Archiving the pre-end-times' happenings. Topics usually appropriate for mixed company. But not really.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Why it’s cool(er) to be liberal again
The L-word is quietly working its way back into the political lexicon.
The number of voters identifying themselves as “liberal” jumped three points on Election Day, from 22 percent in 2008 to 25 percent this year. That’s the highest that number has been since at least 1976, according to exit polls.
The term “liberal” has long been somewhat of a pejorative in American politics — or at least been less popular than the alternative.
When Ronald Reagan was reelected in 1984, just 17 percent of Americans identified as “liberal.” And even back when the founder of the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took 61 percent of the vote in 1936, it was more popular to be a “conservative” than a “liberal,” as Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein pointed out.
That may be changing, though. While the “conservative” label has stayed about where it is, self-described liberals have increased from 17 percent of the electorate in 1980 to 21 percent in 1992 and now 25 percent today.
And the three-point jump between 2008 and 2012 is tied for the biggest jump in the last three-plus decades.
Here’s how that looks on a graph:
Now, this shouldn’t be over-sold. We’ve still got far fewer people identifying as “liberals” than identify as “conservatives” (35 percent). And we have yet to see a stampede of Democrats rushing to embrace the label.
But for a label that Democrats have shunned for a while now, it seems to be on the ascent.
There’s a bit more to the article explaining what factors are leading to this, social issues being among them.
Personally, I’d like to see the country shift further left, that is, were “moderates” are actually at the center and not right of center as they seem to be now.
Often I feel that many people believe that conservatives are “truer Americans” than liberals. I mean, conservatives pretty much hijacked the flag for themselves.
Well fuck that and their tribalism.
Liberals are for a better world, not just country.
Let’s be liberal and proud. We are on to their neo-con extremism even though they paint it as if they are simply right-of-center and that the current conservative ideology is the same as it’s always been.
It’s not.
Have I mentioned how much I love Barbara Boxer?
Have I mentioned how I’m totally reblogging the shit out of this?
(Source: conwaytittie)
Why did he do this? Because despite the abundance of evidence on pay discrepancy between men and women, he still considers it a myth spun by liberal special interest groups.
Women. What an annoying special interest group, right?
Good thing he signed it in the middle of the night or people women might actually have been present to contest it.
So if work place discrimination is just a myth, what’s the real reason for the unequal pay?
“Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers, But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.”
That’s right, women are just lazy. They take so much time off from work, just to, you know, raise kids and stuff.
Apparently it’s okay to create a hypothetical story, apply it to all women, and legislate law based off of it. Glad to see anti-intellectualism is still burning strong.
A fictional and constant “state-of-emergency” in Michigan “allows” the GOP to evade democracy and ignore their constitution in order to pass radical bills without any say from the minority leadership in congress. And the GOP doesn’t even have super-majority. What do they think this is - the former Soviet Union? Maddow is being nice here. She lightly tosses out the words “dictatorship” and “autocracy” but generally keeps her cool because she doesn’t want to come off as alarmist.
But this is alarming.
This is NOT okay. The GOP, which claims to so vehemently hate communism, are starting to look like the communist party of Soviet Russia where only members of the communist party were allowed to vote.
Make no mistake about it: Whether the rule is coming from the private sector or the government; we live in an oligarchical system. Democracy is dead.
Motto for “The War Against Women” Campaign
“I like to have sex with women but I don’t like it when women have sex”
Some of us have been saying this since, oh, about twenty years.
A party that refuses to raise taxes on anyone, ever, when taxes are at historic lows isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that wants to roll back successful programs like Social Security that have been a bedrock of American society for nearly three quarters of a century isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that’s openly at war with Progressive Era reforms like unions and child labor laws isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that refuses to make cuts in defense when the U.S. currently spends more than the next 14 countries in the world combined isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that denies the scientific consensus of climate change isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that seeks to repeal a law that was decided by the Supreme Court nearly four decades ago isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that advocates the forced deportation of 12 million immigrants isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that denies basic facts about the deficit isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that wants to pull out of landmark treaties the United States helped write isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party that invites white supremacists and fringe organizations like the John Birch Society to its most important conferences isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party whose leaders compare the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler and Stalin on the floor of the House, who threaten impeachment if they don’t get their way, and who sow doubt about the President’s citizenship isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
A party whose presidential candidates claim that states should be able to ban contraception and that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional isn’t conservative, it’s radical.
And so on.
Let's not pretend that we don't know how deep the crazy runs with these people...
Someone tell me, honestly, are we all really going to pretend that Rick Santorum is a viable candidate for President of the United States?
— Ari Kohen (@kohenari) January 6, 2012Here are some quotations from Santorum that led me to ask the above question, helpfully compiled by The Week:
1. Opposing birth control
Quote: ”One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country…. Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” (Speaking with CaffeinatedThoughts.com, Oct. 18, 2011)2. Keeping moms at home
Quote: ”In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to. … What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else — or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon — find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism.” (Santorum’s 2005 book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good)3. Re-spinning the Crusades
Quote: ”The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. … What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers. What we’re talking about are core American values.” (South Carolina campaign stop, Feb. 22, 2011)4. Rejecting the very idea of “Palestinians”
Quote: ”All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Nov. 18, 2011)5. Reminding America that some view Mormonism as “a dangerous cult”
Quote: ”Would the potential attraction to Mormonism by simply having a Mormon in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, Dec. 20, 2007)6. Dissing welfare programs that “make black people’s lives better”
Quote: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” (Campaign stop in Iowa, Jan. 2, 2012)7. Bringing race into Obama’s abortion views
Quote: ”The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person — human life is not a person, then — I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We’re going to decide who are people and who are not people.’” (CNS News interview, Jan. 19, 2011)8. Equating gay marriage to loving your mother-in-law
Quote: ”Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” (Santorum’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, May 22, 2008)9. Comparing homosexuality to “man-on-dog” sex
Quote: ”If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. … That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.” (AP interview, April 7, 2003)And I’ll add a tenth, since Santorum has recently clarified Quote #6, above:
10. Blah People
Quote: ”I’ve looked at that quote, in fact I looked at the video. In fact, I’m pretty confident I didn’t say black. What I think — I started to say a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — mumbled it and sort of changed my thought.” (John King USA interview, January 4, 2012Andrew Sullivan also reminds us of Santorum’s general anti-freedom position:
Recall that Santorum is contemptuous of the whole idea of the pursuit of happiness, if it isn’t regulated by Catholic natural law. He is opposed, in his own words, to “this whole idea of personal autonomy,” not to mention “the idea that people should be left alone.”
Santorum’s slogan is “Faith, Family, Freedom.” But it is more accurately described as Faith Family and Freedom That Doesn’t Violate The Tenets of Faith and Family as defined by Santorum. This is what the Tea Party comes down to in the end: opposition to the whole idea of freedom or being left alone by the government.
But perhaps even better is that Sullivan also links to a piece by Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross, which points to a variety of the reasons that “Santorum was ranked, in 2006, as one of the three most corrupt Senators in Washington”:
Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who filed an ethics complaint against Santorum in 2006 on behalf of a watchdog group, said her organization’s website received a tidal wave of visitors in the past 24 hours, and in an interview she said she believes people will discover that the GOP presidential contender is “hardly the moral paragon he purports to be.”
“There were several instances in which Santorum appeared to have taken campaign contributions in direct exchange for legislative assistance,” said Sloan, whose organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), spent months investigating Santorum’s activities while he was in office.
I can only assume that people don’t remember or aren’t interested in any of this, that Republicans are really, really, really freaked out by Mormons, that there are way more religious extremists than I ever imagined, or that the Greek gods have decided to start messing with humanity after a pretty long hiatus. Because I just can’t believe there’s a sizeable group of people that honestly believes someone like Rick Santorum — who seems to believe all of these things, actually says them out loud, but doesn’t seem to apply them to himself particularly rigorously — would be a good President.
Rick Santorum is the flavor of the week that isn’t Romney. However, the fact that a guy this perverse could make it this far means that we need to stop, back up, and seriously reassess what’s going on in this country. This should not be happening in 2011/2012.
Mitt Romney said at last night’s debate that he wants to provide “relief” to the middle class. Based on what his tax plan would actually do to middle-class families, we’re not sure that word means what he thinks it means.
