Another trend that is just as encouraging as the momentum toward accepting gay marriage is another classic hot button issue: the legalization of marijuana....
Election season is in full swing and we’ve already endured nearly a month of back and forth controversies and accusations that one side or the other has engaged in cheap tricks. President Obama politicized the death of the world’s most notorious terrorist (at least until Kony came along), and Mitt Romney politicized Obama eating a dog as a child after the Democrats politicized him putting his dog on his car.
Surprising no one, the Senate failed to pass the Buffett Rule after the Republicans unleashed another filibuster. It’s not just that the Republicans block anything President Obama and his allies in Congress try to get done. This time one of their principles was at stake: the rich must be protected at all costs. Keeping in mind that the rich effectively pay less in taxes than the rest of us, the Republicans did their duty and maintained the status quo for their true constituents.
Super Tuesday has come and gone, to little fanfare. In past elections, this was the decisive point in the presidential campaigns where the eventual nominee was decided, but as with the Democratic presidential contest in 2008, it did not end this year’s Republican nomination contest.
This is the age of Citizen’s United. Every major Republican candidate for president left in the race has a not-so-secret billionaire backing him (Romney of course has several), and the usual wave of disgusting, negative ads has grown to tsunami-like proportions thanks to the prevalence of super PACs, which, and it cannot be repeated enough, do not coordinate with the candidates. Considering the state of campaign finance, it is no surprise that President Obama has authorized super PACs to act on his behalf.
The 21st century so far is the age of the Internet, and with the dominance of the Internet come certain basic expectations. Generally speaking, we expect free and easily accessible content, and the ability to easily contribute to that content or distribute it to our friends and family.
God does not want Mike Huckabee to run for President. Last Saturday night, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 GOP presidential candidate announced on his Fox News program that he would not be entering the 2012 race.
Poor Jon Huntsman. It isn’t bad enough that he is just fresh out of the Obama administration. In today’s hyper-partisan world, he made the very poor decision to be nice to our president.
Once more, Facebook is under fire for taking advantage of its users to generate more ad revenue. This time, Facebook is accused of selling your correspondence on their website to advertisers to increase the accuracy of their marketing.
The big U.S. budget battle reached an unsatisfactory conclusion, and both sides are now stuck with a compromise they are not completely fond of for now. Curiously, the potential contenders for the Republican presidential nomination have been silent. This was a great time for them to throw some red meat to their conservative constituents and bolster primary voter support or take an easy shot at the president. Instead, they chose to ignore the issue entirely, and out of all the possible responses, this was probably the smartest.
President Obama appears to be playing both sides once again. The Obama administration has recently decided to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, despite the president’s insistence that he does not support gay marriage. Everyone is surprised, both those in favor of gay marriage celebrating what appears to be a shift in the president’s opinion and those on the right who believed gay marriage would not be on the agenda in this administration. Both praise and criticism has been coming in, but none of it is justified.
Once again, the President’s citizenship and religion are up for debate. This so-called issue has really worn out its welcome, yet it persists, a tumor that continues to eat away at the President’s legitimacy in the eyes of his detractors. One thing I don’t think anyone would call it is an example of people having a right to their own opinion. However, this is precisely what John Boehner claimed in his latest appearance on “Meet the Press.”
For those who still do not believe that we are entering a hyper-partisan age where literally no issue is safe from being turned into a political battle, look no further than the increasingly ridiculous backlash against Michelle Obama’s campaign for healthy eating. To be fair, conservatives have long made fun of “health nuts” and people who champion diets and better food choices, but this is definitely a step too far.
Twitter is everywhere these days, so it’s no surprise that even our beloved elected officials use it. It is such a common part of their business nowadays that Twitter has sent a representative to the capitol to better serve those congressmen who use the blue bird. The novelty of old, technologically naive politicians entering the social networking world has not worn off quite yet, but one of these days Congress using Twitter will be as unremarkable as e-mail. When it comes to making political statements or campaigning, however, Twitter is still a powerful attention-grabbing tool and will be an important aspect of electoral strategy, not only in the next election but well into the future.
