Six or seven years ago, before I retired from the newspaper racket, I wrote a feature piece on baby-naming trends in America. The more I researched the subject, the more I was fascinated by it.
For example, let’s compare the top ten lists for the decade in which I was born (the 1940s) with the lists for the first decade of this century:
In my time, the most popular boys’ names were, in order: James, Robert, John, William, Richard, David, Charles, Thomas, Michael and Ronald. For girls, they were: Mary, Linda, Barbara, Patricia, Carol, Sandra, Nancy, Sharon, Judith and Susan.
The ...
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This ad tells Catholic voters that their ballots will be “recorded in eternity” — which I suppose means that there will be hell to pay for anyone who votes the wrong way.
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The sophisticated digital machinery here at Applesauce World Headquarters has been plagued of late by all kinds of problems — viruses and various inexplicable thingies that make it increasingly difficult to honor our solemn pledge to bring political truth to a troubled nation.
There can be no doubt that this plague is the work of a sinister neo-fascist conspiracy. But it won’t succeed — not in the long run, anyway. Trustworthy techies have been recruited to remedy the situation, and their work likely will be completed within the next five days or so.
In the meantime, posting here will be more intermittent. The output will slow ...
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As recently as the other day, this blog was receiving comments from Ron Paul supporters to the effect that their hero still had a chance of capturing the Republican presidential nomination.
I can only wonder what those die-hards think of THIS:
Ron Paul hinted at it Monday, but today the Texas congressman confirmed something the campaign has never explicitly said before: He cannot win the GOP presidential nomination.
But in a convention strategy memo that followed up on his statement Monday about his campaign plans, Paul clarified the mission and shed more light than ever before on his intentions and expectations for ...
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Even one in every four Republicans expects Barack Obama to win a second term, as we see on the chart above.
The story is HERE:
The poll was conducted at a time when U.S. registered voters are evenly divided in their vote preferences. Gallup’s latest Daily tracking update, based on May 8-14 interviewing, shows 46% of voters preferring Obama and 45% Romney.
It is unclear why Americans are more inclined to predict an Obama than a Romney victory when the two are essentially tied in Gallup’s latest election polling. It may be that Americans recognize the advantages Obama has ...
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For many months now, I’ve been arguing that the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan couldn’t win a GOP primary election these days. And seemingly with each passing day, another prominent Republican expresses much the same opinion.
The latest of these is former GOP Sen. Chuck Hegel (above) of Nebraska, who SAYS “extremists” now hold sway in his party:
“Reagan wouldn’t identify with this party. There’s a streak of intolerance in the Republican Party today that scares people. Intolerance is a very dangerous thing in a society because it always leads to a tragic ending,” ...
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The geniuses at the America Future Fund seem to have forgotten that conservatives are supposed to see Barack Obama as anti-business and in favor of regulating Wall Street to death.
This attack ad fails to convey those messages, as Steve Benen notes HERE.
The increase in public acceptance of gay relations over the past 35 years, as measured by Gallup polls, has been nothing less than dramatic.
In Ronald Reagan’s second term as president, as many as 57 percent of Americans said same-sex relations between consenting adults should not be legal. Today, 63 percent say such relations should be legal.
And, as Gallup REPORTED this morning, most Americans have no moral objection to homosexual relations:
The slight majority of American adults, 54%, consider gay or lesbian relations morally acceptable. Public acceptance of gay/lesbian relations as morally acceptable grew slowly but steadily from 38% in 2002 to ...
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That sound you don’t hear is the buzz that’s not occurring among the mainstream media with regard to something Mitt Romney said the other day in a speech at Liberty University.
Liberty, as you may know, was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, the famed televangelist. And Romney, in his speech, said this of the man:
In his 73 years of life, Dr. Falwell left a big mark…The calling Jerry answered was not an easy one. Today we remember him as a courageous and big-hearted minister of the Gospel who never feared an argument, and never hated an adversary. Jerry deserves ...
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Hey! Wait a minute! I thought Republicans were supposed to be champions of states’ rights and Democrats were supposed to be advocates of federal mandates.
Isn’t that what the GOPers have been telling us for years now?
Well, I guess the gay marriage issue PUTS THE LIE to that stuff:
[Mitt] Romney does not want to talk about gay marriage, precisely because it puts him in the awkward position of explaining what alternatives he favors. But if you are inclined to question the issue’s relevance in a presidential race, since marriage law is traditionally handled by the states, note that Romney ...
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Writing in the June issue of Vanity Fair, Todd S. Purdom ARGUES that “over the past half-century, the two parties completely switched roles, with the G.O.P. turning into rebels and the Democrats defending the status quo.”
Conservatives are no longer, as William F. Buckley Jr. famously put it in the founding credo of National Review, simply standing “athwart history, yelling Stop.” They are, instead, eager to roll history back, and are prepared to destroy the national village in order to save it…
The radical element is now so firmly in control that the Republican Party of 2012 not only has ...
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This video, which was released this morning, puts the lie to the Republican argument that the Obama campaign doesn’t want to talk about the economy and jobs.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Here’s a shorter version, better suited for use as a TV ad:
Click here to view the embedded video.
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There’s LOTS OF STUFF on the Internet today about the latest issue of Newsweek, which hits the newsstands tomorrow:
It won’t be nearly as controversial as Time magazine’s breastfeeding cover, but Newsweek’s May 21 issue declares Barack Obama the country’s “first gay president.”
The accompanying cover story was written by Andrew Sullivan, the popular–and openly gay–political blogger. The magazine even gives the commander-in-chief a rainbow halo.
Sullivan’s cover story is not yet online, but in a blog post published earlier this week, Sullivan wrote that Obama’s support of gay marriage brought him to tears....
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This episode airs on Fox tonight at 8 p.m. CDT.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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My political passions have never been of the sort that favors shouting down speakers with whom I disagree. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of such conduct among my fellow lefties – let’s not call these people liberals; infringing on a person’s free-speech rights is decidely illiberal — and I’ve always been offended by it.
Accordingly, I find THIS STUFF offensive:
Supporters of Ron Paul booed presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s son off the stage Saturday at the Arizona Republican Party convention, as he sought to solidify support for his father’s nomination…
Josh Romney [above] had to stop repeatedly as people booed and yelled for ...
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Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen (above) issued a memorandum yesterday noting that public support for gay marriage is quickly accelerating and won’t likely slow down anytime soon.
The story is HERE.
And HERE‘s Andrew Sullivan’s take on the memo:
The last paragraph is, to my mind, the most remarkable. It’s advising Republican candidates to emphasize the conservative nature of gay marriage, to say how it encourages personal responsibility, commitment, stability and family values. It uses Dick Cheney’s formula (which was for a couple of years, the motto of this blog) that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” And it ...
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Notice, please, that the silhouetted figure on the target includes the requisite bag of Skittles and can of iced tea. Details like that are important to discerning bigots.
The second paragraph in the following excerpt from THIS STORY gives me pause:
More than half of Americans say they approve of President Obama’s stance that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry legally, but 60% say that his shift in position will have no bearing on how they vote in the November election, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup poll.
Overall, 51% approve of Obama’s new position on same-sex marriage, compared with 45% who disapprove. Nearly 13% say his shift in position will make them more likely to vote for him, while 26% say it will make them less ...
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There’s lots of good stuff in the latest edition of our regular Friday feature on Mitt Romney’s aversion to truth.
As usual, OUR SOURCE is progressive blogger Steve Benen. Be sure to check the bottom of his post for links to 16 previous collections of Mitt’s mendacity....
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Dan Amira ARGUES that anyone who would take pity on “poor simpleton Rick Perry” cannot rightly be said to be a bully.
Amira says Romney campaign adviser Kerry Healey wants us to remember
the infamous GOP primary debate in which Perry, for a solid minute, hopelessly racked his poor, wretched brain for the third federal agency he’d abolish. Midway through that soul-crushingly uncomfortable display, when Ron Paul was just making things worse by distracting Perry with his claw of liberty, Romney suggested that maybe Perry was thinking of the EPA.
We’re not sure what motivated Romney there. Maybe he really did
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