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Thursday October 31, 2013 · 10:43 AM PDT

2013/10/31 · 10:43

- A question that I've been asking myself lately: when did the Democratic party change from being the rump party of the revanchist South to being the US' national left of center party. It's actually a a surprisingly complex question as the transformation started taking place even before the civil war ended, and wasn't complete until the last of the Dixiecrats switched to the Republican party, arguably with Zell Miller's speech at the 2004 Republican convention. The existence of such a long lasting schizoid, political phenomena points to the the deep structural challenges of assembling a cohesive national political ideology in the US, and almost certainly the same structural undercurrents are what is driving the nihilistic, self-destructive political antics of the Republican party at the moment.

Porphyreos

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Monday January 07, 2013 · 2:06 AM PST

2013/01/07 · 02:06

So, I think it's now official in 50 US states 2012 was the hottest ever, Finally displacing the dust bowl outliers of 1934. A quick search of Google news will reveal, depending on what Google thinks it is that you want to see based on your history (and if I were to be really cynical I would say based on there computation of which sites you're most likely to generate the highest AdSense revenue form), some climate advocacy groups warning of the dangers ahead. A large number of local papers mentioning their local records broken. and of course the usual suspects of deniers. Mentioning "2012 Hottest" (again specific to my profile) shows that "2012 hottest" almost displases hottest commodity trade of 2012 as the top news story -- I suppose that's an improvement.

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Porphyreos

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Sunday August 26, 2012 · 2:05 PM PDT

2012/08/26 · 14:05

Digby as usual, has a great post on Obama's continued signaling that he's willing to make significant cuts to a range US middle-class oriented programs. (Off course programs for the poor are also included in that, but to president's -- and Democrats in general's -- credit they no longer try to pretend that there are significant savings to be had there after the long years of neglect and retrenchment.) She's kept an eye on this thread that runs through this administration from the very beginning: of wanting to chart a new course by bringing America's finances into revenue balance by reigning in and cutting government services and rationalizing tax polices, and their frustration, sometimes emotional, at how much political capital they had to spend twisting Democrats arms, only to rebuffed and sometimes treacherously double-crossed by Republican bad faith in its negotiations.

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Cato Institute -- 2012 Hotest Ever

If only it was just (effective) campaign rhetoric