“Chicago, however, is disconnected from the rest of the state. In the 13 years that I lived there, I don’t think I even once described myself as living in “Illinois.” At the risk of overgeneralizing from personal experience, I suspect that most Chicagoans think the same way. To a Chicagoan, Illinois is the name of the jurisdiction to which you pay your state taxes and the funny word that appears in the top left-hand corner of your drivers’ license. But you live, eat, breathe and work in Chicago or one of its suburbs”
It sure is a good thing the GOP kept this guy out of the debates so we don’t have to debate issues like this.
Does corn count as an amber wave of grain? It would seem that Mitt Romney delivered his “rousing, impromptu” stump victory speech enough times before the Iowa caucus to know for sure.
Gary Johnson: Exclude me GOP?!? I’m gonna run as a Libertarian, jerks!: After showing up in a grand total of one major debate (in which he made a dog poo joke), the former New Mexico governor will take a stab at running on a third-party ticket. Think he might have a shot? source
I need the names of some possible Supreme Court appointees before I can say for sure, but I’m definitely considering “throwing my vote away” on this guy.
(Source: shortformblog)
Clay Bennett/Chattanooga Times Free Press (11/29/2011)
The “Oh, really?” quote pull:
“If you’re reading this from another state, there’s a good chance your Governor can’t match Perry’s record on criminal-justice reform.”
“After misidentifying New Hampshire as the state where “the shot heard ’round the world” was fired and misidentifying John Wayne’s Iowa birthplace, in South Carolina you misidentified Aug. 16, the day Elvis died, as his birthday. Incompetent staffers are feeding you false information. Has anyone been fired? Do you believe that when there is no punishment for failure, failures multiply?”
Burnt Orange Report looks forward to seeing Rick Perry put “under the national microscope”:
Over the coming months, the media’s going to talk a lot about whether Perry can unite the evangelicals, secessionists, and let-them-eat-cake corporate fat-cats like his Texas predecessor George W. Bush. What they might NOT talk about as much are the horrifying statistics and human costs of Perry’s record, including high rates of poverty and uninsured children, a relentless attack on teachers and public education, escalating costs of college attendance, and an evisceration of the social safety net here in Texas.
And while the media might rave about his record of “job creation,” they might not remember that the vast majority of those jobs are minimum-wage jobs that don’t help working-class folks escape the cycle of poverty or create sustainable economic growth for the middle class. They might give some quick lip-service to his flirtation with secession, or his comments that he wants to put major policy decisions in God’s hands. But they probably won’t get down into the weeds - not just yet, anyways - of the real Rick Perry, the man who politicized the forensic science commission to cover up for executing a potentially innocent man; the man who cares more about shoving a vaginal probe in every abortion-seeking woman than funding public schools and employing teachers; the man who in eleven long, long years has done an awful lot of harm to an awful lot of people. And while many of us are proud of Texas, proud of our history and heritage, of the many great folks we’ve produced, we’re not proud of Rick Perry or what he’s done to our state.
“Conservatism is true.” That’s what George Will told me when I interviewed him as an eager student many years ago. His formulation might have been a touch arrogant, but Will’s basic point was intelligent. Conservatism, he explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to change societies, one must understand them, accept them as they are and help them evolve.
Watching this election campaign, one wonders what has happened to that tradition. Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America’s present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S.
Consider the debates over the economy. The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending — then things will bounce back. Now, I would like to see lower rates in the context of tax simplification and reform, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes — federal and state combined — as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.
Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?
Video version here.
