My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he’s been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? “They lost me,” he says.
They’re losing even more Americans now, as the four remaining GOP candidates seek to out-do one another in their race for the votes of the loony right that’s taken over the Grand Old Party.
But the rest of us have reason to worry.
A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America.
Yet even if they lose the presidency on Election Day they’re still likely to be in charge of at least one house of Congress as well as several state legislators and governorships. That’s a problem for the nation.
The GOP’s drift toward loopyness started in 1993 when Bill Clinton became the first Democrat in the White House in a dozen years – and promptly allowed gays in the military, pushed through the Brady handgun act, had the audacity to staff his administration with strong women and African-Americans, and gave Hillary the task of crafting a national health bill. Bill and Hillary were secular boomers with Ivy League credentials who thought government had a positive role to play in peoples’ lives.
This was enough to stir right-wing evangelicals in the South, social conservatives in the Midwest and on the Great Plains, and stop-at-nothing extremists in Washington and the media who hounded Bill Clinton for eight years, then stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, and Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004.
They were not pleased to have a Democrat back in the White House in 2008, let alone a black one. They rose up in the 2010 election cycle as “tea partiers” and have by now pushed the GOP further right than it has been in more than eighty years. Even formerly sensible senators like Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch, and Dick Lugar are moving to the extreme right in order to keep their seats.
At this rate the GOP will end up on the dust heap of history. Young Americans are more tolerant, cosmopolitan, better educated, and more socially liberal than their parents. And relative to the typical middle-aged America, they are also more Hispanic and more shades of brown. Today’s Republican Party is as relevant to what America is becoming as an ice pick in New Orleans.
In the meantime, though, we are in trouble. America is a winner-take-all election system in which a party needs only 51 percent (or, in a three-way race, a plurality) in order to gain control.
In parliamentary systems of government, small groups representing loony fringes can be absorbed relatively harmlessly into adult governing coalitions.
But here, as we’re seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party — and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.
As such, the loony right is a clear and present danger. - Robert Reich via http://robertreich.org
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Obama Recruits Jesus Christ in His Fight to Soak the Rich
From yahoo news at: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-recruits-jesus-christ-fight-soak-rich-165900900.html
COMMENTARY | "According to a transcript of his remarks, President Barack Obama used the occasion of the National Prayer Breakfast to enlist Jesus Christ in a partisan political battle. He suggested that Jesus would be in favor of his plan to tax the rich.
The Bible verse that Obama choose to support this opinion with was from Luke 12:48, which states, in the King James version, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required." It is perhaps a more decorous Bible verse than Mark 12:17 which states, in part, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," meaning give to Obama what is his. The latter verse may better capture the true attitude Obama has toward taxes, but he showed some discretion in not invoking it.
Most people reading the Bible verse that Obama invoked would marvel at his interpretation of it. It has been assumed that God would do the requiring and not the president of the United States, even if he sees God every time he looks in the mirror. The admonition is understood to be a call to perform charity and to help one's neighbor, not to pay ones taxes.
To be sure, Obama invoked Islamic and Jewish doctrine to support his soak the rich proposals as well. But under Islam, a believer is required to directly give alms to the deserving poor, not to the Department of Health and Human Services to hire bureaucrats to in turn give money to other bureaucrats to run programs that might or might not help the poor. Judaism has similar requirements of its adherents.
The problem is that the three great religions were founded long before the bureaucratic welfare state was created or even conceived of. It was well understood that helping the least among us was a highly personal act, which benefits the giver as well as the recipient. The welfare state model that Obama favors is not only more impersonal, but far more wasteful.
Obama's invocation of religion is also very offensive. Imagine if George W. Bush, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, had said it was God's will that we end the reign of terror and misrule of Saddam Hussein. The outrage would have been heard around the world. But Obama feels that he can get away with enlisting Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed in a partisan fight over tax policy."
Note: Obama is free to speak his mind if he wishes and what's offensive is the GOP's and so called "right's" hypocrisy of everything that Jesus stood for which they are against of course. As a member of The Christian Left on facebook and the web I agree with Obama's statement. -Rob
COMMENTARY | "According to a transcript of his remarks, President Barack Obama used the occasion of the National Prayer Breakfast to enlist Jesus Christ in a partisan political battle. He suggested that Jesus would be in favor of his plan to tax the rich.
The Bible verse that Obama choose to support this opinion with was from Luke 12:48, which states, in the King James version, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required." It is perhaps a more decorous Bible verse than Mark 12:17 which states, in part, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's," meaning give to Obama what is his. The latter verse may better capture the true attitude Obama has toward taxes, but he showed some discretion in not invoking it.
Most people reading the Bible verse that Obama invoked would marvel at his interpretation of it. It has been assumed that God would do the requiring and not the president of the United States, even if he sees God every time he looks in the mirror. The admonition is understood to be a call to perform charity and to help one's neighbor, not to pay ones taxes.
To be sure, Obama invoked Islamic and Jewish doctrine to support his soak the rich proposals as well. But under Islam, a believer is required to directly give alms to the deserving poor, not to the Department of Health and Human Services to hire bureaucrats to in turn give money to other bureaucrats to run programs that might or might not help the poor. Judaism has similar requirements of its adherents.
The problem is that the three great religions were founded long before the bureaucratic welfare state was created or even conceived of. It was well understood that helping the least among us was a highly personal act, which benefits the giver as well as the recipient. The welfare state model that Obama favors is not only more impersonal, but far more wasteful.
Obama's invocation of religion is also very offensive. Imagine if George W. Bush, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, had said it was God's will that we end the reign of terror and misrule of Saddam Hussein. The outrage would have been heard around the world. But Obama feels that he can get away with enlisting Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed in a partisan fight over tax policy."
Note: Obama is free to speak his mind if he wishes and what's offensive is the GOP's and so called "right's" hypocrisy of everything that Jesus stood for which they are against of course. As a member of The Christian Left on facebook and the web I agree with Obama's statement. -Rob
Would Jesus raise taxes on the rich?
Yes, He would, suggested Obama at Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast. Is the president playing politics with scripture?
President Obama used his speech at Thursday's annual National Prayer Breakfast to explain how his faith influences his policies. "When I talk about shared responsibility," he said, it's because I really believe asking people like myself who have "been extraordinarily blessed" to give up some tax breaks is good economic policy. "But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that, 'To whom much is given, much shall be required.'" Is Obama saying, as Politico puts it, that "Jesus would tax the rich"? And, well, would He?
Jesus wasn't a socialist: Maybe Obama would understand scripture if he "visited church more often," instead of "only during campaign seasons," says Breeanne Howe in RedState. "Jesus very much emphasized the importance of giving to the poor," but out of joy over what we've been given, not out of an obligation to pay taxes. In fact, the Bible "teaches that everything we have, including money, belongs to God." Ultimately, a few "Bible quotes... fail to give credibility to Obama's socialist leanings."
"Give me your money in the name of Jesus"
Obama wasn't speaking for Jesus: "I personally have little doubt that if Jesus of Nazareth had been in charge of determining how much various people were rendering unto Caesar," he'd redistribute the wealth, says Ed Kilgore in Washington Monthly. But that wasn't Obama's point. Far from claiming "Jesus as co-author of his policies," he went out of his way to say the opposite: "Our goal," the president declared, "should not be to declare our policies as Biblical." I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Christian Right is "projecting their own usurpation of religion onto the president."
"Obama's prayer"
It's good to hear a Democrat reference religion so well: I think Obama's speech "deserves study as an instance of turning religious themes and imagery to the service of his larger policy message," says James Fallows in The Atlantic. Republicans are so good at this "we take it for granted." The reason Obama's prayer is getting such notice is that "it is interesting to see it done, and deftly, by a Democrat."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jesus-raise-taxes-rich-115700946.html
Note: As a member of The Christian Left on faebook and the internet I agree
with Obama on this issue. -Rob
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