Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Political rants
Obama,
Edwards,
Clinton
Notice something odd about the Iowa caucus coverage? Edwards pulls off second place, despite being greatly outspent by Clinton and Obama, despite being third in nearly every pre-caucus poll, and which way does the media tack?
This is a failure for Edwards, who needed to win Iowa.
Clinton and Edwards (NOT “Edwards and Clinton”) in a dead heat for second.
Edwards’s performance with labor groups and lower income voters was disappointing.
Edwards? Edwards who? (They have been trying their damnedest not to say his name.)
What should be the talking point, when it comes to Edwards? Edwards narrowly defeats Clinton, despite being outspent by Clinton at least 2:1 (sorry, I didn’t make note of the actual numbers). Grrr. Know what it is? Edwards attacks corporate greed. Guess who owns the media.
And congratulations to Barack Obama, whom I would be delighted to call my President. Yeah, I love Edwards — I think he’s the most revolutionary of the bunch, the one who cares most for the poor, the uninsured — but Obama’s saying all the right things, too. They both gave kickass speeches, although Edwards’s speech choked me up, Obama’s didn’t, and Clinton’s made me want to hit the ultrafast forward button.
As much as I would love to see a woman in the White House, please, God, not Clinton. She’s a hawk and a corporate minion. Anyway, to misquote Stephen Colbert, I don’t see race and I don’t see gender. I’m voting for the populist candidate.
D.
Sunday Sermon
I think the best sermons are the ones which stir us to be better people.
Devilstower: With God on Our Side.
When you’re too busy trying not to lose, you may win elections now and then, but you rarely advance those causes you’re supposed to care about. Â We’ve reached the point where Republican voters can claim the philosophy of absolute greed.
“I make a great deal of money through my own hard work. Â I don’t want to pay for someone else’s child to eat breakfast at school anymore.”
Get that? Â She makes not just enough money, but a “great deal of money.” Â How dare anyone take it away for something so frivolous as feeding a poor child? Â And yet Republicans, through their actions in blurring the lines between church and state, have become the “party of faith.” Â Because they say so. Â Because they are bold in their actions and snarling in their defense.
We need to be just as adamant. Â We need to not hide behind any abstraction or evasion. Â We need to be unafraid to address this voter and say “I am going to take some of your money, and give it to that poor kid, because it’s more important — both to the child and to society — that he eat, rather than that you have an extra week in Cabo.”
Sure it’s political. But politics is just personal morality (or immorality) on the grand scale, right?
D.
I Heart Pete Stark *updated*
. . . for speaking truth to power.
He’s getting blasted by the Republican noise machine for stating that Bush is getting kids’ heads blown off in Iraq for his own amusement. When I sent Congressman Stark a contribution today, I wrote him that ‘amusement’ was not, perhaps, the best word. This war is all about Bush’s toilet paper-thin ego, and his desperate, panicky desire to “stay relevant.” And no, that’s not the whole story, because it leaves out the lust for dictatorial power, the desire to commit the most massive theft in world history, the psychopathology of engineering a Revelations-style Armageddon in the Middle East, and the stupidity to blunder into it with as much foresight and planning as a crowd of drunken frat boys deciding a panty raid on ‘those Tri-Delt bitches’ would be a good thing. Pete Stark’s comments barely scratch the surface of the Bush Administration’s evil.
But they were a fine start.
You rock, Congressman Stark.
Live-blogging tonight, y’all.
UPDATE 10/23/07: He apologized. I want a refund on the money I contributed!
D.
Caption Contest: Debra “I hate all Iranians” Cagan
The prize? The love and adulation of your peers, naturally!
Debra Cagan is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert Gates. She made her comments to a group of British MPs visiting the Pentagon.
I have a few ideas on this one, but I wouldn’t want to interfere with your muses.
D.
I love this guy.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has a blog, and now that he has a new book, you can no doubt look forward to appearances on The Daily Show and Colbert Report.
Watch him not hawk his new book, Supercapitalism.
Interestingly, on his blog he recommends tax cuts to help avert the coming recession — but not tax cuts for the wealthy, who he correctly points out already spend as much money as they please:
It’s middle and lower-income Americans who spend more when their taxes are cut. And because the biggest tax they face is the payroll tax, the payroll tax needs to be cut in order to keep them spending and avoid a recession.
I say exempt the first $15,000 of earnings from payroll taxes for a year, starting as soon as possible. Sure, this may cause the budget deficit to widen a bit. But if the economy goes into the tank, the deficit will be far bigger.
Makes perfect sense to me . . . and we could easily offset the tax cut by rolling back some of W’s breaks to the super-wealthy.
D.
Falafel Boy is gonna hunt you down!
“[N]o longer will these smear merchants be allowed to get away with it, as long as I’m in the chair. As long as I’m here, I’m hunting them down. And that means everybody.”
Here’s the question. Has Bill O’Reilly finally lost it, or is this business as usual?
More from Media Matters (the Bugs Bunny to O’Reilly’s Fudd):
“I’m going to go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice, right now. I’m coming after you.” He went on to warn: “You smear somebody and you can’t back it up, you’re gonna get it. … You go after somebody’s family, you go after them and smear them with defamation that you can’t back up, I’m coming to your house. I’m coming to your house. You’ll have a camera up your nose. OK?”
9/11 Blogswarm: No War With Iran
President Vice President Cheney? You can’t bomb the crap out of this
without also bombing the crap out of this.
Not convinced? Then share this with Junior, too. He supposedly likes children.
Mr. President? Try turning the book right-side up.
D.
I am not gay.
Sen. Larry Craig, who in May told the Idaho Statesman he had never engaged in homosexual acts, was arrested less than a month later by an undercover police officer who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him in an airport men’s room. — IdahoStatesman.com
I have nothing but sympathy for the Republican senator from Idaho. The man devoted his entire professional life to defending and promoting solid Family Values by voting to impeach President Clinton (after all — Clinton was a nasty, bad, naughty boy), opposing a woman’s right to choose at every turn (0% rating by NARAL — such a badge of honor), and most of all, working diligently to scuttle any bill which might promote gay rights. Yes, you have to respect a man with such a wide stance on the issues.
And what does he get in return for decades of public service? He gets the shaft, that’s what, courtesy of the International Gay Conspiracy! This whole situation really blows.
I feel for this man, though, because I, too, am not gay.
GallimauFriday
Check out The Hermit’s new political vid. Davis Fleetwood hooks into an emotion I tried to explain here, but y’all thought I was talking about music or something. And I was thinking about it again this morning on the drive to work. On NPR, they were yapping about the housing crash, about how devastating an experience it is to have your house on the market right now. “I’m so exhausted,” the woman said. “I never know when the real estate agent is going to show up, so every morning, I have to Windex the windows before I go to work.”
I thought about Davis’s video, and everything snapped into perspective.
Join me below the fold for
FROGS!
ZAFTIG WOMEN!
A FRIDAY SNIPPET!
and more, because there’s always me, too.
Music for the Resistance
Cross-posted over at Daily Kos.
I’m not sure which is more depressing: that the House and Senate caved to White House intimidation over the “need” for broader domestic surveillance powers, or that none of my patients — including a local attorney — seems to have heard anything about it.
Like many Americans, I had a spike of hope when Democrats won control of the House and Senate last November. Since then, Republican/White House obstructionism combined with the cowardice of certain Democratic members of Congress has tempered (if not destroyed) that hope. And when I despair, I turn to the political blogs for hope; and when those blogs drive me further into depression, I listen to music.
This is a post about the new Nine Inch Nails CD, Year Zero.