Month: February 2008
Rightwing Previews Its Anti-Obama Attacks: ‘Shady Chicago Socialist’
It is a fundamental rule of politics: If you don’t define yourself, you will be defined by your opponent. Barack Obama’s charisma and inspirational message may have his supporters fainting in the aisles but his bio and voting records are a blank slate for Republicans to fill, if Obama gets the nomination, which appears increasingly likely.
Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama’s Senate voting record was more liberal than, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer.
Republicans noise-machiners met recently to develop lines of attacks against Obama. In yesterday’s London Sunday Times, Grover Norquist, who once compared the U.S. government to something he’d like to drown in a bathtub, previewed other lines of attack:
Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist, said: “Barack Obama has been able to create his own image and introduce himself to voters, but the swing voters in a general election are not paying attention yet. He is open to being defined as a leftwing, corrupt Chicago politician.”
And then Norquist trotted out a lie that worked well against John Kerry in 2004 — that Obama has the “most liberal” voting record in the Senate, putting him to the left of, say, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist Independent or the liberal Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer:
Obama has the voting record of a “hard-left” socialist, according to Norquist, from his time in the Illinois state legislature to the US Senate. He was recently judged by the nonpartisan National Journal to have the most liberal voting record in 2007 of any senator.
“It will be easy to portray him as even harder-left than Hillary,” said Norquist. “Hillary could lose the election, but Obama could collapse. People already know Hillary and she is not popular, but the disadvantage for Obama is that Republicans can teach people who don’t know him who he is.”
Roger Stone, a Republican operative with ties to Reagan era — and who was fired last year by N.Y State Senate Republicans after he left threatening messages on the phone of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s elderly father — trotted out more of the attacks developed at the strategy meeting on MSNBC’s “Tucker” show yesterday.
He used the word “liberal” repeatedly, of course, and focused on Obama’s unequivocal support for issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens. The MSNBC transcript is unavailable at this hour, but here’s how Stone framed the issue on his website, stonezone.com:
Castro Announces Retirement
Fidel Castro, Cuba’s supreme leader since January 1959, has announced he will retire:
Cuban leader Fidel Castro told compatriots early today that he would not accept another term as president, throwing open the Communist-ruled island’s leadership for the first time in nearly 50 years.
Castro, 81, and ailing with an undisclosed intestinal disorder, announced in a statement carried on the state-run Granma International newspaper website early today that he was stepping down as head of state.
His announcement left little wiggle room for a comeback: “I do not aspire to and will not accept, I repeat, I neither want nor will accept, the position of president of the Council of State and commander in chief.”
Total Drag: Bush Judge Appointee Resigns After DUI Arrest While Cross Dressing
That I find this story so hilarious probably says more about me than the cross-dressing federal judge in question, but as they say these days, it is what it is. The punch line is probably the best part.
[Federal Judge Robert] Somma worked in private practice for years in Boston before he was appointed to the bench by President Bush in December 2004.
Yes, the fact that Bush appointed him as a federal bankruptcy judge does crack me up, but let’s start at the beginning.
Somma’s Mercedes-Benz E320 sedan hit a pick-up truck from behind about 11:29 p.m. on Feb. 6, the police report said. No one was hurt.
Somma, who lives in Newbury, Mass., fumbled in his purse for his driver’s license before handing it to the officer who later arrested him, the police report shows.
“He had a difficult time locating his license in his purse. He passed over it multiple times before removing it,” officer Paul J. Thompson wrote in his report.
The officer offered no other details with regard to the judge’s attire or accessories. Nor would representatives of the Manchester Police Department or the city solicitor’s office, which worked out the negotiated plea agreement with Somma’s lawyer…
But lots of other people did offer those details, of which Audrey Hepburn would have been proud.
When authorities removed him from the vehicle, they said he wore a black women’s cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels.
But in his mug shot, the judge appears to be wearing blue eye shadow. Way to wreck a really chic look, Robert.
And where, you might ask, was the judge going that night dressed that way?
Somma told police he had been at the Breezeway Pub where he had one gin and tonic about two hours earlier, the police report reveals. He later said he drank two gin and tonics.
The Breezeway Pub, at 14 Pearl St., bills itself as “New Hampshire’s favorite gay and alternative bar,” according to its web site.
The arresting officer reported Somma smelled of alcohol, slurred his speech and fell backwards against the door frame while getting out of his car.
The Boston-based judge chose the bar in question, according to local rumor, because his wife, Wendy, was out of town and no one knew him in New Hampshire. Sounds like Wendy is pretty cool, though.
“I suspect that he will not be interested in talking to anyone from the newspaper, and I’m his wife,” said a woman who answered the telephone at the judge’s home yesterday. She referred media calls to Gary H. Wente, chief administrative officer for the First Circuit Courts.
Somma showed his sense of style to the end. He phoned in his resignation from a vacation spot in the Caribbean. If I were him, I think I’d just stay there.
MSM’s New Meme: Obama Supporters Are ‘Creepy’ And ‘Cult-Like’
CNN’s Carol Costello said that audience response at a Barack Obama rally is “a scene some increasingly find not inspirational, but ‘creepy,’ ” quoting columnists who have likened Obama supporters to members of a cult or described their enthusiasm as “creepy.” On-screen text during Costello’s report read: “OBAMA-MANIA BACKLASH” and “PASSION ‘CULT-LIKE’ TO SOME.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer similarly cited other writers to make the same assertion: “ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the ‘Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities’ of ‘Obama worshipers,’ what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls ‘the Cult of Obama.’ ”
Vietnam POW Activists Called McCain ‘Songbird’ and ‘Manchurian Candidate’
Among groups who oppose John McCain, the most serious charges come from a small but fervent cadre of Vietnam POW/MIA activists who accuse him of being a collaborator during his time in the Vietnamese POW camps.
They call McCain “Songbird,” and say he received special treatment. Some in the POW community even believe he was brainwashed like Raymond Shaw, the character played by Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian candidate,” who was used as a tool by the communists to destroy America from within.
Activists accused McCain of stonewalling the release of POW records because they contained evidence he had collaborated with the North Vietnamese.
The issue boiled over in 1992 after POW families and activists felt they had been mistreated by McCain during hearings before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. In the video above (posted at Vietnam Veterans against McCain) which was apparently shot soon after the hearings, POW advocates and experts, as well as Republican politicians, including then-Rep. Bob Dornan of California, assert that McCain was stonewalling the release of POW documents because his own records included transcripts of interviews he gave to communist and other media outlets in which he said the U.S. military had deliberately bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam.
Members of the committee included Vietnam veterans among the senators — Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass), Vice Chairman Bob Smith (R-NH), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), McCain and others. (The only Vietnam vet who opted out was Sen. Al Gore.) The committee had two objectives. One was to investigate persistent rumors that Vietnam was still holding U.S. servicemen as prisoners. The second goal was to create a plan for normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam.
McCain and other committee members traveled to Vietnam on fact-finding missions. Witnesses who appeared at committee hearings included Nixon era defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James Schlesinger and Nixon Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, among many others. In the end, no evidence was found that Americans were being held in Vietnam, and relations between the two countries were normalized.
Rough transcript of the video follows:
Campaigns Explained
For those of you non-wonks (of course if you weren’t a wonk, you probably wouldn’t be reading this, but let’s just pretend), there’s a great glossary at The Onion. Astound your friends with your high-level political acumen after brushing up. Here’s a sample.
absentee ballot
A form of voting that does not involve the inconvenience of having to get up off the couch and walk to a high school gymnasium.caucus
The process by which Americans are quadrennially reminded of Iowa’s existence.convention
The best four-day-long chance a politically active, overweight Kia salesman from Tulsa has to nail one of them blond Fox anchors.election worker
A male or female at least 70 years of age.electoral college
A process by which the number of states in the Union is narrowed down to the most important seven or eight.hope
An intangible object within every American that is destroyed every four years in November.lobbyist
A better-paid legislator.MoveOn.org
A company offering routine tests of your e-mail’s spam filter.political consultants
Individuals who are very savvy politically, but don’t have enough hair to run for office themselves.voter apathy
The reason most American politicians are able to achieve and maintain office.
Poll: Obama Moves Ahead of Clinton Among Dems Natiowide
For several days, nationwide Democratic voters’ preferences have been shifting toward Barack Obama in Gallup Poll Daily election tracking. Now, the Illinois senator enjoys his first statistically significant lead, 49 percent to 42 percent, over Hillary Clinton, according to the Feb. 13-15 results. Additionally, the 49 percent support for Obama represents the high point for him in the daily tracking program.
Was Larry Johnson Censured at DailyKos for Criticizing Obama?
Larry Johnson is a former CIA agent (and ex-Republican voter), whose outrage over the outing of Valerie Wilson by Dick Cheney and his henchmen was what initially riveted my attention to the scandal.
“You guys are John Bolton and Dick Cheney in drag. You are welcome to kiss my ass.”
– Larry Johnson
Now, via our friend Brad Friedman at The BRADBLOG, we learn that he’s been warned about the content of his posts at DailyKos, apparently because he’d had the temerity to criticize Barack Obama.
The autobot warning Johnson received from the DailyKos moderator did not mention Obama:
Your latest diary was filled with inaccurate and/or unsupported claims, Muslim-bashing, xenophobia and inflammatory and insulting language. This is unacceptable and you need to tone it down and better support your claims.
But in his response, posted at his site, No Quarter, Johnson says it was support for Hillary Clinton that triggered the displeasure of site owner Markos Moulitsas:
Okay Mr. Kos. Here’s a word for you: GO FUCK YOURSELF. (Actually, that’s three words. My bad.)
