As arch-conservatives cling to definitions of marriage as between a man and a woman, more and more Americans come to believe that people have the right to marry whom they love.
While the Supreme Court's right flank seems uncomfortable recognizing gay families, Anthony Kennedy, the presumptive swing Justice, is recognizing history's swing toward equality.
Dem leaders finally follow public sentiment, 2016 contenders and coming out for gay rights & though the Republican Party lags behind, more GOP voices are calling for change.
In the end, people love who they love, couples have the right to start families, and why stand in the way of a great wedding?
Whether through Courts, States or the Capitol, before long, even the Grand Old Party will be celebrating a Gay Old Party, and we'll all be better off for it.
Speculate about SCOTUS, pipe up about politics & pass around a pitcher to share a toast as you gather with like-minded lefties at your local progressive social club.
DRINKING LIBERALLY Find - or start - a chapter near you.
I thought I would start by listing a group of ideas that are held by the majority of educated Americans. If after you read them you think that no, these are “liberal” ideas, think again. In fact, if you were a Nixon voter, you probably agreed to all of them but the one on climate change, which was unknown at the time. In fact, these are not political ideas at all.
Noah’s Ark is just a fable
Evolution is the founding principal of modern biology (and so modern medicine).
The science is strong that the burning of fossil fuels has started climate change.
Tax rate changes within a narrow range have little to do with the rate of growth in our economy.
Cutting tax rates does not pay for itself through growth.
Gasoline prices are set on the world market and will not be influenced significantly by US oil production.
The free market leads to the fairest price. It does nothing else. Read more
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
We supporters of Barack Obama just won a major election and we are all feeling confident. We should, Obama definitely won a mandate when it comes to raising taxes on the rich, along with passing a comprehensive immigration policy. Then we managed to hold our majority in the Senate and we added two seats, with two Independents caucusing with the Democrats.
However, let us not get too comfortable because 2014 is just around the corner, as far as elections go. Some Republicans from the far right are not going to give up. Some even believe that this last election had to be fixed in some way, and that we Democrats were the ones who suppressed voters, not they.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate who lost the election to Barack Obama by a clear margin, discounts his loss in the election, to the president giving gifts to certain minorities. Read more
I find it fascinating but frightening that the GOP is falling so far out of step with average Americans, that it now resorts to underhanded legislation, not meant for the good of the people they serve but to overcome the voters’ will at the polls. In my opinion, not only does the Republican Party work to warp our very democracy but it delusions itself into believing a conspiracy at every turn.
The GOP it would seem, now questions anything that would doubt its own idea of what they want the facts to be. As far as they are concerned, those fact-checkers have to be conspiring with the liberals and those independent and well-trusted organizations that measure job growth, poll voters or anything that produces facts and statistics which contradict its own politics and agenda, have to be all conspiring to undermine the GOP’s own set of generated facts.
Patience; this is what I have been recommending all along. The economy has been improving for a while now, the stock market has recovered and making money, and now Americans are going back to work.
It was just reported, unemployment fell for September to its lowest number since January 2009. There were 114,000 jobs added in September, and 86,000 more jobs were added in July and August than originally reported.
This is of course, good news for the Obama Campaign and it should turn the election even more in his favor. Mitt Romney’s job to convince Americans that Obama does not know what he’s doing when it comes to the economy, just got a lot more difficult. Read more
We have just stepped away from three days of an Obama-bashing convention, put on by the RNC (Republican National Convention). There weren’t many specifics to what the GOP and their candidate for president were going to do if they were given the reins of the government again, only that they were going to do better than Obama.
Now it’s time to switch gears and find out where the DNC (Democratic National Convention) wants to take us for another four years. Read more
A Hollywood icon had a senior moment, or several, in the lead up to the most important speech of Mitt Romney’s career. We’ve had a few days now to let the chuckling subside, and wipe tears of laughter from our eyes, and so it’s time to reflect on what this means for the Republican Party. Why in the hell did the Clint Eastwood thing happen at all?
Hubris…overweening pride.
We can look back over thousands of years of history and find innumerable examples of this most embarrassing affliction of the human experience. In more contemporary language, hubris is when one lets his ass show. The GOP let its ass show when it stuck an 82 year old man, unscripted, in front of a live mic, with millions of people watching. The handlers of the event thought it would be cool…Clint Eastwood is, after all, very cool.
But what happened wasn’t cool: it was embarrassing to this man, who is a legend, and the party who should have known better. Romney probably deserved a little better, too. Maybe.
The Republican Party stepped into the spotlight, its defining moment of the 2012 election season, and exposed itself for what it is….an ego maniac. Read more
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention made a passing mention concerning the poor and the sick in this country.
“…That united America will care for the poor and the sick, will honor and respect the elderly, and will give a helping hand to those in need.” Romney said at one point in his speech.
Though the audience had given the man cheerful and sometimes thunderous applause throughout most of his speech, there was little reaction at all to that one statement. I think that reaction, or the lack of a reaction, is very telling of Republicans in general, at least the ones who were in that audience. Read more
I for one no longer believe the Republican Party is controlled by Republican voters, nor does it serve those voters’ interests.
Back In 2010, the Koch Brothers saw and opportunity and they took it. This is what I believe happened: A small percent of the United States’ population could not stand the thought there was a black man in the White House. Their rage sparked a larger movement. Then add in those who claim not to hate black people, but in private company, do. Add those who just cannot stand the government and you have a movement. Read more
Mitt Romney and other Republicans may be publicly distancing themselves from Rep. Todd Akin’s [R, MO] recent comment on “legitimate” rape, but most congressional Republicans are on the record supporting policies that create similar distinctions in law.
Just last year 164 Republicans and 10 Democrats co-sponsored and voted to pass a bill, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” that sought to create a new legal distinction between different types of rape. Under the bill, only victims of so-called “forcible rape” would be able to use government funds or health insurance purchased on one of the yet-to-be-established healthcare exchanges to pay for an abortion. If a rape is deemed by a judge not to be sufficiently “forcible,” the victim would have to pay out of pocket if the rape leads to pregnancy. Read more
I’ve heard a lot of politicians say some pretty stupid things in my time – but Todd Akin of Missouri really, REALLY takes the prize for stupidity. Read more
Once there was a serial killer. His name was William Hickman.
He was rather famous back in the 1920s. The son of a paranoid schizophrenic mother and grandmother he would torture and kill cats as kid. Anyone who knew him thought he was growing up to be a maniac. Like every good sociopath he stayed on his best behavior so as not to attract unwanted attention from strangers or the law.
After strangling a woman in Milwaukee and killing an old man for his wallet and throwing his body off of a bridge, he murdered a 12 year old girl in 1927, Marion Parker - because he wanted to. He was 19 years old.
He kidnaped her and sent a ransom note to her doctor father. After her father delivered the money to Hickman in his car, our psychopath drove away and tossed the little girl's head and torso out of the car for her dad. He had dismembered her and proceeded to throw parts of her all over the highway.
Hickman was arrested and eventually hanged.
But Hickman had a groupie. Our groupie kept a journal filled with gushing praise for this killer of little girls. She loved his sociopathic qualities. Read more
Extremism: The holding of extreme political or religious views or the taking of extreme actions on the basis of those views. (Encarta Dictionary)
There are various types of extremist, in every country on the globe. Every society has their kooks, you might say. As far as I’m concerned, anyone or any group has a right to believe however they wish to believe when it comes to religion or politics, as long as they don’t try forcing those beliefs on me or the rest of the populace.
The problem with some extremist though, just having their own differences with the rest of society is not enough, they must also work to see that the rest of us either believe the way they do or at least are forced to accept laws and edicts they would have us to follow. Read more
