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Why you vote the way you do

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Jonathan Haidt - May. 25 (Opinion) - Here's a simple definition of ideology: "a set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved." And here's the most basic of all ideological questions: Should we preserve the present order or change it? Political theorists long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the workers want to change things. But that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left), and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). So for most of the late 20th century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents.

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Memeorandum Colors 2012: Visualizing Bias on Political Blogs

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Andy Baio - Apr. 18 (Special Report) - I don’t watch sports, but every four years, I lose myself in the horse race of the U.S. presidential elections. That competition kicked off in earnest Monday, as Gallup started its daily tracking polls for the general election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. In 2008, I was hooked on one drug for my daily fix: Memeorandum, a completely automated aggregator that surfaces popular stories from political news sites, often within minutes.

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Keith Olbermann: Machine Gun for Hire

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Carr - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Given Keith Olbermann’s abrupt removal at Current and his typically temperate response — “Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently” — it seems as if his next stop will be a puppet show shot from a basement somewhere. He’ll never work in this town, or any other, again, right? Wrong. Many of his past employers will testify to his unmanageability and unpleasantness, but the fact of the matter is that somewhere, sometime, after some kind of cooling-off period, Mr. Olbermann will be coming to a television near you. That has less to do with the greater fool theory, which suggests that there will always be someone naïve enough to think that they can accomplish what others have not — that is, make Mr. Olbermann behave like a professional when he is not on the air. (Remember that former Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt — two of the principals at Current — blew through many stop signs to get to Mr. Olbermann. They made very hopeful statements when the deal was cut, which were followed by very frustrated noises thereafter.)

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Jon Stewart Mocks Barney Frank's Retirement Coverage On Fox News (VIDEO)

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Katla McGlynn, Jon Stewart - Nov. 30 (Comedy News) - After nearly three decades of serving Massachusetts' 4th congressional district, Democratic U.S. Representative Barney Frank announced Monday that he will not be seeking re-election in 2012. On Tuesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart bid farewell to him the only way he knows how: with clips of absurd reactions from the GOP.

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Barney the bully: Congressman Frank’s other legacy

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - The morning after his retirement announcement, Rep. Barney Frank scored an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, gaining the opportunity to act as an elder statesman in front of a TV audience of millions. Instead, the Massachusetts Democrat chose to quarrel with the interviewer.

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Party Line

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:13:52 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Charlotte Allen - Aug. 12 (Review) - Those liberal leanings distort the news in subtle but telling ways. Groseclose dissects a 2006 story in the Los Angeles Times that linked a record low number of black freshmen at UCLA to the passage 10 years earlier of Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that forbids public institutions from considering race in admissions and hiring. The reporter, Rebecca Trounson, had quoted six sources, not for factual information but for their opinions. Five of those sources expressed conventional left-of-center views, complaining, for example, that the campus was insufficiently “diverse” and accusing UCLA of practicing racism. Only one source, former University of California regent Ward Connerly, architect of Proposition 209, suggested that fewer black high school graduates might be academically competitive, or that some blacks might have chosen to attend historically black colleges instead of UCLA. Not only did Trounson not examine the tortuous routes that UCLA’s admissions committee (on which Groseclose served at the time) followed to get around Proposition 209 so as to maximize black enrollment, but she failed to report a record number of black transfer students to UCLA that fall so that the black student population actually increased slightly. She also failed to notice what might have been the real story: the huge increases in Asian enrollments at UCLA, to the point that white people, once the overwhelming majority, now constituted only about a third of the overall student population.

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Fear & Loathing In Minneapolis: Progressives Vent Frustration With Obama At Netroots Nation

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By Matthew Jaffe - Jun. 17 (News) - The frustrations and the fears that progressives feel about President Obama were on full display Thursday as thousands of them flocked to Minneapolis for the sixth annual Netroots Nation conference.

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Cornel West's criticism of Obama sparks debate among African Americans

Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Krissah Thompson - May. 19 (News Report) - Scholar Cornel West's scathing critique of President Obama's liberal bona fides in a series of recent interviews has ignited a furious debate among African American bloggers and commentators.

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How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology

Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Joyner - May. 11 (Opinion) - The United States has found itself in a seemingly endless series of wars over the past two decades. Despite frequent opposition by the party not controlling the presidency and often that of the American public, the foreign policy elite operates on a consensus that routinely leads to the use of military power to solve international crises.

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Democrats' Disgust With Obama

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Patricia Murphy - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - The budget deal, angrily rejected by Nancy Pelosi as it passed Thursday, was the last straw. Patricia Murphy on why some liberals are now pushing for a primary challenge to the president.

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Barack Obama faces problem on left, not right

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Roger Simon - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - I don’t think Barack Obama will have a hard time defeating his Republican opponent in 2012, barring a financial meltdown or a major foreign crisis. It’s a Democratic opponent he should worry about.

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Time to Make Case for Progressive Government

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - The Ryan budget's central purpose will not be deficit reduction but the gradual dismantling of key parts of government. Remember that Ryan wants both to preserve the Bush tax cuts and, over the long run, to enact more breaks for the wealthy, including the elimination of the capital gains tax.

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Tea Time

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Pajamas Media - By Roger Kimball - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - Domestic issues are still front and center. But the embarrassing spectacle of the Obama administration lurching from paralysis to spasmodic incoherence and back on the Middle East and North Africa suggests that foreign policy will also loom large on the tea party’s agenda.

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The unbeatable Republican?

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Steve Kornacki - Mar. 31 (News Analysis) - Massachusetts is a deeply Democratic state, one in which barely more than 15 percent of the seats in the state Legislature are held by Republicans and fewer than 15 percent of all registered voters belong to the GOP. So it's hardly surprising that national Democrats have been making noise about defeating the state's Republican senator, Scott Brown, when he stands for reelection next year.

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Conservatives: We Are Being Outworked And Out-Organized In Wisconsin Recall Campaigns

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Mar. 17 (News Report) - Both national and Wisconsin-based Republican operatives tell the Huffington Post the party is being dramatically outworked and out-organized by Democrats in the recall campaigns being launched against state Senators.

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Next Stop For Wisconsin Protesters: Washington, D.C.

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 08:52:51 -0700

National Journal - By Lindsey Boerma - Mar. 17 (News) - Pro-union protesters are expected to rally in Washington on Wednesday evening to counter a fundraising event for the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

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A European's Warning to America

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Daniel Hannan - Mar. 12 (Opinion) - The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The European Union was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."

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A Liberal Is a Villager Who’s Been Screwed By a Mortgage Servicer

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Firedoglake - By David Dayen - Mar. 06 (Opinion) - Sometimes it takes only a little shared experience to recognize the major problems in our society. For Milbank to understand the mortgage crisis, he needed to experience it first-hand. And he recognizes that he’s one of the relatively luckier ones; borrowers without his income stream or resources are being forced into foreclosure when they confront these situations.

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Liberalism and the post-union future

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Michael Lind - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - The goal should be to do away with employer-based benefits in favor of universal social insurance programs

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"Steep Cuts?" Even the Left Is Starting to Notice

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Power Line - By John Hinderaker - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - Liberal press outlets are reporting, generally without criticism, the Obama administration's claim that its FY 2012 budget embodies "steep cuts" in federal spending over the coming decade.

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The Tea Party and civil liberties

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Feb. 09 (Opinion) - It's long been clear that the best (and perhaps only) political hope for civil liberties in the U.S. is an alliance that transcends the standard Democrat v. GOP or left v. right dichotomies.

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Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By John Tierney - Feb. 08 (News) - He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three. “This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

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Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Obama's Rick Warren Pick Makes Perfectly Good Sense

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Earl Ofari Hutchinson - Dec. 18 (Opinion) - President elect Barack Obama almost certainly knew that he'd take some heavy flack from gay rights and abortion rights groups for picking mega preacher Rick Warren to give his inaugural invocation. Warren backed the anti gay marriage Prop 8 in California to the hilt and rails against abortion. But Obama picked Warren for shrewd political and apparently heartfelt personal reasons. A tip of that came back in mid-August when he traipsed to Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California to talk to his evangelical flock.

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