drakonyx
drakonyx's JournalRomney's Name Was on the Bottom Line, and That's What Matters
Mitt Romney wants to be president. Well, the guy who sits in the Oval Office doesn't get to pretend the vice president or the Cabinet or the Joint Chiefs are responsible when it's convenient. He doesn't get to "transfer ownership" of the country to someone else while he goes AWOL on his jet ski or takes a joyride in that snazzy car elevator of his. As Harry Truman once said, "The buck stops here." That's how presidents get the job done. But it's simply not how Romney operates.
He's not responsible for the health care legislation that was the model for Obama's Affordable Care Act. He's not responsible for his abysmal record of job creation as governor of Massachusetts. He's not responsible for supporting civil unions. Now, he says he's not responsible for the actions of Bain Capital during a period when he was listed on legal documents as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president."
And he really expects us to believe him? Seriously?
Read the rest of the story at The Provocation.
A Tea Party Constitution: Blueprint for a Dominionist Corporate State
What might the Constitution look like if it were written today by Tea Party Republicans and their allies? Ready to be alarmed? Here's one possibility of what such a document might include, based on a the stated goals and priorities of the radical right:
We the Trustees of the Executive Board, in Order to provide for the common defence of our oil, banking, military and related investments, do hereby ordain and establish this Holy Constitution for the Corporate Christian States of America. ...
Read the full post on The Provocation.
Voter Purges Show GOP Desperation in Face of Changing Demographics
An attempt to purge the rolls of "ineligible" voters backfires in Florida when many of those targeted turn out to be legally registered citizens. Similar efforts are under way in Texas and Ohio. The Justice Department has been at odds with Republicans over voter I.D. laws in various southern states, including Texas and South Carolina.
Why are Republicans and Tea Partiers so frantic to keep people from voting? The obvious answer is that they're afraid of the nation's increasingly diverse and urban population. It's on the verge of making the rural white male voter, the core of the GOP base, a permanent minority. If there was any doubt about this, a story by John Harwood of The New York Times made it all quite plain. While economic trends are working against Barack Obama's re-election, demographic trends are pushing in the opposite direction.
Read the full story in The Provocation.
You Can't Be a Conscientious Objector to Wedding Photography
An appellate court in New Mexico ruled that a professional photographer was wrong when she refused to shoot a 2006 commitment ceremony involving a same-sex couple. The decision comes amid a national fight over whether insurance companies should be required to provide contraceptive coverage for employees of companies that object to such practices.
Show me a society in which any human contract can be barred or nullified on religious grounds, and I'll show you anarchy. Theoretically, anyone could justify any behavior simply by claiming religious primacy.
Society simply cannot function under such conditions, yet this is precisely the sort of society we'll get if we follow the template being offered up by the religious right. They would have us blur the distinction between the individual's "vertical" relationship with his deity and "horizontal" relationships among equal human beings. Then, ultimately, they'd destroy them - as surely as they'd tear down the wall of separation between church and state.
Their repeated assaults on individual liberty in the name of preserving their own religious beliefs is a red herring. No one is threatening those beliefs in the least. No one is keeping any Christian, Muslim, Jew or Hindu from worshiping his or her god, any more than a same-sex couples is threatening someone else's marriage by exchanging vows. But the fundamentalist zealots want us to believe that they're threatened. And they think they just might get us to believe it if they keep shouting loud enough and long enough about their own supposed victimization.
Read the rest of the story at The Provocation.
Corporate Strategy of Divide and Conquer Pits Union Against Union
David Koch and his corporate allies are investing in far more than a single election. Their goal is nothing less than to destroy organized labor. From the inside out. Their strategy is to defuse the simmering class war by turning public and private union members against each other in a classic case of divide and conquer. Corporate America wants them to forget fighting corporate greed and set their sights on each other instead.
If the results in Wisconsin are any indication, it's working like a charm - especially now that the Occupy movement, which did so much to raise awareness of the true corporate agenda, has begun to fade into the background. ...
Progressives can't expect to heal the breach between public and private labor by acting as though it doesn't exist. The only path to neutralizing Koch and his allies is to expose their motives and lay bare their strategy. Then the left must direct private union energy - and anger - back where it belongs: against the corporations that put us all in this mess to begin with. Against Koch and the rest of the 1 percent.
A lot of people are complaining that corporate money bought an election in Wisconsin. But it's buying a lot more than that - specifically, a supply of economic slave labor for years to come.
Read the rest of the story at The Provocation.
Same-sex Marriage: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Courts in Boston and San Francisco have ruled against various restrictions on same-sex marriage, but each court has stayed its decision until the U.S. Supreme Court can review it.
The quote "justice delayed is justice denied" was coined by a Briton in the 19th century, but he must have had a crystal ball that focused directly on the 21st-century American justice system.
We delay justice all the time, and in doing so, deny it for millions.
In California, something like 1 million people have died in the past four years, since the passage of Proposition 8. Some of them died still waiting for the courts to act definitively on the initiative, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. No one should have to die waiting for six men and three women in black robes to validate their love.
Read the full story at The Provocation
Obama Deserves Credit for Taking Stand on Marriage, and So Do We
Some folks in liberal and progressive circles are criticizing President Obama for, in the words of columnist Maureen Dowd, taking "too long to do the right thing."
Dowd and others in this camp need to take a refresher course in U.S. government. Much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, presidents don't generally lead. And deep down, we don't expect them to. They are, like members of Congress, elected officials, and we expect their views to reflect our own. When they don't, we kick them out.
There's a fine line between political opportunists (Mitt Romney, anyone?) who flip-flop all over the deck like a freshly caught trout and pragmatic politicians whose views evolve - to use Obama's term - alongside those of the American populace. Changing your views dramatically because you want to be elected is disingenuous; modulating them because you want to be in a position to do the most good is sometimes necessary.
Presidents rarely lead when it comes to broad-based social change. Instead, they take their cues from us - from the people. If we don't speak loudly enough and with sufficient passion, they generally don't act.It's our job as people who care passionately about an issue to raise consciousness and concern to a certain level. When we succeed in doing so, those we elect to represent our views can act. But it's on our shoulders. It's to our credit as advocates that we were able to give the issue the kind of momentum needed to achieve critical mass on the national stage. It's to Obama's credit that he responded.
Read the full story on The Provocation.
Newsweek Makes a Mockery of Obama's Watershed Moment
Newsweek, one of the oldest and most respected news magazines in the country, made President Obama's support of gay marriage its cover story this week. The cover illustration was a picture of Obama, adorned with a rainbow halo (or was it a hula hoop?) and accompanied by the caption "The First Gay President."
In more than a quarter-century writing and reviewing headlines for newspapers and online publication, I've never seen anything like this. Every now and then, one might come across something like this from an activist or P.R. flack with a skewed agenda. But in my time as a journalist, I haven't come across any fellow editor who I believe would have approved this headline.
It is, as the saying goes, wrong on so many levels.
Read more on The Provocation.
Romney Thinks Faith is Under Siege Here? He Should Visit Iran. Or Tibet
Mitt Romney spoke at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University this weekend, firing another shot today in his party's imagined war on religion: "It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with." But Romney has it backward. It's not faith that's under attack, it's evangelical religion that has the nation under siege.
Read the whole story at The Provocation.
The Backlash Against Limbaugh Has Been a Long Time Coming
A lot of people are mystified at the level of backlash over Rush Limbaugh's latest statements. They've demurred that Bill Maher and others have used similar language and "gotten away with it." What these critics don't seem to realize is that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Limbaugh. (The durability of said iceberg is probably the reason Limbaugh is in denial about global warming.)
Limbaugh has been at this for decades. No, this does not excuse Bill Maher from using demeaning terms to describe Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin. But one must note that Maher's a comedian by trade and both of these women are public figures. The person Limbaugh attacked, by contrast, was a private citizen simply seeking to be involved in the process of affecting government. And Limbaugh's no comedian. He's a political attack dog who appears to relish demeaning and defaming people.
Everyone makes mistakes and crosses the line now and then. But a pattern of rude, demeaning behavior followed by a half-assed, forced apology doesn't constitute grounds for a second chance. Insult me once, shame on you. Insult me repeatedly, and I pull the plug. And don't dare try to play the victim. The backlash is long overdue. We all should have said "enough" to this abomination years ago.
Read more at The Provocation
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Member since: Sun Jul 24, 2011, 05:30 AMNumber of posts: 226
