Posting History for JoeCarl
| Title | Author | Published |  |
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Views |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| “House Democrats to offer Trump higher border security spending ….” From the Washington Post:
“House Democrats are prepared to support increased spending on border security, but not a wall, if President Trump agrees to reopen the government first, lawmakers and aides said Wednesday.”
No.
Democrats need... |
JoeCarl | 01/23/2019 | 26 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Will Barack Obama Be the Last American President? Donald Trump’s appearance beside Vladimir Putin, following their hastily put-together, one-on-one “summit,” was a disaster for this country and our democracy. Trump stood next to a dictator who wants nothing so much as to destroy the West and who has... |
JoeCarl | 07/16/2018 | 7 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Why the National Press Never Will Properly Report Elections Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816.
“if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.”
In Jefferson’s day, the news media consisted... |
JoeCarl | 04/18/2016 | 26 | 43 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| When Reality Drop Kicks Your Political Dogma South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, along with the rest of South Carolina’s congressional gang, voted against federal aid to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy literally devastated large swaths ... |
JoeCarl | 10/06/2015 | 6 | 9 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? We Are So Bad at History I started out find when and why the Democratic Party separated from unions. This is the tenth and final post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever Happened to Unions?... |
JoeCarl | 03/05/2017 | 64 | 34 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? The Right Rises Since the election, I’ve been trying to figure out when the Democratic Party separated itself from unions. This is the fourth post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever... |
JoeCarl | 02/27/2017 | 10 | 11 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? The New Left At some point, Democrats and working men and women went their separate ways. I wanted to know when and how. This is the third post in a series in which I try to work through that. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever... |
JoeCarl | 02/26/2017 | 29 | 7 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? The Democratic Leadership Council Since the election, I’ve been trying to figure out when Democrats separated from working men and women. This is the seventh post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever Happened... |
JoeCarl | 03/02/2017 | 22 | 11 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? Ronald Reagan Since the election, I’ve been trying to figure out when the Democratic Party separated itself from working men and women. This is the fifth post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
... |
JoeCarl | 02/28/2017 | 162 | 47 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? Neoliberalism Since the election, I’ve been trying to figure out when the Democratic Party separated from working men and women. This is the sixth post in a series. Previous posts can be found at the following links.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
Whatever... |
JoeCarl | 03/01/2017 | 19 | 12 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? An Inside Job At some point, Democrats and unions went their separate ways. I wanted to know when and how. This is the second post in a series telling that story. The first can be found here.
Whatever Happened to Unions?
... |
JoeCarl | 02/25/2017 | 10 | 12 | - | - |
| Whatever Happened to Unions? I am old enough to know that unions once were the mainstay of the working class and the root of middle class prosperity. I remember a Democratic Party that was the home of every man and woman who worked for a living. But I continued to think of the... |
JoeCarl | 02/24/2017 | 46 | 17 | - | - |
| What Religious Liberty Is Not. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson produced, somewhat optimistically, a draft constitution for Virginia. It in, he writes,
“All persons shall have full & free liberty of religious opinion ….”
In 1783, in yet another draft constitution for... |
JoeCarl | 06/04/2018 | 6 | 8 | - | - |
| Well OF COURSE Republicans Embraced Child Molestation Mitch McConnell began the process of normalizing child molestation. It didn’t take long, either. But then, Republicans know the drill, having been through it already when normalizing the irredeemably abnormal Donald Trump. Put this into context,... |
JoeCarl | 12/05/2017 | 14 | 13 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| We are Losing the Only Supreme-Court Battle We Can Win, and That Before It’s Even Begun Democrats can’t fight. I don’t know why. I’ve not seen any explanation that rings true. It’s just the way it is. Democrats get steam-rollered whenever push comes to shove or debate ... |
JoeCarl | 02/02/2017 | 46 | 6 | - | - |
| Unions Have a Responsibility to More than Their Members I believe in unions. They stand for the dignity of working men and women. They are all that stand between workers and exploitation. If you work for a living, you should be pro-union. But unions ... |
JoeCarl | 09/17/2015 | 7 | 7 | - | - |
| Turns Out We Do Need Those White, Working-Class Voters The white working-class accounts for 44% of registered voters. They also make up 33% of Democrats or those who lean Democratic. If those numbers don’t sound right, it’s because many of us have been working with the wrong numbers since the last... |
JoeCarl | 04/10/2018 | 90 | 18 | - | - |
| Trump’s Response to the Arrest of His Campaign Manager Is His Campaign in Microcosm Today, CNN reported that “Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was arrested and charged in Jupiter, Florida, with simple battery of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, according to police.” This grew out of a campaign event during... |
JoeCarl | 03/29/2016 | 6 | 5 | - | - |
| Trump Must Lose in Epic Fashion: Too Much is at Stake This is a rework of a post I put up last December. This Sunday, 16 October, marks the 54 th anniversary of the event that was at the heart of that post. That’s a long time ago; many will feel ... |
JoeCarl | 10/12/2016 | 11 | 12 | - | - |
| Trump May Be Priming His Base for a Power Grab A lot of lies and invective came out of Trump’s Pensacola Speech. His endorsement of Roy Moore got most of the attention, yet only some of the media noted, and that with painful circumspection, the irony of a credibly accused, sexual molester of women... |
JoeCarl | 12/11/2017 | 38 | 31 | - | - |
| Trump Lies to Farmers and Rural America, as Have Republicans for Decades. Fight Back. Wright Patman was a Texas Democrat. He represented Texarkana from 1929 to 1976. That durability was due, in part, to campaign literature like a flier titled, “Here Is What Our Democratic ... |
JoeCarl | 01/09/2018 | 6 | 9 | - | - |
| Trump is Right – The Election IS Rigged Donald Trump may be, is, in fact, an openly racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, narcissistic, authoritarian, ignorant, habitual liar — but when he’s right, he’s right
This election is rigged.
“As of August 2016, 31 states enforced voter... |
JoeCarl | 08/15/2016 | 6 | 5 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Trump Has Tapped Not into Anger but an Incompetent Press I'm tired of hearing our lazy, superficial, incompetent press talk about Donald Trump having tapped into an angry electorate spoiling for dramatic change. A mid-October, NBC News/ Wall Street ... |
JoeCarl | 10/19/2015 | 12 | 7 | - | - |
| Trump Has No Reason NOT to Fire Robert Mueller, and That is Worse Than the Act Itself Current speculation seems to be turning against the prospect that Trump will fire Special Council Robert Mueller. I believe he will: maybe this week or next, maybe later, as things close in.
After all, what price has he paid for unashamed,... |
JoeCarl | 06/13/2017 | 10 | 10 | - | - |
| Trump Could be a Problem for Democrats – Especially if Democrats Help Him US News reports that “a sizable number of Democrats” are ready to “defect” to Trump. The New York Times says that Trump’s “very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registe |
JoeCarl | 02/28/2016 | 7 | 7 | - | - |
| Trump Admires Putin, But Mitch McConnell Emulates Him. That’s the Real Threat. Trump is a clown, a dangerous one, but a clown. He looks at Putin and imagines himself wielding total power. McConnell looks at Putin and exercises what power he has. McConnell’s imitation is weakened by having to feign respect for our democracy,... |
JoeCarl | 05/10/2017 | 9 | 9 | - | - |
| Traditional Conservatism is Dead. Modern Conservatism Deconstructed. Some people dream of a cure for cancer. Some dream of eliminating poverty. Others dream of world peace. The Republican Speaker of the House dreams of taking health care away from poor people. That is modern conservatism.
Once, conservatism had a... |
JoeCarl | 01/06/2018 | 8 | 8 | - | - |
| To Make a Real Movement, Sanders Supporters First Must Stop Deluding Themselves I had thought and hoped that Bernie would bring back the Party of FDR. I thought he was the first candidate in three decades that spoke to the base. I still believe that he is the only reason that Hillary Clinton checked into Wall-Street rehab. But... |
JoeCarl | 05/02/2016 | 41 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| Three of Our Four Presidential Candidates Are Science Deniers I’m going to blow right past any fine distinction between denying science and just being breathtakingly ignorant of it. Sometimes that difference is real and matters. But in this case, we have ... |
JoeCarl | 09/24/2016 | 19 | 23 | - | - |
| They Will Never Quit. It is Who They Are. It is What They Are. Never Turn Your Back. On July 28, 2017, Senator John McCain turned thumbs down on a conservative plan to cull the population of the weak, the sick, and the elderly. At 1:30 AM Eastern, the Republican anti-healthcare ... |
JoeCarl | 07/31/2017 | 64 | 105 | - | - |
| There They Go Again: Tax Cutting as Religion In tonight’s Republican debate, there was a prayer service featuring a liturgical petition and response. The petition was given by the Fox Business, fair-and-balanced moderators: “Oh Reagan, thou gav |
JoeCarl | 11/10/2015 | 5 | 8 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Second Amendment is an Anachronism; a Partisan Supreme Court Makes it a Dangerous One After watching the CNN “panel” discuss the President’s Town Hall meeting on gun control, I think it is only right that CNN drop one N and, henceforth, be known as Cable Network. But CNN is too easy a |
JoeCarl | 01/07/2016 | 19 | 8 | - | - |
| The Schiff Supremacy Schiff has been remarkable throughout, but his closing tonight, and, in particular, the closing of his closing, was magnificent. When he turned to why Trump must be removed, must be removed, and the stone-cold logic that is the hallmark of his... |
JoeCarl | 01/23/2020 | 103 | 153 | - | - |
| The Republican Government-Destruction Derby: Jobs and Even Lives are Just Part of the Game The Great Recession of 2008 was caused by the Republican devotion to unfettered freedom – for corporations. During a decades-long retreat from prudent regulations, marked by speculation joy-rides, ad |
JoeCarl | 02/07/2016 | 13 | 34 | - | - |
| The Religious Right: All Power-Lust, No Conscience We have a history of confusing the imposition of one’s religion on others with religious liberty. Witness the “War on Christians,” which is Fox’s way of saying that Christians no longer ... |
JoeCarl | 09/10/2015 | 2 | 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 | - | - |
| The Parallel Between Trump Supporters and Jihadists The most typical Trump supporters are members of a recurrent demographic. I refer to those who first raised him up, who were drawn to him instinctively early in the primary. By May, Trump was pulling in other demographics, but this likely was due to... |
JoeCarl | 06/13/2016 | 1 | 8 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Koch-Built Tea Party Wrecked the Recovery – Make Them Own That The recovery from the Great Recession has been shamefully unequal. For the wealthy, it’s been vigorous. For most of us, it’s been slow. For too many, it’s been imaginary. Now, Republicans, as they are wont to do, are trying to turn back on us an... |
JoeCarl | 08/29/2016 | 121 | 139 | - | - |
| The Iron-Age Mentality of the Republican Base (and Other Threats to Humanity) Somewhere around 10,000 years-ago, the last of the so-called saber-toothed cats disappeared from what would become the fossil record. Humanity breathed a collective sigh of relief. Somewhere ... |
JoeCarl | 11/02/2015 | 5 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Hardest Questions I’ve Ever Faced Andrew Sabl had an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled “Hate Trump if you want. But democracy requires respecting the winner’s legitimacy.” Sabl is a professor of political ethics, and his stance is echoed by President Obama. That brings a... |
JoeCarl | 11/14/2016 | 98 | 36 | - | - |
| The Great, Conservative, Rugged-Individual Scam: Now Appearing with the Cajun Navy. Modern conservatism barely bothers to disguise its contempt for the average man. The lethal cruelty of the Republican anti-healthcare bills were just the latest examples. This conservative candor has been made possible by a medical development: an... |
JoeCarl | 09/07/2017 | 49 | 25 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Free Market: Embracing an 18th Century Economic Model The upcoming Republican debate will feature moderators from the Fox Business Network. That means another lovefest, replete with softball questions and set ups that aid and abet. In preparation, I de |
JoeCarl | 01/10/2016 | 94 | 37 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Black Hole That is Republican Philosophy In the last Republican debate, Ben Carson said that we should use our intellect to solve our problems rather than ask government to do it. He was expressing an archetypal Republican belief but in a ... |
JoeCarl | 11/01/2015 | 8 | 17 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| The Anti-Hate Party My boys are only a few years out of high school, and I still think about their African American friends from that time and wonder. Did they understand just how short was the time that separated them from the brutality of Jim Crow? Did they understand... |
JoeCarl | 05/08/2016 | 4 | 5 | - | - |
| The Alt-Right is ISIS. We’ve Been Warned. Trump’s most reviled supporters are, in one important way, one and the same as his favorite bogymen. That is not intentional; Trump doesn’t have the wit. But it’s not a coincidence either, ... |
JoeCarl | 08/25/2017 | 13 | 15 | - | - |
| Tax Cuts Do NOT Generate Economic Growth In a previous diary, I presented a plot that showed that tax cuts do not produce economic growth. While looking for more data, I found that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) already had done ... |
JoeCarl | 10/20/2015 | 57 | 64 | 1 | - |
| Taking on Republican Tribal Politics: Because This Election is Critical During the Civil War, white Southern boys from poor and yeoman families gave their lives by the hundreds of thousands so that a landed aristocracy could continue to build wealth from the raw material |
JoeCarl | 02/15/2016 | 5 | 5 | - | - |
| Stud Poker Aspirant Ted Cruz to Donald Trump: “I’ll see your ignorance and raise you a lunacy.” Ted Cruz responded to the Brussels atrocity with “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods ….” Donald Trump jumped in to say that he was completely on board with that, but it was little more than a sad effort to hide t |
JoeCarl | 03/22/2016 | 7 | 7 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Starbucks’ War on Christmas: Stupid on Steroids or a Power Play? What is the latest indignity that has the religious right frothing at the mouth? Is it the persistence of wide-spread poverty in this richest nation in the world? Is it the number of American childr |
JoeCarl | 11/09/2015 | 12 | 8 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Senator Lindsey Graham Wants to Stop the March Toward Socialism Senator Lindsey Graham says that repealing the Affordable Care Act is the only way to “ stop a march toward socialism ." Therein lies the essence of the savagery of modern American conservatism. � |
JoeCarl | 09/20/2017 | 16 | 9 | - | - |
| Senator Barbara Boxer: “We have to keep reminding people ….” Former Senator Barbara Boxer has given Democrats their marching orders. It happened during a discussion, on MSNBC’s “All In”, of Trump’s failings. At one point, out of frustration with Trump’s foreshortened news cycle, the Senator said, “We have to... |
JoeCarl | 08/22/2019 | 4 | 9 | - | - |
| Searching for That One Word That Defines Donald Trump? It is not easy to sum the Donald up in one word, and not because he’s all that complex a guy. Common terms of derision just don’t have the concussive impact to describe an odious, superficial, cur that, if given power, almost certainly would destroy... |
JoeCarl | 10/05/2016 | 29 | 12 | - | - |
| Science Deniers: When Greed Has Existential Consequences There are at least two categories of science deniers. One is faith driven: the earth is 6,000 years old and evolution is a lie from hell. In a competitive world of constantly evolving technologies, |
JoeCarl | 11/22/2015 | 6 | 15 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| Republicans Show Leadership on Gun Violence The current gaggle of Republican pretenders to the Presidency is using the issue of gun violence to showcase its leadership capabilities: shrug it off America because “stuff happens;” shrug it ... |
JoeCarl | 10/06/2015 | 1 | 7 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Republicans Bemoan Democratic Obstruction of Their Anti Health-Care Bill: Some Context. With what conservatives consider health care looking more and more like road kill, the excuses are starting. Kellyanne Conway has whined, “There are no Democrats that want to support health care reform.” The President, such as he is, has complained,... |
JoeCarl | 06/30/2017 | 19 | 39 | - | - |
| Republicans Are Not Just Another Political Party Donald Trump is a train wreck for America, but it is the Republican Party that tore up the tracks. The Republican Party is at odds with the values on which our republic was founded. Democrats ... |
JoeCarl | 08/29/2017 | 6 | 10 | - | - |
| Republicans are Hobbesians, But Please Don’t Say That I just came across an old article in which George Will had called out Senate Democrats for supporting campaign finance reform. He said it was an attempt to allow “government to regulate the ... |
JoeCarl | 08/10/2017 | 18 | 16 | - | - |
| Republican Evolution on Trump’s Ukraine Crimes: We Know Where this is Heading It was a “perfect call.” Okay, maybe not perfect, but the bad stuff is all hearsay – nothing to indicate that he did anything wrong. Okay, the transcript he put out shows that he did something wrong, but only that one thing about asking a foreign power... |
JoeCarl | 11/05/2019 | 91 | 192 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| Public Employee Unions Saved - For Now. Whether That Sticks Depends on Us. The Supreme Court has ruled on what the LA Times calls a “well-planned legal assault on public unions.” Or maybe it didn’t rule. It dead-locked, 4 to 4, which means that the lower court’s pro-union ruling stands. It stands, though, as a lower... |
JoeCarl | 03/30/2016 | 3 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Our “Turnout” Problem Has Been 40 Years in the Making An argument constructed after the last election says that our problem is turnout. Get the base out, and we’ll be fine. Well, let’s see. The Republican Party controls
the presidency,
... |
JoeCarl | 08/17/2017 | 10 | 7 | - | - |
| Only Republicans Could Turn Freedom into a Scam Not all freedoms accrue to everyone. Some are exclusively held, and they advantage exclusively the groups that hold them. Freedoms claimed by the religious right place their beliefs above ours. Freedoms claimed by the wealthy place their speech... |
JoeCarl | 07/26/2017 | 20 | 10 | - | - |
| Only One Thing Matters, Right Now: Electing Democrats. I was angry when Democrats voted to end the shutdown. By the next morning, though, I noticed that knowledgeable people were making compelling arguments that Democrats had gotten what they could.(1)(2)(3)(4)(5) Some of the posts on this site offered... |
JoeCarl | 01/29/2018 | 16 | 18 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| Not All Trump Voters are Alike. Democrats Need to Get Past Their Resentment and Use That. I still see posts, here and elsewhere, telling us not to waste our breath on Trump voters. The articles usually feature visuals of fat white people with ugly scowls waving Confederate battle flags, |
JoeCarl | 04/05/2017 | 161 | 12 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| New Rule for Democratic Debates: Attack Republican Positions The last Republican debate was closer to a substantive discussion than were their previous debates, which is sad considering that it wasn’t all that close. More typical was the amount of time spent a |
JoeCarl | 11/14/2015 | 8 | 6 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| 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 | - | - |
| 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 | - | - | - |
| Modern Republicans, the Tea Party, Trump, Cruz, and All the Others: We Were Warned In a recent post about Cruz wanting to put Muslims in ghettos, I call George Orwell the new Nostradamus. I was wrong. Mad Magazine already had that honor.
A friend sent me the link. Watch it, then pick your jaw up off the floor. It probably was h |
JoeCarl | 03/23/2016 | 9 | 5 | - | - |