KicK! Making Politics Fun

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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.

Continue reading "Happy Days are Here again..."

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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.” Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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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

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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. Facebook | Digg | Reddit | Stumble | Buzz it! | Email Article |

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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

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