on morality in politics ...
I am watching Rachel Maddow, including the clips on Rick Santorum's idiotic response first to small child asking about making medicine more affordable, then a mother of a child with cancer who noted other children at the oncology center whose families could not afford the care - let it suffice to say that Santorum seemed to weigh the profits of the drug companies as more valuable than the iives of children.
Then Rachel had a discussion with E. J. Dionne. He noted that the Religious Right had been successful in setting the bounds of legitimacy as far as what counted as moral issues.
I disagree.
We should be reclaiming the public space. . . .
Eugene Robinson: "Romney Fails the Empathy Test"
and that'st true even if you place his words on not being concerned about the very poor in the context of the social safety net.
This is a must-read - and pass-on - column.
It is not easy to abstract, and in a sense I will not.
Rather than the official poverty level of 22,314 - which gives 15.1% of our population, or 46.2 million people, of whom approximately 20 million are non-Hispanic whites, 13 million Hispanic and almost11 million Black - Robinson argues to use a figure of the poverty level plus 25%, which results in approximately 1 in 5 Americans. Robinson writes