All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

Directed and Produced by: Benjamin Wilbanks. A group of American Christians travel to Iraq to teach a group of Iraqis how to operate a printing press, and in the process discover that Iraqis are grateful for America's help and want freedom and progress as much as anyone else. "A Journey to Iraq" shows a side of the War on Terror that is rarely seen in the mainstream media. (Documentary, 43 minutes, 2006)

Directed by: John Cameron Mitchell. An aspiring young capitalist (John Cameron Mitchell) struggles to escape the communist Eastern Bloc only to be betrayed by a confused deviant youth who does not respect intellectual property rights (Michael Pitt).

Right now, I'm leaning toward John Edwards in the primaries. He has problems -- a thin political résumé, a fancy estate at odds with his populist message, and a dated hairstyle that looks femme and foofy at a time when military buzz cuts and Caesarian close crops are in. But Edwards is a ferocious, knife-sharp debater with foxy, seat-of-the-pants smarts, and I hope he creams his opponents. It would be a relief to have an articulate president again...

I love the way Barack Obama has nimbly upstaged the ponderous Hillary machine. It's a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford bitch fest! But Obama's effusive gusts of generalities irritate me; it's all sizzle and no steak right now. He needs seasoning: 2012 may be his year...

On the Republican side, I've never understood liberal journalists' infatuation with John McCain, who's as mercurial as Hillary in his ideology-of-the-day. Those two are peas in a pod -- always dialing up the weather report and sleeping next to a window with their fingers in the wind. If Rudy Giuliani improbably wins the Republican nomination, which would require primary voters shutting their eyes to his liberal social views and checkered sex life, he would roll like a juggernaut into the White House on the strength of his macho authoritarianism in this time of war. Giuliani's got balls, but do we want this democracy drifting any further toward a police state?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2007/02/14/return/print.html

If he can really channel the Wellstone thing, he has a shot.

Well Alfred, she also accuses A___ N___ Smith of having comic verve or something.

also, C. Paglia is no longer worth any of my neuronal function

i'm glad paglia is back, she's always interesting to read. strangely i see the dem presidential field in much the same way & am def. supporting edwards right now, i like his straightforwardness and the fact that he doesn't have much to lose this time around, and i also like that he doesn't take obama's "transcend politics" approach which might sound nice but is arrogant and kind of insults the voters' intelligence, politics is everywhere and not any more/less dirty than anything else in life. hillary prob has too much $$$/organizational savvy for edwards to defeat her but you never know.

you rule out the possibility that he's playing left because there's no other way for him to get sufficient $ and primary voters?

I am leaning Edwards for the moment... dar1a, how will you bear it if we support the same horse?

Franken tackled some heckler during the '04 campaign!

his hem/hawing about s.s. unions has been discouraging tho.

It doesn't matter re: far-left appeal, the far-left isn't going to win you anything (most dem primary voters aren't far-left, esp Iowa, NH), being against the war & for starting to bring troops home is mainstream right now, universal healthcare has a lot of mainstream support, Edwards has a lot of ties to organized labor & has been working on building/strengthening them since 04, he's also by far the savviest in use of blogs/technology without showing any sign of letting that aspect of his campaign pick up and run away with wild fervor a la Dean. and like Iowa last time around I see him as.. having enough of his own support + being seen as a viable alternative by supporters of the other candidates, it could be a winning formula - he's not polarizing.

I wouldn't call Obama dead in the water but I don't see his campaign as having near the solid support of Edwards and expect him to be the Dean type flash in the pan this time around, albeit less likely to have a spectacular crash and burn

My ref to the far left/money angle was just in response to gabbneb's comment about Edwards' need for $$$. (I know the far left doesn't have a) a lot of money or b) the sole power to win elections)

here's a link to the proposals

do you see Obama having this same problem? this is an honest question, I'm not sure myself.

"And to the extent you believe that he was 'taken out', the people purportedly responsible for same are part of the coalition lining up behind Obama now."

Well right, which is one of the reasons why I don't think he faces the same intra-party threats as Dean.

absolutely not

Obama recently pulled a 17,000-person crowd outside a major metro in the freezing cold (admittedly in his backyard). Did Dean ever pull a crowd that size in a big city in good weather?

i'm stunned. but obama does come off as an egomaniac a lot of the time

re: edwards, he's never brought his son into it. i don't think that's all the motivation. the whole 'son of a mill worker' thing got to be a shtick after a while but there's something very relate-able about the story, that in this country anyone should be able to work hard, make a decent living, buy a house, send their kids to college, and even dream of them becoming president..

not as a theme, no. but some people, myself included, have long identified some hard-to-pin-down inauthenticity about johnny sunshine (I believe it was one of those Political Insider dudes who was complaining recently about the perceived put-on of his squinty-eye shtick), and I think it may be rooted in a protective shell built over an underlying familial sadness - to the extent that he (understandably) doesn't talk much about it, he's also in some sense not being totally on the surface. people don't want a guy wearing a mask.