Ever the hypocrite, Lieberman visits south Florida

If you've been reading Blast Off! over the years, you know the one thing that really grinds my gears is hypocrisy. And if there's one person who takes the prize as the Greatest American Hypocrite, it may well be Sen. Joe Lieberman (D? R? I? Who the fuck knows?-Conn.).

Holy Joe was in America's Glans™ yesterday stumping for his newest, bestest buddy and big toe, Huggy Bear. And he's as unrepentantly asinine and hypocritical as ever.

"Why do I remain a Democrat?" Lieberman mused to reporters on the McCain campaign bus.

"I've been a Democrat all my life and I still nurture the hope that the Democratic Party will, on matters of foreign and defense and even homeland security policy, return to where it was, not just when I joined it when John F. Kennedy was president, but, frankly, where it was when Bill Clinton was president just eight years ago.

"I think the party has changed dramatically on foreign policy and a lot of economic policy," Lieberman said.

Lieberman's biggest break with his party has been over his support for the war in Iraq and for the McCain-advocated "surge" of U.S. troops there.

At The Shul synagogue in Surfside, after young girls from a day camp serenaded Lieberman with the Hebrew song "Haveinu Shalom Aleichem," Lieberman told the town-hall crowd that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's current visit to Iraq wouldn't have been possible if the United States had followed Obama's calls for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops while McCain called for increasing forces there.

"McCain was right and Obama was wrong. The surge is working," Lieberman said at The Shul.

In a reflection of growing voter anxiety over the economy and soaring gasoline prices, Lieberman also spent time criticizing Obama for opposing offshore oil drilling and a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Both McCain and Obama have pro-Israel voting records in Congress, Lieberman told the synagogue audience. "But I respectfully think you have to go beyond that" and consider factors such as Obama's stated willingness to meet without preconditions with the anti-Israel leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said.

No, Joe, the party hasn't moved away from you -- certainly not in the eight years since Bill Clinton occupied the White House. No, you most definitely have moved away from the party.

Setting aside for a moment that no Democrat would have endorsed the opposition party's candidate for president before you -- let alone embraced him as sickeningly as you have, Joe -- your attitude is hyper-hawkish, narrow-minded, wrong and, to put it bluntly, Republican. You're no more a Democrat than my family is, Joe, and my most fervent hope for this fall's election is that the Democrats can win a large enough majority in the U.S. Senate to render you completely marginalized.

You're worse than a hypocrite, Joe: you're a craven opportunist who gleefully abandoned your party -- a party that, foolishly in hindsight, applauded and supported your inclusion on the presidential ticket in 2000 -- and accepted Republican help and money to reverse the wishes of your own state's Democrats after you lost your primary in 2006. Actually, Joe, now that I think of it, you and Huggy belong together, because you both lack even the most rudimentary sense of integrity and honor that every human -- let alone every lawmaker -- should have.

Enjoy political purgatory, Joe. That's your destiny after November, pal, and you so richly deserve it.

Huggy Bear's past

Well, as long as folks are taking a look back at some noteworthy history of Huggy Bear (like when he joked about rape? Good times), I thought I'd join in the fun.

For example, here's a look back at Huggy in 2000 and 2004 -- the difference is a big reason why I maintain that the man has absolutely no integrity whatsoever.

Senator John McCain, February 15, 2000 (Quick Time movie), to then Governor George Bush, after describing attacks against his service in Vietnam:

You should be ashamed.

From an interview with Senator John McCain, June 2000:

Dadmag: During your campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination Bridget became something of an issue in South Carolina didn't she?

McCain: Yeah. There were some pretty vile and hurtful things said during the South Carolina primary. It's a really nasty side of politics. We tried to ignore it and I think we shielded her from it. It's just unfortunate that that sort of thing still exists As you know she's Bengali, and very dark skinned. A lot of phone calls were made by people who said we should be very ashamed about her, about the color of her skin. Thousands and thousands of calls from people to voters saying "You know the McCains have a black baby?" I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.

[...]

From a Boston Globe article, June 21, 2004, by Richard H. Davis, McCain's 2000 campaign manager:

Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

And now the punchline:

Sen. John McCain, August 11, 2004:

On September 14, [George Bush] stood in the rubble of the Twin Towers, and he put his arm around one of the heroes and said the world will hear from us, and they did! ... The world is safer, Iraq is safer and America is safe. President Bush has not wavered. He will not waver. We will not waver. Under his leadership, we will win this war on terror.

Wait a second. Huggy Bear has a brown child? You'd never know it from the news today.

Huggy Bear, you're such a fuckin' hypocrite.



(h/t Atrios)

A look at Huggy Bear ... from the archives

You know, the Internets are a great thing(s) ... as long as you don't have anything to hide, or that you want to forget.

Tragically, that frequently ends up not being the case for many Republicans ... in particular, Huggy Bear. You might recall that Huggy ran for president back in 2000 ... of course, most of America would like to forget 2000, the Year of the Stolen Election (ver. 1.0). Anyway, thanks to the Internets, we can revisit this revealing profile, published in March 2000, of the dessicated, goiter-ridden near-corpse that the GOP has seen fit to nominate for president.

It wasn't long after arriving in Pensacola that McCain racked up the first of his five crashes, beginning in 1958, on his way to becoming a "reverse ace." As told by Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom."

There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft. According to one of McCain's former flight instructors, "The engine was removed from the aircraft that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller installed. [It] was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So the theory of engine failure was proven false."

The instructor added that McCain was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a number of Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head even as a junior naval officer."

There were four more crashes like that ... and yet, as far as I'm concerned, it's not even really the crashes themselves that put Huggy's reputation into question. So he was a lousy pilot ... I mean, that's not like being, say, a lousy oilman or a lousy baseball team owner, is it?

Okay, bad example. Anyway ... there's much, much more:

But some questioned the number and types of medals bestowed upon "Ace" McCain, the son of the admiral commanding in the Pacific as well as the grandson of another admiral.

"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

"John McCain," says another Navy pilot and acquaintance of that era, "was the kind of guy you wanted to room with -- not fly with. He was reckless, and that's critical when you start thinking about who's going to be the president," The old pilot laughs, and then continues: "But the Navy accident rate was cut in half the day John McCain was shot down."

On a more serious note, however, there has been no discussion of what actions were or were not taken in dealing with McCain after each of the aircraft losses. Neither McCain's senatorial nor campaign offices returned Insight's calls on these matters. But a Navy insider notes that "after every such incident an inquiry is conducted to conclude the cause of the crash. If it were anyone other than the admiral's son, his wings would have been pulled. But that's where that kind of father comes in handy."

Wow, it's such a refreshing change to have a GOP presidential candidate who benefited from nepotism to cover up his many shortcomings, don't you think?

These are exactly the sorts of things that need to come out in this campaign. Surely it's more relevant to discuss a candidate's character and actions than, say, those of his pastor, isn't it? But as long as the mainstream media is Huggy Bear's "base," then I guess it's up to the bloggers ... and the campaign staffs. (Are you listening, Sen. Obama? Can you say "press release?" Hell, can you say "I'm going to focus on the Republican candidate rather than Sen. Clinton?" That would be nice ...)

(h/t ::matthew)

Is Florida getting bluer?

The answer is a definite ... maybe.

The Palm Beach Post offers some evidence that America's Wang™ indeed may be trending bluer ... but I believe the data might be a bit deceptive.

You can get to the interactive maps here, featuring county-by-county statistics by scrolling over the desired county. You also may click on each map below to go to the interactive one. But I've captured them for you here in a static format for discussion purposes.

First, county-by-county voter registration as of August 2007. Of course, blue counties are majority Democratic, while red counties are majority Republican.

To me, the surprise is the central panhandle and, to a lesser extent, the center of the state. Look at all the blue there! And the raw numbers are even more surprising, with Democrats holding a 2-to-1 majority or more in many of those counties. For example:

Taylor County: 8,770 Dem, 2,695 Rep
Baker County: 8,438 Dem, 3,879 Rep
Liberty County: 3,325 Dem, 370 Rep
Glades County: 3,801 Dem, 1,692 Rep

But what happened in the elections? You undoubtedly remember:



In the actual election results, the only blue counties left in north Florida are Gadsden, Leon, and Jefferson, around Tallahassee -- the home of FSU and FAMU; and Alachua, which contains Gainesville -- the home of UF. And the center of the state? Pretty much all red.

The numbers are rather startling. Let's look at our four counties again:

2000
Taylor: Bush 4,056, Gore 2,649
Baker: Bush 5,610, Gore 2,392
Liberty: Bush 1,317, Gore 1,017
Glades: Bush 1,841, Gore 1,442

2004
Taylor: Bush 5,467, Kerry 3,049
Baker: Bush 7,738, Kerry 2,180
Liberty: Bush 1,927, Kerry 1,070
Glades: Bush 2,443, Kerry 1,718

So, what gives? Democrats have a modest majority in registration, 4.1 million to 3.8 million ... but the Republicans dominate nearly the entire state (save basically for the three large counties of southeast Florida). Ultimately, I think there are three key factors at play here:

First, voter turnout. In both 2000 and 2004, it seems that every Republican voter went to the polls, while many Democrats stayed home. Of course, that's not likely to be the case, but an argument certainly can be made that the Republicans did a far more effective job of GOTV (get out the vote) than did the Democrats. That, quite simply, is an organizational issue that the Florida Democratic Party must address in 2008.

Second, the social conservatism of rural counties. The high Democratic registration of Florida's rural areas is a vestige of history. Most of those residents have lived in those areas for generations, and their parents and grandparents were Democrats in the mold of FDR or LBJ. These are largely agricultural areas, which tended to be controlled by Democrats for much of the last century because Democratic politicians presumably were for the "little man," the family farmer and the small storekeeper, that kind of thing.

However, these are also areas where faith, specifically Christian faith, imbues every town and hamlet along the way. "Family values" resonate here as they do in so many places in the deep South, for indeed, rural Florida is just as "deep South" as any part of Alabama or South Carolina or any other state you'd choose. So while there are a lot of "Democrats," we would recognize them today more as "DLC Democrats" at best, whose tolerance for different religions, different races, and different lifestyles typically is extremely limited. They surely are not "progressive" in any real sense of the word.

Finally, unaffiliated or "other" voters. There are 2.3 million registered voters who are neither Republican nor Democrat, and in this swing state, they hold the balance. Presumably the overwhelming numbers for Bush in 2000 and 2004 in many nominally "blue" counties were helped by an influx of unattached or "undecided" voters, who voted their social mores ahead of their economic well-being and chose the Republicans.

If Florida truly is going to be bluer, the Democrats must address these three key areas. They have to find a way to increase voter turnout, to make progressive stances more palatable to the rural voter, and to attract the unaffiliated voter by emphasizing economic issues and the war, on which we on the Left are clearly in the majority. Certatinly as society becomes more and more tolerant and open-minded, the social issues will be easier for the Democrats to "win." But I believe that is going to be the main front in the battle for 2008 and beyond.

Is Florida really bluer? It depends on your definition. Are there more Democrats? Yes. Are they progressive, modern Democrats? Absolutely not. And that's where we must focus our energies.

In case you missed it the first time

Palm Beach County, you may recall, played a critical role in the presidential election of 2000. Now the home of butterfly ballots and Buchananmania! will be front and center again, as HBO allows us to relive the debacle in all its stomach-churning glory with its upcoming movie Recount.

Jayne Atkinson, a Broadway actress best known as national security adviser Karen Hayes on the Fox TV nail-biter 24, is playing former Palm Beach County elections supe and butterfly ballot designer Theresa LePore in the HBO movie about the 2000 presidential recount.

County canvassing board scenes for Recount were to be shot over the weekend in Jacksonville, where consultants were still scrambling late last week to capture that West Palm Beach 2000 look from eight years and nearly 300 miles away. The faux local scenes will include genuine Palm Beach County ballot boxes and Votomatic punch card devices obtained from Jim Dobyns, a Pinellas County political consultant who bought about 1,800 pieces of the county's mothballed elections fleet a few years ago.

Judge Charles Burton, the wise-cracking chairman of the '00 canvassing board who said he hoped to be portrayed by George Clooney, Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, is being played in the HBO project by Brett Rice, whose film credits include the pigskin dramas We Are Marshall and Remember the Titans.

Former County Commissioner Carol Roberts, the board's give-me-a-recount-or-give-me-jail perorationist, is being played by Marcia Jean Kurtz, an actress of Robertsian looks whose résumé goes back to the 1970's Al Pacino vehicles Panic in Needle Park and Dog Day Afternoon.

You know, I've been yearning for another chance to watch mouth-breathing Republican goons harass the vote counters again, so this is perfect!

Seriously, what is HBO thinking? Is this another feeble attempt for Rethugs to remember the halcyon days when all things wars seemed possible and when Drunky McStagger actually could put together a coherent sentence?

I have a feeling this is going to make The Bronx is Burning look like Citizen Kane.

Don't expect me to cheer for Ralph Nader

I received the following e-mail this morning about the rally on Saturday in D.C., where I'll be joining thousands of my closest DFH friends:

Three days until the Sept. 15 March to Stop the War! ~ Partial list of speakers ~ Sign up to volunteer ~ On Saturday, September 15, tens of thousands of people will gather at 12:00 noon on the north side of the White House, in and around Lafayette Park. Following the rally at the White House, participants will march to the Capitol Building. When the march arrives at Congress, thousands of people will participate in a Die-In/Funeral to dramatically represent the thousands of U.S. and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost in Iraq. Those not in the Die-In can participate in a legally permitted rally. Speakers at the White House rally will include: Ralph Nader Malik Rahim, Founder, Common Ground Collective, New Orleans Cindy Sheehan, Co-Founder, Gold Star Families for Peace Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general Adam Kokesh, Iraq Veterans Against the War Tina Richards, CEO, Grassroots America Mahdi Bray, Executive Director, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation Mounzer Sleiman, Vice-Chair, National Council of Arab Americans Etan Thomas, Washington Wizards Basketball Player & many other veterans, family members, anti-war, student and community leaders!

Hang on a second ... did you say Ralph Nader?? The man whose colossal ego and unwillingness to accept logic and reality in large part (though, admittedly, not singlehandedly) led to the mess we're in to begin with?

I find this appalling ... doesn't anyone pay attention to history? Sure, he may be a fine advocate for peace, but mostly he's a fine advocate for himself. And those of us who are coming to Washington to demand change have to put up with this asshat?

Spare me the starry-eyed rhetoric. I know Ralph thought he was doing the right thing. But he knew that his candidacy in 2000 would pull votes from Al Gore, and no matter how you want to argue the point, the final Florida tally (Katherine Harris-approved, I know, but it's in the books) says that Nader drew almost 100,000 votes, which in a margin of 537 for Drunky McStagger literally made all the difference.

Forgive me if I don't applaud Nader on Saturday. I don't know if I'll boo or turn my back or what, but I'll make my feelings known. Your mileage may vary, but I'm going to express myself. Deal with it.

UPDATE (11:23 am 9/12/07): Commenter TA chimes in:

Sinfonian said, "Hang on a second ... did you say Ralph Nader?? The man whose colossal ego and unwillingness to accept logic and reality in large part (though, admittedly, not singlehandedly) led to the mess we're in to begin with?"

You are not being fair to Nader or his supporters. The 2000 election went to Bush in large part because 50,460,110 people (47.87%) voted for him. And the 2000 election went to Bush in large part because Al Gore didn't even win his home state of Tennessee. And the 2000 election went to Bush because Gore's selection for VP was a lame duck. And the 2000 election went to Bush because Gore conceded too easily.

It's easy to tag Nader as the scapegoat of the 2000 election, but it's certainly not fair or logical. The majority of the blame for the mess we're in should be placed on BUSH.

As for Nader, I'll probably vote for him or some other third party candidate if Clinton gets the nomination.

And I respond:

You are not being fair to Nader or his supporters.

On the contrary -- I think I am being more than fair. I said "I know Ralph thought he was doing the right thing" and "The man whose colossal ego and unwillingness to accept logic and reality in large part (though, admittedly, not singlehandedly) led to the mess we're in to begin with?" That's fair to say, IMO.

The 2000 election went to Bush in large part because 50,460,110 people (47.87%) voted for him.

True, but more people voted for Gore. And more people in Florida would have voted for Gore than for Bush had Nader not been in an unwinnable race. If you would like to argue that issue, feel free, but it's a non-starter.

And the 2000 election went to Bush in large part because Al Gore didn't even win his home state of Tennessee.

I agree, that was pathetic.

And the 2000 election went to Bush because Gore's selection for VP was a lame duck.

Well, I sort of agree; we didn't know then what we know now about Lieberman, unfortunately.

And the 2000 election went to Bush because Gore conceded too easily.

Wrong. It went to Bush because Katherine Harris was a Bush campaign chair, and because five SCOTUS Justices (notably O'Connor) ignored the facts and the law.

You just keep deceiving yourself if you want, and I said from the start that reasonable minds may differ, but in my opinion, Ralph Nader has no business being at this rally Saturday, nor anywhere near politics, for that matter.

Naderites certainly are persistent, aren't they?

UPDATE (4:35 pm 9/12/07): The debate continues below in Comments (or, as we like to call them here, "Blasts").