Posted in Uncategorized at 7:39 pm by newlondoncalling
Hi all. I’m back, at least temporarily. I’ve been out of town for most of the last two months (job related) and I may be relocating permanently, so what that means for the future of this little blog is an open question. I have some comments about events here in the NL (for instance, Mayor Cavanagh is Irish. Who knew?) but I’ll save them for a little later. But, for now, could someone explain this to me?
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
So: conservatives believe that black people (and illegal immigrants) cause cancer, according to Barack Obama. (Note: would that be more or less crazy than believing that our government created HIV and intentionally infected people with it? Perhaps that’s a question for Rev. Wright.) No doubt Sen. Obama misspoke slightly, and intended to say something about economic insecurity being the root cause of white bigotry, etc.
Still, that’s awfully self-serving, isn’t it? If I disagree with an Obama supporter on an issue, it’s not because of any serious and substantial policy disagreement. I’m just a bigot who blames black people for all of my problems; the Obama supporter can safely ignore me and return to the important business of clapping his hands and chanting “Yes We Can.” That doesn’t sound like the new politics that Sen. Obama promised us; it sounds like the campaign the Democratic Party has run in every Presidential election since 1964.
Apparently, when someone criticizes Barack Obama for his close association with Rev. Wright, it’s “a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism.” But when Obama unfairly smears his political opponents as racists, it’s the politics of hope. Good to know.
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:53 pm by newlondoncalling
Democratic primary voters are, this year at least, lots smarter than the Republicans. The Democrats have taken their worst candidates and disposed of them pretty quickly. And their worst semi-electable candidate, John Edwards, has been given his hat and nudged towards the door.
Meanwhile, the Republicans have five serious candidates. Mitt Romney, who used to be a liberal before he was a (“I Swear!”) conservative. Rudy Giulliani, ditto. John McCain, who makes George W. Bush look like a small-government guy. Mike Huckabee, a big-taxing, big-spending nanny-stater who shares his bleeding heart foreign policy and religious views with Jimmy Carter. And Fred Thompson, an honest-to-goodness conservative in the mold of Calvin Coolidge.
And who do Republicans primary voters actually like? Anybody but Fred, it seems.
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:46 am by newlondoncalling
Run, don’t walk, to Newsweek’s “Stumper” blog to check out this post:
Man: (Pause) I’m looking for a tall man who will stand tall for America. (Pause.) Who will cut the ears off of earmarks! (Pause.) Stop dead illegal immigration! (Pause.) And pull the teeth of activist judges…
Thompson: Yep.
Man: … who take your house to build a 7-Eleven! (Pause, then louder) And I want to know if you’ve got a Jim Bowie knife and a good strong pair (pause) of Channellock pliers! (Laughter, even more applause, calls of “That’s right!” and “Hear, hear!”)
Something tells me Mitt Romney doesn’t field a whole lot of questions like that.
“Pull the teeth of activist judges who take your house to build a 7-11″ …or who turn your house into a vacant lot after they promised to build a luxury hotel. I salute you, sir.
Update: This is a definite outlier, but the ARG poll released earlier today (well, technically yesterday) shows Huckabee and Thompson skyrocketing, and McCain and Romney bleeding voters badly.
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:54 am by newlondoncalling
Packers lots, Seahawks very little: Only dud game of the weekend. Green Bay spots Seattle two touchdowns, and then blows them out. Very impressive, although the Seahawks were by far the worst team left in the NFL’s final 8, in my opinion. Shout out to Ryan Grant, for finally giving Notre Dame fans something to cheer about this football season.
Pats 31, Jaguars 20: Another enormously frustrating Patriots game. Jacksonville plays about as well as they can possibly play, they keep it close all game, and yet you never felt like the Pats were ever in danger of losing.
And how good was Tom Brady, you ask? Phil Simms good, that’s how.
San Diego Super Chargers 28, Colts 24: You cannot stop Billy Volek, you can only hope to contain him. Remarkably physical game. With Bloomfield’s Finest on the sidelines, the Colts were never able to rush the passer effectively. (Note: I know the Colts are a Tampa 2 team, but could you guys please call a blitz or two? You’re afraid to blitz Billy Volek?)
Football Giants 21, Cowpersons 17: My earliest football memory is the Giants/Bears playoff game in ‘85 (well, January ‘06), when Sean Landeta punted the ball backwards and the G-Men lost 21-0. Sunday was one of my top 5 moments as a Giants fan, easy. The best moments for a sports fan are always the unexpected ones, when your team plays well late in the season and you’re genuinely surprised by it. Had you talked to me last month, I never would have guessed that the Giants would be playing for a Super Bowl birth this week.
Everyone in the world has said this already, but: the touchdown drive to end the first half was the key moment of the game, and probably the greatest moment of Eli Manning’s young career. Watching Marion Barber grind up the Giants defense in the 2nd quarter was not fun, and when the Cowboys scored to go up 14-7 (knowing that Dallas would also get the ball to start the 3rd quarter) it looked like the game was about to slip away. But the Giants moved the ball 76 yards in under a minute, and tied the game just before halftime. Just a great, great drive.
Conversely, Tony Romo’s performance in the 4th quarter was the single biggest reason for the Cowboys loss. There were dropped passes, poor pass blocking, too many penalties, and Barber was ineffective in the 2nd half…but Romo was clearly flustered by the Giants pass rush, and made some very bad decisions as a result. I only watch a few Cowboys games a year, but that was about as bad as I’ve ever seen him play.
So, on to Lambeau. Brett Favre is due for a nice 5 Int. game, right?
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:35 am by newlondoncalling
Most of the blogs I read had Thompson as the clear winner of yesterday’s debate (see Jim Geraghty at NRO, for example). The campaign also announced that a “big” endorsement for Fred will be dropping today.
I wonder, though, if the biggest impact on the campaign will come from something that the national audience didn’t see last night: this commercial, which aired on cable outlets in South Carolina during the debate. I don’t know if this spot is effective enough, but Huckabee will get the Dukakis treatment at some point over this parole issue. If he somehow survives the primaries, he will certainly get it in the general.
Turning to the Democrats, did you know that Obama is “shucking and jiving” his way to the nomination, according to NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo? Folks in the Clinton orbit have already reminded us that Obama is former drug user and a stealth Muslim, so it’s really no surprise that they’re now reminding us he’s black. I agree wholeheartedly with Victor Davis Hanson here:
But w[hat] happens when a talented African-American like Barack Obama has an independent voice and base, and carves out his own political future, and without the usual liberal hierarchy to sanction his career?
…We will soon learn — but already from bits and pieces that leak out, and Bill’s harangues, we are beginning to sense some of the same patronizing and resentment that heretofore was reserved only for conservative blacks. I would expect the Clintons will bite their lip and then adopt the “we have to destroy the black candidate to save the black vote” mentality.
I should be rooting against Obama, because I think he is a much stronger general election candidate for the Dems. But I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when Hillary climbed out of her coffin in New Hampshire, and crap like this is why.
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:32 am by newlondoncalling
This is an exercise that will only interest me, but…
DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas is encouraging Michigan Democrats to vote in that state’s GOP primary for Mitt Romney. A Michigan win will keep Mitt viable, which will keep the negative ads flowing and continue the GOP “circular firing squad.”
His post begins with a brief history of Republican interference in Michigan Democratic primaries: “In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic primary and voting for segregationist Democrat George Wallace, seriously embarrassing the state’s Democrats.” He goes on to state that “Michigan Republicans can clearly be counted on to practice the worst of racial politics.” As proof, Markos links to a pdf of election statistics compiled by the Michigan Bureau of Elections. Let’s examine those stats, shall we?
Page 8 of the pdf gives us the vote totals for the 1972 primary. Here are the vote totals (I combined all of the minor candidates into a single “Other” category):
Other: 103,342 (6.5%)
Hubert Humphrey: 249,798 (15.7%)
George McGovern: 425,694 (26.8%)
George Wallace: 809,239 (51.0%)
Total: 1,588,073
Now, what information do we have on how Republicans voted in this primary? Page 13 of the pdf tells us that according to newspaper reports, “approximately one-third of the voters in the Democratic primary were Republican cross-overs and that the majority [of Republican votes] went to Wallace while McGovern received approximately one-third.” What can we conclude, assuming that the newspaper reports were accurate?
1) McGovern–the “acid, amnesty, and abortion” candidate–surprisingly over-performed among Republicans, getting approximately 33% of them, compared to 26.8% of total voters.
2) We have less exact information for Wallace, as the pdf merely states that he won “a majority” of GOP votes. We don’t know the size of that majority, but we can say that he either matched or over-performed among Republican, when compared to his 51% of total voters.
3) Humphrey–the establishment Democrat, the candidate of the American Consensus, so to speak–almost certainly underperformed among Republicans, which does not surprise me.
4) If Wallace vote = racist, then Michigan Democrats were more than capable of embarrassing themselves without outside help. There were roughly 530,000 Republican votes cast in the primary (1,588,000 divided by 3). Assume Wallace got 55% of them, giving him 291,500 votes. Wallace’s victory margin was close to 400,000, so even if you subtract every Republican vote from his column and allow the rest of the field to keep their GOP votes, Wallace would still win comfortably. It looks like Wallace would have won a closed primary with ease.
