Category: Politics & Elections

Louis Menand wrote an excellent primer on American voters for The New Yorker in 2004. Among the fascinating insights:

Seventy per cent of Americans cannot name their senators or their congressman. Forty-nine per cent believe that the President has the power to suspend the Constitution. Only about thirty per cent name an issue when they explain why they voted the way they did, and only a fifth hold consistent opinions on issues over time. Rephrasing poll questions reveals that many people don’t understand the issues that they have just offered an opinion on. According to polls conducted in 1987 and 1989, for example, between twenty and twenty-five per cent of the public thinks that too little is being spent on welfare, and between sixty-three and sixty-five per cent feels that too little is being spent on assistance to the poor. And voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that “2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.

If you want to understand the phenomenon of the next 14 months, I suggest you read this essay.

By our count, Giuliani spent about 58 hours at Yankees games or flying to them in the 40 days between Sept. 25 and Nov. 4, roughly twice as long as he spent at ground zero in the 90 days between Sept. 17 and Dec. 16. By his own standard, Giuliani was one of the Yankees more than he was one of the rescue workers.

Salon News

As reported by the Daily Howler:

A real discussion had broken out about the way to exit Iraq! It was by far the most intelligent discussion we’ve seen in any debate this year; the hopefuls were even beginning to question each other about their respective views. But our press corps flees intelligent discourse as bats avoid exposure to light. Abruptly, George Stephanopoulos brought the discussion to a halt so he could ask this question:

STEPHANOPOULOS (8/19/07): Let me move on now. We’ve got a question—we got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah. And he said, “My question is to understand each candidate’s view of a personal God. Do they believe that through the power of prayer disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened? I’d like each of you to answer it.”

Let me start with you, Senator Clinton.

And so, instead of explaining how she’d act in Iraq, Clinton had to explain if we could have prayed and made that bridge hold up.

Every time Rudy tries to hype his manly ground zero bonafides these guys are going to be out there smacking him down. This stuff didn’t happen on the Mekong Delta 35 years ago. This happened very recently in the media capital of the world. His movements were well documented. You have to be a truly grandiose psychopath not to think comments like this will not come back to haunt you. Of course, that’s exactly what he is.

The above by Digby on Giuliani’s recent claim, later recanted, that he had spent as much time at Ground Zero as the workers.

And, according to this article in The Village Voice, the reason Rudy chose the World Trade Center for the city’s emergency-command center was so it would be close to City Hall:

The mayor was so personally focused on the siting and construction of the bunker that the city administrator who oversaw it testified in a subsequent lawsuit that “very senior officials,” specifically including Giuliani, “were involved,” which he said was a major difference between this and other projects. Giuliani’s office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced.

It seems to me, there’s a good chance if Rudy were elected that W would remain “the worst president ever” only for a short while.

Vanity Fair has a lengthy piece where they just tear Judith Giuliani apart — and Wonkette has a LOL point-by-point summary.

There’s good news and bad news.

First the bad news. She’s a lying, nasty, gold-digging bitch who’s real name is Judi, not Judith.

The good news. Rudy might already be shopping for wife number four.

“If the primary were held today, we don’t know who we’d vote for. If the general election were held today, we’d vote for the Democrat.”

Daily Howler

Ditto.

“When asked, if elected to two terms as president, how she felt about a Clinton or Bush serving 28 straight years in the White House, Sen. Clinton replied, ‘I think it is a problem that Bush was elected in 2000. I actually thought somebody else was elected in that election.'”

CNN Political Ticker.

It’s a no-win question for her, so she handled it about as well as she might.

Via Crooks and Liars, a clergyman asks Edwards why he uses his faith to justify his opposition to gay marriage. Watch, if only for the question.

As C&L says, “Can you imagine a MSM pundit framing the question that way?”

NewMexiKen still thinks Al Gore would be the best of all possible worlds as the next President of the United States, but Gore’s selection of Joe Lieberman as running mate in 2000 surely gets more inexplicable each day.

Rudy “I Just Make This Shit Up” Giuliani, as reported at Crooks and Liars:

“[I]f we flee Iraq, if we do what the Democrats want us to do – which is to not only flee Iraq, not only retreat in Iraq, but give them a timetable of our retreat.

“Have you ever heard of that in a history of war?”

Well, yes, that’s exactly what the U.S. did in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, AP relying on the Watergate tapes via Hullabaloo:

“Oh s—, that kid,” Nixon said when told by his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, of [Fred] Thompson’s appointment on Feb. 22, 1973.

“Well, we’re stuck with him,” Haldeman said.
…

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not “very smart.”

“Not extremely so,” Buzhardt agreed.

“But he’s friendly,” Nixon said.

Do you think Biden, Brownback, Clinton, Dodd, Hunter, Kucinich, McCain, Obama, Paul and Tancredo are having their pay reduced?

The Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives (upon certification by the Clerk of the House of Representatives), respectively, shall deduct from the monthly payments (or other periodic payments authorized by law) of each Member or Delegate the amount of his salary for each day that he has been absent from the Senate or House, respectively, unless such Member or Delegate assigns as the reason for such absence the sickness of himself or of some member of his family.

US CODE: Title 2, 39. Deductions for absence

McCain has missed something approaching 50 votes this year.

Our Campaign Song — HillaryClinton.com.

It’s Celine Dion. She’s not even from the U.S.

Oh, and this meaningless trivial campaign ad. What are they running for, they’re own sitcom?

Wake me when it’s 2009.

Making fun of the debates — and his own inability to respond to questions.