Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
In Northern Ireland (and I’m sure my readers will correct me), the political system is way unrelated to the rest of UK politics – its own microcosm. You have a multiple divide in politics there – ethnic, religious, class, minority/majority issues, republican versus monarchist, and who smote who first and last. When you get these [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
Big jump in the rates of teen cases of STDs and syphilis and teen pregnancies during the Bush administration, according to the CDC. A different sort of ‘don’t ask, and we won’t tell you’.
If you want an idea of why the idea of mixing church and state is a bad one, look at Iran. You can’t challenge the state without challenging God’s word, you heathen. Die in hellfire! And which church gets to call the shots? The largest church in the USA is the Catholic Church, and I [...]
GM to lay off 10,000 white collar workers this year (if they don’t go belly-up first). Ohio Governor and Senator agree that the stimulus is vital to keeping things going, and new Republican Congressman from Ohio says that FDR caused the Depression by wild spending. Mike Huckabee claims that the stimulus package is anti-religious – [...]
Could you imagine, especially after the Couric interview, Palin going around like Biden did doing spin on the networks? Could you imagine it being coherent? If you have the mistaken idea that John McCain will get rid of Sarah Palin, even if some of the true believers in National Review Online are going OMGWTFBBQ get-rid-of-her [...]
Going back to my response posts, I want to stress that I never assume that anyone voting against Obama is a racist, or that Republicans are racists, or that either on the Republican ticket is a racist. I know better. I’ve lived with serious racists, had racism and sexism used against me and mine (you [...]
Sarah Palin has decided that the bipartisan investigation of her in Alaska is something she will now no longer cooperate with, especially since the GOP and Democrats there jointly voted to subpoena her husband and 12 other members of state government. Of course, a couple of weeks before the Republican National Convention, she said that [...]
Recently, a good friend of mine who I disagree with politically laid out his concerns and objections around the present electoral cycle. I started to reply as a comment to his posting online, and then I quickly found that what I was saying was waaaaaay too long winded to work as a comment. For one [...]
The Anchorage Daily News reports this morning that the State Legislature had to step in and pass a law because of Sarah Palin and her hand-picked Wasilla police chief’s treatment of rape victims, forbidding police departments from charging rape victims for medical exams post-rape. Nowhere else in Alaska was this done but Palin’s Wasilla. Details [...]
…I write as much as I do on political subjects, the answer is simple – because I care. My view, for as long as I can remember, and has been ever since, is to see the long run, the big picture. My focus and education was directed at the synthesis of the world around me [...]
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” – Sarah Palin, at the RNC last week Well, yeah, you do, and you’re supposed to handle them halfway well.
A live mike caught on MSNBC what the Republican talking heads really were thinking. Transcript after the cut, video at the link:
From a meeting between the campaign manager of the McCain campaign and the editorial board of the Washington Post: “This election is not about issues,” said Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” Or – don’t look at the issues, look at the way the spinmasters [...]