Category: Politics

Dewey Defeats Truman

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Let me just offer Ramesh Ponnuru, and the rest of my “friends” at the National Review a hearty:

Ha Ha!!!

BTW, with the exception of Jonah Goldberg, you folks was robbed. Bill Kriston can’t write, can’t think, and can’t get the facts straight. If the NY Times wanted a another reactionary in its OP/ED page, they could have selected someone better, though I find his first column so laughable, it amused me.

Like I’ve said before, I’m not classy. I’ve nearly broken 40 posts using the “schadenfreude” tag.

DOJ Report: U.S. Civil Rights Commission Appointments Illegal

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Bush and His Evil Minions™ wanted to stack the Civil Rights commission. The problem? The law forbade any more than 4 of the 8members being of one party.

Bush’s solution was to have two of the Republicansregister as independent, and then appoint two more Republicans.

Well, now the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has reviewed the 1957 Civil Rights Act that established the commission, along with the 1983 changes designed to forstall Ronald “What me, Racist” Reagan doing what Bush just did.

In sum, the situation that precipitated Congress’ 1983 revision of the Civil Rights Commission – the presidential firing of five of the then six sitting commissioners – is arguably indistinguishable from the changes in party registrations that has effectively allowed the President to establish a majority of his political in control of the Commission. The intent of the 1983 restructuring, as confirmed by the Wilson decision, was to preclude similar juggling of the of the Commission’s statutory appointments process. In light of that history, together with the recognition of the Wilson court of the central importance of independence of the central importance of independence to the accomplishment of the Commission’s mission, it is likely that a reviewing court would find the OLC opinion unpersuasive and the recent appointments violative of the political balance requirements of the statute.

In English, it’s pretty clear that they just ignored the law because they felt like it.

CREW Calls for Criminal Investigation of Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

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Well, a corrupt politician in Louisiana, who would have thunk it.

The way it looks right now, it’s something like 2 to something like 133 by party, with all the Dem’s cases being in Louisiana.

This one appears to be a bit more prosaic though, no money in the freezer, just earmarks for contributions.

Personally, I would not miss her in the Senate one bit. She is a DINO, and a much too consistent vote for the Republican agenda.

At some point, party discipline must be enforced, or you stand for nothing.

This is REALLY Classy

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You know, one of the things I prefer about the British is their culture of heckling.
Not only is heckling expected, but politicians are expected to be able to deal with it.

I think that it would result in more substantive campaigns, because the average voter/heckler has the ability to drive the focus, and politicians have to be quick on their feet.

I think it makes it harder for someone to become president just because they are the idiot son of a previous president.

That being said, if America were to adopt this model, we would need remedial education for hecklers, because lordy, this is lame:

Two men were just removed from a high school auditorium where Sen. Hillary Clinton is speaking, after they stood up during her speech, lifted signs and chanted “iron my shirt.”

Seriously, if you are going to do this, spend some time coming up with something that makes her look bad, not something that makes you look bad.

This is just so “high school”.

Running Out of Ballots: New Hampshire Turnout Off the Charts

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Good. High turnout is something that benefits the society, because it gives more people a vested interest in the results, and hence a reason to be informed.

Not surprisingly, the turnout has increased the most on the Democratic side of the primary, undeclared voter can declare when they go into vote, and it looks like there may be shortages of ballots.

I think that this means a long night before all returns are in, but they will probably have a winner declared by 9:00pm on both sides.

Franken Outraising Coleman

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Whatever side you are on in Minnesota, it’s clear that you will lose, because with the amount of money raised, Franken raised $1.9 million in the last quarter, and Coleman raised $1.7 million, you are going to be getting wall to wall ads.

Once you get wall to wall ads, they go negative, because otherwise they become background noise.

I’m wondering how long before Franken is accused of being a “Thespian”.

Coleman is ahead in cash on hand, about $6m to about $3.1m, and it’s likely that even with Franken out raising his next nearest primary opponent by a significant amount, he will have a serious primary campaign.

Of course, this election is all about him, Al Franken. (Old SNL reference)

Joe Trippi Claims That Hillary Campaign Is Broke

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Honestly, I don’t see this claim as anything but self-aggrandizement from Trippi.

He thinks that because he blew through $40 million dollars with Dean in 2004, that Hillary must have blown through $100 million or so in 2008.

I place no credence in this, for a number of reasons:

  • It’s Joe bloody Trippi, who has little credibility.
  • You are not getting reports of frantic fund raising emails, and in this day of the internet, if there were a cash flow crisis, emails would be flying fast and furious.
  • This serves his interest as an Edwards campaign advisor.

Christopher Hayes’ Proposals for Good Campaign Coverage

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His proposals are pretty common sense, but they would improve coverage a lot:

Then there’s the additional problem that the longer a reporter spends with a campaign, the more likely they’ll develop either a kind of contempt for the candidate and the campaign or a strange version of stockholm syndrome. Clearly this was the case during 2000 and 2004 when the dislike for both Gore and Kerry was palpable. This might be natural and human, but it breeds awful journalism.

Finally, we have the perenial complaint that the coverage focuses on the horse-race and the theater of the campaign and not on the issues. But I don’t really think that’s the fault of reporters. First, they have to file constantly on short deadlines. So even if Obama releases a tax plan one day, and you write a piece about that, that’s still only a one-day story. What do you write about the next day? Why, Obama sniping with Hillary or somesuch. Second of all, consider the imbalance in expertise between a campaign and those who cover it. When Obama releases a tax plan, it’s a product of a team of policy experts, who know the terrain inside and out. But the reporter who has to file the deadline piece about it doesn’t have any expertise on tax policy. So how could their coverage be anything but shallow?

His proposals:

  • Rotate Reports. After covering a candidate for a few weeks, they have heard the stump speech dozens of times, and wouldn’t know a new policy initiative if it bit them on the ass.
  • More long form non-deadline pieces. (If someone has been with a candidate for months, they can provide deeper insights).
  • Assign campaign coverage to beat reports. Hays gives the example of the New York Times‘ Jeff Zeleny covering an Obama tax proposal. The problem was that Zeleny does not do taxes, and most reporters are innumerate. However, the Times does have reporters who can do taxes and count, like David Cay Johnston, who has won a Pulitzer in this area.

The only thing that I would add is that, particularly for papers like the LA Times, WaPo, and Times, who can pick and choose their talent, don’t hire innumerate reporters.

I don’t care if you are covering politics, or architecture, or fashion, if you cannot read a balance sheet, you have no business being a reporter.

We are not talking differential equations, or even calculus, we are talking Algebra that should have been mastered in high school.

Quote of the Day: David Brooks

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Overheard in New Hampshire: David Brooks on Bill Kristol

After last night’s debate, New York Times columnist David Brooks was chatting with a group of people. One of them said: “I hear you hired that conservative Bill Kristol.” David Brooks responded: “More like a pseudoconservative.”

I’m not sure where this comes from, but my guess is that Brooks thinks that Bill Kristol is the beneficiary of conservative affirmative action (nepotism).

The GOP’s Primaries as High School Musical

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Michael Scherer of Time Magazind, has Tan analysis of the GOP debates that actually is a good analysis of the election:

  • John Mccain: The coolest kid in school.
  • Mitt Romney: The class do-gooder and overachiever.
  • Mike Huckabee: The class clown whose heart always seems in the right place.

I’m not sure if I’m impressed at this guy’s perception, or terrified that the Republican nominee fits into the memes of hich school cliques.

Bush and His Evil Minions™: Poor Children Should Die

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Fresh off of denying health care to the children of the working poor, Bush is now doing his level best to make sure that even poorer children die.

They have set impossible criteria, because they believe that people are poor because they are evil, and because they believe that the government helping poor people compounds that evil.

It’s the worst characteristics of 1500s Calvanism with a Texas twang.

Of course it also helps out the health insurance companies, who are big Republican donors. So you get more dead kids and more dirty insurance money, which is a win-win for Republicans.

Mukasey Appoints Patrick Fitzgerald to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys

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Honestly, I have no clue as to what this appointment means.

Based on Mukasey’s statements on waterboarding, I was convinced that he was Bush and His Evil Minions&trade bitch, but this would seem to indicate otherwise.

What is the role of this committee? Does this mean anything, or is it just a title and a pat on the head?

He was on the committee before, but was not reappointed by Abu Gonzalez after he started investigating the Plame leak.

The pourpose of the committee appears to be, counseling “the attorney general on law enforcement issues.”

How I’ll Be Tracking the Polls

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As opposed to posting update posts, I’ve put a Google Spreadsheet on the top of my page.

To prevent useless scrollage, I’m going to not show the older results, but you can see the whole spreadsheet here, ready for things like export to excel or other analysis packages.

Anyone who uses these regularly, I have a couple of questions:

  • Is there a way to vary the weight of the borders?
  • Is there a way to automatically bold the leader in a poll (I’ve played around with Google’s conditional formatting, and ti does not yet quite make it there).

Otherwise, consider this an open thread.