Motley Moose – Archive

Wow.

I think that clears up my position on that.

As we come round the last bend toward the midterm elections of 2010, clearly an ‘economy’ election, it is worth reflecting on the trajectory of Republican economic theory and practice over the last few decades in an effort to pull the curtain back on some of their policy positions and rhetoric since Obama’s inauguration.

Let’s be clear, institutional Republicans want to remove the social support services in our country and return to what they imagine are the good ol’ days before income tax, Social Security and Medicare.  And they are deadly serious about it.  Don’t believe it?  Let’s review this archconservative economic manifesto in the concise words of its two-decades long architect, Grover Norquist:

To Norquist, who loves being called a revolutionary, hardly an agency of government is not worth abolishing, from the Internal Revenue Service and the Food and Drug Administration to the Education Department and the National Endowment for the Arts. “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years,” he says, “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Robert Dreyfuss – Grover Norquist: ‘Field Marshal’ of the Bush Plan The Nation 26 Apr 01

Strategically though, how does one dismantle programs, like Social Security, which are clearly favoured by voters of both parties?  Simple.  Reduce taxes, never unpopular, until there is a funding crisis and then use the ominous, looming deficit as an imperative for cutting services.  Oh, and the occasional unfunded war doesn’t hurt either.

This is the second part of two posts analyzing Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election. The previous part can be found here.

When Democrats nominated State Senator Creigh Deeds, they nominated a rural, moderate Democrat designed to win the small towns and rural regions of western Virginia. In an ideal situation, Mr. Deeds would have carved out a coalition similar to former Governor Mark Warner’s.

In 2001, Mr. Warner won a 5.13% victory over Attorney General Mark Earley, based largely upon rural support in western Virginia.

Mr. Warner is famous among Democrats for this achievement (remember, this was just two months after 9/11). He went on to become a successful and very popular governor; in 2008, Mr. Warner ran for Senate and won double his opponent’s vote. Since Mr. Warner, no other Democratic candidate has ever built a coalition similar to his.

More below.

The crazy dude has called off the ‘burning the Qur’an day’. He is speaking about it right now. Whoa. They are moving the ‘ground zero Mosque. Holy shit! He would see that as a sign from god.

Good grief. This huckster has just blackmailed the folks who have been trying to build the multicultural Islamic community center and Mosque in New York City. I am stunned.

Wow. Wow. I got nothing.

What are your thoughts?

Heh. That just popped up and I decided to share.

Once again John Stewart proves something that ever sane Al Giordano and our own sage Shaun Appleby have said:

Cable TV political shows on Comedy Central – The Daily Show and The Colbert report – have become far more relevant to the national political discourse than any host on MSNBC or even Fox, which has gone down the Glenn Beck rabbit hole in a manner that only increases the dysfunction inside the GOP.

Al Giordano – A Primer on the 2010 US House and Senate Elections The Field 1 Sep 10

Or as I said, in full Bardic emulation mode, perhaps we’ve reached that strange decadent point in our politics “when sooth sayers sound like fools, and only fools speak the truth.”  

The obscene and inflammatory 9/11 commemoration promised by the ridiculous moustachioed demagogue Terry Jones (no, not the Monty Python guy) richly deserves the most withering satire your political wits are capable of.

I can’t view or embed Comedy Central videos in the UK (help Moosefather!), so hat tip for Bruinkid on DKOS for the transcript below the break….

I can’t exactly claim to have my fingertips on the pulse of the nation. I don’t travel, and I live in one of the reddest states in the union, meaning that for the sake of my own sanity I try not to draw too many political conclusions from what people around here think. I don’t even have cable anymore because I can’t afford it, so I usually miss the news, too. All I really know is what I read, and I’ll admit that probably means that my knowledge is pretty limited these days. Still, certain themes have become pervasive enough on the national scene that even I would have trouble missing out on them. One trend it would be all but impossible to miss is the general dissatisfaction voters seem to feel with both Obama and Democrats in general, and in the wake of that, the growing number of pundits, reporters, columnists, and average Joe’s (the plumber?) prophesying doom for the Democratic Party this November. We already know that incumbents are at a disadvantage this fall, but if perception is reality, then many Democratic candidates may be kind of… well, flat out screwed.

So just for the fun of it, let’s have a look at some numbers, some facts, and how we got here.

I watched President Obama’s Labor Day speech today. Sorry about the quality: the audio is great but the video might make you sea sick;~J

I thought it was a very good speech. I want to hear it again, but my first impression is very positive. I caught it on MSNBC as I had my dvr set on MSNBC, and was able to rewind and catch the entire thing. After the speech was done the first thing out of the MSNBC reporter was that President Obama was using (outrageous?) rhetoric.

Lol, people can say that Obama was born in Kenya, is a secret Muslim,  but Obama telling the truth about what is being said about him is using (outrageous?) rhetoric?

This is the first part of two posts analyzing Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election. The second part can be found here.

A normal observer might see the above map and naturally conclude that the Democratic candidate lost a landslide election. This is not always the case. In the 1968 presidential election, for instance, the state of New York looked like this:

Although it does not look like it, Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey won the state: 49.76% to 44.30%.

More below.