Tag: 2010 congressional elections

• Harold Ford’s Qualifications for Being a Political Analyst

  

  Harold Ford is on TV a lot. He’s on Meet the Press and Morning Joe more often than the hosts themselves. I’m fairly certain he has a cot under David Gregory’s desk. And once he rises from that cot, rubs the sleepiness from his eyes, and grabs a quick bite from the NBC commissary, he can be relied upon to predict the failure of Barack Obama’s presidency unless the commander-in-chief follows Ford’s pro-big business, illiberal advice. (Stop dis-incentivizing wealthy corporations, Mr. President! You’re hurting their feelings!)

  But given that his political analysis is so highly sought-after by these major, respected outlets, I thought it might be helpful to recount the things Harold Ford is most known for:

  1. Losing a senate race

  2. Bowing out of another senate race in another state, which he would have lost

  3. Presiding over the “centrist” Democratic Leadership Council as it ran out of money and collapsed.

  Let’s recap Ford’s sterling qualifications: He lost, gave up, and failed.

  So let’s make sure we all keep checking in with Harold to see what the president ought to be doing on any given day.

  October 25, 2011

  2006 congressional elections, 2010 congressional elections, harold ford, politics

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• I’m More Interested in Whether Being a Douche is a Choice

  Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado, Ken Buck, made a little news today saying on Meet the Press that he believes that being gay is “a choice,” and that homosexuality may be akin to alcoholism in that some can be predisposed to it from birth. His opponent, incumbent (and appointed) senator Michael Bennett, asserted this placed Buck outside the “mainstream” of opinion.

  There’s a lot wrong with this beyond the obvious. First, I’ll tackle the lesser infraction. The question of whether homosexuality is a “choice” is not a question of political opinion — it’s a scientific claim; whether or not being gay is innate. So whether or not one’s belief about that claim is “mainstream” is irrelevant. Evolution by natural selection is a fact, but the majority of Americans don’t accept it. But its veracity has nothing to do with whether or not it is a mainstream view.

  Now the bigger problem, which has bothered me for years. The question put to Ken Buck, whether or not homosexuality is a choice, implies that if it were merely a choice then it would somehow be okay to be anti-gay, and also implies that homosexuality is some kind of affliction or moral stain that is better avoided prima facia. This is hogwash.

  For the record: It doesn’t matter if you wound up gay through by accident of birth, whether you decided out of whole cloth to be gay all on your own, or whether you’re gay or straight depending on the time of day or phases of the Moon. The point is that it’s only the business of the person in question. The only subjective, moral question is how one person treats another, not whether or how one person loves another.

  So let’s stop asking whether or not homosexuality is a choice, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is how we behave toward each other. Instead, someone should ask folks like Ken Buck and the other Tea Partiers and theocrats whether their bigotry toward people different from them is a choice, or whether they’re just born that way.

  October 17, 2010

  2010 congressional elections, lgbt, media, politics

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• Waterfowl, Nazis, and Birth Certificates

  For your reading pleasure, I present the first comment posted on a short and fairly banal Politico blog post about Charlie Crist and the Florida U.S. Senate race, written by “Eileen for Freedom/Liberty”:

  LEAVE NO DEMOCRATZI ‘LOON’ STANDING IN NOVEMBER’! America…I believe there are more old time Democrats…like my parents and grandparents…then there are Democratzi ‘loons’! Those patriots will NOT vote for this fraud and the continued agenda of the Democratzi ‘loons’ who are seeking to destroy America from within one big spending bill at a time! They love their country more than party…and will vote for America by saying yes to cleaning house on all the Democratzi ‘loons’ who have put all of America’s children into debt to a COMMUNIST country! Despicable politicians who need to go…and they will! Congratulations Senator Rubio! IMPEACHMENT OR THE ‘ORIGINAL’ RECORDS OF BIRTH…IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME…AND 2010 WILL BE THE TIME…GUARANTEED!

  I learned so much from this comment.

  First, I was introduced to the pejorative “Democratzi” term, which I presume equates liberals with Nazis, which makes perfect sense of course.

  Second, I am curious as to who the “old time Democrats” are/were, but I presume they may have often been idenitifed with the “Dixie” prefix, but that’s just a guess. I mean, I’m assuming Eileen is not referring to, say, Hubert Humphrey.

  Third, the consistent use of single-apostrophe quotation marks for “loons” I find confusing, because later in the comment she uses the same quote marks for “original” when referring to Obama’s obviously-forged-by-Muslim-communists birth certificate. Does that mean that she doesn’t mean the “loons” part, that she’s just kidding about it? Or is she saying that the birth certificate is legitimate? Eileen, what are you trying to tell us?

  Fourth, can one “impeach” a document? Is Obama’s obviously-manufactured-by-Hitler birth certificate holding public office? I suppose so, because according to Eileen, 2010 is “GUARANTEED” to be the year this impeachment takes place. So really, there’s only one question left to ask:

  Will the Senate convict Obama’s obviously-fabricated-by-Osama-bin-Laden-and-Skeletor-and-written-in-the-blood-of-aborted-Christian-babies birth certificate?

  Only Eileen knows for sure.

  August 31, 2010

  2010 congressional elections, politics

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