Friday, January 18, 2013

Hurricanes, Massacres, and Other Conservative-Converting Disasters

18 January 2013

Time Magazine’s Recent cover feature about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie once again reminds us of the key limitation of the American Conservative’s political views. Until the American Conservative experiences a need or disaster first- or second-hand, he doesn’t believe that it exists.

In the Christie case, the Governor’s embrace of Democratic President Obama and the Federal Government’s FEMA services made a big-spending Liberal out of this candid, big-hearted guy.
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From the Perspective of the American political Center, we are of course familiar with this tendency: if all it takes to turn an American Liberal into a Conservative is a single case of being wrongfully sued, all it takes to turn an American Conservative the opposite direction is one first-rate disaster. 

For superlative example, why do so many elderly, otherwise-Conservative Americans support Medicare and Social Security? Because they know first-hand how essential this social “safety net” is to keeping them on solid ground. 
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Our Favorite Big-Hearted Cynic, columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, takes to task both sides of the current assault-rifle-control controversy—the National Rifle Association and the President—for their use of kids in the discussion. 

The National Rifle Association [NRA] has come out big, as we all know by now, with its questionable-taste ad, holding President Obama responsible for the armed-guard protection that his two daughters get at their private school. But Mr. Milbank also accuses the President himself of using children as props, in his address seeking to garner public support for his various proposals for bringing down body counts when it comes to mass murder in America. To this point, Mr. Milbank writes:
“There’s an argument to be made that the horrific nature of the carnage justifies reminding the public that children are vulnerable, but partisans on each side will only dig in deeper if they perceive that the other side is using kids as props.”†
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If It Takes a Disaster to turn an ideologically constrained Conservative into a Moderate American— reasonable-enough to realize that the Federal Government plays an essential role in modern American life—then it makes sense for Barack Obama to show what an innocent child—at risk of assault-rifle attack at school or movie theater or mall—looks like, while as President, he speaks to the American people in this disturbing debate.
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Does Either Side, Left or Right, have any substantive answers to the epidemic of mass murder in America? Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. Vice-President Joe Biden, at the behest of the President, recently sounded out a lot of different sides about this issue. The President, surrounded by his innocent-kid props, put forth his findings from the Vice-President’s efforts. The NRA fired back. While some of us debate the regulation of gun-ownership and the use of kids as political props, every one of us awaits to learn the news of the next mass murder.

Regards,  
(($; -)}  
Gozo! 

P.S.: To put a nice wrap around this, Governor Christie has now spoken out against the NRA ad, as CNN reports here: TRENDING: Chris Christie Rails Against NRA, Calls Ad ‘Reprehensible’

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*See the NRA’s ad here: When His Kids Are Protected by Armed...
† Read Dana Milbank’s Washington Post essay here: The Gun Debate Is Nothing to Kid About

@GozoTweets 

Monday, January 14, 2013

BEATING A DEAD HORSE DEPT: What Republicans Understand About Government—or Fail To:

14 January 2013


Republican Objection to Chuck Hagel’s nomination focuses entirely on the Republicans’ disagreement with the Senator’s policies. Otherwise, his character and capabilities stand unquestioned.

In relation to the confirmation process, one might believe that Republicans expect only to vote for cabinet members who would serve their own, Republican, partisan agenda, rather than serve the elected officials whose political values won the relevant elections.

In the current case, the “elected official” is our reelected President of the United States. The political values relate to those voted on by the majority of the people of the United States.
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Something There Is, about the American political system and majority rule, that leading members of the Grand Old Party of the Republic fail to understand.

Maybe it’s not the American “government” that’s the problem. Maybe it’s just the “Republican” side  which, by failing to understand how our government work, constitutes America’s real “problem.”*

As someone younger and wiser once said, “No wonder Republicans hate government: they don’t know how it works.”

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
@GozoTweets
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*Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address”

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Name-Change Wanted: “Republicans Aside”?

12 January 2013

In Last Week’s Issue of Time magazine, Michael Grunwald wrote the following:
“The checks and balances in our political system were designed to encourage consensus instead of partisan warfare; if Senate Republicans had decided to work with [President] Obama in his first term instead of fighting him, they could have helped shape Obamacare and other Democratic legislation.”*
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While No American Adult would expect that a bill as complex as Obamacare to arrive as full-born, perfect law, it is reasonable to expect that all political sides would offer constructive guidance toward improving such a bill.

Instead, Congressional Republicans, in seeming discord with their oaths of office, kept any such guidance to themselves. In oddly childish manner, they opted to reserve the right to say, “We told you so,” rather than to work to improve the law for the Nation they surely would each claim to love.
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This Blog’s Title, Ideology Aside, reflects a desire to help bridge our long-standing ideological divide. But when that divide becomes entrenched by the kind of uncompromising ideology that we’ve seen from Congressional Republicans since our current President first took office, it becomes disingenuous to pretend that the malevolence of uncompromising ideology does not hold America’s future hostage to the minority.
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Quite a While Back, the GOP took a detour into a ditch that admits no arguments of reason, and that will admit no substantive compromise. Mr. Grunwald’s example of Obamacare gives evidence to this point.

In his Time article, Mr. Grunwald provides other examples, such as the near-complete blockage of every nomination the President has made for the courts, for Cabinet positions, etc.

None of this is news, of course, to anyone who attends to America politics of the past four years. But we post the “news” (as verbalized by Mr. Grunwald’s article) here, to speak to why the blog name, Ideology Aside, has become inappropriate.

We have tried. But for now, we have failed.
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Ideology Aside is looking for another name.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
@GozoTweets
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*“Cliff Dweller,” by Michael Grunwald. Time, 01/14/2013 [Mr. Grunwald’s paragraph continues thus: “At the time, McConnell famously explained that his top priority was denying Obama a second term, but now he’ll need a new top priority.” However, we shan’t be so impertinent as to quote that portion here.]

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Roger Simon Asks, “Must America Remove All Homicidal Dictators?”

10 January 2013


On POLITICO Today, Roger Simon speaks to the suitability of Chuck Hagel as America’s Secretary of Defense. Writes Simon: 
“I am no fan of homicidal dictators like Saddam Hussein, but the world has other homicidal dictators and before we decide to wage nearly nine-year, trillion-dollar wars to remove them all, maybe we ought to have a better reason than unresolved father-son relationships.”
Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!
@GozoTweets
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Read the rest of Mr. Simon’s analysis here:
Hagel Puts Country Ahead-of Conquest 

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

“Would to God These Blessed Calms Would Last.”

1 January 2013

“But the Mingled, Mingling Threads of Life
are woven by warp and woof:
calms crossed by storms,
a storm for every calm.

“There is no steady unretracing progress in this life;
we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:-

“Through infancy’s unconscious spell,
boyhood’s thoughtless faith,
adolescence’ doubt (the common doom),
then scepticism,
then disbelief,
resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If.

“But once gone through, we trace the round again;
and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.

“Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more?
In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary?”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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We Humans, Each and All, 
having survived this past year’s greatest adventures,
now may the brief respite of this holiday season’s “blessed calms”
sustain us through the new year to come, and
find us all, one year from now,
similarly blessed, and lying comfortably
on next year's holiday season’s sun-warmed, sandy shores.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets
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*Read the entire book text, online and free of charge:

Moby Dick