Yesterday was a slow news day. Here’s some of what happened.
- CIA said Justice Department investigating its destruction of evidence will not give them enough time to destroy more evidence. Wait… it will hinder their own investigation. Or something.
- In the “gee, ya’ think?” category, we’ve got “Ohio elections official calls machines flawed.”
- WaPo continues their Frontrunners feature profiling Mike Huckabee.
- Bush getting his way in getting Congress to spend as he sees fit could raise the deficit $240 billion. And he’s ever cared about such things before? He believes in the tax fanasy, logic and facts be damned.
- Pelosi says Republicans “like” Iraq war. Republicans bitch and moan, fail to prove her wrong.
- It doesn’t seem possible to many, but some of us are still realists, understand how misguided and badly informed Americans are, and paid attention for the last 14 years. Al Jazeera tells us why Democrats could lose.
It seemed obvious that the law & order wing of the Republican party (not to mention the anti-taxers, the economic conservatives, etc.) would not be pleased with a Mike Huckabee nomination.
That said, perhaps you’ve heard of the new attack that broke today at huckabeefacts.com, a site set up for the exclusive purpose of releasing a video featuring the mother of a woman Wayne Dumond killed after being released from prison at the “alleged” behest of Mike Huckabee. Yeah, it’s bad. And the video is short, to-the-point, and produced and released by a fairly low-level behind-the-scenes Arkansas Republican named Keith Emis. Watch it below.
Round-up of the big news leading the papers and outlets today.
- Twin bombs in Algiers kill dozens, including 11 UN staffers; al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claim responsibility.
- Punishments retroactively lightened for some offenses related to crack cocaine following Supreme Court decision.
- Republicans hold on to 2 House seats they were heavily favored to win but many thought might be closer than expected.
- Ike Turner, R.I.P.
- Giuliani spins N.I.E. report into a praise for Bush’s war in Iraq; questions “how you read” report.
- CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows economy outweighs Iraq in voters’ minds, 29% to 23%
- The 29 convicts Bush has pardoned, including carjackers, drug dealers, and a moonshiner. Awesome.
- Six kids shot deboarding a bus in Vegas. WTF?
- A great series from the Washington Post gives an overview of all the candidates. Today’s mark: Fred Thompson.
First off, who in the hell let Alan Keyes in the room? Has he ever won anything in his entire political career? Yet these are the same geeks saying Kucinich, an established congressman, cannot participate in the Democratic debate. Sad. Keyes is an embarrassment, refusing to even answer the questions he’s asked, deciding instead to chastise the moderator and use the free forum as a lectern to foist his particular brand of crazy on an American people that’s growing tired of such crazy. (I hope.)
Anyway, very little of interest actually happened. There was a hysterical moment when Thompson (apparently, he’s still alive) refused to give his up-or-down vote on whether he believes climate change is happening. Ron Paul made a couple of good points but downplayed the most insane points of his “plan” or whatever. The frontrunners did nothing to either hurt or help their cause, unless you count Huckabee speaking pretty forcefully about his religion. Has to, I guess, in Iowa. And I’m not sure whether that’ll hurt or help him in the grand scheme. McCain seemed old, tired, and wholly unimpressive. Romney was same old Willard, nothing really new. He’s got his stump down and whenever in trouble he managed to veer back into it with no problems. Some of the lesser, loony candidates got a couple good shots in at him, but he dealt with them far better than he handled Giuliani’s “sanctuary mansion” attack.
So who won the debate? Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. It was a free market love-fest, with each candidate trying to convince the world that they best espouse a mostly failed, utopian ideology. C’est la Republican vie.
Watch it here if you’re interested. You shouldn’t be.
Check out this great, raving kind of opinion piece by Ben Tanosborn at al Jazeera. It’s called “Consentership, more pernicious than dictatorship,” and it starts with the tag “Bush will soon be on his way out, but rest assured that his replacement will be a clone.” I’m not sure I agree with several of his conclusions (like, uh, that one), but it’s a broadside attack on the political culture of America that settles for the corrupt and inept boobs foisted upon us by the few who really get our leaders elected and the people who refuse to deal with their “own cowardice and lack of civic guts.”
It’s beginning to look as if in early 2008, consentership will continue to dominate our Tweedledum-Tweedledee politics with Republicans and Democrats achieving renewed solidarity in foreign affairs, be it the forever-occupation (or negotiated presence) of Iraq, a non-stop continuing demonization of Iran and other “terror-villains,” or the constant denunciation of any nation that challenges our imperial hegemony and right to collect tribute in any way we see fit.
Give it a look, it’s pretty good.
Not really.
From the “where are they now” files comes word that Fred Thompson, the one-time GOP savior and all-time laziest campaigner, will eschew New Hampshire in favor of focusing what little time his 136 year old body can stay awake for on a strong showing in Iowa. Ostensibly this will help propel him out of the cellar in later states like South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states. Or so the theory goes.
Cute, hunh? Old timer still thinks he can win.
Here’s that excellent video from Sunday’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert in which Giuliani giggles himself hysterical to subconsciously downplay his business dealings with known terrorists. Seriously.
And if you’re interested in watching the whole thing, which you damn well should be, you can check it out (after a brief and stupefying commercial) on the MSNBC home page. Russert gives him a thorough once-over, hitting all the high notes of Giuliani’s tragically flawed campaign and “leadership” history. Thanks, journalism!
And finally, it’s “Giuliani Time!” Take the quiz from the New Yorker, featuring such gems as
“7. True or false: When Giuliani blamed an underling named Jerome M. Hauer for the foolhardy idea of placing the city’s emergency-management headquarters in the World Trade Center, he was confronted with a memo in which Hauer had argued against the site and in favor of a less visible target in Brooklyn.”
I’m gonna go with “true.”
Here are some of the articles floating around that may end up beating down the Huckmentum before it has a chance to really take hold. The only question is who’s going to rise from the ashes of all of these Republican scandals and be the last man standing? McCain? Thompson? They’re the only ones who haven’t had a major scandal break in, oh, the past two weeks or so. I’m betting on McCain. (And the news broke today that polling shows all the major Democratic candidates destroying Huckabee in the general election. Grain of salt here though, kids.)
Mike Huckabee – Minister of Death, Michael Collins, Scoop
“Mike Huckabee is the ’surging’ candidate to watch in the Republican presidential primaries, at least for the moment. The former Arkansas governor is an ordained Southern Baptist minister and a believer in the ‘inerrancy‘ doctrine of Biblical scripture. Inerrancy means, quite simply, that the believer accepts every bit of the Bible as literal truth (Adam & Eve, an earth just 6,000 years old, etc.)”
The dark side of Mike Huckabee, Max Brantley, Salon, 11/13/07
“LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Pony Express has reached us here in the Arkansas backwoods with the latest journals from the big cities. So the country correspondents have taken a break from hand-setting lines of type to read the Beltway boys and girls rave about our former governor, Mike Huckabee.“
Documents Expose Huckabee’s Role in Serial Rapist’s Release, Murray Wass, HuffPost, 12/4/07
“Little Rock, Ark — As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.”
Huckabee Hides His Full Gospel, David Corn & Jonathan Stein, Mother Jones, 12/10/07
“Is Mike Huckabee the presidential candidate shunning Mike Huckabee the preacher? Before entering politics, he was a pastor at two Baptist churches. Now his campaign tells Mother Jones it won’t make his sermons available to the media and the public.”
I’ve blogged before, but this is the new one. It will be newsy. Less opinionated than before, but there will be some.
This blog is almost entirely for me. Not that I don’t care about you, but I care more about me. I follow a lot of political news, and it can be hard to keep it all together. Hence this. Anything noteworthy and interesting that I find in the world of politics will go up here.
Hope you find something that piques your interests.
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