Grand Canyon National Park
Last year, we came up with a one-word difference between liberals and conservatives. That one word was “Believe,” as in, “I don’t believe in climate change despite what those 97 percent of scientists say.” Basically, conservatives often use “believe” in a blind faith kind of way, whereas liberals often use “believe” to validate something that is backed up by facts and evidence. We have now identified a second word that, when you hear it being used, also gives you a major clue as to whether the person saying it is a liberal or a conservative:
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Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
We have previously touted the benefits of “good government,” from Social Security to Superstorm Sandy relief. But perhaps no result of good government is more beloved than America’s fabulous national parks. And the first park land set aside in America by the federal government for public use — by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 — was the land that is now Yosemite National Park.
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High speed trains in London
The recent Amtrak derailment in Pennsylvania has once again exposed America’s embarrassing train transportation system. Parts of this system are up to 150 years old, and it’s falling apart. Yet, when Democrats, including President Barack Obama, propose to modernize our train system and build high-speed trains, Republicans oppose these plans.
Predictably, after the Amtrak accident, in addition to the horrible optics of simultaneous Republican budget cuts, we are hearing the usual Republican talking points about America’s train transportation system. Here are the main GOP talking points, along with some possible responses:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 9/11, Amtrak, conservatives, Democrats, infrastructure, liberals, Postal Service, Republicans, Shock Doctrine, Trains, transporation
“Birther” protesters, St. Cloud, MN, 2013
Anyone who pays attention to the arguments made by conservatives (and Republicans, same thing nowadays) versus those made by liberals and Democrats knows that their respective ways of thinking and speaking is entirely different. Researchers have even found that conservative and liberal brains work very differently. But what the scientists haven’t mentioned is that you can usually identify whether someone is a liberal or a conservative by listening for one word.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Barack Obama, climate change, conservatives, Democrats, framing, gay marriage, George Lakoff, George W. Bush, liberals, Republicans, tobacco
CRomnibus opponent Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Conservatives and Liberals finally agree on one thing: they hate the $1.1 trillion continuing resolution of the omnibus federal spending bill (nicknamed “CRomnibus”) designed to fund the U.S. federal government through September 2015. However, conservatives and liberals oppose the bill for different reasons. Strolling through the Twitter hashtag #CRominbus, as well as reading and hearing statements from various quarters, is quite revealing.
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Leave a comment! Tags: budget, Congress, conservatives, CRomnibus, Democrats, House, John Boehner, liberals, President Barack Obama, Republicans, Senate, spending
In 2013, we saw too many instances of the Republican-Corporate-Media iron triangle pushing stories containing big lies about the Affordable Care Act, Benghazi, and even President Obama‘s rather minimal vacation time. If you’re as sick of these phony stories as we are, then all of us need to make some New Year’s resolutions to try to defeat them. In 2014, we resolve to:
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Pig at the barrel, West Palm Beach, FL
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith
The one-word definition of conservatism is “selfishness.” How else to explain conservatives’ (and most Republicans’) opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which will allow millions more Americans to obtain health insurance? How else to explain the Republicans’ opposition to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP“), which feeds millions of poor children in America? Or to raising the federal minimum wage, which now sits at just half the poverty level? How else to explain Republican opposition to the extension of long-term unemployment benefits, or the GOPs zeal to cut benefits for Social Security and Medicare, which keep millions of seniors barely out of poverty? How else to explain the Repubilcans’ love affair with the draconian sequestration cuts, except when it comes to military spending?
This holiday season, as many privileged Republicans gorge themselves on a bounty of food, tax cuts and high-flying stock market investments, and many of their followers inexplicably back them up, ask them why they support such selfish conservative policies.
