Category: Politics
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Election Day Quote du Jour
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
— Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
Borowitz: Same-Sex Massage Amendment
If you didn’t know he was kidding…
In one of the most stunning November surprises in recent memory, the Republican Party today declared its unequivocal support for a constitutional amendment legalizing same-sex massage…
“This constitutional amendment defines massage as a rub-down between a man and a man, one of whom may or may not be selling crystal meth,” Mr. Rove said.
The same-sex massage amendment was not the only Hail Mary pass thrown by a Republican on Election Day, as Virginia senate candidate George Allen attempted to close the gender gap in his race by announcing that he was a woman.
Mr. Allen, who did not know he was Jewish until earlier this year, said he made a similar discovery about his gender on the eve of the midterm election.
“When I discovered that I was a woman after all of these years of believing I was a man, all I could think was, ‘Oy,'” Mr. Allen said.
Florida GOP Governor Candidate Ditches Appearance with Bush
Charlie Crist, the Republican candidate for governor, bailed on President Bush at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, and Karl Rove is pissed:
“All I know is that yesterday morning they apparently made a decision that, rather than being with the governor and the president and 10,000 people in Pensacola, they made it a last-minute decision to go to Palm Beach,” Rove told reporters.
“Let’s see how many people show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice versus eight or nine thousand people in Pensacola,” Rove said.
Schadenfreude — you’re soaking in it!
Haggard Told Gay Hooker He Used Meth With His Wife
[Michelangelo Signorile]: Tell me about this: You’re having sexual encounters with [Pastor Ted Haggard] once a month. After about a year he just asks you about crystal meth?
[Mike Jones]: He just goes, “Hey Mike, I have a question. What do you know about crystal meth?” I was a little bit surprised. I said, “I don’t care for it. I’ve tried it but I don’t care for it. But I have friends who do it and they think it enhances their sexual pleasure.” He goes, “Do you think you can get me some?” I told him I’ll see what I can do.
MS: And you hooked him up with somebody who could get him this drug. Then what? He would do it in your presence when he had sex with you?
MJ: Yes, he agreed it enhanced his pleasure and said that he used it when he had sex with his wife too.
Poll: Dems Lead by 13 Points in Final Fox News Poll
There have been three polls in a row since yesterday showing the Democrats’ lead over the GOP shrinking. The final Fox News poll has better news — and you know it’s right because they are fair and balanced:
Nearly half of likely voters — 49 percent — favor the Democratic candidate in their House district and 36 percent the Republican, with 15 percent still undecided in a FOX News poll conducted the final weekend before the midterm elections.
More Democrats (37 percent) than Republicans (26 percent) say they are extremely interested in tomorrow’s elections, and more Democrats (89 percent) than Republicans (81 percent) say they plan to vote for their party’s candidate in their district.
Notice that if the entire 15 percent of undecideds were to break for the GOP, it would give them their magic number: 51 percent.
Is Voting a Cure for Outrage Fatigue?
My friend Judy has a post up on her site titled, “The New Pandemic: Outrage Fatigue,” in which she expresses the feelings of millions of Americans who have grown exhausted by the daily outrages produced by the Bush Administration and their cronies in the 109th Congress over the past two years:
I am so tired of Bush and his gang ignoring evidence and feeding the American public only partial truths. I am tired of photos of our angry president on the front page, tired of his hollow swagger on the public stage, tired of 51 percent of Americans believing what he says.
I am exhausted by the damage he and his cronies have done to America in the eyes of the world. Even our allies are worn out from the the Bush team’s pretense that America is on the right track in our war against terrorism.
Tomorrow, we shall see if voting can cure outrage fatigue — or at least ameliorate it. As Judy says:
However, I am never too tired to vote. I will have the strength to vote against lies and half truths.
Amen to that.
Rick Perry Says Born-Once are Doomed
They just never get tired of this crap, do they?
True Believer Texas Gov. Rick Perry got all fired up during a service with the Right Rev. John Hagee in San Antonio Sunday. So fired up, he threw all non-Christians under the bus, ala Katherine Harris.
“He doesn’t think very differently from the Taliban, does he?” independent Kinky Friedman said.
Gov. Rick Perry, after a God and country sermon attended by dozens of political candidates Sunday, said that he agreed with the minister that non-Christians will be condemned to hell…
“If you live your life and don’t confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I’m going to say this very plainly, you’re going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket,” Mr. Hagee said during a service interspersed with religious and patriotic videos…
[Perry] said that he believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and that those who don’t accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell…
He added: “Before we get into Buddha and all the others, I get a little confused there. But the fact is that we live in a pluralistic world but our faith is real personal. And my Christian faith teaches that the way is through Jesus Christ.”
Perry challenger Kinky Friedman had another take on it.
“He doesn’t think very differently from the Taliban, does he?” independent Kinky Friedman said.
Mr. Friedman, a Jew, said Mr. Perry’s comment “hits pretty close to home.”
“Being obsessed with who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell is kind of a pathetic waste of time,” he said.
Amen, Kinky. Can I get a witness?
Contract Expired
The Class of ’94 might be only a memory after tomorrow, if some remaining Newt Gingrich Contractors with America get the boot. They are:
John Hostettler in Indiana, a leading voice for social conservatives who was among six House Republicans to vote against authorizing force in Iraq in 2002. He is all but certain to lose to Democrat Brad Ellsworth, a county sheriff, in the district dubbed the “bloody eighth” for it’s razor-thin election victories.
Steve Chabot in Ohio, a lawyer from Cincinnati who is considered somewhat of a maverick in the party despite his conservative voting record. He faces a spirited challenge from John Cranley, a Cincinnati city councilman who failed to unseat Chabot in a challenge six years ago.
Barbara Cubin in Wyoming, a fifth-generation resident of the state and a conservative who champions its mining and agriculture industries. Wyoming hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress since 1976, and Cubin’s race against Democrat Gary Trauner, a businessman, only recently became competitive.
Gil Gutknecht in Minnesota, who has an occasional independent streak. In the late 1990s, he concluded that Gingrich as speaker had been “a disappointment to everybody” and that the GOP revolution had been exaggerated. Democrat Tim Walz, a high school teacher, is challenging him.
Charles Bass in New Hampshire, a moderate who has focused on the environment and opposed the Bush administration’s proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He is in a rematch with Democrat Paul Hodes, a lawyer who ran against Bass in 2004.
J.D. Hayworth in Arizona, a fierce critic of illegal immigration who advocates strong U.S. borders. He opposed the president’s proposal for an expanded guest-worker program until border controls are improved. Former state Sen. Harry Mitchell, a Democrat, is trying to unseat him.
Two of Newt’s disciplines are already gone — Bob Ney from Ohio and our own Mark Foley from Florida. Thank God and Greyhound.
American Conservative Magazine Despises America
“There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time.” — American Conservative
The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat.
According to the rightwing, criticizing President Bush equals hating America. If so, then American Conservative Magazine now despises this country.
Owned by Christian Nationalist talking head Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos, the superannuated rightwing European playboy, the magazine has published an editorial today, on the eve of the midterm elections, that excoriates President Bush and the Republican Party. The headline says, “GOP Must Go.”
While the content of the editorial sounds perfectly reasonable — almost like it was written by smart liberals — it may well signal a schism on the right that could cripple the coalition between christianists and libertarians that has held the Republican Party together since the Reagan era:
It should surprise few readers that we think a vote [in Tuesday’s midterm elections] that is seen — in America and the world at large — as a decisive “No” vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration’s endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why — thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.
As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush’s decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration’s calculation…as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides…the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran’s hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel’s northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.
The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.
Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country…which once symbolized hope and justice…to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.
There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen…in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala Lumpur…as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq.
