May 11, 2008 - May 17, 2008

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"Puking Republican lobbyists" to get their drink on after all?

Filed under: St. Paul

Councilman Dave Thune

Last month, St. Paul's City Council narrowly voted down extending bar closing times until 4 a.m. during the Republican convention. Councilman Dave Thune capped the 4-3 decision by telling a reporter that the alternative would have been "a nightmare" of "puking Republican lobbyists" for his downtown constituents.

On Thursday, Governor Pawlenty signed into law a bill allowing 4 a.m. closing times for Twin Cities bars during the four-day convention.

So now what?

Thune, reached Friday, confirmed he's still opposed to the later closing time, but acknowledged that concessions in the new law would likely be enough to entice the Council to reverse itself. In particular, Thune said, limiting later closure to the four weekday nights of the convention--and not the weekends--was key.

"That makes a lot of difference to me," he said. "Weekend stuff is problematic to me."

Details obviously are still to be worked out, but Thune says that bars in residential areas or with a history of late-night noise and police calls are unlikely to get to stay open past 2 a.m.

Councilwoman Kathy Lantry, who voted for later closing times last month, says the price tag for city taxpayers and the related question of policing will be a concern. "The commitment is that neighborhood protection will not suffer," she says, "but it won't be every Monday night if bars are open until 4 a.m.."

The city has the option of charging each bar up to $2,500 for a special permit.

Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at May 16, 2008 2:28 PM | Comments (2)

 

This isn't the first time Republicans have compared Obama to a Nazi

Filed under: Shameless Whores

Barack Obama has fired back at the John McCain-approved attack by George Bush equating the Democratic presidential nominee with a Nazi sympathizer.

"If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for."

He goes on to expose McCain as a hypocrite, pointing out that he had advocated talking to Hamas.

I follow the maxim that it's a foolish man who compares his political opponents to Hitler. But this isn't the first time Republicans have made this bogus argument about Obama:

Fox News Radio host Tom Sullivan took a call from a listener who stated that when listening to Barack Obama speak, "it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell." Sullivan then played a "side-by-side comparison" of a Hitler speech and an Obama speech.

Video of Obama response:

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 16, 2008 2:14 PM | Comments (2)

 

It's a long haul to November. How many wheels can the GOP afford to lose?

The special election win for the Democratic Party in Mississippi this week was the third such loss for a GOP desperately hoping to regain some of the seats they lost in 2006. Cue the pundit-parade!

The Mississippi defeat elicited a Karl Rove GOP State of the Party report disguised as a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He called it like he (and everyone else) saw it--a blow:

The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting "liberal! liberal! liberal!" in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

...Gallup's 2007 report found that fewer voters identify themselves as Republicans now than at any point in the past 20 years – despite the fact that less than a fifth of Americans agree with Mr. Obama's call to rapidly withdraw from Iraq. And while many Americans are concerned about the economy, most are satisfied with their own finances.

As Republican ranks declined, the number of independents and Democrats grew. Has the bottom been reached? It's too early to know.

Over at the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson was doing some corpse-dancing:

The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise.

...Almost every day, there's more evidence that 2008 is turning into one of those watershed years in American politics--1980, say, or 1968, or even 1932. You can start with the fact that the Democrats are poised to nominate the first African-American major-party candidate for president.

In The New York Times, a report from New Orleans would seem to urge caution in the corpse-dancing department.

While the article laid bare the new threat to "longtime Republican dominance of the South," it also cited the most troubling numbers to come out of the West Virginia primary--that 20 percent of the white voters who contributed to Clinton's trouncing of Obama stated plainly that race was a factor. It's a tricky victory for Clinton to trumpet.

In the Times piece, Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, "predicts 'the largest black turnout in the history of the United States' this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee."

The numbers would seem to tip towards Black's prophecy. According to the Times piece: An "increase has been evident in Southern states with presidential primaries this year. In South Carolina, the black vote in the primary more than doubled from 2004, to 295,000, according to exit poll estimates. In Georgia, it rose to 536,000 from 289,000."

Returning to the Mississippi victory, race--or racism--again becomes a mitigating factor:

Many of the votes on Tuesday for [Mississippi Democrat] Mr. Childers — an anti-abortion, pro-gun-rights Democrat — were from whites who will in all likelihood pull the lever for Mr. McCain in November, analysts and voters themselves say.

“Obama, he’s too off-the-wall,” said Chappell Sides, a white Republican-leaning voter in Yalobusha County who said he was preparing to punch the button for Mr. Childers on Tuesday. “Hillary — I thought I hated her, till Obama came along.”

Another ringing endorsement for anybody-but-the-black-candidate.

What does it all mean for the Republicans who will be rolling into town in just a few months, however bandaged and bruised? Can somebody tell me if they have a chance of pulling themselves together? Karl Rove--are you still there?

There you are...

Look, says Rove, "no Congress has fallen as far and as fast as the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led House and Senate"...

Unlike President Bush, congressional Democrats will be on the ballot this fall, and can do little to improve their lackluster record before then. It must also be disconcerting for Ms. Pelosi that the Democrats' winning formula has meant conceding ground on guns, prayer, partial-birth abortion and other issues that matter to social conservatives.

Both parties face major challenges and have little time to alter the dynamics of the election to their advantage. Recognizing underlying problems and correcting them within a matter of a couple of months is one of the supreme challenges in politics. Whichever party does that fast and well will benefit come November.

Hardly a cheerleader's whoop--and when a guy like Rove puts down the pom poms, there is trouble indeed.

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at May 16, 2008 1:26 PM | Comments (0)

 

What did Neville Chamberlain do? The meaning of appeasement

Filed under: National Republicans

"You keep using this word," Inigo Montoya says in the Princess Bride. "I do not think it means what you think it means."

Right-wing pundits use the word "appeasement" with regularity, and at least one -- talk show yakker Kevin James -- objectively doesn't know. In an appearance on Chris Matthews' Hardball show, James tried to equate Barack Obama's plan to open diplomatic channels with Iran to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.

Trouble is, he didn't know what Chamberlain actually did, as this painful video and transcript make clear.

Chris Matthews is often objectionable himself, but he hits the absolutely correct distinction here. Talking to the enemy? Not appeasement. Giving them half of Czechoslovakia? Appeasement.

Plenty of lessons to be had here. That's one of them. The other is this: if you're going to call somebody out for doing the "exact same thing" as a historical figure, maybe hit Wikipedia to find out what that historical figure did first.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at May 16, 2008 12:52 AM | Comments (11)

 

Joe Biden calls bullshit on George Bush

Filed under: Bullshit

The polite media can't say it, but you can't be too prudish when your paper has sex ads in the back. Yes, Joe Biden said bullshit.

Not "bullsh*t" or "a barnyard expletive." Joe Biden called bullshit.

He was referring to President Bush's thinly veiled swipe at Barack Obama in which the president compared the Democratic nominee to a Nazi appeaser.

In Israel, no less.

So Joe Biden called bullshit. Here is the full text:

“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” Biden said angrily in a brief interview just off the Senate floor.

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 15, 2008 6:53 PM | Comments (1)

 

Jerry Falwell: Still Dead

Filed under: Shameless Whores

The only thing lower than kicking a man when he’s down is kicking a man when he’s dead. So we should note up front that we’re about to tread pretty damn low here.

But so what? Come to think of it, with the imbecilicities embodied by Falwell still infecting the American consciousness (and threatening to crush John McCain’s frail little mole shoulders), I can’t think of a good reason why we shouldn’t unearth Falwell’s decomposing corpse, kick it around a bit, and shake the maggots out. (Maybe feed ‘em to robo-pastor Joel Osteen’s ravenous, outsized ego.)

So to mark the one year anniversary of Jerry Falwell’s expiration, we share this heartfelt tribute to the only man who’s ever made Pat Robertson look sane by comparison. Nevermind Wright and Hagee. On to bigger Jesus fish to fry . . .

The general consensus among the journalists responsible for the mawkish obituaries that littered newsstands one year ago was that Falwell, for all his unrepentant depravity, was redeemed to a certain extent because he was utterly sincere in the mind-bending, honky-baiting twaddle he propagated.

Who knows? Maybe he was. Maybe his insanity was so complete that he actually believed that the ACLU and the pagans and the feminists were responsible for 9/11. Maybe he was speaking from whatever black, pus-filled organ that passed for his heart when he warned, “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.” Maybe. But issues regarding the man’s sincerity are irrelevant.

What is relevant is that Jerry Laymon Falwell has slid off this mortal plane and that the world is a better, saner place because of it. His bizarre sermons—no matter how varied in topic, scope, or tone—always had one thing in common: the unstated goal of these jabberings was to transmogrify the worst in human nature (stupidity, bigotry, mindless fanaticism) into unassailable virtues and to take the best traits demonstrated by mankind (love of truth, reason, sense of liberty, instinct for progress) and transform them into sinful proclivities and sources of shame.

From his bully pulpit, he compelled his sheep to cast aside their logic and critical thinking, to disregard notions of sensible tolerance, to embrace mind-poisoning fairy tales, to regard as evil all manifestations of happiness/pleasure, and to submit their wills to his marauding herd of yokels. In short, to renounce their virtues and to sully life itself.

It is impossible to conjure any means or ends more evil than the above mentioned. Falwell was not merely a symptom of evil, he was an embodiment of evil— a leering, lurching mascot of every deficiency plaguing our species ad infinitum. Power lust? Check. Willful deceit? Check. Propagation of hate? Check. Of ignorance? Check. War-mongering? Check. Aversion to reason and science? Double-check.

His power-lust—and the mystic swill he spat to that end—was borne from a striking lack of integrity, independence, and intellect. Unable to raise himself to even the remotest level of self-respectability, he sought instead to reduce other men to superstitious animals. In lieu of generating his own ideas, he digested archaic religious dogmas and shat their distilled poisons unto his victims. Simply smear some tripe on your resume about being a “spokesman for God” and you, too, can attain reasonable wealth without having to endure the toils of honest work. And while it would be merciful to paint his victims as mere innocents swindled by forces beyond their ken, it wouldn’t be just.

Let’s not mince words or fear accusations of elitism: Jerry Falwell’s followers were a discomforting assortment of excitable and dim-witted rustic rabble. With their fetish for victimhood and flare for melodramatics, they constantly mewled and complained that a nefarious element (be it the “liberal” media, academia, the Jews, Hollywood, homosexuals, immigrants, etc.) sought to “destroy their way of life,” a phrase they defined and redefined at their convenience, depending on the “aggressor” at hand. A sinister legion of baffled white males was thence able to play the victim card, despite having been granted, by birth, every conceivable societal advantage in the history of human folly. There are few things on this planet sorrier than a 35-year-old Georgia cracker pointing to his Confederate flag-emblazoned T-shirt, bitching about his stake in life, and rambling vaguely about “rebel pride.”

These are the kin Falwell and his ilk have wrought, the half-wits John Hagee continues to pander to, and the votes McCain will need to shore up in order to win the presidency. It’s difficult to watch Larry the Cable Guy today and not envision him as the love-child of a decadent love tryst between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson circa 1966.

The image of Pat Robertson perched nude on a pulpit in such a position to better receive Jerry Falwell’s seed is not a pleasant image for a sane person to ponder. Both men are objectively ghoulish. And their mutual ghoulishness, it could be argued, is no coincidence.

It’s been said that a man’s face is a window into his soul. Jerry Falwell provided favorable evidence for this aphorism. More over, his entire body had a languid plumpness to it and was aptly shaped like a rotting pear. His skin was a sickly, pasty hue that hung from his frame like a flaccid, water-logged tarp. The poor bastard no doubt suffered from malaise, of both mind and spirit. His condescending smirk and smug eyes betrayed a degree of self-loathing rivaled only by Dick Cheney’s.

His incurable self-loathing should come as no surprise. The Reverend was such a grotesque caricature of self-righteous chicanery that—even as his heart pumped its last fatally sporadic beat and the final images of a squandered existence evaporated in the synapses of his withering brain—there is no doubt that even Jerry Falwell hated Jerry Falwell.

Posted by Matt Snyders at May 15, 2008 7:18 AM | Comments (8)

 

Grand Old Party Animals

Filed under: Republican National Convention

Let’s face it: Outside of rodeos, high-end brothels, and airport bathrooms, conservatives are notoriously inept partiers. For one, they tend to dance like malnourished chimpanzees (assuming they’ve had more than three Coors Light and there’s no television set nearby to distract them) and are more likely to be seen banning fun than having it.

As Ted Haggard will tell you, when right-wingers really want to get down, it’s time to get bipartisan. Which is to say it’s time to place a begrudging call to the wild-eyed liberal they roomed with freshman year of college, the one dude with “connections,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Or, in Haggard’s case, a gay prostitute who also peddles crystal meth (What’s known in the business as a “triple threat.”)

So it should be no surprise that the first—first!—explicit, unequivocal Republican call-for-unity in seven years comes in the form of “the official line of RNC clothing,” more specifically a t-shirt depicting a harmonious donkey and elephant joining together to hold a sign reading, “Let’s Party!”

I think I speak for every Twin Cities non-Republican when I say: “Fuck off.”

Sure, whenever it’s politically expedient, conservatives will whip Middle America into a pants-shitting fear-frenzy about those dastardly immoral liberals, what with their Mary Juana, naughty language, and race music. But when it comes time for them to cavort, their tone transforms into calculated “can’t-we-all-just-get-a-bong?” pish posh.

No more.

We reject your clumsy call for unity! We scoff at your contrived cooperative façade! We heathens are hereby on strike! (And, no, we’re not going to keep the bars open an extra two hours just so you can work up the liquid courage to call an escort service. You can’t have your Puritanical superstitions and drink them, too.)

Now leave us alone. If you really need us, we’ll be over here hitting on your daughter.

Posted by Matt Snyders at May 14, 2008 2:38 PM | Comments (1)

 

Convention Fact Check: Rumors and Realities

Filed under: Republican National Convention

Pretty much from the moment in September 2006 when the Republicans unveiled plans to congregate in the Twin Cities for their shindig to mark the passing of the red telephone from George W. Bush to the party's new standard-bearer, speculation has swirled around the Great Event.

We now know, of course, that the Republican National Convention will be held at the Xcel Energy Center, from September 1 through the 4th. We're fairly certain that John McCain, barring health issues, will give a triumphant speech. And we're happy to report that scuttlebutt about large advance orders of tri-colored balloons, confetti, and bunting has been confirmed.

But what about all the rest? Here's a quick rundown of some of the rumors circulating around the convention, along with the realities.

* Will protesters be herded into a pen to shout their slogans miles from their intended targets?

No, says St. Paul's assistant police chief Matt Bostrom.

"The city of St. Paul is a free-speech zone," Bostrom said. "I say that proudly. I was disappointed when I saw what Boston did (in handling protesters at the 2004 Democratic Convention). I don't understand this idea of putting people in a pen someplace so they can express themselves. That's not the way we will do things."

* Will St. Paul bars be allowed to stay open until 4 a.m. to suck extra profit from visiting flat-taxers interested in spending their nights getting shit-faced?

Not on our watch, said the St. Paul City Council, by a narrow 4-3 vote.

"It would be nothing short of a nightmare," said Council Member Dave Thune, whose Second Ward includes downtown. He said he wants to spare downtown residents the sight of "puking Republican lobbyists" in the streets.

* Will the Secret Service shut down the vast network of tunnels connecting caves alongside the Mississippi to the basements of downtown St. Paul?

Well, yeah. But wouldn't you?

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS first reported on the tunnel systems in 2005. According to St. Paul city employees, there are places people could go and wreak havoc.

From caves along the river, to manhole covers—if you know what you’re doing, you could wind up downtown, in places touching the foundations of secured buildings.

"We are going to use a variety of means to secure those," said St. Paul Police Assistant Chief Matt Bostrom.

* And what about that homeless shelter, anyway? Will it be shut down for the convention?

Let's take a closer look at this one. In case you haven't heard, St. Paul's hockey-rink-cum-convention-center sits directly across the street from one of the Twin Cities' largest refuges for the homeless. The Dorothy Day Center, run by Catholic Charities, houses nearly 200 people per night. And because the security cordon around the convention has yet to be made public, speculation is rife that the shelter will fall within the perimeter, and that all those living at the shelter will be displaced.

This theory was explored by MPR last year in a story quoting three homeless folks staying at the shelter who worried that they'd get kicked to the curb.

"That's the whole idea is to make sure that none of us go over there, to harass the people or to panhandle, or anything like that," says [a homeless shelter guest]. "That's what they're more worried about, us going over there and pandhandling or harassing the people cause it makes them look bad."

Erin Dady, who said I could identify her as St. Paul's convention czar (her actual title is St. Paul Marketing Coordinator, as well as Director of Convention Planning), says such rumors are wildly overstated.

"I just don’t understand how this has been a story for two years," she says. "It blows my mind."

As it turns out, Dady was quoted in that MPR story confirming "the possibility" that the center could be within the security perimeter.

But as Dady explains it--and as she insists she explained it when MPR asked the same question more than a year ago--the center will almost certainly fall outside of the core perimeter, meaning that no one working or staying at the shelter would need a special security clearance or a photo ID to come and go from the building. However, she adds, the shelter is highly likely to be within the no-driving zone.

Should Catholic Charities decide it's too much of a pain to keep the center open during the convention, Dady says, the city will help find somewhere else for all the homeless to stay.

As for Catholic Charities, spokeswoman Rebecca Lentz says the organization will make no decisions until the perimeter--determined by the Secret Service together with the St. Paul PD--has been publicly announced.

Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at May 13, 2008 3:00 PM | Comments (0)

 

In bed with Republicans: Hillary Clinton cheats on the Democratic party UPDATED

Filed under: Primary

It was widely believed that if Hillary Clinton lost Indiana as well as North Carolina, she would be forced to exit the race. Now comes word in the new issue of Time that the only reason Hillary won Indiana was because of Republican shenanigans:

Clinton's slim margin of victory in Indiana was provided, appropriately enough, by Republicans, who were 10% of the Democratic-primary electorate and whose votes she carried 54% to 46% — some, perhaps, at the behest of the merry prankster Rush Limbaugh, who had counseled his ditto heads to bring "chaos" to the Democratic electoral process by voting for their favorite whipping girl. Clinton's new glow, her newfound stump proficiency, her symbiosis with Limbaugh, seemed an eerily Faustian narrative. But, as we know, those sorts of bargains tend to end badly.

The worst part about it is, she's not even repentent. Indeed, the Verbatim page in the front of the book features a quote from Hillary celebrating and joking about it:

'He's always had a crush on me.'

HILLARY CLINTON, on conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who called for Republicans to vote for Clinton as a way of keeping Democrats divided

Bill only cheated on his wife. Hillary is cheating on the entire Democratic party.

UPDATE: Last night, Saturday Night Live turned on Hillary. Here's the clip:

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 11, 2008 6:12 PM | Comments (2)

 

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