Democrats
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2006Why couldn't Kerry have said this in 2004? Despite what the Washington Mandarins think, anger is the appropriate emotion. Sigh.
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2006While I don't think arguing for or against religious particulars is something any political party should adopt a few days before an election (or should be a political issue at all, for that matter), PZ is absolutely right when he says that Robertson and his ilk should be called out for the foolish bigots that they are. We wouldn't tolerate racially-based hatred (Got Macaca?), so why should we tolerate 'faith-based' hatred? O'Donnell was doing what was needed: staking out the flank.
If politicians won't do anything while El Jefe Maximo wipes his ass with the First, Fourth, Fifth Amendment,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2006A while ago, I described how I feel estranged from the internet Progressives:
Bloggers like Kos constantly remind people that the lefty blogosphere isn't liberal (sounds kinda like the DLC doesn't it?). Actually to say that the internet progressives don't stand for much of anything is unfair. It's just that what most of what the internet progressives stand for is what any sane, reality-based person should stand for.
I bring this up because Jerome a Paris, over at Daily Kos, asks "Is DailyKos a rightwing website?"
He then describes the typical response to two issues he regularly raises,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 27, 2006More than a few conservatives are upset about the Michael J. Fox commercials because they're unfair: how do you respond to the emotional pull of someone who has Parkinson's disease? If you watch the full-length CBS interview, Couric cruelly hammers Fox over and over with the question of if he overexaggerated his symptoms for the commercial (she's obviously trying hard to dispel the image of being the nicest of the big three anchors). But where she truly entered the realm of tastelessness was when she repeated Rush Limbaugh's charge that Democrats use victims for political purposes.…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2006There has been an argument by some liberal hawks that once we entered Iraq, it was our obligation to fix it (the whole "Pottery Barn" metaphor). This always honked me off because I knew from the get-go that this whole thing would go sideways. Nonetheless, there was a brief window after the fall of Saddam Hussein to get things to a stable enough point where we could declare Democracy and leave.
If we Bush had prevented the looting of Baghdad, restored some basic services, and held elections when Gen. Garner (ret.) had wanted (over a year before they were actually held), mabye this whole…
mikethemadbiologist | October 8, 2006
(well they're cuter than rats...)
...impeachment? David Swanson thinks so:
Believe it or not, the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is perfectly possible, although a number of factors will have to come together for it to happen. The public will is already there, and this is quite remarkable given the lack of action in Congress or mention in the mainstream media. The polling that has been done on impeachment is dramatic. The Washington Post finds that a third of the country wants Bush not just impeached but also removed from office. Zogby finds that, by a margin of 53% to 42%,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2006...Al-NAMBLA? (which refers to this) driftglass explains:
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who was the pervert that solicited sex from this page? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated Republican organizations known as al NAMBLA. They are the same Republicans who stood by the Rotting Corpse of Tom DeLay; the same Republicans who stood by while Jack Abramoff looted and perverted the American government.
Al NAMBLA is to Republican Powerbrokering what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not merely making money; its goal is…
mikethemadbiologist | September 30, 2006I agree with Digby that progressives have to stand for something more than winning.
mikethemadbiologist | September 28, 2006...a Jewish grandmother. Barbara Boxer did a wonderful job of preventing the standard Fox 'News' modus operandi of ending an interview of a Democrat with a Republican talking point. Like you're ever going to get the last word in against a Jewish grandmother....
(link here. By way of Oliver Willis)
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006Democratic Senator Barack Obama has released a new book. In it, he attempts to be the Democratic Party's next Joe Lieberman. This is a bad thing. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
"We Democrats are just, well, confused," Obama writes. He goes on. "Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action.
"In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance…
mikethemadbiologist | September 18, 2006Here are my endorsements for various Democratic candidates in the MA primary (held tomorrow; go to the MA state website for more information). I figure my endorsement is worth...one vote.
I've left off the uncontested candidates--no point in wasting bandwith.
Governor: Deval Patrick. Gabrielli has a long, glorious history of losing in nearly every election he's ever run in. Reilly is not that great on several issues, including taxes, and in the last debate, he appeared, well, unhinged. The cincher for me is that Patrick is the only one who isn't promising to cut taxes. That means he's…
mikethemadbiologist | September 14, 2006
(by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)
I always liked Ann Richards, the former Democratic governor of Texas. Not only did she demonstrate that it is possible to be a Southerner, a liberal, a Democrat, and politically effective, but she had a great sense of humor, famously referring to George Bush Sr. as having been born "with a silver foot in his mouth." When someone said that Ann Richards was a woman with good sense of humor, they didn't mean that she laughed at your jokes--as too many men do--they meant that you laughed at her jokes.
As recent events have demonstraed, American…
mikethemadbiologist | September 7, 2006Damn. Just watch the ad. That is how you hit back against sliming. Now if only Democratic consultants would do this more often...
mikethemadbiologist | September 5, 2006In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes:
Good God, and they're sending a copy of the film and a letter to 100,000 American high school teachers written by - who? - the REPUBLICAN chair of the 9/11 Commission. Not the Democrat and the Republican, just the Republican. And a Republican whose son is running for the US Senate seat in New Jersey - oh yeah, no conflict…
mikethemadbiologist | September 2, 2006David Broder has a silly column in the Washington Post where he argues that how unjust it is that people want to dethrone New Hampshire as the second primary state (Brad DeLong and Kevin Drum have nice rebuttals of Broder). Broder's argument is truly ridiculous: what great source of wisdom flows from New Hampshire and Iowa that is absent elsewhere? But Broder's column gives me a chance to discuss a criterion which should be used to choose the early primary states.
When primary season rolls around (which now starts about two years before the general election...), there's a lot of talk about…
mikethemadbiologist | August 30, 2006I came across this interesting poll of the NJ Senate race. It appears that just mentioning the Iraq War hurts Republicans, even popular ones:In the study, half of the respondents were asked questions about President Bush and the war in Iraq before answering questions about the Senate race, and half were asked about the Senate race first. Among those respondents who were asked about Bush and Iraq first, Menendez [Dem] held a two point advantage, 41 to 39 percent. But among the respondents who were not primed to think about the war in Iraq, Kean[Rep] held an 11 point advantage, 47 to 36…
mikethemadbiologist | August 30, 2006According to Diana Kerry, who organized U.S. expatriate voters for her brother John's 2004 campaign, 75% of passport-holding Americans vote Democratic.
mikethemadbiologist | August 29, 2006
I'm always astonished how so many people can think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, that the sun revolves around the earth, or that intelligent design is a valid theory. Another idiocy that can joined this esteemed list is the belief that Social Security will go bankrupt.
Bob Kerrey and Warren Rudman have an op-ed piece in the Washington Post about getting the deficit under control where once again they claim that entitlements are going to increase out of control. First, they confuse the issue by conflating (and combining) Social Security and Medicare. This is incredibly…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2006It's nice to see that the Alabama Democratic Party realized that a lesbian Democrat can be just as irrelevant as a straight Democrat to doings of the Republican controlled Alabama egislature.
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2006The NY Times has an article about how real wages are not keeping pace with productivity increases. Quoth the Grey Lady:
With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.
That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year's midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.
The median hourly wage for American workers…