Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. What’s on your mind today?
Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up.
Everybody knows that Palin is a busy woman. The former half-term governor of Alaska stays so busy these days that one wonders how this mother of five manages to juggle her new reality show, follow her eldest daughter’s dancing career and launch her latest frenetic book tour while still finding the time to insult a slew of revered presidents and first ladies.
First thought – can we retire the phrase “man up” yesterday? It’s especially grating when a man is asking the party’s most visible female politician to go away. So, what’s Palin’s crimes according to Scarborough? She criticized St. Reagan:
I suppose Palin’s harsh dismissal of this great man is more understandable after one reads her biography and realizes that, like Bush, she accomplished a great deal in her early 20s. Who wouldn’t agree that finishing third in the Miss Alaska beauty contest is every bit as treacherous as risking your life in military combat? Maybe the beauty contestant who would one day be a reality star and former governor didn’t win the Distinguished Flying Cross, but the half-termer was selected as Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants.
And now a point of personal privilege. I work hard every day to assume the best of Americans who engage in public service. But I am offended by Palin’s attempt to build herself up by tearing down great men like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
It’s too little, too late as far as I’m concerned. Where was Joe Scarborough when Palin was pushing the death panels lie? Or accusing Obama of being anti-American?
This is another one of those holy crap he really said that type of stories. The leader of a Tea Party group suggests that only property owners should be able to vote. Buy bye urban vote?
Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, has raised objections to the Voting Rights Act. Colorado’s Tom Tancredo has suggested literacy tests for voters have merit. And this month, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips went back even further when talking about Americans’ voting rights.
He explained that the founders of the country originally put “certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote.” He continued, “One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.”
There was no evidence to suggest he was kidding.
In the 18th century, American law limited voting rights to white men who owned property, perhaps assuming that attitudes like those of Judson Phillips were appropriate. But to hear someone in the 21st century suggesting disenfranchisement for people who rent their homes is more than a little jarring.
What I don’t understand – where the hell is this crazy stuff coming from? Has there been an underground movement to repeal voting rights for renters that’s finally breaking into semi-mainstream or is this a new type of crazy? I can’t believe this is something we are talking about in 2010.