Month: October 2007

Ambers says it’s time to take him seriously:

For the longest time, many journalists, myself included, did not take Ron Paul seriously. It wasn’t that his politics — a combination of libertarian constitutionalism and social conservatism — were unusual. It was, principally, that he was anti-war in a party where that view dare not express itself.

Paul is now emerging as a serious threat in New Hampshire, perhaps not to win it — although the winner may need only 25% or so — , but to influence the outcome in a way that reflects his worldview. He will spend most of the $5.3M in his campaign budget on television, mailings and field organizing in the Granite State. There are 450 people in largest Ron Paul Meetup group, and they’re canvassing in Claremont and dropping lit in Manchester this weekend.

Here’s a segment of the discussion on Real Time last night. It began with questions that I linked to from John Cole’s site. And then it went on from there. Notice how Wesley Clark thinks that every criticism of Senator Clinton is part of Republican Party talking points. Just a taste of how she will deal with dissent if she gets back into the White House for a third term:

Matt sees what’s going on:

Perhaps most important is what the story suggests about the declining violence in Baghdad (and perhaps elsewhere in the country): namely, that the spike in violence was associated with competing sectarian efforts at ethnic cleansing, and the decline in violence represents the success of those efforts…

This is the basically fraudulent nature of the American enterprise in Iraq. We’re told we can’t leave because of the civil war that would break out or intensify or whatever if we do. But our troops aren’t really capable of meaningfully impacting the result of the sectarian conflict anyway. Instead, they’re just being plopped into the middle of it and exposed to harm, so that when the conflict eventually ends (as conflicts tend to) we can call the results ‘victory’ and stay in Iraq forever. If the violence waxes, that shows the war needs to continue. If it wanes, that shows that we’re winning and need to keep on keeping on. Meanwhile, in the real world, the civil war and ethnic cleansing we’re supposed to be preventing are things that have already happened.

A woman kills herself to stop the pain of an illness she tried to alleviate with marijuana:

She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.

The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.

That DEA statement should go down in history as an emblem of the anti-federalist agenda of today’s conservatives. It’s up there with protecting people from the alleviation of their own pain. Prosser couldn’t get the medicine she needed, except from unreliable and sometimes dangerous sources. Unable to cope with the pain of her illness, she took her own life.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July.

That’s the American spirit. The government deprived her of liberty and so she chose death. May she and every other victim of the drug war rest in peace.

(Update: here’s Obama on the question. He’d pull the feds off persecuting the sick in states where medical marijuana is legal.)

A reader writes:

I’m not sure you’ve addressed the fundamental question that confronts Democratic primary voters: who is more electable, Clinton or Obama, or for that matter, Edwards (my current pick)? If the choice boils down to Obama vs. Clinton, all we’ve seen from Obama is a campaign organized around an airy platitude: kumbaya. Clinton hasn’t been overly specific on policy, either, but during the debates this summer we got to see how she’d handle the Swift Boats next year — with competence and a spine of steel. As much as I’m emotionally drawn to Obama, his performances in the debates and on the stump have been less than stellar. It’s all too easy to imagine him getting his ass kicked by the GOP and losing in a landslide to a thuggish dictator like Giuliani. Clinton may never reach the 52% she’d need to win the election — but so far, she’s the only one who looks like she can give as good as she gets. And whoever wins the Democratic nomination will face a hell of attacks the likes we’ve never seen.

Also, tragically, I just don’t think Americans will elect a black man with the middle name of Hussein and the last name of Obama. The GOP is already testing out that meme — and I’m afraid Obama is exactly the kind of candidate they know how to run against (think Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi; Willie Horton; all the Rove tricks). Race still would derail Obama in the general, despite his potential to be, as David Brooks has pointed out, a transformational politician.

I don’t think the use of an anti-gay Gospel singer on a muscial tour is a big deal. I don’t believe it was done deliberately. Which means it was a staffer mistake. Here’s one key test for the Obama campaign: has that staffer been fired yet? Who has been held responsible and fired for such an unforced error? If we are to be reassured that Obama can do what Bush can’t: hold people responsible for mistakes, we need to know who did this and when they were let go.

Are hip-hop and disco coming together again? Kanye West offers Exhibit A:

Portland, Oregon, 4.55 pm.