Most of us rabid political partisans, whether lefties or righties, take special pleasure in citing what we see as the excessive rhetoric of certain people on the other side of the spectrum.
And so it is with me when right-wingers like Republican State Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen (above) of Minnesota spout their particular brand of nonsense.
Gruenhagen has been in office for little more than two years, but already he’s made quite a reputation for himself.
For example, he held a news conference a couple of months ago to denounce legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage. Homosexuality, he said, is a …
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The RESULTS of a new CNN/ORC poll are mostly good news for President Obama.
The principal take-aways from this survey are these:
Fifty-three percent of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president’s approval rating was at 51% in CNN’s last poll, which was conducted in early April.
“That two-point difference is well within the poll’s sampling error, so it is a mistake to characterize it as a gain for the president,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Nonetheless, an approval rating that has not dropped and remains over 50% …
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Stephanie Koontz, one of my favorite social historians, WARNS HERE about the potential pitfalls of nostalgia:
In personal life, the warm glow of nostalgia amplifies good memories and minimizes bad ones about experiences and relationships, encouraging us to revisit and renew our ties with friends and family. It always involves a little harmless self-deception, like forgetting the pain of childbirth.
In society at large, however, nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.
(Snip)
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating the good things in our past. But memories, like witnesses, …
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Despite suggestions from such conservatives as Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich to temper their rhetoric, more than a few Republicans these days are claiming that the so-called scandals that currently beset the Obama administration are the worst in American history.
Let’s knock down that nonsense with just two examples of past scandals, shall we?
For starters, the notion that Obama’s problems are worse than Watergate hardly merits discussion. Richard Nixon, after all, needed a presidential pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford, to keep him safe from criminal prosecution.
There is no evidence that Obama has committed any crimes, much less …
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When U.S. Marines were shown providing umbrella coverage for President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a Rose Garden news conference the other day (see top photo above), the right-wing noise machine went into high gear.
The prevailing opinion among the Obamaphobes was that it was disrespectful of the president to have uniformed members of the U.S. military hold his umbrella.
But, of course, Obama’s not the first president to so utilize our military men, as the photo above of George H.W. Bush will attest.
Sarah Palin’s snarky comment on Umbrella-gate (“Mr. President, when it rains it …
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