All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

I thought Sam Brownback had the fundies locked up

he might be their favorite, but he isn't going anywhere

It's kinda his version of "conservatism never fails; it is only failed."

Can anyone see there NOT being more troops sent? Who's gonna stop W? Will the Masses actually put down the fucking remote and raise hell over it? Can't see it.

romney seems more formidable in a general election, although this mormon thing is likely a huge liability. we'll see if he can talk his way out of it.

my money's on obama.

Thank you for your recent communication. When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way.

The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.

We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country.

I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

The Ten Commandments and “In God We Trust” are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, “As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office.”

Thank you again for your email and thoughts.

Sincerely yours,
Virgil H. Goode, Jr.
70 East Court Street
Suite 215
Rocky Mount, Virginia 24151

via glenn greenwald. ugh.

that's the key word. You already get the feel that these guys are quakin' in their boots, freaked out that them muslims are gunna start asking for their own restrooms, water fountains, ability to pray, etc

Obama's staffers found out, and Barack personally called the guy to apologize.

"Messin' up your game" and all that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121900880.html

In a December 18 column headlined "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim" and posted on her website, right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel argued that because Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) middle name is Hussein, his late, estranged father was of Muslim descent, and he has shown interest in his father's Kenyan heritage, Obama's "loyalties" must be called into question as he emerges as a possible Democratic presidential candidate. In the column, Schlussel asked: "So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian ... is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" She ended her column by asking if Obama becoming vice president instead would be acceptable. Answering her own question, she wrote: "NO WAY, JOSE ... Or, is that, HUSSEIN?"

Yup. War against Islam, fun for all round.

spotted here

Dick Morris is now threatening to split the U.S. if Clinton/Obama wins, 'coz "I do not want Hillary Clinton controlling the FBI and the IRS and the CIA and the DEA."

Oh yeah, and apparently Hillary will win the nom, so the GOP will have to run Condi against her.

my congressman. robin hayes. the one who won his election with slightly over 300 votes. sigh.

did anyone else read the Harper's cover story on Obama and the Atlantic cover story on Hillary?

[from TNR]

Village People
by Martin Peretz
Post date: 12.22.06
Issue date: 01.15.07

She's not sure whether she is running for president. But she is certain that the time is right for a woman to try. Maybe Hillary Clinton thinks that Nancy Pelosi should be the Democratic candidate. OK, Hillary is not a candid person. This time--actually, the day that I write--she was not candid on NPR's "Morning Edition." Yesterday, it was on another platform. Tomorrow, she won't be candid on still another one. So, what else is new? We've accommodated to her trying to figure all the angles. Hillary has been scheming for the presidency since the day her husband entered the White House, which is why she didn't much take to Al Gore. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she conspired with James Baker--or is that just me?

One of the problems about figuring all the angles is that you can't. And, believe me, Hillary tried. She has had an apparatus in place for just that chore for years. Not long enough ago to include Harold Ickes's father, the other Harold Ickes, who schemed for FDR. But this Harold Ickes (who ran Eugene McCarthy's campaign in New York), and Mandy Grunwald and John Podesta and Mark Penn and Tony Podesta and Susan Thomases, unless any of these have been unceremoniously pushed off the ship, much like Marian Wright Edelman--Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate--was pushed, never to be let on board again. In its youth, the team was a band of idealists, self-styled. Now it's made up of hardened cynics, no pretense otherwise. But the same folk.

Hillary and Co. prepared for Mark Warner and John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden, Tom Vilsack and the really impossible--no, deluded--dreamer John Kerry. She probably had a strategy against Gore, too. She was confident and contemptuous. And then, suddenly, she found herself running against a latter-day Martin Luther King Jr.

There was no way to see Barack Obama coming. And, damn it, he is a picture of America's future, black and white. African father. Columbia. Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review, no slouch he. Taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, greater evidence of his brilliance. Supple in mind and bearing, evoking energy and thoughtfulness. Ah, yes, his most important public quality: He is comfortable in his own skin. She is not. Oh, is she not! What could Hillary possibly say against him? In the Democratic Party, it is still difficult to honestly criticize an African American. You can't even say a bad word about Al Sharpton, even though you can't say a truthful good word about him, either. But what, for heaven's sake, is there to criticize about Obama? Nothing.

Hillary is holding séances with Democratic politicians in New York. They can't but be for her. Even though my old student Chuck Schumer is more popular than her and more respected. And certainly deeper. The same is true for Eliot Spitzer. If they actually endorse, their endorsements will be discounted. New Mexico Representative Tom Udall probably supports New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. And that means exactly what? Nothing. On the other hand, maybe Hillary will be able to entice Eleanor Roosevelt into her corner.

I have a question I've been reluctant to ask. Do the Clintons have any friends who aren't really rich? Maybe just a few, for old time's sake. But, as I read the clips about them, they consort largely, and maybe only, with zillionaires and very high-pay Hollywood types. It is not an axiomatic vocational hazard of politicians. Let me take Gore as an instance. He and Tipper have musician friends and professor friends and artist friends and just plain worker friends and farmer friends, for sure. Not that they don't mix with computer magnates, as well. But the Gores are rooted in ordinary life--in real, even quotidian activity. For example, he actually writes his own books. Believe it or not, it's true. The indulgent wealth that surrounds Bill and Hillary is, I am sure, corrupting. And that corruption--of taste, of moderation, of what is essential--cripples the soul and distorts life itself.

No wonder that Bill Clinton flies with frequency to Dubai and other sand eruptions in the Gulf to speak at conference after conference on topics so orotund that no one reports what he says. But isn't it a degradation of the presidency for this former president to shmooze, for money and money alone, with men (yes, only men) who want from him only his presence? But perhaps this sexism is a relief. The robed hosts do allow women to be among their foreign guests. At least they allow Madame Albright, who flatters them, also to address them. And Wesley Clark. But Clinton is the king of the Emirates Airline route. The indisputable king.

Which brings me back to Hillary. Does the American public really want her husband in the White House once again? And with nothing to do? Right now, what with George W. and Laura ensconced in the upstairs rooms, the return of the previous first couple may seem attractive, even alluring. But the hardened woman, who lost her health care proposal not to a GOP Congress but to a Democratic one, does not evoke the capacity to persuade, to compromise, to administer, to govern. Her coterie is too tight. Her mind too rigid. And her husband's is too, well, loose.

Hillary started out in 1993 with "the politics of meaning," that pretentious and portentous phrase that actually means nothing. She had leapt at it out of the mouth of a foolish "rabbi," Michael Lerner, earnest and oleaginous (he the enthusiast of tikkun olam, a theology rooted nowhere so firmly as in a Peter, Paul, and Mary song). But she dropped it quickly when she discovered that the American people were on to her preacher-teacher's banal words. Then she peddled It Takes A Village as book and slogan. It soon appeared too soft for her own entry into politics, and so she also sidetracked this theme. But now she is running for president. Tough-minded she was on Iraq, right up there with that junior senator from Massachusetts. A few days ago, she said that, had she known what she knows now, she wouldn't have voted for the war. Then, today, she said she wished she had voted against the war, whatever. She has fumbled and disenchanted the left, and the left is not easily forgiving. Still, as a gesture to that flank of the party, Hillary has republished It Takes A Village. But what it really takes is a majority of the electoral college. Which I don't see.

Maybe Peretz doesn't pay close attention or maybe Obama's just too new to him, but there is definitely something odd going on with Obama's habit of responding to all sorts of questions in the second person.. "Well, you do this, then you think this, and you don't want to react this way" like he's constantly observing his own behavior from somewhere offstage. Because he is. And there's nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with Hillary doing the same except that she isn't as good at faking candor.

Right now, today, I'd prefer Edwards or Obama were nominated over Hillary but some folks' views of her can border on the pathological

if you'd like some evidence that her scheming long ago went off the rails see: HER FUCKING DISGUSTING RECORD ON THE IRAQ WAR.

obama's thing, shockingly, contains a large element of actual thoughtfulness.

that Marty Peretz article has some points worth considering, but I tend to avoid anything expressing irrational-obsessive hatred of the Clintons from either side, especially when it's often personal axe-grinding (like Dick Morris being forever remembered for his toe fetish). With Peretz it's hard to figure out given that it's a guy who both sided with Bush on the war as late as '04 and was a big Gore fan. But I imagine it might have something to do with the impact the Clintons had on the Third Way and its import for TNR - maybe they weren't centrist enough for him, or maybe they so embodied and Democratic-branded the movement that he lost his brand.

The second person thing *might* also be an inclusive gesture, as if he is inviting the questioner to occupy his shoes and thus seems more reasonable as a result. Obama does 'reasonable' very well.

Kerry didn't - and dry wit doesn't play well in a politician outside of his/her core supporters.

hotter