Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
So you, too, want to shut this down by claiming I think it's shameful? Let's discuss racial problems next, and you can accuse me of being racist when you don't like my take on AA.

That's not what I was implying {profane slur delted in the intersts of maintaining peace]. I know your online persona better than that. You are just plain blind about Bush, though.

S_A_M

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yes. I've made it clear here for years that I hate gays.

Fuck you all.

Nice offer, but no thanks.

Bilmore, it's the self hate that will pull you apart.

(edited to remove excessive shot at Penguin. Bilmore, really, I'd be happy to buy you another latte.)

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by bilmore
Fuck you all.

What the hell is going on in your life right now? PM me if you want.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
I find Kerry to be a dishonest, calculating, say-anything-for-the-vote-now kind of guy that Bush isn't, and so have no problem ascribing this motivation to him.

Bush, of course, AVOIDS saying anything to get the vote. He won't tell us his view on Roe v. Wade. He won't tell us about things he regrets. He won't tell us about his plans for jobs or the economy, and just talks abstractly about education instead.

OTOH, he's a say-anything-to-get-us-to-attack-Iraq kind of guy.

(edited in an attempt to avoid the wrath of dtb).

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
The Bush quip was potentially funnier, but it required some deft delivery; not our boy's strong point. It wasn't appropriate for a Presidential debate either.

I think the problem with Bush's lines is that he doesn't know how to deliver them to a quiet room. He has no perspective since whenever he makes a joke outside of a debate, everyone around him roars with laughter. You can see on his face when he pauses after he makes a little joke that he's waiting for a response. And even though he doesn't get it, his face goes into that "Score one for the cowboy" expression that makes him look like a dumbass.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
The Tony Soprano line was stupid.

Agreed.

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yeah, Kerry mentioned it as praise for Cheney.

Geez, S, get real. The only reason Kerry and Edwards keep bringing it up is because they know that part of W's base doesn't approve. Sleazy use of the kids.

I don't think they'd be doing it to piss off the GOP base. They must have some reason to think it's playing to the middle. Though I'm not seeing it either way. It just seems strained to me.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by bilmore
Fuck you all.

Ah, temper.

Sorry.

I don't think I'm in the proper mood for this today.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
Ah, temper.

Sorry.

I don't think I'm in the proper mood for this today.

Don't worry about it. I'd be in a mood too if my candidate had just been crushed in all 3 debates.

Is it Friday yet?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by taxwonk
What the hell is going on in your life right now? PM me if you want.

Thanks, but nothing personally noteworthy. I'm about to tell someone with influence over my life to write a nine million dollar check because someone else doesn't understand how to read a contract. It makes me edgy.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yeah, it can be defended on a surface level.

But you know better.

So did these NYT focusees:

October 14, 2004
THE VOTERS
After the Final Debate, Some Voters Are Still Sitting on the Fence
By JODI WILGOREN

EST BRANCH, Iowa, Oct. 13 - Forget his health care plan. Forget abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Forget even how many times he did or did not vote to raise taxes. Senator John Kerry may have lost three critical votes with a simple aside, when he invoked Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter as part of an answer on same-sex marriage.

"That is very unfair," blurted Patsey Farrell, 64, one of a handful of undecided voters gathered here to watch the final presidential debate Wednesday night. "I'm sorry, that's too personal. That's too hurtful."

Her son-in-law, Kevin Uhde, the 50-year-old elementary school principal who held this pizza party, agreed. "Not by name," he said, shaking his head at Mr. Kerry on the 24-inch Phillips television set a few yards away. "Why single out one person?"

And Mr. Uhde's wife, Karlen, added, "I think it's like a low blow."

More

Mary Cheney's identity as a lesbian is public, and is being deployed in support of the President's re-election bid, for whcih she is a staffer. But it's a "low blow" to point out that she's lesbian? Only if that's something to be ashamed of . . . . .

eta: stp, and 'nuff said

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by mmm3587
In my mind, Kerry was on the wrong side of both the votes regarding war in Iraq. But at least he has been honest about it. I can disagree, but respect his honesty.

I was flipping during the debate yesterday and came across a piece on Kerry on public tv. They showed a clip of him right before he voted for the war where he said something like, "I want to be clear, I am delivering this vote with the understanding that we will not go to war without clear evidence of the weapons of mass destruction. In addition, it comes with the understanding that the President will outline a clear plan on how to deal with a post-war Iraq."

I don't understand why he doesn't use that exact clip in his commercials.

TM

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't think they'd be doing it to piss off the GOP base. They must have some reason to think it's playing to the middle. Though I'm not seeing it either way. It just seems strained to me.

Mickey's take on this seems logical:

When I criticized John Edwards for gratuitously mentioning Dick Cheney's gay daughter, I got lots of email suggesting that Edwards was simply being nice. Sorry, that won't fly after Kerry bizarrely, needlessly and explicitly raised the subject again ("I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, ....") There must be some Machiavellian strategy behind the Democratic urge to keep bringing this up--most likely it's a poll-tested attempt to cost Bush and Cheney the votes of demographic groups (like Reagan Dems, or fundamentalists) who are hostile to homosexuality or gay culture or who just don't want to have to think about it. Or maybe Kerry was just trying to throw Bush off stride. In either case, the fake embrace was even creepier coming from Kerry than it was coming from Edwards--Edwards had at least been debating Cheney at the time. After the debate, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said Cheney's daughter was "fair game." Fair game? Who was being attacked? (It was supposed to be a discussion of whether homosexuality is a "choice" or innate. Bush had said he didn't know.) ... P.S.: If Kerry was being Machiavellian, he went way too far in the culturally liberal direction by talking about friends who "finally sort of broke out"--e.g. came out. (With the support of their wives!) Why "finally"? Is liberation from sexual repression a priority item for Kerry's first term? Of course not, but Kerry's language can't have made socially conservative voters comfortable--negating the effect of the Cheney mention, if that was supposed to make them uncomfortable with Bush. ... Update: Here's some evidence (in a NYT "undecided" panel) of Kerry's Mary Cheney mention backfiring ("a low blow"). ... More: Kerry was puncturing the "hypocrisy" of Bush's position, as some Kerry defenders claim, only if the sole reason to oppose gay marriage is homophobia. I support the idea of experimenting with gay marriage, but surely it's possible to be a non-bigot and be reluctant to immediately tinker with such a venerable social institution (even if modern monogamous marriage is itself a tinkering with the much longer-standing human tradition of polygyny). Once you admit this possibility of non-bigoted reluctance, then Kerry's move looks less like hypocrisy-puncturing and more like a straight appeal to homophobia. As such, it does no credit to Kerry. ... Perilous race analogy: What if Kerry were debating a conservative on affirmative action, and that conservative had a black wife, and Kerry gratuitously brought that up in an attempt to cost his opponent the racist vote? Would Andrew Sullivan approve? I don't think so. ...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108107/

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
Mickey's take on this seems logical:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108107/

I would urge you to look at Wolcott's take:

The L Word
Posted by James Wolcott
I love the newfound solicitude for gay people being shown on MSNBC's late-night panel, particularly from Pat Buchanan, who in his rampaging homophobe days once urged Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo to cancel NY's Gay Pride Parade or "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." (For other enlightened comments of gay outreach from Father Pat, click here and scroll down.) From the way Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan are trying to whip up righteous indignation, you would have thought Kerry had outed Mary Cheney tonight. I think what Kerry did was quite ingenious and useful: he deflected any future attempt to paint Democrats as the party of heathen sodomites by pointing out that the vice president's daughter is lesbian, the vice president and his wife love their daughter, sexual preference crosses political lines, so take this cultural wedge issue and stick it where it ouches--and got this across in such a caring, sharing way.

Such duplicitous sanctimony--I love it.

P.S. Atrios is also struck by MSNBC's outbreak of sham compassion.

The L Word (II)
Posted by James Wolcott
This morning Don Imus was spitting out Grape Nuts over Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney, which he condemned as sleazy and "gratuitous." This from the host of the show where there was much jocular speculation about the size of Kobe Bryant's unit based on the reports of the "vaginal tears" of his alleged victim. Who has as a regular guest the ignorant blowhard Bo Dietl, whose garbage talk about gays and other minorities gets a pass--until he goes too vilely far--because he expresses it in Bowery Boy malaprops (such as calling Hillary Clinton "lesbianic"). Imus in the Morning has been gay-unfriendly for too long to start preaching gallantry now.

And I get the feeling hearing these pundits and bloggers huff that none of the them have ever watched Will & Grace, and don't realize that that so much of what they're tiptoeing around is sashayed across our television screen with humor and brio with no one fainting anymore, and that invoking name of a woman who is openly gay is not flashing a Scarlet Letter.

Pop culture is about five years ahead of the punditry.

http://www.jameswolcott.com/

[dtb]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
I think the problem with Bush's lines is that he doesn't know how to deliver them to a quiet room. He has no perspective since whenever he makes a joke outside of a debate, everyone around him roars with laughter. You can see on his face when he pauses after he makes a little joke that he's waiting for a response. And even though he doesn't get it, his face goes into that "Score one for the cowboy" expression that makes him look like a dumbass.

2.

I was just reading this "best of" blog thingy on cnn, where they have a lefty, a righty and a commedian with their "real time" commentary on last night's debate. Anyway, it's pretty interesting, but I thought this little ditty was worth sharing:

• Bush just said Kerry's health plan would cost $5 trillion. Right. Why not just say, "Ten hundred gajillion, zillion dollars"?

(That's NOT from the commedian, by the way.)



Link here.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I agree. The only reason to bring her name up specifically is to remind the God Hates Fags crowd that there's an unholy association with the Bush administration. Frankly, I think she humanizes Cheney a bit, and it doesn't do the Dems much good to remind people that Dick Cheney might have a bit of blood running along the ice water in his veins.

I disagree. I think you got it right on part of Kerry's ticket's intentions, but I think that the other message they are trying to send is that his stance on this issue affects real people. The easiest face to put on the issue is the one of the daughter of the VP in an administration that wants to limit what kinds of rights she has. Kerry is saying that, instead of Bush/Cheny talking about this in general terms, they should instead be addressing people that are (or the person that is) close to them. And everyone should be able to understand that because very few people know zero gay people.

TM