Political & Elections

 I don't spend a lot of time reading about this nonsense, but even Mississippi did not pass a Personhood law, I believe. It didn't make it in Virginia. Lots of things are "put forward" and nothing happens. Twelve states--not a whole lot.

Meanwhile, access to contraception, abortion, abortafacients, sterliization, etc. etc. go on as before, but to read the news lately one would think women are already being forced to quit their jobs, become pregnant, and go barefoot.

Imo, at least the "fear-mongering" Rs are accused of relative to Obamacare has some basis in reality.

Birth control would not have been an " issue in our lifetime," were it not for the fact that Obama has made it a phony issue. Consequently, what it is, since Obama's unnecessary sticking of his nose where it doesn't belong, is a religious rights issue.

There is no lack of access to birth control in this country, nor sterilization, nor abortafacients, nor abortion, nor any other "female reproductive right" in America, and there never will be. Period. End of story.

I'd be very careful about falling for the left's fear mongering. There are stupid people in both parties.

Perhaps we can have our own Government by Christian Religion. Why Not?

Worldwide we have a Jewish State, and many Mulism States. These countries seem to work out fine, except for their internicine conflicts. 

As Bill Maher said -

Half of me sees Rick Santorum and says, bring it on, he could never win! Other half says, ****, I don't put anything past this stupid country.

I'm really starting to like Ricky - he's the perfect candidate to represent the Republicans this fall.

The National R Party got what they set out to do in 2008.

More camels in the tent. And they have now stunk-up the tent.

The irony is that the only person who is even remotely associated with camels, is BO.

Winchester, you get the award for bringing forth the works of unapologetically conservative writers and institutioins as the gospel and declaring any other opinions as myth. I'm not denying that there are agendas on the other side of the coin, but it is far from being black and white. Actually it was about black and white.

This understanding of history at best tells only part of the story, and at worst its accusation that Republicans are “boldly disingenuous” is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The picture is nowhere near as clear as you make it out to be. In truth, it is much fuzzier, with each side providing the other with grounds, when looked at out of context of the overall trend as you do with your examples, to accuse the other of being disingenuous.

The pot calling the kettle black, huh? Who are the Democrats claiming that their party has always been the party of Civil Rights? Certainly,"Dixiecrats" were as comfortable as Hugh Heffner in a hot tub full of playboy bunnies until the appearance of a civil rights plank in the 1948 campaign. The outrage expressed by dissenters to this ideal gave rise to the very term "Dixiecrat." I'm sure you already know this nacent fracturing of the Democratic Party is essentially where the ideological shift began. Prior to this, Democrats had always been the party in full support of slavery, as well as the Jim Crow segregation that persisted for 100 years thereafter. The cozying up of men like Bobbie Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. left a sizable chunk of the Southern electorate with no acceptable ideological home, that is until the Nixon campaign devised a plan to sweep The South, the heretofore citidel of Democratic politics.

Btw, concerning your claim that I "accuse Republicans of being boldly disingenuous," I must take exception: I said "whenever I hear someone point out that the Republican party is the "party of Lincoln," I roll my eyes. I went on to accuse such individuals of being boldly disingenuous, an accusation not extended to all, or even most Republicans, since as far as I've been able to see, it's not something most Republicans say. So, you see, I used no broad brush here.

Now, moving along to the point I was trying to make, I'm sure you're familiar with Keven Phillips, the estute political analyst endowed with a staggering knowlege of ethnic voting patterns and trends. He was hired by the 1968 Nixon campaign, and became one of its chief election strategists. According to Phillips, from a 1970 New York Times article on this political wunderkind:

When the average voter steps into the booth, he registers the prejudice or the allegiance bred by a mix of geography, history and ethnic reaction which stems from a past he knows only murkily. Three such mixes have determined the Presidential elections of the 19th and 20th centuries: the North-South cleavage that culminated in the Civil War; the slow assimilation into the Democratic party of the urban working class; and the Negro socioeconomic revolution, with its counter-reaction.

And:

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangements with the local Democrats."

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf

From the same article:

Sterilized and scientific as the terms by which Keven Phillips plots the emerging Republican majority, its common denominator is hostility to blacks and browns among slipping Democrats and abandonment of the Democratic party because of its identification with the colored minorities. In the Northeast, the slipage is among blue-collar Catholics who find their neighborhoods and clubhouses overrun by invading Negroes, while their erstwhile party seems to cluck approval. In the outer South, the national Democratic party has begun to replace the GOP as a symbol of alien causes--the Negro politicians and Federal interference with local autonomy. Hence the shift to Republicanism, a trend which for the same reasons has engulfed the milder border states and will, Phillips insists, capture the perferdid South when events force the abandonment of the more extreme Wallace alternative. In the "Latin Crescent"--lower Florida, Louisiana, Texas--the political emergence of the Cuban and Mexican American minorities, joined with Negroes and white radicals in a Democratic alliance, will drive the majority constituency of traditional white Democrats into the GOP.

And:

Revolt against the liberal intellectual elite of the North-East by the resentful commoners of the South, West, and Mid-West is at the heart of the Phillips diagnosis. Richard J. Barnet, Co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and co-author of "The Economy of Death," is representative of that elite. He is Ivy League, wears granny glasses, has been to Hanoi, assails the military industrial complex, runs a think-tank foundation and is surrounded by bearded men and an occassional braless woman. Barnet believes the coilition envisioned by Phillips is possible, but disputes its character: "Phillips may be right. If people don't take his theory seriously enough to come up with alternatives--and the Democrats haven't yet--the forces he mentions, together with the national security-military institution may well produce the nightmare he describes. But the analogy is not with Jefferson; it is with Hitler. The elements are all there--deep rooted social cleavage, insoluble problems, rhetoric which attempts to legitimize and encourage hate, and a phony genetic and geographical underpenning, a despised minority to blame for everything. It all adds up to scapegoat politics, which is a tactic of fascism. The new gains of the Republican party are based upon preservation of the status quo by stopping the Civil Right advance. But the status quo is racist. The Administration tries to legitimize this by saying it will carry out the orders of the courts against de jure segregation. But its an old tactic to use the courts as a way of avoiding execution or political action. The courts, even before the Nixon administration alters their composition, cannot go very far by themselves in bringing about equality between the races. The South, for instance, is just beginning to emerge from a society that was totally racist. Such small gains as have been made involved hugh expenditures of energy, moral authority and political risk. To say we are going to stop now, to pervert the moral authority of the Presidency in order to make people feel more comfortable with their prejudices--and that's what's happening today--is to say that we accept racism. And to build a political majority based on racism is taking a long step toward fascism."

Note that this article appeared in a 1970 New York Times edition.

Oh, and remember Lee A****er, Republican strategist, and political advisor to the likes of Strom Thurmond (racist Dixiecrat convert to the GOP). Lee was architect of the famous "Willie Horton" ads run against Mike Dukakis. During an 1981 interview, and in a spasm of stark truthfulness, he once had this to say about continuing strategies to keep resentful white voters loyal to the GOP:

A****er: You start out in 1954 by saying, "******, ******, ******." By 1968 you can't say "******" — 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 "******, ******."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_A****er

You bold the word “progressive,” as if that word is somehow meaningful, or helpful to your simplified view of things. It’s not. You may as well point to the original understanding of the word “liberal” (i.e., describing values that are now understood to be “conservative”) as proof that conservatives have switched ideologies.

I'll assume you did not understand my purpose for bolding the word progressive, so I'll attempt to be more clear. I used the term "progressive" as it addresses the overall spirit of political movements aimed at the breaking down of prevailing social mores. It does no good to point out that, historically, both the Republican and Democratic parties were once exponentially more socially conservative than they are today (though the GOP of late seems determined to take a hard jog to the right on many of today's social issues). The meaning of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are relative to their times. Surely you know this.

The Republican Party was indeed founded on a platform of anti-slavery.

The Republican Party introduced multiple civil rights bills in the century before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Republican Party voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by an 80%-20% margin, whereas Democrats voted in favor of it by a much smaller margin of %60-40%.

I don't think you assertain that I already know these things. Yes, the Republican party was the socially progressive party until it stopped being the socially progressive party. Today, for instance, probably few people calling themselves Republican would insist that theirs is the socially progressive party, what with the renewed and increasingly strenuous objection to things like women's reproductive rights (and even such heretofore settled issues, like access to birth control) and marriage rights for the LGBT community. Note that all the things you list above happened before Nixon's Southern strategy was so effectively implimented.

Until campaign finance is changed significantly, nothing will change. Campaign finance is going in the wrong direction. It will take a consitutional amendment at this point.

SC has already ruled against Hilary, that PACs and super PACs are legal and protected under the Constitution.  Remember Ben Franklin, wealthiest guy in the British America, and Geo Washington, Thomas Jefferson, amongst the largest land owners in same. 

So why worry when the election of the President is essentially paid by someone else. At least the campaign dollars didn't come from you. And the wealthy  are only looking after your best interest; Just like taxation. 

Go Ron.  Who so far is funding his campaign by students via their parents. 

Got an upset stomach. 

Too much to digest, especially with a headache and low bloodsugar. 

So what if it's, 2 against 1. 

Sorry...I keep saying "mandated" when I mean "mandated coverage."

Being serious for a moment...

I think you make excellent points about the R view there and I can't reconcile it myself. The R party seems a bit nutso to me lately, to tell you the truth.

Honestly, I never doubted Planned Parenthood's value until the brohaha (sp?) over SGKomen. I mean, really? PP was vicious in my view--and apparently they won't be happy until Brinker herself is desroyed. All that for $600,000 bucks? PP's budget is a billion? There are places in rural America that need PP, but I believe it's a fact that PP is located disproportionally in poor, minority neighborhoods. I think I read that the abortion rate among African American women is huge, compared to its population. That made me wonder--why the ferocity? Something, in my opinion, is rotten here.

I don't know--I'm just beginning to wonder....

Prediction: Romney will be the nominee and he will beat O in November.

Why? The debates and campaign between Barry and Mitt will bring out O's nasty, snarky side (i.e. the real O--the one without the teleprompter). Mitt will have prepped for this eventuality.

Imo, O's "likeability ratings" are way inflated (people worry about being seen as racist)--without the MSM spinning him constantly, they'd be even worse.

Yes, Mitt can get testy, but side to side with O, he'll come off as a reasonable, nice guy. (Think GWB and Gore, GWB and Kerry.)

Nice guys finish first.  :)

With Obamacare BC, morning-after and sterilization mandated coverage, in order most especially to help out "poor and minority" women, soon enough we wascially wepublicans won't have to go to the trouble of voter suppression.

Yeah, but that would render the GOP unable to continue banging its holier-than-thou, spiraling black births out-of-wedlock/high abortion rate drum (it works like a marching band's bass drum you see, having two equal but opposite heads---good for banging one side, and then the other with equal verve: on the one hand, condemn them for having the baby---and then presumably relying on government assistance to feed and house them, and on the other, condemn them for aborting the baby---win, win. Plus it keeps the white supremicists satisfied that they're supporting the right party).

However, I'm curious, hope, where did the "mandated sterilization" idea come from? Where in the Affordable Health Care Act does it mandate that anyone be subject to sterilization? If you can prove that's in there , you just might have the issue that could bring Obama down in flames. One would think the GOP would jump all over that one. Better get busy and fire a missive to the Koch brothers, or whoever's in charge of their pro-Romney superpac. Just imagine the ads....

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Tuesday 14th of February 2012 09:54:43 PM

Do I think Republicans will vote for Obama? Absolutely not. But a lot of moderate Reps will stay home.

Agreed. As you've noted, Santorum is simply a non-starter where electibility is concerned in the general election. Just his stand on birth control alone is enough to make many independents and moderate Republicans to sit on their hands on election day. Heck, that could render virtually ineffective all GOP laws aimed at minority voter suppression...

The R's had better look at their respective congressional seats.

I hopefully think that our electorate is smart enough to know that Government could be a very useful thing to have. I am amazed to see them want to downsize government when BC downsized government and farmed out some of functions in the name of competition. Then to have W ignore oversight and expect the farmed operations to do right thing.

Ask any of the investor of Bernie Madoff funds-Kevin Bacon and Kiera Siedwick, our 6 degrees.