Month: May 2011
What Political Type Are You?
Pew has come up with another of its online quizzes that are fun to take and offer interesting insights into the political scene. Take the 20-question political typology test and see where you are on the American political spectrum.
Not surprisingly, I ended up solidly liberal among a 14 percent minority of the folks who took the test.
Are you a staunch conservative or a political bystander? Take the test and leave a comment about your results.
Most Want to See Bin Laden Death Photo
56%
Of Americans say they would like the government to release photos of Bin Laden’s dead body, according to CNN; 39% said they would not.
Seems God Supports Gay Marriage
How many more gay people does God have to create before we ask ourselves if he wants them around?
— Minnesota state Rep. Steve Simon (D), testifying in opposition to a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would outlaw gay marriage.
Even Republicans Don’t Like Their Candidate Lineup
It’s like a beauty contest where all the women are ugly.
— South Carolina GOP operative Bob McAlister, quoted by Real Clear Politics, on the participants in the first Republican debate Thursday night. The lineup: Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum.
$2 trillion
The estimated total domestic cost of the 9/11 attacks, when considering the value of lives lost, property damage, lost production of goods and services and the loss in U.S. stock market wealth.
The estimated total domestic cost of the 9/11 attacks, when considering the value of lives lost, property damage, lost production of goods and services and the loss in U.S. stock market wealth.
CNN Confuses Osama and Obama
If you thought you had to turn to FOX News for this kind of stuff, think again. CNN is running a hyperlink that says, “CIA boss expects release of Obama pics.” When you click the link to the story, of course, it’s about whether the government will release pictures of a dead Osama bin Laden, not pictures of Pres. Obama.
You use the left index finger to hit the “b” CNN guys, and the left ring finger to hit the “s.”
No doubt the error will have been corrected by the time you read this.
Update: Yes it has.
Trial by Bullet
President Obama addressed a grateful nation
Telling us about the end of an abomination.
They could have caught him
If they really wanted bin Laden,
But it was always meant to be an assassination.
Despite Joe Scarborough’s Smear, Liberals Voted Solidly for Obama After He Promised, ‘We Will Kill bin Laden’
Video from second presidential debate in 2008, in which candidate Obama promises, “We will kill Osama bin Laden.” See transcript below.
On Monday, Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s three-hour GOP spin-a-thon, “Morning Joe,” used the occasion of the killing of Osama bin Laden at the direction of Pres. Obama to smear the patriotism of liberal Americans:
SCARBOROUGH: Here, you know, I think Republicans should stand up and certainly salute Barack Obama for making some — again, for making some very tough choices that his own base did not want him to make. That takes courage, that takes leadership, and we saw the results of that courage and leadership saying no to his own base yesterday.[…]
[These are] decisions that he probably did not believe as a candidate he didn’t think he’d have to make…Going against his own ideological leanings to do what he believes he has to do.
Of course, Scarborough offered no evidence that American progressives opposed killing the world’s most-wanted terrorist — he couldn’t, because none exists. He was simply pushing the same old GOP B.S. that Democrats — whose party led the nation during World War II — are soft on security and defense.
Also on Monday, Andrew Sullivan, a center-right independent, published a round-up of snippets of opinion from civil libertarians and liberals about the death of bin Laden. While there was some criticism about the riskiness of the action — that it could lead to a rise in blood-thirsty nationalism at home, for example — no one in Sully’s representative sample regretted the fact that bin Laden’s life had not been spared. Among those Andrew cited, Digby nailed it, as usual:
