Category: Politics

by way of KRON-4:

O’Reilly reacted to San Franciscans approval of Proposition I, which discourages military recruiters on public high school and college campuses.

He advised President George W. Bush to react by withdrawing any military protection for the city. “…If al-Qaida comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead,” O’Reilly said.

On the one hand, jerky people are going to make jerky statements, and calling them out can make the jerks seem more important than they are.

On the other hand, it is important to call jerky people on their jerkiness, because silence can equal assent. And saying that it’s OK to bomb San Francisco is not OK.

Coit Tower, for those unfamiliar with it, is a memorial honoring San Francisco firefighters.

Tristero has a nice roundup of the election results here.

Shorter version: We didn’t win it all but we won quite a lot. I’m particuarly pleased by the Pennsylvania voters who threw out all 8 of the foolish school board members that had tried to get ID into the school curriculum.

It’s a good day to be a Democrat. But let’s not get cocky. The 2006 and 2008 elections will be much more important.

I don’t necessarily agree with the characterization of Venezuela’s leader but other than that this NY Times editorial is spot-on.

After President Bush’s disastrous visit to Latin America, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can’t afford an American government this bad for that long.

In Argentina, Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to relate to world leaders face to face, could barely summon the energy to chat with the 33 other leaders there, almost all of whom would be considered friendly to the United States under normal circumstances. He and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like the president of Venezuela to steal the show.

It’s amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

I’m guessing Markos isn’t snowed under with his book anymore, because he made some excellent points over at dKos today:

I wrote above that most progressives “agree on most things”, but there are probably few issues, if any, in which 100 percent of progressives agree. And such disagreements are not necessarily born of ignorance, or “using Rove’s talking points”, or being a “DINO”. But disagreements born from research and exploration and each individual’s varied life experiences. This is a reality in which we must operate and thrive, and it can’t be by forcing a party line on every single issue. Because really, who will set the party line? Who will enforce it?

I need to start a new category called “WTF?” to cover those achingly jaw-dropping loads of garbage unloaded onto an unsuspecting public by key political figures. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pulled one this morning on Meet The Press. No, I was not awake for it, but (un)fortunately my East Coast blogger bretheren were.

The arrogance is astonishing:

The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda