This social scientist is having an influence on my thinking about politics, including making me open minded to the other views

How do Conservatives and Liberals See the World? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

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I keep saying it, this is the smartest political show on Sunday morning: "Up with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC

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Today's show included panelists from the right and left: former governor and attorney general of New York Eliot Spitzer, President Reagan's former director of the Office of Management and Budget David Stockman, MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry, and economics reporter for The New York Times Catherine Rampell.

Anti-Huntsman video illustrates how xenophobic and racist the GOP and its base have become

Robert Reich predicts an Obama/Hillary ticket, as I do

Robert Reich makes political sense, especially since the GOP nominee is going to be Romney and the election is going to be a close race.

BTW, according to the latest Gallup poll, Obama and Romney are the most admired people in America.

The right stuff: why Andrew Cuomo will be president

Read about him in GQ.

Tea party congressional antics backfire as Obama stands firmly for the payroll tax extension for the middle class. The GOP is more concerned about the welfare of the 1%

The issue right now is this, the clock is ticking. Time is running out...I saw today that one of the House Republicans referred to what they're doing as, quote, high stakes poker. He's right about the stakes -- but this is not poker. This is not a game.

--President Obama, this afternoon

Warning signs for GOP: Gallup reports that the current lot is the least popular ever recorded.

Barney Frank calls out George Will & conservatives on trying to leglislate the personal behavior of Americans

Karma: the revenge of the Republican base

Gingrich's rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama … The establishment was happy to use Gingrich's tactics to win elections, but it never expected to lose control of the party to the voters it rallied with such grandiose negativity. Now, the joke is on those who manipulated the base. The base is striking back, and Newt is their weapon. … He is who he is and always has been. The base knows this and loves him for it. But for Republican leaders, Gingrich has become inconvenient. He's the loud-mouthed uninvited guest who is trying to rejoin the country club.

--E.J. Dionne

The heaven & hell in watching this last GOP debate

I was in heaven watching Ron Paul take on these anti-Islamic and wildly militarists candidates (Perry, Bachmann, and Santorum) and deconstruct their far rights arguments, including saber-rattling about invading Iran. (Ironically, this coming the day before our involvement in Iraq officially came to end -- another Republican war that was ill-advised and hugely costly in terms of life and treasure.) Even Romney tried to his best imitation of Ronald Reagan during the height of the Cold War, announcing he is for adding new ships and airplanes, and 100,000 more service members -- all at a time when our military spending is at record levels and more than the next 20 countries combined. I am worried about Iran, too, but Mr. Paul pointed out that invading other countries is not ALWAYS the answer to every foreign policy question. Despite the squawking of "chicken hawks" (these hawkish Republicans candidates who have never served in the military) the American public agrees with Ron Paul and does not want another Middle East war.

I was in hell when these GOP candidates talked about demolishing the Federal Ninth Circuit Court and Court of Appeals, oblivious to the Constitutional and other legal questions. Sheer right-wing looniness! The Ninth Circuit court has been a leader in protecting the Constitutional rights of all Americans, not just those citizens who look, talk and think like Rick Perry. For example, it was in the Ninth Circuit, where Judge Vaughn Walker handed down his landmark ruling about the rights of gay people to marry and demolished the homophobic lies and prejudices of the Prop. 8 supporters. Even more worrisome is Romney who says he would appoint conservative activists judges, like Alito and Scalia, who are anti-gay and believe that corporations are people, and these corporations have more rights than I do.

Thank you Congressman Paul for taking on the Right-wing demagoguery that has come to dominate the Republican thought and discourse.

Surprisingly, Barack and Newt have similar resumes...

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The conservative GOP presidential contender formerly known as a progressive...in his own words

I think people recognize that I'm not a partisan Republican — that I'm someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive...

-- Mitt Romney, 2002

Which one is the real Mitt Romney? I honestly I don't know...

The reddest and most anti-gay states are also the most unhealthy...is there a correlation?

Check out this insurance company's data.

Rhetoric vs. reality: since 2009 the GOP have become obstructionists as the country tries to recover from the worst recession since 1929

It is hard to blame Obama for everything when the GOP has used the cloture procedure as the rule rather than the exception. It should be noted that the Depression and this recession happened on their watch, after a period of no or decreasing regulation of the banking sector, policies which the GOP champions today.

Great weekend political talkshow: UP with Chris Hayes

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Chris is smart, fair, progressive, and he includes someone from the Right on nearly show. Well worth watching if you enjoy a substantive debate of the issues of the day.

After last night's debate, Mitt Romney's personality is emerging: impatient, technocratic, and entitled

More colorful and funny than Saturday Night Live, the GOP Debate was weird comic spectacle. Romney, unwisely, challenged Perry to a $10,000 bet, making a grand gesture that middle class people class can't do.

This comes after a series of press interviews, most recently with Fox News, where Romney gets visibly impatient and upset when reporters challenge him to defend his ever-changing political views. He doesn't seem to understand that the press is doing its job of questioning the leading candidates as the fourth estate.

Further, pundits say that Romney isn't very likable in person and comes across as a data-crunching mannequin who lacks emotional intelligence. Many GOP primary voters are noticing all this and throwing their support behind Gingrich.

Reason for Congressional gridlock: far right politics

Yesterday Romney announced his support for Paul Ryan's "Kill Medicare" bill. Great news because Obama can use this to beat the GOP up & down the ticket in 2012

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Former Republican Senator: The GOP presidential field is ‘embarrassing.' I agree

I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible. What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that.

--Republican John Danforth, who served as a senator from Missouri for nearly 20 years and later as George W. Bush’s ambassador the United Nations

I agree. Just look at the field and you get a good reflection of the state of the GOP: intellectually and morally compromised.

Santorum - a social conservative extremist
Bachmann - an extremist in nearly every regard
Gingrich - an undisciplined and inconsistent leader who isn't respected by his former GOP colleagues
Romney - a man with no center or character who will do anything to be president except comport himself with integrity and dignity
Paul - principled, but way out of the political mainstream
Perry - someone who is not smart enough to lead this country through difficult times...and has many of skeletons in the closet.
Cain - a man who appears to have sexually harassed many women and has a long-time affair at the same time he positions himself as a social conservative.

While I don't agree with Huntsman on his policies, he is the only person with the gravitas and temperament to be president.

Danforth is right: this field is embarrassing.

joe

Mitt Romney in his own words...