Boondocks Boondoggle
ArchPundit
What could cause Aaron MacGruder, Boondocks creator, to salivate more than having Trent Lott on BET? It is truly a perfect storm.
December 2002
A Nickles for your thoughts
I don’t believe it is a coincidence that Don Nickles’ name is so easy to confuse with Don Rickles. I believe it is a sign from God to the Republican Party to choose Bill Frist whether Bill Frist likes it or not.
As a Democrat, let me wholeheartedly endorse Don Nickles. I don’t believe there could be two better party leaders than Nickles and Delay for the 2004 election for Democrats to run against. Nickles is a conservative twit who happens to be the leftist in a the bizzarro world of the Oklahoma Senate Delegation. While he might be smart enough (editor: errr…slipped there I guess, add ‘not’) to endorse segregation and the CofCC, he is certainly enough of a wingnut to push through a whole wad of policies assured of pissing off suburban white women.
My prediction, is Lott stays. Frist doesn’t want it and the rest of the Senate Republican Caucus knows Nickles’ tin ear is as bad as Lott’s. Cochran would be the natural candidate, but it is unlikely he wants to take another charge at a Senator from his home state, no matter how much he hates the guy.
Instant Iowa Analysis
With Gore out, Iowa’s organization people probably go to Gephardt. He is incredibly popular there, has a strong ground operation and did I mention labor loves the guy.
Gephardt probably just locked up 30-35% of the caucus vote with Gore’s announcement. Labor is important in the caucus and the only thing that could counteract that is if Harkin starts pulling the strings for someone else, but I don’t see that happening. Harkin is a creature of labor and he and Gephardt are close ideologically and a natural fit. The only other person with a shot at much of the labor vote is Daschle. Even then Gephardt has effectively been on the ground since 1988 and should garner much of that support.
My current prediction is Dean in second as the quirky intellectual candidate that wins the liberal arts college towns and the strange prairie intellectual populist vote that is far more important in Iowa than people think. With those two in the prime position, the next key is who can get to Vilsack. If Gephardt does it becomes a race to beat Dean in second place. If Edwards does it becomes a three way tie with Kerry and Lieberman opting to compete in New Hampshire. Kerry and Lieberman aren’t going to do anything in Iowa. Kerry simply doesn’t fit the state that isn’t into haughty. Lieberman doesn’t have a natural constituency.
In the end, Iowa’s primary importance will be whether Howard Dean can ride it to a strong second place and carry that momentum to New Hampshire where a strong second place to Kerry puts, ummmm…straight money, into the coffers and makes him competitive for the nomination. Look at a dog fight elsewhere between him, Lieberman and Gephardt. Edwards is possible, but he has to get a message that works and he is crowded out of the first two states. People working on a strategy are hoping for a Vilsack endorsement and lots and lots of legwork.
no more Goring
Al takes one for the team. Thank goodness. Having known several people involved in Iowa and New Hampshire during the last cycle, I’ve been a bit puzzled at the notion that Al Gore is a good guy and that he should win the nomination. Al Gore is everything I hate about the Republican Party.
To digress for one moment, the man ran one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen. We can wring our hands over the press and how much they hate him, but ultimately that is because he is a loathesome fellow. The campaign was a mish mash of ideas that avoided the key principles of the Democratic Party and seemed to forget that the last 8 years had been pretty damn good.
However, back to the loathesome character, Al Gore. Gore played hardball with Bradley in Iowa and New Hampshire in a manner Shrub would have been happy to have done. In Iowa, his minions sent out labor to disrupt Bradley campaign events. If it weren’t for how human of a person Bradley was this could have been a disaster. Instead of getting upset, Bradley rolled with it. At one event, a bunch of union guys stood along the aisles making it hard to get through for supporters. Bradley went up to every one of them held out his hand, told them he was Bill Bradley and he wanted their vote. Every one of them shook his hand and most had a story about how he was their hero back when he played for the Knicks (a character flaw of Bradley’s I overlook). Gore’s people ignored having anything to do with this garbage, but is one to really believe that?
In other instances they had guys follow Bradley around to every event. Finally the political director broke and swore at the clown and the NY Times picked up the story. The Political Director was fired, but the press ignored the ties to Gore.
The most despicable act came when Bradley had a surrogate in New Hampshire. Bob Kerrey was speaking when he started getting heckled with shouts of "cripple". Gore’s people made sure they weren’t directly tied to the garbage, but who else sent out those people?
Gore would have been better than the current twit occupying the oval office and I would have voted for him again if he had won the nomination. However, his bowing out should be cause for celebration amongst those of us who believe our party should be a party of principles and not cheap knock offs of Republican Dirty Tricks campaigns. Al Gore is a political hack who forgot what was important. I won’t miss him in the least. Now back to the right wings discussion of Clinton’s genitalia.
But wasn’t that Lott skit sweet?
Who am I, Why am I here?
Traffic here has upticked lately so I thought I’d do a quick post describing the site. The primary blog is Archpundit. There, I cover national, international, and state politics, especially Illinois. Additionally, I hope to blog more frequently on welfare, the environment and education policy. I also have a weakness for wingnuts similar to Scoobie Davis’ enjoyment of Jack Chick. This interest has suffered with my wife’s growing concern that either I will fall prey to Trinity Broadcasting Network and Jack Van Impe or our children will.
I have a second blog that I write that concerns itself exclusively with the Saint Louis region and Missouri that I have named Blog Saint Louis (link to the opposite site at the top of the blogroll). Blog Saint Louis is heavy on local politics and I have separated the two. First, many of the people I know who read Blog Saint Louis aren’t terribly interested in my views on national politics, at least on a daily basis. Second, many intereted in this blog aren’t interested in the minutia of Sa
int Louis politics. From time to time I do double post to both sites.
What are my views? I’m a liberal, though not always a predictable one. I also hate cliches unless I write them. I believe government can have an important role in providing opportunities to all. This is certainly true of my life in which I have benefited from free public education and access to a small liberal arts college largely available to me because of federal assistance. I’m also a strong advocate of using markets to make government intervention as efficient as possible.
Now, who the hell am I? Well, I blog anonymously for a couple reasons. One, it allows me plausible deniability at work. Anyone who reads these blogs from Saint Louis can probably figure out who I am pretty quickly, so let’s not confirm my employer’s suspicions. Second, my work does involve working on some projects related to local St. Louis politics and by blogging anonymously I don’t have to concern myself with whether a project will be endangered by a snarky comment.
A bunch of people have requested specific topics and I’m hoping to oblige in the next couple weeks. For the next week I hope to spend some time discussing the 2004 Illinois Senate Race and go into some detail of the challengers. Work is heavy, so there will be some erratic posting, but keep checking in. In addition to that topic, I hope to return to some big picture issues the 2002 elections raise.
On a final note, those of you sick of Blogger and Blogspot, consider Blogstudio. For only $15/yr you receive more functions and far fewer down times. It is available free as well minus a couple features like comments and RSS feed (feel free to access mine for other sites if you so wish–Blog Saint Louis is on stlouist.com). Stats are apparently coming. After starting with Blogger I have found Blogstudio to be a huge improvement and quite easy to use if you want a simple web interface. It also works better with Mozilla and Netscape.
Oh, and feel free to correct my spelling. After getting Blagojevich correct most of my time blogging I was notified I was spelling Hynes incorrectly. I’m fully capable of being an idiot.
Site Update
I’ve updated the blogroll adding and moving several blogs. For this post refer to the blogroll for links.
Of note is a relatively new blog by Nathan Bierma. He is a writer for the Chicago Tribune and resides in my favorite city. I’m not sure if he is a Cubs, fan, but two out of three at least is a decent start.
Ted Barlow moves back up to favorite reads with his return and Charles Kuffner joins him. If you think I’d be interested in your blog and should include it shoot me a note. Assuming you aren’t Gordon Baum or Earl Holt and don’t believe in strange conspiracy theories, I’ll probably add you. As far as ‘my policy’, I link to people I read and I think are interesting. In a couple cases I don’t find people interesting, but they are referenced enough, that I feel the need to include them. The ordering is generally how I’m reading people at the time. IOW, more than anything, my blogroll is an organizational tool for me.
Some high quality blogs aren’t in my favorite reads because they tend not to post several times a day or it takes a bit of digesting when I do read them. Perfect examples of this include William Burton and the Bloviator. I consider them excellent reads, but on average William posts about once a day and so once a day does it. Ross at the Bloviator posts incredible posts on a topic I know little about and so I read it once a day when I can take the time to digest the posts.
I also want to thank those who have added me to their blogroll recently including:
Bloviator
Talk Left
Rittenhouse Review
Cooped Up
Off the Kuff
Max Speak
Two Tears in a Bucket
Smythe’s World
David Hogberg (only dropped down due to the hiatus, write and come back to us)
Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse
I hope I haven’t missed anyone.
And of course those who linked earlier in the life of this blog.
Oh, and the best new blog name: The Bitter Shack of Resentment.
Weekend Updates
I have a lot to cover this weekend. Today is busy so don’t expect much until late.
See Atrios for a Belleville story,
See Atrio for Lott stuff and his campaign to introduce America to one of the two loons in the US Senate from Oklahoma
For the weekend
More on Belleville and St. Louis EHOC complaints
Illinois Leader picks up on above
Carol Mosely Braun seems to be running for US Senate again (at Political Wire)
Lott is going to search his soul or is that for a soul at 4:30.
Blog updates, announcements and a bunch of new content for the Illinois Senate race and a return to the topics I mentioned right after the election
CofCC Radio Tonight!
And it is in streaming audio here. While it might just be wishfunl thinking on my part, I can’t help but think Gordon Lee Baum might just be obtuse enough to say something to give the Lott story more legs. The show starts at 10 PM for those interested and one can call in at 1-877-920-WGNU.
My prediction is Lott stays. No one has challenged him and the outrage is a political class outrage. That is until African-American turnout in the ’04 race is spiked by this and Sonny Perdue’s flag initiative.
The military?
From the Washington Post:
In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Sean Hannity, Lott said his remarks "conveyed an impression that is not accurate." He said that his reference to the idea of the country’s being better off was not about race and segregation but about Thurmond’s support for "a strong national defense and economic development and balanced budgets and opportunity"
You have to be friggin’ kidding me, Trent. A strong national defense? You must mean a segregated national defense. No one is pointing out that in 1948 the reason for Thurmond’s candidacy was the desegregation of the military and Hubert Humphrey. A strong military to Strom Thurmond was a segregated one that ignored the great efforts of African-Americans during World War II.
The first rule of finding oneself in a hole is to stop digging. If anyone was paying attention, Lott’s defense of himself is even more absurd in context of his original comments.
Light blogging through today. Back tomorrow.