Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases where corporations are requiring certain women to wear a scarlet "A" on their uniforms... um, no wait... that can't be right... let me check my notes....
But it's really nothing new to point out the ludicrous nature of what is billed as "breaking news." In fact, I can end precisely where I began this rant. Back in its infancy in the 1970s, "Weekend Update" had a running joke parodying such "breaking news" idiocy. Chevy Chase would be handed a piece of paper (which just goes to show you how long ago this was) at his news desk, and he would glance at it and then report: "This just in... Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
Has it really been a whole year since the Republican Party put out their "post-mortem" document, which tried to identify why they got shellacked so badly in the 2012 election? Since it's not a big date on my political calendar, the one-year anniversary kind of snuck up on me, I'll admit. But since the Republican National Committee used the term "post-mortem" in the first place, I guess it's now time for a post-mortem on the post-mortem (insert your own zombie or "dead man walking" joke here, if you must).
Today is 3/14, therefore a happy Pi Day to all! Next year will be even more fun, though, since it'll be 3/14/15....
Over a decade ago, the federal government did something which made people's lives better. A law was passed by a Republican House and a Republican Senate and signed by a Republican president, and it has demonstrably made people's lives better. It was called the "Do-Not-Call Implementation Act" and it created a government database where private individuals could voluntarily add their phone number to block its use by telemarketers. So far, it's been a smashing success, and the law was improved by making the list permanent (so people don't have to keep signing up for it) in 2007. Also in that year, a survey showed that 72 percent of Americans had registered for the list. The time has now come to build upon this landmark legislation and create a "Do Not Track" list, to further protect consumers' privacy.
Is the gay marriage issue beginning to disappear from the Republican Party's playbook? Are Republicans on the verge of admitting defeat and deciding to move on? The answer is likely "not quite yet" to both of those questions, but the fact that they can even now be seriously asked seems like progress of a sort. It'll likely be years before we see Republicans (at least on the national stage) boldly taking pro-marriage-equality stands, and it'll likely take at least one more groundbreaking Supreme Court decision before the issue loses all of its political weight in the party. But glimmers of such a future can at least now be seen, which wasn't true even as recently as one year ago (the first two landmark Supreme Court gay marriage case decisions were announced only at the end of last June). Previously unimaginable, these questions are now in the realm of the possible, to put it another way. Because (to borrow President Obama's term) the Republican Party has finally started to "evolve" on the subject.
It's been a busy week in politics -- even without all the CPAC follies -- so let's get right to it.
Headlines can be deceptive, so allow me to state up front that I don't mean "oh, those poor poor politicians," or even literally, as in "politicians who don't have millions." I mean it instead in the sense of "the politics of the poor," which could shape up to be a major issue in the upcoming elections. Why this is happening in this election cycle, I cannot really say. Poverty isn't some sort of new thing, after all. But both Republicans and Democrats seem to be showcasing their ideas in a way we haven't really seen since John Edwards trod the hustings.
Instead, we're mostly going to focus on what appears to be an astonishing amount of Republican self-inflicted political wounds from the past week. It's as if someone somewhere gave Republicans an order: "Stick your foot way out, now... ready... aim... fire!" Even when Republicans weren't shooting at their own feet this week, it appears they were conducting a circular firing squad instead. The 2014 campaign, in other words, is off to a raucous start... and it's only February.
I thought that now, immediately after Arizona's governor just vetoed a very discriminatory bill, was a good time to repeat my claims about how the tide had turned. The bill in question is even instructive, because it shows how the anti-marriage-equality folks are grasping at straws -- they are passing state laws in full anticipation of marriage equality becoming the law in the entire nation. In other words, they know they're fighting a losing battle, and they are looking for ways to strategically retreat.