A few days ago, in Lisbon, in the Terreiro do Paço.
Talk amongst yourselves.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 102 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
A few days ago, in Lisbon, in the Terreiro do Paço.
Talk amongst yourselves.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 93 Comments
This post is in: Fuck The Poor, Sociopaths
Nooners has been hitting the turps again.
The left in America has largely thrown in the towel on Ronald Reagan, but in Britain Thatcher-hatred remains fresh. Why?
Because she was a woman. Because women in politics are always by definition seen as presumptuous: They presume to lead men. When they are as bright as the men they’re disliked by the men, and when they’re brighter and more serious they’re hated. Mrs. Thatcher’s very presence was an insult to the left because it undermined the left’s insistence that only leftism and its protection of the weak and disadvantaged would allow women to rise. She rose without them while opposing what they stood for. On the other hand, some of the Tory men around her had been smacked on the head by her purse often enough to wish for revenge. What better revenge than to fail to fully stand up for her to posterity?
And so her difficult position. But one senses that is changing.
Of course, it has nothing to do with the Poll Tax riots, her opposition to sanctions against South Africa, the closure of 150 coal mines and the resulting devastation of mining communities and mining unions, the abolition of school meals, Section 28, the massive long-term unemployment and hardship she inflicted on communities (particularly in the North) from which many have still not recovered, the slashing of higher education funding, the privatisation and deregulation of everything possible, or the fact that Margaret Thatcher was an evil, rabid, vicious, mean-sprited, homophobic, Reagan-snuggling, Pinochet-loving old trout.
No. It’s all because she’s a woman.
This post is in: Election 2012, Gay Rights are Human Rights, Assholes, Get off my grass you damned kids
This open letter by a former Paul Staffer is a must read. I can’t tell if he is trying to help or hurt Paul, and maybe some of you know what his deal is, but the results of this letter are going to be devastating to the Paul campaign:
Is Ron Paul a “racist.” In short, No. I worked for the man for 12 years, pretty consistently. I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth. Not once. And understand, I was his close personal assistant. It’s safe to say that I was with him on the campaign trail more than any other individual, whether it be traveling to Fairbanks, Alaska or Boston, Massachusetts in the presidential race, or across the congressional district to San Antonio or Corpus Christi, Texas.
He has frequently hired blacks for his office staff, starting as early as 1988 for the Libertarian campaign. He has also hired many Hispanics, including his current District staffer Dianna Gilbert-Kile.
One caveat: He is what I would describe as “out of touch,” with both Hispanic and Black culture. Ron is far from being the hippest guy around. He is completely clueless when it comes to Hispanic and Black culture, particularly Mexican-American culture. And he is most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence, (as are a number of Americans, nothing out of the ordinary here.)
Is Ron Paul an Anti-Semite? Absolutely No. As a Jew, (half on my mother’s side), I can categorically say that I never heard anything out of his mouth, in hundreds of speeches I listened too over the years, or in my personal presence that could be called, “Anti-Semite.” No slurs. No derogatory remarks.
He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
Again, American Jews, Ron Paul has no problem with. In fact, there were a few Jews in our congressional district, and Ron befriended them with the specific intent of winning their support for our campaign. (One synagogue in Victoria, and tiny one in Wharton headed by a well-known Jewish lawyer).
***Is Ron Paul a homo-phobe? Well, yes and no. He is not all bigoted towards homosexuals. He supports their rights to do whatever they please in their private lives. He is however, personally uncomfortable around homosexuals, no different from a lot of older folks of his era.
There were two incidents that I will cite, for the record. One that involved me directly, and another that involved another congressional staffer or two.
(I am revealing this for the very first time, and I’m sure Jim Peron will be quite surprised to learn this.)
In 1988, Ron had a hardcore Libertarian supporter, Jim Peron, Owner of Laissez Faire Books in San Francisco. Jim set up a magnificent 3-day campaign swing for us in the SF Bay Area. Jim was what you would call very openly Gay. But Ron thought the world of him. For 3 days we had a great time trouncing from one campaign event to another with Jim’s Gay lover. The atmosphere was simply jovial between the four of us. (As an aside we also met former Cong. Pete McCloskey during this campaign trip.) We used Jim’s home/office as a “base.” Ron pulled me aside the first time we went there, and specifically instructed me to find an excuse to excuse him to a local fast food restaurant so that he could use the bathroom. He told me very clearly, that although he liked Jim, he did not wish to use his bathroom facilities. I chided him a bit, but he sternly reacted, as he often did to me, Eric, just do what I say. Perhaps “sternly” is an understatement. Ron looked at me directly, and with a very angry look in his eye, and shouted under his breath: “Just do what I say NOW.”
***Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
He’s not a bigot cuz he’s hired some “blacks,” he just doesn’t like to be around them or their culture.
He’s not a homophobe, he just doesn’t want to be around them or see any of their gayness.
This should be the end of the Paul campaign. If nothing else, it should be fun watching young Conor contort this to fit his worldview.
by John Cole| 58 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Clown Shoes, Teabagger Stupidity
How bad is the Republican field? So bad that Rich Lowry is calling this train wreck the “A team” that “isn’t on the field”:
The Chris Matthews “Oh, God” at the beginning still cracks me up.
At any rate, at some point conservative “intellectuals” like Lowry are going to realize that the fail parade he currently sees is the best they are going to be able to have when their ideology caters to outright morons. You aren’t going to get leaders to push the kind of nonsense the GOP wants the public to believe, you are going to get lunatics, charlatans, and frauds, or, as we know them, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Romney.
The badness of the GOP field is tied to the awfulness of the platform and the emptiness of modern conservative thought. The two are inseparable. There is a reason Robert Duvall did not star in Macgruber yet Will Forte did…
by Zandar| 43 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Teabagger Stupidity, We Are All Mayans Now
Over at the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne argues (correctly, I believe) that the GOP Clown Car Cavalcade’s central tenet is to run for head of a government they insist cannot work, a Disunited States of America in a very real sense, freed from oversight, responsibility, and oversight from Washington, shades of Goldwater’s 1964 run. What it does is leave President Obama as the classic conservative in the race, fighting to defend the advances in social welfare and the safety net made over the last three generations.
The GOP is engaged in a wholesale effort to redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society. Consider Romney’s claim in his Bedford speech: “President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.”
Obama believes no such thing. If he did, why are so many continuing to make bundles on Wall Street? As my colleagues Greg Sargent and Paul Krugman have been insisting, Romney is saying things about the president that are flatly, grossly and shamefully untrue. But Romney’s sleight of hand is revealing: Republicans are increasingly inclined to argue that any redistribution (and Social Security, Medicare, student loans, veterans benefits and food stamps are all redistributive) is but a step down the road to some radically egalitarian dystopia.
Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled. The rhetoric of the 2012 Republicans suggests they want to go far beyond where Reagan or Bush ever went. And here’s the irony: By raising the stakes of 2012 so high, Republicans will be playing into Obama’s hands. The GOP might well win a referendum on the state of the economy. But if this is instead a larger-scale referendum on whether government should be “inconsequential,” Republicans will find the consequences to be very disappointing.
Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann all join Perry in calling for the wholesale elimination of government Cabinet departments. And as Dionne points out, Romney has now joined the group of Republicans who are running to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible, to leave us in an era where the states and cities fight amongst themselves for the favor of the “job creators” in a race to the bottom, each location offering more incentives than the last at greater and greater expense of their least wealthy constituents.
If you believe that states should be engaging in Hunger Games style combat and brutal competition not to create new jobs, but to strip them from other states in order to “win”, then the GOP is your party in 2012. It would be nice if Dionne’s last sentence were true, that Americans wouldn’t vote against their own self-interests, and yet tens of millions will. The only question in 2012 is if enough will turn out to defend the United part in the name of the country. If you believe that America is in this together, and that there’s a role for government in a federal system, then yes, President Obama seems to be the only one keen on going that particular route.
Don’t blame me for that headline. Blame Dick Morris, the latest cheerleader for Mr Frothy Santorum. I was going to go with “Awash with Santorum”, but I thought that might be a bit much first thing in the morning.
All along, the Tea Party voters have yet to unite behind a single candidate. They still aren’t united, but in Iowa, there is evidence that Rick Santorum may be surging ahead.
In the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) telephone poll of 23,000 supporters nationally, Newt led with 31% of the vote, followed by Bachmann at 28%, Romney at 20% and Santorum with a surprising 16%.
…
There has always been a sort of mini-primary among the Tea Party followers among Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Cain, and Santorum – the candidates they find acceptable. Gingrich’s and Bachmann’s drop, Cain’s withdrawal, and Perry’s stagnation all contrast sharply with Santorum’s surge.The former Pennsylvania Senator has been the also ran in the field, the Rodney (I get no respect) Dangerfield of the Republican primaries. But with the lack of poll numbers has come a lack of scrutiny. These days the spotlight can get too hot very quickly. Santorum, whose conservative record is as solid as they come, is benefiting from the fall of Gingrich in a way Bachmann seems unable to do.
Ron Paul remains terrifying. He is really the ultimate liberal in the race. He wants to legalize drugs, repeal the Patriot Act, slash our military spending, pull out of Afghanistan, and remove all limits on abortion. On these issues, he’s way, way to the left of Obama. What makes him a conservative is hard to tell. But, whatever he is, he would be a disaster as the Republican candidate. His bland assertion in the last debate, that “anyone” will beat Obama is both self-serving and inaccurate. He wouldn’t. Anyone who votes for Paul and is not brought up short by his denuding us in our defenses against terrorism and his passivity in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons, has to realize that nominating him is tantamount to re-electing Obama.
Most likely now, Romney will win Iowa and go on to win New Hampshire. But then, a kind of buyer’s remorse may set in as Republicans contemplate a nominee who backs Romneycare and once supported abortion choice. His past apostasies, combined with his religion, may give Newt an opportunity to come back in South Carolina. Then the two of them will slug it out down the road. But they may have company in the person of Rick Santorum.
I will give all of my Christmas presents to the poor and live on bread and water until the election if only God is kind enough to anoint Santorum to run against Obama.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 49 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Good News For Conservatives, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
Rich Lowry at K-Lo’s Christmas Crib of Despair:
Speaking of discontent with the Republican field, I talked the other day to a pretty prominent conservative officeholder who’s constantly been discussing with people around the country the possibility of a new entrant or a push to draft someone. But who? One name he mentioned is Bobby Jindal, who is extremely knowledge, a favorite of conservatives, and has executive experience. One big problem: Jindal is with Perry–literally. Not only has he endorsed him, he’s been campaigning with him. For a Jindal scenario to work, Perry would have to collapse and Jindal turn around and immediately express interest in rising from his friend’s ashes. This officeholder also says that the deadline for ballot access in a lot of states is about two weeks after Iowa, meaning that a drafted candidate would probably have to use some other candidate’s ballot line as a proxy or go with a write-in. All of this sounds quite far-fetched. The other alternative for a new candidate is a convention where no one has a majority of delegates. That also is far-fetched, but not impossible as Brian demonstrated in his “Getting to Brokered” piece. It’s hard to argue, though, with the bottom line of this conservative: In an election with enormous consequences for the future of our country, “we don’t have our A team on the field.”
Apparently all the Republicans need is their own dark-skinned person who is extremely knowledge, and the next election is in the bag.