By Jennifer J. Foster
Hey folks, I’m off to the National Quartet Convention!
Since I’ll be out of town for a few days, posting will be limited until Sunday night. I’ll try to pop in and put some things up in the evenings from the hotel.
Behave youselves while I’m gone!
By Jennifer J. Foster
Larry Craig is a warrior for the First Amendment.
... Or so his lawyer would have you believe.
Craig, you’ll remember, is the U.S. senator who had a toe-tapping good time in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last year.
From CNN:
In an effort to persuade a three-judge panel to throw out Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea, his attorney suggested Wednesday that his foot tapping in an airport men’s room may have been protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech ...
In addition to suggesting that First Amendment may be involved, Craig’s lawyer, Billy Martin, also argued before the Minnesota Court of Appeals panel that no one besides the arresting officer saw the hand signals and foot tapping, which would mean no one else was offended by the behavior and, thus, make the disorderly conduct charge invalid.
Is Martin serious?
Page the late-night comedy show hosts ... let them know that they’ve got some new material on the way.
Craig and Martin need the judge to dispense a healthy dose of Don’tInsultOurIntelligencicillin.
By Jennifer J. Foster
Speaking of irrelevance, there’s news on the Ron Paul front.
The goofy presidential candidate completed the tour de force of wackiness that was his venture into presidential politics with a counterconvention in Minneapolis during the Republican convention last week.
Today he held a news conference wherein he lashed Barack Obama, refused to endorse fellow Republican John McCain and encouraged his supporters to vote for any of four other, equally wacky presidential candidates.
First of all, Paul, for all his faults, did enter the race in a timely fashion and did complete the presidential campaign gauntlet. This included his participation in several debates, which is no small deal.
But as I said back in April, when rumors were rampant that Paul might endorse Bob Barr:
How much sense does it make to run for president, commit to the grueling travel schedule, participate in all those debates, choke down who-knows-how-many chicken cordon bleu dinners at party events, shake an untold number of hands, suffer through all the local political soirees and fulfill all the other obligations of a major presidential campaign and then turn around and endorse someone who didn’t think running for president was important enough—or the American voters are important enough—to go through the process the way that you did?
It’s one thing to run for president becaues you believe you have something to offer the country. Obviously, Paul believed that about himself and his campaign. But then to endorse someone who didn’t think the process was worthy his time to this point, that’s a slap in the face to all those folks who live in Paul’s congressional district who have put up with a part-time congressman while he ran his “reLOVEution.“
The idea that Paul would come this far, presumably on principle, and then not even vote for himself ... well, that’s yet another blow to his credibility—that is, if he has any left.
Anyway, it’s unclear to me why he didn’t make this announcement at his big counterconvention last week. Could it be that Paul has a touch of the narcissism?
Third, let’s consider the candidates Paul has “endorsed:“
Cynthia McKinney is a former congresswoman from Georgia who is running on the Green Party ticket. Her supporters include Roseanne Barr and Public Enemy’s “Professor Griff.“ McKinney made national and international news with her outrageous claim that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance but failed to warn New Yorkers due to his father’s business interests. And then there was that 2006 incident when she failed to wear her member pin that would have identified her as a member of Congress and deliberately dodged a metal detector when entering the Capitol. She slugged a Capitol Police officer for trying to stop her. (It wasn’t McKinney’s first such incident. Capitol Police recognize her as someone “known to get loud and voiceful if stopped;“ according to her Wiki bio, officers have reportedly stated that throughout her career, McKinney would routinely walk through the door with a defiant look on her face, almost daring someone to stop or question her.)
Good choice, Ron.
Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr is the candidate whom it would make the most sense for Paul to endorse. Formerly a Republican congressman like Paul, Barr has adopted the Libertarian philosophy in his run for president.
Perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader lost out on the Green Party ticket and is running as an independent. Nader’s advocacy for all sorts of government regulation of business doesn’t fit with Paul’s libertarian views. Oh well; apparently a presidential candidate’s beliefs on little things like free markets and capitalism are no biggie to Paul.
Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin rounds out the I-don’t-mind-if-you-vote-for-them group. Who’s Chuck Baldwin? He’s a pastor and radio talk-show host from Pensacola, Fla. Baldwin is an honorary deputy sheriff! for the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department who left the Republican Party in 2000 because he believed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were TOO LIBERAL.
These are the people Ron Paul believes are worthy of your vote for president of the United States.
This is how much he thinks of the office itself.
How did Paul manage to endorse four candidates with such divergent views? Two of them are so far left that many liberals avoid them, while the other two are so far right that no Republican could take them seriously.
Ah, it was no problem. Apparently, for Paul, the leadership of the free world comes down to only four issues:
Paul offered an open endorsement to the four candidates because each signed onto a policy statement that calls for “balancing budgets, bring troops home, personal liberties and investigating the Federal Reserve,“ an aide to the congressman said.
Throughout the entire presidential campaign, I never took Ron Paul seriously.
Thank goodness I didn’t waste my time.
By Jennifer J. Foster
I missed this during convention week, because—as you know—I never watch MSNBC.
Thank goodness for the Internet.
Bill Maher is another example of someone I choose to ignore, partially because he is a raving lunatic but mostly because I don’t want to waste time on him when I could be doing other, more valuable things—like, for example, alphabetizing my DVD collection by the second letter of the director’s last name.
But every now and then, even the most egregious air polluters say something of note.
Enter Maher.
The unapologetically obnoxious liberal firebrand was part of MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention (I know; shocker, right?), when, according to Colleen Raezler, he “explained to Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann that American politics ‘seem to be getting worse because, sorry to say it, people get stupider and stupider every election cycle.‘“
An example: “They think off-shore drilling is gonna lower the price of gas and they think Obama, the black guy from the single mother, somehow is the elitist.“
Yes, Bill Maher: Everyone is America is slowly getting dumber ... except you. Thank goodness you are still in control of all your faculties so that you can show all the rest of us dummies the many, many errors of our ways.
Bill Maher: America’s self-appointed moral compass?
I could have titled this post, “This week’s sign that the apocalypse is upon us.“
But the best thing about Maher’s statement is its irony.
Because you know how I love irony.
Irony, you say?
Of course! Think about Maher’s evolution over the years: He’s gone from being a successful and popular late-night television host to being someone about whose sanity you really have to wonder.
And the way Maher has accomplished his slide into irrelevance—for example, with comments just like these—should be his Exhibit A in his argument about how “people get stupider” over the years.
By Jennifer J. Foster
All the political buzz over the past 18 hours has been about something Barack Obama said on the stump yesterday.
Take a look at the quote—in context—and see what you think.
(Register your opinion about this: Vote on the new poll question in the sidebar.)
Of course, you remember GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin’s ad lib in her acceptance speech last week: “You know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.“
That line took on a life of its own. That speech was seen by 40 million people , about the same number of—or maybe even more than—those who saw Obama deliver his acceptance speech in Denver the week before. In addition, the media latched on to that line arguably more than any other from the entire speech. They treated it like a microcosm of Palin’s meteoric emergence on the national stage.
So it’s no surprise that people connected Obama’s statement to the last politician who discussed lipstick.
John McCain’s campaign pounced, calling the comment “offensive and disgraceful” and demanding an apology for the “sexist” remark. Conservatives were repulsed, and liberals were left to explain away that the comment was “just an old saying” and that any connection between it and Palin was coincidental.
Obama himself jumped back into the fray, taking about five minutes before the start of his campaign event on education in Virginia this morning to address the firestorm that had erupted. He took on an attitude of surprise about the controversy. He scolded the media for making the “lipstick on a pig” statement the top story of the day. John McCain’s campaign wants to talk about things like this, not issues, Obama said, and by putting the comment front and center for two days, the media is doing just what the McCain campaign wants.
SIDEBAR: Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that even Democrats were saying that the media was totally in the tank for Obama? Wasn’t it just a couple of weeks ago that they were marveling over the Democratic convention in general and Obama’s speech in particular? Wasn’t it just a few days ago that the media (Jeffrey Toobin, Carl Bernstein, Chris Matthews and our all-time favorite, Keith Olbermann) were charging that Republicans were starting another culture war? Yes, yes and yes. So apparently, some of the “change” Barack Obama is bringing to this presidential election cycle includes his unique perspective on media bias. END SIDEBAR
“Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change,“ Obama said at the start of an education event in Virginia. “We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.
“I don’t care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics,“ he also said. “Enough is enough.“
Well, he’s right about the “real problems” this country faces. And he’s right when he says, “This is what we do every four years,“ referring to manufactured controversies that obscure true debate on issues.
But here’s the problem with Obama’s righteous indignation: If this is a manufactured controversy, Obama manufactured it.
He alone is responsible for it.
This is a man who is known for his soaring rhetoric. This is a man whose mastery of the English language and his ability to turn a phrase is unrivaled in modern political history (with the possible exception of Ted Sorenson, who wrote speeches for President John F. Kennedy).
This is not a man who makes mistakes with words.
If Obama wanted a trite saying about how you can dress something up but you are still dealing with the same thing, there are plenty of other ways to say it. Good Southerners, for example, remember this exchange in Gone with the Wind:
Rhett: Don’t you think it would be nice if you bought something for Mammy too?
Scarlett: Why should I buy her a present when she called us both mules?
Rhett: Mules? Why mules?
Scarlett: Yes. She said we could give ourselves airs and get ourselves all rigged up and we were like race horses and we were just mules in horse harness and we didn’t fool anybody.
In any event, Obama says he really wasn’t thinking of Sarah Palin with his “lipstick on a pig” remark.
The bottom line is that if that’s true, then he’s the only one.
Watch that crowd behind him when he delivers the line. They knew exactly what—and whom—he was talking about.
Obama’s explanation of his “innocent remark” requires what another lipsticked candidate once called “the willing suspension of disbelief.“
This sort of thing—Obama’s “lipstick” comment—is exactly what Kirsten Powers was saying yesterday. Obama still hasn’t figured out how to deal with Palin, and now he’s cost himself two more days in the media cycle ...
... And likely some undecided voters in swing states, too.
With all that said, the McCain campaign isn’t doing itself any favors by latching on to this like a—ahem—pit bull on to a bone. By engaging Obama on this, they are wasting an opportunity. They simply should have released a statement saying how disappointed they were that Obama was sinking to this level of politics—it would have been a good opportunity for them to hit him on his promise to “change the tone in Washington”—and maybe throwing in a line to the effect of, “If he wants to say something about our candidates, he should at least have the courage to say it outright.“
And then McCain could have left the attacking, the outrage and all the combative discourse to the conservative punditry and blogosphere (trust me, they can handle it) while taking on Obama’s “discourse changer” mantle.
The winner on Nov. 4 will likely be the candidate(s) who make the fewest mistakes between now and Election Day.
The Obama campaign hasn’t had a great week.
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