Allen must be worried, if he’s dredging this up.
Category: Politics Page 71 of 73
Tom Schaller is over at TPMCafe , outlining the central argument of his book “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South.” It’s an interesting thesis – that in order to build a solid governing majority in the United States, the Democrats should stop spending time and effort on races in the South. It’s a theory that I’ve vacillated on over the years, myself. And whatever one thinks of Tom’s ultimate prescription, he offers some important insight that everyone interested in rebuilding the Democratic Party should consider. That said, Tom is just about the last person who should be delivering this argument.
How can I put it? Tom’s approach is like . . . sending Anna Wintour into Charleston, sending Ted Kennedy to Montgomery, sending Jessie Ventura to Washington, well, obviously, I can’t come up with the metaphor. So I’ll just excerpt something from TPM Cafe to illustrate the problem. Tom is responding to charges (specifically from Dave Saunders and Steve Jarding, two southern Democratic strategists) that politically abandoning the South is simply immoral – that is, we (as citizens, as Democrats) have an obligation to try and improve everyone’s lot, no matter where they might live. Tom says:
“A final point…I still cannot get Saunders, Jarding or any other proponent of recapturing the South to answer the simple question I raised in a recent American Prospect piece: How is it that working-class blacks and working class-whites living in the South who attend the same high school football games and restaurants on Friday night, run their errands at the same retail outlets on Saturday, attend similar (if different denominational) churches at the same rates on Sunday, and put their kids on the same public school buses on Monday, vote so differently come the first Tuesday every other November? Those who offer thundering, preachy sermons about the (im)morality of a non-southern strategy should first attempt to explain this seeming paradox without mentioning race. If they can, I’ll gladly sit down for their lectures; if not, perhaps their immorality objections ought to be directed at those whose votes are rooted in racial animosity.”
While Tom’s solution might well be the most efficient, he insists on wrapping it up in a bitter pill of condemnation and moral superiority that could make just about anyone choke.
(And speaking of choking, I was at the DailyKos convention session where Tom and Dave Saunders went head to head over this – I’ll see if I can find it on youtube (or get it up there, somehow). One of the most entertaining things I’d seen in long time.)
Because I swear, nothing ever happens without it somehow turning out to be caused by Bill:
In an interview with the Tribune on Wednesday night, Hastert said he had no thoughts of resigning and he blamed ABC News and Democratic operatives for the mushrooming scandal that threatens his tenure as speaker and Republicans’ hold on power in the House.
[ . . .]
He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.“All I know is what I hear and what I see,” the speaker said. “I saw Bill Clinton’s adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then.”
So, it turns out that the Bush Administration can’t be bothered to read the mail of convicted and imprisioned terrorists.  It seems that, among other examples:
Three terrorists imprisoned in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were able to send more than 90 letters to alleged terrorists overseas because U.S. prison officials do not screen all correspondence from the most dangerous inmates as required, according to a report released yesterday.
That’s right, while the Administration and its enablers are howling about the essential importance of listening to your conversations without a warrant, torturing using enhanced interrogation techniques on anyone it feels like, and building backdoors into every communication system it can think of, they haven’t gotten around to covering the basics.
So, George Allen’s official blog is too cowardly to actually accept comments that don’t already agree with him. Surprise. But it sure seems to be happy to come here and spew it’s unbelievable crap. Just like the candidate – not at all open to anything that doesn’t fit with its small-minded and racist worldview.
Oh, and more evidence that he’s a liar.
to get your mother to lie for you?
I don’t worship at the political altar of the moderate, but the NY Times Op-Ed page makes some excellent points here:
The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.
Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.