil Past!!!:
"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."
Liberals drink the kool-aid:
GOP luddites still in denial:
NOAA: Oct. Temperatures Second Highest on Record
Global temperatures last month were the second-warmest since recordkeeping began, while Arctic sea ice fell to its third-lowest level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. (Bloomberg)
Really?
Whoops! Hottest October on record turns out to be a September. The world has never seen such a freezing heat.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml
I forgot to point out this part:
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
The problem with the Left is the total lack of moral fiber. Once that is gone, anything goes. If conservative Christians and Jews were to vanish from the world tomorrow, lefties woudl fight with one another.
Mats
Hey, "Relieved," that was one amazing video!
That has got to be the most incredible incidence of disrespect of an American President in history...truly amazing, and you can tell he knows he deserves it.
Also, hilarious that we've still got global warming deniers on here...the last refuge of the dying moron right.
omg...another huge slide for the DOW...this thing will be below 7000 if we don't get a guy in the office who garners some respect.
From the talking heads today, there is palpable fear in the air...just when we have the lamest dumb fuck duck we've ever had!
This is dangerous.
This seems to be a very condensed version of the thesis in the brilliant Heritage talk. [checking youTube]. Coming up on half a million views. Not bad for a serious 45 minute talk - done without the benefit of a rubber chicken, even.
I presume the book will have many examples to illustrate the core argument. There certainly are a lot to pick from.
People generally remember one or two examples, then reconstruct the abstract argument from the examples. Few people remember arguments in their purely abstract form.
CHICAGO (CBS) ― President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer -- all by the Fourth of July.
They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.
A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.
"This might be a long haul," said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. "2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won't be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years."
Now on Obama's transition team, Reich worries about what happens after the new president is sworn in Jan. 20.
"We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect," Reich said. "If we all assume it's going to be the first 100 days, we're going to be disappointed."
mg...another huge slide for the DOW...this thing will be below 7000 if we don't get a guy in the office who garners some respect.
From the talking heads today, there is palpable fear in the air...just when we have the lamest dumb fuck duck we've ever had!
This is dangerous.
Indeed! 2012 is a long, LONG way off!
In an attempt to dial down expectations for his administration, President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.
No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.
It’s a step down from divine redeemer, but you have to start somewhere.
Aides say Bush is despondent and seems to have shrunk physically. He speaks in a weak, subdued voice and seems to shrink from contact. They say he seems chastised by the mounting evidence of massive failure which even he no longer tries to deny. He needs to be reminded repeatedly of his daily duties and requires a push to fulfill them. He fears his place in history at the very bottom of the scale, below even such failures as Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover and no longer brushes of the charges of war crimes which are made against him both at home and by the world community. He does not want to even hear briefings on the twin wars he began and is leaving to others to clean up.
The statements by Roger Stone about his guilt in helping Bush get elected and the resulting murders in Iraq, also, seemed to send a visible shudder through the lame duck President according to the aide who provided him with that material as part of his daily briefing.
Ira Schwarz/APConsultant
Roger Stone, the notorious political hitman who helped George W. Bush prevail in the 2000 Florida recount, now says that he wishes he hadn’t.
Roger Stone is one of the last guys on Earth one would expect to feel guilty over an episode of rough and tumble politicking. As a self-admitted hit man for the GOP, Stone has had a hand in everything from Nixon's dirty tricks to Eliot Spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a Michelle Obama “whitey” tape during the 2008 Democratic primaries. You might call Stone the Forrest Gump of scandal, popping up to play a bit part in the most notorious negative campaigns in recent history.
The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.
"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."
Stone voted for Bush in 2004 as well but he pulled no punches in his assessment of the last eight years.
“I think across the board he's led the party to its current position, which means losing both houses of congress and now the White House,” Stone said. “How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties. Big brother listening in on your phone calls—I got a problem with that.”
The Bush GOP's Fatal Contraction
The outgoing president leaves behind a party that looks less like a coalition than a clubhouse.
by Ronald Brownstein
Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008
As George W. Bush's presidency winds down, the Republican Party's greatest problem is that it doesn't appear to be reaching much of anybody who isn't already watching Fox News. Bush leaves behind a party that looks less like a coalition than a clubhouse.
The consistent thread linking the 2006 and 2008 elections was the narrowing of the playing field for Republicans even as Democrats extended their reach into places once considered reliably "red." Consider the Electoral College maps available to John McCain and Barack Obama. By the presidential campaign's final days, McCain was seriously competing in only two states that went for John Kerry in 2004: Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. McCain ultimately was routed in both; indeed, Obama not only defended all 19 states (plus the District of Columbia) that Kerry won but held McCain to 42 percent or less in all but three of them.
By contrast, Obama through Election Day seriously contested 10 states that voted for Bush in 2004 -- among them eight that twice went for Bush and four (Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia) that had voted Democratic for president no more than once since 1964. Obama ultimately won nine of those 10 previously red states (with McCain holding Missouri after an extended recount).
In Congress, Republicans are also suffering through what amounts to a fatal contraction. Eighteen states might be considered the "true blue" states. These 18 (all of the Kerry 2004 states, except New Hampshire) have voted Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections. With this month's defeat of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., Republicans now hold only four of those 18 states' 36 Senate seats. The number will shrink to three if Sen. Norm Coleman loses a recount to Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota.
Democrats, again, are moving in the opposite direction. Twenty-nine states voted for Bush both times. After 2004, Democrats held just 14 of the 58 Senate seats from those 29 states -- a testament to Bush's first-term success at energizing the conservative base. But with this week's Alaska victory, Democrats since 2004 have captured eight more red-state Senate seats, giving them at least 22 overall (with another pickup possible in the Georgia runoff). Democrats now hold at least 38 percent of the Senate seats in the past decade's red states, while Republicans hold just 11 percent of blue-state seats.
Republicans likewise end the Bush years retreating in blue congressional districts. In 2004, Kerry outpolled Bush in 180 districts. After the 2004 election, Republicans held 18 of those 180 Democratic-leaning seats. But after back-to-back losses, Republicans now hold just five.
Once again, Democrats are displaying much wider reach. In 2004, Bush outpolled Kerry in 255 congressional districts. After the 2004 election, Republicans controlled a commanding 213 of those 255 seats, leaving Democrats just 42. But after gains in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic total in those red districts has almost doubled -- to 83. That means while Republicans control less than 3 percent of the congressional districts that voted for Kerry last time, Democrats hold nearly one-third of the districts that backed Bush.
All of these trends expose the same dynamic: Democrats are effectively courting voters with diverse views, but the Republican capacity to appeal to voters beyond their party's core coalition has collapsed.
Bush targeted most of his priorities toward the GOP base. And since 2005, he has faced overwhelming disapproval among independent voters and near-unanimous rejection from Democrats.
McCain, with his reputation for independence, was supposed to restore the GOP's competitiveness among swing voters. But to win the GOP nomination, McCain embraced Bush's core economic and foreign policies and then selected, in Sarah Palin, a running mate who waged the culture war with a zeal that made Bush and Karl Rove look squeamish.
Both decisions weakened McCain's position with centrist voters; then the financial collapse deepened the hole. The result was that McCain cratered in such places as Philadelphia's upscale, socially moderate suburbs, which he lost by almost 200,000 votes, double Bush's already daunting deficit last time. Until Republicans restore their ability to speak to voters in the Philadelphia suburbs and to their counterparts outside Detroit and Denver or Columbus and Orlando, rousing the faithful on Fox isn't likely to halt the Democratic advance.
Rightist knows he did evil:
Another Bushite discovers his shrivelled conscience:
Ira Schwarz/APConsultant
Roger Stone, the notorious political hitman who helped George W. Bush prevail in the 2000 Florida recount, now says that he wishes he hadn’t.
Roger Stone is one of the last guys on Earth one would expect to feel guilty over an episode of rough and tumble politicking. As a self-admitted hit man for the GOP, Stone has had a hand in everything from Nixon's dirty tricks to Eliot Spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a Michelle Obama “whitey” tape during the 2008 Democratic primaries. You might call Stone the Forrest Gump of scandal, popping up to play a bit part in the most notorious negative campaigns in recent history.
The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.
Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.
It would be his first act of actually serving the nation.
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