So I'm listening to NPR's Morning Edition on the way to work, and they bring presidential historian and MENSA inductee Cokie Roberts on to talk about whether the Hillary "played the gender card." Rene Montagne basically has to keep supplementing or redirecting Roberts' answers to keep her from sounding like a complete moron (you get the feeling that Cokie just watched CNN and MSNBC and picked up the narrative they developed in the 5 minutes after Tuesday's debate, pretending that conversation has merely been repeating itself in a Groundhog Day-like loop in the ENTIRE WEEK since then) until Montagne asks her (my paraphrase, looks like it's too early to find a transcript):
"So with Senator Clinton talking about how she can survive in an "all boys' club," yet also complaining about the 7 male 'pile on' in this debate, isn't she trying to have her cake and eat it, too?"
...to which Cokie, audibly confused by the question (or, apparently, by the metaphor) answers:
"Well, Rene, every candidate in this candidate has had to 'have their cake and eat it, too.' I mean, they all have characteristics that are sometimes helpful and at other times negative..."
I didn't hear the rest of the interview because I was laughing so hard. Then I remembered that Cokie Roberts is one of the nation's marquee political commentators, and I spent the next 15 minutes lying in the street.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It's time to come clean and admit that we are a Dennis Kucinich-loving party trapped in Hillary Clinton-supporting bodies. ... If you believe in universal, single-payer healthcare and that campaign finance and electronic voting are corrupt; if you hate the Patriot Act and believe it erodes civil rights; if you believe that gay people should have the same rights as straight people, that America should rejoin the Kyoto Protocol and take steps to halt global warming, that we should invest in alternative fuel sources, that our water and air need to be protected from pollution and overuse, that the government should reduce the amount of money it spends on war and instead work to improve the country's education system, and that going to war in Iraq was a terrible and tragic mistake, then you are [a Kucinichite]. ... If you don't believe me, take some of the presidential polls floating around out there, the ones that ask you to answer questions about the issues and then show you a graphic embodiment of the candidate with whom you are best matched. Try this one, for example. Watch as Kucinich's big goofy head floats toward you, taunting you with how far you've strayed from the reasons you originally invested in the democratic process. Here's a different version of it, in which your preferences are tabulated visually after each answer; you can watch for yourself as Denny the K makes his inevitable, inexorable climb to the top. This one and this one aren't as fancy, but answer the questions and see whom you get. Go ahead. And yeah, I know, you're also getting Mike Gravel: Doesn't that just drive the point home, folks?
3 Kuciniches and a Gravel for me. I think there's a conspiracy afoot to recalibrate all online political tests toward DK.
Joan Walsh at Salon mentions this ridiculous defense of Clinton, this attempt to frame Tuesday's debate as men beating up on a woman, and ultimately rejects it. I agree with her (obviously). Alternatively, there's a lot of dissing Obama et al. for insinuating that Clinton "played the gender card," as well, but I think they're wrong as well.
This is a very stupid time for Hillary's campaign and supporters to play the gender card (and yes, Mark Penn, her campaign manager, most certainly played the card, and coincidentally on the same day as her speech about the "all-boys' club" of Washington politics), because it's patently bullshit here. The other candidates piled on her for one reason, and one reason alone: she is winning. They're not scared of a woman running the government, they're scared of themselves not winning. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. How many people would have found it appropriate for Obama, if it were him instead, to play the race card as soon as he got attacked?
And as far as li'l Russ goes, yes, yes he did lay an ambush for Hillary. Yes, he was gunning for her and not the other candidates. No, it wasn't very professional, and yes, he is a douchebag for doing it, but there's a much simpler, more obvious explanation than sexism or anti-Hillaryism for why he targetted Clinton yesterday: ratings. Russ is moderating the 827th Democratic debate on the the least-watched cable news channel in a Democratic primary that's looking increasingly like a cage match between Bruce Lee and Dr. Stephen Hawking; he needed to up the ante here to get some people talking about this one. Meanwhile, Obama's been promising all week that he'll finally start bringing in the heavy artillery, giving Russ a shot to draw out some real fireworks from the candidates, so he does what any irresponsible, ratings-driven pundit would do: he eggs them on.
There's nothing new about this: the primary candidates and media ganged up on Howard Dean just as badly (even worse, in my opinion) once he threatened to sow up the nomination before they'd gotten enough of their precious horse race. Again, it didn't hurt that they actually didn't like him, either, but this is business. And more importantly for this post, it worked. So why wouldn't they try it again?
And look, as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the criticisms leveled at her were absolutely accurate and deserving. The ambush by Russert is thus, in a way, irrelevant, because Obama, Edwards, and Dodd walked into the room intending to beat up on her, and they would have no matter what Russert had asked.
NEW YORK - Don Imus will return to the airwaves Dec. 3 on New York's WABC-AM, only nine months after the cantankerous shock jock's career seemed doomed over his racist, sexist remark about a women's college basketball team.
Citadel Broadcasting Corp. made the announcement Thursday, confirming long-rumored reports that Imus was returning to morning drive time in the same city where he was banished in April.
"We are ecstatic to bring Don Imus back to morning radio," said 77 WABC President and General Manager Steve Borneman. "Don's unique brand of humor, knowledge of the issues and ability to attract big-name guests is unparalleled. He is rested, fired up and ready to do great radio."
Thank blond-haired blue-eyed Jesus! All these, err, months we've been denied a radio host with knowledge of the big issues, like how many CBS executives are "money-grubbing Jews" and whether or not Hillary Clinton will pander to African Americans by wearing "cornrows and gold teeth."
I also really like his incisive commentary on the media, like referring to Gwen Ifill as "the cleaning lady." And we need guys like Imus for the hard-hitting interviews with presidential candidates, like the one where he told Gov. Bill Richardson: "besa mi culo" or said that Dennis Kucinich should replace al Zarqawi. That Imus, he's too busy tellin' it like it is to bother with political correctness!
So you've probably heard by now that Hillary had a hell of a time in the debate the other day. She got caught faking a position on an admittedly complex immigration issue, and Dodd, Edwards, and Obama ripped her a new one (and are continuing to today). And worst of all, it actually got media coverage; Brian Williams made time to show it, as did Katie Couric, as well as our local news.
On the other hand, I'm always talking about made-up scandals and traditional media values that predispose them to harping on certain (unimportant) issues while glossing over or not even noticing other (actually important) ones. Is this all smoke, just more b.s. from the same Beltway crowd that spent 8 long years deriding and wagging their fingers at her husband because, as David Broder famously put it, "he came over here and trashed the place, and it's not his place?" Will this matter a wit in the primary?
That depends entirely upon whether voters decide it matters. I know, that sounds like a cop-out, but we've seen rhetorical stumbles derail presidential campaigns before. Anyone remember "Actually I voted for it before I voted against it..."? I'm tempted to conclude that the reason that line succeeded so mightily and stood out from all the rest of the chatter so much is because it was something 1. out of Kerry's own mouth that 2. got widespread media coverage when people were listening and 3. perhaps most importantly, fed an already existent, if inchoate, narrative about John Kerry (in this case, the "flip-flopper").
Comparing the two, notice that Hillary's gaffe is similar, but not perfect. It was words that she said herself, and it feeds an emerging narrative about Hillary that she has no core values, but has incredible ambition, and thus will "say anything to get elected." She was confronted with a case where the more popular position was not apparent, and she couldn't find a position. I think that she's vulnerable to such a narrative (as are, frankly, all Democrats simply because they are Democrats), and there is still time to fall.
In fact, I think Hillary is more vulnerable to this narrative because of her electoral strategy. The reason that Hillary is favored among both liberals and centrists, among big business dems and pro-regulation dems, among anti-war voters and defense contractors, is because she's opted to become a cypher. People ridicule Obama for being too vague on policy, but the fact is that Hillary has made it a point to talk big about how the Iraq War should be stopped, or how we need a new health care system, or we need to stop climate change, and then she releases a plan that wows with detail but leaves all the big doors open.
Will Hillary stop the Iraq War? Hillary wants to keep a residual force there; how big would that "residual force" be? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? She won't say, and that's the $64,000 question that decides whether she is pro-war or anti-war, isn't it? If 100,000 troops remain in Iraq past 2013, in what way has she "ended" the war?
And what about health care? She says she'll set up a government-run alternative health insurance for the poor, but how good will it be compared to private health insurance? That is the central question, because nationalized health care is capable of being far more efficient and negotiating lower prices, which would make it an attractive alternative even for those with private insurance. But if she's had it vetted by the insurance industry, which she says she has, how would they allow such a thing unless it was kept artificially shitty so that no one would actually opt for it unless they had no other choice?
Hillary talks a big talk, talks about change and reform and whatnot, but on every position she's left herself an out to avoid the reformist position if she so chooses, and that makes people able to see in her whatever they want to see. Anti-war democrats will tell you with a straight face that Clinton is the candidate to end the war, and no matter how many times you throw that residual force nonsense in their face, they continue to press the issue because they only see what they want to see. Meanwhile, several prominent hawks have said they support Hillary because she's the one least likely to end the war, and claim she's never said anything about ending the war. They see in her what they want to see because Hillary gives them both options.
That's why this moment in the debate is trouble: she tried to do the same thing here, to give people both options so that everyone thinks she took their own position, but she flubbed it and got caught. I think Edwards' attack was the most damaging ("I think I just heard Hillary give 2 different positions in 2 minutes") because it highlighted her actual strategy. That's exactly what she did.
Hillary's actually lucky that no other moments from the debate went viral, because not long at all before the immigrant driver's license snafu, she was asked to pledge that "Iran would not get nuclear weapons during her administration," and she resorted to dissembling so juvenile that the audience actually laughed at her answer:
It was a stupid move. She should've just pledged.
But I digress. "Will this actually damage her campaign?" is the issue. There's a big reason to believe it won't: the number 2 above--getting widespread media coverage when people are listening. Yeah, Brian and Timmy and Katie and John Stewart all covered it, but there's reason to believe that very few voters have really started paying attention to the race yet. How little attention, you may ask? Well, only 59% of Americans-- slightly over half-- can nameeven one single Republican running in the primary. And "most" are unable to even name any Democrats other than Hillary and/or Obama. Furthermore, it is still 2 months until the first primary, and 3 or 4 months until most of the country actually votes. Not to mention, the debate itself was on MSNBC, not exactly the most watched primetime spot.
If people did notice, however, I think this could get out of hand for Hillary pretty quickly. Suddenly li'l Timmy (not to mention actual voters!) would be focused on getting specifics out of her that slam the door on all those little outs, and as she's forced to take actual positions on everything, many will become less pleased with her, but any attempts to hedge, even the slightest bit, would further legitimize the narrative and undermine her credibility and perceived integrity.
Then, and only then, will we have ourselves a race.
and he says it's torture. This is probably the best discussion out there of exactly what waterboarding constitutes, the sensation it creates, and why it's torture.
to the tune of 60-36 in Kentucky's gubernatorial race by Democrat Steve Beshear. Elections are next week, folks; this baby's over. Congrats to our KY friends.
Clear Channel has decided not to play Springsteen's liberal music despite the fact that it's no.1 on Billboard top album sales. Doesn't necessarily mean it's political, but it's an odd choice, and the company has a history of contributing heavily to Republicans.
David Yepsen thinks Huckabee can win Iowa, which would be a pretty stunning coup. It's hard to tell sometimes in these horserace-y elections whether there's a genuine darkhorse, or whether the press is just trying to make it seem more exciting, but I think there's something substantial in Huckabee's surge. For one, it's the Democratic race, not the Republican one, that needs a little injection of excitement; the Republican race is already pretty exciting, what with Giuliani leading national polls but Romney comfortably ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire and Fred Thompson's surging, then stagnating numbers.
Third, Huckabee makes by far the most sense as a GOP candidate. I've been dumbfounded at his lack of support all this time. Look at his credentials: he's a relatively popular governor, a lifelong conservative (and not like a Fred Thompson "I-lobbied-for-pro-choice-groups" conservative, but an actual, bonafide conservative), and a Baptist minister. He's a humble, likable speaker, and has an interesting and endearing personal story: he used to be morbidly obese, and by cleaning up his life he lost 110 lbs. It might not seem like much, but it makes him seem much more "real"-- or to use the political buzzword, "authentic"-- than the other guys.
And don't think for a second that he's unelectable. Huckabee may not be perfect, but he's a hell of a lot more ideologically pure than Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, or McCain, and comes off as more likable than them as well. He'd have no tougher of a time against Hillary Clinton than the others, and unlike some of them, he could actually beat her in a personality contest.
Not that the Huckster isn't without baggage. He suffers from much of the ignorance and sexual Puritanism one would expect from a southern Baptist minister: he doesn't believe in evolution, for instance (you're right, Mike, man didn't come from monkeys. Humans actually descended from primates), which bothers me considering what happened the last time a president refused to listen to information that didn't conform to his beliefs. He also listens a little too much to rightwing conspiracy theories, which ultimately led to make his extremely stupid and myopic decision to free a convicted rapist, against the advice of every advisory position in Arkansas, because he thought Clinton framed the man.
That rapist later raped and murdered a young woman in Missouri, and has since died in prison.
Of course, he's also kind of a dipshit, but let's be honest, Republicans, and some independents, have been falling for the "dipshit with common sense" routine over and over for the last 20 years at least.
And, apropos of the last link, he's the worst kind of anti-Roe: the kind that really just wants women to stop having sex except when called upon to do their duty as baby-farms. He doesn't want abortion to be legal, but he really doesn't want people having safe sex, either, hence the apprehension about condoms. I guess life is a sacred, wonderful thing that comes as a gift from God as punishment for defiling one's body.
It's funny sometimes, the things you read that make you want to blog. I just read all about Giuliani wondering aloud if waterboarding qualifies as "torture" and joking about sleep deprivation that it must mean he is being tortured on the campaign trail. Yup, he's our favorite little fascist. Yet what I actually want to talk about is a great little review of the new Judd Apatow movie "Dan in Real Life" in Salon. Two things, specifically.
Stephanie Zacharek talks about how, even though he gets it right in this movie, Steve Carell doesn't normally do "heartwarming" well. I suspect, by the way, that has A LOT to do with our expectations of him; you don't think heartwarming when you think of a comedian who made a name for himself debating Stephen Colbert on Daily Show and as the voice of Gary in "The Ambiguously Gay Duo". Says Zacharek: "When Judd Apatow was making "The 40 Year Old Virgin," a Universal executive, after watching some of the dailies, remarked that Carell looked like a serial killer..."
I got a kick out of that bit.
She also lays into Dane Cook several times in the article. She says early on: "...Dane Cook appears in a fearsomely large supporting role. In other words, there are plenty of things not to like about [the movie]." This just before calling him a "frighteningly uncharismatic faux-comedian." Sounds pretty harsh, but I gotta say I can't argue with her. I've never understood Cook's routine or his following. There have been several moments where I'm watching him on TV and I'm thinking to myself that the joke he told seems like it should be funny, but I'm not laughing. I'm nowhere remotely near laughing. I also inevitably feel the same emotions when I watch him: empathetic embarrassment occasionally mixed with mild annoyance. Yet I know at least one person who's obsessed with Dane Cook and thinks he's the greatest comedian around, and clearly there must be more or he would never have made it off the intarwebz. Maybe Stephanie and I (and almost everyone I know) aren't getting something, because I think he may be the single most unfunny comic I've ever seen.
And I've been to a comedy club.
This can't be blamed on the guy, but here is a snippet from Dane Cook's bio on Yahoo! Movies:
But this “hottest comic no one has heard of,” ended up cold-cocking the comedy world with his rock ‘n’ roll persona and hilarious observational bits on everyday life and pop cultural touchstones.
Mmmm, that's some tasty cliche! Did anyone else roll their eyes so hard they hurt themselves?
During an MSNBC interview Wednesday, Rep. Ron Paul was asked if he would run for president as a third-party candidate. Paul replied, "No, I don't plan to run in a third party. That's not my goal. But if we have a candidate that loves the war and loves the neocon position of promoting--" Interviewer Norah O'Donnell cut Paul off at that point, and did not return to the topic during the rest of the interview.
Does anyone else find it so delicious that the reporter cut Paul off right as he was about to bash the kind of people running Giuliani's campaign and Bush's foreign policy? Right as he was getting to the juicy stuff? It was like the whole national discourse in microcosm!
I put the odds at about 1000:1, but it would really be something if Giuliani won, and then both the Christian Right and Ron Paul made a 3rd party run. The one thing that keeps me from saying this definitely couldn't happen is that there is already, in existence and on the ballot in most states, a party tailor-made for each of them.
Then again, I think the last thing anyone wants is for that kind of realignment to stick: that would mean a viable Constitution Party.
The DVDs of Firefly were flown up to the International Space Station by astronaut Steven Swanson on board the shuttle Atlantis during it's [sic] June 2007 STS-117 mission.
Here's the text of it. I've also found a pretty good LA Times article on the subject here that focuses on the role of overly numerous and unqualified tax assessors in the problem, an issue Daniels appears to be trying to fix. There's a particularly interesting episode they recount (in maddening little detail) about business properties in Marion County that were significantly undervalued. If this is a common phenomenon, then I suspect that may go a long way toward explaining just why local and state revenues keep falling so short.
I have one serious issue with it, though: what's up with capping taxes on rental property higher than other homes? Is this not asking the poor to carry a disproportionally high property tax burden, i.e., making property taxes regressive? Anyone got an answer for this?
Come to think of it, I'm also surprised about the insistence on a constitutional amendment. Why is simple legislation not good enough, especially in case the government falls on real hard times at some point and needs a temporary increase? Then again, the Indy Star reports that a constitutional amendment would send a tax cutting referendum to the people at the same time as the governor's own election.
Suddenly it all becomes clear.
WSBT (I believe) interviewed John Broden, my local rep, and he had something especially interesting to say: several of Daniels' proposals have already been legislated. So much for the no-nonsense problem solving of my man Mitch.
Oh my God! From Larry Johnson, former CIA agent and classmate of Plame:
In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat... As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.
When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.
Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own. ... So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help.
Apparently Plame recounts this story in her new book, Fair Game. I heard Terry Gross interviewing her yesterday, and when conversation turned to the Bush Administration and the exposure of her identity to the Prince of Darkness, Plame actually dropped the T-bomb ("treason"). That's a pretty serious charge to be throwing around,* and I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone in a non-elected, non-appointed government office use that word before.
My guess at the time was that someone she knew and had been working closely with had died because of that exposure. She was mad as hell.
*-- Not that Plame's characterization of the outing of a covert CIA operative is necessarily wrong or right, mind you; it's just that it's much stronger than the language I think most people are accustomed to hearing.
