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Conservatives 
Fri Jan 07, 2011 at 07:26:25 AM MST
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Is there anyone more disingenuous than Charles Kruathammer? In his column in the Washington Post today he goes on and on about what he perceives as the new "constitutionalism" that is coming to the Republican controlled House of Representatives. He gleefully compares it to constitutional "originalism" which insists that judges look at the Constitution from the point of view of those who wrote the various amendments.
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Fri Dec 31, 2010 at 12:44:02 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
Dear Dr. [name redacted],
Why do people tend to vote the way that their parents voted? Why do some people tend to vote the opposite of the way their parents did?
Is this a question for political scientists? Psychologists? Both?
I grew up in Beverly Crest, just outside the Beverly Hills city limits. My parents were active in the Beverly Hills Young Republicans Club. They took a very active role in the election of 1948. They were absolutely positive that Thomas Dewey would be elected.
When I was a junior in high school President Truman fired General MacArthur. The good general addressed a joint session of Congress and we
all sang "Old Sodiers Never Die" for months afterward. About that time our country faced a serious crisis - from Communists. What made this so scary was that these particular communists were 'card-carrying communists'.
My dad wound up as the business manager - later executive director - of the Americanism Information League headquartered in Knotts Berry Farm, Orange County, CA.
I went off to Fresno State - majored in Political Science. I used to call my dad from Fresno to kid him about ultra right-wing kooks in Orange County. His friends thought that Ronald Reagan was a lefty for not dismanteling Social Security.
The question has haunted me all my life. Why do people vote or not vote the way their parents did? Is there credible source material on this?
Yours,
Gypsy Chief, MBA
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Fri Nov 26, 2010 at 07:15:25 AM MST
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Michael Gearson of the Washington Post Editorial page really phones one in today. I know it is the day after Thanksgiving and there is a tendency to just rehash old arguments in an effort to get a column or blog post out, but really this is beautiful example of false equivalency and intellectual laziness topped with a cherry of partisan world view.
The basic premise of this steaming, tightly coiled pile of crap is that now that there has been electoral defeat for the Democrats liberalism is turning to conspiracy theories to explain what happened. Is it a Truther conspiracy? It is a Bilderburg Group conspiracy, with shadowy billionaires running the planet? Is it aliens? No, none of those (well we know the Space Alien vote was bought, \ those damned Gray's will do anything for fresh people to probe!) the so-called conspiracy is the idea that the Republicans have done and will do everything in their power to keep the economy from recovering as long as President Obama is in the White House.
Gerson points to recent posts by Matt Yglesia, Steve Benen and Paul Krugman, all of whom have pointed out that Republicans have said they are out the get the president, that they have constantly blocked economic measures that every serious economist says will help, that they have done everything they could to claim (falsely) that the stimulus has not helped, and that the HCR reform law would cost money, even though the OMB has said it would save 100 billion over 10 years.
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Thu Nov 18, 2010 at 07:42:32 AM MST
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My father loved the law. He loved it because it was an attempt to provide balance without resort to violence. Note the attempt in that sentence, it is important to recognize that justice is not about exact balancing but about a society making a concerted effort to balance the harm done by one person or group of people to others. We have seen some very serious hits to the one of the pillars of the rule of law, its universal application regardless of who is the perpetrator. Our nation is going to suffer from this as long as those who ordered and carried out torture in contravention of our laws and treaties are uninvestigated and unprosecuted. Still the fabric of the rule of law is holding on, even in the face of these insults.
In Murfreesboro TN, a judge has ruled against a requested injunction against the building of a mosque. This is the same building site that was the victim of apparent arson earlier this year. A local anti-Muslim group filed for an injunction against the mosque on the premise that the County board that approved it had broken its own rules in doing so.
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Fri Nov 12, 2010 at 06:53:11 AM MST
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The Republicans have a real problem, no not genetic, hygienic or even esthetic (though way too many of them do fall down in these areas) no, their problem is a moral one. It is hard to give any credibility to a party and a movement that venerates a racist douche-bag like Rush Limbaugh. This is a man so powerful in the Conservative movement that no sitting Senator or Representative, no Governor or elder Statesman or woman of the party can call out his blatant and disgusting rhetoric without having to walk it back nearly immediately or be destroyed by the party faithful.
Limbaugh has made a career of being a fire-breather. He has addicted his audience to the dark sweet candy of anger at faux causes and misinterpreted remarks. However his long history of anti-African American racism is well known. He lost his position as a football commentator for ESPN because he could not help himself when he attributed Donavan McNabb's popularity to the fact he was black. He said it in an off hand way that showed it was he true feelings and he expected to be agreed with.
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Fri Oct 22, 2010 at 06:00:25 AM MST
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Sometimes it worthwhile to examine the language we use and what it really means. English, as it is spoken in the United States, is wonderfully malleable and thus common words can be open to interpretation. However there are some words that should be clear in their meaning, bigotry being one.
My parents were Liberals with a capital L. They both came from places and times when the N word could be used and nothing would be thought of it. This was anathema to them, and they were not going to pass this kind of thing down to their children. The rule in our house was that you could hate someone, but you could only do it if you knew them personally and they had done you wrong. There would be no painting with a broad brush, no assumptions put on one person because of the actions of another person like them.
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Thu Oct 21, 2010 at 05:52:36 AM MST
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I know that expecting consistency from conservatives is like expecting your Springer Spaniel to jump up and sing a chorus of Gilbert and Sullivan's "I am the very model of a modern Major General" but somehow I continue to yearn to see some of it. This is why today's announcement of a proposed $60 billion (60,000 million) arms sale to Saudi Arabia is another chance for disappointment.
One of the most common memes in the recent spasm of Islamophobia here in the United States has been that all Muslims are constrained by their religion to spread Islam by any means necessary. It is this kind of intellectual laziness that allows bigots to pick on the small minority of Muslims in the United States. It is the classic broad brush which paints all Muslims with the same calumny as those demented assholes of the Islamic faith who practice terrorism.
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Mon Oct 11, 2010 at 06:13:10 AM MST
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It is odd for an Atheist to be defending religious freedom. I have a very negative opinion of all religion, but I have a strong, well, faith, for lack of a better word in the idea that everyone should be allowed to practice or not as they choose. Neither I nor anyone else should be the arbiter of what others find comfort or direction or confidence in. We can argue about the basis of it, we can argue about the outcomes but in this nation, we all have the right to have our religious freedoms.
As the outbreak of Islamophobia has grown so has the hysteria from the Right on this issue. In Murfreesboro TN, where the construction site of an Islamic center was the victim of suspected arson, the Wingers have really lost their minds. Last week they were in court arguing for a judge to issue an injunction saying the zoning commission was wrong to allow the building of the Center. Their primary argument? That Islam is not a religion, but a political movement. From the Tennessean:
Mosque opponents say that Islam is not a real religion. Instead, they argued in a Rutherford County courthouse last week that the world's second largest faith, with its 1.6 billion followers, is actually a political movement.
Opponents say local Muslims want to replace the Constitution with an Islamic legal code called Shariah law. Joe Brandon Jr., a Smyrna attorney representing a group of mosque opponents, argued that the proposed mosque is not a house of worship. He said the Rutherford County Planning Commission erred on May 24 when it approved the mosque.
Brandon wants Chancellor Robert Corlew of the 16th Judicial District to issue an injunction stopping the mosque.
"Shariah law is pure sedition," said Brandon in his opening statement Monday.
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Tue Oct 05, 2010 at 06:05:00 AM MST
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Noted Conservative Hack Jonah Goldberg posted a little article tearing into the idea that the Supreme Court is the place where we define what is and is not constitutional. He is defending the new radical Republican talking point that all legislation should have a constitutional justification attached to it. This is the Tenther's (folks who think that the powers of the Federal Government are completely enumerated in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment gives all other powers to the states individually) favorite meme.
They would use this thinking to end the Federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All the big Tea Party faves have this idea, with Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell really leading the charge.
This idea is nuts on the surface but it is packed full of nutty goodness as you get deeper as well. The whole push for "constitutional fealty" by the Right is a ruse and always has been. The reason that they want to return to so called original intent it so wipe out two centuries of case law that does not suit their radical agenda.
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Thu Sep 30, 2010 at 05:56:30 AM MST
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Tyler Clemeti, was by all accounts a fairly shy freshman at Rutgers University. He may or may not have been gay, but we know for sure that he had at least one sexual encounter with a man. How do we know that? Well after the spy video that his roommate and another student made was released to the internet it became a matter of public record. Tyler had sex with some guy. Surely he thought it was a private thing, but there it was on the internet and would always define him.
This seems to be the proximate cause of his suicide by jumping off of a bridge. This is what the so-called "family values" conservatives railing against the "radical homosexual agenda" leads to. Yesterday I posted a slightly light-hearted look at what they claim this agenda is. The reality is that they don't want any cultural acceptance of gay folks. It all comes down to that, they want to be able to use gay people as a stalking horse for all the ills of society.
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Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 06:22:14 AM MST
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Okay, call me a dope if you must but I just can't figure out what the hell the "radical homosexual agenda" that so many conservatives talk about actually is. Yeah, yeah, you could insert a lot of sexual identity jokes here, but really that just plays into stereotypes about our gay citizens. The fact is, and most of you will be able to confirm this from your own experience is that gay, lesbian, bisexual citizens span the same range of good, bad, conservative and liberal as those who are heterosexual.
Just take a look at the Log Cabin Republicans (a group who has the best ability to compartmentalize and segregate concepts that I have ever seen), here is a Republican gay rights group. Almost a oxymoron in and of itself. Yet these are conservative gay citizens who support most of the Republican agenda.
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Thu Jul 29, 2010 at 07:17:22 AM MST
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I know I have been pounding the "Republicans are "_______" (insert perfidious, greedy, morally bankrupt, etc, etc, etc.) drums a lot but when most of an entire party is trying to be the one at the top of Crazy Mountain, a humble blogger can only respond to the input.
The latest outrage is growing choir of Right Wing Republicans who are against mosque building. The proposed community center and mosque a couple of blocks from the site of the Twin Towers is the one that has received most of the attention but it far from the only one.
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Tue Jul 20, 2010 at 06:25:24 AM MST
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One of the quirks of my personality (yes, I know you thought my whole personality was the quirks) is that I tend to think that nothing I do well is particularly unique. I am under the impression that everyone can write, that baking is a merely a matter of reading and that if people took the time everyone could analyze stacks of data and come to a rational understanding of how inputs and process interact to determine output quality. These are all skills that I have spent a little time and effort to develop, so I figure anyone could duplicate what I have done.
Where I don't expect people to be like me is in what they think. I assume that people are going to be of a different mind on some issues than me, we are all different in experience and temperament, so how in the world could we be similar in our views, even in large numbers? Yet the Republican base and many of its elected officials can't seem to get their heads around the idea that most of the nation does not agree with them and their agenda.
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Tue Jun 29, 2010 at 06:31:12 AM MST
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When one is looking at any system, whether it is a business process or something even more complex it always helps to know what the end state is or what the purpose is. This holds true when we are talking about our government as well. What is the purpose of government? If we do not know what that is, then all policy will be a reduced to tinkering at the margins and flailing.
Conservatives have a pretty clear, if sadly simplistic, view of what the role of government is. They will talk (endlessly and in an ever rising register) about how the federal government is only for the defense of the nation and that nothing else should really be in its purview. The problem with their assertion of States Rights (aside from the racist history behind this idea) is that they don't really want their state government's to do a lot either. It is this kind of thinking that gets us into the situation where Republicans want, as David Corn of Mother Jones said, "Small government and Big Oil".
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Thu Jun 24, 2010 at 06:20:56 AM MST
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The conservative obsession (and I think it is fair to call it an obsession) with the sex other people are having is beyond my capacity to understand. Call it self-involved if you must but I just can't muster any interest in sex which I am not involved in. If your kink is that you like to dress like Shirley Temple and have your partner spank you with a hockey stick, as long as you are both adults and are into it, go for it. I. Don't. Care.
Sadly the Religious Right in this country does. Whether they are just being incredibly cynical and found a relatively small group to use to whip up a frenzy among their base or they have a genuine (and let's never forget deeply bigoted) objection based on an interpretation of their holy books, they feel like it is their job to police the actions of their fellow citizens when it comes to sexuality.
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Wed Jun 02, 2010 at 19:44:02 PM MST
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Consider this the greatest book endorsement ever.
I'm a big fan of CrooksandLiars.com, and when the book "Over the Cliff," How the Election of Barack Obama Drove the American Right Insane. was announced, I knew I would pick it up at the library as soon as I could.
But now that I have read the endorsement Rep Alan Grayson (Big D-FL08) just gave it, I want it more than ever.
Rep. Alan Grayson:
At their hugely popular website 'Crooks and Liars,' John Amato and David Neiwert have helped to expose the fact that there is no conservative party in America any more. They show that the right wingers are not conservatives, they are anarchists.
The only law the right wing believes in is the Law of the Jungle. No schools, no hospitals, no job programs, no nothing. Their idea of nirvana is Mogadishu. See it there, at 'Crooks and Liars,' and read it here."
Only Alan Grayson can put something in perspective quite like that.
More below the fold
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Thu Apr 01, 2010 at 12:31:55 PM MST
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One of the things which have always gotten up my nose is the way that Conservatives will call undocumented immigrants "illegal immigrants". It is a little bit of framing that just rubs me the wrong way. The problem is it is hard to dispute. Being and working in the United States without a visa or a green card is illegal. There is no getting around that. The thing is it is a really low level crime. It is not even a felony. Still it is a crime so if you want to be pejorative about it, you can call people in that situation illegal immigrants.
Well the time to turn the tables on these folks may very well be at hand. Today is the day that your census information is supposed to be filled out and returned (or at least have it postmarked) by. There has been a rather insane and self-defeating push from the Conservatives urging that any of their true believers either not fill out the census or give strange information.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting today that Kirk Lyons, an Neo-Confederate lawyer, is urging people in the South to check the "other" box and write in "Southern Confederate American". From the SPLC's website:
Lyons insisted that "Confederate Southern American" is an appropriate designation because the South seceded to form an independent nation for four years during the Civil War - or, as he puts it, the "War of Northern Aggression." "If there can be Cajun Americans, if there can be Serbian Americans, there can be Confederate Southern Americans," Lyons said. Proclaiming their national origin as Confederate Southern Americans would send the message that they "will not sit in the back of the bus anymore." He added that the Confederate community constitutes "the largest single minority group in the United States today."
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Wed Mar 24, 2010 at 06:56:36 AM MST
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When I was a six or seven, I asked my Dad to explain what political conservative was (yes, I was just as big a politics nerd as a child as I am now, it must be genetic). It was harder than he thought but he came down on the definition that a conservative was someone that wanted to keep things as much the same as they were or are today as possible. Dad was great in that he did not attach any negative connotations to this desire, in fact he made a point to say that it was important to have folks like this, lest the nation make big mistakes. It is sad to say, but the definition Dad provided 30 plus years ago does not seem to apply anymore.
The actions of the current conservatives and the Republican Party where they make their home seems to be far more about turning back the clock then slowing the pace of change. The best example of this is their legal thinking. Any time there is a new law that they do not like, they run all the way back to the Constitution and say that it is not in that venerable 223 year old document.
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