Tag: Liberals

What Is It That Pelosi Did?

I mean besides being a Democrat……..

Mention the name Nancy Pelosi and you will send a conserv into a rage that could be just short of a stroke….she is a socialist….she is a dictator…..she is a liberal….she is too partisan….well hell….you have heard all the diatribes linked to her name……but think about it what did she do?

Besides being a rallying point for the GOP and Tea Party….what did she and her House do while in the majority?  Let me see…..Recovery Act, Obamacare, Wall Street reform, an equal pay act,……..let me see she (Pelosi) and her friends (Dems) passed many bills that became law….but she was demonized for political effect……

I am NOT saying that I agreed with everything the she and the House did….far from it….I believe that they dropped the ball on numerous occasions…….that aside…the House did accomplish lots under her leadership…….

Now fast forward you time machine and let us look at the present Congress…..under the leadership of Boehner what has the House accomplished so far?  Have they created any jobs?  Have they actually tried?  Instead of looking at what can get our country back on track, they (GOP) has concentrated their efforts on NPR, Planned Parenthood, and instead of trying to find a budget compromise they have instead felt that the destruction of social programs is more important….when will the new leadership and the new House start working on bills that mean something?

Granted this Congress has about a year and half before they are a failure….but they are off to a good start…..in the mean time, where are the jobs we were promised by almost every Repub that ran for office in 2010?  Will they actually get to that?  Doubtful!  After the shutdown crap moves on….we will be at the crossroads of another budget debate…this time for 2012.  Will we ever get to the jobs thing?

The House and its GOP members seem to be working on talking about everything but what needs the attention….JOBS!  It seems to me that anytime major issues need to be addressed we resort (by we I mean the Congress) back to emotional issues so we do not have to deal with real problems……let us be real for a moment….the budget?  Everybody is fixated on the planned parenthood thing….and that makes it more an abortion debate than a budget debate…..it is a diversion of thought…once again NO one seems to be serious about this thing…..lots of on camera bluster and cowardly votes after the cameras are turned off….

At least with Pelosi and her gang….we had major problems addressed and yes as always someone tried to turn them into a game and NOT a discussion……Once again…I am not saying that I think they (Dems) did a good job with the laws they passed only that they were at least semi-serious about major issues…..

If I Only Had A Brain!

Remember those immortal words from the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz?  I have questioned the mental capabilities of conservs as well as libs….after watching these people over the years I see a disconnect on the way people process information……my analysis was NOT anything scientific, just observations for the last 40 years…….I could not explain why Libs seem to be more analytical and conserv seem to be more prone to letting slogans explain their thinking…….for many years I had been unkind to my conserv friends….and now I know why I was so confused……thanx to CBS News…..

Are political leanings hard-wired into the brain? That’s the suggestion of a new study that reveals striking anatomical differences between the brains of liberals and those of conservatives.  The brains of people who call themselves liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes than the brains of people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, the study showed.  The anterior cingulate cortex is a collar-shaped region around the corpus collosum, a structure that relays signals between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

What about conservatives? Their brains brains tend to have larger amygdalas.   The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure located deep within the brain.

Based upon what brain scientists know about the function of the two brain regions, researchers believe the structural differences support the notion that liberals are better equipped to make sense of conflicting information while conservatives are better able to recognize a threat.  For the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Current Biology, 90 healthy young people underwent MRI scans and completed questionnaires designed to determine their political leanings on a five-point scale – from very liberal to very conservative.

That explains it!……They cannot help themselves….it is biological!

Crap! Thought We Were Socialists!

From the VOMITORIUM

Keeping with the socialist theme…….

For a couple of years now…we liberals have been maligned by the Right for all too many reasons….because we do not agree with some of the more outrageous issues then were must be socialists in liberal clothing…..and of course since Obama is a black dude he has to be a socialist…..and since he wanted adequate health care for all Americans he must be a communist  and he even knew Saul Alinsky that would make him a Marxist….and just when I was getting use to the idea that conservatives thought me/us as socialists……my fav kook on the Right has to crap on my parade…..I mean Glenn Beck and his show…..

Far-right blogger Pam Geller was on Beck’s show and was talking about the possibility of Samantha Power could be the next Sec of State….Geller was most upset about something Power said when she was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian solution of a 2 state solution……

the mask comes off, and out comes Obama’s army of little nazis.  Power was asked what would be necessary to stop a move toward genocide by “one party or another” in the Israel-Palestinian conflict; she said it may require investment in a new Palestinian state and a “meaningful military presence.”

And then she resorted to her normal diatribe……example of Geller invoking Nazis to attack those with whom she disagrees. Geller previously accused President Obama of “go[ing] full on Nazi,” claimed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is “an admirer of an architect of German national socialism, Nazism,” and called Democrats “National Socialists.”

So now I am a Nazi/ fascist….Since I do not agree with her on anything….that would make me a National Socialists…..at least the title has ‘socialist’ in it……we went from the far left to now the far right……damn!  We need to get our titles straight or we could confuse our opposition…..

I am so confused….will someone please make my mind up for me!

The Council Fires Are Dying!

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Liberalism

Back in the 90’s when one Clinton became president of the US I was thrilled that we might have a real liberal within the walls of the tower known as Washington……I was so sadly mistaken….he showed such great promise that the people would be the most important thing in the world of politics….then a couple of years into his presidency I could see just how mistaken I had been…..

But Chuq…he is loved the world over….how could I say such a thing?  First of all, to me popularity is NOT necessarily a good thing in a leader and Clinton was and is so very popular…..I am looking at policies….not his likability…..and his popularity damn near condemned the Democratic Party to a lesser position in American political life……

But what happened that he lead the way to the attempt at destruction of a party?  Pragmatism!  Is the easy answer……..and that pragmatism took the guise of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)…..

The DLC, the father of Clintonism and the Blue Dog Democrats, conservative group within the Democratic Party……Clinton who was a past chairman of the DLC help lead American into the problems we face now…..but what does the DLC stand for?

The DLC has supported welfare reform, such as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, President Clinton’s expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit,[9] and the creation of AmeriCorps. The DLC supports expanded health insurance via tax credits for the uninsured and opposes plans for single-payer universal health care. The DLC supports universal access to preschool, charter schools, and measures to allow a greater degree of choice in schooling (though not school vouchers), and supports the No Child Left Behind Act.  The DLC supports both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).  (From our friend at Wikipedia)

These are their positions that I did not agree with….but not all their positions were to my dislike (but not much did I agree with at all)…..They also favored some form of Social Security privatization…..another mistake in my opinion….

All that aside…I will bet that you are asking….what is my point?

Cool!  It seems that this “leadership” group is on its last leg…..

Politico is reporting that the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist organization once chaired by Bill Clinton, is having financial troubles and could fold as soon as next week.

The story quotes an unnamed “person familiar with the plans.”The DLC was founded more than 25 years ago by Al From and gained prominence during the 1990s. Clinton hailed the group at a gala honoring From, saying: “I would never have become president if it wasn’t for you.”

I foresaw this problem for the DLC because the Blue Dogs lost badly in the last election and without their butt boys in the Congress there is NO good reason this group of centrists (a term that I am not too comfortable with)  should continue to exist….but I can say that thanx to their “leadership” we have jobs gone that will NEVER return and we have an economic base that will collapse again and again….because NO one has the huevos to stop them….because they help sell the idea that most of America is in the middle….something that I am not positive is all that accurate…..

So if the DLC’s funds are drying up….then how does that reinforce the idea that all America is centrist?

Anal Regressives

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Political Parties/Political Theory

I am sure that you have heard the term “anal retentive”…..But Regressive?  A tendency to return or revert or characterized by regression or the tendency to regress….we can use this definition for many things, but since it is me writing it will be about politics and such…..

First, a little personal history…..For years I have been trying to make sense of our political system…..for to me it makes little sense if you judge a system but its successes…..so far the only truly successful thing that has happened recently is ….WAR!  Health care is a simmering disaster, education is a boil on our society and the environment….that is a societal heart attack waiting to happen…….and then there is our political system….(pause here for raucous laughter)……..we have had a push-pull system forever, but in the last decade or so it is regressing back to the middle ages…..we have conserv Dems and we have liberal Repubs…..but why?  Should not not be if you are liberal then you are a liberal?  Or the same for conservative…..

Here’s an idea. America needs to have a neomodernist party to oppose the reigning primitivists of the right, left and center. Let everyone who opposes abortion, wants to ban GM foods and nuclear energy, hates cars and trucks and planes and loves trains and trolleys, seeks to ban suburbia, despises consumerism, and/or thinks Darwin was a fraud join the Regressive Party. Those of us who believe that the real, if exaggerated, dangers of technology, big government, big business and big labor are outweighed by their benefits can join the Modernist Party. While the Regressives secede from reality and try to build their premodern utopias on their reservations, the Modernists can resume the work of building a secular, technological, prosperous, and relatively egalitarian civilization, after a half-century detour into a Dark Age.

Read the whole article…..salon.com/news/politics/….

A couple of pretty good ideas….The two party system we have now is antiquated and not working worth a damn……with a change we would have all the anal regressives in one place and all the modernists in another….maybe then a little successful legislature would be the norm instead of the exception…..

There has got to be a solution for the inaction of our governing body……why not try a different approach than the one we have now?

The Final Tally Or …You Owe…You Owe

Soon the Prez will sign the new tax cuts bill into law and there were a few tweaks….but what is the final tally of the bill?

Well, thanx to BusinessWeek we have them for you to see……and judge for yourself…..

The package extends:

–Lower rates for taxpayers at every income level. The top rate, on taxable income above $379,150, would stay at 35 percent, instead of increasing to 39.6 percent. The bottom rate, on taxable income below $8,500 for individuals and $17,000 for married couples, would stay at 10 percent, instead of increasing to 15 percent. Cost: $186.8 billion.

–More generous itemized deductions for high-income households. Cost: $20.7 billion.

–A more generous $1,000 child tax credit. Cost: $71.7 billion.

–Marriage penalty relief, increasing the standard deduction for married couples. Cost: $18 billion.

–A more generous Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income families. Cost: $15.7 billion.

–A series of tax breaks for students and their families, including interest deduction for student loans and an exemption for employer-provided educational assistance. Cost: $3.3 billion.

–A deduction for tuition and related expenses for higher education, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $1.2 billion.

–A tax credit of up to $2,500 for students’ higher education expenses. Cost: $17.6 billion.

–The top capital gains tax rate of 15 percent. Cost: $25.9 billion.

–The top tax rate on dividends of 15 percent. Cost: $27.3 billion.

–Through 2011, enhanced jobless benefits for people who have been unemployed for long stretches. Cost: $56.5 billion.

–A series of incentives for selling, using and producing alternative fuels, including ethanol. Many of the provisions expired at the end of 2009. They would be extended through 2011. Cost: $11.3 billion.

–A $250 deduction for out-of-pocket classroom expenses by teachers, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $390 million.

–A federal income tax deduction for state and local sales taxes, taken mostly by people who live in the nine states without state income taxes, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $5.5 billion.

–The ability of older Americans to withdraw up to $100,000 a year from Individual Retirement Accounts, tax-free, to donate to certain public charities, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $979 million.

–A business tax credit for research and experimentation expenses, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $13.3 billion.

–Tax breaks for capital improvements to restaurants and other retail buildings, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $3.6 billion.

–A tax break for active investors in foreign-based banking, securities and insurance firms, for 2010 and 2011. Cost: $9.2 billion.

–Increased depreciation and expensing for capital investments by businesses. Cost: $21.8 billion.

The package also:

–Spares more than 20 million middle-income households from tax increases averaging $3,900 from the Alternative Minimum Tax in 2010 and 2011. Cost: $136.7 billion.

–Imposes a lower estate tax for the next two years, allowing couples to pass estates as large as $10 million to heirs tax-free. The balance would be taxed at 35 percent. Cost: $68.1 billion.

–Provides a one-year Social Security tax cut for all wage earners, from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Cost: $112 billion.

There she be!  And NOT one penny of it paid for….just add another trillion to the deficit….take it out of petty cash…..NO one will notice…..what happened to those guys and gals that were so concerned about the cost of all the programs….and why was this pushed through without hearings or a CBO score?

It will be fun to see who uses this as a political tool…..

A Liberal Gene?

For decades conservs have tried to say that liberals are some suffering from a mental disease or that it is a sickness or some such dribble……oops!  It seems someone has found a liberal gene…..

Appearing in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics published by Cambridge University Press, the research focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence.Lead researcher James H. Fowler of UC San Diego and his colleagues hypothesized that people with the novelty-seeking would be more interested in learning about their friends’ points of view. As a consequence, people with this genetic predisposition who have a greater-than-average number of friends would be exposed to a wider variety of social norms and lifestyles, which might make them more liberal than average. They reported that “it is the crucial interaction of two factors – the and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence – that is associated with being more liberal.” The research team also showed that this held true independent of ethnicity, culture, sex or age.

Fowler concludes that the social and institutional environment cannot entirely explain a person’s political attitudes and beliefs and that the role of must be taken into account. “These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience,” said Fowler, professor of political science and medical genetics at the Univer. of San Diego.

Okay, I can just hear Limbaugh, Beck and the rest of Right Coast radio jerking off…..so liberals are born and conservs are made…is that about it?

Take Our Country Back!

College of Political Knowledge

2010/2012 Election Series

Lecture #2

Speech after speech…speaker after speaker…..for many years now…have used the term “take our country back” as some sort of rallying cry….usually around election time…there is this urgency to lather the populace up to force them into action…..particularly in voting for one party or the other….

But a few questions come to mind….like…..take the country back from whom?  Or just who is it that stole the country?  Just who the Hell stole the country?

Are these politicos suggesting that the American people have stolen the country?  If they are, I am sure that the American people would be interested in hearing how they did that……would it be by voting?  Or maybe they are referencing the politicians, our voices in Washington….sad to say they stole the whole pie years ago….but all that aside who are “they” saying stole the country?

When Bush II was the president, I heard some of these rumblings from the Left and now it seems to be those on the Right rumbling about those darn pesky progressives or liberals, depending on which adjective one would prefer to describe those on the so-called Left.

So right now, it is still up in the air just who are the dastardly people that have stolen our country….and the song goes on….speech after speech….speaker after speaker….all bitching about the theft of the country…..

Please, if you have some inside information on the theft of our country…share it with the rest of us…..most thinking people are at a loss for words on this theft and like me, they would like to know who the culprit/s are……..

Yet another campaign slogan that has no foot in reality…only in the minds of those that have no idea what they want from the government…..they may be against big government, but what does that mean?  They may be against wasteful government programs, but which ones are those?  Where does this type of yellow political games stop?

Apparently the American voter wants slogans with NO substance over solutions to real problems……

Do You Know What Liberal Means?

College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Political Theory/Liberalism

Paper #28

To answer my own question……HELL NO!

First of all, I have covered this subject on previous papers, but apparently few paid attention…..well actually few read, to my chagrin….one more time from the top…… calling someone a LIBERAL as an insult is moronic and ignorant…just as making the word conservative as some sort of Cro-Magnon affliction…..sad to say insults seem to be the rule of the day in American politics….and that makes me sick as a political philosopher.  How does anything get done like that?  (that is rhetoric…for NOTHING of substance gets done in the US).

For instance, you conservs that have a problem with Liberals and use it as an insult……do you believe in a de-regulated economy?  How about the liberalization of trade and industry?  Or the privatization of public institutions?  Wait, there is more…..do you think that tax cuts will help?    How about cuts in those darn pesky social services and welfare programs?  Or the downsizing of the government?  I bet if you are a true American conserv then you do believe in these things.

Well guess what?  All the items I listed above are part of an ideology known as……wait for it!…….NEO-LIBERALISM!

That is right sports fans…..for all your bitching about “Liberals” and the liberal is you…..kinda ironic huh?

My point basically is that if you are not aware of what political theories have to say, then you are nothing more than some empty vessel with NO rudder and NO direction…..and you will fall for anything as long as it sounds good.

The American people are falling for the emotional BS that seems to infiltrate into every recent election…instead of looking at reality they look for lame ass conspiracies that are NOT there….sad to say conservs are NOT the only ones falling for this….Dems and liberals are just as guilty.

To the rest of the world Repubs are liberals…according to the tenets of political philosophy…..American consers are liberal…..so think about that before you try to use the word liberal as some sort of insult…….

I forgot who actually said this, but……”Stupidity is the direct cultivation of ignorance” and sad to say that Americans are cultivating the crap out of ignorance!

Watch The Trend

College of Political Knowledge

2010/2012 Election Series

The mid term election is quickly approaching but what will the outcome be?  Will the American people throw the bums out?  Or will they go for broke and elect radical Righties to lead the country?  Will the voter show logic and rationality in their voting?  Just how will the people track in their voting?

There for awhile the media was giving the Tea Party more than its fair share of influence….why do I say that?  Simple…..they missed the beginnings of the movement and now hope to capitalize on it……The media, especially conservatives in the media, have said that the people are tracking to the TP because of their anger with Washington…

Personally, I think it is much to do about nothing!  The big TP candidate has shown that he is a Repub, NOT A Teabagger!  One Scott Brown.  The TP candidates in Kentucky and Nevada and elsewhere are showing that they are truly on the fringe…some think the unemployed are causing unemployment (no! really!)……and there is one that does NOT want to eliminate Social Security, but rather wants to PHASE it out (no! really! Has been said!)  These show just how out of touch these people are….but the elections will tell just how out of touch the American people are.

If the TP cannot get a foothold in the South, where conservatism is at its highest point, then where will they find it?

A mainstream Republican rolled past a tea party activist Tuesday in the GOP runoff for a southeast Alabama congressional seat that Republicans hope to reclaim.Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby was drawing 60 percent in the unofficial count in the 2nd Congressional District GOP runoff Tuesday against Rick Barber, a former Marine who operates a Montgomery pool hall that hosts tea party meetings.

Remember him?  He was the one that was in a bar talking with our Founders and said to “Gather your armies”?  His brand of politics did NOT play well in the Deep South……if not there, then where?

It is too early to look at the trends in voting…..okay something else…..Obama’s disapproval rating is 57…..Repubs are at 73% and Dems are weighing in at 67%……

I distrust polls especially the ones 4-6 months before an election…..much can happen by the time people vote and will swing approval in another direction…..the trends today point to the anger of the people will NOT translate into votes for any different type of candidate….the US will get a carbon copy of the politician that they voted out of office….nothing will change and the people can go back to bitching about their representation in Washington…a vicious cycle that few are willing to break…..the only trend that will be evident with the next election is that the TP will be proven to be a non-player……

Plato disliked democracy because he said it was “opinion over knowledge”…….and this next election will prove him correct, yet again…….people will vote with their opinions regardless of the facts…..