Category: Politics & Elections

A best line and more

“If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter, then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.”

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a minister, who’s running for president himself. Guess he’s thinking about Rudy and Newt and St. McCain.

At Functional Ambivalent, Tom takes the side of the grumpy tourist who wouldn’t give the Starbuck’s barista his name.

Dan Neil gets to drive a Formula 1 car.

Some come to Vegas to visit the town’s fleshpots or to enrich its fleecing parlors, or simply to pass out by the pool. But in a nation obsessed with cars, sex, speed, diversion and the unholy mingling of same, it’s no surprise that the city of demiurges has become a major destination for people who want to get their wheel freak on.

Here you can rent a Ferrari by the hour, drive a rooster-tailing sand buggy, go roundy-round on the Las Vegas speedway in a 650-horsepower stock car, learn to ride the sickest racing motorcycle the deviants at Honda or Ducati can devise.

At the top of this particular pile of coin-operated thrills, however, is LRS Formula USA, a company that sells mere mortals the chance to wedge, and I do mean wedge, themselves into an full-on, honest-to-Odin F1 car.

“I don’t have little cars,” says LRS principal Pierre-Louis Moroni. “They’re not toys. These are as close to a race-ready F1 car as you can drive, unless you buy one yourself.”

Neil goes on to relate his experience — he’s so low to the ground and the car is so finely suspended, “I could read a newspaper if I ran over it.” $3,395 for four laps if you’re interested.

Glenn Greenwald reports on conversations National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru had with Cato Institute’s President Ed Crane.

Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.

Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

These gentlemen are running to be President of the United States and they are unable to express an understanding of the basic tenets of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Gasoline in San Francisco

Gasoline in Albuquerque is $2.65/2.75/2.85 a gallon. Buy your gas early in the day so you can save the several cents a gallon it will go up by nightfall. We need an election to get the price back down again. Photo from Crooks and Liars. Don’t you just love the persistence of the 9/10ths?

The new NewMexiKen design is a work-in-progress, but then isn’t everything?

McCain is full of it

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain R-AZ told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush’s escalation is working. “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said. Today, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren’t able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving three-month-old talking points:

General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee. I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media.

But according to CNN reporter Michael Ware, who has been in Iraq for four years, McCain is “way off base.” He stated, “To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.”

Ware also rebutted McCain’s assertion that Petaeus travels in an unarmed humvee: “[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed.”

Think Progress, which has the video.

Get serious about McCain. He’s oblivious to the truth.

Too bad he’s a senator

NewMexiKen has just read Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Where’s the voting booth?

I am not entirely a fool. I recognize a campaign book when I read one. Even so, this is a remarkable person. I can’t say he’d be a excellent president or even a good one. I can say he’d be a positive one.

Americans are willing to compete with the world. We work harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We are willing to tolerate more economic instability and are willing to take more personal risks to get ahead. But we can only compete if our government makes the investments that give us a fighting chance—and if we know that our families have some net beneath which they cannot fall.

In a sense I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As the child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN General Assembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.

You should read this book, long-winded as a few parts of it can be.

Say Heather, wasn’t your whole campaign last year about character and ethics?

Mr. Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has stated that, in mid-October, two members of Congress from New Mexico pressured him about an ongoing corruption probe of state Democrats. Apparently, Rep. Wilson called Mr. Iglesias first and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) called a week later. After Sen. Domenici admitted calling Mr. Iglesias, Rep. Wilson finally admitted yesterday that she too had called the U.S. Attorney.

Rep. Wilson’s call to Mr. Iglesias violates chapter 7 of the House ethics manual, which prohibits members from contacting executive or agency officials regarding the merits of matters under their formal consideration. House rules also state that if a member wants to affect the outcome of a matter in litigation, the member can file a brief with the court, make a floor statement, or insert a statement into the Congressional Record. Directly calling officials to influence an ongoing enforcement matter is not an option.

House rules also state that a member may not claim he or she was merely requesting “background information” or a “status report” because the House has recognized that such requests “may in effect be an indirect or subtle effort to influence the substantive outcome of the proceedings.”

Rep. Wilson’s conduct may also violate the requirement that members conduct themselves in a manner that “reflects creditably on the House.” In a precedent cited by the House ethics committee when it admonished former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), the House has held that members are prohibited from asking an executive branch employee to engage in an activity having an impermissible political purpose.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

The New Bill

David Brooks wonders aloud, and compellingly, if perhaps New Mexico governor Bill Richardson might somehow rise above the glamorously noisy H. Clinton/B. Obama fray and become the Democratic candidate for President. Here’s what [David] Brooks likes about [Bill] Richardson:

He’s down to earth, accessible, funny, and smart.

He is “the most experienced person running for president. He served in Congress for 14 years. He was the energy secretary (energy’s kind of vital).”

He is a “successful two-term governor who was re-elected with 69 percent of the vote in New Mexico, a red state. Moreover, he’s a governor with foreign policy experience. He was U.N. ambassador. He worked in the State Department. He’s made a second career of negotiating on special assignments with dictators like Saddam, Castro and Kim Jong Il. He negotiated a truce in Sudan.”

He is the only Democratic candidate who is “completely invulnerable on the tax cut issue.”

And most of all, Brooks writes, “he’s not a senator. Since 1961, 40 senators have run for president and their record is 0-40. A senator may win this year, but you’d be foolish to assume it.”

Freakonomics Blog

NewMexiKen is thinking that David Brooks saw my take on Richardson back in January.

Imagine that

So there it is. Former US Attorney David Iglesias has now all but named Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) as the two members of Congress who pressured him to indict a New Mexico Democrat before the November election. He didn’t use their names. But he said they were “two members of the New Mexico delegation.” The other three have each categorically denied it was them. And Domenici and Wilson still refuse to give any answer to the press.

Talking Points Memo

Why Richardson?

Emily asks for “a top ten of why Richardson is the best person for the job so far.”

  1. Richardson has never been a U.S. senator. Senators have no idea how to be president and only two senators have gone directly from the Senate to the White House in more than 100 years (Harding and Kennedy).
  2. Richardson has been U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I believe we need a president who has actually been on the international scene — and has several personal diplomatic successes — to help repair the immense damage done in the past six years.
  3. Richardson has been energy secretary. Is there a domestic issue more important than energy and climate change?
  4. Richardson doesn’t have any children to embarrass the country.
  5. Richardson played baseball, albeit perhaps not as well as he has let on, but playing is better than owning a team.
  6. Richardson is a governor. Governors generally know how things can get done — Franklin Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton come to mind.
  7. Richardson’s background is multi-national, just as our country is.

    Richardson’s mother, Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada, was the daughter of a mother from an intellectual family from Oaxaca and a blond-haired, blue-eyed father from northern Spain.

    Richardson’s father, after whom he was named, was also half-Spanish. His father, an Anglo biologist from Boston working in Nicaragua, met his mother, Rosa, as she got off a boat from Spain.

    Richardson’s father ended up in Mexico City after postings in Italy and Cuba for First National City Bank of New York, called Citibank today. He was sent to Mexico City in 1929 to open a branch of the bank and remained its vice president and manager for 29 years. (The Albuquerque Journal)

  8. Richardson seems to have a reasonable joie de vivre. I think our best presidents (Jefferson, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Clinton) have approached life as an adventure.
  9. Richardson’s ads last year in his reelection campaign were fun. And he took 68.8% of the vote in a red state (though just red).
  10. Richardson is from New Mexico.

These were essentially off the top of my head. Others may add and detract as they see fit.

If Barack Obama is as good a politician as he is a writer, he will soon be President

Anyway, all of this is just a long prelude to the fact that I picked up his book The Audacity of Hope and was blown away at how well written it is. His stories sometimes make me laugh out loud and at other times well up with tears. I find myself underlining the book repeatedly so I can find the best parts quickly again in the future. I am also almost certain he wrote the whole thing himself, based on people I know who know him. I have no interest in politics, yet I am devouring this book. If you aren’t giving Freakonomics as a Christmas gift this year—probably you gave it to everyone on your list last Christmas 🙂 —this would make a great gift.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised at what a good writer he is because I read his first book Dreams from My Father two years ago and loved that one as well. But unlike that first book, written 15-20 years ago before he had political ambitions, I thought this new one would just be garbage. Rarely does a book so exceed my expectations. Also, I should stress that I don’t agree with all his political views, but that in no way detracts from the enjoyment of reading the book.

If he has the same effect on others as he does on me, you are looking at a future president.

Steven D. Levitt

As far as NewMexiKen is concerned, Gates, Obama, whoever, I’m voting for Jeb Bush.

Best lines of the day, so far

Nothing NewMexiKen can add to this from Whiskey Bar:

What the Dems are saying:

Pelosi praised “the beauty and genius of our democracy,” and thanked voters for giving Democrats the chance to lead.

“Democrats pledge civility and bipartisanship in conduct of the work here,” she said, calling for “partnerships … not partisanship.”

What the Dems are actually thinking:

MARSELLUS: Step aside, Butch.

Butch steps aside, revealing Marsellus standing behind him, holding a pump-action shotgun. KABOOM!!!!

Zed is blasted in the groin. Down he goes, screaming in agony. Marsellus, looking down at his whimpering rapist, ejects the used shotgun shell.

BUTCH: You okay?

MARSELLUS: Naw man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from okay.

BUTCH: What now?

MARSELLUS: What now? Well let me tell you what now. I’m gonna call a couple pipe-hittin’ niggers, who’ll go to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. (to Zed) You hear me talkin’ hillbilly boy?! I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’m gonna git medieval on your ass!

Quentin Tarantino
Pulp Fiction

Best line of the day, so far

“I didn’t know there was a Green Party candidate in Virginia. You idiots. Why won’t you go shut up and go away? Not enough wars for you yet? Not enough corruption?”

— Altercation, commenting on the candidate who drained off 26,000 votes in a race where the viable candidates are less than 7,000 votes apart.

Unless you live in Vermont, please give up on the idea of a third party.

32,100,000 vs. 24,524,000

Brad DeLong does the underlying math:

One way to look at last night’s election is that the implicit gerrymandering of the Senate and the in-the-tank-ness of the press corps are keeping people from realizing how big the blowout was. Consider this: it looks like 32,100 thousand Americans voted for Democratic Senatorial candidates, and only 24,524 thousand Americans voted for Republican Senatorial candidates. That’s a 13.4% margin of Democratic victory.

Update:

Democratic senate votes/Republican senate votes:

2002: 21,428,784/18,665,605
2004: 37,645,909/38,164,089
2006: 32,100,000/24,524,000

Total: 91,174,693/81,353,694