Monday’s political round-up

July 9, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) was surprisingly cagey about his future plans, including a possible presidential campaign, on Meet the Press yesterday. Hagel said he doesn’t “intend” to leave the GOP to run as an independent, but that leaves him a lot of wiggle room. Asked if he’s ruling such an effort out, Hagel said, “For right now I am. And what the world looks like next year, I don’t know. But I have no plans to change parties or run for president as an independent.”

* John Edwards is following up on his work on poverty next week with a three-day swing through poverty-stricken communities in New Orleans, Memphis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and eight other cities and eight states. The visits begin on July 16.

* Remember all of those campaign staffers that John McCain was forced to fire? It looks like they’re making the jump to Fred Thompson’s campaign, which is just starting to staff up.

* Rudy Giuliani received a surprisingly hostile reception at the University of North Florida over the weekend, when he said he opposes the elimination of the federal income tax. Pushed on whether he’d consider a consumption-based tax, Giuliani said, “I have to study it some more. I don’t think a fair tax is realistic change for America.” The comments drew quite a few boos.

* Barack Obama’s campaign office in Davenport, Iowa, was burglarized Friday night, and two laptop computers were stolen. “It doesn’t appear that it was anything sensitive or irreplaceable,” a spokesperson said.

* And George Stephanopoulos interviewed Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) yesterday, discussing Paul’s presidential platform. Towards the end, Stephanopoulos asked, “What’s success for you in this campaign.” When Paul said “winning” would be a sign of success, Stephanopoulos said, “That’s not going to happen.” Paul asked Stephanopoulos if he would wager his “every cent” in his pocket that Paul would not be president, to which the host said, “Yes.” It was kind of rude, but kind of amusing, too.

When Paul said “winning” would be a sign of success, Stephanopoulos said, “That’s not going to happen.”

I’m glad that George Stephanopoulos speaks for the American People now and is also a psychic-medium. Could he do us a favor and tell Congress that it’s time to impeach?

Would anyone have guessed two months ago that Ron Paul would have outpaced Baghdad John in fund-raising? I guess George Stephanopoulos really speaks for his coporate masters and not the thousands of Ron Paul campaign contributors.

  • “a fair tax”? Is that what their latest oxymoron is for “screw the little people”? Good on Rudy for taking the heat for such a stupid idea (not that he’s a good person or anything).

    And wager a hundred bucks that if Michael Moore picked the Corporate Media for his next target, that George Stephanopoulos’s boss would shit a brick.

    Go see SiCKO. Take a Republican with ya.

  • All campaign staff everywhere should have the following dictum tattooed on their foreheads:

    “Laptop computers are easy targets for thieves. Do not leave them in empty offices where the bad guys can get them. Take them home. Keep them safe.”

    It ain’t rocket science, guys. Don’t make your candidate look stupid for hiring stupid people.

  • Fair Tax?

    Depends on how one defines fair. Fair for them or fair for the greater society?

    I’d agree to this Fair Tax horseshit if those who would benefit (ie Rich) had the SAME disposable income (by TOTAL not as a measly %) was the same as those who “benefit” from a progressive tax. But when you apply math (real math not Rovian math) then a serious reduction in taxes for those who can afford to pay means more headaches for those who can’t.

    One of the things we have seen here in Canada is that when they cut taxes, they reduce the amount of dough for infrastructure maintenance and improvements. My father was ALL for tax cuts till he realized why no one filled in potholes, the sewers were falling apart and why our vaunted electrical grid failed in Sept 2004. In this case, a penny saved in taxes is millions in bills down the road.

    For once Roodee is right (he’s still a douche.) Government can’t function without money flowing in.

  • Stephanopoulos was right, and Paul is your typical libertarian idiot. It’s a philosoph that works perfectly in a society of 100 intelligent people who believe in being honest and being ethical – until one realizes that by lying and being unethical means he can loot the pockets of the other 99.

    Libertarians are right up there with Marxists for failing to understand basic human nature in their prescriptions for Utopia.

  • Paul asked Stephanopoulos if he would wager his “every cent” in his pocket that Paul would not be president, to which the host said, “Yes.” It was kind of rude, but kind of amusing, too.

    Oh, come on. F*** that guy.

  • Ah, I just remembered that Tom Cleaver has a monopoly on the Truth also. But it’s not very flattering, Tom. In fact, Flush Rimjaughb’s phone-lines are open. The derelict-heads probably hate Ron Paul just as much as you seem to. And they’d love for you to prove your anti-democratic mettle.

  • Libertarians are right up there with Marxists for failing to understand basic human nature in their prescriptions for Utopia.

    Libertarians are like the Scientologists of the political world- it’s a scam, and if it’s not a scam, it might as well be.

    All it is is liberalism without all the pro-black stuff. And what do rich liberals who are, or edge toward being, nihilists and hedonists because of their religion-void, philosophically incomplete upbringing, care about? Being able to pursue any vice they want, because the normal pleasures of life (family, friends, society) have been distorted for them. So when you’re forging an opposition political party that doesn’t stick up for the weak and oppressed, what have you got left? No political power = you lose. And you can even tag on conservative beliefs by convincing these “libertarians” that their hedonistic permissiveness is analogous to / has something to do with economic permissiveness (for those who are already rich).

    If there ws ever a doctrine more designed to gut political power and momentum, I haven’t seen it.

  • In regard to Rudy Giuliani appearance in Florida, Mike Huckabee was on NBC’s Today this morning pushing the idea of a fair tax–a consumption tax–to replace the federal income tax. I guess the wingnuts enjoy being pandered to.

  • Swan,

    And what do rich liberals who are, or edge toward being, nihilists and hedonists because of their religion-void, philosophically incomplete upbringing, care about?

    presumably you are using the classical definition of “liberal” here as opposed to the modern version which is synonomous with “progressive”. If not, I think you need to better understand the concept of libertarian before you go off on such a diatribe.

    Modern liberals/progressives, are not so easily generalized as all being nihilistic or “religion void”. The civil rights era was largely influeced by people of strong religious convictions. Need I remind you that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is more accurately referred to as Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

  • WTF? Did Gravel show up just before Giuliani? I had no idea the Fair Tax was so big with the young ‘uns. (incidentally, the current income tax screws the little people just fine and it’s harder to enforce. If a Fair Tax is so great for the rich, why don’t more GOP spokesmen support it? Why doesn’t Rudy? He’s such a friend of the poor???)

    Dang shame they don’t vote.

    As for Stephanopoulos, how much did he have in his pocket at the time. Unless he’d just been to the ATM machine, it might not be all that brave a bet.

    Libertarians are no more idiotic than liberals or conservatives. Not that this observation has a point. CB already demonstrated that Ron Paul is not a Libertarian.

  • Modern liberals/progressives, are not so easily generalized as all being nihilistic or “religion void”.

    Edo– not writing about all liberals and describing them as “religion void,” etc.- rather characterizing the subset of liberal-leaning individuals who libertarianism would tend to appeal to (rich, anti-Black, hedonistic, self-centered, misanthropic, etc.)- and just making generalizations, not doing the Republican thing where they shill a stereotype and try to convince everybody that everyone in that class possesses all or even any characteristics of the stereotype.

    Also, be careful of conflating the word liberal with progressive, because the bad guys seem to have their own ideas about what those words mean and to want to use that against us- my best guess is that they must consider Progressive a pro-terrorist or pro-communist denomination because its more associated with those who read Chomsky, were involved in or supported the anti-WTO protests and surrounding series of protests, etc. I am definitely not going to start calling all liberals progressives or use the terms interchangeably just because you think they’re the same thing. I definitely have gotten the impression that this is something they’re interested in.

    Please don’t jump to assumptions about what I write, as it’s very problematic.

  • Libertarianism is about wanting to pursue any vice unimpeded, to not feel guilted into supporting charity and social welfare government programs, and to have one’s anti-black convictions reinforced. Besides that, it works to peel people off the real liberal, Democratic parties- or it is even promoted by the Republicans to be used this way. I’d rather not talk to a libertarian, or be in the same room with a libertarian book- it’s like being in the same room with a swastika-sporting Nazi.

  • I’d rather not talk to a libertarian, or be in the same room with a libertarian book- it’s like being in the same room with a swastika-sporting Nazi.

    This might be the single most over-the-top thing I’ve read on this site, and among the flat-out dumbest.

    Libertarianism is pretty much as Tom describes it in #5–a “philosophy” for people who don’t understand (or refuse to accept) that an increasingly complex society requires a robust, capable and competent vehicle to act for the common good. We call this vehicle “government,” and most of us–okay, some of it–understand that since it ain’t goin’ nowhere, it’s worthwhile to try and get it to work well. That in turn requires money (though not only money.)

    Libertarianism is a Peter Pan ideology, but comparing it to Nazism suggests that either you really don’t understand either worldview, or you’re shockingly, obnoxiously insensitive to what Nazism means.

  • Swan,

    Edo– not writing about all liberals and describing them as “religion void,” etc.- rather characterizing the subset of liberal-leaning individuals who libertarianism would tend to appeal to (rich, anti-Black, hedonistic, self-centered, misanthropic, etc.)- and just making generalizations…

    I’m trying not to “jump to assumptions about what I [Swan] write”, but this only serves to confuse me. What “liberal-leaning” individuals are you referring to here? “anti-black”? Liberals? putting those two items together just doesn’t make sense. Unless you are using the classical term for liberal. i.e. in the same way The Economist uses the term as a synonym for economic liberalism. Is that what you mean? ‘Cause unless you can provide some citations, the vast majority of those you would accuse of being enticed by libertarianism are what used to be called “country club republicans”, not liberals (or progressives).

    As for your concern about using the term “progressives” again, I think you have it exactly backwards. The right has spent the last 30 years denigrating the term “liberal” and doing their best to conflate it with socialism, communism, terrorist-sympathizers, anti-war peaceniks, etc. Can you please cite some recent and less recent (say in the last 20 years) examples where the term “progressive” is tied explicitly to those same notions?

  • Edo, there are asshole liberals just like there are asshole conservatives (albeit less). That’s human nature. People don’t sort themselves into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ by using labels like ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ like people can be sorted into ‘dark haired’ and ‘blonde haired’. It’s certainly possible for a person who has the more compassionate position on some social issue to be a dick to his kids, for example.

    Unfortunately, there are a few anti-black liberals, as I’ve noticed. They may say the right things on race some of the time, which is at least good that they’re saying them, but they need to read Guns, Germs, and Steel. They are not overtly racist but they seem as racist as some conservatives (irrationally, inordinately fear they are going to be the victims of crime from black people, think black people are dicks when they’re not (or just based on an experience with a few guys), or mistake black people’s having a chip on their shoulder and suspicion of white people because of historical racism for black people’s being assholes). They must have grown up in areas where they didn’t meet many black people. Often these people express a conservative view on (what they must see as) a debatable issue, like affirmative action- it’s astonishing.

    It would be really easy for conservatives to take advantage of liberals like this. If a conservative just had some conservative black guys who were working for him and told them to show up around the liberal at a bus station and act all inarticulate and rough and ghetto like a black stereotype, and told the black guys there was some important national security reason for them to do it that he couldn’t explain because of secrecy, the anti-black liberal (or liberal who is susceptible to antiblack stereotypes) would fall for it as easy as anything, and would end up thinking thoughts about how crappy and hopeless black people are. It’s an easy, sucker scam. And the sucker black conservatives would have been glad to help out.

    Re: progressive, you’ll notice I never use the word progressive (unless I slip), because I wouldn’t want to apply it to someone unless I know they prefer to be called progressive and not liberal. It may be a great word and it may be that we should be able to use it, but I would never call someone progressive by default now. These are disturbing, dark times for the nation, and people who don’t understand a lot of things wield a lot of power over individuals they don’t understand, and hold a lot of distorted opinions of people based not on facts but on what their conservative friends tell them. “Progressive,” as a person who knows a bit would know, is the word that is used more, relative to “liberal,” to describe themselves among people who are Chomsky fans or who were more likely to be connected to the small circa 2000 anarchist movement and the WTO, World Bank, etc. demonstrations. If you want G. Gordon Liddy loving, ultra-conservative, law enforcement types with a distorted view of the world to see you as a security threat, my bet is that there would be no better thing to do than associate yourself with that movement, which afore-mentioned law enforcement types are likely to see as civil unrest (in the sense of being an evil) and as rioting in the streets (not demonstrations, and practicing rights guaranteed to Americans in the constitution). These people do not see periodic demonstrations or demonstrations that happened in the 1960s (even not counting the race riots) as healthy. They see it rather as a symptom of communist-fomented incipent revolution, or some-such other delusion. And no, I will not cite any examples for you of incidents that made me have this concern because it would not be a good idea for me to do that. You will just have to honestly look back at your own experience, and not let your view be distorted by thinking that I am giving you an ass-wupping here, to figure out whether it makes sense to you or not.

    So I think you are the one who has it exaclty backwards. It makes sense for a conservative- if there are two words liberals apply to themselves (liberal and progressive)- to attack both of them. It is not sensical and it is mere fantasy they they would allow you a ‘safe space’ to call yourself by some general label for your ideology that they haven’t attacked. It even makes sense for them to go after the more commonly-used word more publicly. So there is the consistency you want.

    I would like it if you and the other commenters here who like to continually attack me would try not to do it. I do not want to be a public transmitter of this stuff. I only write comments about stuff like this because you write stupid comments and then I have to respond to them on the Internet on run the risk of you thinking something stupid for years or forever.

  • people who are Chomsky fans or who were more likely to be connected to the small circa 2000 anarchist movement and the WTO, World Bank, etc. demonstrations

    If you are part of some national law enforcement group who has been hyped up by all the post-9/11 ‘don’t let another lead go by’ and ‘either you’re with us or against us’ (which conservatives tend to read as ‘the liberals are with the terrorists’) and you are totally, unjustifiably, prejudiced against liberals and indoctrinated now to want to target and watch liberals, and say, you want legal authorization to watch a liberal whose m.o. is basically writing saucy comments on the interent, and you associate criminality with the aforementioned movement, what’s more natural that to try to establish that liberals you want to watch for national security reasons or who say things you associate with radicalism all tend to refer to themselves as progressives, while other liberals don’t- to creat a national security profile- and then try to encourage any liberal you want to watch to call him or herself ‘progressive’? It’s like entrapment and it’s the most natural thing in the world. The cop encourages people to adopt the profile, creating the profile, and then gets more and more people to adopt the characteristics of the profile. It’s an easy way to expand the rach of the Patriot Act. It may seem horrible but to a cop who thinks he knows what he’s doing (that all liberals are) it may just seem like cutting corners and valiantly finding a way to get the work done- to not get another lead (‘this guy is a big liberal’) to go by.

  • It looks like the Republicans are once again preemptively moving the goalposts on tax discussions as for to the right as possible.

  • Swan,

    I would like it if you and the other commenters here who like to continually attack me would try not to do it. I do not want to be a public transmitter of this stuff. I only write comments about stuff like this because you write stupid comments

    you ask me not to “continually attack” you and then in the next sentence accuse me of making stupid comments. huzzawha?

    Name some prominent liberals that are anti-black. cite some examples of where conservatives have demonized the term progressive over the last 20 or 30 years that is on a par with what they’ve done with the term liberal.

    I don’t think you can. And if you can come up with 3 different conservatives who have equated “progressive” with Chomsky in a national media outlet, then I’ll back off on the distinction. Yes, if we start using that term, Conservatives will work to disparage it as well. however, they won’t have 30 years of history doing so.

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