Republicans
gregladen | September 18, 2017A lot of people will object to the title of this post. I will be told to take the post down. I will be told to modify the title or to change what I say in the post.
Nope.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct, and his presentation is brilliant. Watch the following interview (in two parts) and read his book We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.
Chris Hayes is correct to point out that the historical source of Coates title is critically important and deeply disturbing (this is something we've talked about here in the recent past). He is incorrect, as Coates points out near the end of…
gregladen | August 17, 2017General John F. Kelly is retired from the US Marine Corps, where he commanded the Southern Command. He replaced political operative Reince Priebus as President Trump's Chief of Staff.
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking staff member in the White House, and was formalized as such in 1961. This is not a Senate confirmable position. What the Chief of Staff does varies from administration to administration but it is almost always about the same. This person can be the puppeteer, in the case of a President who is weak and in need of a guiding hand. This person is always a…
gregladen | July 25, 2017If you give your children over to the Boy Scouts for a day or two, they may do something to them akin to abuse. This happened.
The Boy Scouts knew what they were getting into when they invited Donald Trump to speak at their national event. They even posted warnings for the troop leaders and scouts, on their blog.
As a unit leader or staff member, you can help make the president’s visit a success by ensuring that any reactions to the president’s address are, as we state in our Scout Law, friendly, courteous, and kind. This includes understanding that chants of certain phrases heard during the…
gregladen | July 3, 2017I speak, of course, of America.
America became very ill early last year when one of the two main political parties seriously embraced a fake candidate for the most important job in the land.
America was given a very poor prognosis in August when that party endorsed this clown for president. Then, in November, the fatal blow happened, but as is the case with many fatal things -- being sentenced to death, being told you have incurable cancer, etc. -- it took a while before the death throes.
From some point in time, around January, though the late winter and spring, we gained the full…
gregladen | February 15, 2017As the Republican led US Senate has voted to confirm (or deny) the party leader's cabinet picks, they've done a poor job, approving, for example, people who have acted in direct opposition to the areas of government they are expected to serve, or in some cases, being abjectly incompetent. The Republicans in the Senate were not vetting the nominees. Some of the Democrats were, but even there, we saw failures of conscious.
The Senators need to be reminded that the critical choices made by the Trump administration tend to be poor ones. Look, for example, at the first NSA choice. General…
gregladen | February 10, 2017The most recent polling indicates that Donald Trump has a 43% approval and 53% disapproval rating. So he is not exactly loved by the American people, which is odd because he seems so lovable. And, he has told us that the American people love him. And his victory in the November election was unbelievably big league. But, that's how it is, according the scientific polling.
Approval and favorability are apparently slightly different, but the pattern holds. The same polling tells us that the American people have a 45% favorable attitude about the president, which would be tremendous for any…
gregladen | July 17, 2016I have no idea if this will be of interest to this community of science oriented and smart readers, but a group called The Republicans is having a big convention this week.
Here's the basic schedule:
Mon 18 July 1:00 PM EST: Convention Opens
Tue 19 July 5:30 PM EST: Resume convention
Wed 20 July 7:00 PM EST: Resume convention
THU 21 July 7:30 PM EST: Resume convnetion.
Funny how every day they start a bit later.
Here are some of the speakers expected to attend. This information is culled from the NYT.
Watch the RNC Convention Live Here
At CSPAN
Pam Bondi
Florida attorney general who…
milhayser | April 4, 2016In January, Hillary Clinton still possessed the benefit of the doubt. Memories of her and Bill snarling at Barack Obama in 2008 had faded, and despite her long and dreadful record, it's always possible to turn over a new leaf. But Clinton's ongoing response to Bernie Sanders shows why she is unfit for the presidency. Even as the frontrunner, Hillary shows no leadership ability; she, too, follows Sanders, trailing him to the left as he takes meaningful positions on issues like income inequality and campaign finance reform. Her saccharine smile says "I can do that too!" but truly she should be…
gregladen | February 29, 2016They even have a short list of candidates. Unfortunately, the only available copy of the secret internal report on running a third party candidate has the list blacked out (see above).
According to Scott Bland at Politico:
Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination.
...
“All this research has to happen before March 16, when inevitably Trump is the nominee, so that we have a plan in place," a source familiar with…
gregladen | November 5, 2014The Potter Metaphor
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the first in a series of books that are metaphorical of the central theme of politics and society in the Western world. Voldemort represents purity of race and racism, the good Witches and Wizards of Hogwarts represent the struggle of self aware consensus around the idea of fairness. The key protagonists -- Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, together with a few others -- succeed because of the diversity in ability they collectively represent.
One of the key moments in J. K. Rowling’s book is the solution of the potions…
gregladen | October 6, 2013
People are getting mad.
GOP Rep. Randy Neugebauer Confronts Park Service Ranger at WWII Memorial: You Ought to Be 'Ashamed'
On Wednesday afternoon at the Word War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) confronted a female U.S. Park Service Ranger as she was preventing non-veteran tourists from entering the temporarily-closed park due to this week's government shutdown. "How do you look at them and deny them access?" Neugebauer asked the unidentified ranger. "I don't get that." In his breast pocket, he carried a small American flag.
"It's difficult," the ranger…
gregladen | November 12, 2012This is the year of the woman in the US Congress and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of some to make sure that the opposite happened.
This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued attack on non-hetero persons. A defining moment in this campaign occurred in February, when the Republican controlled House carried out a nearly comical hearing on women’s reproductive rights.
Three Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the…
gregladen | October 11, 2012The juxtaposition of Nobel Prize season and the revelation of High Octane Crazy in the Republican Party in regards to science is examined by Rachel Maddow:
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sastyk | January 19, 2012Well, as the republican donnybrooks narrow down, the enemy becomes evident - the American poor. Newt Gingrich particularly dislikes poor folk, especially poor children, because after all, if they were good people they wouldn't be poor, they'd be working 50 hours a week in some nice sweatshop!
Celeste Monforton at The Pump Handle has a nice post on the realities of the food stamp recipients Newt claims are lazy buggers.
"And we think unconditional efforts by the best food stamp president in American history to maximize dependency is terrible for the future of this country."
It is absolutely…
denialism | January 7, 2012And get's it wrong
What's amazing is they rank Newt first at the same time acknowledging he destroyed the Office of Technology Assessment.
Jon Huntsman may have the most rational scientific and technological policies of anyone in the field, but Gingrich, sometimes called Newt Skywalker, has far more passion. As Kelefa Sanneh argues in the current issue, the philosophy of Gingrichism is nothing but a combination of the idiosyncratic views of the man himself--which include his beliefs in the virtues of space exploration and his opposition to regulating the Internet, even when it comes to porn.…
hrynyshyn | January 6, 2012Barring a miraculous revival of the fortunes of Jon Huntsman, Republicans this year will, for the first time, elect a presidential nominee who does not believe that humans are responsible for global warming. How did things get this bad?
The Climate Desk team found a few of the last Republicans among the party's leadership who break with this new orthodoxy and spliced their heresies together in this video.
One can also dredge up a few brave souls who are trying to make difference at the GOP's grassroots, groups like Republicans for Environmental Responsibility. This particular collection of…
gregladen | November 22, 2011We know that the right wing revels in stupidity; Willful stupidity and well practiced stupidity are thought to be the way elitist anti-populous tax-the-middle-class Republicans capture support from the masses. Seems to work rather well. But increasingly this trope of (ig)noble ignorance is being supplemented by large doses of mean spirited in your face angry verbal assault. Imagine a member of congress saying to an expert witness at a committee hearing "As long as I'm sitting here and you're sitting there, I can call you whatever I want."
Seriously. The last time I heard that kind of…
gregladen | November 19, 2011This is a bit long but you will benefit from watching all of it. It gets extra hot at 31:30.
I love the look on that woman's face at 31:38 and again at 31:47. LOL.
This particular member of congress, Don Young from Alaska, needs to get unelected. Frank J. Vondersaar seems to be the guy running against him, and this seems to be his web site. You can donate money to help Frank's campaign here.
I was originally made aware of this testimony from a blog post at Get Energy Smart blog, HERE. Please go check that out.
gregladen | August 15, 2011I've known very few real Iowans. I know people who live there now but are from the Twin Cities, but I've only met a handful of native Iowans. One of them is a dear friend, most are only vague acquaintances. Six of them were landlubbing pirates of no value to humanity whatsoever.1 But I'm sure Iowans are mostly wonderful people who are well intentioned, hard working, intelligent, and are just as good as anyone else. Nonetheless, states have personalities and personalities have reputations, and people who live in states contribute to making those personalities and reputations. And for…