Archive for 12/07
Yes, I’m off on vacation to the Holy Land for the next week and a half or so. That period, of course, covers exciting presidential things in Iowa and New Hampshire, so I’m sure I’ll have some catching up to do when I get back.
There’s plenty of really depressing stuff going on in the world, but I thought I’d leave you on a positive note with The Onion’s 2007: What the Hell Just Happened?
Enjoy, and I’ll see you in 2008 (with vacation photos)!
Mike Huckabee issued his response today to Benazir Bhutto’s assassination: watch out for scary brown people.
“We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusal [sic] activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time,” Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines.
Something about the phrasing of that first sentence keeps bugging me. It almost reads as if “Pakistanis coming into the country” is the unusual activity that we need to be worried about. Well, I guess he wouldn’t be a Republican without the fearmongering.
John McCain, on the other hand, has been using Bhutto’s death to play up his own foreign policy credentials. What does the Huckster have to say about that?
“This is not a time for us to play political games with (Bhutto’s death). It’s a time to express our outrage as well as our sadness and sympathy for the people of Pakistan and for the rest of the world,” Huckabee told reporters.
So let me get this straight: we shouldn’t be playing political games with someone’s death… unless the game is immigration and Mike Huckabee is the one playing. Wow. I guess he wouldn’t be a Republican without the hypocrisy either.
If you are afraid of people whose skin is darker than yours, then Rudy Giuliani is the man for you! Why is that? Just ask John Deady, the co-chair of the New Hampshire Vets for Rudy:
[He has] the knowledge and judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history. And that is the rise of the Muslims…And we need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people ‘til we defeat them or chase them back to their caves, or in other words, get rid of them.
And then we wonder why Muslims don’t like us. Could it have something to do with our new mantra that all Muslims are bad people? You can watch this clip below (courtesy of TPM), and The Guardian has a longer video with more bigotry and some interesting comments from Rudy’s biographer.
Earlier this month, Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand announced that she was pregnant. No scandal here–the Congresswoman and her husband decided to have a child–until one constituent (probably a strong supporter of family values) wrote a letter to the editor (scroll down the page) arguing that this pregnancy was just one more example of why women can’t serve in the U.S. Congress.
Naturally, this letter prompted some responses from the sane part of the world. Feministing’s Jessica Valenti responded by sarcastically asking if male politicians should similarly “reimburse their daily salaries when they have to go to get prostate exams or prescriptions for their Viagra.” FundieWatch has a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of the letter, and Jesse Wendel from GroupNewsBlog responded with a letter of his own.
It’s one thing when there’s just one self-described “male chauvinist” spouting off crap to the editor of his local newspaper. But what about when the crap is being spewed by a major presidential candidate?
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson on Wednesday teased Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying “there is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year.”
…
Thompson continued to refer to the next president as a man who should represent conservative principles and values, and should be examined “by what he believes and by where he’s been and what he’s done.”
Thompson claims he’s not opposed to a female president since “I’ve got a daughter that’s going to be president some day,” but I have a hard time believing him. The entire purpose of his speech is to single out Clinton as a woman and, therefore, unqualified for the presidency. Moreover, he’s trying to win the hearts and minds of fundamentalist Christians who believe that a woman’s place is, according to the Bible, in the kitchen. He strongly believes that a woman can be president, except she will be unqualified because she’s a woman. Or maybe he’s saying that women just aren’t ready to be president yet. Maybe women still have to do something (grow a penis?) before Thompson will consider them ready for the high office of President of the United States.
So my question for Mr. Thompson is: when will it be a good time for a woman to be president?
Not everyone spent their day celebrating. For some children, the best Christmas present–Mommy or Daddy–is still thousands of miles away fighting George Bush’s war.
DailyKos diarist Mark Warner is God knows why the Democratic Party can never nominate Barack Obama to be President of the United States:
Barack Obama is slightly less progressive on one or two issues than other Democrats. He wants to bring people together, which is in itself inherently evil. It makes me so angry when he says he wants to bring people together. I cannot stand the idea of Americans uniting. He cannot accomplish this, because no politician in the history of the United States has ever brought the American people together. It has never been done. We have always had a red-blue divide, as far back as I can remember, to 1998 or so. That’s the beginning of history. It is impossible to unite people. If he tries, he will fail, and then he will eat our children.
Make sure to read the whole thing. Personally, I’m still standing behind Barack. What’s the big deal about eating babies? After all, It is a well-established fact that eating children benefits society.
Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul sheds all of his medical training and denies science, joining the ranks of Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, and Sam Brownback.
Q: I saw you in one of the earlier debates, all of the candidates were asked if they believe the theory of evolution to be true and they had a show of hands, but I didn’t see which way you voted, and I was wondering if you believe it to be true, and should it be taught in our schools.
Paul: First, I thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter. And I, um, I think it’s a theory, theory of evolution, and I don’t accept it, you know, as a theory…. I just don’t think we’re at a point where anybody has absolute proof, on either side.
Now, explain to me how this guy is better than all the other Republicans again?
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow tries to cover the biggest scandals of 2007, only to find that one week’s worth of comic space isn’t nearly enough room to cover everything.
Uh-oh, someone on Hillary Clinton’s staff forgot to proofread. At a rally in Iowa on Saturday, her campaign handed out “pledge cards” to supporters eligible to vote in the Iowa caucus. Unfortunately for Clinton, those potential voters who actually read the pledge card might not get a chance to caucus.
In the upper right-hand corner of the card, it says “I, _____, pledge to support Hillary Clinton at my precinct caucus on January 14, 2008.”
Unfortunately, that’s 11 days too late. The Iowa caucuses are January 3 and organization is key to getting voters to go to the events and support their preferred candidate.
Oops.
Considering the media coverage, it’s possible that this mistake won’t have much of an effect, as people will have figured it out for themselves. On the other hand, the key to winning in Iowa is getting as many supporters as possible through the door. We’ll see what happens.
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