The Department of Peace isn't bad in all details, but is overall disconnected from reality
Was once quoted as not being able to think of any government program that should be cut, but I can't find it right now.
Well, yes, he's totally unelectable.
Not saying that Kucinich is gay or anything (last I knew, he was overchicked or something), but he sort of reminds me of Canada's Svend Robinson. Except that Svend was totally electable (until the theft scandal, that is).
It's not at all clear to me that we need to mock Kucinich on any grounds whatsoever. Why do their dirty for them, you know? Couldn't we just ignore him, or not pay him too much heed, or something?
Because Kucinich is, not to put a fine point on it, kind of a loon. He's the sort of dirty fucking hippie dirty fucking hippies make fun of*, and not just for his risible Department of Peace.
But that's what I mean, snarkout, he didn't really seem so loony in the interview. Although I'm not worried about doing anyone's dirty work, since I don't think the GOP is even saying anything about Kucinich. They're content to let the Democrats seem like the party of loons.
As a Californian with a bright and shiny new primary date, my vote counts more in the scheme of things than in previous years, and that means Kucinich counts more.
I look forward to his mailings.
Oysters oysters oysters split split split.
Dennis Kucinich is a guy who has a consistent record of standing up for the right thing, which everyone knows that serious people don't do. He was an amazingly gutty mayor of Cleveland, and is a fine Representative from a red (or at least purple) state.
Guys like Kucinich run for president not because they are deluded about the possibility of winning, but because they want to influence policy.
Well, okay, because they want to influence policy and impress chicks.
He seems naively optimistic and, well, too nice. I prefer a little dark fatalism in the people I elect.
Yeah, can anyone point out specifically what's supposed to be "loony" about Kucinich? Is it just that he's too openly at odds with the current lunatic intersection of militarism and profiteering that passes for much of American politics? What about the "Department of Peace" idea is supposed to be so evidently disconnected from reality -- is it that the idea of having a government department dedicated to conflict reduction is somehow unthinkable, or just that this idea presents too big a target for the right wing?
He's not batshit; as far as I know he hasn't attempted to recreate the Kennedy assassination in his backyard or offered delicious endangered salmon to militia members. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, he's not a terribly competent politician (Stephanie Tubb Jones seems to do a great deal more for the Cleveland area, and I've heard bad things about his constituent service), many of his campaign planks are absurd (outlaw handguns nationwide! repeal the WTO! make the workers powerful again!), and he's constantly pandering to the left fringe of the party. There's a place for someone like him in partisan politics, but c'mon. I don't want to celebrate a mediocre publicity hound who likes to toss ill-conceived platitudes around just because he's pandering to me and not the people who get the Texas GOP platform written for them, and I think more attention for him is probably bad for more substantive liberals in the Democratic party.
Given that the Department of Defense is in charge of planning and executing wars of conquest, I shudder to think of what the Department of Peace might end up doing. Why not rename Guantanamo to the Ministry of Love while we're at it?
Yeah, can anyone point out specifically what's supposed to be "loony" about Kucinich?
That he's running for President and he's ever uttered the words "Dept. of Peace." Whether it's a good idea or not is immaterial.
10 - No, it's that so many of his ideas read like they were written by Naderite undergraduates (or aren't there at all; here, for instance, is what Google returns as the result on his official campaign site when you search for "Kucinich health care plan").
Why not rename Guantanamo to the Ministry of Love while we're at it?
Because USAID has dibs on that name. Don't you read the papers?
As a necessary component of the living world, we must extend compassion to one another and to every living thing. Our mission as human beings can truly be to elevate this world from a condition of suffering and cruelty to the planet's creatures, and towards a condition of compassion and inherent respect. Through elevating the cause of every creature, we elevate our own humanity.
Dennis's opposition to assassinations loses all its meaning with this New Agey crap. Of course he's against killing Bin Laden, because Bin Laden is a necessary component of the living world. I want a peace candidate who can convince me that his policies are a good idea without reference to the interconnection of all living things. Maybe Gravel is that candidate.
(This text is snipped from the portion of his campaign webpage that explains why the Department of Peace would be concerned with animal welfare.)
His platform -- even the Department of Peace -- seems more admirable than risible, however unelectable he is. It would be nice to have someone in the Democratic field stand up unequivocally for hippie shit like peace, environmental protection, universal health care and living wages.
Anyway, who's loonier, Dennis Kucinich or Bill Maher? Kucinich has a lovely and right-thinking wife; Maher used to go out with Ann Coulter. Advantage: Kucinich.
12: outlaw handguns nationwide! repeal the WTO! make the workers powerful again!
These are all insane things? AFAICT the WTO is pretty much a disaster, the low ebb of labour right is a serious problem, and there is good reason to want to outlaw handguns.
14: Whether it's a good idea or not is immaterial.
Well, we've just spent six years watching the results of a politics where it's immaterial whether ideas are good or not, right? Is this an indictment of Kucinich or the people sniggering at him?
These are all insane things? AFAICT the WTO is pretty much a disaster, the low ebb of labour right is a serious problem, and there is good reason to want to outlaw handguns.
As stated, they are all rather out of the scope of both his jurisdiction and practical possibility, aren't they?
Meanwhile, if I see one more person praise him for having a pretty wife, I'm afraid I'm going to have an attack of humorless.
15, 17: I can see taking presentation into account, to a certain extent, in voting for him. I don't see that as a case for talking about him as some kind of fringe figure.
He's outside the mainstream, but is that all people mean by loony? I thought there was something more damning there.
I'm going to have an attack of humorless
But it's Dennis. He looks so funny, and she's so pretty...
I think he's treated a fringe figure because he's at 1% in the polls, rather than being at 1% in the polls because he's treated as a fringe figure.
23 me. And for what it's worth, redheads from Britain are conditioned early-on to think of themselves as ugly and freakish.
19 - Outlawing handguns nationwide is probably un-constitutional and certainly a good way to ensure that we send a bunch of fairly populist Congressman back home. "Make the workers powerful again" is a fine slogan, but I don't trust Kucinich as a substantive politician. Ignoring his checkered history in Cleveland, here are some of the things he wedges into his proposed Department of Peace:
* Development of an educational media program to promote non-violence in the domestic media,
* Establishment of a national Peace Day,
* Expansion of the national Sister City program,
* Also, making recommendations regarding:
1. Battered women's rights,
2. Animal rights
Those are all fine (except the first one), but he's a giant freshman dorm bull session, wrapped in a crunchy New Age shell. He's a lousy politician. God forbid I look for a solid liberal who's a good one.
He's treated like a fringe figure because he looks like an elf and talks about "the planet's creatures."
1 - washerdreyer, what government programs would you cut?
20: What if we praise him for having a wife with a prettier-than-usual* myspace page? (Somehow the picture there makes them both appear funny-looking.)
* Meaning, of course, not cringe-inducing-ly hideous.
My family is chock full of redheads from Britain. None of them has married a New Age gnome yet.
It's full of wisdom, like "That which we focus upon, we draw to us and make manifest." I tried that with her picture, but it didn't work.
26: No, he married someone who looks like an elf. He looks like a hobbit, or gnome.
Part of my crankitude here is that Dennis represents a metro area containing a decaying city full of poor minorities who are absolutely, totally fucked, and I've only lived here a few years, but I've gotten the sense that he's done nothing useful as a Congressman to try to help. It's not just the rainbows-and-unicorns stuff.
28: "prettier-than-usual myspace page" is semantically similar to "prettier-than-usual turd". Plus, any web page that plays music on load is reprehensible, risible, and stinky. That page alone dropped Kucinich 7% in my personal polling.
[from wikipedia]
His platform for 2008 includes:
* Creating a single-payer system of universal health care that provides full coverage for all Americans.
* The immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and replacing them with an international security force.
* Guaranteed quality education for all, including free pre-kindergarten and college for all who want it.
* Immediate withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
* Repealing the USA PATRIOT Act.
* Fostering a world of international cooperation.
* Abolishing the death penalty.
* Environmental renewal and clean energy.
* Preventing the privatization of social security.
* Providing full social security benefits at age 65.
* Creating a cabinet-level "Department of Peace"
* Ratifying the ABM Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol.
* Introducing reforms to bring about instant-runoff voting.
* Protecting a woman's right to choose while decreasing the number of abortions performed in the U.S.
* Ending the war on drugs.
* Legalizing same-sex marriage.
* Creating a balance between workers and corporations.
* Ending the H1B and L1 Visa Programs
* Restoring rural communities and family farms.
* Banning hand guns.
{Most of these are good ideas. The only ideas I don't like are things like withdrawal from WTO and Nafta and those are actually pretty popular.}
Katha Pollitt had a column outing him as having a fairly anti-choice record: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020527/pollitt
It's surely not why he's mocked but it is why I don't care for him much.
I thought I'd heard that he was anti-choice, but couldn't find where; thanks, leeann.
But if you think a guy who talks like this should be running for President as the public face of the left flank of the Democratic Party, more power to you:
Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends to return to spirit. The interchangeability of matter and spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: One with the universe. Whole and holy. From one source, endless creative energy, bursting forth, kinetic, elemental. We, the earth, air, water and fire-source of nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic spiraling.
I think we're talking past each other a bit, snarkout. I think we all grant that he's outside the mainstream and unelectable, but there's nothing here that's bad in the way the doctrine of pre-emptive war is bad, and that idea is mainstream.
His list of bullet-pointed priorities isn't facially ridiculous, but that doesn't mean all is hunky-dory with him. Someone whose political instincts are that screwy would make a phenomenally ineffective president.
26 nails it.
Given the war criminals on the other side, which dastardly villains are, I am sorry to say, not at all fringe figures (though they should have been hounded out of civil society at the earliest available opportunity, which opportunity has long since been lost, alas), I say we just ignore the likes of Kucinich. He's harmless enough, for all his New Age-y nonsense, and he's actually not crazy.
About 25, I'd have to say "whatever." I don't see what's to get worked up about that a candidate thinks America's domestic media could usefully do something other than constantly shout warwarwar fearfearfear. The American media right now is, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, pretty fucked up and surreal.
The criticism in 32, though, seems substantive. If Kucinich actually lacks a record of walking like he talks it, that's different. I don't know that much about his actual voting record, for instance...
Not naming obvious stuff like particular military programs or missile defense (since I can't find the quote, it's possible the question included a non-military proviso), I'd certainly want to a number of subsidies (farming and particularly the politically deadly ethanol), increase the use of the EITC relative to other forms of redistribution (which would correspondingly cut those other programs, I know AFDC has been cut quite a bit and am not sure what else I'm referring to, to be honest), and for a seat of the pants probably crazy one, defederalize airport security (cut the TSA), since it doesn't appear to be have done any good, though certainly I don't have numbers for that. This list sucks, sorry, and it even occurred to me that 27 was the obvious follow up when I wrote 1.
snarkout: "he's not a terribly competent politician"
In fact, he was a great mayor of Cleveland and is now a member of Congress. I am reminded of the quote by Thomas Dolby who, when he was called a one-hit wonder, said "Well, yes. How many hits have you had?"
How many political offices have you won? How many of them did you win after antagonizing powerful business interests?
I think we all grant that he's outside the mainstream and unelectable, but there's nothing here that's bad in the way the doctrine of pre-emptive war is bad, and that idea is mainstream.
I think that kind of shit is bad, as well as ridiculous, but true, it's not bad in the same way that our current administration is. I am sure my feelings on this are more vigorous because I live in Cuyahoga County.
44: Because of the way district boundaries are drawn, there are a number of House seats that are pretty easy for a mildly insane person to win. Doesn't make them any more than marginal figures.
I don't know much about his record in his district, but to be fair, Cleveland was pretty well fucked before Kucinich came along, and much of the rest of the rust belt hasn't been doing so well either.
He stepped back from all previous anti-choice positions in the course of '04 campaign.
I didn't grow up here, so I'll defer to pf if he has personal experience of the period, but Kucinich was a polarizing mayor who failed to maneuver out of a very difficult position he was left in by a free-spending predecessor, Republican financial interests, and an indifferent state government. On the other hand, the city went bankrupt under his watch, you know? And a panel of historians judged him the seventh-worst large-city mayor in American history.
Just because the guy makes himself look ridiculous doesn't mean that the media has to do the same. Why should Kucinich be the hippie-spacemonkey and GWB the guy you could have beers with, instead of GWB being the dry-drunk-jesus-freak-psychopath and Kucinich the guy you could do bong hits with?
Killing Bin Laden isn't necessarily an assassination. It depends on the context.
The contempt among liberals for Kucinich represents what's diseased about American politics today.
Kucinich is a guy with decades of experience standing up for human decency - and actually striking a successful blow or two ! This is a guy whose platform (as laid out in 25 and 35) represents a large dose of common sense, spiced with some controversial but respectable positions, and leavened by a dollop of harmless, goofy goodwill.
It's entirely reasonable to not vote for the guy, and reasonable for people with certain beliefs to find him contemptible. But for liberals to dismiss and ridicule this guy - it's a goddam disgrace.
This is not Ralph Nader; this is someone whose influence on American politics has been almost entirely honorable and benign.
That Kucinich (a) does good things in Congress, basically (b) is kind of a loon in terms of some of his cosmology (c) shouldn't be President (d) should run for President if he wants does not seem to me a contradictory set of beliefs. Doesn't make me want to vote for him, but he's certainly less of a nutjob than any of the top seventy five hundred most influential Republicans in this country.
I kind of like Kucinich, but 50 gets it right. I think he also sometimes stirs vigorously negative feelings in Cuyahoga County Democrats because he's still a political liability for them. He might seem likable enough when he's on Bill Maher, but the higher his profile is the more damage he can bring our way.
I like 53 and 54: I've made fun of Kucinich a lot, and my main exposure to him was in the debates, where he doesn't come off well at all, to my eye. But in the interview, it became clear that he was a very liberal, slightly new-agey guy who isn't at all crazy. (It's worth considering whether "genuinely principled" always comes off as crazy in presidential politics.) So I felt complicit in marginalizing views that I don't think should be marginalized.
50: Well I did grow up there. Kucinich inherited a city with some financial problems, and local businessmen tried to extort him into curing those problems by selling the local utility. He stood firm, and defaulted, and poor people got to run their heaters in the winter.
Yes, the media hates that kind of shit, and he will always be ridiculed for it. But Dennis Kucinich is an American hero. Seriously.
53: the links in 36 and 50 suggest that his political career hasn't been entirely as benign as you suggest. And the New Age nonsense really is exactly that: nonsense.
But, those things said, I think that whatever Kucinich's flaws might be, they're negligible compared to the flaws of a lot of more successful political figures. And he does advocate a number of entirely reasonable policy goals, even if his ability to successfully implement them is suspect. So I'm not convinced that ignoring him is the right thing: it's clear that he won't get elected, but isn't it useful to have him get media attention to acculturate people to liberal ideas? The more we can get a spotlight on people who say reasonable liberal things and are not perceived as completely radioactive, the better.
(It could be that I don't appreciate the extent to which he screwed up in Cleveland, and to which any idea he advocates is tarnished as a result.)
The fact that neither Kucinich nor anyone with positions at all like his can be a plausible presidential candidate is sad and frightening. I can't see the animosity against the guy at all.
Even if he were a war hero (like McGovern) and a 6'2" hunk of movie star, Kucinich would still be unelectable.
Even if you trimmed off everything new age and weird from his positions, he'd still be unelectable because of the things that we agree with him about.
At this point, of the Democratic candidates, only Hillary ha stipped her hand on military policy (she's a competent hawk). Obama and Edwards are sending mixed signals, and I don't trust either of them completely. That's what bothers me, not Kucinich's weirdness.
I think that, like Ralph Nader, Kucinich is completely unsuited by character for the actual job of being President of the United States.
Here's a couple bits that I didn't know about him until I read this
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/2/23/113236/176
article on dKos :
Did you know that Kucinich was once ardently anti-choice and anti-stem cell research? From a 2002 Nation article:
One thing you won't find on Kucinich's website, though, is any mention of his opposition to abortion rights. In his two terms in Congress, he has quietly amassed an anti-choice voting record of Henry Hyde-like proportions. He supported Bush's reinstatement of the gag rule for recipients of US family planning funds abroad. He supported the Child Custody Protection Act, which prohibits anyone but a parent from taking a teenage girl across state lines for an abortion. He voted for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a crime, distinct from assault on a pregnant woman, to cause the injury or death of a fetus. He voted against funding research on RU-486. He voted for a ban on dilation and extraction (so-called partial-birth) abortions without a maternal health exception. He even voted against contraception coverage in health insurance plans for federal workers--a huge work force of some 2.6 million people (and yes, for many of them, Viagra is covered). Where reasonable constitutional objections could be raised--the lack of a health exception in partial-birth bans clearly violates Roe v. Wade, as the Supreme Court ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart--Kucinich did not raise them; where competing principles could be invoked--freedom of speech for foreign health organizations--he did not bring them up. He was a co-sponsor of the House bill outlawing all forms of human cloning, even for research purposes, and he opposes embryonic stem cell research. His anti-choice dedication has earned him a 95 percent position rating from the National Right to Life Committee, versus 10 percent from Planned Parenthood and 0 percent from NARAL.
His transformation to being pro-choice happened literally overnight -- a week after he announced his 2004 presidential bid. One moment he was virulently anti choice, the next he was a staunch defender.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020527/pollitt
and
The 1999 book The American Mayor by Melvin G. Holli, ranked Kucinich the 7th worst mayor in the nation:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/holli-mayor.html?_r=1=slogin
Only thirty-one years old when elected, Cleveland's "boy mayor" had failings that were not the sins of venality or graft for personal gain, but rather matters of style, temperament, and bad judgment in office. Kucinich earned seventh place the hard way: by his abrasive, intemperate, and chaotic administration. He barely survived a recall vote just ten months in office, then disappeared for five weeks, reportedly recuperating from an ulcer. When he got back into the political fray, his demagogic rhetoric and slash-and-burn political style got him into serious trouble when he stubbornly refused to compromise and led Cleveland into financial default in late 1978 - the first major city to default since the Great Depression. That led also to Kucinich's defeat and exit from executive office. Out of office, he dabbled in a Hollywoodesque spirit world and once believed that he had met Shirley MacLaine in a previous life, seemingly confirming his critics' charges that he was a "nutcake." After that, he experienced downward mobility, losing races for several other offices and finally ending up with a council seat; but more recently, he climbed back up to a seat in Congress. Bad judgment, demagoguery, and default also spelled political failure in the eyes of twenty-five of our experts, who ranked Dennis, whom the press called "Dennis the Menace", as seventh-worst.
This survey spanned mayors in the United States between 1820 and 1993. Notching the "7th Worst" slot was a serious accomplishment.
On Kucinich, I think it's just plain old not-wanting-the-class-nerd-to-be-friends-with-you syndrome. Has anyone seen his "crown thy good America, with brotherhood" clip? He's just the opposite of charismatic, does not strike me as very bright, and to the extent that I agree with him he's a terrible spokesman for my positions. He drove me up a tree in 2004. I've lightened up a bit on him since; he does mean well, and he's harmless at worst, beneficial at best. But it was never scorning a liberal because he's a liberal--I was a huge fan of Wellstone; I'm a huge fan of Feingold; I've always said I preferred Durbin to Obama; I have a real soft spot for Kennedy and many of the lefty Congressmen from NYC and Massachusetts...
As far as the other candidates, I was slowly shifting from an Obama-lean to an Edwards-lean....this has me leaning harder:
At last month's Democrat debate in South Carolina, moderator Brian Williams asked the eight candidates: "Show of hands question: Do you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror?"Senator Hillary Clinton's hand shot up. After hesitating noticeably, Senator Barack Obama joined her. Edwards did not, even though he has used the phrase himself and a policy paper on his Web site refers to "winning the war on terror." And now, in his first interview to explain his turnabout, Edwards tells TIME that he will no longer use what he views as "a Bush-created political phrase."
"This political language has created a frame that is not accurate and that Bush and his gang have used to justify anything they want to do," Edwards said in a phone interview from Everett, Wash. "It's been used to justify a whole series of things that are not justifiable, ranging from the war in Iraq, to torture, to violation of the civil liberties of Americans, to illegal spying on Americans. Anyone who speaks out against these things is treated as unpatriotic. I also think it suggests that there's a fixed enemy that we can defeat with just a military campaign. I just don't think that's true."
He also followed it up with a speech in Portland today, and a suggested question for the next Republican debate.
Development of an educational media program to promote non-violence in the domestic media
What, exactly, is wrong with this? We've got incredibly violent television compared to other places I've lived. Hell, even Disney movies usually resolve problems by fighting, whereas the Miyazaki films never do (and actually have girl protagonists, the horror). It would do us a lot of good to have less violent crap as entertainment.
I'm not at all surprised he's anti-choice--the whole "care for living things" stuff rather suggests it. At least he's consistent.
We have violent television compared to Japan? Go us. I would have thought they had it sewed up for sure.
I think people have already nailed why Kucinich is a joke. He's a funny-looking unelectable gnome of a man who has some sensible positions, but no surprising or innovative ones, and no particular charisma or political knack to push those positions successfully. The wonky-as-hell people like Yglesias and Ezra may be equally unelectable for their positions, but they will at least be eloquent in defending those positions and fully aware of the philosophical, intellectual, and empirical supports. Kucinich's only use is as someone who has just enough money and profile to pay his way into the fringes of the race and the debates so he can bring these extreme positions up, while never having enough of a shot that it's worth toning down his more wing-nutty messages.
And could anyone tell me what the hell the difference is supposed to be between a "Department of Peace" and a properly functioning State Department? We already have a department dedicated to international diplomacy, and it even does pretty well if properly funded and listened to!
I would think what's wrong with it is that having government programs to promote content-based views in the domestic media is problematic.
Yeah, I'm coming to like Edwards more, too. Obama or Edwards, either is fine.
He's just the opposite of charismatic, does not strike me as very bright, and to the extent that I agree with him he's a terrible spokesman for my positions.
This gets it exactly right.
I was slowly shifting from an Obama-lean to an Edwards-lean....this has me leaning harder:
I still have serious doubts about whether Edwards can win, but dammit he just keeps on impressing me, haircut flap notwithstanding (and can someone please strangle Maureen Dowd please already please), and I've been sending him money regularly and talking him up at every opportunity since last fall.
Tonight's Daily Show interview with Pierre Rehov about his film Suicide Killers might be the most tonally-jarring interview I've ever seen on the show.
66: I haven't lived in Japan, but at least the Japanese children's movies I've seen aren't violent.
The ideas the current government has been advocating and trying to put into practice would have been thought just as extreme in 1970. The idea that someone espousing them would come to power and eventually elect a congress and become conventional wisdom was unimaginable then. American politics can take more radical turns then people think.
70: I'm still somewhat agnostic on Obama v. Edwards, it being the 3rd of May 2007, but I've been making a point of mentioning that I think Edwards very much can win whenever I'm talking to people about him, even without bringing up what's substantively good about him. I feel like just doing this is helpful in that people want to be on a winning team.
68: Good call, I hadn't even thought about his positions that might imply domestic media influence. And I thought his international policy ideas in 35 were scary enough, geez. The more I look at his policy objectives, the more they look like the left-wing equivalent of "and a pony" thinking.
Free college educations for everyone!
Social Security for all at a young age! And no investment in risky, higher yielding securities!
Free health care for all!
Money for unprofitable farms and rural towns, because some people like those, too!
More (supposedly better) restrictions on corporations and labor!
No more visas for skilled immigrants or international trade!
And even though we'll have cut off the main economic engine that pulled the developing world out of poverty, they'll be happy and foster international cooperation!
And this will all be paid for with no problems!
Even though I support universal healthcare and more money for education from preschool through high school, the question of how and where to get the tax revenues is a very non-trivial one that I'd never trust Kucinich to answer. The rest of his policies that raise costs and lower economic growth are just unbelievable wishful thinking.
I'm still somewhat agnostic on Obama v. Edwards, it being the 3rd of May 2007
Yeah, it is early, but it seems like there's a rush to say "decision made" this time, and I'd greatly prefer that decision to be Edwards than anyone else currently on offer.
Even though I support universal healthcare and more money for education from preschool through high school, the question of how and where to get the tax revenues is a very non-trivial one that I'd never trust Kucinich to answer.
As was well said in 64, Kucinich is a terrible spokesman for progressive positions.
72: Miyazaki aside, the Japanese children's shows I've seen have been horrifically violent, and that's just the censored version they showed in the states. The original Japanese versions can be quite startling.
This is a country that features not only barbed wire flourescent tube electrified piranha cage wrestling on, like, afternoon TV, it's the country of anime series for young children that regularly feature the violent deaths of major characters.
Which, incidentally, I don't sign on to the concept of the government doing anything about violence in media even a little bit, so I think that stuff I mentioned is awesome.
"it seems like there's a rush to say 'decision made' this time"
There is? By who? Fight them off!
There is? By who? Fight them off!
I'm on it, Sifu. Surely I must prevail!
I don't do electability voting, and I'm not close to committing to a candidate at this point. But I think Edwards has a real shot. He's not too far behind in the polls, and I think he's running the best campaign right now. Perhaps it's that being in third in money and polls liberates him to run a primary campaign, which Hillary and Obama aren't doing so much right now.
78: Okay, cool. Quite willing to agree that Japan is not the society we should be modelling ourselves after.
plain old not-wanting-the-class-nerd-to-be-friends-with-you syndrome
I take it this is to account for his non-viability, imputed to people in general for reasons you can understand. But there are people who will defend this way of feeling as defensible beyond political projection, as a way of defending their own feelings, and not just about politicians. For myself, I'm deeply ashamed of ever feeling that way. I don't try to befriend the repellent, but many people so ostracised are not repellent, just odd.
I don't do electability voting, and I'm not close to committing to a candidate at this point.
I feel the same way, but the Clinton and Obama (seeming-)juggernauts have really pushed me to make a more significant stand than I've historically made at this point in the cycle.
Whoever the Democratic nominee is , I'll of course work my ass off for them. But Edwards, for me, possesses the closest nexus between electability and positions and issues I really care about that I've seen so far. So I'd at least like to see him considered as a serious candidate, and for that reason I've decided to donate as much money and time as I can spare to his primary candidacy. I know I'm just one person, but I'm really hoping that early involvement by people with similar feelings will produce significant results this time.
I don't try to befriend the repellent, but many people so ostracised are not repellent, just odd.
I actually have lots of "repellent" friends and acquaintances, and they're perfectly fine people. I wouldn't vote for them for public office, however, as that job requires skills they are not at all proficient at. Similarly, I make no assertions whatsoever that Kucinich is or is not a bad person. I'm just excruciatingly certain that he's a bad political advocate for the causes he (and I) proclaims.
85: I also don't trust him on technocratic economic management type issues, but I have no good reason for this. Perhaps just comes down the same old class nerd problem you discuss.
Sure, I'm trying to tease out the feeling from its context. When we make political judgments we're forced to judge our fellow men and women at their worst, and make an assessment based on our judgment. So I admit we all do that. But some people seem disturbingly comfortable with that kind of thinking beyond that context, and are happy to own up to it.
I'm not proud of it but in this context it seems pretty harmless.
You guys are warming my cold, shriveled heart.
The punch line of the Kucinich joke is that all three serious candidates may just be competence hawks. Hillary is up front about this, whereas Obama and Edwards are evasive. (I agree with Max Sawicky about this). Whether this is because the Democratic Party's election wonks convinced Obama and Edwards that the electorate won't elect a dove, or whether it's because no one in the foreign policy establishment is able to imagine a serious change in policy, I don't know. Probably more the second than the first.
So ha ha. Funny.
55, 64, and 76 all do a better job of explaining my Kucinich animus than I did. Thanks! I think he's loopy and a lightweight, and to the extent that he is associated with policy positions I believe in, they'll be tainted with his loopy lightweightness. And 68 is a great signifier; it's something that probably sounds broadly palatable to a lot of liberals (although not me), but when you dig into it a bit more it sounds problematic and ill-conceived. And again, I'll defer to pf on how he was as a mayor, but there is at least real question about his performance and I've seen zero signs that he's an effective Congressman for the Cleveland area. I don't think he's a bad person, but he's just not someone I want on t.v. speaking for me.
The problem with "withdrawing from the WTO and NAFTA" is that it's not the same as "withdrawing the WTO and NAFTA from Nicelittlepoorcountry", which might be a laudable goal.
In fact, the chief reason to withdraw the United States from the WTO (and of course NAFTA) is so you can slap a tariff on Nicelittlepoorcountry's exports of foo, bar, and left-wing coffee. If you wanted to de-tariff them, the WTO would positively encourage you - that's what it's designed for.
Also, the thing about the WTO (or whatever you'd hypothetically replace it with) is that it's meant to provide an impartial dispute-resolution mechanism, so if Nicelittlepoorcountry has the right to a tariff on US imports of subsidised foo, they can defend it in a court rather than just being told to fuck off by the US Department of Commerce.
Well, the great thing about the Internet is that you get to chat with all sorts and see all kinds of different perspectives all over the world.
In my country, the president is a clown who openly asserts he is above the law, presided over the devastation of two major cities, embarked on a war for reasons nobody can explain, looks like a smirking chimpanzee, and talks like he's being coached through an earpiece with bad reception.
The nominal opposition party sat by and watched my country disgrace itself with only nominal resistance, and the media (and the public) ridiculed as nonserious anybody who attempted to stand up for basic common sense.
So I envy you in your United States, a country with such a surfeit of able leadership that you are able to find a fundamentally decent, like-able seeming guy like Dennis Kucinich ridiculous. Must be nice.
Snarkout, my context for what you've been saying is that we have no spokesman at all. No one takes Gravel seriously either, for unrelated, entirely different reasons. We're really back to the slightly-lesser-evil / futile protest vote dilemma.
Obama and Edwards have made statements and have chosen advisers which make people tracking their positions extremely uncertain and uneasy about what their foreign and military policies will be. They seem to be trying to keep both AIPAC and the anti-war people happy at the same time, and I don't see how that can be possible. (I understand the Machiavellian reasons for doing this, but if these guys are going to doublecross someone, it will most likely be the doves. That's the 40-year pattern).
I do not think that Alex's description of WTO and NAFTA is realistic.
So who do you want to implement protectionism against then, if not poor countries? The European Union or Japan? And if you don't want to impose tariffs, why do you want to leave the WTO?
I think his New Agey spiritual stuff is awfully silly, but I think that about almost anything spiritual/religious -- there's just social pressure to be polite about the organized stuff, and no pressure not to be rude about someone babbling about stardust.
Barring that, I think his policy positions, other than on abortion, are all pretty reasonable and he shouldn't be mocked on those grounds. He's personally unelectable enough that there's no need to run away from him for fear his campaign will take off -- competence/character issues just aren't ever going to be relevant. At which point there's no real reason to talk about him other than to praise and agree with his sensible leftist positions.
Ideally radical candidates both pressure big candidates to go left, and give them more room to do so when they want to, since they can portray staunch liberalism as being the moderate alternative. Or maybe they can promote a specific issue.
This has worked well in many instances, but rarely in US presidential politics that I know of.
Most of Kuchinic's domestic platform isn't very radical, it's pretty sensible stuff. This isn't necessarily good thing, though. Having a new age elf advocate for single payer or things like that may only make policies that aren't necessarily hard sells seem out of the mainstream.
When it comes to foreign policy, the dynamic has been positive, but not greatly so.
A somewhat radical figure, that was eloquent and gave a serious and smart impression, would be much better than Gravel and Kucinic. But then, I don't think fringe candidates ever have much impact. Staunch progessives with an actual shot, like Feingold, would be much better.
Wellstone was an almost perfect guy, and the least-ridiculed left candidate in the last 30-odd years, but even if his health had been good (that's why he dropped out) he wouldn't have been regarded as a serious candidate. Partly this is because of the voters themselves, but the conventional wisdom of the media people and the insider politicos contributes powerfully. Jesse Jackson did very well in the primaries in 1984, and he got minimized too.
More so in '88. It's been forgotten, maybe repressed, how close he seemed to winning for a few weeks.
So I envy you in your United States, a country with such a surfeit of able leadership that you are able to find a fundamentally decent, like-able seeming guy like Dennis Kucinich ridiculous.
I find our current leadership profoundly dangerous, evil, and grotesque, naturally, but interestingly, I find that this does not diminish my nigh-infinite capacity for finding other people ridiculous. Humanity rarely lets me down on this one.
101: It's very hard to make a serious run for president when you're under 5-1/2 feet tall. Shouldn't be that way, but it is. However, with not just one, but two degrees from UNC, he'd obviously have been the greatest president in the history of the United States.
102: I voted for him in Illinois, and he wasn't clearly out of the running when I did.
No, wait, that can't be right. I was in Illinois in 92. I'm remembering wearing a Jesse 88 button in 88 -- he wasn't running in 92, was he? I think I voted for Brown.
The thing is, conservatives seem to believe that if you scratch any liberal you'll find a Kucinich hidden underneath. For instance, this satirical book offers a position statement for a fictional liberal presidential candidate -- except they're all positions that no actual Democratic candidates support. They're closer to Kucinich's than anything. But it's not just that book, if you read freerepublic you'll see that they seem to believe that there's not a dime's worth of difference between Kerry, Hillary and Kucinich. They all want to raise taxes, surrender to terrorists, open the borders, eliminate war and shut down refineries.
I'm not sure what this means, though. I think it has some parallel in that we believe that all Republicans secretly think Ann Coulter is right about everything.
99 is exactly right.
I'd add this: While Kucinich himself is not a terribly significant figure, the impulse to ridicule such people is significant.
Here we get a very common kind of snark - seemingly entirely uninformed by actual facts, but based on what appears to be a deep desire to demean a decent guy.
Two key facts about Kucinich - during his tenure as mayor, he stood up to business interests that forced the city into default over something like $15 million dollars - a ludicrously small sum. The reason they did this was they were trying to extort the local utility out of government hands. Kucinich refused to sell the utility, and it still public-owned to this day.
To be elected as a representative, Kucinich took away a seat from a Republican.
Yet the guy is assailed here as an ineffective leader and a poor politician by people I assume to be liberals. I take the Kos-ite critique of modern liberalism very seriously, and I think the contempt for Kucinich exemplifies what is deeply wrong with Democrats - not the Democratic Party, but Democrats.
presided over the devastation of two major cities
1) New Orleans
2) Gulfport, Mississippi? Galveston? Houston? Trenton? New York?
Grand Forks, North Dakota was devastated during the Clinton administration.
The abortion stuff: Al Gore was solidly anti-choice until he ran for president in '88. That wasn't a reason not to vote for Gore in 2000, and it's not a justification for heaping scorn on Kucinich today.
The New Age stuff: The last couple senators and presidential candidates I've voted for have largely included people who believe, apparently with some sincerity, that a two thousand year old dead guy came back to life, ascended bodily into heaven, and must now be regularly eaten in the form of a cracker to guarantee eternal life. Religious beliefs are always going to sound pretty fucking dopey. While Kucinich's religion might not have the air of legitimacy that comes with a couple thousand years of wiping out smaller religions, it does have the benefit of being relatively benign. So a big "fuck you" to everyone trying to hassle him for wanting to believe in the cosmic interconnectedness of all things while the usual tools get a pass on the blood-soaked Old and New Testaments.
Also, Bill Maher is a fucking idiot. Does anyone have any idea why Ezra Klein is calling him "the most politically sophisticated of the hosts"?
but based on what appears to be a deep desire to demean a decent guy.
It's human nature to laugh at certain things. See 26.
110: It's unclear what he meant by "hosts" or "politically sophisticated". I think Maher is more politically open-minded than your average talk-show host, and if you assume that none of them, including him, can be said to be above a barely-detectable level of actual thoughtful ideology, then there you go.
112: Republicans managed to suppress the urge to ridicule W - even though this guy has *never* been able to put two consecutive coherent sentences together.
Grand Forks is not a major city, and the Clinton response was about two orders of magnitude better than the Bush response to New Orleans. Grand Forks is white people, you know.
The Canadians downstream barely needed to respond at all, because they were prepared.
112: No matter how much I may dislike the man and find him an utter travesty for our country, I still can't bring myself to blame him even slightly for the terrorist hijackings and crashes.
I would like to suggest that the devastating events in New Orleans and New York could not have been prevented by the efforts of Bush or any other president.
The response to them, though, that might have benefitted from a governing philosophy that wasn't "The Invisible Hand = Social Darwinism = Good For Monopolistic Capitalism = Good For Everyone".
Maher is the least fucking idiotic of the major talk show hosts.
It also pisses me off the way people badmouth the Air America hosts (which they often do) when they're (again) far superior to anyone on the major media.
I think that Democrats and liberals have internalized the oppressor in a big way. The conventional wisdom, including its snarky and inside-basebal forms, is toxic.
Maher often lapses into regrettable schmibertarianism. I'll take Stewart over him any day of the week.
The devastation of New Orleans could have been prevented (see Holland) but it wasn't all Bush's fault. But at every point Bush's response was criminally inadequate.
Whether or not Bush could have prevented 9/11 is uncertain, but if he had continued Clinton's efforts he would have had a far better chance of doing so.
113: But it's been clear for years that Maher in particular is a political dilettante. He describes himself as "libertarian" in that way that people who don't care enough about politics to identify with liberalism or conservatism but don't actually know anything about libertarianism always do. A month or so ago he interviewed Ron Paul, an actual libertarian, and was put off by the man's very libertarianness (what? Libertarians don't like Lincoln? Libertarians sound crazy sometimes?). Maher isn't trying to get answers or information out of his guests; he's trying to extract soundbites. Contrast this with Jon Stewart's interview of John McCain last week, which, while certainly not funny, was probably one of the most aggressive interviews anyone's given McCain in a long, long time.
Maher often lapses into regrettable schmibertarianism.
Yet somehow the actual libertarian John Stossel is much more horrifying.
I don't watch political TV at all, but I have highly reliable third-hand gossip that Maher is personally unpleasant. 'Dated' a friend of a friend briefly, and was rude and cold to her.
118: Except Stewart, of course.
I'd give the "most politically sophisticated" award to Colbert...
I just watched Obama's and Edwards' speeches at the California convention.
First of all: dudes, it's May 2007; you shouldn't have laryngitis already.
I'm not actually sure how different their substantive positions are, but rhetorically, there's a real difference....Edwards seems to be running a campaign that is: (1) aimed at people like me in a way that's truly disconcerting--even more than Dean's in '03; (2) the sort of campaign that Obama talks about the country needing but hasn't actually yet delivered.
The odd thing is, when Obama shoots for the same place, his rhetoric is a little better & gets to me a little bit more. But he does it for a couple paragraphs; Edwards does it for the entire speech.
122: Go watch it again. It will give you a warm feeling in your cockles.
Oops. I tried to link directly to the clip of Edwards speech but that apparently doesn't work--its accessible from this page.
No matter how much I may dislike the man and find him an utter travesty for our country, I still can't bring myself to blame him even slightly for the terrorist hijackings and crashes.
Fuck that. The Clinton administration provides a rather stark contrast in how these things used to get handled. Now it's possible it would have happened anyways, but it's not crazy to think that a bit of competence might have resulted in it being stopped.
I went through the 9/11 report in considerable detail. There were a bunch of ways that Bush fell down. There were people trying to get his attention, and he blew them off (several times). It was just like everything else he ever did, the cocky carelessness and laziness.
The 9/11 report was bipartisan. The agreement seems to have been to report the facts and mush the conclusions. You really neede to rewrite it in order to understand it.
If the terrorists had a lick of sense they'd have waited until Bush was president because a Democrat wouldn't have launched a full-on crusade against Islam. They wanted war, and they knew how to get it.
127: He's gotten better at it than he was four years ago. And you're right: it's the first time in many, many years that I've felt like a presidential campaign was aimed directly at me.
110:
a two thousand year old dead guy came back to life, ascended bodily into heaven, and must now be regularly eaten in the form of a cracker to guarantee eternal life
I'm as fond as the next pseudonymous commenter of the I-hate-my-parents school of religious analysis, but you might want to check in on the Protestant Reformation, chum.
By which I mean, can you translate 132 into non-condescending-dick language?
134: Isn't s/he saying that your description of Christian beliefs doesn't describe the account of Christianity offered by the Protestants?
134: Sure, the dead guy and resurrection are still in force and kinda funny, but a lot of people stopped believing in transubstantiation a few hundred years ago. So... give 'em 1 out of 3?
136 should be in quotes, if that isn't clear
135: That's what I figured s/he was saying, but (1) I was quite explicitly referring to people I'd voted for (including the Catholic John Kerry), and (2) contrasting the goofy-yet-acceptable beliefs of Kerry with the goofy-yet-somehow-deplorable views of Kucinich. I thought this was pretty obvious from the context of 110. The crack about "hating your parents" is neither here nor there, since neither of my parents is Catholic.
And there's a whole lot of transubstantiating Catholics (and consubstantiating Lutherans, IIRC) out there. So it's not like the cracker thing is archaic. (And it's no sillier than the whole rest of it.)
136: Is transubstantiation no longer official RC dogma? When did this happen?
Anyway, I picked Catholicism because I vote in Rhode Island and up until last year the entire Congressional delegation was Catholic, and Kerry was also Catholic, so there you go. I really didn't think the wisecrack needed explaining, since I figured everyone knew who John Kerry was without giving me a lecture on the 95 theses.
No, you're right on Catholic dogma, I was referring to the protestant split from transubstantiation that can be traced to Luther, Edward VI, etc.
it's the first time in many, many years that I've felt like a presidential campaign was aimed directly at me
Welcome to Old, sellout.
Hey, while we're talking religion, Bostoniangirl should be careful about her church date doctor.
143: Actually, there are lots of old, aged people born a long time ago and about my age who have never had that feeling about a plausible Presidential candidate. Our rightward shift was far surpassed by the nation's rightward shift. Especially the cohort born between 1960 and 1980 (aka "you guys"), which started out pretty conservative.
The problem, to my mind, with Kucinich's positions are that they read either like something a rightwinger would cook up as a caricature of a liberal position (why not just name it the Department of Hugs?), or, slightly more seriouly, like the sorts of proposals that you'd get when you ask an eighth grade civics class to imagine Their Perfect Government.
It sounds disconnected from reality, and I don't mean in the sense that his proposals don't have the Jack Bauer quality that's popular, but that he would call something the "Department of Peace" instead of sensibly calling for more funds for the diplomatic functions of the State Department. None of it seems like it's thought through.
The real point I've been trying to make, which I don't think has come through, is that none of the three frontrunners can be trusted. I am aware of Gravel's and Kucinich's weak spots. I'm just not able to talk about them with any enthusiasm.
It's not like a restaurant where they'll send something different out if we don't like what they send out first. We've scraped the bottom of the barrel.
"none of the three frontrunners can no president should ever be trusted"
139: Everybody has silly beliefs. You, for example, believe that there should be more roles available to women than sexual consort and baby factory. Crazy! But not terribly threatening because lots and lots of women (and even non-vaginated Americans) have similar beliefs and yet seem to behave in ways that are orderly and comprehensible. There just aren't that many such Moon Unit Americans, and Kucinich suffers for his beliefs because of that.
Everybody has silly beliefs.
Yes. You, for example, suckered me into saying the Lakers had potential. I must repent.
The Lakers have potential energy, if you hold them up in the air.
Well, he suffers for it because no one's out there making comments like Flippanter's 132 when they get mocked. (Which, nothing against what you said, Flip. If you were offended, snapping back is perfectly fine.) So he's freely abusable with no one to say that abusing him on that front is out of line.
I don't think it should be any more or less out of line than making fun of people who think that God transforms himself into snack-food every Sunday -- I'll be polite to everyone or no one when on the basis of their religious beliefs, so long as they're practically pretty harmless, and I don't care all that much which.
151: I have already confessed my sins (about 3 min. into the game, actually) to the Minister of Darkness and Despair (ogged). I cannot yet give up my love for Odom, though; if anything, it has grown stronger.
Well, he suffers for it because no one's out there making comments like Flippanter's 132 when they get mocked.
It's not so much "no one"--the Rev. Jackson reminds us that even stras Is Somebody--but "not many." Romney might have the same problem--and the WaPo Novak piece today was about as gross a thing as I can remember seeing--but he's trying to finesse it.
Yeah, this is really a 'life isn't fair' problem. Kuchinich's religious beliefs just don't have a massive and touchy constituency objecting when anyone fails to respect them.
about as gross a thing
Holy crap. I hadn't seen it until just now. WTF?
Good lord. That is pretty awful. Any Catholic candidates should be expected to answer for the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre next.
There's something wrong when P. J. O'Rourke is regarded as perfectly OK and Kucinich isn't. Snark can be genuinely nasty.
Count on Novak to justify his nickname.
Damn, I want people to discriminate against religions, and that column still offended me.
fwiw, I understood sj's original comment to be specifically about Catholics and intended to point out the hypocrisy of mocking Kucinich more than to mock Catholic beliefs. It's a good point. I think the media have reinforced the images of K as hippie-spacey and Gravel as radical; not that those images are entirely false, but there's clearly institutional marginalization going on.
Also: Novak is a reptile, and it speaks very poorly of American journalism that he even has a job, much less the high status he enjoys.
What a fucking asshole. Born and raised in Illinois, eh? Has he apologised for lynching my great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-granduncle? No? Step up, motherfucker.
See, there are advantages to being unable to trace my family history. I'm not responsible for anything that happened before around 1910-1920, and outside Queens. (Not that I'm claiming responsibility for all of Queens history since 1920, mind you.)
My apologies—on these shores alone—will have to start with the Pequods.
Me, I am the oppresor.
I'd like to jump in and point out that 120 is hardly an inarguable point. On the other hand, I swore to myself that I would avoid debates about Democratic candidates with Emerson, and this is veering perilously close, so I'll just move on.
The fearsome and savage Breath bandits of County Kerry, with their litotes and sarcasm, are none of yours then?
Cavan and Limerick -- no one from Kerry. I do exaggerate; I could probably follow the Irish half of the family back if I tried. But I haven't tried. I never heard of anyone doing anything interesting, though. My great-aunt Maggie lived in a stone cottage without plumbing into her eighties, and had a severe harelip, but that's not much in the way of family history.
156: Kuchinich's religious beliefs just don't have a massive and touchy constituency objecting when anyone fails to respect them.
There could, however, conceivably be a massive and touchy constituency pointing out that the "New Age" stuff amounts to figurative language saying nothing particularly objectionable, and that obsessing about it is ridiculous.
Someone above noted that Kucinich sounds "disconnected from reality," but I'm not convinced. As opposed to whom? People who think the WTO has led the charge in eradicating Third World poverty? Anybody want to claim the ABM treaty and Kyoto Protocol are disposable? That they still want the PATRIOT Act in place? Anybody want to say at this point that environmental concerns and international cooperation are wishy-washy hippie stuff? Same-sex marriage shouldn't be legalized? How is that War on Some Drugs working out? Has anybody who thinks the Department of Peace is unserious been serious enough to read any of the basic literature on it?
Man, what a discouraging thread.
without plumbing
I myself have never plumbed. FWIW.
Sorry, this is the second link from the rant in 169.
There could, however, conceivably be a massive and touchy constituency pointing out that the "New Age" stuff amounts to figurative language saying nothing particularly objectionable, and that obsessing about it is ridiculous.
There could be a massive constituency to elect Kucinich. In both cases, I doubt it.
I'd settle for a massive constituency to steal his ideas and push whoever does get elected to implement them.
Here's what I love.
Somebody gets up and says, "I'm for spreading freedom all over the globe! With military force if necessary. I'm for fighting terrorism wherever it appears" and similar Bush-isms. Folks are rightfully all over that kind of talk not just for the specific errors of judgement it leads to in specific policies, but for its plain-old lack of understanding about the complexity of the world, or the difficulties of defining freedom, or any sense of how you get from a desire to see everyone free to actually getting to a situation where everyone is free.
Somebody says, "I'm totally in favor of peace" and people here are like, "Wow, what's wrong with that, that's a great idea, nothing loony about it." Exactly: nothing loony about it, any more than being in favor of the spread of freedom to all people everywhere is loony. But there's also nothing *political* about it, no sense of how exactly you *do* that, about how the rubber meets the road in the real world as it presently is constituted. A lot of Kuchinich's stands are about as real as what contestants for Miss America say when they're asked what they stand for: laudable but wholly without any connection to the ways power and possibility move in the world. Even something as seemingly concrete as "outlaw all handgun ownership in America": I want to know a) how he proposes to do that given the actual distributions of political power in America b) how he proposes to do that given the Second Amendment and the likely Court that he'd face as President c) how he proposes to actually get the government to enforce its new statute without creating a whole new mode of mass criminalization comparable to the 'war on drugs' and so on. You get ZERO fucking credit in my book as a politician for saying, "Wow, I'm really into good things happening and totally against the bad things".
We're grasping at straws, Timothy. It's quite possible that there's no realistic way to move American foreign policy in a less warlike direction. Someone who has that intention (Kucinich) is, to me, better than someone who doesn't (certainly Hillary, probably Edwards and Obama).
I would vote for anyone who would ignore AIPAC, but it may well be true that no one who does that could possibly win.
Realism sometimes involves choosing the lesser evil, which at this point is Edwards, and sometimes consists in realizing that there's no real hope.
The whole Kucinich argument tends to be about his personal ridiculousness. Funny thing, the Edwards argument, the Hillary argument, and the Obama argument are trending that way too!
Haircut! Madrasa! Bitch! Moonbeams!
174: Somebody says, "I'm totally in favor of peace" and people here are like, "Wow, what's wrong with that, that's a great idea, nothing loony about it."
If what you're alleging is that the proposed Department of Peace consists of nothing more specific than saying, "Wow, peace would be really cool, man," that's actually false, cf. 171.
But your general point that Kucinich should be more specific about how he plans to do things is a good one (and man, his campaign website is spectacularly uninformative). That's a criticism I can sink my teeth into.
What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?
Really.
169, 171: Color me unconvinced. You honestly think that the WTO has had nothing to do with massive tariff reductions and greater openness to foreign investment around the world? Or do you honestly think that the much larger amount of world trade and foreign investment has absolutely nothing to do with the recent massive economic surges in East and South Asia driven by manufacturing and services for export? Or is it just that you don't think the immense rises in GDPs have anything to do with the drastic reduction in people living below the dollar-a-day poverty line?
Also, that page from 171 doesn't give any halfway decent reasons why the Department of Peace is anything more than a functioning State Department other than the inclusion of domestic affairs under its umbrella (most of which would be handled by local governments anyway, not federal). They argue that the State Department only deals with foreign "states" with governments, despite the fact that the State Department already has representatives with around 70 multinational agencies and several non-state-focused offices such as their Office for the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Hell, the State Department even has it's own Intelligence department already! Finally, their example for how a single Cabinet position can "attain a higher level of synergy, effective co-ordination and influence upon the thinking of American citizens"? "[T]he establishment of our Department of Homeland Security"!
It's only icing on the unserious cake that this page uses the phrase "wage peace" unironically and proudly displays endorsements from such luminaries as Paula Abdul and Flea.
Fuck peace. I want a War on War.
Okay, I know I'm like a million comments late on this, but bitchPhd's claim in comment 65 that Miyazaki's films don't involve people solving problems by fighting is really quite wrong. The protagonist in Princess Mononoke shoots people's heads off, for god's sake.
It's certainly correct to say that Miyazaki's films are anti-war, and do not generally resolve their core conflicts via violence, but they implicitely endorse limited, righteous violence when there's no alternative, while acknowledging that even that kind of fighting is destructive. Still pretty hippie, but not completely pacifist.
Also, Disney has plenty of female protagonists (Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, arguably Pocahontas, Mulan, just for example). Those female protagonists may reinforce a lot of ultra-conservative messages and incidentally be principally responsible for the young American girl's kind of uncomfortable princess-worship, but you need to go further than counting protagonists to criticize them on that score.
Kucinich seems nuts in the same way that, say, Steve Forbes and Ross Perot do. It isn't that what any of them saying is crazy (though at times it can be with all three), it's that their personal affect is so...off, that none of them is ever going to get elected president.
The distinction between "Disney films" and "Miyazaki films" is striking me a little odd, since all of the Studio Ghibli films I have seen have been in overdubbed English versions produced and distributed by Disney.
their personal affect is so...off
Totally true in the debates, not so much in the Maher interview. But I'll shut up about it, since you can watch it yourself.
Cala and Burke have said more or less what I think bothers me about the Kucinich thing. It seems to me that his campaign ought to look recognizably different from the one he'd run in a world in which his proposals are an accepted part of the political mainstream, in particular, by explaining how all these things might happen, or, at least, by explaining the value of making the opposition vote against something (e.g., wedge-issue bills so beloved of the republican majority).
Huh. He does do better in that format than he does with his pocket constitution.
He needs a theme song. "I am the opposition with my pocket constitution."
Since this is the presidential-candidates thread, I will note:
The Secret Service said Thursday that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama was being placed under its protection, the earliest ever for a presidential candidate.
116: But you're okay with blaming him for natural disasters? Fact is, W made a series of policy choices designed to leave us vulnerable to terrorists and Gulf storms. It may be that his incompetence wasn't decisive in either case, but the conjunction of incompetence and catastrophe is, at least, an interesting coincidence.
187: This concerns me. Not because Obama is the Antichrist, but because the logical inference (to me) is that this is a response to actual information; i.e., that his campaign has received a lot of unpleasant communication that hasn't been publicized, but is sufficient to result in unprecedented actions by the Secret Service.
Or, they just want to get the agents familiar with him in advance of his 8 Year Reign of Peace and Tielessness.
Oh, and while it's obvious that President Gore wouldn't have definitely stopped 9/11, I don't see how it's arguable that he wouldn't have had better odds, no matter where you want to put the percentages. You can't win a race you don't run, and, for all practical purposes, Bush did not even attempt to prevent 9/11, and his chosen personnel in several cases prevented competent people from attempting to prevent 9/11.
Oh, and PS, Bush never saw fit to fire or demote anyone over it. Evidently, he considered his gov't performance up to 9/11 to be acceptable and appropriate.
Stands to reason the first African-American candidate with a chance has probably drawn a credible threat from one of our homegrown wackjob groups.
The report also says that its not in response to a threat, but I'm not sure I believe that.
Yes, but what in particular, Cala?
Maybe not in response to any specific threat, but he has to be getting quite a bit of hate mail these days. The Secret Service is probably reacting to that.
Maybe not in response to any specific threat, but he has to be getting quite a bit of hate mail these days. The Secret Service is probably reacting to that.
Uh, yeah.
I'd bet every dollar in my bank account that anybody in his position gets numerous specific and more-or-less credible threats, starting long before a campaign for the presidency is announced. I can only imagine that bringing the Secret Service in is just a an in-the-aggregate issue, maybe with a little CYB thrown in.
189: I think he had to have anticipated the need for this. A fair number of people assume that if he gets the nomination, someone will take a shot at him. (I do on even dates.) The important thing, for Obama's campaign, is to spin this properly: "Secret Service Moves to Protect Candidate--Obama Presidency Seen as A Real Possibility! "
If you kill Obama, we will BURN SHIT DOWN.
Kucinich was offered SService protection, but insisted they be unarmed.
195: That's it. It's not in response to any particular douchebag group's threat, maybe, but you don't send out Secret Service protection this early unless there's more swirling threats than usual. Because it's a royal pain in the ass to pretend, essentially, that there are two Presidents.
If you kill Obama, we will BURN SHIT DOWN.
No shit. That would be UNACCEPTABLE. But I'd like to know what to burn down, because my corner grocer doesn't really deserve it.
The best line of that piece is really "I am not spotting him 800 million Hindus. I call shenanigans."
Shit, if somebody kills Obama I would burn shit down, and I'm about as honky as it gets.
(Well, haole really, and it turns out that haole goes to 11 with pretty distressing frequency. But anyway.)
"Haole" always throws me -- I expect Hawai'ian words to be cognate with Samoan, and that one is completely unrelated.
We should be brainstorming on what to burn down. In NY, something in Times Square, I'd think, for the visibility. And then spraypaint the URL to that KFMonkey post nearby.
We should be brainstorming on what to burn down.
Oklahoma.
Apparently, Obama's early need for SS protection scared the hell out of HRC. Via The plank, which rightly, it seems to me, call it the nuclear option.
Well done HRC. I'm still not voting for her, but she's moving in the right direction.
We should be brainstorming on what to burn down.
I'm not sure you're really getting how this whole "riot" thing works.
We can't expect to have a respectable riot without prior planning, can we? Be reasonable.
LB so white she puts her riots in her palm pilot.
Here's something I should have thought of earlier: Ogged's original post is interesting because it highlights this as one of Kucinich's virtues:
"Maher asked Kucinich, in the context of using force, whether he'd give the order to kill Bin Laden. ... But Kucinich said no, he didn't approve of assassination as a policy. Major points to the guy."
I disagree. This actually is an area where I'll agree with those who find Kucinich a bit of a liberal caricature. Bush wildly overestimates the number of problems that can be mitigated with bullets, but I think bin Laden really is one of those problems.