Progressive Pontification

When I have a conversation with a conservative about politics, almost inevitably, I'm going to hear something like this:  "What I can't stand about liberals is that they want to take my hard-earned money and give it away to people who don't deserve it.   I work for a living.  Why shouldn't they?".  They will then proceed to tell me about someone they've known or heard about who gets food stamps but has a BMW parked in the driveway or someone who has found a way to get on every government assistance program known to man and then vacations in Hawaii. Then I tell them something they're usually surprised to hear: "I agree with you!".  This issue is one of the major misunderstandings between conservatives and progressives.  We don't like welfare fraud any more than they do!  We want to get that BMW owning, Hawaii vacationing welfare cheat off public assistance as much as they do. We can totally agree with our conservative friends on that iss...

There's one thing about the current conservative movement in this country that I just don't get: The absolute hatred many of them have for President Obama.  And no, hatred is not too strong a word.  The more I read about and try to understand what's going on on the right, the more it becomes clear to me that many members of the hard-core conservative base absolutely despise President Obama.  I get the political differences.  He believes government has a positive role to play in a modern industrial society, and they don't.  He believes there's nothing necessarily evil about taxes, and they believe that taxes should never ever be increased under any circumstances.  I get that.  What I don't get is the deep, gut level animosity toward the man himself. The evidence of this is everywhere.  I saw many interviews with conservatives, particularly during the primaries, who claimed to be in the ABO party (Anyone But Obama).  OK, kind of a clever...

No one ever has or ever will run for president with the campaign slogan "Vote for me because I could do a slightly better job than the guy who's doing it now".  To oust an incumbent president, you have to draw a sharp contrast between the terrible, horrible, awful job he's doing and the amazing job you would do.  Anyone who's at all familiar with politics knows that, and expects the challenger to criticize the President at every level and to draw contrasts wherever possible. The trouble with this game that we play every election is that many people start to actually believe the rhetoric and the posturing and to accept as fact some of the rather outlandish statements that are made.  And yes, I do include in this the outlandish statements made by the incumbent to discredit the challenger. Because one of the main attacks on the President's record was an indictment on how he handled the economy, a very strange situation developed wherein half the country was r...

Does the World Really Need Another Political Blog???? The answer to that question is undoubtedly "no". This blog owes its existence to the idea that i seem to need to write one.  Whether you need to read it is something you'll have to decide. It's worth taking a minute, though, to explain what brings me to this point of feeling the need to, as the blog title suggests, pontificate on progressive issues.  I will start by saying that nearly everyone that I'm in any way related to (and this includes second cousins and former in-laws) is a staunch conservative.  We're talking Rush Limbaugh listening, Drudge Report reading, Obama is a Socialist Conservatives.  I'm basically a peaceful, let's all get along type of person, and as things heated up in the last election, I found myself having to bite my tongue a lot to keep from lashing out at what I perceived as untenable views on the direction the country should take.  My interactions on Facebook are...