Thursday, May 07, 2009
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
The GOP Deserves Its Current State of Isolation
by Joseph Palermo on HuffPo
Every Sunday I look forward to reading Frank Rich's column in the New York Times. He's one of the few commentators the Times has who can both write and think. Last Sunday he offered a lament of sorts about the current state of the Republican Party. "We need more than one functioning party," he writes, "not just to ensure checks and balances and pitch ideas at a time of crisis, but to temper this president's sporadic bursts of overconfidence and triumphalist stagecraft." Rich digs deep to unearth signs of "sporadic bursts of overconfidence" citing three superficial examples from the last presidential campaign. His point got me thinking about whether or not we should be concerned, as many journalists seem to be, about the fate of the GOP. This argument would have more weight if we were discussing policy differences between Ike Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. But the modern Republican Party has been largely in power since 1981 and during the brief periods when it found itself in "opposition" it behaved so miserably it does not deserve our sympathy and regrets.
... read the rest on HuffPo after the click.
Every Sunday I look forward to reading Frank Rich's column in the New York Times. He's one of the few commentators the Times has who can both write and think. Last Sunday he offered a lament of sorts about the current state of the Republican Party. "We need more than one functioning party," he writes, "not just to ensure checks and balances and pitch ideas at a time of crisis, but to temper this president's sporadic bursts of overconfidence and triumphalist stagecraft." Rich digs deep to unearth signs of "sporadic bursts of overconfidence" citing three superficial examples from the last presidential campaign. His point got me thinking about whether or not we should be concerned, as many journalists seem to be, about the fate of the GOP. This argument would have more weight if we were discussing policy differences between Ike Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. But the modern Republican Party has been largely in power since 1981 and during the brief periods when it found itself in "opposition" it behaved so miserably it does not deserve our sympathy and regrets.
... read the rest on HuffPo after the click.
Labels:
Family Values Party,
politics
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Los Angeles Archdiocesan Youth Commission Logo
Yup. It's the real thing. I wonder what the message is ...
It's either an example of total obliviousness or an attempt at "truth in advertising".
Labels:
religion
Saturday, May 02, 2009
100 Days of Spin
What Obama said -- and what has been said about him.
After 100 days in office, we find President Obama is sticking to the facts – mostly.
Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He's used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated the problems his proposals aim to cure by misstating facts about school drop-out rates and oil imports.
At the same time, there's been no shortage of dubious claims made about the president by his political opponents. Republicans have falsely claimed that Obama planned to spend billions on a levitating train and that his stimulus bill would require doctors to follow government orders on what medical treatments can and can't be prescribed, among other nonsense.
And those whoppers are mild compared with some of the positively deranged claims flying about the Internet. No, the national service bill Obama signed won't prevent anybody from going to church, for example. And no, he's not trying to send Social Security checks to illegal immigrants.
... read the rest on FactCheck.org after the click.
After 100 days in office, we find President Obama is sticking to the facts – mostly.
Nevertheless, we find that the president has occasionally made claims that put him and his policies in a better light than the facts warrant. He has claimed that private economists agreed with the forecast in his budget, when they were really more pessimistic. He's used Bush-like budget-speak trying to sound frugal while raising spending to previously unimagined levels. And he has exaggerated the problems his proposals aim to cure by misstating facts about school drop-out rates and oil imports.
At the same time, there's been no shortage of dubious claims made about the president by his political opponents. Republicans have falsely claimed that Obama planned to spend billions on a levitating train and that his stimulus bill would require doctors to follow government orders on what medical treatments can and can't be prescribed, among other nonsense.
And those whoppers are mild compared with some of the positively deranged claims flying about the Internet. No, the national service bill Obama signed won't prevent anybody from going to church, for example. And no, he's not trying to send Social Security checks to illegal immigrants.
... read the rest on FactCheck.org after the click.
Labels:
Family Values Party,
politics
Friday, May 01, 2009
What does your religion teach you?
The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
... read the rest at CNN after the click.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
... read the rest at CNN after the click.
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