Archive | Politics RSS feed for this section

Sarah Palin Ran a Faster Marathon Than Paul Ryan – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic

3 Sep

Is he saying that Ryan is a liar ANd a whimp to boot?

What’s awe-inducing about Palin’s feat is that she accomplished it at 41 after having four children, while Ryan’s mark was set at 20 and Edwards’ best came at 30. There are only about 40 thousand women who were that fast or faster in 2011. (More comparisons: The average marathon time for a woman aged 40-44 in 2011 was 4:47:34. The average for a man aged 20-24 was 4:22:48.)

via Sarah Palin Ran a Faster Marathon Than Paul Ryan – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic.

Tags: , , ,

Open the Presidential Debates! | The Nation

31 Aug

This year, the case for reform is being made by a number of credible third-party candidates who have secured ballot status in multiple states, including the Green Party’s Jill Stein, a physician and noted environmental health activist; the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor; the Justice Party’s Rocky Anderson, a former Salt Lake City mayor; and the Constitution Party’s Virgil Goode, a former Virginia Congressman. All have claims to debate spots; under more open formats, Stein debated Mitt Romney when they both sought the Massachusetts governorship in 2002, and before he switched parties, Johnson faced Romney in the 2012 GOP presidential debates.

The commission is disinclined to open things up this year, or even to tinker with the format. It’s still vital to keep the pressure on, however. The best way to do that is by backing the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Open Debates, which is calling on the commission to release the details of its negotiations with the Obama and Romney campaigns, as well as its agreement to implement the campaigns’ debate plan. Transparency poses the greatest threat to a commission agenda that Open Debates decries as “more concerned with the partisan interests of the two major-party candidates than the democratic interests of the voting public.”

But citizens should do more than just pressure the commission. After all, its oversight is not required by law. Only back-room deals engineered by the major parties and their candidates give the commission its power. Why not pressure the parties and candidates to open things up? “Debates have the potential to be the most interesting, unscripted and definitional part of the campaign,” Nader says. “So why ration them? Instead of three presidential debates, why not have twenty-one spread across the fall? Why not have debates all over the country? In inner cities and rural areas? Various formats? Debates that focus on specific sets of issues? Why not let activists ask questions based on their knowledge and experience? Why not have moderators who challenge candidates, who ask follow-up questions, who encourage candidates to go at it?”

via Open the Presidential Debates! | The Nation.

Tags: ,

His Supporters Treated “Atrociously,” Ron Paul Refuses to Back Romney | The Nation

29 Aug

GOP = Gutless Old Plutocrats:

As Santorum spoke, not on the message of the night but on a deeper message of outreach to working-class voters delivered the language both parties once employed, the crowd that packed the great hall roared with approval — if not entirely for the political point then surely for the relief from the drab repetition that defined “We Built It” night. This was not the empty rhetoric molded by the mandarins who have managed the life out of the 40th Republican National Convention.

The only speech that might have been more engaging would have been the one that wasn’t delivered — by Ron Paul.

Paul was the Romney challenger who stayed in the race longest, and who won almost 200 delegate votes (193 by the Seattle Times count) during the Tuesday night roll call that nominated Romney.

Once upon a time, that might have guaranteed him a convention speaking slot.

But Paul was not allowed near the podium. And the party brass engineered a rewrite of the rules for the 2016 nominating process in order to assure that neither Paul — not anyone else as interesting, or dissenting — will ever again be able to beat the establishment at its own game and win substantial numbers of delegates. The Paul delegates, many Tea Party conservatives and a number of renegade Romney delegates objected, creating the only real drama of the day, and the convention.

via His Supporters Treated “Atrociously,” Ron Paul Refuses to Back Romney | The Nation.

Tags: ,

The 1% and the 99%

28 Aug

IMGP9048rd

Tags: ,

Ron Paul Rallies His Supporters in Tampa – NYTimes.com

27 Aug

TAMPA, Fla. — In a speech that was part motivational, part valedictory and at every opportunity critical of the mainstream Republican Party on the eve of its convention here this week, Representative Ron Paul declared his “liberty movement” alive and well on Sunday before a crowd of nearly 10,000 supporters who were eager to testify to that claim.

Mr. Paul said that he had recently read in newspapers that the so-called Ron Paul Revolution was over, and that whatever enthusiasm voters had shown toward his presidential campaign in the Republican primary season was gone.

“They only wish!” Mr. Paul thundered to an audience that seemed to become more energized with his every word, their roars of approval reaching a deafening level inside the Sun Dome at the University of South Florida.

via Ron Paul Rallies His Supporters in Tampa – NYTimes.com.

Tags: ,

Paul Ryan: The Man Who Wasn’t There | The Nation

24 Aug

Judged by the entirety of his career, Ryan is merely a good-looking version of a typical Obama-era Republican. He calls for budgetary discipline while exploding the deficit. He speaks of lowering taxes but merely shifts the burden to the middle class. Back in the Bush administration, he rarely met a boondoggle he didn’t embrace. On social issues, he may as well be Pat Robertson: Ryan co-sponsored a federal “fetal personhood” amendment, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, and offered legislation to prevent Medicaid from funding abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

via Paul Ryan: The Man Who Wasn’t There | The Nation.

Tags: ,

We Need a ‘Conservative’ Party – NYTimes.com

23 Aug

America today desperately needs a serious, thoughtful, credible 21st-century “conservative” opposition to President Obama, and we don’t have that, even though the voices are out there.

You mean a Conserving Consensus kind of candidate, one who believes in Truth and Traditions?

via We Need a ‘Conservative’ Party – NYTimes.com.

Tags: ,

Election Special: The Blues House

17 Aug

Which is not at all the same as the House of Blues. No, the Blues House is what the White House would have been if John Birks Gillespie had been elected back in 1964, when he ran for the office. John Birks Gillespie, of course, was better known as Dizzy. He was from Cheraw, South Carolina, and was one of the finest trumpeters and most important jazz musicians of the 20th Century.

His Presidential run was at one and the same time not entirely serious and completely and utterly serious. A certain amount irony was involved, which is perhaps why the lyrics to the theme song were set to “Salt Peanuts” – a tune Diz would one day perform in the White House with President Jimmy Carter.

He developed a standard stump speech which eventually made its way into his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop (Doubleday 1979 pp. 457-458). It’s full of jazz references that will be obscure to those who don’t know the music, and various contemporary references are likely to be lost as well. Though I never heard Gillespie give this speech, I’ve heard him speak on several musical occasions and his comic timing is superb. That is utterly lost in this transcription, though those familiar with his vocal patterns can – in some small measure – supply them as they read his words. Here they are.

* * * * *

When I am elected President of the United States, my first executive order will be to change the name of the White House! To the Blues House.

Income tax must be abolished, and we plan to legalize ‘numbers’ – you know, the same way they brought jazz into the concert halls and made it respectable. We refuse to be influenced by the warnings of one NAACP official who claims that making this particular aspect of big business legal would upset the nation’s economy disastrously. Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

Black, White, and Blues: A Commentary on Complex Truths and Traditions in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

11 Aug

I forget just when I originally wrote this, sometime in the early 1990s, or maybe the late 1980s. A reference to FloJo sets 1988 as the earliest possible date, as that’s the year she set her “fastest woman in the world” records in the Olympics, but I may have written it a couple years later. No matter. Most of the references are, if not timeless, at least respectably old and well entrenched in American history (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, Nat Turner, W.C. Handy). Since TnT is all about truths and traditions I figued this little packet of poetic dynamite would be just the thing.

(Note: The hyperlinks in the poem are supposed to take you to notes at the end. But they don’t work too well. Still, if something in the poem is underlined, then there’s a note at the end commenting on it. The notes are in order.)

Independence Day, 2001: In Which a President Finally Frees His Slave Mistress

I

When Thomas Jefferson dreamed of Bessie Smith
Lincoln was shot and Michael Jackson got a nose job,
Atlanta was burned and Rosa Parks welcomed Neil Armstrong to the moon,
While hooded Klansmen invaded Star Wars with their laser whips
And FloJo embarrassed Hitler in Berlin.

The dream stained his sheets, the pleasure embarrassing.
Yet Tom needed his sweets and wouldn’t dream of his wife.
She was the mother of his children and the apple of his eye,_
But Bessie knew other things, secret hidden ways to sing
The blues, who do the voodoo? the long snake moan.

II

When Bill Handy had dinner with Mozart
Malcolm X traveled to Mecca and Lennon gave peace a chance,
The Declaration of Independence was signed and Haiti was born,
Bobby Kennedy was shot while chatting with Nat Turner at Trader Vic’s,
And Elvis became the King so he could buy his mamma a house.

It was a good evening. Amadeus sure could tickle the ivories,
And old Bill liked to tickle people, white folks too.
Wolfgang taught him the secret arts of notation so he could gather
Songs for Bessie to sing. That’s how the blues propagated.
Now old Tom could buy records and learn to dance.

III

When Jack Johnson escorted Marilyn Monroe to the theatre
Hiroshima was atomized so Nipponese could sing doo-wop in blackface
Chinese ghosts still haunting the Union Pacific.
Sequoya created his alphabet so the Cherokee could read Booker T.
And Augustine became a Christian before Aretha’s first was born.

The show depicted a familiar tableau:
Leontyne sang Aida in gold lame while Caliban
Fiddled with Queen Bess who couldn’t believe
That Tom had finally taken Shine’s advice and
Decided to jump ship and haul ass for New Jerusalem.

IV

When Bessie played with Martin Luther
Sometimes the magic worked, and sometimes it didn’t.
The writers of those manuals couldn’t cover everything.
Still, when Bird called and Louis Moreau played bamboula
Nijinsky would dance so fast he heated Chano’s skins.

Tom liked to watch but finally got hip to participatory democracy.
He embraced equality and burned his wig,
Freeing himself to perform unspoken acts
With his wife while the children were asleep,
Dreaming of genies and their magic lamps. Continue reading →

Tags: , ,

Romney’s Incredible Extremes | The Nation

8 Aug

Mitt Romney’s tax and spending plans are so irresponsible, so cruel, so extreme that they are literally incredible. Voters may find it hard to believe anyone would support such things, so they are likely to discount even factual descriptions as partisan distortion.

The pro-Obama New Priorities PAC stumbled across this phenomena early in 2012 in its focus group testing. When they informed a focus group that Romney supported the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also championing tax cuts for the wealthy, focus group participants simply didn’t believe it. No politician could be so clueless.

via Romney’s Incredible Extremes | The Nation.

Tags: ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →