Love your assessment of the numbers reflecting the reality for months on the projected Obama victory, refuted, as many realities are often refuted by the right, to their ultimate detriment. (“THE JOE COOL STOMP II”—Issue: 11/14/11) Look, these people have been running against a straw man for years. The president they wanted to run against, Muslim appeaser, socialist, weak on foreign policy, clueless, doesn’t exist. They had the chance to make an alternative argument against the guy that actually held the position, but thought it better to echo nonsense by Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin; lunatics all. Not only lunatics, but living in a fantasy world perpetuated by the FOX machine and accepted as fact by ill-informed voters, who were actually shocked when the cold, hard facts they had laughed at came home as actually votes.
—V. Elias
Man, Mitt Romney had to work hard to blow this. More power to him. He is a champion loser.
—Adalson
This is now five out of the last six election cycles where the Republicans have lost the popular vote. Their message is stale, antiquated, and soon to go the way of the Whigs. The hijacking of the party during the ‘80s of the religious right and the corporate culture, much of which dumped millions upon millions of dollars to elect Mitt Romney their puppet, have been bested more times than not. This is not likely to change anytime soon. Immigration, contraception, evolution, climate change, tax cuts for the rich, anti-women, anti-homosexual, anti-intellectualism has doomed it.
The brand, as you say, is damaged. The question is who has the balls to change it?
—Freddie Regaldo
See, you lose me when you let a little soft-on-Obama ankle show. There was nothing impressive about Obama winning. I actually had it backwards when I said nobody cared about Romney—they actually did, but in a negative way to the tune of 2+ million LESS Repub votes than McCain got in ’08. I thought for sure the anti-Obama sentiment would override the obvious Romney stank, but hey, I wouldn’t be the first to be wrong in the history of the world. Add to that the fact that Obama himself didn’t draw as many votes as he did in ’08 and there goes your “impressive” analysis.
The bottom line is the Rhinos control the Repub Party, they put a Rhino up for Pres who claimed to be conservative when true conservatives knew that was BS, and you have the same result as in most elections whenever Rhinos go up against Dems—utter failure. As long as they control the party and continue to out-lib the Dems, they’re going to be losers, despite the media intelligentsia blaming the TEA Party for everything ‘cause they’re scared shitless of them. One could say the two mil who stayed home might have gotten off the couch had Romney picked a real TEA Party conservative, not to take anything away from Paul Ryan, but it’s all pissing in the wind at this point.
I will now sit back and enjoy the spin of the coming and inevitable government failures as the fault of the party who controls only 1/2 of 1/3 of government…
—Ken Eustace
You make a fair point; what data was Dick Morris, whose job—actual job, not hobby—is to dissect this data, using? It’s not just that the Republican side of things is out of touch with an evolving nation, but they don’t even have serviceable people to understand the process. It’s sad. I used to be a Republican. Now I cringe when any of these people speak. It’s like the party of idiots now.
—GG16
Mr. Campion, this article is… Brilliant. (“THANKS FOR NEXT TO NOTHING”—Issue: 11/21/12) Couldn’t have said it better. My hat’s off to you.
—Blows Against The Empire
Yes, it is true. Only two states legalized cannabis. Only a few voted for gay rights. It is true that these things should already be legal in this country. I get it. But the facts are that things are not that way. People in 48 states are still being arrested for pot. This is a relatively small first step, but it is most importantly, a first step. After generations of inequality, and the severing of some of our personal liberties, we are finally making progress. I am excited to see something being done about cannabis prohibition. Even though the present situation is not perfect, it began the first serious realization that it can be done. The conversation is upon the world stage now. The genie is out.
I am not going backward.
—ShumannFu
One part of this piece is correct—fundamental rights should never be subject to popular vote. We allowed it to happen without challenge, and paid the price. So where were you in 2004? Why weren’t you filing lawsuits to stop them?
And now that things are turning in our favor, now that we have a much broader base of support among the public, you’re having a fit.
Real constructive, that.
—Huntercgo
Giordano Bruno was burned alive for beliefs that were largely fact. He audaciously claimed the sun was just another star, that other stars had planets orbiting them and likely had life. While that latter is yet unobserved, we retain two absurd words bereft of factual basis. We still reference our daily revolution from a biased, geocentric viewpoint; we call it a sunrise or a sunset. The sun does neither.
Unless we are grossly incorrect, our species lived over 160,000 years in nearly the same level of relative ignorance as the wilds around us. We struggled for 1,000 of our more recent years to comprehend what is now regarded as basic math. The newer language of science existed for 200 years before the revelations of Einstein were realized. We struggle to understand how much of Einstein was correct, and how much he deserves correction.
It is no less a wonder how it could be that our interpretation and expression of enlightened ideals remains imperfect, errant and incomplete. Within a short few years, the wisdom of recognizing the equality of all people was tarnished by the specification that whole categories were exempt as only 3/5ths of a human being.
We must continue the struggle to understand and implement our own convictions, and to eliminate the contradictions and injustices we invoke upon ourselves.
The paradox will continue. We made huge progress over the epochs, and quickly compared to the eons before us, yet it moves glacially compared to the span of our lives.
—JVene
This article reads like a scream for attention. Things are getting better and you’re pissed about it.
It’s precisely this kind of sensationalism that makes it hard to get the progress both you and I want.
Also, I disagree about the religion part of this argument. If they want to be non-taxed, they ought to be playing by the same rules required of every other citizen association that collects and spends money and wants to do so in a tax-free way. The religion part of the First Amendment is no more inalienable than the right to assemble part.
—Pied
