Carrying on the “understanding the GOP” theme. Key quotes:
As the Republican party has moved to the right in recent years, so too has our standard for what counts as a moderate Republican. These days, if you’re willing to admit that President Obama was probably born in the United States, that the U.S. Treasury probably shouldn’t default on its debts, and that someone, somewhere, might occasionally have to pay taxes, then congratulations, you’re a moderate Republican!
The fact is that a moderate Republican today is an arch-conservative from only a few short years ago. (…) Why this shift? Because moderate Republicans of today fear their base more than they fear independent voters.
(…)
Romney was very effective at working with Democrats in Massachusetts. But he didn’t have a choice. The problem for those of us who would like to see the return of Moderate Mitt — and I count myself in that number — is that there’s little reason to believe Romney would find himself forced to work with Democrats if he was president, at least at the outset.
Romney isn’t an ideological moderate. He’s a pragmatic executive. When he needs to govern from the center, he does. When he needs to lurch to the right, off he goes. So if you want to know how he’ll govern, don’t listen to what he says. Look at who he has reason to fear.
We have got to stop ASSUMING others want our help
Walking to work today, I saw something unexpected: a man tried to offer money to a homeless women, and was promptly refused. (It’s always amusing to see the look on people’s faces when this happens - a mixture of surprise and offense: “How dare you not accept my charity?!”) I can’t guess what goes on in that woman’s mind, and I won’t make a poetic attempt to do so, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that she was sitting next to the leftovers of her McDonald’s breakfast - don’t want to judge, but don’t know what to make of that.
Anyways, that reminded me of watching The Newsroom yesterday and how Will McAvoy, as part of his quest to civilize the world, bullies a black, gay interviewee for supporting GOP presidential-hopeful Rick Santorum in that typically smug way we all have - admit it, you do it too - of assuming we know what’s best for “those less fortunate” and that we militants have to protect the minorities we fight for.
And I’m not just talking about the P.C. left here. The right also has its screwed up, self-righteous notions of charity that are equally patronizing - the only difference is that they believe private initiative should do the protecting whereas the left portrays it as a civil right. Then again, maybe I’m just letting my critical thinking be too influenced by the black-and-white worldview of American politics (which is in itself based on the belief that it is “America’s” duty to civilize others as “leader of the free world”, but that’s a subject for another post - recommended reading in the meantime: Democracy Kills).
I was going to expand and suggest a change in attitude, but I started using expressions like “self-determination”, so that put me off.
But I’d love to hear people’s views on The Newsroom. The jury’s still out for me on how much the Hollywood glamourization and the American self-righteousness of it bother me…
TV Show Promo of the Day: First official trailer for HBO’s Veep — Armando Iannucci’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed political sitcom The Thick of It.
Originally developed by Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and writer Richard Day, the show stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lead role alongside Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale, Matt Walsh, Andy Buckley, and Reid Scott.
The first episode is set to premiere Sunday, April 22nd.
(via thedailywhat)
Occupy Londers were evicted from their encampment around St. Paul’s Cathedral overnight. Bailiffs and policeman worked to evict the protesters, who were not violent in their resistance. About 20 Occupiers were arrested and the police remove tents, threw them away and crushed them as protesters looked on.
Above: An Occupy London demonstrator holds a laptop with a sign on it: “They know not what they do.” Matthew Lloyd/Getty. Via.
If you were at Occupy London and took photographs, please send them my way so I can include them in my Occupy web documentary.
(Source: msnbc.com, via thepoliticalnotebook)
"It’s not just the films and TV shows we watch, but the monuments and museums we build. No wonder, as General Omar Bradley once said, that we “know more about war than we know about peace.” We tend to think of wars as occasions for heroism, and in a narrow, simple sense they can be. But a larger heroism, sorely lacking in Washington this last decade, lies in daring to think through whether a war is worth fighting at all"
— The Story the Oscar-Nominated “War Horse” Doesn’t Tell - that more than 6,000 of them were put behind bars for being conscientious objectors in Britain during the First World War — up to that moment the largest number of people ever imprisoned for political reasons in a western democracy.
Há um tempo atrás eu já apontei o ridículo dos argumentos usados prar prover que o governo Kirchner está querendo instalar uma ditadura chavista, bolivariana, whatever you wanna call it, na Argentina. Mas agora que inventaram um editorial para fazer isso, e ainda mais, com o mesmo jogo de palavras nojento que nos revoltou tanto quando a Folha o fez, me sinto forçada a repetir: Y U NO SHUT UP?!
Especialmente quando, dois dias depois, o mesmo jornal publica um artigo alertando para o perigo do que está acontecendo na Hungria, ignorada pelo resto do mundo Ocidental e os grandes defensores da democracia que nós julgamos ser.
Now, let’s get to the facts, lembrando que se trata de um jornal e uma sociedade que se vangloria da liberdade plena da qual goza, não pela democracia, mas pelo capitalismo liberal:
Para se ter ideia, no ano passado os gastos do governo com publicidade somaram o equivalente a US$ 288,2 milhões, três vezes mais do que em 2008, o primeiro ano de Cristina no poder. O Executivo federal é o maior anunciante do país. E a distribuição das verbas de propaganda obedece - como quase tudo o mais nas relações do Estado argentino com a sociedade - à lei do cão.
Last I heard, isso se chama lei do capital. Ou eu devo assumir que este senhor jornal recebe uma vasta fatia das verbas de propaganda de grandes construtoras como Andrade Gutierrez, Odebrecht, etc. porque apóia empreendimentos como Belo Monte e não aponta as falcatruas de licitações de projetos da Nova Luz? Oh. Oops.
Da mesma forma, a tentativa do governo de tomar o controle da única empresa de papel-jornal do país, atualmente controlada pelo grupo Clarín, também segue as regras do capitalismo ao meu ver. É uma disputa acionária sobre uma monopolia que, a meu ver, não deveria existir.
E pra não dizerem que sou do contra, concordo que são estranhas as leis “antiterrorismo” da especulação financeira e a que limita a participação privada na radiodifusão, embora concorde com as idéias por trás das medidas, mas o próprio editorial afirma que esta última foi aprovada parcialmente e está sub judice desde 2009, o que mostra que o executivo argentino ainda não tem tanto poder assim.
“A ideologia de se achar sem ideologia é uma das ideologias mais disseminadas em nossa sociedade, especialmente entre os bem-nascidos de inclinação conservadora, e serve de justificativa para todo tipo de apatia, especialmente da supressão do diálogo político na arena pública. Nesse caso, cometer a enorme redundância de marchar contra algo que todo mundo é contra torna-se apenas mais um sintoma dessa apatia em estado terminal.
Quem reclama de não aguentar mais “tanta ideologia” não é um livre-pensador descompromissado e apolítico tentando formar suas próprias opiniões, mas sim uma pessoa mentalmente preguiçosa e de cabeça fechada, que só gosta de se expor às opiniões com as quais já concorda e que se sente extremamente incomodado quando exposto à opiniões diferentes.”
Escândalos levaram irmãs a desencadear ato apartidário e agora falam em se engajar por novas causas
Leandro Cólon, de O Estado de S.Paulo
BRASÍLIA – “A gente não entende nada de política”, avisam as irmãs Lucianna, 30 anos, e Daniella Kalil, 32. Elas montaram uma página no Facebook no…
