Category: Politics (explicit)

Because it’s all incredibly depressing bullshit. Need examples?

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A Canadian buddy of mine was freaked out that Obama and Clinton/B both spouted off about trashing NAFTA recently. I explained to him, “They don’t mean it; they’re just pandering to voters in Ohio. If either wins the election, they’ll repudiate all that based on ‘the realities of the office’ or something.”

Lo and behold, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there’s a short article on how both candidates are assiduously avoiding any mention of NAFTA in their speeches in Texas, where the economy is doing just fine, there’s job growth, and border towns are benefiting from the free trade pact.
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NYTimes writer (and St. John’s College alum!) Danny Hakim writes about how Gov. Eliot Spitzer is circumventing his own limits on political donations so that he can get enough funds together to knock out the Republican majority in the state senate:

The governor could not have been more emphatic when he initially announced his policy. On Nov. 30, 2006, before even taking office, Mr. Spitzer held a news conference to unveil a number of reforms he intended to undertake, with the $10,000 limit the most eye-opening proposal — well below the $55,900 that statewide candidates can accept.

“I think this is unprecedented,” the governor said at the news conference. “I do not know of another instance where others have acted unilaterally.”

[. . .] “The reason we do this [limit donations to the governor, but redirect much higher donations to the governor-controlled party fund], and the reason it’s a priority, is so that we can achieve a majority in the Senate to accomplish the necessary reforms,” Mr. Toohey said. “We’re never going to get the kinds of reforms that people want on a range of issues if we don’t have a Democratic Senate.”

Oh, and the other reason they do this is because the investigations into Spitzer’s unethical behavior will also be harder to shut down if his party doesn’t control the state senate.

John McCain: unnatural-born American?

McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

NM Governor Bill Richardson may be a kingmaker in Democratic party presidential politics, but I hope the eventual winner doesn’t promise him a position in the Department of Interior Decorating:

Seriously: that’s some terrible upholstery (and I’m pretending not to see the “GOV” fur blanket behind him). Good thing Bill Clinton brought his chameleon sweater to this Super Bowl bash.

(Photo credit: Rebecca Craig/The Santa Fe New Mexican, via Associated Press)