One part of political debate I like is using images to make a point. Whether it is a chart or a quote image, these graphics hold on to the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. They are also easy to share in social media. However one still needs to be careful one isn’t sharing inaccurate information. Don’t post or share any graphic unless you can confirm the accuracy of the information.
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There are some people who have birthdays at inconvenient times. Some were born on or near Christmas or during some national tragedy like those born on September 11th. There are others who were born on leap day so they can only celebrate the actual day of their birth in years that are evenly divisible by 4. Back when I was in elementary school, my birthday conflicted with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Why did he have to be born the day after me? Martin Luther King Jr. ruined my childhood.
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Guess who showed up in a news clip showing a tacky photo-op by supporters of HB 125 aka “Heartbeat” Bill? Senator Cliff Hite (R-Findlay) received a Teddy Bear that made a heartbeat sound when squeezed. The whole photo-op was a circus that P. T. Barnum would be proud of.
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Political issue ads are a sad fact of life. One thing I really wish would happen is that issue ads would be required to be factual about the issue in the ad. One ad which lacks the facts is one featuring Mike Huckabee speaking out against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act derided by the right as ‘Obamacare’. The ad gets heavy play on the Military Channel and plays fast and lose with the truth about the law and the reaction to it. Free speech shouldn’t give cover to a false political advertisement.
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Read an article on the Washington Post about a new political party called the National Atheist Party. While I applaud the effort to get atheists more involved in the political process, trying to include a broad progressive platform into such a narrow religious belief label is the wrong way to go.
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Today in my twitter stream was someone ranting about Glenn Greenwald and Katrina vanden Heuvel writing nice things about Ron Paul. In fact the person said both were RWNJs for supporting Paul. Of course the tweeter was wrong. Neither was supporting Paul only pointing out the ideas that Paul has that liberals usually support. I agree with most of what Greenwald writes but when talking about Ron Paul I disagree with his unstated conclusion.
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Singer Kelly Clarkson tweeted that she supported Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul for the GOP nomination. After some push back she clarified that she didn’t support his more homophobic, anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-minority views. Clarkson is entitled to her views but her love of Ron Paul while seeming to ignore the extreme side of him, is troubling.
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Vanguard, on Current TV, is like 60 Minutes on steroids by focusing on one issue for the whole hour. After the Current TV special on the GOP Iowa debate held Saturday night, Vanguard showed a program titled “Two Americas” that compared and contrasted two families on either end of the income scale. One brief statement from the unemployed Dad parroted the views expressed by Ron Paul – that the social safety net should taken down and poor people supported by charity. His comments showed the disconnect I’ve seen before by poor Republicans who keep voting for cheap labor conservatives who steal from the 99% and give to the 1%.
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Some people think the Occupy movement and the issues brought up by the protests is something new. I know I’ve been talking about corporatism and income inequality for many years. While archiving some past writings, I found an essay I wrote in 2003 which has ideas in it that wouldn’t seem out of place today – unfortunately.
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One of my hobbies is political debate. I would rather debate in person and I often do but I also like using ‘Letters to the Editor’ in local newspapers. Every so often I will read a letter that frankly pisses me off and I have to respond. One such letter in the Findlay Ohio Courier showed some anti-union views are based on misinformation.
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Herman Cain made a campaign stop at The Ohio State University in Columbus on Wednesday 11/30/11 and a Coach Woody Hayes impersonator introduced him. Woody Hayes endorsing Herman Cain? Is that really appropriate for a public college icon? Does this mean that Brutus Buckeye will be endorsing Romney or Newt next? I hope not. The introduction, which was pretty political, seemed to be an inappropriate use of a symbol of a publicly funded University.
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I found out tonight that the so-called “professional left” has the power to keep President Obama from being re-elected and those on the left who criticize the President, like me, are the enemy. It seems that there are some on the left that wish there was a propaganda machine like we see with the GOP/Fox “news” nexus. Such a wish is wrong and won’t help in President Obama’s re-election. Criticism, when based on facts, isn’t an enemy if we want to hold our elected officials accountable. I think only being a cheerleader is not being a complete and productive citizen of this country.
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On FOX “news” Sunday, the panel decided that the Occupy movement was un-American and maybe even Marxist but during the Tea Party protests FOX “news” fell over itself to promote them. There is no difference between the Occupy movement and the Tea Party protests – in that they both were an exercise of their right to protest for what they believe in. To say one is “un-American” and the other isn’t betrays FOX’s bias toward the 1%.
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Michael Shermer is founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine “Skeptic”. He is a BIG NAME in the freethought community and is well known for debunking pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer has been an advocate of Scientific skepticism – questioning the veracity of claims using the scientific method – except it seems for his own political views. Recently Shermer wrote a series of tweets praising an OpEd by David Brooks that complained about the Occupy movement. He (and Brooks) totally missed the point.
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On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns fell silent across the Western Front in Europe. That’s why we mark November 11th as Veteran’s Day to honor not only our war dead (like my father, pictured on the right) but to celebrate the living men and women who put themselves in harms way. Raise a glass to honor and thank them all and hope, one day, no other sons and daughters, moms or dads, or brothers and sisters have to go to war. Here’s a classic poem about war titled “In Flanders Fields”:
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