On the one hand, I'd love to see Clinton knocked from her front-runner perch in the Democratic field. (Go Edwards!) On the other hand, it would be a real shame if rumors of lesbianism were what did it. Not sure how I feel.
Principles suck, indeed.
So wrong, but: If true, HRC has better judgment than her husband in at least one area.
I think the only way that HRC being a lesbian (news?) could hurt her would be if she shacked up with Rosie. Shacking up with Ellen would guarantee the nomination.
So then, is the emerging consensus that Rosenbaum is getting played like a fiddle?
And people wonder why I complain that their discussion of Clinton's candidacy is sexist.
That said, go Edwards, indeed.
But Hillary denies she's a lesbian. She must be lying, of course.
I propose an anticipatory impeachment.
I'm sure I'm not clicking on Luke Ford's blog at work.
Rosenbaum is pissing me off. Spreading rumors is one thing, wringing your hands over all the juicy rumors that you know and which you are just too darn moral to share is nothing but little bitchery. I suppose his alcoholism is finally taking its toll.
Yeah noone of the other candidates have been accused of being gay by the right.
Many wonderful people are alcoholics.
11: Name five. Captain Haddock doesn't count.
My great-uncle Joe was one of the best alcoholic relatives a kid could ever hope to have. Unfortunately, he's been dead for nearly twenty years.
Many wonderful people are alcoholics.
That is true. Some of my best friends, etc., etc. And just as a certain predilection for goats hasn't harmed Kaus' career, I'm sure Rosenbaum has many productive years left. But still, maybe, in a haze of booze and regret, he mistook Spice TV for C-SPAN.
Only the good die young. My horrible m-in-law lived past 90. In the end, cautious polite people were openly hoping that the end would come soon, and not for her sake.
11: There, there, John. I'm sure he didn't mean *you*.
Kaus:
Do you sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do.
God I hate Kaus.
New Yorkers should email/call/send a carrier pigeon to Schumer to demand that he not vote Mukasey out of committee.
Jesus, Luke Ford quotes B/ig Hea/d DC in that post as a source of evidence. I can't believe anyone takes that guy seriously. He's got some pretty serious mental problems.
Already done. But everyone else should.
(I do find calling legislators disconcerting. I want to exhort, and argue, and make points, and then some staffer picks up the phone and I realize that all I can really do is be a tally-mark (15 calls against Mukasey) so I just say what I want meekly and then hang up. Schumer should answer his own phone so I can yell at him.)
As long as it's never explicitly confirmed by anyone with reason to know, does anyone who is likely to vote for HRC care? I assume that they all cheat, that the spouses know this, and are, after a fashion, OK with it.
I don't know, Tommy, B/g He/ad DC can't be all wrong. He writes: "From what we hear Kr/ston Cap/ps, an arts writer based in DC, is pretty much an all-around nice guy."
God, I hate people. Look, my loathing of the Clintons is second to none, but if Hillary Clinton was a lesbian someone would've figured it out ten fucking years ago back when half the fucking DC press corps was combing through the Clinton underwear drawer. There's plenty of dirt on Bill and Hillary, plenty of which I think hasn't adequately come to light, but it's mostly dull, boring dirt - how they're great big corporate whores who don't give a fuck about civil liberties or basic human rights. You know, shit no one cares about unless it comes attached to a stained dress.
Oh, and that goat molester Mickey Kaus can go fuck off and die already.
I want to exhort, and argue, and make points
Trust me, the staffers are perfectly willing to indulge you in this.
Really? Maybe I should get chattier. I just envision some twenty-something tapping their feet and thinking "Look, lady, I'm going to make a tally mark in a column. I'm not voting on this, so convincing me is pointless."
No, absolutely not. Maybe it's different for the Senate, but I have a friend who calls to shout at the staffers for our Blue Dog rep every day. He says they usually indulge him for about 10 minutes but he has been known to go an hour at times.
27: but surely they're just trained to let constituents blow off steam, right? They're not actually listening and engaging. They probably have hte phone on mute and are watching youtube videos the whole hour.
So unless you're just raelly wanting to yell, I think LB's approach is right.
26: LB, did you call the DC or the 212 number for Schumer? I've called the 212 number a couple of times today, and no one answers. I suppose that I should call DC?
I called DC. I envision calls to local offices not getting tabulated in a timely fashion -- maybe they do, but I don't have faith.
Yeah, I just called DC. I got a kid who basically read back to me the reply, "I am not aware of the senator's position." So then I told him in my mean teacher voice that I expected the senator not only to vote against Mukasey, but also to eschew (I hope I didn't actually say "eschew") the cheater move of voting for him in committee and then against in the open vote. He thanked me and then stammered out that there was another committee meeting on Tuesday.
Mau-mauing the flak catchers for fun and profit!
I envision calls to local offices not getting tabulated in a timely fashion -- maybe they do, but I don't have faith.
IME, they don't. If you want to express yourself on an issue, especially something time-sensitive, call DC. The local offices mainly do constituent services.
Love the Luke Ford link. Favorite quote:
White men love lesbian stories. And because we believe that butch dykes are meaner and tougher than any five sissyfied liberal democratic men put together, we imagine that a bull like Hillary who has managed to turn a hot young Muslima (Luke - PICTURES, please!) into her body slave is just the sort of woman who can drive the Muslim world insane to the point of impotence. So the bottom line is that true or not, this rumor helps her, because it helps her with regular joes like us who wear pants and grumble about Mexicans.
As someone who answers constituent mail and phone calls for a Congressman, and therefore is the person called upon to talk to constituents who call and scare the interns...please be nice to the interns that answer the phone. Feel free to spend 30 seconds to explain why you feel the way you feel, because they will write some of it down, but they don't need a lecture. And when they tell you they don't know the Congressman's position, they're telling the truth. Even if you think its absurd that they wouldn't know his position on the most important issue in the world!!!
That's my Hill Staffer PSA of the day. I will now return to lurkerdom.
Hah. I love Marshall McLuhan moments. Advice noted, and taken.
Hey, I know Congress seems like a black box sometimes--you put in comments, and a couple months later, out come laws!
I've also discovered how strange it is to read progressive blogs, and be a part of the "they" that people talk about. "I don't know if they listen to us." "How do we get through to them?"
I always want to jump up and down and wave my hands--I'm right here!!
Anyway, constituent comments really do matter. Calls are best, emails are next best. Never mail anything, it takes a month to get to us because of security screening. Be polite, state your position, and ask for a written response with the Congressman's or Senator's position. We really do like to talk to you--most of the time, Dem staff members are more partisan and more liberal than their bosses, so just because your representative keeps voting for the war, doesn't mean the person answering the phone is in favor of continuing the war. We probably agree with you. We just don't like to be hassled or yelled at.
But of course, you all would never yell at a poor underpaid Democrat!
Yay Patrick Leahy. I'm honestly surprised that this nomination is looking like it might go down.
And when they tell you they don't know the Congressman's position, they're telling the truth. Even if you think its absurd that they wouldn't know his position on the most important issue in the world!!!
Well, in the case of Sen. Schumer, this is the charade being enacted. The man is practically in hiding so that he doesn't have to tell anyone his position. So the intern saying he "isn't aware of" the senator's position, as if it is just something that he just happened not to know, is one of the Chuck Schumer Players.
"To the best of anyone's knowledge, the Senator has no position on that issue, and will not in the future, except at the exact moment when he votes on it, when his position will be determined by rational consideration of the facts."
Hey, I know Congress seems like a black box sometimes--you put in commentsmoney, and a couple months later, out come laws!
Russ Feingold, of all people, still isn't committed to voting against Mukasey. Is it wrong to think that if Feingold and Schumer both vote for him, that I'm not going to hold it against Schumer?
(Also, does it make me insane to have been daydreaming about pointedly refusing to shake Mukasey's hand if introduced to him? Yeah, I thought so.)
But oudemia, it's not the intern's fault that he doesn't know the senator's position. Hell, if the New York Times can't get Schumer to tell his position, a poor intern has no hope. And, even as the staffer that is responsible for communicating my boss' positions to constituents, I often don't know how he's going to vote until that day. I know that's frustrating for constituents, but please remember that yelling or being aggressive with someone who has no power to give you the information you want results in nothing except an upset college student.
In our office, interns are not allowed to tell constituents the Congressman's position on an issue, because we don't trust them to get it right. They're 19-year-old kids. Not legislative experts. We respond to inquiries by letter or email, because that allows us to ensure that the message going out accurately reflects the Congressman's true position. We don't want to give you inaccurate information, which is much more likely to happen over the phone than in writing.
And, have you considered that perhaps Schumer hasn't made up his mind yet? And that perhaps one thing that would persuade him is respectful calls from constituents asking him not to confirm Mukasey? Elected officials on occasion really do take time to fully consider an issue, and Schumer may not have decided yet.
Participation by constituents is central to our democracy, and I strongly encourage all Americans to communicate with their elected officials. But please don't take out your frustration and anger with politicians on the unpaid interns. They're doing the best they can with the limited authority they're given.
soup biscuit, you're absolutely right about the money, and I hate it as much as you do. Maybe more.
42: I was responding more to your comment that one can't expect the poor intern to know their bosses position on everything. Of course not. I agree. I assert only that in this case -- with the senator all but hiding his position -- that I was not harboring some sort of unreasonable expectation that the intern ought to know Chuck's position (everyone knows he's hiding it!) and that the intern and I were engaging in a rather absurd pas de deux.
When I was an intern in a congressman's office (I was 18), I wasn't allowed to give out positions mostly because the congressman wanted to pretend to be all things to all people for as long as he possibly could.
In any event, I was perfectly polite to the kid, told him what I thought, and was off the phone in less than a minute.
Schumer tips his hand -- Mukasey is in. But please, this is just about torture -- it's certainly not worth hurting an intern's feelings!
I accidentally posted a comment in the Location thread.
It looks like enough Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are going to vote to let Mukase out of Committee. For fuck's sake, why? Only 5 have opposed him so far. Kennedy is one, and Leahy just came out against him too. Feinstein is generally a tool, so I don't have much faith that she'll do the right thing. Still, it is always infuriating and disappointing.
I just heard the news about Schumer just now on NPR.
Also, I kind of hate Schumer. He's an improvement over Al D'Amato, but that's not saying much. Why couldn't New York have somebody like Corzine?
I called Kennedy this morning--even though I knew his position--just to thank him.
LB, Feingold believes that presidents should be given a lot of deference on cabinet appointments, since, unlike judicial appointments, they aren't lifelong.
I don't quite get why he won't say that these aren't ordinary times.
In normal times, he'd have a point, but these so are not normal times. (And Attorney General is different -- it's a position with oversight over the rest of the Executive, in a sense.)
Yeah, Schumer kind of sucks. Primary challenge in 2010! (Hrm. That gives me two years to develop a credible political career.)
I'll vote for you, LB! Except I'm not a New Yorker, so there's that.
Hey, Red or Green!
Question -- is there any point at all to saying "I generally donate to candidates, and have donated to your boss -- this issue will cause me not to donate." Does that sort of thing have any effect at the small-scale individual donor level?
47: I know. He voted for Ashcroft on that basis, but he did vote against Gonzales.