We asked our readers to come up with a caption for this amusing newswire photo: The winner: "I've decided to deposit my young in Huckabee's skull. Tie him down!" Thanks to Ken Raymond for that one. He'll be getting a free copy of the new I Drew This book.
2nd place: "YOU! Cake or death?" Submitted by Gabe. What can we say? We can't pass up a good Eddie Izzard reference.
3rd place:In New Hampshire last week, Senator McCain was outraged at the other candidates' continued refusal to acknowledge Republican debates as a form of torture. Submitted by Patrick J. Rooney.
We should also acknowledge the large number of you who sent in variations on the "pull my finger" theme. That so many of you were thinking along those lines is truly, uhm, startling.
We had a lot of fun reviewing all the submissions. Thanks to everyone who participated.
I heard Paul Begala say something on NPR to the effect that at least with John McCain and Mike Huckabee, you know they stick to their principles. You may not like the policies they advocate, but you have to respect them. Mitt Romney, by contrast, is a big phony.
Which is true as far as it goes, and it's certainly not the first time I've heard someone say something like that. But I don't think it automatically follows that a president with the courage of his or her convictions is better for the country than one who isn't.
Broadly speaking, my first choice for president would be someone who has the courage of convictions I agree with. Second is someone who advocates policies I like, but is malleable. Third is someone who advocates policies I don't like, but is malleable, so at least might do the right thing under public pressure. Dead last is someone who has the courage of convictions I strongly disagree with.
George W. Bush is in that last category, which is why no amount of public pressure has changed his Iraq policy. If we had a president whose convictions were more influenced by political expedience, like Mitt Romney, he'd quite probably have caved by now.
Of course I don't want Mitt Romney to be president, but he's clearly got flexible principles and a willingness to pander to the electorate, so if we had to have a Republican president again (shudder), Romney would be more likely to sometimes do things I like than a genuine right-wing ideologue like McCain or Huckabee.
The Seattle P.I., whose editors seem to have a good eye for wire photos, ran this one of Romney, McCain, and Huckabee alongside a story about the GOP debate in New Hampshire: Now, this is just begging for a caption contest. So, email your best line (just one entry per person, please) to caption@gull.us. The one that makes us laugh the hardest will get a free copy of the new I Drew This book.
dday, over on Digby's blog, in a post about the Bloomberg/Schwarzenegger/etc. call for "bipartisanship and an end to "partisan bickering," said this:
"Let's everybody get along" is a transparent way to not say "Let's everyone do what I say" when that's the actual meaning.
That sentence in particular stood out for me (thought the whole post is worth your time).
It's worth mentioning because it reminds me of alleged "postpartisans" and calls for "bipartisanship" at least throughout my own political lifetime.
After the 2000 election, the airwaves were filled, for months and months, with calls for the Democrats to put the ugliness of the 2000 election aside, in a spirit of "unity" and "bipartisanship," and just do everything the new president said to do. For some reason, this did not mean the guy who had just stolen the presidency after losing the popular vote had to listen to anything any Democrat said.
After 9/11, it got even worse. You could barely turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper without hearing that now was not the time for partisanship and we should all just line up behind the president and his policies, which--surprise!--meant Bush had a long period in which he could enact much more extreme policies than the public would ever ordinarily have supported, because criticism of anything he did exposed the critic to accusations of insufficient bipartisanship.
Today, the hero of the "bipartisanship" fetishists seems to be Michael Bloomberg, a neoconservative longtime war supporter.
You know what? I don't actually think "excessive partisanship" is a problem. The parties argue because they have different ideas, and that's just how the national debate works: people actually, you know, debate.
But even if it is, why does "bipartisanship" always mean Democrats have to do everything the Republicans want, and never the opposite? When someone proposes the two sides actually meet in the middle and both make concessions, instead of one side being called on to just capitulate in the name of unity, maybe I'll at least take that proposal seriously.
Some of the FBI's wiretaps have been getting disconnected. The problem? No, it's not protests from civil libertarians or lawsuits from the ACLU. It's the FBI's failure to pay its phone bills.
This undermines the phone companies' arguments that they were just looking out for the good of the country when they allowed the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, doesn't it? It seems their patriotism is conditional, after all — not on getting a warrant, but on getting paid.
Bipartisanship. It's a word that's in the air again, lately. On Monday, a group of moderate Democrats, Republicans, and independents met in a bipartisan forum at the University of Oklahoma. They argued that the nation is in trouble, and the only way to fix it is for politicians to come together in a spirit of compromise. Some members have previously called for a "unity ticket" consisting of presidential and vice presidential candidates from different parties, and Mike Bloomberg, who also participated, appears to be gearing up for an independent run for president.
Now, while I actually agree with most of the issues this group lists as national problems, I'm suspicious of the timing of their appearance. We recently saw six years of highly divisive, partisan rule by the Republicans -- where were these people then? And now that the Democrats are starting to claw some power back, suddenly a group appears calling for compromise? It all seems a little fishy. Frankly, I don't believe what the country needs right now is for Democrats to compromise their principles and neuter their agenda in order to appease the Republicans, and in my experience that's inevitably what "bipartisanship" really means.
I'm also not convinced bipartisanship is inherently a good thing. I see little evidence that it leads to good legislation. NAFTA, the USA PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War Resolution, McCain-Feingold -- all of these were bipartisan bills that, in hindsight, don't look like such great ideas after all.
Bipartisanship is a sucker bet. I want the Democrats to grow spines and stand up for their agenda, even if that makes them appear "partisan." I realize this may prove uncomfortable for those who host inside-the-beltway cocktail parties, but some things are more important to the nation than everyone in Washington getting along.
I was an Edwards bird, myself, or would have been if they let out-of-state eagles vote in Iowa. But, I have no problem with Barack Obama winning. There's much to like about Obama too. I could proudly vote for him in the general. Clinton too, for that matter.
That's the strength of our field: we have a bunch of good candidates. A lot of us are nearly as happy with our third choice as our first. Republicans have no such luck this time out. Most of them can't even seem to find a first choice they like, and those who can seem to loathe all the other candidates--Huckabee's middle-class evangelicals and Rudy's secular Muslim-haters have surprisingly little in common. Their coalition has fractured, and ours is coming together.
And, if being unified and inspired is the goal, it's hard to do better than Barack Obama. If you haven't seen his victory speech, watch it and just try not to feel hopeful and inspired at the end of it:
The man is a tremendously inspiring speaker. His youth (he's 46, young by presidential standards) gives his candidacy an air of sweeping out the thick cobwebs of the Bush years; he gives you something inspiring to vote for, which is a nice contrast to the Republicans, who won in 2004 by scaring the shit out of everybody.
And, apparently, that message had powerful appeal to the tens of thousands of first-time caucus goers; obviously Obama has a rare gift for bringing the young, the cynical and the previously disengaged into the political process. I salute him for it. And, I salute him for knowing in 2002, in real time, that the war was a terrible mistake, and saying so. Neither of his chief rivals can make that claim.
The reasons I wouldn't have voted for him, at least not with Edwards as an alternative? He turned me off a little bit by repeating some old talking points about how we must do something about social security. Look, Barack, we worked hard to get that issue off the table. Let's not raise it again.
Also, at least from what I've read I think both Edwards and Clinton are more likely to push for genuine universal health care than Obama is (although he's better on that issue than any of the Republicans, by an enormous margin).
And as susceptible as I am to inspiration, for me, Obama's "let's all believe in things" message was not as appealing as Edwards's "let's fight the bastards" message. I've spent the last seven years the way most politically engaged sane people have: stewing in impotent rage. I want to fight. I don't want to find common ground with the forces that brought us Bush's America. I want to crush them flat. They can't be dealt with in good faith and they obviously interpret compromise as weakness. Before we can make peace with the Republicans we have to smash the elements in their movement that have been trying for years to smash us, and will keep trying to do so no matter how nice we are. And of the top tier candidates, Edwards alone seems to get that.
Nevertheless, for a long time Obama was my preferred candidate, and not just because he's such an inspiring speaker. No, my reason was actually much more cynical (ironically).
Basically, at the time I thought John McCain would be the Republican nominee, and McCain has always gotten ridiculously positive coverage. (He's frequently described in what are supposed to be objective accounts as a "straight-talker" or a "maverick"--try to think of any other candidate who can get the press to mindlessly parrot his campaign slogans like that.) So, I reasoned, our best shot at victory was to nominate the candidate on our side who the press also seems to like.
Obama seems to have charmed the media into giving him decent coverage at least so far. Which is not true of Clinton or Edwards. I hate that we have a media culture founded on social-climbing high school groupthink, but we do, and we have to deal with that. And, with McCain again looking like at least a minor threat (a lot of the media talking head types are feverishly trying to hype his fourth-place finish behind Sleepy Fred Thompson as a McCain juggernaut, and should he win New Hampshire, I guess it's on), maybe we still have to think about that.
Here's the thing, though. They're going to slime whoever we nominate.
It's pointless to try to nominate a candidate with no baggage. We've tried that. Wasn't that basically the rationale for John Kerry? He was an experienced political veteran and a war hero. Very few people found John Kerry exciting, but we thought he was a safe candidate. But the right manufactured some baggage for him, and the media went right along with it. Remember those purple heart band-aids at the '04 convention? Repulsive, but this is what we have to expect.
And that, I'm afraid, is an argument for Hillary Clinton, probably the strongest argument for her. No one knows more about what it's like to face the right-wing slime machine, and a media willing to mindlessly repeat everything that comes out of it. She's been facing it since 1992. There's nothing new they can say about Hillary, and if they did find something everyone would yawn. "Been there, done that."
Obama is a newer figure on the scene, so people aren't used to hearing things about him in the same way. And, if you look around, you can already see which particular low road they're going to take if Obama is the nominee: double-barrel racism. They're going to package fear of Muslims with fear of blacks.
I think it's worth imagining a certain scenario. Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee -- and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008.
Gee, what "certain segments" does Jonah think are one electoral defeat away from becoming a bunch of violent savages?
And yet, right-wing blog luminaries like Instapundit and Michelle Malkin link approvingly to Goldberg's startlingly racist prediction. Silly little birds like me thought maybe the main racist card in this deck would be the anti-Muslim one. And, apparently, that's still in the deck too.
Is Hussein Obama the weakest Dem for the General election?
By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.
Hussein's exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope. . . .
As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.
Is that unhinged and brain-dead? Of course it is. And it's precisely the kind of racist smear we're going to hear for the next ten months, if Obama's the nominee. Be prepared. Hating and sliming is basically all they do, and, staring into the pitiless void of political oblivion, they're going to hit whoever we nominate with whatever they have. We need to be ready.
Some of the FBI's wiretaps have been getting disconnected. The problem? No, it's not protests from civil libertarians or lawsuits from the ACLU. It's the 
