Oh, yes! Please, please, let this happen!
8 comments May 13th, 2008 01:39pm Pat Cunningham
Frankly, I don’t think John McCain is so dim as to make THIS CHOICE — but we can hope, can’t we?
Open thread
4 comments May 13th, 2008 10:08am Pat Cunningham
Blogging here likely will be sparse today, as I’m a bit under the weather.
Fight among yourselves. See if I care.
Is this politically prudent?
3 comments May 12th, 2008 07:52pm Pat Cunningham
John McCain gave a SPEECH today on climate change, seeking to distance himself from President Bush on this issue and calling for new limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.
I can’t figure the upside for McCain here. I don’t think he can out-green Barack Obama in the fall campaign, and he’s running the risk of alienating the sizable portion of the Republican base comprised of global-warming deniers.
In fact, in the new TV spot below, he refers to those skeptics as an “extreme” element that “denies the problem even exists.” Is he asking for trouble?
I guess I’ll just have to give him credit for saying the right thing, politics be damned. (No! What am I saying? It’s never politics be damned. It must be a strategy of some kind, a pitch for independents or something.)
And the winner is…
3 comments May 12th, 2008 06:21pm Pat Cunningham
MoveOn, a liberal group that has endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, sponsored a competition in which a panel of 24 judges selected the best from among 1,100 pro-Obama video spots.
The winner was this effort, which features an Obamacan — that is, a Republican who’s backing Obama:
Bush and McCain support the troops, right? Well, not necessarily
3 comments May 12th, 2008 02:01pm Pat Cunningham
The American Legion has COME OUT in favor of Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s bill to expand benefits for returning veterans.
President Bush opposes the measure, and John McCain has resisted Webb’s entreaties to co-sponsor the bill.
Barack Obama CRITICIZED McCain’s posture on the matter in a speech today in West Virginia.
I wonder if McCain’s reluctance has anything to do with the fact that Webb is said to be on Obama’s short list of possible running mates. But no, he wouldn’t put partisan politics ahead of the interests of veterans, would he?
What if Hillary had moved back to her native Illinois after the White House years?
Add comment May 12th, 2008 08:54am Pat Cunningham
Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker SAYS Barack Obama likely would still be a state senator rather than a presumptive presidential nominee if Hillary Clinton had returned to her native Illinois after she and her husband left the White House.
POSTSCRIPT: HERE’s another early post-mortem on Hillary’s presidential campaign.
McCain finds himself on the horns of a political and moral dilemma
8 comments May 11th, 2008 11:16am Pat Cunningham
John McCain is one of the millions of Americans who are generally opposed to abortion but want its legality maintained in cases of rape or incest.
Accordingly, McCain has advocated on several occasions that the Republican Party platform be changed from its current opposition to all abortions to a position allowing for certain exceptions.
But now that he’s the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Straight Talk is under BIG PRESSURE from the party’s hard-core anti-abortion wing to drop his plan to change the platform.
The squeeze in which McCain finds himself involves a few angles that might not occur to the casual observer. As I’ve said before in this forum and others, the stricter position against abortion is more logically consistent than the one that allows for exceptions. (My own pro-choice view involves numerous other factors and is not at issue here.)
The only good reason for a person to oppose abortion in general requires one to believe that it’s the taking of an innocent life. If it’s not the taking of an innocent life, it’s no different in an ethical sense than having your appendix removed.
(Granted, the decision on whether to bring a fetus to full term can involve complex emotions and considerations, but absent the homicide question, the ethics are not very problematical, and the government has no legitimate interest in the matter.)
So, the basic premise advanced by the so-called pro-life movement is that abortion is wrong because it’s tantamount to murder. If you don’t buy that argument, you have no valid reason to want abortion outlawed.
That makes it hypocritical to say you’re against abortion except in cases of rape or incest or the life of the mother.
How can a fetus in a case of rape or incest be less innocent than one produced in more acceptable circumstances? How can John McCain and those who agree with him deny that they’re logically and morally inconsistent on this score?
Indeed, one has to wonder if McCain has actually thought this matter through, or whether his opposition to abortion is an insincere political convenience for purposes of advancement in the Republican Party.
But their are lots of other hypocrites on this issue. Most pro-lifers shudder at the thought of a woman having to bring a fetus to full term in a case of rape or incest. And most politicians are loathe to buck majority sentiment in that regard. So much for the sincerity of their pro-life positions.
There’s another political question that arises here: If a fetus is a person, and abortion is the unwarranted killing of that innocent person, why don’t any of the pro-life politicians favor a law under which the mother would be charged with murder?
The answer, of course, is that taking such a position likely would be political suicide. Most Americans don’t want women who get abortions to be prosecuted as murderers.
Nor is there any consistency of logic in making an exception for an abortion to save the life of the mother. In his book “Papal Sin,” author Garry Wills argues: “If the fetus and the mother have equal status as persons, the natural and not the inflicted death should be preferred,” if you’re going to be morally and logically consistent about it.
Then, too, politicians should be required to square their anti-abortion positions with the belief among some folks — orthodox Catholics, for example — that the morning-after pill is an abortifacient. Are any of these pols willing to call for a ban on morning-after pills? Are they willing to call for murder charges against women who take such pills? If not, why not?
The politicians should be required to explain in detail their opinions on just when life starts and when, if ever, it’s permissible to end such life and what penalties should be imposed for violations of any limits that are enacted into law.
Questions like that would prompt the Republican pols, I’m sure, to squirm and dance and tie themselves into ideological knots.
They have no class and no shame
4 comments May 10th, 2008 02:11pm Pat Cunningham
Bob Herbert NAILS the Clintons — but good!
Oh, the shame! That Barack Obama fellow has actually visited San Francisco!
2 comments May 9th, 2008 10:08am Pat Cunningham
For several decades now, Republican campaigners have figured that one sure way to win over the good, decent, God-fearing, hard-working, law-abiding, white-bread eating, heterosexual folks in Middle America is to link Democrats with that infamous sin city, San Francisco.
Anybody remember Jeane Kirkpatrick’s famous “San Francisco Democrats” SPEECH at the 1984 Republican Convention?
Well, 24 years later, the GOP elite are singing pretty much the same song. Witness the gratuitous mention of San Francisco (replete with footage of a cable car) in this new Republican ad against Barack Obama:
