Category: politics

your tax dollars at work

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

via time: brent rinehart is running for reelection as a county commissioner in oklahoma county. that’s in oklahoma. oklahoma city, to be exact.

why should you care?

you shouldn’t, except that he’s distributing the funniest, most over-the-top campaign literature you can imagine. it’s a comic book he wrote himself.

but richie rich or archie it ain’t.

from the associated press article on the subject:

Some Oklahoma County voters can expect to receive comic books in the mail soon, but the subject matter will have a serious tone.

The 16-page publication prepared by Commissioner Brent Rinehart’s re-election campaign lampoons gays and criticizes Rinehart’s political opponents. It also features an angel who supports the embattled commissioner and Satan, who supports his critics.

“It’s more or less a story of my experiences of the last four years of being the county commissioner of District 2,” Rinehart told The Oklahoman, which obtained the comic on Wednesday.

Toga-wearing gays, political figures, trench coat-clad henchmen, concerned residents and Rinehart make up the rest of the comic’s characters.

In one sequence,
Satan says: “If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal!”

The angel replies: “Hey Satan, not with Brent around you won’t!”

the comic book must be seen to be believed. it’s a must-read.

perhaps we should introduce mr. rinehart to larry craig or mark foley, two other crusaders on the evils of homosexuality.

hot water for dehydrated babies

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the banality, bad planning, and hilarity of john mccain’s speech on tuesday has been discussed to death.

but i want to focus on one particular line that had kirk and me hooting with laughter.

and of course there’s a long hilarious discussion on digg.

hopefully by november this guy will, at a minimum, learn to read a teleprompter, a skill you think he would have acquired by now.

or, perhaps, i should hope that he won’t learn.

could it really be true?

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could tomorrow be the day that hillary clinton withdraws from the race?

i’m watching this closely. as one of her constituents, i’m looking to see how she gets out of the race, and how well and strongly and effectively she supports obama. she really needs to be graceful, and supportive, and needs to do her best to ensure his election. and she needs to do it sooner as in this week and preferably tuesday/wednesday, rather than later as in after this week. if she drags this out, i’ll be very upset.

if she doesn’t withdraw well, as i’ve said before, i’ll be looking to help her opponent in her next new york primary election, for senator or governor or whatever, should she be in a race.

oh, and a little thought butterfly to float over to mr. obama. promise her help with her debts. promise to bring her campaign workers on board with your team. promise to help the elected officials who are getting primary challenges via your supporters as a result of those officials’ support for her. promise to put lots of her supporters in white house positions.

but do not promise anything to hillary herself. the clintons need to be dispatched efficiently. i say this, not because i dislike hillary, but because i’ve come to really dislike bill, and i don’t want him anywhere near washington power again. and i don’t think that she is strong enough to keep him at bay should she be in an obama administration. she chose to keep him on her team, and use him, even after his odious behavior. that’s the price she should pay for making that choice.

and, mr. obama, you will lose more votes than you will gain if, before they actually vote for you, people know she’ll be in your administration.

time for hillary clinton to go

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more accurately, it’s time for her to be made to go.

these latest remarks, citing robert kennedy’s assassination as a reason to stay in the race, are beyond the pale. you can’t tell me this was just a slip. nothing the clintons do is without purpose.

the superdelegates need to step up and end this thing officially, now. and that means i don’t want her on the ticket as vice-president. i say that partly because i don’t want her around, but mainly because i don’t want bill clinton anywhere near the white house again. my main problem with her isn’t what she does, but that she can’t seem to control what he does. he has undue influence over her. i don’t want the clintons tag-teaming and triangulating obama out of his presidency, or if he wins, out of his governance. which is exactly what they’d do, led by bill clinton. jeebus — to think i worked for his 1992 campaign.

i want them both out in the political wilderness for the duration of the presidential campaign, where they can do no harm. obama can win without her or her support. enough of her vaunted supporters will vote democratic in november anyway, with or without her. and especially without bill clinton around. and at this point, i’m not sure i want her as my senator, either. she’s frigging toxic.

peggy noonan had a great column about hillary clinton yesterday. it may be behind a paywall for you (come on, wall street journal!) so i’ll summarize: golda meir, indira gandhi, and margaret thatcher, three women who knew how to play tough politically, would be outraged at clinton’s week of claiming sexism as a principal reason for her loss. what a sorry endgame clinton has — blame society and the media. never once did you hear that from obama, even when he was far behind in the polls.

here’s my favorite quote from the noonan column:

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”

and this:

Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”

got that right.

ellen and senator john mccain debate gay marriage

~ jamie ~ 4 Comments

this is a must-watch video clip — ellen hands john mccain his head on a plate, logic-wise.

here’s my favorite part:

“Blacks and women did not have the right to vote. I mean, women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn’t have the right to vote until 1870. And it just feels like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people, all of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me — to me, what it feels like — just, you know, I will speak for myself — it feels — when someone says, ‘You can have a contract, and you’ll still have insurance, and you’ll get all that,’ it sounds to me like saying, ‘Well, you can sit there; you just can’t sit there.’ That’s what it sounds like to me. It feels like — it doesn’t feel inclusive…It feels — it feels isolated. It feels like we are not — you know, we aren’t owed the same things and the same wording.”

and the end of the clip is wonderful as well. go ellen…you rock. i don’t want a frigging contract either.

stupid stupid stimulus check boondoggle

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kirk sent me an email that purported to give the schedule that the irs will follow when mailing out the stimulus checks this spring.

did i say spring? i did. more on that later.

so the email said that they would mail on a schedule according to the last two digits in your social security number. which would mean that, according to the provided schedule, that my check would be mailed on july 11th.

july frigging 11th! that’s not spring! that’s half the summer gone! some frigging stimulus. what a crock.

but wait. maybe it’s just an email hoax. so, off to check snopes.com. and you know what? it’s frigging true! i couldn’t believe it.

now, to be sure, i think that the entire stimulus check nonsense is, well, nonsense. i don’t think it will do a bit of good for the economy. but on the off chance it might do some good, perhaps it would make sense to, oh, i don’t know, have it enter the economy in a relative lump sum. at least then it would have a chance of having some effect.

jeebus. this is the best our government can do? if you are going to pander to me, at least halfway deliver on your promise. i can hardly wait for obama to get into the white house, and hopefully bring at least a bit of sanity to washington.

i’m moving to oregon

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

…so i can vote for steve novick, who opens a beer with his hook hand in his campaign commercial. now there’s a politician i can get excited about.

plus oregon has great weather, lots of organic vegetables, and is a great place as long as you don’t leave portland or eugene.

this and that catchup

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

it’s been a while, so here are a few short takes:

» kirk was in the hospital overnight on wednesday for some tests. he’s had dizziness, general fatigue, and chest tightness for a few weeks now, and our doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff — heart problems, blood clots, lung problems, etc. thankfully all that big stuff checked out, but the symptoms remain. next stop — the inner ear. at least we have a baseline of good health for him. our doctor is good and persistent, so i’m hopeful that we’ll sort it all out.

» happy mother’s day, to my mom, kirk’s mom, and mothers in general. i sent a neck pillow/comforter thingy to my mom in florida, via red envelope. she loves the red box and the grosgrain ribbon. good thing — i can’t stand the company. she’s the only reason i still patronize them, and the only person i use them for. i think they have terrible customer service. the latest in a long line of gripes — a month ago they sent me an email reminder to buy something for mother’s day, with a 10% discount code. but when i used the code and made a purchase, they wouldn’t delay the shipping. so i could either send my mother’s day present directly to my mother a month in advance, or have it shipped to me and pay twice to have it shipped to arrive in a timely fashion. i chose the latter. what a crock. if you are going to ask me to buy early for mother’s day, then have the back office capabilities to ship the purchase to arrive on mother’s day. idiots.

» obama seems to have wrapped things up, defeating hillary clinton for the nomination. all the talk now is to have her for vice-president, but i think that’s a bad idea and i don’t think it will happen. two “liberal senators” on one ticket? the republicans would have a field day. we need to move on from the clintons. he needs to pick someone with foreign policy experience. sam nunn? too old — he would negate the mccain age argument. gen. wesley clark or gen. jim jones? we don’t need an inexperienced admiral stockdale type. joe biden? great choice but two senators isn’t a good idea. jim webb? perfect choice, but do you want to give up the senate seat in virginia? and he isn’t the best campaigner. bill richardson? sounds good to me. what sounds even better? wait out mccain and make him pick first.

» congratulations to the writers of iron man, one of whom is the husband of a good friend and former co-worker of mine. he struggled for years, has enormous talent, and is deserving of every bit of success he’s getting.

thank goodness

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

the media has gotten obama to denounce the last uppity black man in his life. now maybe they’ll be satisfied and move on to things of consequence.

like, say, health care, the economy, the middle east, iraq, and iran.

obama “outraged” with wright’s comments

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from the article:

In his harshest criticism yet of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama said he was “outraged” by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club Monday, and “saddened by the spectacle.”

personally, i’m guessing that wright chose to fall on his sword to a degree — to get out there and make comments so outrageous that obama would have an opportunity to really put some distance between them. obama has been less than forthcoming about all this, i think. and i have to admit that the people who can’t understand why he stuck with the church have somewhat of a point. i know that church does not equal pastor, and there’s a new pastor now, and you should be going to church for the institution more than the personalities involved.

still. maybe this will precipitate a clean break between the two. let’s hope so.

in any case, better sooner (now) than later (october). there’ll always be a percentage of people unable to separate the two in their minds. hopefully this will mitigate the damage that’s been done.

i want that small squidgy thought floating in the back of my mind — “perhaps hillary is more electable after all” — crushed mercilessly.

update: just remembered what this was — obama’s sister souljah moment.

what’s going on in the white house?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

from swampland, a blog at time.com, via the washington post, comes a story about the decision to torture detainees:

Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a “presidential communications privilege,” according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were “authored or solicited and received by the President’s senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president.”

which raises the question: if they can do that stuff when everyone’s watching them like a hawk, what’s going on at the white house when everyone’s attention is on the election?

comment of the day

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from an obama/clinton story on talking points memo:

“Blocking revotes in MI and Fla.” Lol! I just love this mindless talking point.

Where did he acquire the power to stop the Michigan and Florida legislatures from passing laws and/or the state parties from submitting workable delegate selection plans to the DNC? Is this like a legal power granted to him by virture of his being the front runner by some previously unknown laws passed in those states? Or is it a superpower he acquired after he was bitten by a radioactive Diebold voting machine? Is it a magical power? Is he using a +4 Staff of Disenfranchisement against poor Hillary?

and even more:

He’s beaten her. He beat her fair and square. She had a flawed, inflexible, and arrogant electoral plan, he identified the flaws in that plan early on and took advantage of them. She was unable to adapt and now she can’t turn it around. The superdelegates are not going to overturn the results of the delegate race, Michigan and Florida have screwed themselves, and the voters in the ten remaining states are not going to give her the 70 – 30 victories in each and every congressional district that she has to have to pull even with him in the popular vote and delegate races.

comment of the day? hell, it’s the diatribe of the year.

obama’s new strategy?

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i’ve wailed and moaned for obama to get tougher. it seems that he has.

the last couple of news cycles have seen a steady ramp-up of stories about how hillary clinton outright lied “misspoke” about her trip to bosnia with sinbad and sheryl crow.

a clinton obfuscating a prevarication? who knew?

nice to note that the obama campaign pushed this story, and the press picked up on it, and there’s no blowback to the obama campaign itself. nice to note also that hillary was at no point in any danger, despite her protestations to the contrary. we gotta keep her safe, so obama can ignore her for the v.p. slot but use her strategically to get out the fall vote.

now that’s how you get elected.

more obama miscues

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

last i checked, i was musing about obama getting control of his message. not sure it’s gotten any better.

first we have the whole “rev. wright” business. an astute politician, or a worthy adviser to that politician, should have seen this coming a mile away. and should have worked in advance to negate the effect, or had plans in place to blunt it immediately. as it was, he seemed blindsided.

yes, the subsequent speech on race was brilliant. could turn out to be a political recovery for the ages. the rapturous media response may help obama’s “wright” problem, though his subsequent foot-in-mouth moment about “typical white people” doesn’t help. and i’m not sure that long oratory lends itself to this era of “sound-bite” politics.

and this latest staged leak of the photo of clinton and rev. wright is about as clumsy and heavy-handed as you can get.

i know it seems like i’m dumping all over obama. i think he’s still the best choice, and has unlimited potential for improving this country like no one else can. today’s news cycle (the passport mess, and the bill richardson endorsement) is certainly more favorable.

but i think there needs to be an experienced, hard-nosed old-style pol installed near the top of the hierarchy.

update: to clarify my thoughts on the clinton/wright picture: good idea, poor execution. no way this should have been traceable to the campaign.

update update: and now there’s this. the obama campaign finally starts playing a bit of hardball. maybe there’s hope for hope.

barack obama’s speech on race

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

from the speech:

This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

what a beautiful turn of phrase. isn’t that what our goal should be?

a more perfect union?

slam him all you want for being vapid. we need someone uplifting about now.

random thoughts on the upcoming depression

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i’ve lived long enough now to have seen the economy rise and fall a few times.

and i’ve seen relatively isolated crises averted. a mostly contained sector of the economy, as with the savings and loan crisis. or one large company, as with the long term capital management hedge fund collapse.

but this latest business seems endemic, with tentacles reaching into every sector of the economy. add in americans’ insatiable appetites for stuff and fun and fiscal irresponsibility, funded by chinese investment in our country, and it seems like a recipe for disaster. the bear stearns bailout is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

here’s one thought about the bear stearns bailout:

This is the most radical change and expansions of Fed powers and functions since the Great Depression: essentially the Fed now can lend unlimited amounts to non bank highly leveraged institutions that it does not regulate.

great. our taxpayer dollars going into a bottomless hole over which the government has no control, with no end in sight.

and here’s another sobering thought:

The people who made tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 5 years are not at risk for those earnings. If shareholders and managers are bailed out, we’ll have privatized the profits (false profits based on loans that were clearly bad) and socialized the losses. We will have rewarded the people who manipulated the financial system, at the expense of ordinary consumers.

oh, ok. so our tax money isn’t really going into a bottomless pit. it’s going into the pockets of the people who created the mess, and profited from it, in the first place. big-time republican donors, no doubt.

and finally, this:

“Maybe it’ll turn out that all this Wall Street stuff is just less important than we think it is,” he says. Let’s hope so.

“this Wall Street stuff” is what passes for pensions these days in America.

that’s your 401k going down the drain for the foreseeable future. still think we should privatize social security?

maybe i’m being too pessimistic. maybe i’m just older and more aware of things now.

but this situation has me scared.

update: if all that’s not enough, read this article and the comments as well. excellent summary of the problem, with knowledgeable folks chiming in. there’s no end in sight here.