Category: Politics
The Big Lie
That Obama is a socialist big spender. The numbers speak for themselves.
And Andrew Sullivan puts it into perspective.
No administration has reduced aggregate government spending as a precentage of GDP as much as Obama’s in forty years. If you look at the full chart, back to George HW Bush, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the biggest spenders and borrowers are Republicans and the most fiscally conservative presidents have been Democrats. Given the last two decades, the Tea Party, if they really want to shrink government, should be voting for Obama.
Romney and Taxes
Mitt Romney gave a revealing quote when addressing the fact that his effective tax rate is dramatically lower that most Americans. Explaining that he paid his taxes according to the law, he said, “The American people don’t want as their president someone who pays more than they owe in taxes.”
They don’t? Why not? Is it some kind of moral or intellectual failure to pay anything but the minimum possible amount in taxes? Apparently, for him and his ilk, it is their patriotic duty to put their money in the Cayman Islands because to pay more than you need to in taxes reflects badly on you in some way.
It shows how deeply the anti-government strain runs in the Republican mind. Remember Kennedy’s famous call to action? “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” It motivated a generation of public spirited young people. It inspired the Peace Corps. Seems kind of quaint now. Certainly, among Republicans, it’s an apostasy. I remember in the last campaign when Joe Biden said it was patriotic to pay taxes, he was ridiculed by Republicans.
So, Mitt Romney just takes for granted that Americans would think less of him if he didn’t contribute as little as possible to the government formed by the divinely inspired Constitution.
The sad part is that he may be right.
The Food Stamp President
Newt Gingrich
In another example of how far off the rails the American conservative movement has gone, the Economist, a pretty conservative publication, takes Newt Gingrich to task for his latest demagoguery, calling President Obama “the Food Stamp President” and claiming that he has “put” more people on food stamps that any president in history.
Here’s the conservative Economist’s take:
Of course, Barack Obama has put no one on food stamps. Population growth together with the most severe recession since the advent of the modern American welfare state, which was in full swing when Mr Obama came into office, conspired to make a record number eligible for government food assistance. The Obama administration has moved to expand eligibility for the SNAP programme, but the initiative has not come to fruition. That there is a safety net, and that it succeeds in keeping millions of Americans from the misery and humiliation of hunger, may be an uncomfortable fact for Mr Gingrich, but not for Mr Obama or for any of those among us who do not lament this humane achievement.
Imagine. A conservative supporting a “humane achievement” by government. Sounds so foreign. I guess they are all European socialists across the Atlantic.
Matt Lauer Nails Romney
This Matt Lauer interview with Mitt Romney on the Today Show yesterday was among the most revealing candidate interviews I’ve seen in a long time. Lauer’s question about income inequality was perfectly formulated and clearly set Romney on his heels. You can see it in his eyes. As a result, it showed how the Romney campaign planned to deal with this issue that was placed front and center in the campaign since Occupy Wall Street (OWS) started setting up their tents in Zuccotti Park in New York. Continue Reading
Santorum’s Values
Yesterday, I met with a very bright young British conservative who has come to the U.S. in a bit of a career shift. I was a bit taken aback by his resume which was loaded with experience working on social justice projects. He described his work with great enthusiasm and explained the various successes he’s had working on these projects for the Conservative government in the UK. I told him that I was experiencing cognitive dissonance in our conversation, explaining that, on this side of the pond, assisting the poor is not a high priority for the conservatives. He, having worked with the Heritage Foundation, acknowledged as much. In fact, he surprised when he was told to avoid the term “social justice,” by American conservatives. He had considered “social justice” kind of like “apple pie” for us. Not so, in the American conservative movement. Continue Reading
Romney’s Drone Attack
While the Iowa Caucus has resulted in a bit of muddle in terms of the status of candidates at this point in the Republican nomination process, it has provided utter clarity in overall strategy by which Mitt Romney hopes to become president. He will be matching Obama’s strategy for taking out Al Qaeda. Here’s how.
It is a given among political consultants that negative ads work. Voters complain about them and vow to ignore them, but there is absolutely no doubt but that voters are influenced by them…to a point. There are two ways that negative ads can backfire. They can simply be bad ads, dishonest, harsh or simply over the top. In that case, the voters react against the perpetrator of the negative ad and the advantage goes to the target. The other way they can backfire is, in a multi-candidate election, two candidates attacking each other effectively succeed in tearing each other down and the voters reject both. Another candidate, seen as taking the high road, can sneak through. A prerequisite of both of these scenarios is the fact that the voters know who is airing the negative ads so they can punish them. Continue Reading
Quote of the Day – Iowa
I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.
Despicable.
The HIstory of Charlie on the MTA
Here’s how the song was inspired:
O’Brien couldn’t afford radio ads, but he had a boxy old truck outfitted with speakers and a platform. He had asked a quintet named the Boston Peoples Artists to compose and record some songs he could broadcast from the truck as it drove through the city, and sometimes to play live from the truck at rallies.
Kilmainham Gaol
It is interesting that Ireland’s modern political history is best told in a horrific prison. Kilmainham Gaol is a powerful symbol of the struggles of the Irish people. Architecturally, it resembles the prison in The Shawshank Redemption. Unforgiving stones and steel. Our tour guide was a burly, passionate Irishman with a full beard who talked non-stop for almost an hour and a half in a presentation that was rich with fact, anecdote and drama. For instance, here’s a picture of the altar where Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the 1916 uprising, married his beloved, 3 hours before he was executed by firing squad. His bride lived to her 70’s and never remarried.
But the history of the prison vastly pre-dated this event, having been build in the late 1600’s. All the Irish rebels through the years passed through Kilmainham. The most dramatic story was that of Anne Devlin, who effectively sacrificed her entire family, not to mention herself, for the cause of Ireland. I’m not disciplined enough recount her story, but click here for more. It was our tour guide’s most passionate story and he concluded with the protest that one of the most grievous omissions in Irish history was the minor place to which this heroic woman is relegated.
The prison is now a multi-use facility where there are often concerts or theatrical performances. It has also been used as a movie set, recently in the movie Michael Collins with Liam Neeson, which, outside of the dramatic love story, is a pretty accurate account of the founding of the Irish Republic. Collins, of course, served time in Kilmainham.
