Juicy Politics

Some interesting Political Developments

Did Hillary Clinton really win last night’s Republican Debate?

Perhaps.

Hillary Wins the CNN/YouTube GOP Debate

Army Brigadier General Keith Kerr challenged the white male homophobes on the CNN/YouTube debate stage about their position on gays in the military. He phrased the question about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ beautifully (see the video below) and he elaborated from the audience.

While the gay veteran was pointing out that doctors, nurses and pilots are routinely discharged for the crime of being gay, members of the GOP audience actually booed. After he finished speaking, the straight white men on the stage said, too bad, we still support discrimination.
[...]
But rightwingers have been hard at work since the debate ended. It’s only 12:27 a.m., and already they’ve discovered that the gay veteran is a Hillary supporter! [...]
Horrors! General Keith Kerr is a member of Hillary’s LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee!!!.

My goodness, the wingnuts are furious over this!

Hey, CNN didn’t make your candidates look like morons; they did that all on their own! Gee, if you can’t handle CNN, how are you going to handle Al Qeda?

The Tennessee Guerilla Women are on fire today; they have yet another excellent post that directs us here.

So, a good night for for the lowest denominator, a bad night for the GOP. America got to see a vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes. My cheers went to a listless Fred Thompson who easily qualified himself to be president in my book by looking all night like he would cheerfully trade his left arm for an early exit off the stage to a waiting Scotch and good Cuban cigar. The media will probably award a win to Mike Huckabee, the easy listening music candidate at home in any crowd, fluent in simpleton speak and the one man on the stage tonight who led the audience to roaring cheers by boasting that he had a special qualification to be president that none of the second-raters on the stage could match: A degree in Bible Studies from Ouachita Baptist University of Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

Ahh, music to my ears.

To hear more about Bible thumping from wingnuts themselves:

Note to Rudy: We change for God, God and his word do not change for us.

Also, you’ve killed yourself on the abortion issue. I will not, cannot, shall not vote for you in the primary based on your abortion answer. Review Mitt or Fred’s answers and repeat until you believe.

Oh, and mock me if you will, but I do not question the account of Jonah and the Whale. You know, Mayor, Faith ain’t just a woman’s name.

(note: many religions, including the Roman Catholic Church, which Giulani belongs to, teach that the Jonah story was a deliberate fiction designed to make a point.)

Of course Giuliani has some more troubles; it seems that he used the New York Police Department as a taxi service for his mistress.

Well before it was publicly known he was seeing her, then-married New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided a police driver and city car for his mistress Judith Nathan, former senior city officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

“She used the PD as her personal taxi service,” said one former city official who worked for Giuliani.

Of course, we have to see if this is true or not. But even if it is true, my guess is that Giuliani backers will just shrug this off; after all, he appeals to the “play by your own rules” crowd.

I don’t think that this will be a major hit against him, though it might cost him some social conservative voters.

John Edwards made out pretty well too; watch as he slams Mitt Romney for being in denial about “Two Americas”:

The Edwards Campaign released a video response to Romney’s attempt to deny reality today. I have it after the fold.

Joe Trippi:

Mitt Romney can bury his head in the sand and pretend the problems will magically go away. But you and I know that there are two Americas — an America for Mitt Romney and his powerful, privileged friends — and an America for everyone else. And it’s time we had a president with the courage and the backbone to tell the truth.

In addition, the serial adulterer who bills the public for his trysts, aka Rudolph Giuliani, has a new attack ad out, and the Edwards Campaign quickly responded to Giuliani.

Come around after the fold to see how a fighting Democrat takes on Republican candidates. It’s a preview of next fall. Yes, this is a hit diary on Republican fools.[...]

The poor performance lead one undecided Republican voter to at least consider John Edwards

And this video lead me to this cool blog.

I’ll have to spend some time this weekend updating my blog roll.

Social:
I’ve been meaning to link to this blog post for some time; it concerns health care. This blogger talks about our tendency to focus on cases for isolated individuals while ignoring the larger, often associated problems closer to home.

oussif is the five year old Iraqi boy who was allegedly doused with gasoline and burned by unidentified masked men while he was just outside his home back in Baghdad back in January 2007. Featured in a CNN story Youssif’s plight became global news. His family was unable to come up with the funds for the surgeries to repair Youssif’s scarring. But, ever since his story was aired there has been an outpouring of support for Youssif. CNN and the California based Children’s Burn Foundation have established a fund that has raised three hundred thousand dollars to make Youssif whole again. The Children’s Burn Foundation has agreed to pay for transportation to fly Youssif and his family to the United States, pay for housing for the family while they are here, and pay for the medical cost to repair the damage to the boy’s skin. Dr. Peter Grossman of the Sherman Oaks Grossman Burn Center has volunteered to perform the surgery without charge. [...]

If the public’s response to Youssif is any indication it seems that a lot of people enjoy helping children in need. A lot of people have an understanding of the positive energy that can be generated from doing something positive to help someone who is unable to help themselves in our midst. Helping each other out is what community is all about. But the problem is our community is designed to help someone and not designed to help everyone. Helping only one child in our midst is enough for many people. But trying to set up a program that helps as many children as possible is something that many of us are vehemently opposed to.

The healthcare program known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is designed to help low income families that make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private health insurance. A recent study by the Vimo Research Group found that nearly seventy percent of newly uninsured children were from families that earned as much as twice the federal poverty level. Since its inception in 1997 SCHIP has cost the federal government about forty billion dollars. Sounds like a lot of money, but the program is facing financial shortages. A recent proposal by Congress was to expand the funding for this program to nearly twelve billion dollars per year to increase the number of children eligible to be covered. But the idea of expanding the number of children eligible for coverage of a program already in motion reeks too much of social medicine and would be the first step towards federalizing healthcare. Somebody’s got to protect the insurance industry’s profits. [...]

Nicely done!

Republican Youtube CNN debate part II

Workout notes 3 mile run, (to the Riverplex; about 3.3 miles) plus a 1 mile cooldown walk. It was chilly (22 F) but I had the wind at my back on the way down; I darn near froze going against the wind. Then yoga with Ms. Vickie.

Politics
Evidently I made an error on my previous post; I shall attempt to correct it here.

My “favorite” moments from the CNN Youtube debate (Republicans)
(see the whole thing here)

Giulani and Romney go at it over illegal immigration

Waterboarding/Torture. McCain shines here.

Human Space Exploration: I love Tancredo’s answer. Huckabee is a complete smartass, which is interesting since this woo doesn’t accept evolution.

Commitment to Iraq

What programs would you reduce?

National Debt?

Infrastructure Repair? Note: McCain and Giuliani go at it a bit over the line item veto.

Gay General asks a question!

What gun do you own? I like Thompson and McCain’s answer.

Death Penalty: What would Jesus do?

Do you believe every word of the Bible? Giuliani makes sense here.

Republican Youtube Debate: first impressions

I’ll be very blunt: these are first impressions, which are completely undigested. I am writing this post mostly so I can compile a report which consists of accurate transcripts and/or videos.

But here goes with my first impressions:

Winners: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee
Loser: Mitt Romney
Mixed: Fred Thompson
Entertaining: Ron Paul
Were they even there, and if so, why?: Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo.

McCain: spoke forcefully on the waterboarding issue, Iraq (though I disagree with his position). He admitted that he no longer owns a gun. He did come across as being tired though.
Giuliani: came across as the most intellectual of the candidates; explained about the constitutional issues surrounding the line item veto, talked about the Bible in a reasonably intelligent manner.
Huckabee: came across as if he really does like people. His commercial just talked about himself and what he would do; no attacks on others. Too bad he is a friggin woo.

Romney: he was terrible, in my opinion. He seemed befuddled by simple questions; it wasn’t so much as he didn’t know the answer but rather that he didn’t know what answer would be popular. Update: Huckabee said this, not Romney: His remark about sending Hillary Clinton to Mars was downright awful.

Thompson Showed some charm; his commercial (which attacked Huckabee(?) and Romney) kind of fell flat. He had that reassuring demeanor and perhaps a bit more pep than normal. I chuckled at his “none of your business” type of response to what sort of guns that he had. His responses were shallow though.

Paul Right about Iraq, but little else.

Interesting moments: a retired Army General brought up the fact that he was gay and asked the candidates why they won’t allow gays to serve openly. They ended up supporting Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Hunter’s answer to the question was basically: “we can let you be open because most of our service people are bigots”. No, he didn’t use those words, but that was exactly the message he gave.

Another good moment (Tancredo) is when someone asked about our going to Mars; he basically said that “we are in debt because of people all clamoring for projects like this one”. In short, he gave a non-pandering answer.

To his credit, Romney did too when he was asked about the Confederate flag.

Overall impression: Giuliani, Huckabee and McCain were the only ones that didn’t have me running for the barf bag. And the audience was downright scary; let’s just say that those folks and I won’t be exchanging dinner invitations, to our mutual relief.