Rick Perry vs World

27 September 2007

That Oklahoma State coach

I'd go play for that Oklahoma State coach in a heartbeat.

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/07 01:45 AM | Comments (1)

26 September 2007

Wah wah wah

From the "08 is going to suck if you're a Republican" files, check out Professors R Squared.

It's a good time to be a Democrat. Can I switch parties? Heh. Winning is more fun than losing.

Posted by Evan @ 09/26/07 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

Back to the future with Barack Obama

Barack Obama unveiled his Social Security solution today. It's a class warfare tax increase, aka the return of Walter Mondale. Why am I not surprised?

Proposals of this sort lead to more poverty in the long run. That's sad, whether out of ignorance or expedience.

Posted by Evan @ 09/26/07 01:02 AM | Comments (0)

24 September 2007

Bill White (D-NJ)

One of the most intriguing things to me will be how Texas Democrats will choose to deal with the unsavory lack of good government in Bill White's administration when he runs for governor. Anglo liberals do often pride themselves as being goo goos, after all. [No aspersions cast with those words, by the way.]

Let's review the actions of just the last year:

First, there was the time White extorted money from the center for mentally disadvantaged. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

Then he failed to get full value for selling a city street to a developer.

And most recently, White pushed through an extension for an exclusive right to food concessions at terminal C of IAH. No competitive bidding, no sunshine, nothing. You might not be surprised to learn that the holder of the concession has given money to Mayor White and councilmembers.

Man. I don't like it when Houston reminds me of New Jersey.

Posted by Evan @ 09/24/07 06:20 AM | Comments (2)

Make this man POTUS!

Apparently, the leader of France gets America better than most of the people running for president:

"I want to tell the American people that the French people are their friends," he said. "We are not simply allies. We are friends. I am proud of being a friend of the Americans. You know, I am saying this to The New York Times, but I have said it to the French, which takes a little more courage and is a little more difficult. I have never concealed my admiration for American dynamism, for the fluidity of American society, for its ability to raise people of different identities to the very highest levels."

Sarkozy defended his decision to summer in America, and not somewhere in France, saying, "I don't see why I should have given up going to the United States because a small part of the French elite professes an anti-Americanism that in no way corresponds to what the French people think — in no way at all."

He listed all the things that appealed to him during his two-week vacation: the countryside, the shopping malls, the restaurants, swimming in the lake, jogging in the woods while his 10-year-old son rode his bike alongside him. "I loved the kindness and simplicity of the people," Sarkozy said.

Posted by Evan @ 09/24/07 12:32 AM | Comments (0)

23 September 2007

Gee, great

As if the Republicans didn't have enough to deal with this cycle, the House leaders are fighting with each other:

The struggle over the NRCC's direction is less about a rivalry between [House Minority Leader John] Boehner and [NRCC Chair Tom] Cole, who meet daily, than it was a unified decision by members of the elected leadership to force some operational changes at the campaign committee.

If I recall correctly, he's not raising enough money, but that may not be his fault. Nonetheless, I trust Cole to run the campaign much more than I trust the others.

Posted by Evan @ 09/23/07 08:27 PM | Comments (1)

Recreant expedience

Marc Ambinder links approvingly to this Matt Yglesias post arguing that the Moveon ad wasn't that big a deal:

I completely agree with the dread DC Establishment that calling General Petraeus "General Betrayus" was dumb. That said, I'm staggered by the amount of emphasis that people inside this town are placing on this. One virtue of having moved to the Beltway is that I can tell you, the reader, a thing or to about the mood here and that while you might think the reverse is true, the truth of the matter is that the left-of-center establishment is being restrained in terms of expressing its absolutely fury at MoveOn over this. People seem to really think that this was not merely a misstep, but a huge blunder of world-historical proportions.

As best I can tell, it's all basically bull**** [censoring mine to avoid Google safesearch restrictions --Evan]. The whole fracas of Petraeus, Crocker, MoveOn, etc. has had, to a good first approximation, no impact whatsoever on anything of any significance. Bush continues to be stubborn. Republicans continue to back Bush. The war continues to go poorly and continues to be unpopular. There was nothing else that ever could have happened. A bunch of editors and politicians talked themselves into believing that this September showdown was crucially significant, but they were all wrong and their theory never made any sense.

My feeling is that Yglesias is wrong. It seems to me that Democrats were slowly chipping away at the votes necessary to sustain the war. There are plenty of Republican senators and congressman who are nervous about facing the electorate in 2008...and for good reason. If Democrats had just kept holding votes, they would've probably ended the war, because there were quite a few votes that were getting increasingly tentative as the election draws nearer. If you think senators like Norm Coleman aren't hearing the "Norm Coleman votes with President Bush 97% of the time" ads in his head....you're crazy.

What the Moveon ad did was give Republicans a reason to believe that perhaps they wouldn't be as politically hurt by their votes as they had expected (whether they are right or not is another question). This is why the media thinks that Republicans were guilty of faux outrage, which isn't so. Yes, the Republicans were acting in self-interest in making it an issue. Republicans were looking to rally around something that they could take to the American people.

When a liberal interest group charges an Army general with betrayal of his country (or appears to do so), that's a big deal. When the Democrats running for president -- the de facto leaders of the Democratic party -- refuse to condemn the ad for fear of angering that liberal interest group, that's a big deal. It's quite dangerous to send a message to our current military and the children who might be our military in the future that you can serve honorably and be condemned for your actions in uniform.

The Moveon ad crossed the line. Yes, the rest of the ad wasn't as bad as the headline, but it was the headline that sent the message. The Democrats running for president all missed their chance for a "Sister Souljah" moment by choosing political expedience over standing up for the men and women in uniform. A pity for them, and for America.

Posted by Evan @ 09/23/07 08:04 PM | Comments (0)

Hook 'em, Perry

Thought experiment: how would Texas politics be different if Perry went to UT instead of being an Aggie?

Posted by Evan @ 09/23/07 07:36 PM | Comments (1)

Ratcliffe, Chron:

San Antonio lawyer Mikal Watts on Thursday lent his Democratic U.S. Senate campaign another $3.69 million — bringing to $7.5 million the total amount of personal money Watts has put into his run.

After he gave and loaned his campaign a combined $3.8 million in June, Watts announced that he was willing to put another $6.8 million of his own money into the effort to unseat incumbent John Cornyn.

Lawyer from the Valley self-funds campaign in attempt to unseat Republican incumbent. I think I've seen that headline before. Watts only has about $70 million to go before he'll match Tony Sanchez.

Posted by Evan @ 09/23/07 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

If Nick Lampson's consultants had written this Michelle Mittelstadt Chron article, they probably wouldn't have thought the editors would let them get away with it:

Texas members of Congress parsed the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus on Monday for the facts they wanted: Republicans focused on successes of the military buildup, Democrats on the Iraqi government's failure to achieve political reforms crucial to stability.

The closely watched testimony by Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared to do little, if anything, to shift the positions of the state's two GOP senators and the five Republican and four Democratic House members from the Houston area.

In an arena where the legislative battle lines have been drawn mostly along partisan boundaries — Democrats pressing for troop withdrawal deadlines and benchmarks, Republicans against them — only one of the Texans appeared to fit in neither camp.

Rep. Nick Lampson, a Stafford Democrat, is working with both parties to find common ground.

"There are those who advocate an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. And there are those who want to send in more troops and continue with an open-ended commitment," Lampson said in a prepared statement. "Somewhere in the middle exists a practical and realistic solution that honors the commitment and sacrifice of our troops. That is type of solution I will support and work towards."

Posted by Evan @ 09/23/07 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

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