Wow–Seals Turns in Another Stellar Quarter
ArchPundit
$361,141 Raised
$115663.78 Spent
$507975.09 on hand.
July 2006
Political Press Release of the Week
It’s about a poll between Yaphett El-Amin and “known caucasion” Jeff Smith in a Missouri State Senate Race. Download file
It’s a beaut. Notice it was sent from ACORN’s office and another hysterical feature is that John Cross is the Political Director For SEIU Local 2000 down here.
It’s a great ‘read’ as well.
And He Still Doesn’t Get It
I’m having some minor tech problems on my end, but in the mean time, it appears Pete, the Anti-Abortion Crusader, still isn’t quite grasping the concept of satire
One theory is that Andy Kaufmann is, in fact, alive.
He’s rapidly approaching 2000 comments on the posts. One might start to feel sorry for the guy if he didn’t keep attempting to treat the Onion article as serious. While such intransigence is probably a good sign to feel sorry for him, such feelings are greatly outweighed by the desire to see how far this guy can go.
When Idiots Blog
Citing the Onion ‘author’ as a real article, generally gets you a lot of ridicule.
I was fully expecting the site to be satire itself in some sort of post modern parody, but all evidence is, it’s for real.
If you go to this site, the comments are adding a whole new dimension to comedy.
I have to go, I’m crying from laughing….
Nazis: Bigger Morons than You Ever Knew
The General and his inner Frenchman points us to the implosion of a big bunch of, well, Nazis.
You have to go through all the links to get the full effect, but for those with a short amount of time available, this probably will get you the most bang for the buck.
Coming from the birthplace of George Lincoln Rockwell, I always looked forward to the yearly news story on the three losers holding a parade to celebrate his birthday.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
Though this one tells you a lot about what they are repressing.
The Big Bad Chicago Machine
seems a bit hypocritical when one is being supported by Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist, and the Republican establishment at the center of the Culture of Corruption in DC.
Roskam isn’t an independent operator or a Mr. Smith going to Washington, he’s a movement conservative who has had Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist to raise money and campaign with him. DeLay is at the center of the Abramoff investigation and Norquist is being shown to be one of the conduits for money for Abramoff with his non-profit Americans for Tax Reform, that
Hiram did a good round up on this last year. The issue isn’t, as the Roskam campaign has tried to deflect it towards, that Roskam worked for DeLay in the 1980s. The issue is that Roskam has been a movement conservative receiving support from just such movement conservatives in both 1998 and 2006. The two most prominent supporters are neck deep in the Abramoff scandal.
Roskam brags about his award from Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform on his web site.
So, on one hand, we have Tammy Duckworth being supported by DCCC chief Rahm Emanuel who was a Daley aide, but isn’t under investigation as far as anyone knows, while two of the most prominent supporters of Peter Roskam during this election cycle are actively under investigation by federal prosecutors.
Patterson made a crack about six degrees of separation in regard to Roskam’s position on Social Security, but the charges about machine politics with Duckworth are far more like six degrees of separation especially since Durbin and Obama recruited her originally. On the other hand, Peter Roskam is strongly supported by two of the major figures in what many scholars such as Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann view as the biggest Congressional scandal in over a century.
Maybe John Patterson Can Win a Prize
I generally like Patterson (and Krol)–he does good work, but in the Roskam Social Security story, he’s let the campaign off on the issue of Social Security Privatization. The interesting thing about it is that Roskam hasn’t even appeared on Jeff Berkowitz’s Public Affairs–a fairly friendly venue, though one in which Jeff would pin him down on as many issues as possible.
Talking Points Memo is running a contest to pin down Republican candidates who have not taken clear positions on Social Security. Two of the first candidates are Tom Kean and Illinois’ own Peter Roskam.
The post by Patterson is gone (nothing nefarious, they don’t archive all of their posts at Animal Farm), but the basic point was Roskam’s campaign replied, but no answer was given regarding Social Security instead offering a reason why Roskam was not at the vote though he made most of the votes that day in Springfield.
A fine way this could shape up.
So, if you can get him on record on Social Security Privatization, Josh has some gifts for you–or even if you can just get him avoiding the question on tape….
More on Barack’s Speech
Ed Kilgore makes an important point about Barack’s speech.
(1) against conservative claims that God’s Will is easy to understand, dictates culturally conservative positions, and requires nothing more than obedience;
(2) against Christian Left claims that progressives of faith should simply counter their Law with our Gospel; their sexual moralism with our social-justice moralism; their scriptural authorities with our scriptural authorities;
(3) against secularists of the Left or the Right (encompassing, BTW, most of the political chattering classes) who reduce religious faith to entirely secular political and cultural positions, without having any clue of the ambiguities involved in believing in a transcendent God who reveals Himself in history and human action as well as in scripture.The political import of Obama’s speech is that he is engaging in an intra-Christian debate that is already undermining the Christian Right every day. In essence, the James Dobsons of the religious world have sought to lead their flocks into a prophetic stance that stakes their spiritual lives to a series of specific and highly questionable political commitments. More and more, even the most conservative evangelical Christians are chafing against this bondage, while the less conservative faithful, including the largely apolitical attendees of rapidly growing non-denominational megachurches, never bought into it much to begin with.
The real divide I noticed in reactions was between those on religious liberal blogs who found the argument quite refreshing because it was a complete reshaping of the modern debate over values and the clearest statement of that is above.
The notion that the speech reinforces GOP talking points is based on either not reading the speech or not understanding what they read. The speech redefines the values debate to not just be about sexual morality versus economic morality and argued clearly for liberal positions based on a personal understanding of faith.
Comparing it to triangulation by Bill Clinton fundamentally misunderstands the line Barack drew. He isn’t attacking liberals to provide a basis for being in the middle of liberals and Dobson, he’s attacking Dobson and Fawell from distinctly progressive stances.
He does say that
“Having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats.”
One challenge to this earlier was whether the ACLU actually fights this and it’s rather complicated. If you think High School Democrats and Republicans should have the same access as the High School Muslims or Baptists, then the ACLU does disagree. High School political groups generally have faculty sponsors as do any student groups. The way the ACLU identifies the challenge is that faculty can only be present for monitoring which is different from political groups where faculty sponsors can be active and it’s certainly different from my high school where the teacher sponsor was active for the Bible Study. So the ACLU’s position might or might not be slightly different from Obama’s, but we do see such arguments of separation in schools and non-profit programs that from fairly well known progressive publications like the Nation. It’s true that most progressives probably aren’t absolutists, but discomfort with faith based arguments aren’t rare—take the response to Obama’s speech that largely missed the point in terms of what the speech argued.
Barack will back the Democratic Nominee in CT Senate
He’s endorsed Lieberman for the primary, but will back whomever wins the Democratic Primary. Durbin?
It’s the right thing to do.
I don’t have purity contests for who someone might endorse, but supporting the Party’s nominee barring corruption or some terrible trait such as David Duke, seems pretty basic to being a part of a party.
Happy Independence Day!
I’m in San Francisco after having taught a seminar this morning and I’m going to enjoy the day though it would be a lot more fun at home with the family. Funny thing who you meet at seminars. More on that on Thursday.
For today, enjoy the holiday and see what I want in a Governor if you must….