All older postings have beenm exported to the new site so there will remain for perpatuity and context in the future.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
This Blog has Moved to Wordpress with New Name & Focus
All older postings have beenm exported to the new site so there will remain for perpatuity and context in the future.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Romney, McCain: Trump a danger for America's future
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| English: Governor Mitt Romney of MA (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — In an extraordinary display of Republican chaos, the party's most recent presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, lambasted current front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday, calling him unfit for office and a danger for the nation and the GOP.
"His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader," Romney declared. He called Trump "a phony" who is "playing the American public for suckers," a man whose "imagination must not be married to real power."
Hours later, Trump lashed back, calling Romney "a choke artist" who lost to Barack Obama four years ago only because he was such a poor candidate.
The vicious feud marked a near-unprecedented scenario pitting the Republican Party's most prominent leaders, past and present, against each other as Democrats begin to unite around Hillary Clinton.
Romney, McCain: Trump a danger for America's future
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Transpartisanship and the Conversion of Political Conflict
The current presidential campaign exposes extreme partisanship as our political normality. Reminiscent of the classic "boiling frog" metaphor, what once seemed deplorable has gradually (and gravely) become our standard practice. As revealed by the Pew Research Center ("Political Polarization in the American Public: How Increasing Ideological Uniformity and Partisan Antipathy Affect Politics, Compromise and Everyday Life"), our civic temperature is methodically rising, perhaps beyond the boiling point, and the consequences are both serious and several. The study states:
"The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. [As a result], the center has gotten smaller: 39% of Americans currently take a roughly equal number of liberal and conservative positions, down from 49% in surveys conducted in 1994 and 2004."
In addition to the steady and significant growth in gross ideological polarization, the research also reveals a growing and alarming disdain for those with opposing political views. The findings assert:
"Partisan animosity has increased substantially... In each party, the share with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled since 1994. Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing party's policies 'are so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being'."
As indicated by research (and frequently revealed in practice), it appears that far too many citizens have learned to accept such political polarization - and the personal loathing that accompanies it - as our destructive domestic custom. Our most accepted tactics to counter such dysfunction - known as "bipartisanship" and "non-partisanship" - have also proven to be mostly ineffective, thus leaving those in the center (both literally and politically) both distant and disengaged. The temperature of our hostile conflict continues to increase, and thus it increasingly appears that bipartisanship and non-partisanship have proven to be unsuccessful community coolants.
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