Recently in Politics Category

What happened to this guy?<br />Whose press secretary now says this:<br />I can't tell who that mealy-mouthed remark is intended to support, Governor Walker or the public employees. "Tighten their belts and live within their means just as we in Washington, the executive branch and Congress, need to do with our federal situation."Gimme a freakin' break. After they give away a few more hundreds of billions in tax cuts to millionaires, then the belt tightening...

Shared sacrifice, Republican style:Arizona: "Governor Jan Brewer is proposing to kick some 280,000 Arizonans, mostly childless adults, off the state's Medicaid rolls. Brewer claims such a move is the only way to get the state's fiscal house in order, as it would save $541.5 million in general funding spending. Brewer also wants to save $79.8 million by dropping 5,200 "seriously mentally ill" people from the state's Medicaid program. Instead of balancing out these draconian cuts...

Paul Krugman has an excellent piece in yesterday's New York Times explaining what's really going on in Wisconsin and what's at stake. Despite the claims of Governor Walker and his supporters on the right, it has nothing to do with the state's budget deficit and everything to do with power. What's at stake is whether we live in a semi-oligarchy, or if corporate interests, like the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, are allowed to roam free and...

President's Day is upon us.Above you see George Washington and Abe Lincoln hugging in the afterlife.Where can you learn more about the Presidents?I have four suggestions. Two of these resources are books and the other two can be found online.The book The American Presidency--The Authoritative Reference is very useful.Edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, American Presidency is a collection of essays about each President up until George W. Bush.The book offers up a small measure of biography and a larger portion of analysis....

Above and below are icons created by the campaign to reelect Houston Mayor Annise Parker.You can find these icons on the Annise Parker Facebook page.Does the Mayor's record warrant the use of the words you see in these icons?Of course---This is advertising. The Mayor wants people to donate and volunteer for her campaign.  She has every reason to make a pitch for people to come and help her out for the 2011 election.I'm glad that the...

From Think Progress:"During a segment on Hannity earlier this week, GOP strategist Frank Luntz interviewed a panel of Republican voters in Iowa, and half said they believe Obama is a Muslim."<br />"Very intense, very passionate." Also very stupid....

The Green Bay Packers, who just won the Super Bowl, are the only community-owned non-profit team in American major league sports.(Above--Citizen-owners at the Packers game. Photo by yunggunn2k3.)From the Georgetown University newspaper The Hoya---"Unlike the 31 other professional football teams, or any other sports team for that matter, the Packers are not owned by some wealthy individual (or group of individuals) seeking a profit. Instead, they're owned and managed by 111,968 devoted fans. In that lies their...

 Does it surprise you at all that the novelist Ayn Rand accepted Social Security benefits?(Above--Ayn Rand looking on as Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act in 1935. Ms. Rand is glad about what she is seeing because she is going to take the money.)Ms. Rand talked about rugged individualism in her novels, but she took the government money when it suited her purposes.Ms. Rand fits in well with today's fiscal chicken hawks.Have you seen any Republican/Tea Party voters...

In two non-political news items of the day, another good reason to watch the games at home:"Almost one in 10 sports fans has a blood alcohol content above the legal limit as they exit the stadium after football and baseball games, a study found...The research, which involved giving breath tests to 362 attendees of 13 baseball and 3 football games, also found that 40 percent had been drinking, according to the report in the journal....

With a national audience tuned in, tonight would be as good a time as any for President Obama to draw some lines in the sand and make some clear distinctions between his vision for the future and that of his opposition. The fact that the Republican response to the president's State of the Union message will be given by Paul Ryan the Social Security and Medicare slasher and privatizer makes it an even more opportune...