Clinton increasingly describes herself as a “fighter” who will “stand up” for people. Checking the transcript, Clinton used the word “fight” or “fighter” in reference to herself no fewer than six times. She also used “standing up” and its variations no fewer than eight.
[...]
Longtime Democratic speechwriter and campaign advisor Bob Shrum was excellent at getting candidates into legislatures and state houses with exactly this sort of retail populist “fighter for the people” rhetoric — but his candidates went 0-for-8 (the last one being Kerry) in reaching the White House.
This is something that I noticed once I started watching more political coverage (i.e., once I moved to DC). The particular strain of faux-populism that the Shrumian era wreaked on American liberalism has probably robbed “fight” and all its variants of whatever meaning they may have had before their complicity in thirty years of Democratic losses. “Fight” has been bludgeoned to death by years of abuse. The Kerry/Edwards campaign dealt it a final, crippling blow, buried it in a shallow grave, and left it for Mark Penn to exhume three years later. To “fight” in American politics is as meaningless as to advocate “freedom.” Nobody pays attention to candidates who “fight,” because “fighting” has thirty years of hapless Third Way liberalism tacked onto it. For a lot of Obama supporters, Hillary has probably become a synecdoche for the Democrats’ DLC wing which has largely failed at winning elections or advancing a, um, liberal agenda. Which brings up a question: are Mark Penn and the rest of Hillary’s brand managers truly unaware that demonstrating a willingness to “fight” has shown to be a bad way to get elected? If not, then it doesn’t bode well, if not for next Tuesday, then for November.
There’s a constant theme among the Washington ruling class that bipartisanship is an end in itself, that cooperation should be Congress’s prerogative above all else. From a logical perspective, this is a horrible argument, but if that doesn’t convince you, all you have to do is look at the wonderful things the administration has done with the tacit approval of our Democratic Congress. Forgive my voice-acting. I have not put on that hat for a while.
In the “not really as great as it sounds, but still cool” department: that stimulus package video posted here last week was picked up by the Huffington Post yesterday. They’re currently featuring it on their business page.
Since discovering that Castro and his malfunctioning large intestine (which CNN’s medical expert described in great detail this morning — a truly great way to greet the day) have officially ceded power in Cuba, like any good American, I have been trying to come up with justifications for a full-scale land invasion. I can’t think of anything other than transforming Cuba into a full-fledged Spring Break destination. My vision is admittedly far-reaching and ambitious, but we need to be sending our children somewhere within earshot of Nancy Grace’s calls of conscience. Otherwise they might do something they’ll regret in a few years, like join Teach For America.
I went to Haiti on Spring Break once. It was like France, but cheaper.
After examining a sample of exactly one instance … the best time to fly AirtranU seems to be in the early morning, when people (like me the other day) oversleep and miss their scheduled flights.
Of course, as someone pointed out to me, the whole purpose of the program could just be to lure college kids to the airport with the promise of cheap fares, only to reveal that all their flights are overbooked, except for a single $450 first-class seat on a flight six hours from now with said kid’s (parents’) name on it.
Not that I’m drawing from personal experience or anything, of course.
This is the first cartoon project where I’ve done everything – drawing, lettering, coloring, shading – on Photoshop. There are some rough spots, obviously, but I think the “paper” style comes out a bit in the graphic where he flashes the audience. That is my goal at this point, to be able to replicate that style on Photoshop in color. Expect a few more of these.
Oh, and old-skool headz will recognize the soundtrack from the Liberty Boyz era, the “New World” beat.
Glenn Greenwald, writing about the retroactive telecom immunity bill about to be passed in the Senate, sums it up thusly:
[In] 1973, The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for its work in uncovering the Watergate abuses, and that led to what would have been the imminent bipartisan impeachment of the President until he was forced to resign in disgrace. By stark and depressing contrast, in 2006, Jim Risen, Eric Lichtblau and the NYT won Pulitzer Prizes for their work in uncovering illegal spying on Americans at the highest levels of the Government, and that led to bipartisan legislation to legalize the illegal spying programs and provide full-scale retroactive amnesty for the lawbreakers. That’s the difference between a country operating under the rule of law and one that is governed by lawlessness and lawbreaking license for the politically powerful and well-connected.
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From Frank Church and the bipartisan oversight protections of the post-Watergate abuses in the mid-1970s to Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, legalized warrantless eavesdropping and retroactive telecom amnesty in 2008 — that vivid collapse into the sewer illustrates as potently as anything could what has happened to this country over the last eight years.
