Category: Politics

Now they tell us. From The New York Times web site:

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

Via Romanesko, an interview with the folks behind the ONN video team.

Too broken to write. Just read Dennis Perrin:

You could start by asking all those liberals now appalled by McCain’s politics why they gave him a free pass and enthusiastic praise for so many years. Like Joe Lieberman, McCain hasn’t changed all that much. He’s simply become inconvenient. Back in the ’90s, when liberal McCain love was strong, libs yelled at me for not showing this war hero the proper respect. Couldn’t I see that McCain wasn’t like the other Repubs? The man not only slaughtered Vietnamese so we could enjoy faster service at Wendy’s drive-throughs, he had conviction, morals, and personified patriotism. Well, that’s all down the memory hole; now it’s the media’s fault for pushing this war-crazy old man and his gun-toting MILF on the rest of us.

On this 73nd anniversary of the death of Louisiana Senator Long (he was shot on 8 September 1935 but died two days later) I feel it’s important to encourage people to look at the actual accomplishments of the man, and not what people who were threatened by his agenda accused him of.

To that end, I humbly submit my 1992 review of T. Harry Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Long (the review’s been on the web so long it’s still on the first Google page of searches for “huey long”). If you can find a copy, one of Ken Burns’s earliest projects was on Long. While it’s hardly a detailed study of Long’s policies or actions, it’s particularly interesting for the interviews in which members of the state’s ruling class express their hatred for Long and his intrusion into their turf, which puts one in mind of the Washington elite’s attitude toward Clinton.

There’s much more out there, but, as always, I like to close with words from Huey Long himself, from his autobiography Every Man a King:

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE MADDENED FORTUNE HOLDERS AND THEIR
INFURIATED PUBLIC PRESS!

The increasing fury with which I have been and am to be, assailed by reason of the fight and growth of support for limiting the size of fortunes can only be explained by the madness which human nature attaches to the holders of accumulated wealth.

What I have proposed is:—

THE LONG PLAN

1. A capital levy tax on the property owned by any one person of 1% of all over $1,000,000 [dp: $14,275,000 in 2005 dollars]; 2% of all over $2,000,000 [$28,550,000] etc., until, when it reaches fortunes of over $10,000,000 [$145,750,000], the government takes all above that figure; which means a limit on the size of any one man’s fortune to something like $50,000,000 [$728,750,000]—the balance to go to the government to spread out in its work among all the people.

2. An inheritance tax which does not allow one man to make more than $1,000,000 [$14,275,000] in one year, exclusive of taxes, the balance to go to the United States for general work among the people.

The forgoing program means all taxes paid by the fortune holders at the top and none by the people at the bottom; the spreading of wealth among all the people and the breaking up of a system of Lords and Slaves in our economic life. It allows the millionaires to have, however, more than they can use for any luxury they can enjoy on earth. But, with such limits, all else can survive.

That the public press should regard my plan and effort as a calamity and me as a menace is no more than should be expected, gauged in the light of past events. According to Ridpath, the eminent historian:

“The ruling classes always possess the means of information and the processes by which it is distributed. The newspaper of modern times belongs to the upper man. The under man has no voice; or if, having a voice, his cry is lost like a shout in the desert. Capital, in the places of power, seizes upon the organs of public utterance, and howls the humble down the wind. Lying and misrepresentation are the natural weapons of those who maintain an existing vice and gather the usufruct of crime.”

—Ridpath’s History of the World, Page 410.

In 1932, the vote for my resolution showed possibly a half dozen other Senators back of it. It grew in the last Congress to nearly twenty Senators. Such growth through one other year will mean the success of a venture, the completion of everything I have undertaken,—the time when I can and will retire from the stress and fury of public life, maybe as my forties begin,—a contemplation so serene as to appear impossible.

That day will reflect credit on the States whose Senators took the early lead to spread the wealth of the land among all the people.

Then no tear dimmed eyes of a small child will be lifted into the saddened face of a father or mother unable to give it the necessities required by its soul and body for life; then the powerful will be rebuked in the sight of man for holding what they cannot consume, but which is craved to sustain humanity; the food of the land will feed, the raiment clothe, and the houses shelter all the people; the powerful will be elated by the well being of all, rather than through their greed.

Then those of us who have pursued that phantom of Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Theodore Roosevelt and Bryan may hear wafted from their lips in Valhalla:

EVERY MAN A KING

As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, my own pick for president this year is Christopher Walken, but there is a shiny, newish face on the scene as well:

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, discussing the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the GOP’s vice presidential slot:

KERRY: What John McCain has proven with this choice — this is very important, George. John McCain wanted to choose Tom Ridge. He wanted to choose Joe Lieberman. He wanted to choose another candidate, but you know what? Rush Limbaugh and the right wing vetoed it.

Why carry McCain’s water for him? Saying that he had to choose Palin because he was told to choose her lets his judgment off the hook and leaves the impression that Kerry thinks McCain would have made a good choice if left on his own. It promotes the idea that McCain’s essentially a decent guy, just a “prisoner of the right wing,” and that he’d be better if they’d left him alone. This kind of constant excuse-making is why the Democratic party is still saddled with people like Joe Lieberman. It’s why they have a hard time making a case for effective change (presuming they want to).

Tommy Smothers, in Chicago a week before Election Day 1972, via Bruce Miroff’s The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party, p. 115:

I was wondering what happened to the passion that we all had a long time ago and how we felt so outraged and incredulous [at] things going down … When you get six years of Johnson followed by four years of Nixon, you’ve got ten years of laying on your head, and now if Jesus Christ was running on the Democratic ticket, you’d say he was full of shit too.

Some things that shouldn’t have been said at the Democratic National Committee Convention last week:

Joe Biden:

John McCain is my friend.

Hillary Clinton:

Now, John McCain is my colleague and my friend.

John Kerry:

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years.

There was no need for anyone to proclaim their everlasting friendship with John McCain at the convention to nominate his opponent. Why push this out at every opportunity? The man’s a disaster waiting to happen to the country, and the most recent Democratic presidential candidate, the person who almost won this year’s nomination, and the current vice-presidential nominee are all driven to express their abiding ties to McCain? Sure, they complained about his policies, too, but this kind of chummy relationship goes just too far.

Can anyone remember John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson talking about being pals with Richard Nixon? Or Johnson and Hubert Humphrey saying what a good buddy Barry Goldwater was?

this is UTTER FUCKING GENIUS: http://tinyurl.com/5f4hbg

— @NotoriousSJV@sfba.social (@vardley) August 27, 2008

Stephanie tweeted about this from the DNC convention the other day. It’s a generator for very realistic-sounding comments for the BBC’s “Have Your Say” call-in program, named the Twat-O-Tron.

[UPDATE] As of 2019, the Twat-O-Tron apears to be no longer in service.

From one of Tom Tomorrow’s Democratic convention posts for the New Haven Advocate:

Speaking of speeches, there was a line in Michelle Obama’s speech that also showed up in Nancy Pelosi’s, and these things don’t happen by accident: “Barack Obama will end the war in Iraq *responsibly.* And I can’t help but suspect that within that one word qualifier lies a world of hurt.