Motley Moose – Archive

Hello. My name is Rick Santorum. I believe the fundamentals of the economy are strong. I also believe I am doing a great job as a Senator, and my name is not a very interesting slang word. It’s 1997, right?

What’s on your mind?

I am beginning a new blog that deals with individuals and communities that identify around some aspect of Sex, Gender or Body.  I have pasted a copy below of a post I just published on my blog.

I hope that it is not in bad form to announce it here on an existing community blog.  Since this blog focuses on politics, and my new one will only deal with politics as it pertains to the larger body of conversations on SGB, I do not believe that I am undermining this blog’s reader base.  If anyone has an objection to my posting this, please let me know and I delete this entry.

– gadfly

For those of you that did not catch this earlier, this is too rich not to share. I will try to find the entire clip and post, if able. Ari Fleischer visited Chris Matthews today.

I wished Chris would have pointed out that Saddam Hussein never attacked the United States a first time.

Ah. Here is the long version. This is why I like Matthews. WARNING Really long tubes ahead…but worth the time.

It worked for Reagan. It even worked for Nixon. Do you think if they lie long enough and hard enough, any of us will buy this? The sad truth is, maybe.

For those of you that did not catch this earlier, this is too rich not to share. I will try to find the entire clip and post, if able.

I wished Chris would have pointed out that Saddam Hussein never attacked the United States a first time.

Ah. Here is the long version. This is why I like Matthews. WARNING Really long tubes ahead…but worth the time.

I grew up in the country. I would not be exaggerating when I say that my entire family hunts…I actually just polished off some venison jerky that my grandfather sent me the other day. Being in touch with the land we live in–even if it means sitting in a tree stand for hours on end in the frigid cold–is a necessary part of life for many Americans, as it should be. Behind all the computers and fast food and highway systems is the land our forefathers first settled on and made a living off. We cannot forget that.

I am also a progressive, today. There’s obviously no secret to that–I am the young, journeying progressive, and I love it.

Meghan McCain is on the Rachel Maddow show right now, and while at this moment I don’t know the specifics of her political views I like her already.  I think I have just seen in her the next face of the GOP, and it gives me Hope for a rational two-sided discourse in future American politics.  In fact, Meghan McCain just showed me more about the current GOP than I have gleaned from (far too many) hours of watching their antics in past weeks.

Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are not only not the future of the Republican Party, they  aren’t even the present.

Meet the Next GOP:

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

If you are a Republican its been a busy week. First, David Frum weighed in on everyone’s favourite political analyst Rush Limbaugh and basically… tore him a new one…

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Oh snap.  

Some conservatives felt Frum’s piece didn’t go far enough.  

“He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise…”

Respect your closet cases, if you want to.  As long as you need the yahoos, you won’t be able to hide them.

David, you are capable of better political strategy than this.  How about open disavowal of the yahoos and an attempt to make the GOP into something relevant to America’s future, rather than a refuge for plutocrats and snake-handling fundamentalists.

The GOP, like the Liberals, have tarnished their brand for at least a decade.  You need to write off the true believers who think you lost because you were betrayed, or that the last election was a vast con job, and try to reestablish contact with the American people.

Heh.

Then if that weren’t enough RNC Chairman Michael Steele declared that abortion is an “individual choice.”  

L: How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your catholic faith, but by the fact that you were adopted?

M: Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that. I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it, uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.

L: Explain that.

M: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

L: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?

M: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

L: You do?

M: Yeah. Absolutely.

L: Are you saying you don’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

M: I think Roe v. Wade–as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.

L: Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?

M: The states should make that choice: that’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

Wow.

If you missed SNL this past weekend – here’s a bit of awesomeness that you should be sure to check out (not sure if the clip works – damn Canadian IP)

My nom de plume is slightly incorrect.  I am Happy TO BE in Vermont, not necessarily happy.  I honestly don’t know when I have ever been happy.  Don’t get me wrong, I have happy moments; even happy days.  They are generally far between.

A couple of weeks ago I was made miserable by a door – my neighbor’s front door to be exact.  It is a very nice door.  I think it has six window panes and it seems pretty solid.  I’ve knocked on it a couple of times out of necessity, though, not because I wanted to.  I hate that door.  I avoid looking at that door when I walk by.  If I could, I’d kick that door, hard.

That door, you see, has become the physical symbol of how utterly unimportant I am.

Norm Coleman has had several vote quests struck down by the Minnesota Second District Court, and Al Franken told a conference of Democratic Senators today that he can see a “light at the end of the tunnel.” I hope that means Al will be awarded certification on his seat by the Minnesota Court very soon. The Democrats need his vote to fight off the filibuster strength of the Republicans in the Senate.

In order to get a real sense of what’s happening, I spent time reading .pdf files at the Minnesota Second District Court web site this afternoon, and, going back a couple of weeks, it’s clear that Norm Coleman is  following every failed approach with a newer one… what he is doing is stalling and, I expect, it is stalling at the instruction of the Republican National Committee.

My ‘day job’ has me traveling today.  I am in rural MA, but I could be anywhere.  Looking at this hotel and the surrounding…um…civilisation, I am actually nowhere.  That has nothing to do with the city, though.  It has everything to do with the effect this economy is having on the people.