And they do it as only leftists can: by blaming nasssssty Republicans for magically changing how the voters feel about the word “entitlement”, which now begins to sound bad.

From the linked article:

Obama Programs Derided by Republicans as Pejorative Entitlements

…Republicans have been working to convert the once-neutral entitlement label into a negative…

…“‘Entitlement’ used to be a fairly positive thing,” said historian Edward Berkowitz, an expert on social-welfare policy at George Washington University in Washington. “Now, the term is being changed. Entitlement is this form of social spending that’s getting out of control.”

Look, Mr. Berkowitz: If Republicans’ power to mold language/voters were that good, Romney would have won in 2012.

But further down, some facts creep into the article:

…Obama [ed: yes; not Republicans] last week proposed changing the formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients [to reduce future benefits]…

Spending on Social Security and…Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits — rose 40 percent over the decade ending in 2012…more than twice the inflation-adjusted increase in the size of the economy…

…while Democrats portray the most costly entitlements as benefits that voters have paid for, typical wage-earners retiring in 2010 will receive at least $3 for every $1 they contributed to [Medicare]…

Social Security’s disability trust fund is expected to be exhausted in 2016…A two-income couple with both individuals earning an average wage of $44,600 who reached age 65 in 1960 received more than seven times as much in lifetime benefits as they paid in…

Golly, do you think maybe the facts are what make the word “entitlement” seem bad? That maybe entitlements are a “form of social spending that’s getting out of control”?

Perhaps like me, you’re enjoying this great new TV show I just found on C-SPAN2 called Mr. Paul Goes to Washington where my favorite Senator is currently filibustering President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan. As I write this, he’s currently about to ring in his sixth hour. The goal of Senator Paul’s soliloquy is, as he has stated several times since I’ve been watching, simply to elicit one thing: A straight-forward answer to the question, (to paraphrase) ‘Does the president believe he has the legal authority to execute through drone strike non-combatant citizens on American soil?’

Brings up a very interesting point: For eight solid years, we heard screeching and gnashing of teeth from the Left about how George W. Bush wants to kill us all and eat our babies and of course shred the Constitution through wars based on lies and the horrible PATRIOT Act. But in the end, who is it who’s actually standing up for these ideals? Well, so far I’ve seen Senator Paul in exchanges with Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Pat Toomey. Odd, don’t you think, that it’d be these ‘Tea Party right-winger knuckle-draggers’ who are actually doing the work that the Bush-haters allegedly wanted done while the leaders of their nominative party are lining up with their president in his expansion of Bush’s ‘unitary executive’ policies?

Clearly it’d be expecting waaay too much for the addlepated adherents to the Bush-is-Satan school of political thought to recognize the irony of the situation, let alone find that realization a great opportunity for self-reflection. Sad, that.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HHQ)

NB: I had originally written the paraphrase of Sen Paul’s question as “power” to execute. Clearly that’s within the president’s power, but I’ve clarified (I hope) by changing my original post to read “legal authority”, which I think is likely more to his point.

Glenn linked something yesterday which really gets at the advantage the legacy media accord to Democrats.  When some fringe figure at a Republican rally hurls an angry epithet, prominent Democrats call for party leaders to “differentiate themselves” from the lone nut-bag lest he come to define the party.  And folks in the legacy media often pick up on the story, portraying the isolated voice as representative of the GOP.

But, when an angry leftist hoists a mean-spirited sign at a liberal rally, that’s just one angry liberal and not a representative of the party.  Heck, if a prominent Democrat says something stupid, well, it’s just not news.  And when a liberal columnist uses harsh language to describe Republican, there’s no need for any differentiation–because the Republicans really are that bad.

Democrats, Stephen Kruiser writes

. . . will forever be aided by the MSM lap dogs who do their bidding when it comes to false narrative writing. This one is basically parroting the president. That doesn’t mean it is impossible to counter. But it will take leadership who is willing shout “Oh, HELL no!” every time they’re painted as evil or violent.

Read the whole thing.

Is is just me — or are others noticing that their left-of-center Facebook friends are still posting more links (and commentary) critical of Republicans (and conservatives) than they are posting pieces praising the reelected president and promoting his second-term agenda?

How quick some were to pounce on General Powell’s suggestion about dark undercurrents of racism in the GOP. (They didn’t bother to come up with facts backing up their assertion — and ignored the fact that most Republicans seem pleased the the nation’s only Indian-American woman governor appointed a black man to serve in the United States Senate. And when you provide examples of Democrats saying similar things to those Republican statements Powell singled out, well, it comes time to insist that Republicans really, really are racist.)

One friend just linked something from an outfit called Americans Against the Tea Party. Is it that those folks define themselves not by what they’re for, but by their against?

Just wonderin’.

Contending that Republicans “have a rhetoric and practical wisdom problem”, a young correspondent of The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, considering New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s popularity, addressed the GOP’s image problem:

So I wonder, are Christie’s recent negative comments about Republicans something like Xenophon’s frequent sacrifices and invocations of the gods throughout the Anabasis? Might Republicans learn something from this? The vast majority of people are liberal today not because they have reasoned their way to that position, but because they believe in it as the average person used to believe in god. Authority—in schools, on TV and in print—tells them that the Republicans are evil. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that hating Republicans is the Last Man’s god. (I believe it was Allan Bloom who said that “anti-bourgeois ire is the opiate of the last man…”). So Christie makes sacrifices, as he must, to that hateful god. He invokes that god. He publicly embraces that god.

Via Powerline Picks.  Emphasis added.  Read the whole thing.  This guy is onto something.  My only quibble is that I would add “who are” between the word, “people,” and phrase, “are liberal”,  and add “arrive are this ‘designation’” after “liberal today” in the italicized portion

I do find that, in interactions with many who call themselves liberal or who support President Obama have not, as Kristol’s correspondent put it, “reasoned their way” there, but have accepted the designation or come to the support because that is what they believe “good” people do.  They talk more in abstractions than details, often preferring clichés to arguments.  Many seem oblivious when you point out details of Obama’s policies.

And some seem dumbfounded when they learn that ideas for change that they support are similar to policy reforms Republicans have put forward.

At present, I don’t have a solution to this problem Republicans face.  But, we need at least recognize the GOP’s image problem, especially among the chattering classes and consumers of popular culture. (more…)

While doing cardio today at the gym, I thought that just maybe CNN would actually look into a Democratic scandal as they reported the (then-just released) Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on Operation Fast and Furious.  But, soon thereafter, they returned to coverage of the Romney tape.  (Will two days after this report is released, will CNN return to coverage of Fast & Furious?)

When I returned to the cardio machines after my (roughly one-hour) weight workout, CNN was still droning on about the tape, but didn’t seem to have concerned about what might have been in the missing 1-2 minutes.

Commenting on the media coverage, Erick Erickson contends that 

. . . this episode epitomizes how the media is an enemy collaborator with Barack Obama’s campaign. When conservatives accurately quoted Barack Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line including the context in which he meant it, the press immediately folded when Obama claimed conservatives were taking him out of context. In Romney’s press conference after the revelation of the tape he said he was speaking off the cuff and maybe was not as articulate as he could have been without a prepared text. Nonetheless, unlike Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark, the press demands that we all take Mitt Romney literally in his remarks.

And it was interesting that CNN kept repeating the remarks made on the “secret” video without offering any of Mr. Romney’s subsequent public appearances where he attempted to provide that context.

You do have to wonder where some liberals get their news.  Caught this comment on the thread to a liberal Facebook friend’s post, dubbing Mitt Romney’s the “Worst. Campaign. Ever.”

He might have a better idea if the legacy media focused on the content of Mr. Romney’s speeches and the specifics of his policies instead of the gaffes of a candidate in Missouri and an awkward joke the candidate made in MIchigan.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin contends, “Obama doesn’t have an agenda for turning around the economy other than to tax the rich, borrow and spend some more and hire some more unionized public employees.”

NB:  Tweaked the title.

Instead of covering the dire economic situation our nation is facing, “ the media,” Jennifer Rubin writes, “following like lemmings behind the Obama parade, are still fixated on Todd Akin.”  It’s not just that they’re fixated on Todd Akin, it’s that they’re eager to tie the Republican Party to the Missourian, conveniently forgetting that nearly every prominent Republican has criticized his crazy comments on rape, the candidates himself contending he misspoke and having apologized.

Mrs. Boxer accused her partisan opponents of a “sickness” and not liking their mothers.  And no one is calling the three-term Senator to apologize nor attempting to tie her fellow partisans to her.*

Our media, however, are obsessed with Akin, with “the three news networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – [giving] Akin’s gaffe four times the coverage they gave to Vice President Joe Biden’s overtly racist comments last week in Virginia.” Let’s see . . .  one is the elected Vice President of the United States and the other is a candidate for elective office from a state with just 2% of the nation’s population.  And the candidate’s gaffe gets more coverage.

How many episodes of his show did Piers Morgan devote to Biden’s gaffe?

It’s not just the networks.  The Associated Press reports:

Meet the newest campaign issue for House Democrats: Todd Akin.

From Colorado to New Hampshire to Illinois, Democrats already are using the incendiary comments about rape made by the Missouri congressman and Republican Senate candidate as a political bludgeon.

(Via HotAir headlines.)  They’ve even attacked Republicans who have asked for Akin to exit the race.

In many ways, the Akin affair says more about the Democrats than it does the Republicans.**  It shows their desperation in this campaign and their determination to use whatever issue at their disposal to demonize Republicans. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago, a friend alerted me to a report about a “pair of liberal super PACs are teaming up on a new Web campaign that accuses Mitt Romney of advancing an ‘extreme anti-LGBT agenda’ that would make life worse for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans.”

Those who run the “Courage Campaign Super PAC and American Bridge 21st Century” seem a lot like certain social conservatives who believe that politicians can undo the social change of the past quarter-century.  Those on the left fear the election of Republicans because they contend Republicans are dedicated to undermining that change.  Meanwhile, social conservatives wish to use the GOP as a vehicle to undermine it.

While Mitt Romney has come out in favor of the a constitutional amendment defining marriage, there is no likelihood that such an amendment could muster the necessary two-thirds majority in either house of Congress as the first step toward ratification.

Not just that, as per her comments in January during he ABC/Yahoo!/WMUR New Hampshire GOP primary debate, the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t seem to have adopted social conservatives attitudes on gay issues.  Instead, he offered that it was “a wonderful thing” for “gay people to form loving, committed, long-term relationships”:

. . . and that there’s every right for people in this country to form long- term committed relationships with one another. That doesn’t mean that they have to call it marriage or they have to receive the — the approval of the state and a marriage license and so forth for that to occur.

There can be domestic partnership benefits or — or a contractual relationship between two people, which would include, as — as Speaker Gingrich indicated, hospital visitation rights and the like. We can decide what kinds of benefits we might associate with people who form those kind of relationships, state by state.

Doesn’t sound like a man who wants to work hard to stop the social and political change that has lead to increased corporate and state recognition of same-sex relationships.   (more…)

As I worked on my essay answering the question “What does it mean to be gay”, I reviewed a paper on individuation I had written for a class in Jungian psychology and highlight this passage on the “shadow”(that part of one’s self of which we remain unconscious) as it is particularly relevant to an issue about which I have blogged in recent days:

In recent debates on gay marriage, we see how many gay people have projected their shadow onto Republicans and social conservatives.[1] Promoting a benefit concert for the gay group, “Freedom to Marry,” John Cameron Mitchell, an openly gay actor and writer, not merely faulted [then-]California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for vetoing a same-sex marriage bill, but accused him of enshrining “fear and loathing in the Constitution”.  Mitchell is not the only gay activist to accuse the Governor – and other opponents of gay marriage – of hatred.  Even as they vilified the Governor for vetoing the gay marriage bill, that Republican signed four gay-friendly pieces of legislation.  That is, the anti-gay image that many projected onto him did not correspond with the reality of his record on gay issues.

Instead of understanding why this politician has a different opinion on gay marriage than they do, they define him as evil.  To be sure, gay activists are not unique in ascribing such aspects to their ideological adversaries:

It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else.  (C.G. Jung, The Essential Jung, 398)

Thus, in projecting something about themselves onto Governor Schwarzenegger, gay activists are only doing what activists have done frequently throughout history.   As a gay conservative blogger, I have frequently found some of our critics projecting their shadow onto me.  Almost since the moment my blogging partner launched the blog, it has attracted regular critics who often post nasty remarks in our comments section, misrepresenting our ideas and attacking us personally.[2]

While I don’t know precisely what these individuals are projecting onto us, I note that their angry expressions are similar to those of other gay leaders – and activists.  Like John Cameron Mitchell, they vilify Republicans and those on the political right in harsh and derogatory language.  To some degree, it seems that Republicans have become a kind of collective shadow for a large number of gay people, particularly gay activists.
(more…)

Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican candidate had penned the fundraising missive that Julianna Smoot, Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America wrote. According to Bookworm who has “signed up” for Obama campaign e-mails in order “to see what the opposition is doing“:

Everyone’s got that special conservative in their life.

Maybe it’s your dad, who forwards you every chain email about the President’s birth certificate, or your neighbor, who just put up a Mitt Romney sign.

Dealing with these folks can be … frustrating.

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little bit of fun at their expense. Let a Republican in your life know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign — chip in $3 or more today.

When you give to the campaign, simply enter your Republican friend’s email address and they’ll get a note letting them know that they motivated you to donate — which will surely make their day.

“Sure enough,” writes James Taranto who linked the above,

BarackObama.com has a special Web form for donors who wish to have “fun at the expense of a Republican.” Let’s say you’re a Republican and your 20-something daughter is an Obamabot. (Have you had a DNA test?) She makes a $10 donation to the president’s campaign, which sends her an email tweaking you–and your name and email address are now on a list of dissenters against the most powerful man in the world.

In his roundup, Jim Geraghty quotes Nice Deb who suggests this tack could sow divisiveness:

It’s not cute, and it’s not funny. Family members will fight and friendships will be lost over this. What person in their right mind would do something like this to someone they like? Wouldn’t it have to be someone they don’t like? So the Obama camp is purposefully egging on their followers’ basest instincts to hurt people during the holidays? (more…)

Given her record, we can pretty much guess that this has more to do with politics than sexual harassment:

The AP reports that Democratic activist (though they don’t identify her as such) “Gloria Allred said Monday that another woman is accusing Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of sexual harassment and will appear at a news conference in New York City later in the day.”

They call this gal a “High-profile discrimination attorney”. High-profile partisan is more like it. Does seem that whenever California Democrats want their dirty work done for them, they call ol’ Gloria.

Now, the lady is going national.

UPDATE: Given the woman who is trotting this accuser forward, we should demand corroboration before taking her seriously.

In linking my post on the president’s demagogic attacks on the Republicans seeking to replace him come January 20, 2013, Glenn Reynolds quoted the paragraph I had intended to paraphrase in a follow-up post:

He didn’t need to attack Republicans. He could have simply highlighted his accomplishments on issues of concern to the gay community, notably repeal of DADT (which even yours truly believes is a feather in his cap). . . . The president’s mean-spirited attack shows his eagerness to repeat the talking points of left-wing pundits. He is attempting to hold Republicans responsible for the actions of perhaps not more than one boorish individual. This demagoguery, having defined the president’s governing style for these past several months, has also begun to define his re-election campaign.

So, why did it attack? Is it that, the president knows, as our reader MV quipped that “‘HRC’ stands for: Hate Republicans Campaign.”  He was just playing to his audience.

Or is there something else to it.  He could have just listed his accomplishments — and not just on DADT repeal — on those issues of concern to gay people.  Instead, he chose to attack Republicans for standing silent when on numerous occasions, he remained silent when others, in his presence, hurled invective at his political adversaries or other groups.

So, why did this self-professed post-partisan politician feel compelled to attack?  This is not the new kind of politics he promised, eschewing the name-calling, buck-passing and divisive rhetoric that seemed to have defined our political discourse for the sixteen years prior (save for a brief respite after 9/11) to his taking office.

The answer to this question might help us better understand the real motivations of the incumbent President of the United States.

When someone on the right behaves boorishly, our friends in the media highlight the incident and pronounce that such behavior defines the GOP, the Tea Party or the conservative movement.  When a liberal behaves in a similar manner, his boorish behavior is just that, boorish behavior, signifying nothing, perhaps just an overzealous individual subject to the passions which, from time to time, overwhelm us all.

It seems that some on the left are just waiting for a conservative to behave badly, so they can use his bad behavior to define the party.  Shortly after an individual booed a gay soldier asking a question at last week’s Republican debate, liberals rushed to make this anonymous lout the face of the Republican Party, with a liberal friend on Facebook posting this dishonest slogan:

Dishonest and perhaps prejudiced as it ascribes to an entire political party the rude actions of one individual. Some Democrats insist that a number of people booed. I watched the clip of the question several times and heard two, possibly three, people booing. Ann Althouse, who did the same, stands by her perception that “only one person audibly” yelled “boo.”

Despite this likely lone boor, the media, John Hinderaker laments, “won’t let the facts get in the way.” Seems there were more people shushing and/or criticizing the boor:

I was at the debate, in the audience on the right hand side about halfway back (here’s my tweet of the video screen that was right in front of us). The person who booed was just a few rows in front of us. The booing got an immediate and angry reaction from nearly everyone sitting around him, who hissed and shushed at him. Lots of loud gasps, “Shhhh!” “No!” “Shut up, you idiot!” etc.

There were more people in this Republican audience criticizing the lout(s) who booed a soldier than there were louts booing. A more accurate description (than the one provided in the image above) of the Republican crowd would be that even Republicans seek to silence and criticize man who boos a gay soldier.

But that just doesn’t fit the narrative.

Contending that “Republicans need to push back hard against this distraction tactic,” Hinderaker reminds us that

On a near-constant basis, Democratic Congressmen blurt out outrages far worse than those attributed to anonymous citizens who attend GOP debates, yet the newspapers will never try to make those absurdities the dominant narrative of the Democratic Party (more…)

This morning, when I read Nick’s post on how the left just can’t let social issues go, I wondered if this obsession accounted for the media focus on Michele Bachmann.  And not just the liberals in the MSM.  It seems that a day doesn’t go by without a liberal friend posting some damning accusation (usually exaggerated) about this charismatic conservative on Facebook.

Now, I’ll grant that many of her activities should draw scrutiny.  But, she has already been subject to more scrutiny than had Barack Obama at this point, indeed perhaps at any point, in the 2008 campaign.  She has her associations with some fringe social conservatives.  He has had his with some very radical leftists and sat for twenty years in a church helmed by a pastor who regularly spewed hate from the pulpit.

I think Nick’s onto something in suggesting that the media seek to focus on the social issues so as to avoid the Democrats’ failed economic policies — and to paint conservatives as fringe cranks more concerned with what people do in the privacy of their homes than as concerned taxpayers worried about a bloated, inefficient and intrusive federal government.

They want to make Mrs. Bachmann the face of the GOP — and not the Michele Bachmann who has shown a remarkable fluency on fiscal issues, but the ostensible crank who worked with someone who knows someone who praised someone else who once engaged in some truly inflammatory language.

Let me stress.  I do not back Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination and will not vote for her in the California primary.   Given her past associations, I don’t think she has the capacity to unite the GOP. (more…)

Looks like one of our critics was having a bad day on Friday and decided to vent on our Facebook page:

It is an article of faith among the gay left that Republicans hate gay people.  A paucity of evidence notwithstanding act as if animosity toward homosexuals is a defining principle of the GOP.  Yet, an article in the New York Times indicates that some Republicans are actually the driving financial force behind the effort to achieve state recognition of marriage the right way in the Empire State — through the elected legislature:

As gay rights advocates intensify their campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, the bulk of their money is coming from an unexpected source: a group of conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party, most of whom are known for bankrolling right-leaning candidates and causes.

heir behind-the-scenes financial support — about $1 million in donations, delivered in recent weeks to a new coalition of gay rights organizations — could alter the political calculus of Albany lawmakers, especially the Republican state senators in whose hands the fate of gay marriage rests.

Seems a lot of my readers have been alerting me to this article, including one who sent me a link to this Stephen H. Miller post on the Times piece.

Do hope this article will cause some on the gay left to reconsider their prejudice.  Yet, for some reason, I don’t think this bit of news will alter some people’s hardened views.

At least since I was an undergraduate, I have noticed that some of the most intolerant leftists I have come across hold tenured positions on university faculties. Those who should be best equipped to wrestle with ideas at odds with their own often show the greatest outrage when students present such ideas.  The latest example comes from the Hawkeye State:

University of Iowa professor who studies same-sex relationships was so upset by an email from a campus Republican group promoting “Conservative Coming Out Week” that she fired off a vulgarity aimed at all Republicans, according to messages released by the school Wednesday.

“F— you, Republicans” was professor Ellen Lewin’s response Monday to the recruiting pitch from UI College Republicans. She sent the email from her school account, drawing outrage from conservative students and one Republican lawmaker.

UI President Sally Mason responded to the incident Wednesday by condemning intolerant political speech.

The university president may have condemned intolerant political speech in broad terms,* but she did not single out, as she should have, the professor nor even identify her political views, as if such intolerance were not legion on the left.  The university should be questioning why a scholar who reacts as Ms. Lewin did was doing on its faculty.

A conservative who spoke out as did she would likely be subject to sensitivity training.  Instead of grappling with her prejudice, this academic used her apology to lash out against Republicans.  In an ”email to the leaders of the College Republicans,” Ms. Lewin explained “that she had just finished reading about ‘fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government’ when she received the pitch”:

“I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities,” Lewin wrote.

But she said the group’s email contained several statements that were “extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity.” She said she was upset that Republicans used the “coming out” language to describe the week given what she called their general disdain for gay rights. She said the email also mocked labor protesters in Wisconsin and animal rights.

This woman just can’t let go of her prejudices and even includes a jibe against those critical of her angry riposte — dubbing their sensibilities “delicate”.  Would she consider a gay man’s sensibilities delicate if he were outraged that a professor replied to his invitation to a talk on anti-gay bigotry with, “F*** you f****t”? (more…)

Via Legal Insurrection:

The results have just been posted in the Milwaukee County canvass, and nothing much changed from yesterday. AP reports Prosser picked up 11 more votes and is the winner.

I repeat, JoAnne Kloppenburg lost.  David Prosser won.

The vote margin stands at 7316, a virtually insurmountable lead for a recount.  All the hanging chads in the world will not put Kloppenburg on the Supreme Court.

Awwwwww…. and all that money wasted by the public employee unions, too.  Oh wait — that’s taxpayer money they waste on their liberal political agenda.  *facepalm*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Those who know — or who are aware of — me primarily through this blog likely think of me as a man consumed by politics. And while, to be sure, politics is one among my many interests, it is only one. For the past seventy-two hours or so, I have not spent much time on the blog, only stopping by briefly to check the spam filter and “rescuing” comments, occasionally and quickly chiming in, wondering (as always) why some people choose to comment without even bothering to understand the post to which they attach their “thoughts.”

It seems they see the space we offer them as a place to vent, projecting their own inner demons (or whatever) onto their ideological adversaries. It never seems to occur to some (but fortunately not all) of them that we might hold our views out of principle, with the conviction that conservative policies are best for all people in this great nation (and around the world), including gay people. Why, I wonder again and again and yet again, do these folks assume we hold these views for sinister means or out of some great need to belong in a community of those who “hate us”?

All that said, I do hope to get back to blogging perhaps even later today — after I run a few errands.

Yet, as these past few days have reminded me that I can full participate in life without blogging regularly about politics, I do hope this post will remind our readers that politics is not all there is to life. And that they may bear in mind (as do most of my left-of-center friends) that just because you disagree about politics doesn’t mean you can’t have other things in common, other passions, other affections, other attitudes toward life.

UPDATE:  Not long after posting this, I found my energy to write about politics again.  Maybe it was the intensity of my cardio workout.