Month: August 2008

On the same night as Bush.

Ambers:

If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?

Rome, Italy, 9.34 pm.

A reader writes:

I think you may be giving Alec an excessively hard time. Condoleeza Rice is a love interest for his character on the show, so I think he means that the writers have a hard time making that recurring joke funny without crossing a line into graphic offensiveness (i.e., having his character make anatomical references to the Secretary of State). Arguably, a line is crossed by alluding to her as a love interest in the first place, but it’s hardly the first time an actual public figure has been invoked in a sitcom.

My bad. I don’t watch the show and didn’t know it was an inside-joke.

The Clinton campaign may already be regretting it. Stay tuned to the Atlantic for the full campaign memo doc-dump. Can’t wait.

That’s what John Kerry said his policy was in 2004 for which he was mercilessly ridiculed and attacked by Bush and Cheney. "Senator Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to – quote – ‘nuisance’ – end quote – and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling," President Bush said. "See, I couldn’t disagree more. Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorists, and spreading freedom and liberty around the world." Here’s how the Bush Pentagon just described their anti-terror policy in the just released National Defense Strategy:

"Victory will include discrediting extremist ideology, creating fissures between and among extremist groups and reducing them to the level of nuisance groups that can be tracked and handled by law enforcement capabilities."

Memo to Obama: keep Gates at Defense.

And good for him:

Cheek, now a Princeton University student, was planning to attend the games as a human rights activist and support the 73 members of Team Darfur who will be competing. Calling the decision to revoke Cheek’s visa a "serious error," Romney said he is writing letters to the Chinese leadership and Chinese Olympic officials urging that the decision by revisited.

A reader writes:

I felt like taking a bath after reading "The Age Issue".  Can Andrew really have sunk this low, I asked myself? You have no evidence that McCain is suffering any cognitive impairment.  You are smearing him not for his ideas or positions, but for his age.  Are you recommending an age limit for the president – and if so, what is it? You have no evidence of cognitive impairment – but are very happy to insinuate it. That’s despicable.

Another adds:

Since Obama’s mother died of cancer at age 52 (only a bit more than a half decade older than Barack Obama is right now), whereas McCain’s mom is still vigorously alive today at age 96 — and since cancer is a malady where one’s genetic heritage (inherited from one’s parents) is an extremely important aspect of one’s own susceptibility to the disease — why isn’t Obama’s health an important question in this campaign?

Another:

Ronald Reagan turned 70 three weeks after beginning his first term (January 1981); he was three weeks shy of 78 when he left office eight years later.

Winston Churchill was six weeks shy of his 77th birthday when he was elected to his second term as prime minister in 1951. He didn’t resign until 4 years later. Konrad Adenauer was 73 when he became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (then West Germany) in 1949 — and 87 when he left office in 1963.

Obama’s and McCain’s health are issues, as they always should be. Why else release the medical records? And age is related to health and capacity, as any doctor will tell you. I don’t think McCain’s age is dispositive for me; I’m staggered by his energy and focus for a man of his age. But we’re talking about a minimum of four years here, and having a president in his upper seventies is worth discussing. Reagan, our recent older president, did not have Alzheimer’s in office, but his age was showing in his second term, and may have contributed to some errors. Churchill’s second term was deeply affected by his age – as any biography will tell you. This doesn’t detract from these men’s greatness; it merely reveals they are still men, subject to all the frailty that flesh is heir to. So I really don’t think this issue is off-limits, as long as we stick to the facts, the data and not a bunch of ageist stereotypes.

A welcome shift to a clearer statement of the importance of intact families for children:

    Too many fathers are missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs and end up in prison. We need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child-it’s the courage to raise one. We will support fathers by providing transitional training to get jobs, removing tax penalties on married families, and expanding maternity and paternity leave. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit, crack down on men who avoid child support payments, and we will ensure that payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies.