Day: July 9, 2013

Irony: Bush V. Gore Attorneys Joined Together To Win Gay Marriage Case In California!

Ronald 1 Comment

It is extremely ironic to realize that the opposing attorneys in the infamous Bush V. Gore case, which George W. Bush won over Al Gore in the Supreme Court, making Bush the 43rd President of the United States, have now triumphed in the most significant civil liberties decision in recent memory, the case against Proposition 8 in California.

This victory in the Supreme Court last month allowed the revival of gay marriages in the most populous state in the Union, with about one out of every eight Americans!

That case, along with the case that declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional for its discrimination against gay couples who wished to marry, will stand out in the history of civil rights and civil liberties in America.

And these two heroes are Ted Olson, who represented George W. Bush, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore, and now are joined together in a case that will go down in history as just as important as the Bush V. Gore case, and possibly more so, as the long range effect of winning gay marriage in the Supreme Court is massive!

The Beginnings Of The Republican Field For The Presidency In 2016 Start To Emerge: More Circus Like Than 2012!

Ronald 11 Comments

Anyone who is clear headed knows that the GOP Presidential field of 2012 was a circus, with such horrible, embarrassing candidates as Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Newt Gingrich, all having the effect of making Mitt Romney the LEAST horrible candidate for the White House!

But already, in July 2013, we can see the likely Republican field for the Presidency in 2016 emerging, and if anything, it is more circus like than 2012!

It begins with the two “Ricks”, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, both true embarrassments to themselves and to others, but both believing that God is behind them, and that they will emerge as the next President of the United States, despite the reality that they both represent regressive, mean spirited, and reactionary views out of tune with the changing American electorate!

Then, there are the following potential candidates, all of whom have major flaws and shortcomings that insure they will have a rough time becoming the nominee of the Republican Party for President:

Ted Cruz
Rand Paul
John Thune
Paul Ryan
Scott Walker
Bob McDonnell
John Kasich
Bobby Jindal

Then, there are the potential candidates who would have some appeal to the mainstream, but likely will self destruct due to their catering to the Tea Party Movement, or their refusal to do just that, including:

Marco Rubio
Jeb Bush
Chris Christie
Jon Huntsman

Also, do not dismiss the concept of a Senator Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, running for President if she wins the Wyoming Senate seat coming up in 2014!

But in the end, the Republican battle for the Presidency is a lost cause, as it is clear that Hillary Clinton, or any other Democrat, will have the Electoral College edge for the Presidency, along with the popular vote edge in a nation moving away on a long term basis from the Right Wing message that the Republican Party seems bent on perpetuating, at its own destruction!

40 Years Since The Middle Class Reached Its Peak: The Republican And Conservative Role In Middle Class Decline!

Ronald 4 Comments

Forty years ago, in the year 1973, during the Presidency of Richard Nixon, the middle class, which had been steadily growing since the end of World War II, reached its peak in economic terms.

In the years of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, an optimism that the future would be better was fulfilled, and the “American Dream” was a reality for millions of Americans, many of whom emerged from the lower middle class or from poverty.

This was the age of liberalism, a time of expanded government and social programs, whether under Democratic Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, or Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon.

But a right wing reaction was beginning to emerge, and reached its ultimate success under Ronald Reagan, after sniping at Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, undermining both of them in their attempts to continue the direction that the nation had been engaged in for 28 years.

And despite what seemed like improvement under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the reality was that conservative ideology even infected him, and while some benefited from the prosperity of the tech revolution of the 1990s, many were left behind by the trend toward making government the evil, rather than the source of much of the prosperity that brought about the middle class advancements.

And once the Republican Party gained the two houses of Congress in 1994 and kept it until 2006, and then regained the House of Representatives, beginning in 2011 until now, the middle class continued its decline, and here we are with hardly any wage increase and asset growth for the middle class, or what used to be the middle class, as we reach the two generations that have passed since the ultimate peak of the middle class.

Leave it to the GOP, and as long as the wealthy do well, they will continue to war on the middle class and turn them against the poor, so as to keep the wealthy in a privileged position, paying lower levels of taxes than they ever did during the years from FDR to Nixon!

So those who see themselves as middle class, and are struggling, need to realize who the real enemy for them is—the Republican Party and conservatism, not the Democratic Party and modern liberalism and progressivism!

The Most Diverse And Yet The Most Divisive Congress In More Than A Century: The 113th Congress!

Ronald 2 Comments

It is ironic that the 113th Congress is the most diverse in history, but also the most divisive and partisan in more than a century, which does not bode well for any future cooperation or progress on the important issues facing the nation!

96 women, 42 African Americans, and 31 Hispanics serve in Congress, but the vast majority are Democrats!

Partisan polarization is endemic, however, more than in the past century or more, probably back to the Civil War-Reconstruction period!

Of course, we have never had a Congress, except in the 112th Congress and this one, in which there has been a Republican House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate, and only five other Congresses since 1900 in which there has been a Democratic House of Representatives and a Republican Senate, with those occasions (1911-1913, 1931-1933, 1981-1987) being much more cooperative and accomplished by comparison to the past two and a half years since the beginning of 2011!

Party unity in the House is now 72.8 percent, while in 2006, it was 54.5 percent!

Less than 50 percent of the time do we see Republicans supportive of the President’s agenda, an extremely low level historically!

Regional loyalty to a party is extreme, particularly in the Northeast, New England and Pacific Coast for Democrats, and in the South and Great Plains for Republicans.

The likelihood of any major change in this scenario is gloomy, sadly for the nation’s future!

The Republican Delusion That They Can Win The Presidency And Majority Status Just By Having More Whites Voting!

Ronald 6 Comments

The Republican Party is truly delusional in their belief that they can win the Presidency and majority status in the future as long as they can convince more whites to vote, than did so in the Presidential Election of 2012.

With the percentage of whites in the population declining, and with the reality that it will continue to decline, this is a losing strategy in so many ways.

Not all whites would vote Republican, even in the South and Great Plains and Mountain West, GOP strongholds, and certainly NOT in the Northeast, New England, Midwest, and Pacific Coast, and in parts of the Mountain West.

Not all whites would wish to back the right wing policies of Republicans toward women, minorities, labor, and on other issues, such as the environment and science.

Not all whites would endorse the social conservatism of the religious right, particularly with a decline in religiosity among younger whites and voters generally.

A majority of whites who vote Republican are old, and once they pass the scene, many younger whites will have a greater influence on elections, and combined with those who are social liberals, female, and minority background, will NEVER vote Republican because they know that the Republicans are trying to ignore them, if not undermining their right to vote!

With their backward, regressive, vindictive policies toward the middle class and the poor, along with their anti women, anti labor, anti environment, anti minority viewpoints, the GOP will insure that they will be dinosaurs, looked back upon as a historical curiosity as to the issue of how they self destructed despite many warnings as to their self suicide by refusal to adapt!