Month: November 2008
Hillary for Secretary of State? Not Feeling It
With the rumors flying that Obama’s pick for secretary of state could be Sen. Hillary Clinton, we are of mixed mind. On the one hand, maybe it would finally shut up all those diehard Hillary fans out there (but I doubt it). On the other, one worries about the toll it would take on our diplomatic relations.
After all, this is the woman who once joked that Ghandi “ran a gas station down in St. Louis.”
After all, this is the woman who said “hard working Americans, white Americans” would never vote for Obama.
She’s the one who once joked that Ghandi “ran a gas station down in St. Louis.”
She’s also the one who swore she was met with sniper fire instead of flowers and little girls reading poems when she visited Bosnia as First Lady.
If Clinton can keep her mouth in check and her brain engaged, she might make a good secretary of state.
Personally, I would rather Obama go with someone dreamier and more symbolically bipartisan, like Republican former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. Leaving more Democrats in the Senate and fewer on the Cabinet will help Obama more in the long run.
National Enquirer: Cindy McCain’s Been Cheating
The National Enquirer is at it again, and we can only hope their record on exposing extramarital affairs is upheld in this case. After all, who could blame Cindy McCain?
The wealthy blonde heiress and her secret pal have been spotted together around her hometown of Phoenix, Arizona over the past several years, say sources.
Could it be that John McCain was right? That Cindy really is a trollop and a…The amazing spy photos were snapped April 1, 2006 when Cindy and her companion attended the Tempe Music Festival says the person who took them. The photos are somewhat grainy, but the insider says they depict Senator John McCain’s wife, who was greeted by pals at the event as “Cindy.”
“To my amazement, Cindy had her hand on his shoulder and was kissing him passionately on his lips,” the photog told THE ENQUIRER.
Let’s face it, you would have been really amazed if she had been kissing him passionately anywhere except the lips.
We’re on pins and needles waiting to see who the mystery man is, or if that’s even really Cindy. Could it be that John McCain was right? That Cindy really is a trollop and a…no, I can’t.
Quote du Jour
“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”
— Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th President
Top Prop 8 Donor Funded Proponent of Death Penalty for Gays
The Ahmanson name is attached to some of the most familiar institutions in Los Angeles, including the Ahmanson Theater, the Ahmanson Foundation and Ahmanson Ranch, just to name three. But very few people in these parts — or anywhere, for that matter — know that the heir to the Ahmanson banking fortune that bestowed these institutions on the city is an extremely reclusive ultra-right wing Christian extremist who suffers from Tourettes Syndrome and who was diagnosed with schizophrenia two decades ago.
But Howard F. Ahmanson’s days in obscurity may be ending. Last week, reporter Max Blumenthal uncovered the fact that Ahmanson was the third largest private donor to Proposition 8, the anti-gay initiative that overturned the right of gay people to marry in California. Ahmanson, a long-time donor to anti-gay causes, is a follower and major funder of the late Rousas John Rushdoony, an author and radical theologian who promoted replacing democracy in the United States with a theocratic government.
Regarding Rushdoony, Blumenthal wrote:
Electoral History Puts Palin’s 2012 Chances Somewhere Between Slim and None
The 2008 election is barely a week old, but, predictably, the punditocracy has already moved on to 2012, filling the empty airwaves with speculation about the political future of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate, whom many conservatives consider to be the next GOP frontrunner.
If history is a guide, chances are slim that Palin will survive the primaries in four years, and even if she does, her odds of winning the presidency are even slimmer.
If history is a guide, however, chances are slim that Palin will survive the primaries in four years, and even if she does, her odds of winning the presidency are even slimmer. In fact, based on past performances of losing vice presidential nominees over the last 180 years (see chart below), Sarah Palin’s chances of becoming president at any point in the future are 45 to 1, at best.
It is not uncommon for losing vice presidential nominees to run for the big job, of course. Most recently John Edwards (who lost with John Kerry in 2004) and Joe Lieberman (Gore, 2000) have run unsuccessful primary campaigns. In the 2000 election, former Vice Pres. Dan Quayle, whose ticket with the senior Pres. Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992, briefly ran against George W. Bush and John McCain in the GOP primaries.
Other losing vice presidential nominees who later ran but failed to be nominated include Democrat Edmund Muskie, who lost to Richard Nixon on the ticket with Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey in 1968; Republican Earl Warren, the former California governor and eventual Supreme Court chief justice, who ran with Thomas E. Dewey against Pres. Harry Truman, who won reelection in 1948; and Nicholas M. Butler, running mate to GOP Pres. William H. Taft, who lost to Woodrow Wilson in 1912.
Muskie ran in the primaries in 1972. Warren’s name was floated as a rival to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, and Butler ran unsuccessfully for the nomination in 1920 and 1928.
In fact, in the last 45 cycles, only three losing V.P. nominees have gone on to lead tickets. Vice Pres. Walter Mondale, who, with Pres. Jimmy Carter, lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980, lost again to Reagan in 1984. And Bob Dole, who ran in 1976 on the losing ticket with Pres. Gerald Ford, led the ticket in 1996 that lost to Pres. Bill Clinton.
Florida Preserves Its Anti-Asian Heritage
Last week, 52 percent of Florida voters voted to keep an 80-year-old state constitutional amendment on the books that prevents Asian immigrants from owning property in the state. The provision dates back to the early 19oos, when a significant influx of Asian immigrants — especially on the West Coast — prompted California and eight other states to pass similar anti-Asian ownership laws.
The provision has nothing to do with illegal aliens; it’s about institutionalized discrimination against people who don’t look like white Florida Crackers or even black Florida Crackers
In Florida, most of the Asian immigrants were Japanese brought in by none other than the father of Florida exploitation, oil baron Henry Flagler. He brought immigrants from Denmark (hence, the Broward County town of Dania) and Japan (see Yamato Road in Boca Raton) to plant and work pineapple farms whose fruit would be carried north on Flagler’s East Coast Railroad, which otherwise would have dead-headed back after disgorging tourists, land speculators, profiteers and supplies.
Of course, as soon as Flagler discovered that it was cheaper to buy pineapples in Cuba and ship them up the Mississippi River, he abandoned his immigrant farmers in South Florida, who were left to shift for themselves as best they could in what was still largely a wilderness.
So why didn’t Floridians vote to repeal the jingoistic amendment? Partly, it was the wording of the thing:
Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to delete provisions authorizing the Legislature to regulate or prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, and possession of real property by aliens ineligible for citizenship.
Yep, that “aliens ineligible for citizenship” was a killer, conjuring up all kinds of anti-immigration images in the tiny minds of my fellow Floridians. That, and the anti-immigration groups who claimed that the provision as it now stands would prevent terrorist groups from buying property in Florida. I mean, nobody wants a Muslim madrassa or Taliban training facility in their neighborhood, right? And that’s the terrorists’ new strategy — instead of flying airplanes into our buildings, they are going to BUY our buildings ….
Look, people, the provision has nothing to do with illegal aliens; it’s about institutionalized discrimination against people who don’t look like white Florida Crackers or even black Florida Crackers, for that matter. Plus, it’s an embarrassment — Florida is the only state that has not repealed its anti-Asian law. But there is hope: supporters plan to have it back on the 2010 ballot, and maybe, like New Mexico’s repeal of a similar law, the second time around will be the charm.
Pitts: Some Blacks Forgot Sting of Discrimination
As usual, The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr. nailed it in his commentary on the intolerance blacks showed in their opposition to gay marriage in last week’s elections:
Sometimes, progress carries an asterisk.
That’s as good a summary as any of a sad irony from last week’s historic election. You will recall one of the major storylines of that day was the fact that, in helping make Barack Obama the nation’s first black president, African Americans struck a blow against a history that has taught us all too well how it feels to be demeaned and denied. Unfortunately, while they were striking that blow, some black folks chose to demean and deny someone else.
Gay people, like black people, know what it’s like to be left out, lied about, scapegoated, discriminated against, held up, beat down, denied a job, a loan or a life
Last week, you see, California voters passed an initiative denying recognition to same-sex marriages. This overturned an earlier ruling from the state Supreme Court legalizing those unions. The vote was hardly a surprise; surely there is nothing in politics easier than to rouse a majority of voters against the ”threat” of gay people being treated like people.
But African Americans were crucial to the passage of the bill, supporting it by a margin of better than two to one. To anyone familiar with the deep strain of social conservatism that runs through the black electorate, this is not surprising either. It is, however, starkly disappointing. Moreover, it leaves me wondering for the umpteenth time how people who have known so much of oppression can turn around and oppress.
Yes, I know. I can hear some black folk yelling at me from here, wanting me to know it’s not the same, what gays have gone through and what black people did, wanting me to know they acted from sound principles and strong values. It is justification and rationalization, and I’ve heard it all before. I wish they would explain to me how they can, with a straight face, use arguments against gay people that were first tested and perfected against us.
When, for instance, they use an obscure passage from the Bible to claim God has ordained the mistreatment of gays, don’t they hear an echo of white people using that Bible to claim God ordained the mistreatment of blacks?
When they rail against homosexuality as ”unnatural,” don’t they remember when that word was used to describe abolition, interracial marriage and school integration?
When they say they’d have no trouble with gay people if they would just stop ”flaunting” their sexuality, doesn’t it bring to mind all those good ol’ boys who said they had no problem with ”Nigras” so long as they stayed in their place?
No, the black experience and the gay experience are not equivalent. Gay people were not the victims of mass kidnap or mass enslavement.
No war was required to strike the shackles from their limbs.
But that’s not the same as saying blacks and gays have nothing in common. On the contrary, gay people, like black people, know what it’s like to be left out, lied about, scapegoated, discriminated against, held up, beat down, denied a job, a loan or a life. And, too, they know how it feels to sit there and watch other people vote upon your very humanity, just as if those other people had a right. So beg pardon, but black people should know better. I feel the same when Jews are racist, or gays anti-Semitic. Those who bear scars from intolerance should be the last to practice it.
Sadly, we are sometimes the first. That tells you something about how seductive a thing intolerance is, how difficult it can be to resist the serpent whisper that says it’s OK to ridicule and marginalize those people over there because they look funny, or talk funny, worship funny or love funny. So in the end, we struggle with the same imperative as from ages ago: to overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. But if last week’s vote taught us nothing else, it taught us that persistence plus faith equals change.
And we shall overcome.
Bush’s Dismal Approval Sets New Record
Don’t let the screen door hit ya on the way out:
No other president’s disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent
As President-elect Obama visits the White House, a new national poll suggests that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the most unpopular president in the six decades since presidential approval ratings were first measured.
Seventy-six percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday disapprove of how George W. Bush is handling his job as President. That’s an all-time high in CNN polling, or in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.
“No other president’s disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent. Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “That means that Bush is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned from office during Watergate with a 66 percent disapproval rating.”
Prior to President Bush, the record holder for presidential disapproval was Harry Truman, with a 67 percent disapproval rating in January of 1952, his last full year in office.
Meanwhile, in opposite world:
Nearly seven in 10 adults, or 68 percent, said they have a favorable opinion of President-elect Barack Obama. Almost that many — 65 percent — said they think the country will be better off four years from now.
“The reception he’s getting is unlike anything we’ve seen in decades,” says Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. “It’s a very high set of expectations to live up to. On the upside, it means people are going to be pulling for him.”
Manager of Famed LA Restaurant Regrets Prop 8 Donation
El Coyote is an unintentionally kitschy Mexican restaurant on Beverly Blvd. that is famous for its margaritas. It has not been in the news much since August 1969, when Sharon Tate imbibed her last margaritas there before heading up to her home on Cielo Drive, where the Manson family laid in wait.
The restaurant is back in the news now because its manager’s name turned up on a list of donors to Proposition 8, the anti-gay measure that passed last Tuesday. Unlike most Mormons who supported the hateful bill, however, Marjorie Chrisoffersen seems to have had a change of heart:
I have been sick at heart that anyone has been offended by me. I have family, friends, employees from the gay community who are treasured people in my life.
I have been a member of the Mormon church all my life. I responded to their request with my personal donation.
For years the El Coyote has financially and generously supported the gay community and its charities.
Please be my guest for an early lunch Wed., Nov. 12th, @ 11:00 am and allow me to personally speak with you.
Please call and make a reservation as seating is limited. (323) 939-2255.
Margie
The contrary view: “I think she saw how it affected her pocketbook and freaked,” said SFist Editor Brock Keeling. Can you spell “boycott?”
What’s interesting here is that El Coyote is not a “gay” restaurant, per se. On the other hand, the restaurant’s demographics is generally liberal denizens of Hollywood, all of whom voted against the initiative.
