“Senator John Kerry said this week that he is thinking about running for president again but he hasn’t made up his mind as of yet. Well, that should put to rest all those rumors about him being indecisive.”
Jay Leno
Category: Politics & Elections
Our governor is packing — yours?
“Legislators and lobbyists beware — Gov. Bill Richardson has just received a license to carry a concealed handgun.”
NewMexiKen is looking forward to the 2008 Democratic presidential primary debates. Knowing Governor and presumed candidate Richardson is packing may make the debates very interesting.
Gore 2008
Richard Cohen is on board. An excerpt from his column, which is enthusiastic about Gore’s global warming film due out in May, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Gore insists his presidential aspirations are behind him. “I think there are other ways to serve,” he told me. No doubt. But on paper, he is the near-perfect Democratic candidate for 2008. Among other things, he won the popular vote in 2000. He opposed going to war in Iraq, but he supported the Persian Gulf War — right both times. He is smart, experienced and, despite the false caricatures, a man versed in the new technologies — especially the Internet.
Gore 2008
David Remnick is on board. An excerpt from an essay worth reading:
It is past time to recognize that, over a long career, his policy judgment and his moral judgment alike have been admirable and acute. Gore has been right about global warming since holding the first congressional hearing on the topic, twenty-six years ago. He was right about the role of the Internet, right about the need to reform welfare and cut the federal deficit, right about confronting Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo. Since September 11th, he has been right about constitutional abuse, right about warrantless domestic spying, and right about the calamity of sanctioned torture. And in the case of Iraq, both before the invasion and after, he was right—courageously right—to distrust as fatally flawed the political and moral good faith, operational competence, and strategic wisdom of the Bush Administration.
In case you think McCain is a solution
Mr. McCain praised the president for his failed effort to rewrite the Social Security system, said he supported the decision to go into Iraq and blistered at critics who suggested the White House had fabricated evidence of unconventional weapons in Iraq to justify the invasion.
“Anybody who says the president of the United States is lying about weapons of mass destruction is lying,” Mr. McCain said.
The New York Times reporting on the Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
Provide Your Own Caption
Here’s the background.
Idea for providing own caption from Rox Populi, though she doesn’t have this one yet.
Congress ‘made Wikipedia changes’
Online reference site Wikipedia blames US Congress staff for partisan changes to a number of political biographies.
Computers traced to Capitol Hill removed unpalatable facts from articles on senators, while other entries were “vandalised”, the site said.
An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography.
Wikipedia is produced by readers who add entries and edit any page, and has become a widely-used reference tool.
I’m fairly certain they were just clarifying things.
Thanks to Emily and Eve for the pointer.
Best line of the day, so far
“The gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew. That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture many more Bubbas than the one she already has.”
— Maureen Dowd in a column entitled “Who’s Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?”
Something to remember
Both New Mexico senators voted yes on cloture for the Alito nomination today. That was to be expected from Republican Domenici. It’s discouraging that it was also the case with Democrat Bingaman.
[Update: I forgot to note earlier that Bingaman is running for reelection this year. Apparently not as a pro-choice candidate.]
Here’s the vote (72 for, 25 against).
The 25 who tried (whatever their motives):
Bayh, Evan (D-IN)
Biden, Joseph R., Jr. (D-DE)
Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)
Clinton, Hillary Rodham (D-NY)
Dayton, Mark (D-MN)
Dodd, Christopher J. (D-CT)
Durbin, Richard (D-IL)
Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)
Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA)
Jeffords, James M. (I-VT)
Kennedy, Edward M. (D-MA)
Kerry, John F. (D-MA)
Lautenberg, Frank R. (D-NJ)
Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)
Levin, Carl (D-MI)
Menendez, Robert (D-NJ)
Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-MD)
Murray, Patty (D-WA)
Obama, Barack (D-IL)
Reed, Jack (D-RI)
Reid, Harry (D-NV)
Sarbanes, Paul S. (D-MD)
Schumer, Charles E. (D-NY)
Stabenow, Debbie (D-MI)
Wyden, Ron (D-OR)
Good point
NewMexiKen read this observation somewhere this morning:
Four years of Bush I.
Eight years of Clinton.
Eight years of Bush II.
Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
Do we really want to keep the presidency in two families for 24-28 years?
There must be some other explanation
“[A]ccording to NBC, both Louisiana and Mississippi requested 40,000 FEMA trailers. Thus far, Mississippi, whose governor chaired the Republican Party, has gotten 33,000, while Louisiana, whose governor is a Democrat, has gotten 2,000 or so.”
Best line of the day, so far
“George W. Bush has been president for precisely five years. By my reckoning that means he can serve for another three years, unless, after consultation with the Attorney General, he exercises his Executive Privilege to void the Constitution entirely and declare himself President For Life.”
Joel Achenbach, who adds that he’s not saying that will happen, “It’s much more likely that he will declare that he didn’t really win in 2000, and therefore should be permitted to run again in 2008.”
Actually, go read Achenbach’s whole entry.
Now here’s a pessimist
I still say “Gore/Obama 08,” but I think McCain will be nearly impossible to beat and I’ve changed my mind about him being un-nominatable. (Jeb is the wild card, by the way.) But if McCain does turn out to be the nominee, maybe Democrats had just better nominate Hillary and get it over with”.
McCain will be 72 in 2008, or some other age if that suits his ambitions better.
Best line of the day, so far
“If the Democrats are like the dithering ‘Desperate Housewives,’ the Republicans have come across like the counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer on ’24’: fast with a gun, loose with the law, willing to torture in the name of protecting the nation. Except Jack Bauer is competent.”
Maureen Dowd, who adds: “How many things do you have to mess up in the country and the world before you lose your reputation for machismo?”
Update: The Daily Howler reminds us who put the skirts on Gore.
Other than this I wouldn’t compare the two
But Richard Nixon did it, why not Al Gore?
(The “it” being: Serve as Vice President for 8 years, lose the Presidency in a stolen election, run and win 8 years later.)
Best line of the day, so far
“The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. That, though, is no small matter. It is a Himalayan barrier, a Sahara of a handicap, a summer’s day in Death Valley, a winter’s night at the pole (either one) — an endless list of metaphors intended to show you both the immensity of the problem and to illustrate it with the op-ed version of excess.”
Richard Cohen, who just takes the Senator apart, including this:
“But his tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency.”
NewMexiKen mentioned Biden’s longwindedness yesterday.
Best line of the day, so far
“This weekend, a Democratic National Committee task force on presidential primaries and caucuses issued its recommendations for the 2008 calendar. Unfortunately, the group didn’t have the power to make the change that would do Democrats the most good, which would be to have the 2008 election right now.”
Bruce Reed at Slate
Shame
From this day forward, the Democratic Party will commit to putting up a “Shame on You” billboard in the home district of any Republican who attacks a veteran’s service in order to score political points.
The first billboard will go up near Jean Schmidt’s district office in Portsmouth, Ohio. The message: “Shame on You, Jean Schmidt: Stop Attacking Veterans. Keep Your Eye on the Ball — We Need a Real Plan for Iraq”.
From, the Democratic Party, which would welcome your contribution toward the billboard.
In a bad political year
At The Washington Post, Chris Cillizza’s Politics Blog, called “The Fix,” handicaps the 10 House seats most likely to change parties next year. NewMexiKen’s own Congressperson is rated the 6th most likely.
New Mexico’s 1st district — Rep. Heather Wilson (R): The story remains the same in this ultimate swing district. Democrats have their best candidate in state Attorney General Patsy Madrid, a Hispanic in her second term as a statewide officeholder. Wilson has shown remarkable resiliency in holding this Albuquerque-area district and continues to impress with her fundraising prowess — $732,000 on hand at the end of September. Republicans have always conceded that in a bad political year Wilson could be one of the first to go. This race could move up the line if Madrid turns out to be as strong a candidate as expected.
They’re nearly all blue states now
What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the goslings
From an AP news item:
The House on Tuesday agreed to a $3,100 pay raise for Congress next year to $165,200 after defeating an effort to roll it back. …
“It’s not a pay raise,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. “It’s an adjustment so that they’re not losing their purchasing power.”
Federal minimum wage: $5.15. It’s been $5.15 since 1997. Loss of purchasing power: About 19.4%.
In 1997, Congressional salaries were $133,600. If the minimum wage was raised only as much as Congressional salaries have been raised — by the Congressmen themselves; I mean there hasn’t been a big groundswell that I’ve heard to increase Congressional salaries — then the minimum wage would become $6.37 in January.
Grading the Democratic Presidental Hopefuls
Well, gee it’s only about 1,080 days until the next presidential election, we’d better get started. Here’s Michael Froomkin, Grading the Democratic Presidental Hopefuls; ten candidates from Clark and Edwards (A-) to Kerry and Biden (D and F).
America’s Least Wanted
According to Bruce Reed at Slate, George W. Bush has now caught his father George H.W. Bush. The two are tied with the third highest presidential disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll since World War II — 60 percent.
Nixon is second at 66 percent disapproval; Truman number one at 67. Jimmy Carter is fifth at 59.
“Truman needed seven years to hit bottom, Nixon six, and Bush the son five. The elder Bush tanked in three and a half.”
Metaphor Alert!
The President reacts when he finds the door locked as he tried to leave a press conference in Beijing.
There’s no way out, Mr. President.
Fantasyland
Freakonomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner question Why Vote? in The New York Times Magazine. Here’s one observation:
Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it’s fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you’d spend the winnings – much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
It’s a fantasy all right.