[ Posted Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 – 15:41 UTC ]
[Sorry for such a short post today, I've spent all day on the phone. Tomorrow's column is going to be fun to write! Stay tuned....]
Boo!!
Halloween has apparently come early in Republican-land. The Republican National Committee's website today unveiled a prominent link to their new "Scariest Democrat" page. You can go to the page and vote from among six of the Democratic presidential candidates (with sound effects!). Missing are Kucinich and Gravel, which seems odd as Kucinich should definitely be in the running for the candidate to scare Republicans the most.
Out of the other six, guess who is currently polling at 91% of the vote? No real surprise....
-- Chris Weigant
[ Posted Monday, October 22nd, 2007 – 16:34 UTC ]
There is one thing that just about everybody in the Iraq debate agrees on, from President Bush to anti-war Democrats to Republicans to the generals on the ground: that the biggest thing we want to avoid in Iraq is a "wider regional war." No matter what your position on Iraq, from "leave troops there for 50 years like in South Korea" to "bring all troops home tomorrow," pretty much everybody agrees that a wider war which involves Iraq's neighbors is a thing to be avoided if at all possible.
We're now on the brink of that war starting, but we barely even realize it because it's happening from a direction we haven't been paying much attention to -- Turkey. Now, I personally have been warning for a long time that the situation with Turkey could put the United States in a very tough spot, both diplomatically and militarily. Last year (8/9/06) I wrote: Continue Reading »
[ Posted Saturday, October 20th, 2007 – 17:26 UTC ]
[ Posted Friday, October 19th, 2007 – 17:15 UTC ]
Welcome to the sixth installment of the weekly suggestions for Democrats who are likely to appear on this weekend's chat shows. Previous installments can be seen at the new Talking Points archive on my site.
Before we get to the talking points themselves, attention must be paid to the worst and the best Democrats from last week. For balance, we initiate the "Most Impressive Democrat of the Week" (otherwise known as the "Golden Backbone Award") -- although I honestly can't promise I will be handing this award out every week. The rule shall be: if no Democrat impresses me, then no award for that week shall be given.
Continue Reading »
[ Posted Thursday, October 18th, 2007 – 17:55 UTC ]
Senator Chris Dodd doesn't get a lot of press attention even though he's running for the Democratic nomination for president. This may be about to change, as Senator Dodd has just announced he is putting a "hold" on the FISA bill being considered by various Senate committees.
Some background on this action -- Congress, in a stinking cloud of shame, passed a sweeping law this summer which actually expanded the White House's ability to wiretap phone calls without warrants. They did this quickly, so they wouldn't miss any of their precious monthlong August vacation. At the time, Democrats sheepishly explained that the law was "only" for the next six months, and they'd fix it when they got back from going to the beach. For an entire month.
Continue Reading »
[ Posted Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 – 16:19 UTC ]
[ Posted Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 – 10:10 UTC ]
This column really should be called "Variations on a Theme," as it continues the thought I began on Monday ("Will 2008 Be A Ho-Hum Election?") -- what kind of campaign will it turn out to be if we wind up with Hillary Clinton versus Rudy Giuliani? (As I said previously, I am not going out on a limb here and predicting that the race will come down to Clinton and Giuliani, but given their poll numbers it is certainly plausible that they will be the nominees next year.) While Monday's article examined the relative lack of enthusiasm for each candidate from within their own parties, today I'd like to look at the negative enthusiasm against the candidates from their opposition.
Hillary's detractors are well-known (and vocal). Hillary's negatives are also well-known. For whatever reason (I've never quite understood why, myself) Hillary also provokes an almost irrational amount of seething hatred against her from the right wing. None of this is earth-shattering news to anyone who hasn't been under a rock since 1992.
Continue Reading »
[ Posted Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 – 14:29 UTC ]
Getting a clear picture of the situation on the ground in the middle of an occupation or war is a hard thing to do. For various reasons, it's hard to trust the reports from the Pentagon, the embedded media, or politicians of either stripe, because their views are usually skewed in one direction or another.
Which is why I give much more weight to first-person accounts from soldiers who have been there. And you can call me anti-elitist, but the lower the rank of the soldier, the more weight I give to their accounts. I see it as: the closer you get to the bottom, the tougher jobs you likely will have performed. This may not be fair, but I wanted to lay out my own personal biases (since I'm criticizing everyone else's).
Continue Reading »
[ Posted Monday, October 15th, 2007 – 14:38 UTC ]
Conventional wisdom (or at least the self-proclaimed sages of political conventional wisdom, the Washington punditry) has been telling us that the 2008 presidential election is going to be The Most Important Election In Modern Times (if not actually In History), and that (of course) the electorate is More Polarized Than Ever -- which explains not only how incredibly early the contest started, but also the fierce battles for the primaries now being waged.
But what if this conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong? What if the 2008 election is a real snooze-fest, and voters are barely motivated to go to the polls?
Continue Reading »
[ Posted Saturday, October 13th, 2007 – 11:35 UTC ]
