To illustrate how drastically political parties can change in just a little over 50 years, I offer you some choice excerpts from the Republican Party platform as passed by the 1956 Republican National Convention held at the Cow Palace in Daly City, just outside of San Francisco…

Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: “In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people’s money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative.” /* Good quote! */

…

Republican leadership has enlarged Federal assistance for construction of hospitals, emphasizing low-cost care of chronic diseases and the special problems of older persons, and increased Federal aid for medical care of the needy.

We have asked the largest increase in research funds ever sought in one year to intensify attacks on cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other dread diseases.

We demand once again, despite the reluctance of the Democrat 84th Congress, /* I guess even then Republicans didn’t know how to use nouns and adjectives */ Federal assistance to help build facilities to train more physicians and scientists. /* Oh oh, them communist scientists */

We have encouraged a notable expansion and improvement of voluntary health insurance, and urge that reinsurance and pooling arrangements be authorized to speed this progress.

We have strengthened the Food and Drug Administration, and we have increased the vocational rehabilitation program to enable a larger number of the disabled to return to satisfying activity.

We have supported measures that have made more housing available than ever before in history, reduced urban slums in local-federal partnership, stimulated record home ownership, and authorized additional low-rent public housing.

…

We recommend to Congress the submission of a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for men and women. /* What? The GOP supported ERA? */

Read the entire platform here.

This comment made me laugh from user BaScOmBe on CrooksandLiars…

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

“She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”

“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”

The man smiled and responded, “You must be a Republican.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”

“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”

Greg Sargent posits…

A question for fellow reporters and editors: At what point do Sarah Palin’s attacks and smears become so vile and absurd that they no longer merit attention? Is there such a point?

Palin, who has broken the mold in so many ways, has defied the laws of political and media gravity in another fashion: Despite the ever-mounting ridiculousness of her claims, she continues to get attention. This isn’t so with other figures. Frequently those who traffic in absurdity and smears to get media attention keep upping the ante until their assertions become so grotesque and self-parodic that they are no longer newsworthy.

It’s kind of like inflation: Keep printing more money and the value of it keeps dropping. That hasn’t happened with Palin.

As long as Palin isn’t an actual candidate for public office, at what point do we stop rewarding every statement from Palin, no matter how vicious or mendacious, with attention? Should there be such a point?

I say no.  The fact that we give attention to people like Sarah Palin and pretend that she is actually engaging in serious discourse says more about us as a people than it does about her.  We are a shallow and simple minded people with ADD.

Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle

Leave it to Alabama.  

A teacher used the example of as­sassinating President Bar­ack Obama as a way to teach parallel lines and angles to his geome­try students.

“He was talking about angles and said, ‘If you’re in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,’ ” said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.



Apparently the Secret Service questioned the teacher and found no credible threat and has closed the case. Just amazing.

The San Antonio Express-News reports an unidentified San Antonio high school teacher singled out a student as “Mexican” during a class discussion on illegal immigration.  Augustine Ortiz, who was wearing a Mexican soccer jersey that day, says that his English teacher had him sit in the front row of the classroom and used him as an example as she proceeded into a diatribe about “Mexicans with their attitudes are the racist ones.”  The teacher went on like a buffoon claiming that Mexicans “expect handouts” and that the United States was soon to become the “United States of Mexico” all the while pointing to Ortiz.

Ortiz complained to the principal, after being blown off by the vice principal, who then placed the teacher on administrative leave after obtaining corroborating testimony by other students.  Her fate is pending the outcome of an investigation.

This is only going to get worse.  Leave it to ugly Arizona with SB 1070 to pick this scab and polarize our people, but then again, maybe this is a fight that is long overdue.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line for Arizona as a result of SB 1070.

The Arizona Republic is reporting on Governor Jan Brewer is forming a tourism task force in response to convention cancellations and boycotts around the country.

The task force has a month to develop a plan to present to the governor. The first meeting has not yet been scheduled, according to Kiva Couchon, spokeswoman for the Arizona Office of Tourism.

Arizona has been taking heat for three weeks, and Rose says we can’t afford another month.

“We’re way past thinking about the issue. We’re way past studying the issue,” he says. “We need emergency leadership now.”

The governor, he says, might even consider declaring a state of emergency in order to suspend the rules that can slow governmental agencies from swift action.

Lesson: reactionary hate policy doesn’t pay.

I have a new State Senator. This past weekend a vacancy committee appointed Lucia Guzman to fill a vacancy for Colorado’s 34th senatorial district, which is also my home district. My former State Senator Paula Sandoval resigned her seat after winning a recent special election to the Denver City Council after my former City Councilman Rick Garcia accepted an appointment as HUD Regional Director. Guzman was already running for the State Senate in an open-seat election this November. She will continue to run, however now as an incumbent.

Guzman is an ordained minister and former member of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education.

Colorado is one of only three states, along with Massachusetts and Wisconsin, with openly LGBT elected officials at the municipal, county, state and federal levels. Colorado’s Congressman Jared Polis is the first openly gay man to be elected to Congress.

This just in…

LISBON, Portugal — Portugal’s conservative president says he has decided to ratify a law allowing gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country.

The head of state’s decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva announced his decision Monday.

The Socialist government’s bill was backed by all of Portugal’s left-of-centre parties, who together have a majority in Parliament. Right-of-center parties opposed the measure and demanded a national referendum.

Portugal’s constitutional Court validated the bill’s legality last month.

Debunking the invalid comparisons some are trying to make between Greece and the United State, Paul Krugman offers us the following…

So, how do America and Greece compare?

Both nations have lately been running large budget deficits, roughly comparable as a percentage of G.D.P. Markets, however, treat them very differently: The interest rate on Greek government bonds is more than twice the rate on U.S. bonds, because investors see a high risk that Greece will eventually default on its debt, while seeing virtually no risk that America will do the same. Why?

One answer is that we have a much lower level of debt — the amount we already owe, as opposed to new borrowing — relative to G.D.P. True, our debt should have been even lower. We’d be better positioned to deal with the current emergency if so much money hadn’t been squandered on tax cuts for the rich and an unfunded war. But we still entered the crisis in much better shape than the Greeks.

Even more important, however, is the fact that we have a clear path to economic recovery, while Greece doesn’t.

The U.S. economy has been growing since last summer, thanks to fiscal stimulus and expansionary policies by the Federal Reserve. I wish that growth were faster; still, it’s finally producing job gains — and it’s also showing up in revenues. Right now we’re on track to match Congressional Budget Office projections of a substantial rise in tax receipts. Put those projections together with the Obama administration’s policies, and they imply a sharp fall in the budget deficit over the next few years.