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Tag Archives: Politics
MY ONLY POST TODAY JAN 18TH 2012
Marines, The Taliban, and dehumanization in war
So a few days ago a video surfaced where it appeared that four U.S. marines, while be recorded possibly by a fifth Marine, urinated on the corpses of recently killed presumably Taliban fighters. The reaction to the incident has been varies and in many ways thoroughly predictable based upon the political philosophy of the reactive audience.
People have done everything from vocal support for the act to calling for it to be considered a war crime. All of that is of course absurd and nothing more in my opinion than general political tribalism.
I land somewhere in the middle, on the thin isthmus of rational ground between the extremists and partisan on either side. Continue reading
The United States Constitution, Living Document or Fixed Meaning?
It is a constant argument, generally between the liberals and the conservatives, as to weather this U.S. Constitution is a living documents, whose meaning is open to interpretation through the filter of changing culture and societal mores, or if it has a fixed and unchanging meaning imparted by the founders. The answer in my opinion is, ‘yes.’ Continue reading
Why I am so critical of Republicans.
Frequent visitors, who don’t avoid the political postings, will no doubt notice that I tend to more often criticize Republicans politicians over Democratic ones. Such visitor might get the impression that I am more favorably inclined towards the liberal arguments and that such criticism is mostly just attacking ‘the other team.’ This is not the case. Continue reading
2012, the expecting, part II
So, now let’s look at the second of 2012 and see what sort of thing your humble host and narrator might be interested in.
A General Political catch-up post
I haven’t posted on politics in awhile and boy has there been a number of interesting events. So here, in no particular order, are my own muddled thoughts. Continue reading
What happened? Updated
So last night I brought up the question what happened to the Republican dominance in California for Presidential elections. Brad theorized that it was a demographic change that lead to Claifornia becoming a safe state for the Democratic Party in presidential elections. I expressed some doubt, but he may be right. Be low the cut is a graph I made of the popular vote totals in California for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. For comparison I also graphed the popular vote totals for both parties nationally.
The Democratic part has been gaining steadily in the Golden State since about 1980, this did not translate into victories until 1992, but the trend is plain. What I found even more surprising was that the trend was mirrored, though delayed in the national vote totals. From 1952 through 2008 in general the Democratic Party has been gaining popular votes and the Republican Party has been bleeding them.
If this is demographics, then it could spell massive trouble for the Republican Party. The Tea Party revolution will be carrying the party into the wrong direction for electoral victory. Note that the Republicans did not lose votes totals, slipping behind the Democrats when the total losses became too great, but rather votes moved from the Republican ledger to the Democratic ledger. It is hardly likely that those migrating votes are of a Tea Party mentality. As such moving towards the Tea Party is unlikely to bring those votes back to the Republican party and is therefore unlikely to help in the long term electoral prospects of that party. (there may be short term swings such as 1964 or 1994 but the trend lines continue.)
Becoming a lite version of the Democratic pArty is no answer, rather the Republicans are faced with a generational challenge of finding a philosophical stance that agrees with their principles, and is flexible enough to sweep in votes from the growing Democratic wave.
So what happened?
A friend of mine is fond of saying that his vote, nationally, doesn’t matter because he lives here in California and no matter what he thinks, wants, or votes California is going to be in the Democratic column come election night.
Today that is true, but it hasn’t always been that way.
From 1952 through 1988 California was a reliable Republican state, only once 1964 ending up in the Democratic totals during the Goldwater Disaster. However from 1988 through the current day, five straight elections, California has gone Democratic and teh Republicab’s haven’t had a ghost of chance at the electoral college votes locked up in the Golden State. Why?
Did California turn that Liberal in 1992?
Did the Republicans move that far right in 1992?
Was it a combination of both?
A very deserving collapse
I am terribly pleased to see that this man’s campaign has collapsed. Should by some quirk of fate he rise again and takes the nomination I will happily vote for Obama against him in the general election.