Arkady's Thoughts

In the upcoming Republican debate slated for June 13th in New Hampshire there will be a slight change of plans from the powers that be.  Gary Johnson who participated in the first debate and is polling neck and neck with Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty will be excluded from participation . According to some fuzzy math from the main stream media and a secret formula that is, well, secret, CNN determined that for your viewing and listening pleasure they will be performing you a service by inviting only those candidates that are best for you to hear and see.  Despite facing a backlash in the 2008 campaign by essentially pulling these same shenanigans with Ron Paul, the main stream media since then dubbed lame stream media continues to exert its choke hold on political messaging. With voters increasingly frustrated with the flavor of Republican candidates being served to them by the establishment the need for choice and variety has never been greater.  Instead of...

Watch the Fox News first Republican Primary of 2012.  My opinion of the debate coming later. My reaction: I think it is safe to say that this particular debate offered us a glimpse into three distinct groups of politicians.  On one hand this particular breakdown is nothing new to Republican politics, but on the other hand we are fortunate enough that we are at least presented with options. The three categories in my mind can be broken down as follows: Status-quo Republican :  These particular folks tout the standard Republican line and even if they may on occasion criticize some particular policy they content with the direction of the GOP and generally believe that if the country were to adopt these policies then things would fall into place.   New Republican:   Although they are quite different from the status-quo by the nature of them being new, they still espouse the same Republican status-quo ideals and do not veer far from the t...

In a grizzly act of savage violence four police officers were gunned down by a man whose criminal past shocked authorities.  Maurice Clemmons the alleged shooter does have an interesting past and it is inexorably tied to Mike Huckabee a 2008 presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas.  Huckabee was touted during the campaign as someone utilizing the commutation power a bit liberally and liberal is a rather appropriate choice of words in this particular case.  In an interview , Huckabee states: "If I could have known nine years ago, looked into the future, would I have acted favorably upon the parole board's recommendation? Of course not," he said. "One of the things that is horrible and just, again, one of the realities you have to confront is the criminal justice system is far from perfect, and in this case it failed miserably on all sides." Huckabee can blame the justice system all day long, but there is no escaping that it was Huckabee'...