8 posts tagged “politics”
Appropos of nothing, I once had a t-shirt that read, "The Blacker The Barry, The Sweeter The Juice"
My mother was born in 1933. Until she was a teenager, she thought the word "Roosevelt" meant President. She'd only been aware of one in her lifetime.
If Hillary Clinton is elected president in November, we will have completed a 2 decade cycle of a legitimate Bush/Clinton Dynasty. I'm not saying that Senator Clinton would not make a fine president, though her "I Ain't No Ways Tired" bit really makes it hard for me to take her seriously (I notice that it's been pulled from YouTube).
I'm just saying that I'm troubled by the idea of the presidency bouncing between two "royal families." For me this trumps her becoming the first woman president of our country. Which, by the way, leads to some very ... uhm... "heated" dinner table discussion in my household. And you know her husband will not be able to resist sticking his finger in the pie. I do not find this comforting. He had his shot. Let Chelsea run in a few years after we've had time to breathe.
I'm serious.
Anyway, if Senator Clinton is the Democratic nominee, she'll likely get my vote, especially if Huckabee or Romney (shudder) get the GOP nod. I say "likely" as I'm still flirting with McCain even though I believe he may be crazy.
BTW - I voted for McCain in the Michigan
Primary. Before I get cards and letters to turn in my dashiki let me
just say that I had two very valid reasons. 1. The Democrats had made a
monumental mess of their side of things. 2. I was voting against Mitt
Romney rather than for McCain. Unfortunately my vote was in vain.
This is why the people of Michigan (at least the Republicans) are dead to me.
Literary meme via snortinkatz.
Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 different people.
Muskie went the same way to Florida - just as Mankiewicz had predicted forty-eight hours earlier in the living room of his suburban Washington home. "Muskie is already finished," he said then. "He has no base." - from "Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72" by Hunter S. Thompson.
"I'm probably the only candidate who, having won the nomination, can actually redraw the political map," Obama said at the time. "I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I'm the nominee, goes up 30% around the country, minimum. Young people's percentage of the vote goes up 25-30%." - more here
Me, I'm not convinced, particularly of the youth vote. I haven't seen the numbers yet, but I'm guessing the "surge" in Iowa was 12-15% tops. Still a significant number but enough? Meh, I don't know.
What I do know is that we've been waiting for the "youth" to "get fired up" since about forever. If they didn't against Nixon in '68 and '72 why would they now when they've got TiVo and Halo?
And who says the youth vote is all that redeeming anyway? As Unca Hunter said, the youth can be just as gullible and greedy as their seniors (emphasis mine):
If the current polls are reliable... Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states... This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. - "September," from FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 (Warner Books, 1973), pp 413–414, Hunter S. Thompson
I miss Unca Hunter.
And "The Black Vote", wellll, The Black Vote doesn't matter much until we're in the general election anyway, IMHO. And it's been so cherry picked by the "Faith Based (use Jesus' name and we'll fall for anything) Initiatives" as to be rendered practically irrelevant even then. This is of course, assuming the old political model of black political power as centered in the black church. The Internet changes things.
How much remains to be seen.
From Andrew Sullivan:
The central question is whether the Bush administration has used the U.S. Attorneys as a systematic weapon in targeting the opposition party, rather than rooting out corruption and malfeasance wherever it appears. The natural inference from the evidence so far - and the conflicting stories from the administration - is that the eight fired attorneys were not being partisan enough.
International politics make my head hurt. Not that I have it all wired on the domestic scene but I find I can get a better handle on local and national politics than what goes on internationally. This bit from NPR this morning caught my attention:
Some European officials have told NPR they believe Iran is trying to divert attention away from its controversial nuclear program by pushing Hezbolloah to continue its assault.
My dad and his cronies used to sit for hours on Saturday afternoons bouncing conspiracy theories off of each other (Daddy's favorite was that Kennedy was being kept alive on a remote Pacific island). It was like a journalistic bullpen (heavy on the bull), an editorial review where they'd hone their stories for optimum effect at the next dinner party or Monday morning water cooler talk.
I learned after a time to take it all with a huge grain of salt and an eye roll.
I'm not sure what to do with the NPR quote. I mean, I thought Iran was doing a pretty good job keeping the international community at bay on its own. Not that I'm comfortable with them having "the bomb" but I could see why any sovereign state in the area would want one. Especially when several of their fairly close neighbors (Israel, Pakistan, India) do.
But to set off Hezbollah to divert attention from a program that no one has yet to prove exists? Man that's reaching and - to me - a bit monstrous if true. Foment all that destruction, put human life at risk, put the region on the brink of war, all because you can't handle your business - can't make a case for your own security.
Daddy called that "the punk way out."
Full text of the article is here.
