Last year, Sister Simone Campbell made quite a splash on national television when she took her mission on the road. She went from around the nation, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, raising awareness about those among us who live in poverty, and she took her fight to congress when she brought attention to how their budget adversely impacts the most vulnerable in our society.… [Read more]
April has come and gone, and virtually all of us have dutifully filed a tax return or an extension. The anti-tax mob hasn’t gone anywhere. Somebody’s going to have to pay the tab, according to their means. Despite the sequester that wasn’t supposed to be, replete with “For special friends of Rick’s” special interest mulligans, the bugaboo of taxation hasn’t left us.… [Read more]
Religious leaders have called it immoral; some have even suggested that Jesus himself would oppose it. Various leaders of the Republican party have opposed it and even David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director, called it a fairy tale. Many on the left have referred to it as ‘austerity on steroids.’
What has all of these different people so upset?… [Read more]
Back when you were the party of Abraham Lincoln, we knew you.
When you became the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, we knew you.
Even when you became the party of Barry Goldwater, we knew you.
And then you became the party of Ronald Reagan….and while there was much to squirm over, we still knew you because we knew what to expect.… [Read more]
This week Congressman Paul Ryan released the new Republican budget for the federal government. One thing was notably missing: anything different from the budget he proposed last year. Rep. Ryan and his colleges on the GOP budget committee produced a document that turns Medicaid into a voucher system, makes further cuts in programs that many Americans rely on for their daily survival and his core proposal being the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.… [Read more]
Though the news this week is of the election of Pope Francis and what this means for the Catholic Church’s Legacy following the resignation of Benedict XVI, I want to focus on the big news last week. Last Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit the astronomical all-time high of 14,253.77, and has continued breaking records for nine straight trading days.… [Read more]
As Jon Stewart noted, ” . . . [B]are bones competence and middle school maturity” is all that’s needed to get over this economic hump (which I will studiously refrain from calling the “fiscal cliff,” a phrase simultaneously stupid and meaningless) come January.
Big bar, there. Look who the Democrats are dealing with: Republicans, who believe ACORN (defunct now for years) stole the 2012 election for President Obama, that anti-choice laws can be passed off as “regulations,” and the UN is engaging in mind control.… [Read more]
Since President Obama’s reelection Tuesday night, Republicans’ reflections on their embarrassing loss, ironically, have been a reflection of the exact reasons why they lost. In the aftermath, the $400,000,000 question is this: Who lost the election? Conservamoderate Mitt Romney or the Party itself?
First, I feel compelled to disabuse the premise. Barack Obama won the Presidential election.… [Read more]
The dust has settled. Somewhat. The race for the White House captured much of the nation’s attention but while Mitt Romney’s loss was the highest profile defeat, Republicans lost to Democrats in other attention-worthy races across the nation. Each loss presents the GOP with an opportunity; enter the analysis phase of the post-election cycle.
Whether one blames Chris Christie, Hurricane Sandy or bad message delivery what cannot be disputed is that, as Bob Dylan said years ago, “The times…they are a-changing.… [Read more]
In the 1950s, the science fiction genre was at its highest popularity with movies depicting aliens from other world coming to earth to take over the human population for various reasons ranging from food to slave labor, to the total annihilation of the human race.
My all-time favorite Sci-Fi movie is the classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.… [Read more]
Monday night, I knew exactly what I was going to write about: The third and final presidential debate on foreign policy, with Romney acting a fool and a typical blunderbuss (when, that is, he wasn’t telling the American public that, when it came to President Obama’s foreign policy, he wouldn’t change a thing). And then there were the post-debate Tweets from conservatives which demonstrated, without question, that right-wingers are in the grip of demonic possession. … [Read more]
My esteemed departed father would have been 76 years old today. Born in London, on the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805, where the immortal Admiral Nelson knocked down the French fleet. In our family lore my father was (almost) named Horatio Nelson Davies – a rate determining step on most 1940s schoolyards, one might think…but ‘Bryan’ eventually prevailed.… [Read more]
Now that the second round of presidential debates is over, I’ve been revisiting last week’s Biden-Ryan debate because something Ryan said bothered me and it’s still unresolved. While watching the Vice Presidential debates, and trying not to get too irritated with stream of nonsense coming from Paul Ryan’s verbose answers, there was one thing Ryan said more than once that stuck out to me: “Mitt Romney is uniquely qualified to be President”.… [Read more]
According to most media outlets, especially the spectacle of cable news, the best way to judge a political debate seems to be tantamount to judging a beauty pageant or American Idol contest without the musical talent evaluations. It’s all about presentation, facial expressions, what one is doing while the other is speaking, “looking presidential.” Numerous pundits have advised viewers to best take in the debate with their volume off.… [Read more]
This week’s Say It In Song pick is a Eurythmics hit. It came to mind because the recent presidential and vice presidential debates have made us ask that simple question…and apparently, if you’re Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, the answer is a resounding yes.… [Read more]
“Hello, 9-1-1? There’s an old man beating a child on my TV.” ~ Bill Maher
The debate moderator, ABC News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz’s decades as a respected professional journalist (and motherhood experience) kept the peace between squabbling pols and the tough questions flowing. No Fox News softballs or a first Presidential Debate open brawl which Jim Lehrer often was unable to keep on topic last week.… [Read more]
Body language told the story tonight during the first and only vice presidential debate. For much of the debate, VP Biden showed what many of us felt: a head-shaking disappointment at Paul Ryan’s inability to be honest with the American people. Ryan lost on both foreign and domestic policy.
Ryan gave no real specifics on the economy and no specifics on tax policy.… [Read more]
Make no mistake about it: despite Mitt Romney’s changed tone and policy flips during his debate with President Obama, the fact remains that although they will never state it directly, a major political party, the GOP, has built its platform on the backs of the poor, middle-class, civil servants, veterans, elderly, disabled, ‘working stiffs’ and ‘non-elite’ people of this nation — even though unemployment, poverty, illness and disability affects people of all political affiliations.… [Read more]
Perhaps it’s foul to put it quite that bluntly but, as is the case for many of us, election day can’t arrive soon enough. The campaign season seems endless; misleading ads, voter suppression efforts and full-throated lies may be what is expected but that doesn’t make it easier to endure. After all, while the follies go on there’s still a nation to run — and the more time we spend watching an extremely lackluster candidate who is supposed to represent the best that the ‘loyal opposition’ has to offer, it’s now just a matter of time and how disgusted the voting public can become.… [Read more]
