“But presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governoer Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, actually told a crowd yesterday that ‘most’ of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were ‘clergyman.’
As reported by Talking Points Memo, which points out that just one of the 56 signers was a clergyman.
[Democrats could be] doing something as simple as saying the magic word: “No.”
Retroactive immunity for the telcos? “No.” War funding for anything other than the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq? “No.” Continuing to deny Habeas Corpus rights? “No.” Illegal wiretapping? “No, no, no.”
And how about doing something about all those witnesses—like Karl Rove and Harriet Miers—who gave you the middle finger by not showing up for congressional hearings?
But no. They just follow the Yellow Brick Road until they get to the GOP poppy field and pass out.
“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.”
GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee quoted by Paul Krugman.
My god, what kind of country is it where one of our two dominant political parties can only give us Thompson—the drone, McCain—the seventy-something pinball, Huckabee—the hound, Romney—the be-whatever-you-want-me-to-be Ken doll, and Giuliani—Dick Cheney’s wet dream?
A very good Paul Krugman column today on why big business has forsaken the Republican Party.
Time’s Karen Tumulty reports on the 14th annual Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest.
I neglected to mention the Honorable Mention won by C-SPAN’s Robb Harlston, who was the only contestant to do the requisite Larry Craig portion of his routine with a piece of toilet paper trailing from the back of his pants. Also, just about everyone’s act got interrupted by a cell phone call from Judith Giuliani.
Such originality.
Sam Brownback has withdrawn as a candidate for president.
Why is it always my candidate that drops out?
I know I’ve said before that Romney’s profound and almost incalculable phoniness is a terrifying prospect to behold in a possible president. But the danger of phoniness, aesthetic or otherwise, cannot hold a candle to the truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue if he got anywhere near the Oval Office. Watching him campaign it’s pretty clear that the guy has no real sense that posturing and pandering to ethnic paranoia in New York City simply isn’t the same as running a national foreign policy. The people he’s coalescing around himself as his foreign policy advisors are the ones who are going to help him learn as he goes. And they are simply the most dangerous, deranged and deluded folks you can find in American political and foreign policy circles today. It’s really not an exaggeration. Scrape the bottom of the “Global War on Terror” Islamofascism nutbasket and you find they’ve pretty much all signed on as Rudy advisors.
“What politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I have found in short supply.”
Al Gore quoted by Bob Herbert, who also writes:
Mr. Bush came to mind because, for all of the obvious vulnerabilities he exhibited in 2000, it was not him but Mr. Gore who was mocked unmercifully by the national media. And the mockery had nothing to do with the former vice president’s positions on important policy issues. He was mocked because of his personality.
In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds.
… driving around, I was thinking a little about Al Gore.
You remember the reaction when Gore sighed during one of the 2000 presidential debates after Bush had said something particularly ignorant? I got to thinking that if instead of sighing — if in fact Gore did sigh — and if in fact sighing is a sign of elitism — Gore might better have said to Bush, “You stupid son-of-a-bitch.”
If he had, I think Gore could have taken the popular vote by more than 500,000.
Oh, wait. Gore did take the popular vote by more than 500,000.
Yesterday during post-debate analysis on Hardball, Roger Simon of The Politico said he was impressed with Fred Thompson because he knew the name of Canada’s prime minister (Celine Dion). Simon’s words: “It’s more than I knew.” A proud moment for journamalism.
“In American political commentary we often pick on the candidates but the voter is always sacrosanct. He’s usually portrayed as a noble innocent who may be betrayed but whose mistakes are always honest ones. But sometimes the voter is just plain stupid. He’s a guy you wouldn’t trust to mow your lawn, much less chose the leader of the free world.”
New Mexicans interested in politics and sharing more or less NewMexiKen’s outlook should be sure to read Burque Babble’s What I Want For Election ’08.
NewMexiKen, too, might vote for Republican Wilson in a Wilson (R) vs. Mayor Marty (D) senate race. And I have never voted for a Republican, and I have been voting since 1966. I even voted for Black Panther Party founder Bobby Seale once (for mayor of Oakland, California — he came in second of nine).
Reporter: “One last quick question, and this is just kind of a lighter note, you don’t have an American flag pin on, is this a fashion statement? Those have been on politicians since September 12, 2001?”
Obama: “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest, instead I’m gonna’ try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”
I’m afraid America isn’t ready for a candidate who thinks for himself.
(As if Obama didn’t have this checked with focus groups beforehand.)
“32% said it’s time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.”
And why is that a best line of the day? Because it’s the Wall Street Journal citing a poll of REPUBLICANS.
Oh, and: “By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy.”
Check out the GOP’s new “wide-stance” logo.
The retirement of Senator Pete Domenici has put our local politicos and journalists into a tither. C’mon, none of you thought an increasingly unpopular 75-year-old who wears pajamas to work might not run? It’s unexpected, but surely not a shock.
The speculation this morning about the probable senate candidates and then who will rush to fill the other chairs has NewMexiKen thinking about Bill [Richardson] and the 7 dwarves.
Mayor Marty couldn’t win reelection in Albuquerque today. Why would anyone think he’d be a good U.S. senator?
Current Representative Heather “Are you working on those indictments?” Wilson barely won her race last year. She’d get about three votes in northern New Mexico (and those from former Texans living in Santa Fe).
Patricia Madrid. Puh-leese, she is so o-ver. She couldn’t beat Wilson in a Democratic year. And god forbid if there was a candidates debate. Might as well have that big hair blonde that does the Beaver Toyota ads run.
It’s enough to give me a brain disease.
U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) will announce tomorrow that he will not run for reelection next year.
Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post broke the story today at 2:30 MT.
Domenici was first elected to the Senate in 1972.
Interesting fact NewMexiKen did not know. Domenici’s parents were immigrants — from Italy.
Jon Stewart doesn’t really like Chris Matthews’ new book, Life’s a Campaign — Stewart calls it a “self-hurt book.”
Pointer via Eschaton.
The Daily Show is calling its continuing coverage of next year’s presidential election “Clusterf@#k to the White House.”
“The presidential campaign ritual in this country has obviously devolved into a deeply flawed phenomenon, one that tends to produce incompetent or inappropriate leaders and fails to really touch the population on any level anymore beyond disgust and resentment.”
Matt Taibbi in his campaign blog: “Year of the Rat.”
This article in the Wall Street Journal is getting a lot of attention today: GOP Is Losing Grip On Core Business Vote. The article, free today, begins:
The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title.
New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party’s identity — what strategists call its “brand.” The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.
It seems fiscal conservatives are finding the GOP isn’t so grand after all.
“Hillary [is] so far ahead of Barack in the polls it’s like being up 7 games with 17 to play.”
A quick look at health-care politics from Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker. It wouldn’t take you long to click and read it all, but NewMexiKen liked this summary:
Our health-care system has continued to deteriorate. We spend twice as much as the French and the Germans and two and a half times as much as the Brits, yet we die sooner and our babies die in greater numbers. Thirty-eight million Americans were uninsured in 2000; now it’s forty-seven million. Employer-based health insurance is increasingly expensive, stingy, and iffy. Companies, especially manufacturing companies, are beginning to realize that being deputized to pay the health-care costs of their employees and retirees puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy.
Whether change comes will depend entirely on the next election. If a Democrat wins the Presidency after outlining his or her intentions as specifically as the leading contenders have done, and if the Democrats substantially increase their congressional majorities, then it will happen. If they don’t, it won’t.
Elsewhere in the magazine, Louis Menand has an informative essay about Jack Kerouac and On the Road (50 years old this year): Drive, He Wrote.
And I liked the lead from Anthony Lane’s review of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford:
“It is no mean feat to make a boring film about Jesse James, but Andrew Dominik has pulled it off in style.”
I’d have to quote it all to tell the story, so just go read this item about Rudy! at Talking Points Memo.