The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
by dvx Mon Mar 5th, 2012 at 11:04:12 AM EST
you are the media you consume.
The Lessons of Paris-on-Thames LONDON -- Can beauty be stifling? Paris puts that proposition to the test, a city manicured to perfection that has confined its immigrant underclass to the invisible suburbs and burnished every surface of its seductive allure. Certainly, a lot of young Parisians have voted with their feet, moving across the Channel to Paris-on-Thames, aka London, where they come not so much in search of jobs -- although there have been more of them -- as of the global swirl: that raucous mix of innovation and grunge missing in a too-perfect Paris.
LONDON -- Can beauty be stifling? Paris puts that proposition to the test, a city manicured to perfection that has confined its immigrant underclass to the invisible suburbs and burnished every surface of its seductive allure.
Certainly, a lot of young Parisians have voted with their feet, moving across the Channel to Paris-on-Thames, aka London, where they come not so much in search of jobs -- although there have been more of them -- as of the global swirl: that raucous mix of innovation and grunge missing in a too-perfect Paris.
Taxes on the rich are evil, socialists are evil, the French are evil, and we have proof! Wind power
The Lessons of Paris-on-Thames - NYTimes.com
The French election remains too close to call.
Sure enough... It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
And 2nd round elections can be hard to poll in advance.
Why? Wind power
With Hollande floating around 30% there's the possibility that a Le Pen or Bayrou win might get rid of an unpopular incumbent and unite the right.
Do I really think that the raise is close? No. But I think that if we're going to take the author of that piece to task it's misleading to jump straight to the 2nd round polls without acknowledging that there is a 1st round, and no candidate is likely to win it outright. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Saying you're going to vote for Sarkozy I imagine is more socially acceptable than saying that you will vote for Le Pen. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
But even if one thinks they are not doing enough, you would have to transfer five whole points from Sarko to Le Pen to bring her into second round territory.
But if it's obvious he's going to get pasted in the second round, then your take might well be, "Well, who cares? I'll go with my real first choice and let her make her stand." Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
Le Pen averages 16.4%.
The Hollande-Sarkozy gap is just outside the margin of error of 3-4%. Le Pen is out of it, unless the polls are very wrong.
Opinion polling for the French presidential election, 2012 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
These are public poll figures for hypothetical runoff elections between individual 2012 presidential candidates. The candidates include incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist Party (PS) presidential candidate François Hollande and Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen. The PS First Secretary, Martine Aubry, is also listed in polls which pre-date the selection of Hollande as the PS presidential candidate in October 2011.[22]
Somehow over the next decade the Republican party - which cannot win elections without support from the white working-class - has got to makes its peace with them and convince them that the ideas it espouses make sense. The alternative, frankly, is electoral irrelevance. So what will the Republicans do? How will they cope with this problem? Will they - as Michael Kibbe hinted and the maverick presidential candidate Ron Paul suggests - campaign to cut defence spending as much as domestic programmes? How will that change America's place in the world? The Republican Party has often been on the right side of history. From Lincoln to Reagan they have been able persuaders - admired and respected. This primary season has not been their finest hour. Their re-emergence, when it comes, will be fascinating to watch.
The alternative, frankly, is electoral irrelevance.
So what will the Republicans do? How will they cope with this problem?
Will they - as Michael Kibbe hinted and the maverick presidential candidate Ron Paul suggests - campaign to cut defence spending as much as domestic programmes? How will that change America's place in the world?
The Republican Party has often been on the right side of history.
From Lincoln to Reagan they have been able persuaders - admired and respected. This primary season has not been their finest hour. Their re-emergence, when it comes, will be fascinating to watch.
He means ideas like cutting social security, and replacing it with a plan in which people pay into a fund during their lives.
Which is nothing like the existing plan, obviously.
...Houses taken from the pool were left unreplaced, at rates accelerating fast under Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme from the 1980s. New Labor did little to reverse this. The shortage is severe. Rents are rocketing, house prices, stagnating gently or not, are utterly prohibitive. Everyone knows this. Now the government is capping housing benefits, which the Chartered Institute of Housing warns is likely to price 800,000 households across the country out of their own communities. Rough sleeping is up. The trends are obvious, the results predictable. "What we think is likely to happen," says Bharat Mehta, chief executive of Trust for London, whose job it is to investigate London poverty, "is that there'll be a movement of people from inner to outer London." In Paris, cheap housing is pushed out of sight of the boulevards, to the banlieues, the impoverished, underserved, tense suburbs. With its history of public housing, London has always been far more of a medley, incomes jostling together across the city. Now the poor are to be pushed centrifugally, faster and faster. The banlieuefication of London is under way.
The trends are obvious, the results predictable. "What we think is likely to happen," says Bharat Mehta, chief executive of Trust for London, whose job it is to investigate London poverty, "is that there'll be a movement of people from inner to outer London."
In Paris, cheap housing is pushed out of sight of the boulevards, to the banlieues, the impoverished, underserved, tense suburbs. With its history of public housing, London has always been far more of a medley, incomes jostling together across the city. Now the poor are to be pushed centrifugally, faster and faster. The banlieuefication of London is under way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/magazine/china-mieville-london.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
And you have very different banlieues - the middle class ones (a majority), the upper class ones (more than you'd expect) and the rest - the distinction coming often down to how good the transport links are to central Paris. Wind power
As I pointed out in my diary, london, dying like a dinosaur, there is no cheap housing for the best part of 50 miles around london and that's outside commuting distance keep to the Fen Causeway
German offshore pioneer Alpha Ventus exceeds expectations The pioneering Alpha Ventus wind farm in the German North Sea produced about 15% more power during 2011 than expected by its operator, the consortium DOTI. The 60MW development supplied more than 267GWh of electricity to Germany's national grid last year. The better-than-predicted figure was due to "excellent" wind conditions and high turbine-availability of up to 97%, says project director Claus Burkhardt of EWE, which owns DOTI along with fellow utilities E.ON and Vattenfall.
The pioneering Alpha Ventus wind farm in the German North Sea produced about 15% more power during 2011 than expected by its operator, the consortium DOTI.
The 60MW development supplied more than 267GWh of electricity to Germany's national grid last year.
The better-than-predicted figure was due to "excellent" wind conditions and high turbine-availability of up to 97%, says project director Claus Burkhardt of EWE, which owns DOTI along with fellow utilities E.ON and Vattenfall.
267 GWh with 60 MW means 4,450 full load hours, i.e. a capacity factor above 50%. And that's real data - in a year which was considered a pretty bad wind year onshore. Wind power
I'm wondering because if it's the latter number then the capacity factor must have been a lot higher than standard to begin with. And if that's typical of offshore, does that help offset the higher costs of installation? And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
But as usual in capital intensive industries, the biggest driver of cost is the cost of capital and there, thanks to generally smarter policies & regulations, Germany has been able to keep the expected cost per MWh on the lowish side for the industry. Wind power
If you haven't read Sir Ian Blair's Guardian article endorsing plans to privatise many of the functions of the police, you ought to. It reflects two iron rules of the relentless drive to outsource and marketise the parts of the state that have so far been left alone: first, that mindboggling policy extremes tend to be recast as matters of simple common sense; and second, that nothing suits those who would dissolve the barrier between state and market like a crisis, which is the essence of what Naomi Klein famously called the Shock Doctrine. I am not accusing Blair - nor, indeed, the equally supportive Association of Chief Police Officers - of being zealous privateers; the point is, they are inserted into a tangle of institutions so relentlessly pushed towards what people like me call neoliberalism that they almost unthinkingly do its work. His argument is measured; level-headed, even. As he sees it, now that the "shibboleth" of police numbers has been dropped, and forces are thereby free to manage the impact of such drastic cuts, outsourcing has become a very sensible option. This is not, he says, "a shock, horror idea". The basic pitch is all about efficiency and "modernisation": to use the argot of the last government, "what works". But here's what Blair omits: this debate is also about accountability, transparency and the most fundamental elements of democracy - not to mention the question of who the police are there to serve, and what they are meant to do.
I am not accusing Blair - nor, indeed, the equally supportive Association of Chief Police Officers - of being zealous privateers; the point is, they are inserted into a tangle of institutions so relentlessly pushed towards what people like me call neoliberalism that they almost unthinkingly do its work.
His argument is measured; level-headed, even. As he sees it, now that the "shibboleth" of police numbers has been dropped, and forces are thereby free to manage the impact of such drastic cuts, outsourcing has become a very sensible option. This is not, he says, "a shock, horror idea". The basic pitch is all about efficiency and "modernisation": to use the argot of the last government, "what works". But here's what Blair omits: this debate is also about accountability, transparency and the most fundamental elements of democracy - not to mention the question of who the police are there to serve, and what they are meant to do.
Harris gets right to the nub of the question about privatisations, if policing is ultimately only possible by the consent of the policed; what happens when serving the policed ceases to be the primary concern ? keep to the Fen Causeway
Why go halfway? TRULY privatize the police functions, abolish them entirely, and re-empower citizens to enforce the law for themselves. Bring back the volunteer constables!
The results of Friday's election for Iran's parliament, the Majlis, generate a political climate in Tehran that augurs well for the commencement of talks over the nuclear issue. The US administration senses this. The big issue is whether President Barack Obama can carry the United States' two key allies - Saudi Arabia and Israel - in the quest of finding a "permanent" solution to the US-Iran standoff. Yet this has been a season of fables. Iranian politics arouses great curiosity, and election time becomes a carnival of fables. Four years ago Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was usurping political power and the country was becoming a military dictatorship. This year's hot pick (so far) is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dispatching President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to political exile and the Majlis is their arena of contestation. It's all forgotten how Khamenei fought off single-handedly the reformists' challenge in 2009 and preserved Ahmedinejad's presidency. True, Iran's politics, like politics anywhere, is complex. The Shi'ite religious establishment is known in history as fractious. Party politics as is known in Western liberal democracies does not exist in Iran. But factions and cliques and interest groups realign incessantly, and that gives much verve to Iranian politics. Friday's election has been no exception..........
Yet this has been a season of fables. Iranian politics arouses great curiosity, and election time becomes a carnival of fables. Four years ago Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was usurping political power and the country was becoming a military dictatorship. This year's hot pick (so far) is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dispatching President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to political exile and the Majlis is their arena of contestation. It's all forgotten how Khamenei fought off single-handedly the reformists' challenge in 2009 and preserved Ahmedinejad's presidency.
True, Iran's politics, like politics anywhere, is complex. The Shi'ite religious establishment is known in history as fractious. Party politics as is known in Western liberal democracies does not exist in Iran. But factions and cliques and interest groups realign incessantly, and that gives much verve to Iranian politics.
Friday's election has been no exception..........
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey. So this is the real inside baseball skinny keep to the Fen Causeway
My pal Klaus today reached half a million page views of his own blog at a blog spot for Swedish-speakers that he co-set up and financed a couple of years or so ago.
So Klaus made a short video today. His son thought the original ending too sad and cried, but then directed the new denouement post-credits. Just as in Dallas, it was all a dream.
You can't be me, I'm taken
BTW, has anyone done a film based on this idea? Seems a good fit for the standard issue Finnish "humor." She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Again. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
The Foreclosure-to-Rental Boondoggle » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
The reason that housing prices have dipped only 33.6 percent in the United States instead of 60 percent as they have in Ireland, is because the big banks have been keeping inventory off the market. If the millions of homes-that are presently headed for foreclosure-were suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would plunge and the biggest banks in the country would be declared insolvent. That's why the banks have slowed the flow of foreclosures. According to Amherst Securities Group's Laurie Goodman, "....2.8 million borrowers haven't made a payment in over a year. Add that to the over 450,000 real estate owned (REO) units and you have approximately 3.2 million that are in the shadows. We are liquidating about 90,000 homes a month. That's about 36 months of overhang; a really shocking number."
Will the advice about creating titles to houses soon be appropriate for the US? Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Jesus.
H.
Christ. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Anyway? She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
There's all kinds of ways this could play out, none of them good for the Romney_Bot. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
He's in his 60s and needs something to do. My grandfather hung out with his friends and bagged groceries, Mittens runs for president. You've gotta stay active. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
Who knows. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
yours work too.
mittens looks in the mirror every morning and thinks: 'Central Casting the god of Maroon has anointed me to inflict hairy underpants upon the Promised Land, and my 3D poll-extruded hologram is Up To The Task!
... and better yet, the kicker is by the time the primaries come around my media scorched earth strategy will leave every other republican in sight squirming in humiliation.'
'no Bain, no Gain...'
vacuous, disingenuous nihilism rulz! 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
I mean, at least he's been elected to something, unlike the pizza guy. And it was something reasonably important, unlike the ditz from Alaska. And he can talk in reasonably coherent English--taking into consideration the fundamentally incoherent message he's trying to send--unlike Perry. And his religion is actually pretty conventional, unlike the Papist version of Dominionism that frothy is pushing.
Mitt would be ok if he didn't have the 10 ton weight of the GOP around his neck. Maybe he should run again in 2016--as a Democrat.
Dukakis springs to mind. Like ... immediately. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Mitt would be ok if he didn't have the 10 ton weight of the GOP around his neck.
The real problem with Mitt is that nobody knows what he really believes. My inclination is to think he's fairly moderate, as he was when he was a governor.
But was that just pandering because he was running for office in Massachusetts?
I think Mittens has run this campaign all wrong as far as messaging goes. He should've run on the message, "I can fix the economy and beat Obama, and you'll just have to live with the fact that I don't think girls are icky and gays are the devil."
It doesn't sound great, but I think it would've been a winning message in the primary, because the GOPers want to win badly. Instead, he's boxed himself in to right-wing policies, and the GOPers all still think he's a fraud. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
Any chance you guys could stop sending stuff over here without the accompanying turbodiesels that make them actually worth buying?
I mean, c'mon, my wife's Jeep can do 34 mpg on the highway, ffs.
Or at least take back those moronic Smart Fortwos? Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
my wife's Jeep can do 34 mpg on the highway, ffs.
Any car up to 6 tons can do that kind of mileage when you drive at the silly low speeds Americans drive at (if made by decent engineers).
What's wrong with a car that can do the same at 50% faster speeds (not to mention which makes such speeds twice as fun as well)?
Plus you can park two of these is a typical US parking space. Wind power
Okay, I'll bite: Where is the six-ton car that can do 34 mpg at 75 mph?
50% faster than 75 mph? I don't think Fortwos go that fast, and the 500 would have mileage in the teens at that speed.
Plus you can park two of these is a typical US parking space.
Which makes it all the more pathetic that the mileage is so weak, no? Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
GM's hook-up with Peugeot Citroen may help. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
The automakers don't think Americans will drive diesels, because they're noisy and have the old reputation for smelling badly. I think there's a little truth to that, but not enough to completely kill the idea.
Probably doesn't help that most diesels you see on the roads are either in big 18-wheelers or very large pickups.
The real issue, I think, is the up-front cost of a diesel over a gas engine, balanced against the fuel savings. It's like the calculation behind hybrids: For most applications, it doesn't make sense, because people either don't own them long enough or don't drive far enough.
VW is the only maker selling diesels in small cars on any scale worth measuring. It costs about $6k more up front (vs about $2k in Britain), and you gain about 10 mpg. I suspect some of it is tariffs on the engines coming into Mexico from Germany, and much of it is probably economies of scale.
The GM-Peugeot alliance may help, but my guess is that has a lot more to do with Opel being in the toilet. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
it's a bit like choosing whether to be bashed over the head by a mace or an axe, i know.
the only advantages of diesel are cold weather dependability, length of life ruggedness, higher torque, lower pump prices, and best of all ready to switch to biodiesel, when pigs fly.
so you can feel 300 ways shittier after a drive, but feel better about the polar bears, with diesels.
granted they have come a long way these last 20 years with emitting less fumes, better tailpipe tech, but getting stuck behind a belching diesel truck on a mountain road is borderline dante, a mini personal Bangkok.
internal combustion engines are pretty ropey technology, efficiency wise. if it weren't for vested interests we would have left them by the wayside by now.
instead we have a booming rate of cancers and asthma, go figure. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Gas engine durability isn't really a huge issue anymore. There are very few from after (say) the mid-'90s that can't put up at least 200k miles. I'm still "meh" on aluminum blocks, because from everything I've read they're simply not as tough as iron blocks -- and that's something Fiat definitely has going for it, as I assume most of the subcompacts are pushed by aluminums these days.
(That may help explain the relatively poor gas mileage, too, in which case I'll be more sympathetic. Iron blocks are heavy.) Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
Posted speed limits are widely ignored, and even the posted speeds are pretty high. It's 75 MPH between here and Denver, which means people drive 85-90. While texting.
Note: cheese-eaters here for a holiday driving around in convertibles don't get the true experience. Drive across Utah or Montana or Wyoming or Texas some time.
http://www.denverpost.com/murphy/ci_20102377
My wife's is pretty accurate as best I can tell. (I tend to occupy myself by doing the math in my head when we go on long trips.) Her mileage gauge is also pretty much dead-on.
I think mine tends to overstate my speed a tad. Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
As for the "Fiscal Compact", it is rendered a dead letter by Spanish actions. Gracias a Dios. If the text were enforced, the consequences would be ruinous. It enshrines Hooverism in EU law, and imposes contractionary policies without the consent of future parliaments - including any future Bundestag. Indeed, it probably violates the German constitution. But it won't be enforced in any meaningful sense because the political realities of the EU are already intruding, and will intrude further. A president François Hollande of France will rip it up. The Latin Bloc is awakening.
Gracias a Dios. If the text were enforced, the consequences would be ruinous. It enshrines Hooverism in EU law, and imposes contractionary policies without the consent of future parliaments - including any future Bundestag. Indeed, it probably violates the German constitution.
But it won't be enforced in any meaningful sense because the political realities of the EU are already intruding, and will intrude further. A president François Hollande of France will rip it up.
The Latin Bloc is awakening.
And flush toilets.
And libraries.
And Public Health, Public Order, good roads, literacy, advanced mathematics, Aristotelian logic, & etc. & so on. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Yeah, he was banished by his Christian King for questioning his civil war victory and spent a few years as a mercenary of the Moorish King of Zaragoza... There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman
3. Crossing Frontiers examines the interaction between the two civilizations after Muslim expansion came to a halt. The first part of the chapter centers on the two frontier regions, Spain and Turkey, and two characters: a presumably fictional Basil, the two-blooded border soldier (Digenes Akrites is the title of the Greek epic poem about his exploits) in Turkey in the 9th century; and Rodrigo Díaz, El Cid, in 11th Century Spain. Both men are taken as representative of the relatively relaxed attitude to political (and even religious) allegiances that existed in the border regions, while both heartlands remained by and large ignorant of each other. The latter part of the chapter deals with the crusades, including the strange [for they never actually met in person] friendship between Richard the Lionheart and Saladdin.
As for the albatross, we have at least thirty years of neoliberalism round our necks. The real weight is the ideological hegemony.
And it will weigh down on us for another 30 years if we're not careful. There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman
There's plenty of time until Sarkozy loses in May for Merkel's nonsense to be entrenched in the legal systems of more and more countries, or in the treaties.
Even if the Euro goes away, austerity won't. There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman
The latest round of jostling is between Rajoy and the regional governments in Spain: Rajoy tells regions no way out of cutbacks as government prepares budget
The regions, which were largely responsible for the blowout in the country's finances last year, will have to contribute 15.6 billion euros to the total estimated by De Guindos. The country's two biggest regions, Andalusia and Catalonia, on Sunday called on Rajoy for some slack in the target in order not to have to cut back on essential services such as health and education. However, after a meeting Monday with the OECD's secretary general, Ángel Gurría, Rajoy said the regions would have to make a "significant effort," adding that the central government had no intention of relaxing the target set for the regions of a deficit of 1.5 percent of GDP. That figure, he pointed out, was up from 1.3 percent last year when the actual shortfall was 2.94 percent. ... Rajoy insisted he did not have to get Brussels' permission to announce a deficit higher than that agreed with the previous Socialist administration. "We have done what seems to us to be logical and reasonable, and we will be evaluated in April when we will speak with the Commission," he said.
However, after a meeting Monday with the OECD's secretary general, Ángel Gurría, Rajoy said the regions would have to make a "significant effort," adding that the central government had no intention of relaxing the target set for the regions of a deficit of 1.5 percent of GDP. That figure, he pointed out, was up from 1.3 percent last year when the actual shortfall was 2.94 percent.
...
Rajoy insisted he did not have to get Brussels' permission to announce a deficit higher than that agreed with the previous Socialist administration. "We have done what seems to us to be logical and reasonable, and we will be evaluated in April when we will speak with the Commission," he said.
I don't see why countries that have regained monetary sovereignty would feel endlessly constrained by this pact - unless the austerity ideology is so persuasive. Which brings us back to the primacy of ideology again.
The wall we come up against is the success of neolib/austerity ideology. The right supports it, and a large chunk of the left goes along. If we want to change the epiphenomena (the laws and amendments and treaties) we will only be able to do so by means of a change of ideology.
The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone--horrors!--printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms--especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings.
One is based on something that occasionally resembles the scientific method, the other is used as an excuse for social pogroms against people we don't like. (Usually poor people, but occasionally entire countries.)
You have to remember that in the same way that slavery was founded on racial discrimination, theocratic economics is founded on economic discrimination, and the belief that some people and activities are essentially and irredeemably bad.
"I honestly thought he was just playing up to the far-right voters, because that's what Republicans are supposed to do in the primaries," said Grand Rapids, MI resident Dan Banks, who explained he had dismissed as manipulative campaign rhetoric Santorum's assertion that President Obama would send Christians to the guillotine. "But now it's dawning on me that this guy means it, all of it. Every single thing he says is an accurate depiction of how he sees the world." "So, when he said that Satan was currently attacking the United States, he meant exactly that," added Banks. "Satan, the devil himself, is attacking the United States. Rick Santorum believes this is a real thing that is actually happening. I...wow. Just wow." Gallup polls taken during the campaign show an evolving awareness among voters that Santorum is not lying about any of the horrifying things he says. For example, in August of last year, 96 percent of voters said they thought Santorum could not possibly be serious when he said gay marriage was "an issue just like 9/11," compared with only 9 percent today. And in that same time span, the number of voters who believe Santorum was not at all kidding when he said the president had a "deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions" has increased more than tenfold.
"So, when he said that Satan was currently attacking the United States, he meant exactly that," added Banks. "Satan, the devil himself, is attacking the United States. Rick Santorum believes this is a real thing that is actually happening. I...wow. Just wow."
Gallup polls taken during the campaign show an evolving awareness among voters that Santorum is not lying about any of the horrifying things he says. For example, in August of last year, 96 percent of voters said they thought Santorum could not possibly be serious when he said gay marriage was "an issue just like 9/11," compared with only 9 percent today. And in that same time span, the number of voters who believe Santorum was not at all kidding when he said the president had a "deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions" has increased more than tenfold.
by Oui - Mar 28 1 comment
by Oui - Apr 9
by Oui - Apr 12 4 comments
by Oui - Apr 8 22 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Mar 30 12 comments
by Oui - Apr 2
by Frank Schnittger - Apr 20
by Oui - Apr 171 comment
by Oui - Apr 17
by Cat - Apr 146 comments
by Cat - Apr 14
by Oui - Apr 124 comments
by Oui - Apr 10
by Oui - Apr 822 comments
by Cat - Apr 64 comments
by Oui - Apr 62 comments
by Oui - Apr 46 comments
by Oui - Apr 4
by Oui - Apr 3
by Oui - Apr 11 comment
by Oui - Mar 31
by Oui - Mar 304 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Mar 3012 comments
by Oui - Mar 293 comments