Brief History of Bad Things...

From the Other Side...

"And enough with the complaints that the GOP has become the Party of No. That's their job. I'm immensely relieved that the Republicans, for obviously cynical reasons, have yet begun to re-earn their total-fiscal-asshole status. I want my Republican party complaining about spending and borrowing. I want them delaying a little and quibbling over every line. It's when they played the Rove-Bush bribe-the-electorate-with-your-grandkids'-money that I got off the bus."


- Andrew Sullivan

From the Other Side...

It sounds good but it also sounds like wishful thinking:

Now imagine if the GOP did not have such a knee-jerk opposition to spending and actually thought strategically.  The lede could have been "Republicans voted against the measure because it did not include enough large infrastructure projects and lacked imagination."  Instead of fighting Dems on the dollar amount of spending, knowing that we would lose that fight in any event, we could have stood with Obama and called for large high-tech infrastructure projects that would employ large numbers of minorities in construction and white collar suburbanites in development.  These projects (high speed rail corridors as an example) would also capture the imagination of the green close-in suburbs that are turning viciously against the GOP and have the strategic benefit of jamming up the young Dem members (Webb/Warner/Hagan/McCaskill) who depended on these voters for their victories.

The Culture Wars Rage On...

At least Damon Linker thinks so and I'm inclined to agree. I think the best thing we can hope for is that the Obama Administration starts the process of marginalizing the Evangelical Right, slowly stripping them of the power they've yielded over politics the last twenty years.


The crazy is easier to deal with if they don't have the power to inflict their crazy on the rest of us.


Linker:

...thinks he just might -- by continuing to reach out to conservative evangelicals (as he did with the Rick Warren pick for the inaugural invocation) and by depoliticizing divisive cultural issues (as he did by postponing his revocation of the so-called global gag rule on federal funding of overseas abortion providers until the day after the thirty-sixth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade, which was last Thursday).


Now, I'm all for trying to undercut the political salience of culture-war issues. And I think symbolic gestures like these can be a very effective way to achieve this goal. But we need to be clear that keeping the religious right out of political power (by stealing the votes of its more moderate members) is not the same thing as ending the culture war. Indeed, the core of the religious right might very well respond to political impotence by becoming even more radical and more committed to its causes. 

From the Other Side...

Daniel Larison from American Conservative isn't totally feeling Obama's interview from last night while Andrew Sullivan thinks it was well played.


Larison:

...giving an interview to Al-Arabiya is a conciliatory gesture designed to try to make up for the reality of U.S. policy. It is the sort of conciliatory move that Obama believes he can make because he is confident in his own “pro-Israel” bona fides, as well he might be considering the make-up of his Cabinet, staff and Middle East policy team, just as Obama’s general acceptance of national security ideology gives him the flexibility and the political cover to critique and oppose individual policy decisions.


This Al-Arabiya interview is most likely a case of attempting to “re-package” or “re-brand” the same policy in a more attractive way, which assumes that Arab and other foreign publics are not reacting negatively to the substance of U.S. policy but only to its presentation. More basically, critics of this interview must not understand Obama at all. Obama likes negotiation and consensus-building, and he likes to try to explain one group’s situation to another. This is the peril of his bridge-building instinct that I mentioned long ago: the attempt to convey a message from one side to another is routinely mistaken as a concession to the other side. This is why some other conservatives (usually those who ended up voting for him) made a very different kind of mistake in assuming that Obama sympathized with certain conservative policy proposals that he did not dismiss out of hand. The claim that Obama represents a Rohrschach test, which I have seen so many people make, is really a statement about how badly the people making the claim misread what Obama tries to do. It’s not that Obama makes a secret of what he thinks or does not have a clear record on where he stands, but that very few people on either side of any given debate seem willing to believe that Barack Hussein Obama can really be as establishmentarian and conventional as he is.

Sullivan:

It popped up on television last night and I had two reactions. The first was a sense of met expectation. Part of the rationale for Obama's presidency from a foreign policy perspective was always his unique capacity to rebrand America in the eyes of the Muslim world. Since even the hardest core neocons agree that wooing the Muslim center is critical to winning the long war against Jihadism, Obama's outreach is unremarkable and should be utterly uncontroversial. Bush tried for a while to do the same. But Karen Hughes is not exactly Barack Obama. And the simple gesture of choosing an Arab media outlet for his first televised interview as president is extremely powerful. It has the elegance of a minimalist move with maximalist aims. It is about the same thing as inviting Rick Warren or supping with George Will: it's about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.


My sense, for what it's worth, is that Obama is genuine. He doesn't know whether this bold new play will pay dividends any more than we do. What he does know, I think, is that we have no choice. The trajectory of the current global conflict, centered on the question of Islam and modernity, is an apocalyptic one if the game isn't changed soon. He is attempting to change the game. Which led me to my second reaction.


Hope.

From the Other Side II...

Hmm...

George Bush was not a conservative, but rather a curious hybrid of reactionary and progressive. He was a reactionary by temperament and conviction whose methods were borrowed from the most radical progressives. He besmirched the conservatism that he had forsaken and led it from the corridors of power into the political wilderness. Because progressive commentators depict Bush as an arch-conservative instead of the curious amalgam of reactionary and radical revolutionary that he actually was, they remain blind to Obama's conservatism...


The Obama presidency is not a revolution, but instead a restoration. The "values upon which our success depends", Obama reassures America, "these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout history". He asks for a "return to these truths". Nothing new is needed, neither fresh ideas about the human condition's betterment nor utopias; merely a return to and vindication of the past.

From the Other Side...

I can't believe I'm about to post an article written by George Fucking (that is what the F. stands for right?) Will but I am.


Because I sort of agree with him; emphasis on sort of. Only because I'm not sure the courts, in this modern age, is the right way to go about overturning Proposition 8.

Afternoon Alarm II...

From Morning Douche Joe:

And I know for a fact that waterboarding brought our interrogators, brought Americans, probably about 70-75 percent of what they get. What they got from Khalid Shaikh MohammedWaterboarding has produced and given so much evidence to our people in the CIA and in the other intelligence agencies. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed by himself has done more to crush al Qaeda than Dick Cheney or George Bush because of waterboarding. opened doors that we are still going through.

Thanks to Think Progress

You Can't Fix Stupid...

The winners for the week, are the idiots who decided to make life very difficult for their child by naming them Adolf Hitler Campbell:

A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake. Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.

Sure... Mr. Campbell was raised not to, "mix with other races socially or romantically" which would explain why another one of his kids has 'Aryan Nation' as a middle name.


So you don't like the 'gays' 'Negroes' and 'Jews...' splendid. But don't screw your kids up with these stupid ass names.

Thanksgiving from a Hedonist's Perspective...

Is there anything better than a holiday that promotes gluttony? Sure, for most of the day, you're around the parts of your family you don't like too much (or maybe that's me) but there's a parade to watch, three football games at your disposal when you need to tune everyone out and post turkey drinking to be done.


As with every year, there is much to be thankful for. This year however, just feels a little special doesn't it? So... here's my things I'm thankful for list (caution: explicit but hot picture at the end).

Friday, November 14th 2008

Honestly, could you see John McCain looking this cool?

Since the weekend is coming up, I think it's only fair to have a little fun. As a caution, things get a little dirty after the jump.

I. First up though, as it has been since the campaign, Obama is bringing the 'fireside' chats into the 21st century:

President-elect Obama's office gave the media a new way to present him as Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 by announcing Friday that it will be posting weekly addresses - fireside chats for the web generation - on YouTube.

The first address will appear on Change.gov this Saturday, after it airs in audio. An Obama spokesperson says that this innovation is just the beginning of the digital, transparent presidency.

Now, I'm guessing 'transparent' will mean, show us what they want us to see but the concept alone is pretty cool. Just another sign the old way of doing things is a wrap.

II. Andrew Sullivan thinks Hillary for Secretary of State isn't a bad idea either:

Obama has to offer something to Clinton. She's his main threat now and rightly regards part of his victory her doing. The primaries helped him. Left to fester in the Senate, Clinton will plot against the president if he doesn't actively seek her support and engagement and "spread the political wealth" of his mandate.

               

It is a senior enough position not to be fobbed off; it really does take advantage of the Clinton name abroad; it could even put Bill to good use and keep him out of mischief; and Obama has kept telling us that his cabinet model is "Team Of Rivals." Giving Hillary that kind of position is straight out of Lincoln.

I'll have my two on why I think this would be a stroke of genius for Obama later as I have a night of heavy drinking to prepare for. I've noticed many of my fellow liberals are dubious about this and rightfully so. But I really think what Obama will lose in the media extravaganza (not to mention mining the Senate for talent), he'll gain in keeping Hillary (and Slick) off of his ass for the next four years.