Politics: A new beginning

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Ten to fifteen years and my raza will have won Texas back from the gringos by sheer numbers. We tend to vote Democrat, though we have our anomolies every now and then. With Austin, Houston, San Antonio and the Valley sympathetic to the Dems, I wouldn't count on Texas being a Republican stronghold forever. That's why the whole redistricting fight was so nasty.

Hell, until Clinton appointed Bensten to secretary of the Treasury back in '92, we were pretty evenly split in the US Congress, state-wide offices and the legislature. The whole Bensten nomination caused a massive reorging by the Dems and they weren't able to hold on to that Senate seat, and then later the governorship, and then the rest of statewide offices. It wasn't until last year that the legislature fell into Replublican hands.

The Bentsen thing was very sad; there were so many high-profile Texas Dems who looked like emerging national figures (Anne Richards, Cisneros, Hightower), and all that seems to be pretty much gone.

I think you are right on the trends, and I also think that the Dems will pretty much concede Texas to Bush this time around, but will be trying to make it competitive from 2008 onwards.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I thought the threshold question in PBA cases was whether there were adequate protections in the law to balance the health of the mother? My understanding is that is why the Nebraska (?) law was struck down, and Congress tried to get around that by unilaterally declaring in the law that the health of the mother is not in question in these cases.

It might, as BRC appears to suggest, depend on how broadly you define PBA. By my definition (i.e., actual partial delivery), I doubt there is any evidence whatsoever that such an abortive procedure is "necessary" for the "health of the mother".

Specifically, and just pulling this out of my arse, I believe there are other non-PBA alternatives, as evidenced by the (apparent) fact that only a few abortion providers actually do PBAs. And they ain't exactly the type of doctors that people travel out of state to see AFAIK.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
If you support a ban on PBA, you should call your rep and strangle him, the whole thing is incompetent.

Arghhh. Allow me to cry on your shoulder for a moment.

The closest reps there are for me to strangle are Jesse Jackson Jr. and Nancy Pelosi.

Or am I in Luis Guttierez's district? Patrick Kennedy's? Oh no, this year its Jim Moran's.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I'd be surprised if state employment law offered a private company's at-will employees more protection from discipline for bad politics than is offered by the Constitution to public employees.

* * *

Maybe this is one arena in which private employees have greater job protection under state law than public ones do.

Well, color me surprised. It was staring me in the face, right there in the advance sheets. At least in California, telling your employees to work on a particular campaign is a very big no-no. Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1101, 1102. As in, it's a misdemeanor. Cal. Lab. Code § 1103.

Those gosh darn legislators have thought of everything.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The Administration and House Republicans work together to kill a prohibition on "war profiteering" -- overcharging taxpayers for goods or services with the intent to profit excessively from the situation in Iraq.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
I think you're right that most are performed by a handful of practitioners. I think there are a few hundred performed a year.

The statistics I read were that there were 2200 "PBAs" nationally out of 1.3 million abortions for the most recent year they had statistics. So -- thanks Sen. FRistand GWB for the "hundred of thousands" of lives this bill will save.

[Hank Chinaski]

at least one Senate Dem agree with me on the strategy memo:

“Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics. The information it deals with should never, never be distorted, compromised or politicized in any shape, form or fashion. For it involves the lives of our soldiers and our citizens. Its actions should always be above reproach; its words never politicized.

“If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible - be they staff or elected or both should be dealt with quickly and severely sending a lesson to all that this kind of action will not be tolerated, ignored or excused.

“Heads should roll!”

http://miller.senate.gov/press/2003/110503memo.html

I hope Teddy* gets jail time, for his own good. If he had a dietician somewhere involved in his food chain, even for a few months, he'd be better off.

*i know T's not on this committee, but using Mikulski for the thought doesn't have the same umph!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
at least one Senate Dem agree with me on the strategy memo:

If you're going to call Zell Miller a Democrat, you should put the word in scare quotes. To call this investigation "treasonous" but to have no words for the way this Administration politicized intelligence and foreign policy is absolutely obtuse. Miller, of all people, should remember what happened to Max Cleland.

[Replaced_Texan]

Does anyone have an opinion on the reports coming from the New York Times and the Newsweek about a last minute effort by Iraq to make a deal to avoid war?

My understanding is the following:

• Lebanese business man called buddy in Pentagon saying that he had been approached about a deal
• Lebanese businessman claimed that the deal came from the head of Iraqi Intelligence
• Deal was to include free elections, giving the US rights to Iraqi oil, the handing over of an Iraqi involved in the 1993 bombing of the WTC and carte blanche for American inspectors to comb Iraq for WMDs.
• Richard Pearle met with the Lebanese business man about the deal at one point.
• The CIA would not let Pearle pursue this avenue.

(all based off of NYT article located here.)

Is this another case of Pentagon vs. CIA?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Is this another case of Pentagon vs. CIA?

I haven't tried to follow this story, but Josh Marshall has some theories about why it's showing up right now. None of which have anything to do with partisan politics, at least as far as I can tell. A different sort of bureaucratic skirmishing.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

So, is this Dean/Confederate flag idiocy like Clinton's Sistah Souljah moment, but in reverse? Dean tries to show that he wants to move to the center, and the narrow-minded hard-core lefties drag him kicking and screaming back?

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Does anyone have an opinion on the reports coming from the New York Times and the Newsweek about a last minute effort by Iraq to make a deal to avoid war?

Er, is it just me or didn't reports of the underlying deal negotiations come out (albeit not in the mainstream US press) in the weeks before we invaded? This is seriously old news (though, I admit, the stuff naming US officials who participated directly in negotiations is new). There were also last-minute backdoor negotiations by various third parties and interested nations with the heads of the Iraqi security services about staging a last-minute internal coup, and one through private individuals with reps of Saddam's family. There was one possible deal on the table, I believe, that was indirectly brokered by the French, and I believe a proposed Saudi deal did get some airtime.

My recollection is that none of the proposed deals contemplated turning Saddam over for trial, they all involved his exile to a "neutral" third country. There was wide speculation as to whether Russia would accept him in exchange for the big bucks, since the more obvious default dumping ground (Sudan) was already the object of fairly intense US scrutiny and intelligence activity.

In any event, this stuff was pretty widely leaked at the time (whether it was this specific negotiation or three or four that looked just like it), and everyone knew they would go nowhere because none of them satisfied the widely know and widely unacknowledged strategy of the American admin w/r/t Iraq: get a large military presence in the Middle East fast to put serious-ass pressure on the local non-cooperating countries. The only real questions were what embarrassment the negotiations might cause the Admin for pressing forward when it did, given the fact that they never made any effort to make the public understand the real geopolitical reasons for the invasion.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
and the narrow-minded hard-core lefties drag him kicking and screaming back?

trying to drag him kicking and screaming back, or marginalizing him to the center so as to outflank him? And is it "hard-core lefties" or political opportunists named Kerry, Edwards, and Sharpton? Isn't the goal of the primaries to show how honestly Democratic you are, and gain the leftist vote? The want him to kick and scream and not be dragged back, just to make it more obvious he shouldn't win in March (but could win in November)

Although, Edwards' quote:

"The last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do."

could be interpreted nearly as perniciously

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
In any event, this stuff was pretty widely leaked at the time (whether it was this specific negotiation or three or four that looked just like it), and everyone knew they would go nowhere because none of them satisfied the widely know and widely unacknowledged strategy of the American admin w/r/t Iraq: get a large military presence in the Middle East fast to put serious-ass pressure on the local non-cooperating countries. The only real questions were what embarrassment the negotiations might cause the Admin for pressing forward when it did, given the fact that they never made any effort to make the public understand the real geopolitical reasons for the invasion.

I was kind of thinking that maybe this was getting more play again (and perhaps that new/different/more people were coming forward with information about it) because at the time it originally was discussed the war was so popular that it was kind of overlooked. Now that people are perhaps more receptive to the idea that hey, maybe this wasn't such a fabulous idea or wasn't entirely well-thought-out, it's coming out again. And/or higher-level people are more comfortable speaking out. Or are taking the opportunity to do so for political (not necessarily partisan) reasons.

But I guess I must be wrong because of course everyone knew all about all of this at the time and everyone still remembers all of it because you know, that's what people do. I'm sure no one dismissed it at the time and then kinda forgot about it when everything was going really well and the war part was over in a short period of time with relatively few casualties.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
trying to drag him kicking and screaming back, or marginalizing him to the center so as to outflank him? And is it "hard-core lefties" or political opportunists named Kerry, Edwards, and Sharpton?

I'm not sure, who is the left and who is the center in the democratic party?

Are the redneck union boys the "center" in Ty's Q?

I'm not sure why minorities would be considered "to the left" of the party generally. Their kids serve in the military. They are libertarians on drug legalization. They want people to quit fuckin with them. Christ, the hispanics want to deport illegal immigrants (or at least cut them off from welfare benefits).

I'd say the leftiest of the left is the patronizing motherfuckers who insist that others should be offended. That others should be recompensed. That others should be avenged. That two groups can't stand in the same tent. Specifically, Kerry.

I still just don't see this debate reoccurring between, e.g., Dean or Edwards or Clark. I'll bet they've been screamed at more than a few times in the last day for this garbage.