Category: Politics

Sadly, the CNN silliness continued last night. The questions were predictable and Wolf asked for follow-ups of the candidate he knows will provide the most incendiary response. It seems that CNN believes that the purpose of hosting a Presidential debate is to create a spectacle that they can then cover. It’s brilliant, actually: make your own news that you can cover. But it doesn’t help voters figure out who they should vote for and it certainly doesn’t help the cause of the party whose candidates are debating. Highlighting past tiffs or manufacturing new ones is politics as cock-fighting. Candidates need much longer than a minute to explain their position on ending the Iraq war, solving health care problems, or how to handle immigration reform. Can we get a Presidential debate run by an organization that doesn’t have a conflict of interest?

Before I move on from complaining about CNN, Wolf Blitzer deserves some special criticism. He insists on continuing with his “going down the line” questions where he asks for a “yes or no” answer. Sometimes it’s nice to get a one-word answer from a politician such as when Blitzer asked the candidates if they would support whichever candidate becomes the Democratic nominee – that’s a question to which one can answer “yes or no”. However the question of whether the candidate supports giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants is not a “yes or no” question because the question presumes that there is no change to the status quo and that’s the real crux of the issue. As Obama tried to explain to a clearly too-stupid-to-understand Blitzer, the issue isn’t over whether we should allow illegal immigrants to drive cars but over how to manage the population of illegal immigrants that we already have. But Blitzer wouldn’t let it go – like a dog chewing on a meat shaped plastic toy, Blitzer thought he had something and wanted to tear into it.

Since CNN, Blitzer, and the debate structure itself took center stage, it was worth critiquing first. But some relevant content did manage to slip through. Bill Richardson came across as a bit condescending but still somewhat competent. Edwards seemed a little righteous, but perhaps justifiably. Kucinich handled himself pretty well, even when Blitzer tried to get him to say that he was pro-union to a fault. I remain ambivalent about Hillary Clinton because she has a lot of the right answers but I always feel like they are regurgitated reflexively rather than genuine thoughts. Chris Dodd presented himself well and had some really solid answers. I especially liked the new Joe Biden – perhaps he has mentally given up on a win and that makes him more relaxed. Whatever it is, he should keep doing it.

Finally, a quick complaint about the crowd: after Clinton answered strongly about being a woman running for President, John Edwards got boos for pointing out that she takes money from lobbyists. It’s sad that the crowd was as emotive as they were through the evening and that they were as easily swayed by Clinton’s prepared pablum.

This week, the Republican religious right made two surprising moves. Sam Brownback, who dropped out of the Presidential race, announced that the candidate he was going to endorse was not Mike Huckabee as many expected but was John McCain. (story: AP) And Pat Robertson, the poster child for the far right, endorsed Rudy Giuliani. (story: AP)

Brownback’s supporters are likely the kind of people that would be easy to get behind Huckabee. Brownback was running on a God platform so the Southern Baptist minister Huckabee seems like a no brainer. And Huckabee seems like a pretty likable guy; the only people who wouldn’t want to vote for Huckabee are those that are ideological opposites – definitely not a description of Brownback’s supporters.

If Huckabee was feeling puzzled by the lack of support from Brownback, he must be downright bewildered that he didn’t get Robertson’s support. As the AP story points out, Robertson has previously stated that New York was victimized by terrorism because God no longer wanted to protect the city due in part to allowing abortion. Giuliani, mayor of the city at the time of the attacks, is an abortion supporter. You’d think that this alone would make them polar opposites in the Republican party.

As a supporter of none of these people, I have to say that it’s all very confusing and a little unnerving. It has been relatively easy to dismiss the religious right as having lost power recently. Their current political-spiritual (for them, it’s all one thing) leader, Bush 43, is clearly flagging in popularity and there is no heir apparent. So I’ve been singing the “nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, good bye” song in expectation of their imminent irrelevance.

But maybe this is what happens when the religious right senses trouble. After all, the whole movement operates like a business. The more followers, the more money. The more money, the more power. If they lose power, they lose followers, and therefore money. So their ability to adapt to the changing environment is just good business sense. A sort of Darwinian evolution, the survival of the fittest where “fit” is measured by fiscal health.

When Brownback made his announcement, he didn’t say “support McCain because he’s a Christian who believes exactly as you do. He said that McCain has the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure he’s right but maybe he couldn’t bring himself to support Giuliani and he recognized that Brownback doesn’t stand a chance in the general election.

Robertson, on the other hand, apparently did muster up the courage to support the biggest threat to the Democrats, even though Giuliani represents so much that Robertson despises. Although he didn’t come right out and say “I don’t like this guy, but I like every Democrat less”, that must be his primary motivation.

It is this Republican playmaking that has me really worried about the upcoming primaries. Once again, the Republicans are taking a practical approach and rallying around those that are electable, even when they are not the ideal ideological match. The Democrats do not do this well, preferring to remain ideologues even as they go down in defeat. The Democrats are historically unwilling to compromise on their principles for the sole purpose of putting forward a worthy competitor. What’s the point of even having a political party if it isn’t going to become a cohesive force? I still blame this Democratic attitude for yielding the lame candidate of John Kerry which is what ultimately allowed Bush 43 to remain in power. And if the Democrats want to avoid President Giuliani, President Romney, or even President McCain, they are going to need to learn from the religious right and get together to endorse candidates that can win.

President Bush has now vetoed the S-CHIP extension bill (story: Yahoo). He did so because he claims that it extends the coverage to those that don’t need it. His argument is that the expansion would allow households that currently have private insurance and a family income of 83K to switch to the S-CHIP insurance instead.

The Democrats, who created the bill, are calling Bush’s veto “intolerable” and wondering how Bush can sleep at night. Their argument for the bill is that it is for the children and who would want to go against the children.

Now, I’m all for health care reform and universal health care seems like it might be worth a serious look. (This is when I realized I had not yet posted about “Sick” – see previous post.) And since S-CHIP is a form of that, perhaps expanding it is a good idea.

But I have to say that the Democrats are doing an incredibly poor job of arguing their point. Bush came out with a very specific claim about making the coverage too broad and the only thing the Democrats can say back is “it’s for the children!”. I’m feeling like the usual party response has flipped and we now have the Republicans with a substantive debate while the Democrats are going after knee-jerk emotional response.

Obviously S-CHIP needs to be extended and Bush is in favor of an extension of the status quo. But if the Democrats want to expand it, they’ll need to either come up with something substantial to justify their expansion or reduce the expansion to a level where it can be justified.

President Bush yesterday answered a question about the risk of a recession by saying “You know, you need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low” (White House Transcript).

In other words, he doesn’t care what happens to the economy, all he knows is that he is against taxes. So, the Decider decides and economists will need to make his policy work somehow, fiscal science be damned. Apparently his absolute faith applies to Economics as well as his deity.

Yesterday, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was in New Hampshire begging to be liked and being mean to his competition (story: Concord Monitor).

When talking about Hillary Clinton’s views on the economy, he said “That’s out with Adam Smith and in with Karl Marx.” A classic move: feeling like his campaign could use a little heat, he turned to an old standby and took to comparing the current liberal leader to a Communist. Annoyingly, that will probably improve his appeal to the non-thinking conservatives merely capable of knee-jerk reactionary politics.

His other swipe, however, is more likely to appeal to the thinking conservatives. “It would be helpful to have a person leading the country who understands how the economy works and has actually managed something. In the case of the three Democratic front-runners, not one of them has managed even a corner store, let alone a state or a city.” I have to admit, that’s a good point. Romney may have managed something much larger than a corner store when he was at the top of Bain but he wasn’t a genius when he was leading Massachusetts. While our taxes did not go up and there was more financial accountability than before, we also suffered the results of cuts he made. And if he was all that while Gov here, his Lt. Gov should have had an easy time of sliding into office rather than being soundly defeated as she was.

But it was his sound-bite ready quip on Hillarycare that really got me worked up: “I don’t want the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup running my health care system.” This quote is absolutely true but wholeheartedly misplaces the blame. The Katrina cleanup was a mess because of President Bush, not because it was a government effort. Saying that to provide government run healthcare, you’d automatically end up with a Katrina-like disaster is to imply that his own Presidential administration would be a wreck of Category 4+ proportions. If he has so much faith in his ability to run a business, shouldn’t he be in favor of being in charge of the biggest domestic issue currently facing this country?

I am shocked. Really – I’m not being sarcastic. I am shocked that the President has the balls to extend his cronyism to eliminating jail time. It’s one thing to nominate Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Although that cronyism could have had a lasting damaging impact on this country, one could argue that thinking Miers was qualified for the highest court was subjective. Specifically eliminating a relatively short jail sentence (30 months minus time off, etc.) is a more brazen act of cronyism.

Bush tried to soften the impact of his commutation (story: Tribune) by pointing out that Libby’s fine of 250K and probation still stand. So, in other words, as long as Libby can find 250K somewhere (which I imagine will be paid by others and/or found in his sofa cushions) and as long as Libby doesn’t perjure himself for a couple years, he’s gotten off easier than Paris Hilton.

I suppose what is so shocking to me is that the President is well aware that he is taking a critical beating on Iraq, on immigration reform, and just about any other policy decision he makes. Why would he want to bring on more criticism? And even more puzzling, assuming he wants a Republican to succeed him, isn’t he damaging the reputation of all Republicans with this commutation? Is the President’s belief in loyalty so strong that it trumps all else? I remain shocked.

A Hamas television station aired a children’s program called “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” which was propaganda for children. Fortunately, the Palestinian government forced it off the air (story: Reuters). Apparently a character dressed in what looked like a home-made Mickey Mouse costume telling children how Israel will be destroyed and how they can help achieve that violates Palestinian broadcast standards.

You have to be impressed at the cajones (what’s Palestinian for “balls”?) that it took to produce this program. After all, here in the US, we do brainwash children with television shows – it’s just that usually the result is that a toy company sells more product. In this case, instead of Hasbro handing out better stock dividends, this show is attempting to turn the impressionable minds into fundamentalist militants. God/Allah forbid that they let their kids think for themselves.

What’s the point in anyone testifying without being under oath? Bush says that the only way that he’d allow Gonzales and other Justice Department staff to discuss the firings of the US Attorneys was if the discussions were done in private, with no transcript, and not under oath. Although I’d like to see the testimony, I understand that the general public should not always have access to all government information, so I’d begrudgingly accept that the testimony remain inaccessible to the media and public. But any discussions that occur without being “under oath” are explicitly not testimony – they are meaningless chats. And presumably, the reason Bush is trying to avoid transcripts is to introduce ambiguity into the aftermath of the meaningless chats. Of course the Bush Administration is aware of how bad this must look which only goes to show that there must be something that they are hiding. And that only makes the White House and the DoJ look more guilty.

Ann Coulter finds it financially rewarding to say outrageous things to offend those not sharing her far right opinions. So, it’s kind of nice to see her go too far with her remarks about Edwards. She might actually have done damage to her income stream this time. Let’s hope that even people who might secretly agree with her now are too ashamed to associate with her and maybe this is the beginning of the end for Coulter’s prominence on bookshelves and TV.