Sunday, December 11, 2011
Mitt Romney: Gambling Mormon
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Dan Quayle Endorses Romney
Monday, November 28, 2011
Barney Frank
I'm sad to see him go because Barney Frank is one of the most surprising characters in national politics. He's a gay man with a voice like Elmer Fudd but a tongue whose barbs are tipped with acid. In an electoral system where elected officials are expected to speak to voters in a tone somewhere between submissiveness and pleading, Barney Frank isn't afraid to deliver a verbal roundhouse kick to the face when the confronted by a clueless constituent. And in an age when Democrats let Republicans run roughshod over them, Barney Frank has always been an articulate, unapologetic champion of liberal values who never hesitates to tell you why you're wrong. Others might dismiss his abrasive manner as rude, but it takes courage to speak your convictions proudly in the face of opposition.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
As soon as Romney clinches the nomination
Monday, November 14, 2011
Now Newt is in first place
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
"Romney has no core"
But it's also about preempting what Romney's campaign must necessarily do in the coming months. The president's advantage over the Republicans (and those are few and far between in this economy) is that he has no primary, while the Republicans duke it out over who is Most Conservative®. Candidates running in a primary always follow the same playbook. Cultivate that base during the primary, and hurry toward to the center for the general. By driving home the point right now that Romney is an opportunist, the Obama campaign hopes to handicap Romney's ability to shift positions in the general, which candidates are always wont to do, and Romney the political chameleon perhaps even more so than the average pol. So this puts Romney between a rock and a hard place: does he morph back into a moderate (again) as any candidate would in the general and risk playing into the Obama campaign's central criticism of his character - or does he stand firm, refuse to walk back the extreme positions he's staked out during the primary and risk losing the center?
It's a good set-up if Team BO pulls it off, and it looks like it's working. Since the last Republican debate, Romney opened himself up to this line of attack by suggesting that he wouldn't hire illegal immigrants because he's running for office, and then wiggled his way out of his previous support for an Ohio union-busting measure that looked sure to lose (and indeed failed badly today).
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Jobs bill(s)
It's meant to force Republicans to kill a popular jobs package, which they did last week. But as Harry Reid hacks off individual provisions of the dead bill to submit to additional votes, it's obvious the Democrats are intent on forcing Republicans to slay the zombie bill's reanimated limbs as well. These votes will be damaging for Republicans, since most of the stand-alone elements of the Act are polling pretty well, and the White House has spent weeks drumming up further public support for them. And if the political pressure cracks Republican unity enough to get something like a payroll tax extension passed, then that will be nice bonus.
Make no mistake: this thing is a reelection strategy.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The Difference (between Democrats and Republicans)
In fact, I've come to believe that for middle class families like mine, Democrats and Republicans really aren't that different. They both profess to worry about our decline. Neither of them will touch our homeowners' tax credits. The difference between the parties is at the margins: the poor and the rich. And I don't need to say whom I think will cut the poor loose and enact additional tax cuts for the super wealthy and whom I think will defend social safety nets and worry about the Gini coefficient in this country.
However, I'm not at either margin. If populist poor folks decide to throw their lot in with Republicans next election and get trampled, more power to them. I'd be disappointed for the country because what the Republicans will do to the poor is tragic, but I honestly can't see Republicans affecting my personal financial situation any differently than Democrats, so why get upset if stupid people reap what they sow despite plenty of warnings not to?
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Debt ceiling endgame
In fact, their actions all but ensured that a deal will be cut without their votes, and thus without their input. Their show of resolve sent a message all right, but how this message was received by players more astute than the average Tea Partier is quite a different matter. Consider:
Confronted with the possibility of owning a default, the speaker has no choice but to compromise, so he needed to demonstrate to his Democratic counterparts that he could unify his members behind a deal of his design. When the hardliners sunk Boehner's bill, they didn't signal their primacy within the process; they exposed the softness of Boehner's right flank. As congressional leaders hash out a deal, they now know that the speaker's far right members will abandon him at the slightest whiff of compromise. Yet other than the Tea Party, all the players will and must make sacrifices. So if Boehner can't rely on Republican votes, where will they come from when the inevitable compromise emerges? House Democrats. And these guys won't be inclined to cast their lot with the negotiators unless something is done to sweeten the deal for them.
Friday, July 29, 2011
The Democrats have been negotiating with hot air
We now know that Boehner is not the head of a majority party in the House, but a partner in a coalition government with the Tea Party. And the junior partners declined to support a cornerstone of his political strategy. Boehner wants to govern, midwife a few big pieces of legislation, and build a legacy. That involves cutting spending when possible and yes, raising the debt ceiling as necessary. But we now know he cannot deliver.
At this point, the leader of the Republicans in Congress might be forgiven for judging himself closer to the Democrats than to his own base.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Gambling on the debt ceiling
But the dynamics of the standoff may favor Harry Reid as things progress, even though Senate Democrats are currently unable to move his bill. It takes time to negotiate a new bill, for the agreement to be marked up as a bill, for the CBO to score the mark-up, and then for Congress to vote on it. Since we're only a week away from defaulting, Dems and Reps need to come to an agreement very soon. And as soon as either Reid or Boehner shows his hand by calling for a vote in his chamber, we will see that both are negotiating from a position of weakness. If the House votes first and their bill fails to pass, House Republicans might lose their leverage as moderate Senate Republicans scramble to work with Harry Reid. However, in the event that the Senate votes first and fails to move Reid's bill, I still don't think Boehner stands a much better shot at pushing his proposal through, since the far right-wing of his party is a main obstacle in the House and they seem uninterested in exploiting the looming deadline.
In order to propel his bill ahead of the Democrats', Boehner needs to show that he can assemble a majority. That would pretty much tank the Democrats' plans. But his prospects were damaged today by a disappointing score from the CBO and warnings by Wall Street that a short-term debt limit hike is insufficient - which spells bad publicity and destabilizes his standing among his base. In a sign that the Speaker recognizes his weak hand, the House vote has been put off until Thursday, so I can't say things are looking too bright for the poor guy. If the Tea Party even had one iota of interest constructive governance, they would stand behind the Republican leadership right now, hand themselves a victory, and cut their losses. But these people don't know how to quit while they're ahead. If they actually cared about leveraging their votes for policy, they would have agreed weeks ago to the grand bargain that Obama had been crafting with Boehner. Instead, they gave up their best opportunity for entitlement reforms in order to protect tax breaks for oil companies and a porous tax code for the rich. They torpedoed their own flagship just to make a point. And they'll continue this predictable holding pattern because their zealotry has reduced them to automatons.
The Democrats will prevail because they're playing strategically against people whose most salient dynamic is their lack of dynamism.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Debt limit negotiations
In fact, Reid reportedly didn't back out of the talks until after being summoned to the White House, where the Senate Majority Leader presumably conferred with Obama and decided to amplify the White House's narrative that Republicans are being intransigent.
And what will happen when markets reopen to the increasingly jittery investors tomorrow? The Republicans may see their resolve tested when the consequences become tangible
Friday, July 22, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Best (Worst) Nicknames in Politics
Monday, June 27, 2011
Speaker Emerita: Nancy's iPhone
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Obama "exercises" Strategic Petroleum Reserve Option
All this talk of Obama exercising the reserve option to lower gas prices has gotten my finance juices flowing and I think you could not only make the case that the augmentation in supply might soften the worst of summer gas prices, but also that the administration's calculation is similar to taking a macro short position on oil futures - that is, it expects the price of oil to decline, and by insulating consumers from the oil shock now while price pressures are most acute, it is exercising a sort of derivative financial option to stimulate the economy as a whole given that the reserve bought the oil at a lower price in the past for release at a higher price. This means the government sells its commodity investment at a higher return than what it initially paid to buy it, while injecting capital into the economy by artificially lowering the price of a core good. And it might even get to buy back petroleum at a (hopefully) lower price in the future. Talk about "priming the pump."
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Best (Worst) Nicknames in Politics
The same vendor also sells kitchenware in the likeness of Bill Clinton except with a corkscrew for a penis
Tom "The Hammer" DeLay
Snarlin' Arlen Specter
Ted "The Lion" Kennedy
Rick Santorum
Santorum giving his concession speech after losing reelection, his goody two shoes children weeping in the foreground
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Weinergate
The Weiner story has legs, and the Dem leadership is giving him a little nudge in front of a barreling bus.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Belated Non-DILF News
Bizarre behavior for a veteran spokesman of the national Democratic Party and a NYC mayoral aspirant.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Essential News Roundup
- Indiana governor and architect of the Bush tax cuts for the rich Mitch Daniels has decided not to run for president. Following Mississippi governor Haley Barbour's and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's exits, the Republican field is looking a little scary-thin, as girls around my age like to say.
- Fortunately, former right-wing senator Rick Santorum is throwing his hat into the circus ring for the Republican presidential nod! I'm putting his name on my list of Republican sideshows who have no shot of winning the nomination right between Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. I call that a "Santorum sandwich." If you don't know what santorum means and you didn't click the link, I'll just define it for you: it's the frothy mixture of lube, semen, and fecal matter that results from anal sex. Other than that, the august senator is best known for comparing gay sex to bestiality.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Essential News Roundup
- In the first successful judicial filibuster since 2005, Senate Republicans blocked Goodwin Liu's nomination to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th is widely considered the most liberal appeals court in the nation, and has the dubious distinction of leading the country in the number of decisions that later get overturned by the Supreme Court. It is also the largest appeals court jurisdiction by far and includes my home state of California. Liu is a law professor at Berkeley (my alma mater) and has won praise as one of the most brilliant legal minds of his generation.
- Yet another potential Republican presidential candidate catches flak for his past support for an "individual mandate" to buy health insurance. Turns out that Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and Obama Administration ambassador to China, attempted to attach an individual mandate to health care legislation in his state. Like Romney - and numerous GOP luminaries in years past -, Huntsman concluded that an individual mandate was crucial to the success of health care reform. That is, until Obama adopted this moderate Republican plan and the individual mandate became anathema to the snarling Republican base almost overnight.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
More Daily Show Constitutional Jurisprudence
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Speaker Emerita: Nancy's Fashions
While she looks effortless in eye-catching red, Nancy is also known to wear purples for important ceremonial occasions - purple being a gimmicky bipartisan blend of Republican red and Democratic blue - as she did at her 2007 swearing in as the first woman speaker in history.
...and that time she led a procession to the Capitol ahead of the historic health care reform vote in the House. (Disclaimer: there was nothing bipartisan about the health care reform vote, which garnered exactly 0 Republican "ayes" and involved a controversial procedure called reconciliation designed to amend the bill to the House's liking while bypassing a Senate filibuster). Nancy in a lilac skirt suit and matching pumps moments before the final 2010 health care vote:
The Daily Beast compares this outfit to a lavender runway look in the Philip Lim show that same year.
I prefer this pairing with Nancy looking cosy in camel. I myself have been looking for a good camel jacket for months as well! (LOLOL Harry Reid, what r u doing in this photo? In a matching camel coat to outshine Nancy no less! Opposite Harry Reid, a model in Alexander Wang's Fall 2010 show)
And my favorite high-fashion analogy from the Daily Beast: "'Anna [Wintour] is basically the Nancy Pelosi of fashion' [...] Pelosi, for her fearsome authority and consistent style, could likewise be called the Anna Wintour of Congress." That, and they both wear their hair in a fashionable bob.
I also liked Nancy's autumn green outfit with basket weave detailing at last year's State of the Union address. Since we're doing her style in terms of couture, I'm gonna say that the weave detail looks like the intrecciato technique used in Bottega Veneta bags.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Wisconsin Senate race
Some people are already whispering about a battle of titans between Wisconsin political heavyweights Congressman (and RILF) Paul Ryan and progressive hero Russ Feingold. Dreamboat Ryan, whom I recently profiled for his heartless wonkishness and exquisite bubble butt, is best known as the author of the Republican budget to gut Medicare and Medicaid benefits while lowering taxes for corporations and the rich. Russ Feingold was the former three-term US Senator from Wisconsin until his reelection defeat last year at the hands of a tea party imbecile whose name I will not utter here. As a senator, Feingold was most associated with the radical, socialist effort to keep corporate money out of politics.
The capstone of campaign finance reform, the McCain-Feingold Act, was of course ruled unconstitutional in last year's Citizens United case by a supposedly deferential, strict-constructionist Supreme Court. The Court ruled that since corporations are legal persons, they obviously have the right to free speech. And clearly, free speech means spending as much money as you want to influence an election. As such, corporations can spend as much money as they want to influence elections. Since leaving office, Russ Feingold founded an organization called Progressives United whose mission is to overturn the craven idiocy that is Citizens United. I hope they both run and Feingold fucks the shit out of Dreamboat Ryan's little virgin booty all the way to a Senate seat.
-Update-
I just got an email from Howard Dean's Democracy For America with a petition to draft Russ Feingold. Sign it here.
Speaker Emerita: Nancy's Sweets
Technically she's the Democratic Leader, but we refer to her as the Speaker Emerita here, since this is also technically correct and some of us would rather not think about the Republican crybaby who currently wields the speaker's gavel. I also love that Nancy deemed her love of dark chocolate important enough to include in her profile given the character constraints imposed by Twitter. Did you know that she eats entire pints of chocolate ice cream for breakfast?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
DILFs exist too!
After Newsom, the list of attractive Democratic men in high office gets a little dubious. I seem to recall a certain Scott Kleeb (pronounced "cleb") running for Congress in Nebraska in 2006 and 2008. He lost both times, but we overlook minor faults like that for corn-fed Midwestern boys here.
Two time failed Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. ran an ugly, homophobic campaign in Tennessee, going out of his way to not just oppose gay marriage, but to attack civil unions and support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in a futile effort to convince Appalachians that he's a moderate sort of Democrat. To make matters worse, he moved to NYC after his loss, reinvented himself as a Wall Street hack, and tried to carpetbag his way into a US Senate seat there just four years later! Of course, you can't win a Democratic primary in New York on nothing but gratuitous homophobia, so Harold Ford promptly announced that he supports full marriage equality for gays all of a sudden. Wow. Why am I even writing about this unprincipled panderer? Oh yeah. He's kinda good-looking.
Maria Shriver and the Governator announced their separation today. For those of you who don't know, they have a very hot son named Patrick Schwarzenegger. Here's to hoping that the Kennedy blood (the aforementioned original handsome pols) wins out and the kid turns out to be a Democrat.
The Republican bench of attractive young men may just be a little deeper than the Democrats' right now. But the moral here is apparently that you can be a conservative douchebag, moderate Democratic gay basher, losing candidate, barely employed Lite Governor, or barely legal teenager but I'll still fantasize about you as long as you're handsome.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Rep. Aaron Schock bares his muscles for the cover of Men's Health magazine
Looks like RILF is going to be a running feature.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Speaker Emerita
I said it to break the ice, but I only half intended it as a joke. I have a very complex adulation for Nancy, but she's a complex intersection of some of my favorite things. Maybe it's because I'm a gay guy, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that gay men are attracted to powerful women. Maybe it's that she's a Californian, or that she's the Congresswoman for my beloved gaysian San Francisco. Or maybe it's because Nancy Pelosi is single most effective, unwavering champion for liberal causes in national politics since I became politically conscious.
It's not just that I want to differentiate myself by worshipping at the altar of someone other than the president. I admire President Obama, but when the White House wanted to abandon comprehensive health care reform in favor of a piecemeal approach after RILF Scott Brown's election to the Senate, it was Nancy who famously rejected the White House capitulation and declared, "You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people."
Along with Russ Feingold, Nancy's speakership was the biggest casualty to liberals in the 2010 midterm elections and it's a travesty. I'll never forget that November day when Democrats took back Congress just a few years ago in the 2006 midterms. Bush and the Republicans had been running around unfettered for 6 years - really as long as I knew anything about politics - when Nancy Pelosi appeared on television to declare that "Democrats are ready to lead." It was the first time I remembered a big electoral victory, and the speech was music to my ears. And boy did she give Bush a hard time for the remainder of his presidency. Nowadays, John Boehner calls the shots in the House, but I for one will keep trumpeting the awesomeness of the first woman Speaker of the House until she gets that gavel back!
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Fourteenth Amendment and Incorporation
On last night's episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart had as his guest David Barton, an advocate of what he calls "historical reclamation." In essence, he argues that at the time of the founding of the United States, religion was a far more central and accepted feature of public life than it is today; the part where reclamation fits in is that as we've turned away from overt displays of religion in the public sphere, we have also forgotten or tended to downplay its contribution to early US history. I think that's a very fair description of DB's views. I also think it's fair to say that he considers the legal banishment of religion from government an affront to Christians, whose right to worship is being ever more tightly encircled. Jon, being the "secular humanist" that he is, pretty much disagreed about everything DB said, so from start to finish the entire interview consisted of challenging each other's little factoids, citations, and the context of the citations dating back to founding of the US.
I tend to think that, for the purposes of teasing out questions of present day morality and constitutional law, arguing over the historicity of society and values in early America is a distraction from the real meat. For one, practically everyone at the time could agree that they were Christians and Christianity really did pop up everywhere (sorry Jon). Secondly, - and I know I make this point way too often - I've never been able to understand why we debate ourselves breathless to make the point that the Founding Fathers agree with me and not you, as if having a bunch of 18th century slaveholders on our side vindicates our beliefs or lends us moral credibility. I admire the Founding Fathers for what they are: men - they were all men - who were far ahead of time with revolutionary ideas about liberty and justice. But it's far too easy to get sucked into the originalist/strict-constructionist trap and begin taking every single one of their ideas at face value.
For me the most interesting moment of the debate came when David Barton pointed out that the First Amendment actually reads "Congress shall not pass any law respecting the establishment of religion." This supports DB's claim that the Founders were intentionally silent on the question of whether the individual states could do so. In fact, he's correct that states historically could pass laws establishing or impeding the free exercise of religion in ways that we would today consider unconstitutional. Of course, DB's larger point was that once upon a time, sub-federal jurisdictions could make community decisions to worship in public space with the preference of the law. Never mind that communities can still worship together even without the backing of force of law... In the originalist construction, giving preference to the local religion before the law is just dandy, because there's at least some historical evidence that this was practiced in the early years of the republic.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court came to apply the First Amendment against the states in a process known among jurists as "incorporation of the Bill of Rights," and I wish either Jon or DB had given more context about it because it's a wonderful illustration of the Constitution evolving with country. This process basically interprets provisions of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights, which enshrines principles like equal treatment and due process before the law, and applies them more broadly than we had previously understood by holding not just the federal government to it, but state governments too. Before the First Amendment was incorporated (that is, for most of American history) state governments could issue certifications granting religions the right to proselytize or require that public school students pray together.
Throughout the legal history of incorporation, most cases have occurred through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. According to my con law professor Gordon Silverstein, the 14th has been described by some scholars as a new constitution, because of how dramatically it shifted the balance between federal and state power. That's not surprising, given the historical context of its ratification. The 14th was passed in reaction to the Civil War, which saw the most strident partisans of states' rights defeated by the Union. Among other things, the 14th Amendment expressly reverses the infamous Dred Scott decision by granting US citizenship and its rights to all persons born in the US and codifies the right to equal protection and due process before the law. The idea of amendments itself poses a fatal process to DB's reclamationist logic, for the Constitution's own framers provided for a built-in amendment process to ensure that it evolves with time. And as the capstone of Reconstruction(ism), the 14th Amendment constitutes a real paradigm shift that the original constructionists can't quite account for.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Bounce
That's why the cynic in me is bemused to read reports that Obama is travelling to Ground Zero as early as Thursday to bask in triumphant glory and milk this story for all it's worth.
I hope he'll say something about how different the World Trade Center complex is looking 10 years out.
Monday, May 2, 2011
On Osama bin Laden's death
Now that the initial shock of hearing that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces has worn off, those of us who remember 9/11 this way might be left to contemplate the kinds of emotions on display among some of the celebrating crowds. The mostly young people who turned out to cheer bin Laden's death probably feel, as I do, that al-Queda's actions robbed us of our childhood insouciance, or at least precipitated its loss. I too feel relief that an ugly chapter in history has come to an end, if only symbolically. However, the ecstatic cries of "USA! USA!" in celebration of a death struck me as inappropriate, if not deranged. And as others have pointed out, their zeal for death bears a chilling resemblance to that of anti-American extremists' celebrations (complete with jingoistic banner waving and chanting) following 9/11 and other murders of American civilians in the Middle East.
Have we already forgotten the unmeasured, emotionally-charged foreign policy disasters of the past decade? David Sirota wrote a great piece today criticizing the untempered displays of joy and the media for condoning it:
This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory -- he has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history -- the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.
Our reaction to the news last night should be the kind often exhibited by victims’ families at a perpetrator’s lethal injection -- a reaction typically marked by both muted relief but also by sadness over the fact that the perpetrators’ innocent victims are gone forever, the fact that the perpetrator's death cannot change the past, and the fact that our world continues to produce such monstrous perpetrators in the first place.
When we lose the sadness part -- when all we do is happily scream "USA! USA! USA!” at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war -- it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.
We can all understand jubilation in victory but it would have been a little more human to see some solemnity in remembrance of those who lost their lives in this conflict.
Friday, April 29, 2011
RILFs and RINOs
And as exciting as it is for the politics junkie in me to catch a glimpse of the taut and supple amid the parade of wrinkled and grey, I'm noticing a disturbing trend: all the hot members of Congress are Republicans. Remember Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts? If you didn't know that he was the successor to liberal icon Ted Kennedy, you might remember him as the senator who once posed nude for Cosmo. I may have been dismayed to see the conservative "dark horse" candidate come from behind to win Kennedy's old Senate seat, but if I had to admit defeat to anyone, it would be the dark stud coming at you from behind. The Tea Partiers who elected him are now calling him a RINO over his vote to keep funding Planned Parenthood, but to me, anyone to the right of Mary Landrieu is fascist, so he's squarely in the Republican camp in my book. If anything, he's a RILF.
I saved the Congressman that I'd most like to fuck, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Illinois), for last.
With pecs and six-pack abs like that, one could almost overlook his medieval, virulently homophobic positions. Is his chest waxed?
Then there's this photo of Congressman Schock at a White House picnic, where the dress code probably demanded that he cover up that delicious torso of his in clothing. After this picture made the rounds in all the gay Hill staffers' inboxes, Aaron Schock took to twitter to proclaim, "Never thought a pic of me w/ my shirt on would go viral. Learned my lesson and burned the belt." Burn the cerulean belt? That's so dramatic! Why doesn't he just set himself on fire? That's the only sure way to get rid of the flamingo pink shirt, crisp white pants, and sculpted Adonis body too.