This annoys me. In 1971, Dick Van Dyke starred in a movie called Cold Turkey. It was a comedy about a dying town attempting to win a prize sponsored by a tobacco company that was betting against any town remaining "smoke free" for a certain length of time. Van Dyke…
What kinds of voters are we? It’s hard to tell by looking what kind of candidates we elect. After all, we usually only have two viable choices; we often hold our noses and vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Many potential candidates never appear on the ballot, thanks to our horrifically corrupt political system, a system that requires a candidate to have corporate money in order to seen as viable by the corporate-owned media. It is a ludicrous and vicious circle.
Even acknowledging the severely limited choices we have at the polls, how well do we vote? Do we prepare ourselves carefully before entering the voting booth? Do we work hard to expose ourselves to a wide range of perspectives before voting or do we fall prey to the availability heuristic, voting on the basis of highly suspect political ads and intellectually vapid local “news”? Do most voters take time to carefully deliberate on the long-term risks and benefits of the political positions touted by the candidates? Apparently not, based upon the ubiquity misleading attack ads that invite unreflective scorn rather than a deliberate consideration of the issues.
Another bit of evidence suggesting that many of us vote without enough preparation occurs whenever citizens vote for lesser known candidates and issues. On numerous occasions, people have admitted to me that they voted for or against a particular candidate (or issue) about whom (which) they knew nothing at all. In Missouri, this happens all the time when circuit judges seeking …
Many years ago, a fellow employee and I got into political and philosophic discourse weekly, sometimes daily. One of our basic disagreements had to do with abortion. She was Irish Catholic, and a very bright woman. Her position was consistent with her church. But she was not so dogmatic as to be incapable of engaging the debate without getting so defensive as to shut off her brain.
One day we both heard a news report about a statutory rape case in England. The girl–14–was pregnant. The judge ordered her to have an abortion. The circumstances were bizarre and extreme. Naturally, though, the debate at work that day was about abortion.
“I suppose,” she said to me, “you agree with the judge’s order.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. She blinked, dismayed, and asked why. “Because it’s supposed to be a matter of choice, for Pete’s sake. Choice. Why is it so hard for you to get that? It’s not the court’s decision, it’s her decision, whether to keep it or get rid of it.”
She had a hard time with that–with both aspects. The idea of abortion and my support of a woman’s right to keep her fetus.
An earlier post elicited some responses dealing with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, one of which asserted that there is no explicit statement in the Constitution separating church and state. As far as it goes, no, there isn’t, but the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment lays a logical basis for first …
If the past few weeks have proven anything at all they have proven to us that no news is not good news. In the absence of a steady stream of vigorous reporting to convince us that things are actually going well, we should never assume that things are okay.
We now have evidence that Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice were advised of an imminent Al Qaeda attack in July, 2001, but that they did nothing to protect us.
We now have evidence that an alleged stalwart protector of children, Mark Foley, is actually a brash and despicable Internet predator. We know also that several high-ranking Republicans covered up the conduct of Mark Foley for months instead of protecting the teenage boys on the receiving end of Foley’s horny advances.
We now know from the recent NIE report directed to the President that the war in Iraq is inflaming the Middle East and that producing a new generation of Islamic radicals. This contradicts the constant and ludicrous assertions by the President that attacking Iraq would make Americans safer from acts of terrorism. In other words, the President’s claim that he was protecting us by attacking Iraq was utterly false and it should have been vigorously questioned by the press for years.
All of this recently revealed information makes me ask “what else don’t we know?”
Here's a pretty amazing admission by Limbaugh, published on Crooks and Liars. Limbaugh has been criticizing Jack Murtha for this approach for dealing with Iraq, but now suggests it himself without giving Murtha credit (or an apology).