Democrats
mikethemadbiologist | December 8, 2007Republicans are upset that, at the most recent CNN-hosted Republican presidential debate, a member of the audience who turned out to be a Democrat asked a question:
"My name is Keith Kerr, from Santa Rosa, California. I'm retired brigadier general with 43 years of service, and I'm a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Command and General Staff Course, and the Army War College. And I'm an openly gay man.
"I want to know why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians."
This is hardly an unfair question. Had he…
mikethemadbiologist | December 6, 2007I've described how the Iowa caucus voting procedure is a ridiculous way to decide how might be the next president, but Iowa's and New Hampshire's insistence on being the first states might have cost the Democrats Florida. Here's what the Democrats did:
Fearing likely attempts by big states like Michigan and Florida to disrupt the parties' primary calendars with early dates in 2008, Republicans and Democrats ruled at their 2004 conventions that states trying to butt in before Iowa and New Hampshire would lose half their delegates. The Republicans left it there. The Democrats decided to try…
mikethemadbiologist | November 29, 2007Things are kind of hectic, but I stumbled across this interesting post by Chris Colvin, an NBC news writer, about blogging:
Now to the news media.. the Mainstream Media.. as it has become known, and an object lesson in how the blogosphere is changing the way the MSM operates. (And I say this at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive to the many people who think the "corporate media" exists to push a political agenda-- if that's true, I'm either too stupid or too low on the food chain to be able to actually demonstrate it.) Anyway. Salon's Glenn Greenwald has engaged in a fairly brutal…
mikethemadbiologist | November 23, 2007...or run an empire. Paul Waldman, in a fit of coastal pique, critiqued the myth of the informed Iowa voter as a reason to switch the primary calendar. But what's really bothered me about the Iowa primary is the entire caucus process. While I'm not a believer in the idea that a different political voting process would yield dramatically better governance, the Iowa caucus procedure is so stupid that I'm willing to make an exception (italics mine):
Unlike the Republican caucuses in Iowa, which are fairly simple, akin to a straw poll, the Democratic caucuses are arcane, rule-bound Party…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2007I often always have many unpublished posts in my cue, so I was going to let my response to Katha Pollitt's Nation column about the sexism behind a lot of the Senator Clinton bashing slide by, but then I read Amanda's post about Pollitt's column. Onto what Pollitt wrote (italics mine):
The more people insist that sexism plays no part in the primary campaign or its media coverage, the more likely I am to vote for Hillary Clinton and I'll bet I'm not the only one. Her poll numbers with women are rising, after all. I think a lot of women are just fed up to here with the sexism they see around…
mikethemadbiologist | November 12, 2007One of the most successful anti-poverty programs ever created in the U.S. is the Social Security program. Despite that, conservatives and Republicans, primarily for ideological reasons, have attempted to dismantle the program--if not in one fell swoop, then incrementally.
One of the tactics that conservatives have used is to try to convince people that Social Security "won't be there" when they retire. To do this, they gin up the notion that Social Security is in crisis, even though that is simply not true. The reason for this is that, as mandated by law, the Social Security Trustees are…
mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2007Instead of focusing on partial drowning interrogation during the hearings for the attorney general, John Dean tells us what Congress should be doing. From Talking Points Memo:
Nixon's Attorney General had been removed (and was later prosecuted for lying to Congress) - a situation not unlike Alberto Gonzales's leaving the job under such a cloud. Nixon was under deep suspicion of covering up the true facts relating to the bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, not to mention widespread rumors that he had engaged in abuses of power and corrupt…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2007I've criticized Senator Obama before for his inaccurate views of the Social Security program. Paul Krugman has a very nice takedown--on the TV, no less:
What is Obama thinking? Is he trying to position himself as a liberal...Republican?
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mikethemadbiologist | October 23, 2007If memory serves me correctly, Senator Obama was counting on the 'youth' vote* as his secret weapon. That's fine, but then why on earth would Obama court virulent anti-gay bigots, especially when younger voters of all political affiliations are the most likely to be tolerant of gays? This certainly won't help him in the primaries. Unlike some political issues, gay bashing is easy to understand and remember. Is there something I'm missing, or is he just desperately trying to prove how piss poor a candidate he really is?
*I always thought eighteen meant adulthood. Presumably, we're not…
mikethemadbiologist | October 20, 2007maha had a very interesting post about the eroding support among Corporate America for the Republican Party:
I want to go back to the notion that the Bushies are agents of corporate America, verses the "lethal amateurishness of these loyal Bushies" apparent now even to CEOs. I think the Bushies saw themselves as agents of corporate America, people who would "run the government like a business," to recall a popular phrase of the 1990s. When the Bush Administration began the Bushies were full of the conceit that they were so much more disciplined and business-like than the Clintons they could…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2007I like this ad about S-CHIP:
Now, why can't Democrats communicate like this more often?
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mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2007These are much cuter than Congressman Marshall
(from here)
I received an email from Jane Hamsher and Matt Stoller about S-CHIP:
Dear Mike,
Despite overwhelming bipartisan support and a near veto-proof majority in the House, eight Democrats voted against the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
That list includes Bush Dog Democrat Jim Marshall of Georgia's Eighth Congressional District.
Today, we can pressure Marshall to switch his vote and move the party an absolutely critical step forward towards overriding the President's veto.
We've created an ad to run next Tuesday, right…
mikethemadbiologist | October 8, 2007Both Kevin Drum and digby argue that Senator Clinton's 'electability' problem is due to Republican sliming and isn't really a factor. Drum:
Hillary, by contrast, is polarizing not because she wants to be, but because the right-wing attack machine made her that way. She's "polarizing" only because a certain deranged slice of conservative nutjobs detest her.
And guess what? By this standard, Jimmy Carter is polarizing. Bill Clinton is polarizing. Al Gore is polarizing. John Kerry is polarizing. Do you see the trend here?
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton. But anyone…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2007I guess we should be glad that Senator Clinton has a plan to end the Republican War on Science. It needs to be done and she is right to do this, but it's sort of like getting excited that someone boldly supports the notion that 2 + 2 = 4. Clinton announced yesterday that:
Hillary will restore the federal government's commitment to science by:
* Signing an Executive Order that:
o Rescinds President Bush's ban on ethical embryonic stem cell research and promotes stem cell research that complies with the highest ethical standards.
o Bans political appointees from altering or removing…
mikethemadbiologist | September 17, 2007This is why elections have consequences: the Democrats have decided to increase the funding for college schloarships...by decreasing the tax subsidies to college loan sharkslenders. From the NY Times:
Congress gave final approval to a broad overhaul of federal student loan programs Friday, sharply cutting subsidies to lenders and increasing grants to needy students.
In quick succession, the Senate and the House approved the changes, allowing Democrats to say they had made good on one of their campaign promises last year, to ease the strain of rising college costs. In the Senate, the bill…
mikethemadbiologist | September 7, 2007...he is us. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers relates the results of some polling. Democratic voters were asked the following question:
Now I'm going to read you a list of people, organizations. For each person or organization, please tell me which of the following four choices comes closest to what you think their view is on what the U.S. should do in Iraq?
The respondents had four choices:
1. Make no cutbacks in U.S. troops in Iraq.
2. Leave a substantial number of troops in Iraq, but have them concentrate on training Iraqis and targeting Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq.
3. Start withdrawing…
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2007Yes, I'm kidding. But there's a new poll which should make every Republican political operative and politician terrified. From Strategic Vision, a Republican polling firm:
4. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)
Yes 51%
No 39%
Undecided 10%
Not beginning a withdrawal in six months if Iraq becomes more stable, a brigade of magical unicorns shows up, and so forth. Iowa Republicans want us out in six months. Gone. Outta (t)here. I'm not sure that we can even do that logistically, without spiking most of our heavy…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2007The Massachusetts Public Health Association released a statement in July about the new budget for the Department of Public Health (pdf). You'll notice that most budget items increase:
The legislature and Governor Patrick have approved $548.7 million for the Department of Public Health (DPH) in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget. This is $74.4 million (16 percent) higher than the basic FY07 DPH budget passed by the legislature a year ago. It is $31.6 million (6 percent) higher than the total currently available for FY07, including supplemental funding that was approved for use in FY07.
Here's a list…
mikethemadbiologist | August 10, 2007Because they don't know the rules. I was stunned to read about this admission by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (italics mine):
Towards the end of the meeting, Dorothy Reik, President of Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, urged Waxman to use the "inherent contempt" power of Congress to bring criminal charges against Bush and Cheney and their aides, hold a hearing in Congress on those charges, and then hand down the punishment, prison time. Reik expressed frustration with the refusal of Bush administration officials to testify before congressional committees, despite the fact…
mikethemadbiologist | August 4, 2007(from here by way of Mimus Pauly)
The Democrats rolled over on FISA legislation, giving Bush even more latitude in spying on his own citizens. As Josh Marshall put it:
Bush is getting practically everything he asked for.
He should have phrased that as a question because I can't figure out why they rolled over. Bush has a 25-30% percent approval rating. All the Democrats would have had to do is phrase their response as a question, "Do you trust George Bush with even more power?" and they win.
Still the most hapless political party in recorded history.