Monday, December 31. 2007
Sunday, December 30. 2007
Sunday, December 30. 2007
Happy days are here again for Democrats
Party's poised to achieve majority GOP strategist Karl Rove dreamed of
By JOHN B. JUDIS and RUY TEIXEIRA - Washington Post
Karl Rove's grandest aspiration was to create a Republican majority
that would dominate American politics for a generation or more. But as
the effects of his distinctive brand of fear-mongering fade, it's the
Democrats who are poised to become the country's majority party — and
perhaps for a long time to come.
Many conservatives have insisted that the Democrats' wins in the
2006 midterm elections, as well as their recent pickups in some 2007
races, were mere blips. They wish. Political, ideological, demographic
and economic trends are all leading toward durable Democratic
majorities in Congress, control of most statehouses and, very possibly,
the end of the decades-old GOP hammerlock on the Electoral College.
This sea change is the result of the electorate's disenchantment
with conservative Republicans, beginning in the 1990s. The old
conservative majority, as given voice by Ronald Reagan and Newt
Gingrich, sought to cut federal regulation, to privatize government
operations and to slash social spending. But by late in Bill Clinton's
presidency, broad public majorities had come to back environmental and
consumer regulation, as well as significant new government spending on
health care and education. As President Bush discovered in 2005, the
public also disliked attempts to gut Social Security.
Moreover, much of the electorate had grown leery of the GOP's
fervent identification with the religious right. As early as 1992,
mainstream voters were turned off by Pat Buchanan's nasty, divisive
"culture war" speech at the Republican National Convention. Attempts by
religious conservatives to stop teaching evolution and funding human
stem-cell research spurred a widespread backlash, even in states such
as Kansas, which Democrats had given up for dead.
This dramatic shift in the public's outlook carried with it a change
in the makeup of the Republican and Democratic coalitions in a way that
decisively helps Democrats. Even in conservatism's heyday, Democrats
received the support of African-Americans, Hispanics and a group of
white working-class voters (especially union members) who had not
switched parties in the 1980s and become "Reagan Democrats." That was
fine for a base, but not enough to win the White House or to keep
Congress. But over the past two decades, two new groups have migrated
to the Democratic Party — and provided the basis for an enduring
majority coalition.
First, there are women, who used to vote disproportionately
Republican. (In 1960, for instance, women backed the Republican Richard
M. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow, over the dashing Democrat John F.
Kennedy.) But in the 1990s, troubled by the Republicans' ardor for the
religious right and opposition to social spending, they began voting
disproportionately Democratic — especially single women, working women
and college-educated women. In the 2000 congressional elections, single
women backed Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 63 percent to 35.
Even better news for Democrats: Women are more likely to vote than men.
Second, there are professionals, once the most Republican of all
occupational groups. In 1960, they backed Nixon over JFK by 61 percent
to 38. But as professionals — including nurses, teachers and actors as
well as doctors, scientists and engineers — have become a larger
proportion of the workforce (about 7 percent in the 1950s, and about 17
percent today), they have turned decidedly blue.
Sunday, December 30. 2007
Saturday, December 29. 2007
Friday, December 28. 2007
Friday, December 28. 2007
December 26, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Tale of Trigger
By MAUREEN DOWD
When consumerism curdles, it’s tempting to become an emotional Marxist about Christmas.
Not Karl. Groucho.
“Now the melancholy days have come,” Groucho Marx wrote to pal and fellow comic Fred Allen on Dec. 23, 1953. “The department stores call it Christmas. Other than for children and elderly shut-ins, the thing has developed to such ridiculous proportions — well, I won’t go into it. This is not an original nor novel observation, and I am sure everyone in my position has similar emotions. Some of the recipients are so ungrateful.
“For example, yesterday I gave the man who cleans my swimming pool $5. This morning I found two dead fish floating in the drink. Last year I gave the mailman $5. I heard later he took the five bucks, bought two quarts of rotgut and went on a three-week bender. I didn’t get any mail from Dec. 24th to Jan. 15th. ... For Christmas, I bought the cook a cookbook. She promptly fried it, and we had it for dinner last night. It was the first decent meal we had in three weeks. From now on I am going to buy all my food at the bookstore.”
I found Groucho’s grouchy letter in Caroline Kennedy’s “A Family Christmas,” a selection of songs, poetry, prose, letters and a list of the questions most frequently asked of Macy’s Santa.
("Q: Are you lactose intolerant?
A: No, Santa likes all kinds of milk, except buttermilk, although he will use buttermilk in cakes and pancakes.”)
The book includes the solemn and sardonic, including this verse from Calvin Trillin, yearning to escape the shopping zoo and endless loop of Der Bingle crooning and “Jingle Bells” jingling:
“I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar. Or someplace else that Santa won’t find handy. Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it’s sandy.”
As a little girl, Caroline had the advantage of being able to ask the bloodhounds on the White House switchboard to get Santa on the line.
“The fact that he had the same soft Southern accent common to many White House workers of the day escaped me completely,” she writes dryly.
She includes a letter her father, as president, sent to Michelle Rochon, a little girl in Michigan.
“I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and risking the life of Santa Claus,” J.F.K. wrote, noting that he shared her concern with Soviet atmospheric testing. “You must not worry about Santa Claus. I talked with him yesterday, and he is fine.”
Ms. Kennedy writes that she continues the literary tradition of her mother. Jackie wrote Christmas poems for her mother, and Caroline and John wrote poems for Jackie.
As I read her book, it struck me that everyone must have a holiday tale they could write up and paste into the back of “A Family Christmas.”
Mine would be about Trigger.
When I was little, I got one of those wooden horses that bounced on springs for Christmas. I loved him and rode him every day.
One morning, I came down to the porch and the horse was gone. My mom explained that a poor woman and her son had walked by, and the little boy had stopped and stared longingly at the horse.
My mom’s world was turned upside down when she lost the father she adored at 12, so she had a soft spot for children who hurt. On a police widow’s pension, she was always mailing a few dollars off to St. Jude’s or to children she had read about who were hungry or needed an operation.
When she told me that she had given my horse to another child — a stranger — I was crushed. Whenever we fought for the next 16 years, I reminded her of her perfidy.
On my 21st birthday, I came home to find a bouncing horse with a handwritten sign in its mouth. “Hi. I’m back!” It was signed: “Trigger.”
I brought the horse of a different era to live with me, as a rebuke about how long it took me to appreciate one of my mom’s favorite sayings: “Don’t cry over things that can’t cry over you.”
Her lesson was lovely: that materialism and narcissism can only smother life — and Christmas — if you let them.
In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: “Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas.”
Thursday, December 27. 2007
 WA
Thursday, December 27. 2007
Politics made easy - no need for a WIKI entry at Wikipedia: Boutros-Ghali is Egyptian. Benazir Bhutto was Pakastani.
Boutros was UN Secretary General in 1992 through 1996.
Butto was Pakistan's Prime Minister from 1993 to 1996.
Boutro Butros Ghali is still alive. PM Bhutto is dead. SOURCE: International common-knowledge
Thursday, December 27. 2007
The editorial staff at the New York Times is a world away from Dumbutt, Texas. This is the state that hated John F. Kennedy so much some idiot thought it was okay to shoot him. This is the state where someone as universally disgusting as Tom DeLay would get 70% of the vote for 20 years. This is the state where a man shooting unarmed Black Hispanics in the back is considered a hero. This is the state that gave us not only George W. Bush, the worst President in American history, but who as governor mocked and giggled through the execution of Carla Faye Tucker. Texas is no place for children.
December 27, 2007
State Without Pity
New York Times Editorial
It is a shameful
distinction, but Texas is the undisputed capital of capital punishment.
At a time when the rest of the country is having serious doubts about
the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions this
year took place in Texas. That gaping disparity provides further
evidence that Texas’s governor, Legislature, courts and voters should
reassess their addiction to executions.
As Adam Liptak reported in The Times on Wednesday, in the last three
years, Texas’s share of the nation’s executions has gone from 32
percent to 62 percent. This year, Texas executed 26 people. No other
state executed more than three.
It is not that Texas sentences people to death at a much higher rate
than other states. Rather, Texas has proved to be much more willing
than others to carry out the sentences it has imposed.
The participants in Texas’s death penalty process, including the
governor and the pardon board, are more enthusiastic about moving
things along than they are in many states. Texas’s system also contains
some special features, like the power of district attorneys to set
execution dates. Prosecutors are likely to be more eager than judges to
see an execution carried out.
While Texas has been forging ahead with capital punishment, many
other states have been moving away from it. New Jersey abolished the
death penalty this month, and other states have been considering doing
the same thing. Illinois made headlines a few years ago when its
governor, troubled about the number of innocent people who had been
sent to death row, put in place a moratorium on executions.
These states have had good reasons for their doubts. The traditional
objections to the death penalty remain as true as ever. It is barbaric
— governments should simply not be in the business of putting people to
death. It is imposed in racially discriminatory ways. And it is too
subject to error, which cannot be corrected after an execution has
taken place.
In recent years, two other developments have undercut the public’s faith in capital punishment.
There has been a tidal wave of DNA exonerations, in which it has
been scientifically proved that the wrong people had been sentenced to
death. There is also increasing awareness that even methods of
execution considered relatively humane impose considerable suffering on
the condemned. The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a case about
whether the pain caused by lethal injection is so great that it
violates the Eighth Amendment injunction against cruel and unusual
punishment. Those who study the death penalty say that if current
trends continue, eventually almost all of the nation’s executions will
occur in Texas. That is not a record any state should want. Some
states, such as Illinois and New Jersey, have already had wide-ranging
discussions about what role they want the death penalty to play in
their criminal justice system. Texas is long overdue for such a debate. If it is unwilling to abolish the death penalty, which all states
should do, Texas should at least take a hard look at a system that
still produces so many executions and is so wildly out of step with the
rest of the country.
Wednesday, December 26. 2007
 As you will recall, last Christmas after sitting in the den with my wife watching TV for the months leading up to the big day, I, like any good American husband could not brush off the onslaught of watching other good American men buying big African diamonds for their wives. Everytime one of those ads came on, I got that look. So I pulled the kids out of college and went down to my local Jewlery store and bought the biggest diamond they had. I did indeed get laid that night - which seems to be the purpose of it all - and the kids seem happy working over at the Walmart selling lead covered toys and products that last almost 6 months or more to so many wise American consumers.
Though the diamond "you are a cheap creep if you don't buy your wife a diamond" ads ran just as heavy this year, it was the "you are a cheap creep if you don't buy your wife a Lexus" ad that generated the same looks this year. So I went down to the Lexas dealer and found one the right color for only $63,000. I cut a good deal and paid nothing down. I only had to shell out $85 for the giant red bow. They had a lot of those giant red bows there. It all went even better than last year as this time I got laid with her wearing nothing but a giant red bow!
As an average Amerian with $6000 in credit card debt and $19.64 in the bank, come January 24th they will be coming to take the Lexus away. But I paid for the damn bow and will get to keep that anyway. So the plan is to have one last shot of giant red bow sex on the 23rd. Wish me luck and a very Merry Christmas to you too. Fueled by ads, luxury vehicles are a popular gift choice
Tuesday, December 25. 2007
Monday, December 24. 2007
Monday, December 24. 2007
Monday, December 24. 2007
Monday, December 24. 2007
Sunday, December 23. 2007
 Far from the Good Ole Boy town of Pasadena, Texas, John H. White (a 54 year old Black man) was found guilty this week of second-degree manslaughter and is now facing 5 to 15 years in prison for killing Daniel Cicciaro, 17, in an upscale neighborhood of Suffolk County, New York.
At about 11pm on Aug. 9, 2006 Mr. White was woken by his son Aaron, 19 who told him “some kids are coming here to kill me.” White went to his garage and got a handgun to confront a gang of White kids on his front lawn who he perceived as a lynch mob. As they threatened the Whites' with filthy racial epitaphs, the father confronted them with the hand gun outside his front door telling them to leave. Daniel Cicciaro charged Mr. White grabbing for the gun which discharged and killed him. White claims it went off accidentally and called 911.
During the trial Blacks sat on one side with members from the Nation of Islam while whites sat on the other side with "burly men with shaved heads and biker clothing" [that is New York Times PC language for "racists".]
The original confrontation was racist, the courtroom was racially divided, the public outcry was racial but no matter to Gregg Sarra (Daniel’s very white godfather) who had the very white balls to say:
“This situation was never about race, and we hope this verdict finally dispels the notion that any racism was involved, the defense wanted to play the race card, and there was nothing there and the jury saw through that.” Everything about this is racial as it is down here in Pasadena, Texas. Late at night, Mr. White (a black man) confronted a gang of angry drunk men advancing upon him at his front door and ended up shooting one of them in the face, perhaps accidentally, who made contact with him. Here in Pasadena Joe Horn (a white man) on a sunny afternoon shot two unarmed black men in the back (no accident) who posed no threat to him and were running away across his property. One man is going to jail and the other is sure to walk free. And you know, anyone who can say that these cases are not about race are themselves racists. ADAF. The John White Case at the NYTMore on the Joe Horn Case
Sunday, December 23. 2007
Saturday, December 22. 2007
Bill Moyer's Journal on Dec 21 had on two guests who take to task the very core of what America is. American Heretics.  The first half of the Bill Moyer's Journal was with Benjamin R. Barber and his latest book, CONSUMED: HOW MARKETS CORRUPT CHILDREN, INFANTILIZE ADULTS, AND SWALLOW CITIZENS WHOLE, which explains how American capitalism undermines democracy.
"Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer." Benjamin R. BarberA matter of Supply Side Economics. Fill warehouses to the brink and then pay the highest salaries for psychologists and marketers to THEN sell it all whether anyone wants it or not. More on Barber with video at PBS The second guest was Univerisity of Texas Law School professor Sanford Levinson and author of, OUR UNDEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION: WHERE THE CONSTITUTION GOES WRONG (AND HOW WE THE PEOPLE CAN CORRECT IT), who explains that our Constitiution is not democratic and in need of change. Levinson's three main main points are the veto power of one man, the President, who can stop any legistation he wishes, the Senate which gives states with tiny populations as much power as California and New York and that we can only rid ourselves of dangerous incompetent morons through impeachment for "high crimes and misdemeanors" when we should be able to just kick their ass out the door when necessary. More on Levinson with video at PBS
Saturday, December 22. 2007
Saturday, December 22. 2007
While Political Correctness concerns administrative reprimands for publicly expressing various forms of bigotry, Conservative Correctness concerns the click of safeties and jail cell doors for saying unpatriotic, irreligious and naughty things.
 Over the years I have written extensively on this issue, here is a political correctness chapter of the book. Let us begin by going back to 1979 when we had what so many wish for these days, an honest Born Again Christian President who is now known as the Failed President. What happened was a triple whammy; President Jimmy Carter's infamous "malaise" speech which the conservative PR machine jumped on to for evermore define liberals as what Spiro Agnew a decade earlier had called The Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. Add to that the taking of hostages in Iran and the failed rescue attempt it lent "weak" and "loser" to the formula. Within a year a new term was added to our American lexicon, Reagan Democrats.
 After Walter Mondale was so soundly trounced by Ronald Reagan who won 49 states in the 1984 election, "loser" was added to the definition of "liberal" (tolerance) and the word soon embraced such a negative context it became the kiss of death for any politician to be so labeled, as such another phrase was written into our language, The L Word which expressed such angst that it could no longer be spoken out loud in mixed company.
 During Reagan's second term a little known disc jocky in Sacramento, California was making a name for himself by reading off the names of gay men who had died from AIDS each week while pushing the applause button and laughing (Character Matters.) The success of taking so much joy in so much innocent suffering made Rush Limbaugh the most popular voice on California radio. Limbaugh rode the low road to then take on local lesbian groups, he sparred with GLADD up in San Francisco and soon expanded his mysigony to include all women who wore shoes and were not pregnant. As luck would have it, the spokesman for NOW (The National Organization for Women) at the time was an old, often nasty unattractive woman named Molly Yard, an easy mark for Limbaugh. A caller to his show tossed out the phrase "feminazi" and Limbaugh ran with it to syndication in New York a few months after the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded. Almost instantly he became the top radio personality in America which put feminazi into the dictionary. Within a few years AM Radio had become the most ubiquitous Right-wing propaganda machine in the world.
 With Republican control of AM radio began the most successful public relations campaign in American History began with the advent of the phrase, Political Correctness. From the late 1980's through today the variations of PC whether; political correctness, political incorrectness, politically correct, or politically incorrect flowed through radio, television and print thousands of times a day, everyday for most of 20 years. By incorporating the term feminazi and defining tolerance or concern for minorities as McCathyism, PC became universally equated to Nazism.
An example of how entrenched this has become note that Richard Melon Scaife has for many years been pouring money into David Horowitz's organization that is the clearing house for moving political correctness into the mainstream media. Across American campuses both Horowitz and the Cato Institute use Right-wing student groups to search out any and all examples of PC they come across, which they send to Horowitz who exaggerates them and moves them on to Right-wing AM radio. Thousands of conservative radio hosts grab hold, exaggerate it further and push it for weeks until the main stream media has to pick up on it or be labeled... Remember, it can't be said where children may overhear... The L Word.
Over the past generation working class people pull straight Republican tickets against their own self interest as this emotional issue of Politicial Correctness causes more damage to the Democratic Party than abortion, guns, flags, queers, and God combined (those people are going to vote straight GOP tickets anyway). Down here in my exburb of Dumbass, Texas I have heard the refrain that has been driving it everyday for twenty years. It may be a little different depending on region but it's the same angry toot.
"No friggin' uppity Yankee elitest know-it-all nazi liberals are going to wag their finger in my face telling me what to do or how to think. I will shoot them or myself before that happens." And there you have it, the political dynamic of a generation.
Saturday, December 22. 2007
The late-night comedians may have made an early exit from the scene, but fortunately there was no shortage of political punch lines in 2007. From tapping toes and UFO encounters to prostitution scandals and $400 haircuts, it was a year in which politicians did their best to satirize themselves. As a salute to our nation’s fine public servants, here’s a look back at the year’s most memorable feats and foibles. The envelopes, please. Winner of the George Orwell Award for Outstanding Achievement in Historical Revisionism: Karl Rove, for claiming that Senate Democrats prematurely forced President Bush to go to war in Iraq when Congress passed the war resolution in 2002. It was the White House’s position, Rove insisted, that the issue should not have been politicized right before an election. On hearing that claim, Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff, laughed and said sometimes Rove’s “mouth gets ahead of his brain.” Runner-up: Bill Clinton, for claiming he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, although fortunately in Clinton’s case, at least it was only his mouth that got ahead of his brain. John McCain
Best Debate Sound Bite From a Republican: “In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.” —John McCain, referring to the years he spent as a P.O.W. Joe Biden Best Debate Sound Bite from a Democrat: “I mean think about it, Rudy Giuliani, there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence—a noun and a verb and 9/11, and I mean, there’s nothing else.” —Joe Biden. The rest of Dan's 2007 awards...
Friday, December 21. 2007
Thursday, December 20. 2007
Thursday, December 20. 2007
Princeton Student Francisco Nava is a Mormon and member of the Republican campus organization the Anscombe Society, a campus group consumed with issues of premarital sex, abortion and the evil gay men and women perpetrate upon us all. Francisco and other members of the Anscombe Society recently received a batch of foul nasty death threats, and to ad injury to insult Mr. Nava was severely beaten by fellow Princeton Liberals dressed in black. He was hospitalized with lacerations, a swollen jaw and a concussion.  Republican comedian David Horowitz - whose job is to act as the database of all things evil liberals do on college campuses (mostly concerned with political correctness) - pushed the story of poor Francisco out to talk radio, Fox News and every other Republican news outlet is what am. It is what Horowitz does for a living - with Richard Mellon Scaife money I might ad. BTW, Horowitz is listed between Ann Coulter and Michael Savage as the 10 most disgusting human beings in America. Well, it turns out Francisco not only sent all the death threats, but also beat the crap out of himself by running into a brick wall, repeatedly scraping his face against it and then breaking an Orangina bottle over his head. Some would say that this is all pretty low and blame Francisco for the dishonesty, but come on, give the poor guy a break. He is a Mormon who has to wear blessed long underwear and believes Jesus if from Michigan, what do you expect? Does Mitt need a Princeton man for a running mate? Story a the Daily Princetonian
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