Day: February 12, 2008

Saudi Arabia: Get the Red Out!

Buck Banks

valentine-post2.jpgI can’t stand Valentine’s Day. It’s a fake holiday created with the sole purpose of selling a bunch of crap that ends up in the waste stream and getting people to spend money on things they don’t need. Like dinner and a movie.

Anyway, as much as I think Valentine’s Day is a racket designed to separate fools from their hard-earned, I am not calling for banning the holiday. I’m not calling for the elimination of the color red from the marketplace. I’m not patrolling the streets with legions of jack-booted thugs enforcing strict separation of unmarried males and females.

But Saudi Arabia is. Our ally in the desert, our buds from OPEC, are trying to obliterate the whole notion of Valentine’s Day from their oil wealthy yet backward country.

“As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women, ” Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, told the Saudi Gazette, an English-language newspaper.

Every year, officials with the conservative Muslim kingdom’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice clamp down on shops a few days before February 14, instructing them to remove red roses, red wrapping paper, gift boxes and teddy bears. On the eve of the holiday, they raid stores and seize symbols of love.

This is, of course, the country that, two years ago sentenced a woman who had been raped by seven men to 200 lashes and six months in prison. She was raped by the men because she was seen in public in the company of a man who was not her husband or relative. She was pardoned, but still ….

But as in most places where there are strict rules about behavior, human beings find a way to work around them. In Saudi Arabia, a thriving black market in roses has grown, and florists deliver bouquets in the middle of the night “to avoid suspicion.”

Think about that when you buy your significant other a box of chocolates in broad daylight.

Poll: Sen. Sununu Trails Dem Opponent by 17 Points

Jon Ponder

CBS/The Politico:

Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) trails his Democratic opponent by 17 points in a recent poll, further bolstering the argument that Democrats’ best hope for making gains in the Senate starts in New England.

In a poll released today by the University of New Hampshire Sununu trails former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen by a margin of 54 percent to 37 percent, with 7 percent undecided and a 4.5 point margin for error. These numbers are largely unchanged since last July, showing that Shaheen continues to poll well in a state that has trended strongly toward Democrats in the past election cycle.

Sununu’s campaign has countered with an American Research Group poll taken in December that showed Sununu up 11 points, so it’s clear that methodology and the polling sample could be further debated and analyzed in this race.

Democrats have an edge in the Senate this year:

Democrats possess a field advantage in 2008, needing to defend only 12 seats, while Republicans must defend 23. In addition, five Republicans and no Democrats have announced that they are retiring. The open seat gap between the parties is the biggest in 50 years.

Rep. Shadegg Beomes 29th GOP Congressman to Retire

Jon Ponder

Arizona Republic:

Saying he never intended to be a professional politician, Rep. John Shadegg announced Monday that he will not seek re-election to an eighth term in Congress.

It appears to have been an abrupt decision:

Just weeks ago, Shadegg spoke confidently about his ability to win another term from the 3rd Congressional District, and he had raised nearly $500,000 for re-election in the fourth quarter.

His district in Phoenix is solidly Republican, but his Democratic opponent has raise $500,000, and Shadegg’s departure could make the race competitive.

Shadegg’s retirement means there are now 29 open Republican seats in the House, compared with five Democratic seats.

Update: Corrected amount of money raised by Shadegg’s opponent. Thanks VRW.

Bush Anoints Obama as Frontrunner – By Lying about His Record

Jon Ponder

It’s fair to say that you’ve officially become the Democratic frontrunner when George Bush lies about your record:

Appearing today on Fox News Sunday, President Bush laid into Sen. Barack Obama, claiming he would “attack Pakistan” and “embrace” Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I certainly don’t know what he believes in,” Bush said when asked if there had been a “rush to judgment” about Obama. “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad.”

Bush added he doesn’t think people know enough about Obama — but wouldn’t comment on why, if that’s the case, so many are supporting him.

In fact, Obama has not advocated either for attacking Pakistan or embracing Ahmadinejad. Obama has said that the U.S. should be willing to strike against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan if the country’s president Pervez Musharraf refuses. Obama also said during a debate last year that he was willing to meet with leaders of Iran and other U.S. rivals without preconditions, although he did not commit to doing so.

Peggy Noonan: GOP Most Scared of Obama – No, Seriously, They Are

Jon Ponder

Does anyone seriously believe there are more voters who loathe Hillary Clinton than there are racists in American today? Peggy Noonan, the right’s resident moonbat, appears to believe this — and she asserts that the GOP would not dare run a racist ad against Barack Obama.
If Sen. Corker or former Sen. Jesse Helms were forced to be truthful — let’s say by waterboarding them — both would admit they did not care that their victories were attributed to racist ads. Neither will Pres. McCain.
As expatriot columnist David Seaton put it, “I smell a rat.”

He’s referring to Noonan’s column in the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal column on Friday, in which she waxed poetical about Obama, who is quickly becoming the GOP’s second favorite Republican, after Joe Lieberman:

But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line–lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible–in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.

Baloney. Noonan has forgotten, deliberately perhaps, the ad produced by the Republican National Committee to run against then-Rep. Harold Ford, conservative African-American Democrat who was running for the U.S. Senate against a lightweight former mayor of Chattanooga, which exploited ancient fears about black men and white women, especially in the South:

A new Republican Party television ad featuring a scantily clad white woman winking and inviting a black candidate to “call me” is drawing charges of race-baiting, with critics saying it contradicts a landmark GOP statement last year that the party was wrong in past decades to use racial appeals to win support from white voters.

Critics said the ad, which is funded by the Republican National Committee and has aired since Friday, plays on fears of interracial relationships to scare some white voters in rural Tennessee to oppose Democratic Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. Ford is locked in a tight race, hoping to become the first African American senator since Reconstruction to represent a state in the former Confederacy.

“It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African American men and white women,” said Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the country’s oldest civil rights organization.

A former Republican senator, William S. Cohen of Maine, was more blunt. Cohen, who was also Defense secretary under President Clinton, said on CNN that the ad was “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”

Ford saw his lead in most polls evaporate after the ad started running. Corker won the seat, 51 percent to 48 percent.

Speaking of “rats,” in 1990, future professional Clinton-hater Dick Morris and GOP message-meister Alex Castellanos, the “father of attack ads,” produced the most famous racist ad prior to the anti-Ford nastiness, for the U.S. Senate reelection campaign of Jesse Helms, the segregationist scourge of North Carolina. As a former Charlottean who voted for Helms’ opponent, Harvey Gantt, when he ran successfully ran for mayor, I was, and still am, outraged over this:

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