Posting History for JoeCarl
| Title | Author | Published |  |
 |
 |
Views |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winner of the First Debate (Fact Checkers): NPR This may be a little late: I suspect most of us have been reveling in checked facts for more than 24 hours, and I haven’t paid enough attention to know all of those that might have been discussed ... |
JoeCarl | 09/28/2016 | 9 | 5 | - | - |
| How is This Not Treason? Have Republicans, right-wing media, and mainstream media so normalized Trump that, even after his surrender in Hamburg, few will say what seems so frighteningly obvious?
Senator Schumer declared Trump’s actions in Hamburg “disgraceful” and a... |
JoeCarl | 07/13/2017 | 29 | 5 | - | - |
| Stand Up, Paul Ryan, Just Once Before You Are Forgotten You started out as an elite, a frat boy whose highest life’s ambition was to take medical care away from poor people. Then, you became one of the youngest members of the House, where the news media proclaimed you a golden boy, a policy guy, the future... |
JoeCarl | 06/14/2018 | 6 | 5 | - | - |
| The Pope and a Cast of Thousands Deny the Obvious: Religion is the Problem Today, the Pope’s visit to Ground Zero featured an “interfaith” prayer service with so many religious leaders that it bordered on satire. They all assured us that religiously inspired ... |
JoeCarl | 09/25/2015 | 59 | 4 | - | - |
| Ben Carson and the Republican are in (Science) Denial How can a man who is sufficiently intelligent to have become a very good neurosurgeon also be a complete idiot? Lawrence Krauss, in an article in The New Yorker , details Ben Carson’s anti-... |
JoeCarl | 11/05/2015 | 3 | 4 | - | - |
| There is Republican Dignity, and Then There is True Dignity During the action, tonight, by Democrats on the floor of The House of Representatives, Speaker Ryan called for behavior “that reflects positively on the dignity and the decorum of this house.”
It occurs to me that Rep. John Lewis sitting on the... |
JoeCarl | 06/22/2016 | 2 | 4 | - | - |
| So, What Did Happen to Unions? Stable realignments of the electorate do happen. Political scientists recognize 5 of them in our history, some say 6. The elections of 1980, 1994, and 2008 were hailed as realignment elections, but only by media pundits. None had legs. However, the... |
JoeCarl | 03/04/2017 | 35 | 4 | - | - |
| Prince Harry, Please, Do Not Do This Prince Harry, we are your cousins once removed. Some would say twice, but 1812 was just a big misunderstanding; please don’t take it the wrong way. We have fallen on hard times, struggling, now, under an unstable, corrupt, puppet of a foreign power.... |
JoeCarl | 11/28/2017 | 18 | 4 | - | - |
| There are No Unalienable Rights but Only Those We Fight For. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The man who wrote those words... |
JoeCarl | 02/02/2018 | 4 | 4 | - | - |
| Donald Trump Couldn’t Negotiate Himself a Candy Bar on Halloween, and Kim Jong-un Knows That. Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. What could go wrong?
Along with racism and hate, Donald Trump offered his voters business acumen, especially his ability to make deals. He constantly attacked President Obama and... |
JoeCarl | 03/09/2018 | 7 | 4 | - | - |
| Democrats Should Embrace This Economy. After All, It’s Obama’s. The economy is in it’s ninth year of steady recovery. Trump, of course, is taking credit for this in his usual, understated, rigorously honest way: "In many ways this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America….” Unfortunately, that is working... |
JoeCarl | 06/16/2018 | 16 | 4 | - | - |
| Follow Bernie’s Lead – But More So Despite the right’s hatred of entitlements, the people in this country who feel the most entitled are the wealthy. They believe themselves inherently deserving of ever-greater wealth, influence, ... |
JoeCarl | 09/15/2015 | 3 | 3 | - | - |
| Challenge the Republican Line on Gun Control Former Minnesota Governor and former Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty tonight was on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell . The discussion turned to gun control, and ... |
JoeCarl | 10/05/2015 | 3 | 3 | - | - |
| A Question for Those Literate in Economics I recently heard an author on television claim that Ronald Reagan produced a quarter century of growth by lowering the top marginal tax rates. I couldn’t remember that quarter century of “growth, |
JoeCarl | 10/10/2015 | 43 | 3 | - | - |
| Clinton and Sanders Need Each Other Hillary Clinton has made a running series of jabs based on a Bernie Sanders’ comment about shouting that did not mean what the Clinton campaign pretends it meant. That is a move worthy of Fox. ... |
JoeCarl | 10/30/2015 | 5 | 3 | - | - |
| The Death of Death Panels On “The Incidental Economist” blog, Aaron Carroll reports that the Obama administration has issue a rule that essentially brings back the fabled Death Panels of Republican lore (http://... |
JoeCarl | 11/03/2015 | 4 | 3 | - | - |
| Trump is Catching – Not Catching On, Just Contagious I just watched Rick Perry on CNN defend Donald Trump for attacking the parents of Captain Humayun Khan. His claim was that The Donald was justified in attacking this family because they used a partisan event to attack Trump for no reason other than... |
JoeCarl | 08/16/2016 | 8 | 3 | - | - |
| The Clinton Campaign Has an Opportunity to go Positive – And Still Hammer Trump I just heard a television pundit, one I respect, say that Hillary cannot improve her negatives so she may as well continue to attack. I won’t argue with attacking Trump, but I think it’s simplistic to say that she cannot improve her negatives.
Let... |
JoeCarl | 09/14/2016 | 14 | 3 | - | - |
| A Fascism Scale for Scoring Our Dear Leader Bigthink.com published a synopsis of British political theorist Roger Griffin’s work on fascism. Griffin’s high-level definition of fascism is as follows: a form of populist, ultra-nationalism ... |
JoeCarl | 12/09/2016 | 2 | 3 | - | - |
| Why Were Republicans So Anxious to Exhibit the Combined IQ of a Clump of Dirt? A Poll. I’ve been trying to figure out why House Republicans, in a closed meeting, on the evening of a federal holiday, against the advice of their own leadership, would gut the Office of Congressional ... |
JoeCarl | 01/04/2017 | 11 | 3 | - | - |
| Perspective There recently have been a few posts that take the Republicans to task by comparing their policies to the teachings of Jesus. I’d like to present an alternative approach that gets us to the same ... |
JoeCarl | 03/27/2017 | 7 | 3 | - | - |
| The Great Debate (as distinct from the recent kindergarten lunch-table food fights).
Forget Hillary v Sanders. Forget all the others, individually. O'Malley came the closest to nailing at the end. Just think ... |
JoeCarl | 10/13/2015 | 5 | 2 | - | - |
| Republicans Care About You This has been an adventurous year for Republicans: they discovered the middle class. The annual Koch jamboree even discovered the poor. Republican candidates in tonight’s debate discovered and ... |
JoeCarl | 10/28/2015 | 4 | 2 | - | - |
| Rubio 2.0 I am no fan of either Chris Christie or Donald Trump. Then again, I don’t like any of the Republican candidates. However, give credit where it’s due. Christie and Trump got Marco Rubio exactly righ |
JoeCarl | 03/01/2016 | 3 | 2 | - | - |
| Why do Schools Condone Bullies? Bobby Knight has endorsed Donald Trump, thus creating what David Zirin at “The Nation” accurately calls a Brotherhood of Bullies. However, Trump’s behavior is anomalous for his arena. Knight’s behavior in his arena often is held up as the character... |
JoeCarl | 04/28/2016 | 2 | 2 | - | - |
| To Bernie-or-Busters: If you recognize yourself here,
www.theonion.com/...
it might be time to reassess your approach to governance. |
JoeCarl | 06/09/2016 | 5 | 2 | - | - |
| Are We Down to Using the Same Juvenile Approach That Trump Uses? Well, Yes…. I Guess…. Maybe…. There have been at least two recent diaries suggesting that we start a concerted campaign to label Donald Trump as a coward: BorderGal and bosdcla14 . Both authors provided supporting arguments, ... |
JoeCarl | 09/20/2016 | 18 | 2 | - | - |
| We Have Two Years to Fix This – Maybe We have a President-Elect who is an unqualified, unscrupulous, unbalanced, and unashamedly corrupt authoritarian. News articles assigning blame for this circumstance are coming at us faster than ... |
JoeCarl | 12/02/2016 | 4 | 2 | - | - |
| The New Republican-Russian Fellowship: Managing Cognitive Dissonance
NBC poll: 50% of Republicans, 73% of young Republicans see Russia as an “ally” or “friendly”
Had this poll been taken before the primaries, my guess is that Republicans overwhelmingly ... |
JoeCarl | 02/23/2017 | 3 | 2 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? Saving the Democratic Party Since the election, I’ve been trying to figure out when Democrats separated from unions. This is the eighth post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever Happened to Unions? An... |
JoeCarl | 03/03/2017 | 3 | 2 | - | - |
| Illegitimacy Begets Illegitimacy An illegitimate President now has given us an illegitimate Supreme Court. Yes, he had the help of a Senate majority leader for whom democracy and the rule of law are not priorities. Yes, he had the help of the racists, the misogynists, the... |
JoeCarl | 10/06/2018 | 3 | 2 | - | - |
| Pope Francis, Democrats, and Real Family Values First, I am not a Christian. I was raised one, though, and I would like to start a dialog with those of you who have not yet gone astray (that is, awakened to reason). The Pope’s visit and the ... |
JoeCarl | 09/22/2015 | 12 | 1 | - | - |
| Muslim Moderates Cannot Help Us The Paris atrocity should show the emptiness of demanding that moderate Muslims speak out against Muslim terrorists. They have been speaking out, and they have been making YouTube videos and holding |
JoeCarl | 11/20/2015 | 20 | 1 | - | - |
| The Stupid-Cycle: Trump, Bush, Cruz, the Media and Giving Credit Where it’s Due More than 24 hours after The Donald unleashed his latest attack on rational thought, it still was hard to find any news that wasn’t about some courageous person or group standing up to say that Donald |
JoeCarl | 12/09/2015 | 4 | 1 | - | - |
| Of Diplomacy, War, and Idiots The recent seizure by Iran of two small, American naval vessels was an unfortunate incident made more unfortunate by the conflicting explanations we thus far have been given. However, excepting that, |
JoeCarl | 01/13/2016 | 2 | 1 | - | - |
| The Hollow Republican Bluster About ISIS The 2nd of May, 2016, marked five years since Navy SEALs caught up with Osama bin Laden. That prompted a number of articles on the current state of al-Qaida. The gist was that, though no longer preeminent, al-Qaida still is a player and is undergoing... |
JoeCarl | 05/05/2016 | 2 | 1 | - | - |
| Are We, as a People, Really This Stupid About Terrorism? I put up a post earlier about the demographic profile of those who are susceptible to recruitment by terrorists. It was less about terrorists, though, than about Trump. His earliest supporters, it turns out, share that demographic profile. For those... |
JoeCarl | 06/13/2016 | 6 | 1 | - | - |
| Mainstream Republicans and The Reservoir of Willful Ignorance At the Democratic Convention, President Obama noted that people outside of this country don’t understand what’s going on in this election. Well, neither do I. And neither does anyone else, from what I can tell. I’ve been trying to figure out why... |
JoeCarl | 07/31/2016 | 4 | 1 | - | - |
| No, NO, NO! He Deserves No Credit for Apologizing, and They Deserve No Credit for Moving Away Yesterday, before the "Access Hollywood" story broke, I heard a television “pundit” wonder aloud whether the next debate would be the charm. Will Trump change? Will he correct course? Will ... |
JoeCarl | 10/08/2016 | 2 | 1 | - | - |
| The Imperial Donald Trump One of Trump’s favorite lines is that Hillary has been in public life for 30 years and still hasn’t prevented him from skating by without paying taxes, hasn’t solved racism, hasn’t done whatever charge crosses his petty, little mind at the time. ... |
JoeCarl | 10/09/2016 | 1 | 1 | - | - |
| Before you go, Mr. President, Fire James Comey. Julian Borger, writing for the Guardian, gives a travel log for the Trump-Russia dossier. I have not seen it laid out so clearly anywhere else, so, I have excerpted a few of the more interesting stops along the way.
“By July, the... |
JoeCarl | 01/12/2017 | 7 | 1 | - | - |
| Steal a March on Republicans. Take on the Mantle of National Defense. Russia attacked our sovereignty and continues to do so. That is the unanimous conclusion of the nation’s intelligence agencies. Semantic wrangling about which legal terms apply or don’t is half a century out of date. Cyber warfare is warfare. A... |
JoeCarl | 02/13/2018 | 3 | 1 | - | - |
| Trump is Hitler. Immigrants are his Jews. Maybe not fully, not yet, but the differences, stark as they may be, are of magnitude, of potency, not of kind. So much of what Trump has said and done shouts at us that, secretly, he would be Hitler. So, never having paid any price for his... |
JoeCarl | 06/19/2018 | 4 | 1 | - | - |
| The Bizarro-World Election From the New York Times: “‘False Flag’ Theory on Pipe Bombs Zooms From Right-Wing Fringe to Mainstream.”
From the next day: “Bombing Suspect Arrested in Florida; Van With Pro-Trump Stickers Seized”
“Mr. Sayoc, a registered Republican …..”... |
JoeCarl | 10/26/2018 | 1 | 1 | - | - |
| Tired of the Same Old Campaigning? Bash the Media Facing a tough question? Caught off guard or unprepared? Stuck in a venue where the truth would be embarrassing? No problem! Just bash the media. Bask in the applause of persecutory delusionals. |
JoeCarl | 10/29/2015 | 2 | - | - | - |
| Modern-Day Cave Paintings - Without the Art Millennia after we emerged from the cave, we cling to the paintings on its walls: modern man turning to sympathetic magic to better the hunt. We've traded the cave for massive cathedrals and pretenti |
JoeCarl | 11/15/2015 | 4 | - | - | - |
| Politicians, the Press, and Paris: Fear Mongering for Fun and Profit Why do we always make our enemies into seven-foot, three-hundred pound, geniuses trained to fight like Bruce Lee and Jason Bourne combined?
Does anyone really think that it is that hard to coord |
JoeCarl | 11/16/2015 | 1 | - | - | - |
| Donald Trump Wants a National Data-Base to Track Muslims Donald Trump said today that having the government track Muslims in this country is a good idea, and that a national data-base to register them would require little more than good management. He also |
JoeCarl | 11/19/2015 | 5 | - | - | - |
| Mary Poppins: The Original Super-Nanny or Insidious Tool of Plutocrats? Tonight, I saw a promo for the usual holiday-season broadcast of Mary Poppins. It’s a great movie with wonderful music, a talented cast, and a pro-family story. Wait – let’s think about that last pa |
JoeCarl | 12/13/2015 | 11 | - | - | - |
| Because We Are Democrats: An Invitation to a Community Effort The Democratic presidential nominee has been chosen: in effect, in essence, for practical purposes, however you want to put it. My candidate, Bernie Sanders, has acknowledged as much. I hope he keeps going to influence the platform. I hope he keeps... |
JoeCarl | 04/27/2016 | 4 | - | - | - |
| Donald Trump + TV News = Perfect Storm for Democracy I don’t mean to short-change Donald Trump’s base, but I cannot explain them. I’ve tried, and I just can’t. I can, however, explain the other component of Trump’s success.
Robert Costa, in a recent Washington Post blog, reported on an... |
JoeCarl | 05/09/2016 | 2 | - | - | - |
| How to Save the Wine: Step-by-Step Instructions from the Republican Party From the AP:
Concern that global warming could make it more expensive to store and transport wine has caused the Wine Institute to turn to the GOP. In a letter to the Republican National Committee, |
JoeCarl | 12/14/2016 | 1 | - | - | - |
| Putting 2016 In Perspective A longer view can be helpful when dealing with tragedy.
1776 saw Washington chased off Long Island, up Manhattan, across New Jersey, and into Pennsylvania. Fort Washington was lost. Fort Lee ... |
JoeCarl | 12/28/2016 | 1 | - | - | - |
| Republicans' ACA Replacement: The Great Pretenders On TPM EDBLOG, Josh Marshall writes that the health-care goalposts were moved while Republicans weren’t looking.
“The problem is that over the course of seven years Republicans have essentially accepted the premise of the ACA: which is to say, the... |
JoeCarl | 03/09/2017 | 2 | - | - | - |
| My Concern About “Black Panther” and “Wonder Woman.” It’s not about the movies. It’s about the inordinate hope being placed on them and about the cynical provenance of so much of that hope. It’s about the rain of hyperbole from commentators wanting to establish diversity credentials or to assuage guilt... |
JoeCarl | 03/13/2018 | 62 | - | - | - |