Josh Marshall offers a standard on-the-one-hand, on-the-other analysis of the question whether Hillary would or should accept an offer of the VP slot on the Democratic ticket: she’d have to wait 8 long years, and be 69 years old, before she could run for Pres. again, and she may have more influence in the Senate; but it would be an unprecedented achievement and a chance to be right at the center of power once more. He concludes she’d be better off in the Senate, where the Democrats are likely to be the majority and she’ll accrue enough seniority to really get things done.
Most people who accept the vice presidency do so either because they believe it will line them up to succeed to the presidency or because it brings them to a level of power and honor their careers held little prospect of bringing them otherwise. But neither applies to Hillary Clinton. She’s already of the stature and standing to run for president. She’s a genuinely historic figure. And she’s already been heavily involved in a successful two term administration.
Remember too that the recent trend for greater vice presidential involvement in key administration decision-making has brought with it a flat requirement that vice presidents be strictly loyal and politically subservient to the president. Quite simply, the vice presidency is beneath Hillary’s stature. It’s not clear to me why Hillary would want to spend four or eight years in a position that I think would actually diminish her stature for the possibility of running for president again almost a decade from now.
As it goes, it’s not an unreasonable analysis. And, as he notes, there is a serious question whether Obama can overcome the bitterness of the campaign to trust her as VP, or even see her as the best choice. But I think there is a way to swing the deal that would work tremendous benefits for both of them and the country.
May 8th, 2008
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General, Politics, News & Current Events |
16 comments
Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding. . . .
Descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. . . .
That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.
Wow - pretty radical words. Must have been some sort of angry, hateful, anti-white, black nationalist, racist, fear-mongering, Malcolm X-wannabe who spewed that kind of anti-American garbage.
Oh, wait. It was Condi Rice, unindicted Iraqi Occupation co-conspirator, vestigial Secretary of State, and fever-dream GOP Vice-Presidential possible who claims that the United States suffers from a “birth defect” relating to its treatment of blacks and that that history still matters. So I guess we’re not going to be hearing anything about how “angry”, “hateful”, or “anti-American” she is, because . . . IOKIYA(B)R.
March 28th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race |
13 comments
Via commenter Ted and Obsidian Wings, we find this:
Finally, the Barack Obama campaign has found a big gun to help shoot down Hillary Rodham Clinton’s self-proclaimed foreign policy experience. And he may be the wackiest gun of all: Sinbad, the actor, who has come out from under a rock to defend Obama in the war over foreign policy credentials.
Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she’s taking much grief on the campaign trail.
Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.
In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the “scariest” part of the trip was wondering where he’d eat next. “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’”
Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. “They said there might be sniper fire,” Clinton said.
Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn’t remember that, either.
“I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.’”
In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, “We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.”
Say what? As Sinbad put it: “What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.’”
Whoops!
I mean, all politicians engage in BS of some sort or another. But how bad does it have to be that you would resort to something that’s so easily — and so embarrassingly — refuted?
Quoth Hilzoy:
Honestly: there was no need for Clinton to do any of this. She did play a serious policy role in her husband’s administration (even if she didn’t help pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, as she claims.) The only reason for her to inflate a trip with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow into a serious diplomatic mission, and a trip to Northern Ireland involving “a visit to a women’s drop-in centre and two business parks” into helping bring peace to Northern Ireland, is that by pretending to have been more involved in foreign policy than she really was, she can pretend that while Barack Obama isn’t ready to be commander in chief, she is.
March 24th, 2008
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Politics, News & Current Events |
31 comments
Peggy Noonan mostly praised Obama’s speech, and largely seemed to understand it, which puts her in a minority of conservative commentators. But she criticizes him, near the end of her article, for . . . wait for it . . . not understanding America. Yes, snotty Reaganite lickspittles who made a profession of courting racists and religious bigots with coded signals, demonizing “welfare queens”, glorifying death squads and Nazi war dead, excusing incompetence and ignorance at every turn, and obsessing over wayward blowjobs, now presume to tell candidates of the working-class party what the real America is all about.
March 21st, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Economics, Culture, News & Current Events, Fiasco, Torture |
9 comments
Sean Braisted brings on the snark:
I don’t believe that [Wright deserved a “lifetime of service to Christ” award] for one second. After all, I’ve seen tons (or 3-4 minutes worth) of footage which shows him angry and abrasive and hate-filled. Yeah, some might say that taking 3 minutes from a seven year period might not be an accurate measure of what he or his church was about, but we know differently. Context is for American-hating liberals…I want simplicity, and to think that Wright could be more complex than the youtube clips show, well, that is just downright un-American.
Amen, brother. Amen.
March 20th, 2008
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Politics, News & Current Events, Race |
one comment
Katherine at Obsidian Wings says it well:
[I]f a white candidate is affiliated in some fashion with a white religious figure who preaches incendiary sermons, he’s a nutty preacher, and it’s a one day story or doesn’t make the TV news at all. The white candidate can say: “if he said insulting things about Catholics or Jews, I strongly disagree,” entirely ignore hatred of Muslims, and that’s that. If a black candidate is affiliated with a black religious figure who preaches incendiary sermons, he’s a nutty BLACK preacher, and it’s a weeklong story & a huge threat to his candidacy. Repeatedly denouncing the preacher’s excessive remarks–in specific terms–and giving the most thoughtful speech about race in America in decades & exhibiting no hatred of whites or anyone else, is not sufficient. A lot of people say there is nothing that Obama can do or say that can excuse his association with a black man who would say those things. Never mind whether Obama was there. Never mind when Obama found out about them. Never mind whether they’re typical of Wright’s sermons–the media cannot be bothered to explore that question at all. Never mind that Obama specifically denounced those remarks, repeatedly. Never mind that Obama obviously doesn’t share those views. Never mind that there is absolutely no evidence in his entire public record that he hates America or hates white people, or that he has ever pandered to those sentiments. He is guilty of fraternizing with an angry, scary black man; he is therefore unfit for the presidency.
That is, as far as I’m concerned a huge double standard which is quite obviously a function of Obama’s & Wright’s race–and the fact that Wright’s remarks were directed at the United States & against white people, instead of against a hated minority like Muslims or gay people.
Go read the whole thing.
March 20th, 2008
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Politics, News & Current Events, Race |
59 comments
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the “Obama’s Pastor” controversy, because it’s the product of three forms of conservative stupidity that I am glad to be immune to. The first is their deliberate, calculated, and organized distortion of political campaigns with red herring issues and machine-gun assaults of irrelevant attacks whipped up by their noise machine to drown out a substantive discussion of issues on which they cannot compete. The second is their inability to think for themselves and its corollary, their assumption that nobody else is capable of thinking for themselves - hence the bizarre “controversy” over whether Obama was present in the room when somebody else said something that makes white conservatives uncomfortable. (It’s true: a major portion of the noisemaking over individual sentences spoken by Jeremiah Wright and taken out of context by Obama’s critics is the question not whether Obama agrees with them, but whether he was present when they were spoken. Somebody should ask these clowns if they are so weak-minded that they are incapable of hearing anything and not believing it - and if not, why they assume that black people must be.) The third is the inherent inability even to acknowledge race and racial history as an issue in America - the drooling stupidity that allows conservative whites to imagine that the Confederate flag is not a symbol of race hatred, but that black anger over discrimination is. Like so much of conservative discourse, this nonsensical “controversy” simply fails to rise to the level that would deserve to be taken seriously; as with conservatism in general, giving it no credence is the safest and most efficient way to deal with the mess it presents.
But the speech that Obama planned on the subject was interesting to me - interesting as a phenomenon. It occurs to me that this election has now seen two “Kennedy moments” - defining speeches in which a candidate has been forced, by others’ bigotry, to confront their own outsider status and challenge America to expand its notion of community membership and our range of shared values. Kennedy did it with panache over the question of Catholicism, and this year Romney did a decent job in the same vein regarding Mormonism. Obama faces a larger challenge on the question of race. Race and sex are the fundamental lines of discrimination written into the Constitution itself; race especially was the ground of the most vicious and tenacious divisions of American society, the one that defined and shaped the country as no other, and laid the groundwork on which the lives of all Americans are lived today.
Americans have always been able to make themselves feel good about themselves by invoking both religiosity and religious freedom, but they have invested to an even greater degree in defining and maintaining racial divisions. In some ways, Kennedy and Romney were fighting a downhill battle; it required little more for either of them than to express teary-eyed religious fervor and promise not to go overboard with it. Obama is unquestionably struggling uphill; he cannot claim community with other groups by invoking his devotion to his own, as Kennedy and Romney could, and he cannot erase their bigotry by any degree of non-threatening rhetoric or promises not to challenge their complacency (which is just as well, because that’s not what he’s about). Even so, a speech on race is an opportunity to bring race to the forefront of the discussion in a serious way, and potentially to cut through the winking code-words and denials and evasions that invariably smothered any approach to the subject heretofore. It was an unique enough opportunity, also, that it just might have had a chance to make whites shut up and listen for a change, and maybe shift the grounds of discussion just a bit. I was interested to see what Obama would do with it.
(More after the break)
March 18th, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Read Your Bible, Race |
23 comments
Commenter Stormy Dragon on 2007-09-18:
And in either case, while these foreclosures are no doubt excruciating for the families involved, I find it rather incredible to suggest that something affecting less than two tenths of one percent of the households in the US is going to crash the entire national economy.
I’m starting to think the housing bubble is this year’s ’summer of the shark’ story.
This weekend:
With a deal finally struck, JPMorgan Chase & Co. will embark on the tough task of absorbing Bear Stearns Cos., once among its biggest rivals on Wall Street.
As the assimilation proceeds, the financial industry wants to know exactly how badly Bear Stearns bet on mortgage-backed investments. Unwinding the nation’s fifth-biggest investment houses should provide some insight into what other financial institutions might have on their books.
JPMorgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns for the shockingly low price of $2 per share, or $236.2 million, occurred Sunday night, in a deal that was fast-tracked by the federal government to avoid a bankruptcy. A complete collapse of Bear Stearns might have completely crushed the already-dwindling confidence in the global financial system, which has frozen up after last year’s collapse of the subprime mortgage market.
Bear Stearns was the most exposed to risky bets on the loans; it is now the first major bank to be undone by that market’s collapse.
H/T: Commenter Ted, whose encyclopedic memory of such discussions is impressive.
March 17th, 2008
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Economics, News & Current Events |
no comments
A fine example of IOKIYAR, summed up by TPM commenter EM:
What drives me crazy is how this could have been avoided so easily if Wright was the slightest bit media-savvy. Had he merely controlled his tongue and limited himself to advocating an attack on Iran to encourage massive worldwide Muslim attacks leading to a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of end-times and bringing about Armageddon and the summary slaughter of every Jew, Muslim, Catholic, and non-believer on the planet while rapturing him and his flock up to heaven, then followed it up by denouncing Catholics as cult members and blaming Hurricane Katrina on gay people, this story wouldn’t be metastasizing like this. One five minute milquetoast repudiation by Obama and it would all be behind him.
But what does Wright do instead? He spews this vile “God damn America” bile. What a psycho.
Double-standard? What double-standard?!
March 14th, 2008
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Politics, Weekend Flame Bait, News & Current Events |
58 comments
I honestly expected one of the Kevins (in particular, KTK) would cover this one, but since neither has, I’ll go ahead and do it:
What a maroon. (As Bugs Bunny would say.)
Spitzer must resign at this point, and rumors are that he will, of course. But the hypocrisy in this case is simply mind-boggling. There’s word that Spitzer may have been done in by the very anti-money-laundering rules he helped to implement, and if that’s the case, the irony would be delicious.
By this time, all the bad puns have been taken, as have the snide remarks about how it would have been male prostitutes if he were a Republican, so I’ll spare you.
If it’s actual thoughtful coverage you’re waiting for, you’re going to have to wait for one of the Kevins to address it, or hop on over to Talking Points Memo, where they’ve got a lot of good analysis.
UPDATE: Spitzer has resigned
March 11th, 2008
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Politics, News & Current Events |
66 comments
Not much to say about this flap, other than to direct you to David Corn (H/T: Hilzoy):
The big news today–if you listen to the Hillary Clinton camp–is that Samantha Power, a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama (and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide), referred to Clinton as a “monster” in what she believed was an off-the-record remark with a reporter. She did apologize. But the Clintonites, ever on the lookout for an issue (or non-issue) to hype, quickly called on Obama to fire Power.
Non-News Flash: Aides to presidential candidates routinely refer to the competition in harsh terms, particularly when they talk to reporters off the record. More than once, a top Clinton person has told me that s/he believes Obama is a self-righteous fraud–or worse. It was, of course, always off the record. But if I had reported any of these remarks, I could have gotten the pop The Scotsman has received for disclosing Power’s comment.
The Clinton people do deserve chutzpah points for trying to turn this nothing-burger into a full-course feast. During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton’s top spinner, Howard Wolfson, compared Obama and his aides to Kenneth Starr because they dared to question Clinton’s refusal to release her income taxes. (In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank credited me with asking the question that prompted the Ken Starr remark –a quip obviously locked and loaded before the call.) The comparison was ridiculous. But in Democratic circles, there’s not much of a bigger slur than, Hey, you’re Ken Starr! For Democrats, Starr is the functional equivalent of a monster.
So the Clinton crowd does not have the moral high ground in this round.
I figured I’d leave an open thread for discussion. How bad does this hurt, what’s the best response, etc.
March 7th, 2008
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Politics, Weekend Flame Bait, News & Current Events |
27 comments
The principal writers of The Wire, the HBO drama about the Baltimore underworld, have published a public call for civil disobedience in non-violent drug crime prosecutions:
[The drug] war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That’s the world’s highest rate of imprisonment.
The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.
What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain. . . .
[W]e offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn’t resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
“Jury nullification” has often been urged as a strategy against perceived government abuses, particularly in the case of drug crimes. (It is also a favorite mythology of the delusional far-right militia types, which hardly makes it more attractive.) I have written about my own flirtation with that path, under similar circumstances. But in this case they are advocating it not merely as a protest against unjust laws, but as a strategy to get those laws overturned by making them unenforceable.
It would be remarkable if they could recruit enough people to make an observable difference in these cases. What is also remarkable is that this article appeared in Time magazine - once the bastion of toe-the-line traditionalism. It’s interesting, too, that the staff of a popular TV show would take such a stand publicly - advocating for civil disobedience on a controversial issue involving widely-despised behavior, and linking their stance, indirectly at least, to the content of their show. Simply by countenancing such statements, both Time and HBO signal that this stance - open recruitment to contempt for the law - has come within the bounds of acceptable opinion. (This isn’t the first time network TV has taken such risks. The coded anti-Vietnam-war ethos of M*A*S*H, and the somewhat tame feminism of Maude and One Day at a Time were controversial in their day, and also reflected the personal opinions of their stars or producers. But they didn’t advocate civil disobedience.)
I wonder if these could be signs of a turning tide in the “War on Drugs”.
March 6th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Culture, News & Current Events |
5 comments
The news has been reporting for the last day or so on the plight of young Harry Windsor, Prince of Whateverthefuck and one of the few members of the British royal family who doesn’t turn your stomach merely by existing [oops - yes he is]. Bowing to his family’s destiny, Harry joined the Army, but it was made clear that his royal arse was much too precious ever to be exposed to combat. Legitimately, also, there were fears that the knowledge of his presence in a combat theater would subject his unit mates to increased danger as enemies from around the globe fell over each other to take the most exalted scalp since Mountbatten’s. The issue was especially poignant given the British Army’s long and less-than-exalted history in Afghanistan.
To his credit, he complained of being kept back, going so far as to threaten to resign his comission if he wasn’t allowed to play a full role. He was eventually shipped over - spending most of his time in a behind-the-lines role, but also going on patrols with his air-cav unit. The British press were briefed on his participation, under “embargo” conditions (they agree not to publish the information until given permission, in return for being informed). For less than three months, Harry was in the combat theater, if not exactly in frequent combat, and things were going OK.
Yesterday, Matt Drudge revealed these facts, and within 24 hours Harry was homeward-bound. It seems likely that Drudge was not subject to the embargo - that is, he did not personally agree to its terms - but likely got a leak and chose to publish the information anyway. That he was, in actual effect, working to get a prince of the British royal succession, and soldiers of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, killed, was apparently not a reason in his mind not to do so.
February 29th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Fiasco |
37 comments
I’ve been ambivalent as between Hillary and Obama - each has great strengths and also some flaws or weaknesses. But Obama impresses me more and more as a man whose principles are more than window-dressing, and sorely needed. Today, he proved it beyond question:
An Open Letter to LGBT Americans
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage. Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia– that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.
Barack Obama
It rankles a little that he still finds it necessary to equivocate on this “civil union” nonsense, but it’s important to remember that that was the progressive position on gay rights just a few years ago. No one in high office, in the history of this nation, has made so forthright and so morally upright a statement in favor of full and uncompromising equality - certainly none with the Presidency in their grasp, still less on the very issue that the haters and bigots had used to put one of their own into the Presidency at the very time it was said. He didn’t have to say it - he could have coasted into office while keeping this issue on the back burner - but he chose to stand up in a way that was so badly needed, and will cause such a vicious backlash, and that he could have so easily avoided.
Aside from simply being right on an important issue, Obama today showed remarkable moral depth. It was inspiring - in a way that has nothing to do with rhetoric or visionary exhortation, but with true moral courage and the dedication to govern his life and work by his ideals. It is impossible not to admire this.
February 28th, 2008
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General, Politics, Legal Issues, Church & State, Religion, Culture, News & Current Events |
72 comments
The wingnut brigade is falling over itself today because Michelle Obama is proud of her country. They think it’s a bad thing. Specifically, Obama said:
[F]or the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.
They can’t stand the implication that she hasn’t had much to feel proud of in the past. Naturally they think that’s her fault, and naturally they’re ginning up their slavering noise machine, complete with screaming Drudge headlines and oleaginous crap from repulsive loons like John Podhoretz and Michelle Malkin.
But, really, what is questionable, or even surprising, about such a sentiment? What decent American hasn’t been frustrated and disappointed by the country’s many inequities, its many failures to make good on its own promise, and the repeated disasters engendered by lack of decency among its leadership? Who hasn’t been hungry for the chance to claim the birthright of true equality, true freedom, and political and material largesse that America portends, without making excuses or sweeping historical travesties and abuses under the rug? And for black Americans especially, who but a fool would imagine that the American dream and promise has been anything but a mockery of partial fulfillment and cynical denial? If you have any decency or sympathy at all, how can you not feel unsatisfied with America’s halting and incomplete fulfillment of its promise?
[more after the jump]
February 19th, 2008
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General, Politics, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race |
23 comments
The Washington Post - once a crown jewel of the newspaper profession - has been slowly descending into sheer hackery. This is only more of the same:
About 44 percent of Michigan Democrats voted against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) yesterday in the party’s primary, with the vast majority of that group marking “uncommitted” on ballots that did not include any other major candidates. . . .
With 89 percent counted, Clinton captured 56 percent of the vote. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) placed third with about 4 percent, behind 39 percent for “uncommitted.”
As the story notes, the DNC voted not to seat the Michigan electors, in response to Michigan’s moving its primary date ahead of other states in the traditional schedule. As a result, most of the Dem candidates did not bother to put their names on the ballot there, so many voters had no way to vote for their preferred candidate. The ballot includes a line for “Uncommitted”, and many voters chose that either because they had no other candidate or as a protest vote against Hillary.
Given these distortions, the outcome isn’t that meaningful. But there was a vote, and it was overwhelmingly for Hillary. So what did the Post have to say about it?
“44 Percent Vote Against Clinton”
Now, this is not just an obvious example of putting the worst possible spin on things - it isn’t even reasonably representative of what happened in political terms. Their 44% includes all the “Uncommitted” votes and any vote for any other candidate, write-in or otherwise - that is, everyone who didn’t vote for Clinton. But of course that means that 56% of the voters did vote for Clinton (as they do in fact report - in the last paragraph). This is a landslide by most reckonings. It’s hard to tell whether this represents her real level of support there, since it is distorted both by the fact that she was the only competitive candidate on the ballot (which would likely increase her support) and by the fact that her enemies were pushing the “Uncommitted” line as a way of hurting her (tending to reduce her total). But the fact remains that well over half the voters in the state voted for Hillary when they had other options on the ballot.
There are plenty of ways they could have expressed this:
“56% Vote in Favor of Clinton”
“56% Vote Against All Democrats Other Than Clinton”
“Over 90% of Voters With a Preference Chose Clinton”
“Hillary Fans Swamp Naysayers 3:2″
“96% Vote Against Kucinich”
But the Post deliberately put it in terms that reflected negatively on Clinton even when she overwhelmingly won the (admittedly pointless) race. They went as far as they could to find the most negative spin they could put on it, even to the point of absurdity (”Well Under Half of Voters Oppose Landslide Winner!”). And this is what still passes for a liberal paper.
January 16th, 2008
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General, Politics, Media, News & Current Events |
8 comments
Mitt Romney is on record defending his membership in an (until recently) officially racist religion by citing his family’s personal experience in combatting racism:
These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.
Except that David Bernstein, in The Boston Phoenix, documents the impossibility of that claim.
December 20th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events, Race |
2 comments
Huckabee just can’t win for losing. In addition to the understandable criticism of his insane right-wing politics and values, he’s getting tagged for the smarmy dog-whistle content of his ads. In particular, his recent Christmas ad, informing our 1/4 non-Christian nation that “at this time of year . . . what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ”, has been criticized for including a huge glowing white cross hovering over Huckabee’s shoulder and slowly gliding behind his head (!) as he speaks.
The strangest thing is that his campaign seems to be lying about how it got there, pedaling peddling [oy!] a story to USA Today (repeated without the slightest critical inquiry by the credulous Byron York at NRO) that the whole thing was an unplanned coincidence resulting from a national-campaign ad shoot so casual there wasn’t even a script. Not only is the story absurd on its face, it’s actually physically impossible.
December 19th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Media, News & Current Events |
17 comments
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