Category: Politics & Elections

Meow

George W. Bush is out jogging one morning, and notices a little boy on the corner with a box. Curious, he runs over to the child and says, “What’s in the box kid?”

The little boy says, “Kittens, they’re brand new kittens.”

George W. laughs and says, “What kind of kittens are they?”

“Republicans,” the child says.

“Oh that’s cute,” George W. says and he runs off.

A couple of days later George is running with his buddy Dick Cheney and he spies the same boy with his box just ahead. George W. says to Dick, “You gotta check this out,” and they both jog over to the boy with the box. George W. says, “Look in the box, Dick, isn’t that cute? Look at those little kittens. Hey kid tell my friend Dick what kind of kittens they are.”

The boy replies, “They’re Democrats.”

“Whoa!” George W. says, “I came by here the other day and you said they were Republicans. What’s up?”

“Well,” the kid says, “Their eyes are open now.”

Don’t Blame Bush

I’ve been looking at the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion: maybe we’ve all been too hard on President Bush.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Mr. Bush has degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.

But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? . . . In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it.

Paul Krugman

We? What ‘we’ would that be?

HEREFORD [AZ] — Presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo told supporters gathered at a private ranch here Friday that American culture, as well as the fate of western civilization, is being threatened by illegal immigration.

“This is so much bigger than the cost (of illegal immigration) to our schools, and other issues like that that we know are true,” Tancredo told the crowd of approximately 150 people assembled at a fund-raising barbecue hosted by Glenn Spencer, head of the civilian border watch group American Border Patrol.

“There’s an issue that is so much broader than all that, so much more serious. It is the issue of our culture itself, and whether we will survive.”

Sierra Vista Herald

You know, this guy really needs to be put some place quiet before he hurts himself.

Other than that, an impressive group

Last night Mitt Romney said the will of the people is irrelevant on Iraq and that perjury isn’t a crime. Tommy Thompson said that it’s okay to fire someone because they’re gay. Sam Brownback’s hero is Joe Lieberman. John McCain says the occupation of Iraq is going just dandy. Three of the 10 candidates say evolution is bullshit. Nine out of ten say they’d mow down a thousand people with their SUVs to save one embryo. And Rudy Giuliani claims we have the best health care system in the world, which is true if by “best” you mean 37th place.

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers

The House of Representatives

“I confess I always thought this part of the constitution defective, though not dangerous; and that it ought to be particularly attended to whenever Congress should go into the consideration of amendments.” — James Madison, 1789

In the comments, Michelle asks an interesting question: Are they increasing the total from 435?

The D.C. legislation is still just a bill in the Senate but, as passed in the House, there would be two permanent new House seats; one for D.C. and one more. Utah gets that second seat because it is currently the next state in line to add a seat based on the apportionment formula. After the 2010 census, apportionment would be according to a recalculated formula.

I’m guessing (at this point) that they are adding two seats to keep the number odd (for votes), though that makes little sense. More likely it is a political sap to get Republican support for the bill.

NewMexiKen’s preferred solution for the District of Columbia would be to return the city of Washington to Maryland, treating certain parts of the city as a federal reservation (like a military base or national park). While not without issues, this seems the most reasonable solution to me. (The Virginia part of the original D.C. was returned to Virginia in 1847.)

Historical asides. The first of the original 12 amendments (ten of which are known as the Bill of Rights) was about apportionment. It was never ratified. The very first presidential veto ever, by Washington in 1792, concerned the apportionment of the House. The House has been fixed at 435 since the admission of New Mexico and Arizona in 1912 (except temporarily at 437 when Alaska and Hawaii first became states). The Constitution says “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand…,” so constitutionally we could have as many as 10,000 Congress-persons.

I’m too old to cry and it hurts too much to laugh

NewMexiKen missed the Daily Howler yesterday but got to it this morning. It is absolutely required reading if you want to understand how the political discourse in this country has been framed.

Here, via Somerby, is Brian Williams’s actual first question to Senator Clinton:

Senator Clinton, your party’s leader in the United States Senate, Harry Reid, recently said the war in Iraq is lost. A letter to today’s USA Today calls his comments “treasonous” and says if General Patton were alive today, Patton would wipe his boots with Senator Reid. Do you agree with the position of your leader in the Senate?

As Somerby says, “Good God! Nothing too ‘loaded’ about that question!”

Or his question to Senator Obama:

Senator Obama, you have called this war in Iraq, quote, “dumb,” close quote. How do you square that position with those who have sacrificed so much? And why have you voted for appropriations for it in the past?

As Somerby points out, Obama called the war “dumb” BEFORE the war. When Obama used that term, no American soldier had died.

Go read it all!

Speaking of Richardson

This is not good.

Two recent stories illustrate the bumbling reality of Richardson’s campaign, and how it contrasts with his glowing resumé.  The first concerns the Guv’s dumbass decision during last week’s debate to name Byron “Whizzer” White — one of the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade, and a dissenter from the majority in Miranda — as his model Supreme Court justice.  Yet that’s not the worst part.  When pressed to square his professed admiration for White with his alleged support for reproductive freedom and civil rights, Richardson made two more boners.  Which one bothers you more?

A) He cited the fact that White “was an All-American football player besides being a legal scholar” as a justification for describing the often retrograde White as his model High Court member;

B) He apparently doesn’t really know or care about Roe, given that he excused his White pick by saying, “White was in the 60s. Wasn’t Roe v. Wade in the 80s?”

I can’t choose.  (A) is a hopelessly meatheaded answer, and I’m saying that as a serious sports fan.  What next?  Is Richardson going to name Ford as his favorite president simply because he was All-American at Michigan?   And if Bush had said that Roe was decided in the 80s, we’d be mocking him for weeks.  Either way, l’affaire Whizzer is a stain on Richardson.

Daily Kos

Alas, she’s in the majority

“It seems [Richardson] calls his 92-year-old mother every Sunday, and she’s getting forgetful. One day she says to him, “Son, are you still Governor?” He says yes. Ten minutes later, she says, “Son, are you still Governor.” “Yes, Mom, unless I’ve been impeached since the phone call started. In fact, I’m running for President.” She replies: “¿Presidente? ¿Presidente de que?”

The Reality-Based Community

[Translation: President? President of what?]

Debate Scorecard

NewMexiKen did not see last evening’s Democratic candidates’ debate, but here’s a quick run down from Rolling Stone.

Also, from a good write-up at NewDonkey.com:

Joe Biden got a question on the Supreme Court’s decision on the congressional “Partial-Birth Abortion” ban that didn’t mention he voted for the ban in the Senate. Bill Richardson offered Whizzer White as a model for the nominees he’d put on the Supreme Court, and nobody noted that (aside from White’s status as something less than a constitutional giant) the Whizzer was a dissenter in the original abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade. And John Edwards was asked about his attitude towards hedge funds (a subject that most viewers probably knew little or nothing about) without any reference to his own employment by a hedge fund between his presidential runs.

Whizzer White?

Balking at the First Pitch

This is a baseball story, so let’s get right to the stats.

Today is Washington’s 65th Opening Day since 1910, when William H. Taft gave us a tradition: the ceremonial first pitch by the president. Taft threw the inaugural one for the Senators that year. In the local club’s 63 home openers since, a dozen presidents have done the honors 45 times, from front-row seats or from the mound, making them 46 for 64 overall (.719). Pretty reliable.

President Bush kept up the tradition in 2005, celebrating baseball’s return to the nation’s capital after a 33-season absence. But he missed last year’s home opener — and he’ll miss today’s, too, when the Nationals host the Florida Marlins at 1:05 p.m. Except for when the world was at war, only two other presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Richard M. Nixon, missed Opening Day ceremonies two years in a row. And Wilson had suffered a stroke.

The Washington Post