Posts Tagged ‘wedge issue politics’


More Fake Outrage, More Wimpy Democrats

A few days ago, the Democratic Party posted an ad on their website. For once, it was a powerful, effective ad, full of emotional imagery that succinctly presented an unmistakable message: The past six years have been awful, and it’s time for a change. Naturally, the Republicans in Congress and Republican bloggers were outraged! Outraged that the ad was effective, but the official line was they were outraged that the ad showed images of flag-draped coffins coming home.

The Democrats who created that ad stood up and faced the latest bout of fake rage. Naturally, they then tucked their tail between their legs and ran as fast as they could in the other direction, but not before they removed the ad from their website.

Instead of giving in (yet again), why didn’t the Democratic Party respond by saying the real outrage is that these young men and women are dying in the first place in a war that didn’t have to happen, and that it’s their duty as patriotic Americans to point that out?

Why didn’t they point out that, to some people, it’s only ok to feature soldiers in campaign ads when they’re alive or when their widows are staring at George W. Bush in adulation?:


Candorville lampoon of Senator Bunning “treasonous and traitor-like”

From yesterday’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

Sen. Jim Bunning made newspapers across the United States again yesterday — this time in the funny pages.A national cartoonist with a reputation for wry political humor took a swing at Kentucky’s Hall of Famer after Bunning called for The New York Times to be charged with treason.Candorville, which runs in about 50 papers across the nation as well as another in Ecuador and the Pacific Stars & Stripes, featured a faux political commercial yesterday from “Senator Bunting.” However, the face on the TV is that of Bunning, a Republican in his second term in the Senate and a pitcher in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The strip’s main character, Lemont Brown, hears the ad apparently from the bathroom — the third panel features a flush as “Bunting” denies that his attack on the “Candorville Chronicle” is politically motivated.Cartoonist Darrin Bell said Bunning caught his eye last month after condemning the Times’ report on the Bush administration’s not-so-secret surveillance of international banking transactions.”Senator Bunning at the time seemed to be the GOP’s point man for the treason charge against The New York Times, so he was the logical one to use as a representative for the whole party,” Bell said yesterday. The flush was “the most appropriate” activity that came to mind, he said.He had not gotten any feedback yesterday from Bunning’s office on Capitol Hill. “I don’t really expect to. Somehow, I really doubt they read Candorville,” he said.Bunning’s office did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment for this story.Bell said he doesn’t see his work as falling into either the Democrat or Republican camp. In the 1990s, he was called a fascist for picking on President Clinton.”I just go after whoever’s in charge,” Bell said.As for Senator Bunting, he could make a return appearance, but that depends on Bunning.”He’s got my attention,” Bell said. “The next time he gives me material, I’m going to use it.”

Apparently, one reader was not amused:

I have always thought political cartoons to be inherently anti-Republican, and this has gotten to be even worse with all the nationwide progress witnessed in the last 5 years. It’s even possible that this drawn criticism has in fact lent itself to limiting the progress we have had…because it’s so treasonous and traitorlike.Posted by: Bill

This was one of the comments below the article (comments have since been removed, possibly because the argument got sort of heated. People stopped just short of burning each other in effigy. Barely.The “treasonous and traitorlike” comment doesn’t interest me as much as “limiting the progress we have had…” in the last five years. What progress is that, again? And if there is any progress, how can it be undone by a comic strip? If only Bill would have explained himself further. It would have been fascinating.


What a surprise…

This is all over the conservative blogosphere. Can someone explain to me how a person can actually be nonchalant – if not downright proud – of using divisive wedge issues to drum up support they otherwise wouldn’t earn?

ROVE TIMEStaffers in the White House have been talking up the possibilities of an “October Surprise” or two leading into the mid-term elections. They say the President feels confident he can still play a role in the election, that he intends to campaign hard for Republicans, and that on the policy front, there are a couple of issues that can be used as wedges along the way.-from the conservative mag, The American Spectator 


I’m sorry about what you said I said.

What I learned this week:1. John Kerry inadvertently insulting the intelligence of the troops is far worse than George Bush getting those troops stuck in Iraq without adequate manpower, armor, or planning. It’s certainly far worse than Mr. Bush and his Congressional rubber stamps not having any plan (or intention, it seems) of getting our troops out of that bloody civil war he created.2. Although John Kerry was a highly educated soldier who served with other highly educated soldiers, and has spoken on and on (and on and on and on) about the intelligence, nobility and capability of modern soldiers for more than thirty years, his one botched joke yesterday proves he thinks soldiers are morons.3. John Kerry’s gaffe is more newsworthy than 104 Americans dying in Iraq in one month.4. It doesn’t matter whether Kerry was joking about Bush or attacking the troops. He should apologize for what the Bush White House says he meant, whether he meant it or not.5: The “I’m not going to stand for anyone distorting my awful, bungled jokes” Kerry is far more inspiring than the guy who ran for President in 2004:


October Surprise: the Saddam Death Sentence

October Surprises happen in November these days. After being delayed for nebulous reasons, the Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein (a court whose logistics are largely controlled by agents of the United States) has decided to announce its verdict this Sunday, two days before the U.S. Congressional elections.

As President Bush faces mounting criticism over the war, a guilty verdict announced two days ahead of tight U.S. congressional elections on November 7 could reflect positively on him as a vindication of his policy to overthrow Saddam. U.S. officials deny Washington had any say over the timing of the verdict or the court’s decisions, saying the American role was limited to logistics and security.More…

Of course Washington had nothing to do with this timing. They’d never politicize something as important as this. Not this White House.•••


Why can’t we be more like South Africa?

I remember when this country used to be more progressive than South Africa. Whatever happened to that?

The South African parliament on Tuesday approved new legislation recognizing gay marriages _ a first for a continent where homosexuality is largely taboo… “When we attained our democracy, we sought to distinguish ourselves from an unjust painful past, by declaring that never again shall it be that any South African will be discriminated against on the basis of color, creed culture and sex,” Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nqakula told the National Assembly…

•••


Lib’ral Media Covers Up for Obama

Nice try, Chicago Sun-Times:

Barack Obama’s week-old presidential campaign has been hit with a smear. Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, launched Saturday, has been attacked with an unfounded accusation. Contrary to what was reported in Insight magazine and then repeated on Fox News and in other news outlets, including a column that ran in the Sun-Times by free-lancer Mark Steyn, Obama was not educated in a radical Islamic school when he was an elementary student in Jakarta.And there is no evidence whatsoever that Clinton’s campaign had anything to do with spreading the damaging rumor that Obama hid a Muslim background.The source for both slurs started in a report posted on the Web site of Insight, a conservative magazine published by the Washington Times. The article with no named sourcing alleged that researchers connected to Clinton dug up information about Obama as part of a “background check.”

You mean Obama didn’t attend a radical Islamist madrassa when he was six? Are they trying to tell us he didn’t plot the destruction of America between nap-time and Play Doh lessons? Next the Lib’ral Media’s going to try telling us he never actually burned the flag while cross-dressing when he ran that abortion clinic in San Francisco. They must think they’re dealing with idiots.


Washington Times disavows Insight over Obama story

Like alcoholic parents trying to disavow their crack-whore son, the Washington Times is attempting to distance itself from the bogus Obama-madrassah story — a story that they and Fox News had amplified.

The Washington Times, which is also owned by the Unification Church, but operates separately from the Web site, quickly disavowed the article. Its national editor sent an e-mail message to staff members under the heading “Insight Strikes Again” telling them to “make sure that no mention of any Insight story” appeared in the paper, and another e-mail message to its Congressional correspondent instructing him to clarify to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama that The Washington Times had nothing to do with the article on the Web site. “Some of the editors here get annoyed when Insight is identified as a publication of The Washington Times,” said Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times.

But can the Washington Times disavow itself?

Barack Obama announced last week he was forming an exploratory committee to explore whether he can really be as fabulous as the media say. And happily the answer is: Yes. He is young, gifted and black, and white and Hawaiian and Kansan, and charismatic and Congregationalist, and Muslim. He rejects the way “politics has become so bitter and partisan,” he represents “a different kind of politics.” He smokes, which is different.He was raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams, which is more than John Edwards can say. …The madrassah stuff was supposedly leaked to Insight Magazine by some oppo-research heavies on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team. If true, that suggests Hillary is losing her touch. It’s certainly the case that a foreign education doesn’t always assist in electoral politics: John Kerry didn’t play up the Swiss finishing school angle. But look at it from a Democratic primary voter’s point of view, the kind who drive around with those “CO-EXIST” bumper stickers made up of the cross and the Star of David and the Islamic crescent and the peace sign. Your whole worldview is based on the belief that deep down we would all rub along just fine and this neocon fever about Islam is just a lot of banana oil to keep the American people in a state of fear and paranoia. What would more resoundingly confirm that view than if the nicest, most nonbitter, nonpartisan guy in politics turns out to have graduated from the Sword of the Infidel Slayer grade school in Jakarta?

Maybe someone at the Washington Times needs to circulate another memo.CNN, through the rare implementation of something called “journalism,” debunked this nonsense last week::


Fox “News” Viewers React to Release of Obama’s Birth Certificate

Today, President Obama finally released his long-form birth certificate to prove he’s an American. In other words, the country finally released long-form certification that we continue to be a nation plagued by racist assholes. Millions of Americans (45% of Republicans, according to a recent poll) just can’t accept that a black man is a true American.

No amount of proof is enough to squash a conspiracy theory, because conspiracy theories aren’t about facts; they’re about people refusing to accept that history’s moved on and left them or their worldview in the dust. The facts are always, always incidental. The people who clung to their Obama-is-an-Other fantasy (also known as “Fox News Viewers”) will now simply refuse to believe their own eyes. For example…

(culled from the reader responses to the release of the certificate…)

“It’s a Certificate of birth… Not a Birth Certificate which has the seal, mothers finger print and baby’s feet prints… Certificate of birth, easily forged… Birth Certificate, cannot be forged…I hope they do a chemical analysis on the paper and ink.”
-heydad614

“To the best of my knowledge, that green “crossthatch” paper didn’t exist in 1961. Had a white sheet of paper been place on the copier screen, then copied using that green paper, you’d see a white sheet of paper copied onto that larger green crossthatch paper. If someone has information to the contrary, as in, when exactly that style of paper came into being and when it became a standard for State’s to use it for birth certificate, vehicle titles…as well as banks to use it (for checks), I’m all ears. And eyes.”
-Rod Vanger

“His mother’s mother, his grandmother stated that she went to Kenya for his birth. Remember, you don’t have to be born in the USA to be an Illinois State Senator. Just so happens she didn’t live long enough to see the election and explain why she could possibily be mistaken as to where her grandson was born. Yup, people forge documents all the time and money and power get really good documents. This isn’t over. Where did he say he was born on the college forms that he filed. That is where the investigation should go. If he falsified the forms to get Federal Grant or Scholarahip monies then he would be guilty of Fraud. Trump must go after those forms next. “A person who has nothing to hide hides nothing”.”
-sunkgleska

“He should show it he has had three years to have one made up!!!!!!!!!!!!”
-dissmayed

“So, now the question remains, why did Obama pay over $2 Million, in legal fees, to prevent his birth certificate from seeing the light of day, only to now release it (over two years after the election), or did he? Is this a real birth certificate? What about the university and health records?”
-Wolfman Jones

“Why would they refer to him as African as his race …. and his mother as cauc. ? Something isn’t right here… African is not a Race!! Also his mother was 17 when she became pregnant with Obama… many of us were led to believe she met Obama Senior while in college…. hummm…. like I said something just isn’t right….”
-goway

“It only took 2+ years for him to produce one at all. Now EITHER this is the real one and it took Trump hasseling him about it for him to finally produce it OR it is NOT a real one but it took 2+ years for his people to figure out a way to get him a Long Form. Now in this case, as my Grandfather used to say ” If it walks like a Duck, looks like a Duck, and sounds like a Duck…its a Duck” Now if you look at the Certificate it may look like a real one next to a real one. But if you look at the situation, at the context of it, the timing of the release and how long it took you could say its a fake one. The FACT is, it should have never been an issue. Every other President before him both Democrat and Republican PROVIDED it up front*, as well as their educational records, and tax records. This President has gotten away with concealing SO MUCH FOR SO LONG. If there wasn’t a problem why would he conceal it? Its a simple question.”
-tazer357 (*Darrin’s note: no, they didn’t, because nobody ever thought to ask a caucasian president to prove he was an American)

“And one is to believe that a person would spend a few mill on lawyers to dodge the issue of simply whipping this mint copy of “live birth”, not a birth certificate, out of their sock drawer? Perhaps the anti tea party Buttbama loving groupies need to further their education. It’s all bogus.”
-kevinbecham

“it’s a fake!!!!
i’ve seen obamas family picture (in an email) and they do not give BC’s to monkeys!!!!”
-rwalden

There are two slightly less bat-shit insane groups of conspiracy theorists: the kind who accept the facts, but then concoct a NEW conspiracy theory to explain why they were duped into believing the original conspiracy theory… and the kind who simply try to change the subject and hope you forget they ever mentioned it in the first place. Sometimes you get people who do both:

“So basically, just like I already knew, this was hidden for no other purpose than to deliberately cause controversy so Obama could use it to demean & dismiss those that oppose him. He could have done this when McCain was made to show his in 2008, instead he used it in typical Saul Alinsky style. The question is not WHERE he was born but WHY has he hidden all of his personal information?

He is a liar, a rac ist, a Mar xist, Social ist, Commun ist, pick one. He just attended “Easter” services at a church where the B L A C K “pastor” is another Jerimiah Wright, lots of coverage of that huh?
-paintinc56

(sigh)

This is the kind of sad chapter in our history that the “racism is all behind us” crowd will be working overtime to forget. Which is why I propose turning it into a national holiday. Henceforth, Americans will celebrate April 27 as “Black-President-Had-to-Prove-He-Was-an-American-Day.” Some of us will hang our heads in lingering resentment, racists will gleefully and ironically barbecue, and all of us will eventually use it as just another excuse to take off work for a day. And Hallmark will clean up.