In a sign that maybe the world won’t go to hell in a handbasket just yet, a slate of liberal candidates just swept into office in Alberta, Canada. See:
Notley’s campaign has made possible an Alberta that is more like the rest of Canada — more humane, more inclusive, more respectful, more democratic, and therefore more prone to healthy changes of government from time to time.
The hard work for the NDP will start today — or, at least, tomorrow, when the hangovers wear off.
Yes, Notley has an inexperienced caucus, some members of which never imagined they would be MLAs when they agreed to run. But, seriously people, how could they do worse than the experienced clowns that made up the last PC government?
Yes, once they recover from yesterday’s shock, the right-wing opposition will go wild. It is not unreasonable to assume that some elements of the business community will go as far as trying to sabotage the economy, as happened when Bob Rae was premier of Ontario.
Yes, the right-wing press will start by telling us immediately this election result really means Albertans want more conservatism, which it manifestly does not.
Yes, some of Notley’s strongest supporters will be disappointed and bitter when the realities of politics, which is the art of the possible after all, mean they cannot have their wish list instantly fulfilled.
And, yes, even though it’s springtime in Alberta, it’ll probably snow today.
ISIS may be evil and deranged, and they may lack any sort of capability of striking in the U.S., but I fear they have our number.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack outside a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Texas — and warned of more attacks to come.
In a broadcast on its official radio channel Tuesday, the group said two Al Khilafa soldiers opened fire outside the event in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Al Khilafa is how ISIS refers to its soldiers. …
…While ISIS claimed responsibility two days after the attack, there was no immediate indication that the terror group in Iraq and Syria had contact with Simpson or Soofi, who both lived in Phoenix.
Odds are the gunmen were wannabees with borderline personality disorder who had as much contact with ISIS as they had with Santa Claus, although the gunmen and ISIS operatives appeared to be following each other on Twitter. But we’re living in a country in which Wal-Mart has to refute rumors that the feds are building tunnels under closed stores to facilitate a military takeover of Texas. ISIS doesn’t have to lift a finger to scare Americans; we are champs at terrorizing ourselves. Claiming responsibility for the Texas shooting was actually brilliant on their part. The baggers will believe it and reach new heights of irrational paranoia.
Reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode where the townsfolk panic over rumors of space aliens and start shooting each other. The actual space aliens observe this and decide the easiest way to conquer Earth is to let the paranoid humans destroy themselves.
A guy who writes for Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller e-rag tells the UK Telegraph that the GOP’s “diverse” range of candidates will help them against Her Presumptiveness, Hillary Clinton. See, the GOP has a woman, too, Carly Fiorina; Dr. Ben Carson, an actual Black Person; a couple of Hispanics, Cruz and Rubio, although Cruz pretends he isn’t Hispanic; and even a WASP, Jeb Bush, who pretends he is Hispanic. Plus there’s whatever Mike Huckabee is.
Conservatives can’t see past the surface of things and persist in assuming that people elected Barack Obama just for the novelty of the thing. I keep going back to the hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice, and how the Republican senators kept whining that Dem senators had blocked confirmation of a Hispanic Bush appointee, Miguel Estrada. The fact that Estrada’s resume was thin and his record, um, alarming shouldn’t have been an issue, according to Republicans. One Hispanic is just like another, apparently.
Let’s just say thank goodness there were enough Dems in the Senate to block that guajolote. And Sotomayor rocks.
Dr. Ben Carson has announced his presidential intentions, and the Daily Caller writer assumes that African Americans will be inspired to vote for him. It appears, however, that Dr. Carson has gone from being a black role model to a black embarrassment. Given his impressive background, his wingnut positions make me sincerely wonder if he’s suffering some kind of age-related dementia. See also Ben Carson can’t attract Blacks for GOP.
And I don’t see any particular reason why Carly Fiorina would attract feminist votes. Fiorina’s big accomplishment was running Hewlett-Packard into the ground. Whoop-dee-doo. Her positions on most issues reveal she’d likely run America into the ground as well. She wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, for pity’s sake, as well as Obamacare. She’s also against net neutrality (naturally) and wants to scuttle the peace deal being negotiated with Iran.
Wingnuts never figured out feminism. They whine because lefties don’t support right-wing women politicians. But feminism was never about just supporting women politicians because they are women politicians. “However often this fact is obscured, movement feminism is about systematic gains for women—that is, using politics to change structures that make women less free than men,” writes Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. I have issues with HRC, but I don’t doubt that she’d fiercely respect women’s rights in the workplace and in reproductive choice. Would Fiorina? Not that I can see from her record. Plus, Fiorina has never held elected office.
Likewise, Marco Rubio isn’t necessarily a shoo-in among Latino voters. Rubio, as is Cruz, is Cuban-American, and no end of analysts are saying that Cuban-Americans and other Latinos in the U.S. are on very different planets, politically. See also:
“There’s too much animosity from the Republican Party toward the Latinos, and in order for that to change you can’t just run a Latino last name,†said Norma Ruiz Guerrero, founder of Memes Media, a New York political advertising firm that helps candidates craft their message to Latino voters. “His last name should be Smith, really,†she said of Rubio. “He’s not anything like the majority of Latinos in this country.â€
Rubio has a negative net favorability rating among Latinos who voted in the 2014 midterm elections, according to a survey conducted by the polling firm Latino Decisions. Only 31 percent of Latino voters had a favorable view of the Florida senator, while 36 percent held an unfavorable opinion. About a third either had no opinion of Rubio or had never heard of him.
And what can one say about Ted Cruz, but this:
And that brings us to Mike Huckabee, who IMO personifies genuine evil these days. He’s running a campaign that could appeal only to extremist culture-warrior Christians. He quit a gig on Fox News to run, so he’s not doing this to audition. He is either so genuinely demented he thinks he has a shot, or he’s running to pull the Republican Party further to the Right. Which is also demented.
Walker is a Koch sock puppet. Trump is a joke everybody gets but him. Christie is sinking. Jindal, Perry, Santorum and Graham apparently have no support in the base. John Kasich could be the dark horse who moves up when everyone else flames out, so keep an eye on him.
What you don’t see in the GOP is a diversity of thinking. Media talk about these clowns as if there were serious policy differences among them, or speak of some as “moderates” and others as more “conservative,” but the truth is they’re all pretty much on the same page on any issue you can name. Taxes, Israel, civil liberty, “entitlement” spending, marriage equality, workplace equality, reproductive rights, immigration, etc. etc. etc. The differences among them could be shoved into a matchbox. The GOP hasn’t had an original idea in at least a generation; they’ve all been sputtering along on the same old talking points for almost 40 years.
But amid the bustle, there was an absorption of a new reality for the governor and those closest to him: that his bid for the White House seems increasingly far-fetched. A political team long characterized by its self-assuredness now sounds strikingly subdued, sobered and, realistic about his odds.
In two dozen interviews over the past 24 hours, many of the most trusted allies and advisers to Mr. Christie acknowledged that winning the Republican nomination required a domino-like series of stumbles from his rivals and an unlikely breakthrough for him. …
… Instead of crowing about fund-raising records (as Jeb Bush is) or traveling the country as an announced candidate (as Senator Marco Rubio is), Mr. Christie’s team is in a sense starting over now, hoping that the developments in the legal case represent a new chance at a campaign unburdened by the threat of direct legal action against the governor.
On Friday allies and aides of Christie were indicted in Bridgegate, but not Christie himself. I haven’t seen anyone say that “direct legal action against the governor” is out of the question in the future, however.
I’m too tired to write anything now, except to note that as “conservatives” have been worked into a frenzy by nonsensical rumors that the federal government is planning a military takeover of Texas, they are also outraged that six Baltimore cops have been charged with homicide in the death of Freddie Gray.
So, the U.S. Army is a pack of jack-booted thugs who will steal your liberty, except when deployed to a Muslim country, but the Baltimore police are off limits no matter what they do. Let’s not try to be consistent or anything.
