NewMexiKen can remember going to a Poli Sci class the morning after LBJ’s landslide against Goldwater in 1964 and hearing the professor tell us how it was the end of the Republican Party. With that hindsight, I have found the talk about this year’s realignment and the end of the Democratic Party pretty amusing.
Every Saturday’s big game has to be the biggest game ever. Every election where one party replaces the other has to be the end of the losing party.
As someone who has spent many happy hours studying Christian theology, from Origen to Hans Kung, as well as modern scholarship about Jesus, I supposed I should be pleased by this eruption of holy fervor among the Republican candidates for the highest office in the land. But there’s just one little problem.
Jesus would have been appalled by the whole pack of them.
We do not know very much about the historical Jesus. But everything we know indicates that the carpenter from Galilee would not have been pleased to learn that this pack of coldhearted, sanctimonious, wealth-exalting politicians were claiming to be his followers.
I’m not saying that Jesus would have been a Democrat. Anyone who pretends to find support for specific political policies or ideologies in the Bible is delusional.
From Jesus versus the GOP, a fascinating, informed look at politics and religion.
Mr. Romney added: “And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
In fact, in the most recent year, Mr. Romney made $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees, at an average of $41,592 per speech, according to his public financial disclosure reports.
“…There is no longer any plausible scenario by which Willard Romney, the Piltdown Man of American politics, will not be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. Which means, among other things, we have nearly a flat year of Willard’s defending his lucrative career as a vulture capitalist and looter of old people’s pensions on the ground that he is a classic American up-from-the-bootstraps success story, and that he is only in this to make sure that other children like him have the opportunity to be born into wealth and make themselves wealthier. The way he’s going — and his staggering recitation of tinpot Reaganite banality after his win here was only the most recent indication of where he’s headed — by the middle of, oh, April, we are going to hear about how Willard was raised a poor black child.”
“When Whoever passes judgment on this political era, Senator Jim DeMint is going to be roasting on a particularly sharp spit in hell.”
So So Pierce begins. Please go read the rest.
“A couple of interesting things for the local folks here. I live in Richmond. In the past three months, I have lived in all three of Fort Bend’s districts without ever moving. First I was in 26 (Reynolds) where I was perfectly happy, then the Republicans moved me to 27 (C. Howard) where I woke up every morning and threw up. And now I am in 28 (Zerwas), who is one of the lesser offensive Republicans if we can get his goofy wife to shuddup about Planned Parenthood.”
Juanita Jean in a post about Texas redistricting.
Checking my iPad for any updated applications just now, I found this:
Yelp
New in 5.4.3
There are three types of bugs that are now gone:
“The last lesson in unusual politics comes from Costco, longtime home of the $1.50 hot dog and gummy bears by the barrel. Using its newfound powers as a corporation-as-a-person granted them by the Supreme Court, Citizen Costco spent about $20 million on an initiative to persuade Washington voters to privatize the liquor business. No corporation, or individual, had ever spent so much money in the state on any voter measure.”
“Of course, nobody in the field except Jon Huntsman, the Incredible Vanishing Mormon, has any serious experience at dealing with foreigners. Michele Bachmann has negotiated with nobody except the voices in her head for 10 years, and Rick Perry believes there are only two countries in the world — America-Fk-Yeah! and Meskinland. Newt Gingrich’s most memorable overseas experience was bitching about his seat on Air Force One, and all Ron Paul knows about people in other lands is that we shouldn’t give them any money. (He feels much the same about other Americans, too, so that’s a wash, I suppose.) Mitt Romney’s experience in foreign affairs is limited to bobsledders, and Herman Cain’s experience in foreign affairs is — please, god in Heaven, let this be so — merely limited.”
“Specifically, [Romney] signed on to Paul Ryan’s toss-Grampa-to-the-jackals voucher approach to Medicare. Ryan was thrilled to death. Not his death, of course, but the death of a lot of old people who’ll be thrown onto the market of the single most disgusting industry in America that doesn’t involve deepwater drilling.”
“Mitch Daniels is George W. Bush’s former budget director. Making him president would be like giving Joe Hazlewood another oil tanker.”
This Is Where All the GOP ‘Heavyweights’ Went
“At this point, [the Catholic Church] is little more than an elaborate international conspiracy to obstruct justice that also happens to have a really good art collection.”
Occupy Vatican City – Catholic Church Priest Abuses 2011
Both of the above posts are worthy of your time.
I thought this was a very insightful analysis of the Herman Cain phenomenon.
“If someone with Jon Huntsman’s pedigree accepts, even in theory, the notion that too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-exist, all that pounding on the drums may be worth it. Of course, had he said it on-stage during the actual debate, somebody would have eaten his face.”
Pierce explains Chris Christie. An excerpt:
Rachel Maddow made this point in lovely fashion last night, running a succession of YouTube videos of which Christie and his people are so proud that they’ve taken to using them to establish his bona fides as a national figure. Here’s Chris berating a public-school teacher. Here’s Chris blowing off an uppity constituent on a radio show. Here’s Chris explaining that he’s a ruff-tuff guy from Joisey who can give your attitude back to you if you cop one with him.
If there were any political advantage to pulling the wings off of flies, Chris Christie would have his own show on the Outdoor Life Network by now.
“[Michelle Bachmann] is deeply concerned, you see, with the possibility that Hezbollah will establish missile bases in Cuba, perhaps for the purpose of launching long-range intercontinental ballistic syringes full of the HPV vaccine at America’s middle schools.”
“This is how we get Mitt Romney, with his $290 million, telling an audience that he doesn’t ‘try to define who is rich and who is not rich.’ (Here’s a hint, Mitt. You’re rich. You’re filthy, stinking rich. You reek of money. You belong on a card in a Monopoly set, okay? Buy a damn monocle already.)”
I can’t be the only person watching Rick Perry’s performance as a presidential candidate and wondering, how did this guy become a Texas political legend, an unstoppable force who never lost? Did nobody ever ask him a slightly hard question before?
So I asked my favorite Texan, aka my wife, and she said, “Texas is feudal”. Meaning that Perry was the candidate of the bidness community, and in Texas, what bidness wants, bidness gets.
Of course, he might yet become president. And if so, soon all of America will be like that.
“[W]hile reviewing the results of last night’s highly entertaining getting-shit-wrongfest in the Republican debate. It’s hard not to notice a new trend in the Republican race this year, which is that candidates are increasingly unconcerned about being factually wrong on live television.”
Last night that foolish woman from Minnesota said President Obama had the lowest modern presidential approval ratings ever.
Gallup says Obama has a 41% approval rating.
Here are the presidents who apparently were pre-modern:
LBJ 35%
Nixon 24%
Ford 37%
Carter 28%
Reagan 35%
G.H.W.Bush 29%
Clinton 37%
G.W.Bush 25%
Update: Actual statement, “President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times.”
The lowest Obama has gotten is 38% (last month). His average is 51%.
Janet Maslin reviews Joe McGinniss’s ‘The Rogue,’ on Sarah Palin.
Meanwhile, Doonesbury gives us excerpts. Start here and continue at least through today. The Fox parody is as funny as the excerpts are remarkable.
“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”
“POLL: Palin Could Draw Votes Away From Bachmann and Perry Among Voters Who Describe Themselves as Morons”
“To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
“Personally I haven’t given up hope for Barack Obama even though he has shown little inclination for bold gestures. I’ll still vote for him for no better reason than the fact that the alternatives range from abominable to ‘are you fucking kidding?’.”