Tuesday, August 22, 2023

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Thursday, January 23, 2014

Abortion--a two-edged political sword

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Whether you're for or against it, you need to realize what abortion means as an issue. First, it has little or nothing to do with saving...
Thursday, January 16, 2014

Is there actually only one party in Washington--the Party of Money?

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Recently on a comment thread to a political discussion on KQED Forum, a commentor said this: ...
Saturday, January 11, 2014

Astroturfing--how a handful of paid operatives create false impressions of public opinion

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On January 9, Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson posted a column titled " Despite what the critics are saying, Obamacare is worki...
Saturday, January 4, 2014

"Corporations are people, my friend"

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The the Supreme Court's Republican majority means by this is reminiscent of how the original Constitution counted slaves. That is, a c...
Friday, January 3, 2014

Children brought here illegally are already citizens

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In the comment thread to a talk show on children brought here illegally, one commentor said: ...
Monday, December 30, 2013

Yes, there's an NSA spying scandal--it's just not the one everyone's talking about

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The far Left and the far Right are full of paranoid antigovernment zealots who think Snowden is a hero for revealing the gummint's evil ...
Sunday, December 29, 2013

What Republicans hear when you say "Obamacare"

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The Republican Party didn't rename the ACA "Obamacare" for nothing. The change sounds harmless enough to liberals and moderate...

The Whopper of the Year wasn't the President's lie about ACA coverage--it's the Republicans lie that their alternative is better

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Every hour of every day, across the airwaves and the blogosphere, Republican partisans blast “Obamacare” with the usual heavy-handed sarcasm...
Thursday, December 26, 2013

Republicans and Democrats both fail to grasp who is an American

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Democrats have the nerve to claim that anyone who lives in America deserves citizenship--even if they got here illegally. I'd say it jus...
Sunday, December 15, 2013

The Lie of the Year isn't President Obama's whopper about the Affordable Care Act

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Politifact.com has "awarded" its Lie of the Year dubious honor to President Obama for saying you keep your healthcare if you like ...
Thursday, November 21, 2013

A new precedent was not established in the U.S.Senate today

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Today the U.S. Senate majority changed the Senate rules to ban filibusters for presidential appointments (apart from Supreme Court nominatio...
Friday, October 18, 2013

Affordable Care Act enrollment software is a worse mess than the Administration admits; but this has nothing to do with the value of ACA

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I voted for the President twice, and support him and the ACA now. Whatever the virtues or defects of the ACA are, the quality of the impleme...
Thursday, October 17, 2013

Nobody wants to admit that the Constitution is broken

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The Constitution was designed to prevent majoritarianism--the tyranny of the majority. Perhaps this was a response to the years of arbitrary...
Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Who's playing with fire?

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"Capitalism is like fire: a good servant but a bad master." "Government is like fire: a good servant but a bad master."...
Friday, October 11, 2013

Why did the Republicans think President Obama would cave in they precipitated an economic crisis?

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Part of being a partisan ideologue--a key part--is gut-level contempt of your opponents. You're strong, they're weak. At best they...
Wednesday, October 9, 2013

False equivalence--the propagandist's Plan B

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If your side is losing an argument--or if it's losing an argument in the eyes of a definable voter bloc--your fallback is to get voters ...

Propaganda pays off

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Talk about getting bang for your buck. Read down the comment threads on articles about the current government shutdown crisis-and you'l...
Monday, October 7, 2013

The current impasse isn't a constitution crisis--not in the sense that anyone is acting unconstitutionally at least

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In fact no one is acting unConstitutionally. The problem is that the Constitution didn't anticipate the existence of political parties--...
Saturday, October 5, 2013

Is it the Right vs. the Left--or the Right + the Left vs. the rest of us? At the local level, it's the latter.

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If the Left seems to think the corporations can do no right, the Right reciprocates by thinking they can do no wrong. The notion that they...