Month: January 2008

Not so fast.

I liked this comment:

What exactly does it take to be gay? It depends on the person, and how willing he is to actually be one.

Mark Shea responds to this excrescence from Kathryn-Jean Lopez:

As with the Dem devotion to abortion, the Right’s dalliance with torture is no longer played as an ugly thing they are ashamed to name and in a hurry to deny with euphemism. I can remember how Linda Chavez telescoped the whole Faustian process in her column a few years ago" torture. She began by calling for "rational debate" and ended with a demand that we get over our squeamishness and get on with the safe, legal and rare torture. Some of you may remember the Dems following a similar process a few years earlier with another embrace of evil.

So now, for those who wish to be "one of us" according to the canons of what used to be a conservative journal, the *first* thing you must embrace is not free speech, low taxes, the dignity of the individual, nor smaller government. No the first thing that makes you one with the alleged standard bearer of conservatism is zealous defense of Caesar’s power to torture. And in this day and age, that means Caesar’s power to torture anybody he deems an illegal combatant.

And this swinish definition of conservatism as prostitution to the power of Leviathan is used to exclude a man who heroically endured torture at the hands of the Viet Cong.

Despicable. Utterly, utterly despicable.

Or fun with Bills. The Lincoln latte is a classic.

An interesting link to Obama’s full statement on his Roberts nay-vote. Money quote:

The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified and that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch. I hope that he will recognize who the weak are and who the strong are in our society. I hope that his jurisprudence is one that stands up to the bullies of all ideological stripes.

Notice the positive tone. Tone matters. More context here.

A reader writes:

Ann Rice, in her endorsement of Hillary, called her "prophetic" for her health care reform efforts in 1993. Well, if derailing the viability of health care reform for a generation is prophetic, sure. Now she promises to repeat the same mistake. No matter how hard she works, does anyone think she’ll convince Mitch McConnell to create a new welfare state program? Doesn’t she remember Bill Kristol’s memo calling for all out opposition. Sorry, but six years of keeping her head down in the Senate to rebuild her reputation is hardly the experience that will be needed.

Polarization’s a bitch for liberals. Even if it’s a "roll of the dice", Obama is our only shot at building a movement than can defeat polarization. He’s doing it the old-fashioned way, asking people to work for change. It’s hardly a sure thing. But, as Oscar Wilde wrote,

"A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish."

We don’t need to to change the leadership of polarized Washington, for which Hillary is no doubt the best suited of the Democratic candidates. We need to end polarization, and that requires a Democratic landslide that only Obama might achieve. So let’s roll the dice.

Whatever works:

Like the tears, her victory speech suggested that Clinton is resolved to inhabit a new persona, at least as long as she needs to. Instead of her usual power suit, she wore a flowery brocade jacket that oozed femininity. She gushed about her "full heart," and how she had "found my own voice."

Sixty years old, with all that massive experience in the work of transforming the nation, and she’s just now finding her voice? More likely, she’s just found a new way to disguise her essential self.

Clinton pitches herself as the practical, working class, base Democrat candidate. Obama needs to do more of the same: more specifics, more policy, ore beer-track focus. He has the others. His poetry needs more campaign trail prose. And more door-to-door engagement with regular Democrats.

A really original and insightful column by Chris Caldwell in the FT on the melodrama of Clinton’s very public, and very scripted emotional "breakdown" before the NH primary:

The recent histrionics bring to mind the closing days of the Italian campaign of 2006, when Mr Berlusconi ruminated on his rapport with his nation’s telephone sex workers and stormed into a meeting of Confindustria to denounce the assembled businessmen for having “skeletons in their closet”. Mr Berlusconi’s 11th-hour antics brought him a political comeback as spectacular as Mrs Clinton’s on Tuesday. He narrowed a double-digit poll deficit to a few thousand votes and nearly won.

She’ll try anything. A blogger dissents here.

US Senator Barack Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah Obama stands in her house on January 12, 2008 in Kogelo, western Kenya. Barack Hussein Obama, father of US presidential candidate hopeful Obama, was born and raised in Kogelo. He died in a car accident in 1982. Senator Barack Obama’s parents separated when he was young. By Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.