Posts filed under 'national politics'
April 18th, 2008
Wouldn’t life be easier if we could pick our president by comparing our grocery shopping lists?
Well, the New York Times asked two national market research experts to help them do just that.
If you like the crunch of Kashi GoLean cereal, the grease of Church’s Fried Chicken and the energy from a Luna Bar, you might be a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Obama followers would likely prefer to eat at the trendy Panera Bread bakery/restaurant, sweeten their beverages with Sugar in the Raw and shop at the local farmer’s market.
And those of you who prefer the monstrous Hardee’s burgers, DiGiorno’s Stuffed Crust pizza and SoBe Energy drinks are most likely to vote for McCain.
Here’s how the Times cooked up the politicians’ preferences:
Larry Finkel at MarketResearch.com used information on 25,000 people assembled by Simmons Market Research to develop a voter preference index based on store-bought cookies and restaurants. […]
(Obama’s) strength among latte drinkers was confirmed by the software developers and restaurant geeks who created Urbanspoon.com. Last year, they developed a steak-sushi index showing that cities with more steak restaurants also have more Republican victories. […]
Harvey Hartman of the Hartman Group applied the data he uses to help food companies understand consumer issues and came up with a grid that predicts voting patterns based on preferences for health and wellness products.
Of course, I am a big fan of DiGiorno’s pizza, Kashi GoLean cereal and Panera Bread, so I suppose that makes me a moderate.
April 15th, 2008
Last week, the national press was all over the three presidential candidates as they returned to their day jobs — being U.S. senators. The trio descended on Washington to cross-examine Gen. David Petraeus and his testimony on the Iraq War.
Saturday Night Live, of course, spoofed the hearing. (Interestingly, SNL prefectly matched the clothes the wannabe commanders-in-chief wore in the committee.)
Watch it here.
March 17th, 2008
The New York Times had a piece today that shows Illinois isn’t the only state with budget problems, in fact, some states have it much worse.
Many states are reporting their largest budget shortfalls since the recessions of 2001 and 1991-2.
Of course, the usual suspects appear in the Times’ story as the reasons that states are hurting financially.
Ms. Lav pointed to a confluence of factors — including weak consumer spending, high energy prices, dropping housing values and growing foreclosure rates — that suggest states will face a protracted struggle to keep their budgets afloat.
Earlier we told you how the Illinois tax revenue is slowing, and the state’s mound of unpaid bills is growing by the day. In fact, even though our governor’s pet issue is health care, Illinois’ mutli-million dollar Medicaid debt landed the state on the list of states with proposed health care cuts. (Check out this great graphic that shows where Illinois and other states fall. You will need to click on the graphic to see it better.)
The governor delivered a skeleton budget this year with old revenue ideas that have failed before, but unsurprisingly, he was mum on the idea of a tax increase. A few Democratic senators, however, believe this is the only way to pay off the state’s bills.
A couple of other states agree.
While most states are looking to address their budget anguish through cuts, tax increases are occasionally broached.
The Maryland Legislature made the difficult choice of increasing the state’s sales tax to 6 percent from 5 percent, raising its corporate taxes to 8.25 percent from 7 percent, and bumping the state’s cigarette tax to $2 per pack from $1. In Kentucky, the governor has proposed a 70-cent increase on cigarette taxes, raising it to $1 a pack, and Mr. Schwarzenegger in California has spoken vaguely about closing “tax loopholes” in his state.
The piece ends with this warning:
Ray Scheppach, the executive director of the National Governors Association, said things were likely to worsen over all. “The major impact on states is the year after a recession stops or the following year,” Mr. Scheppach said, because personal income taxes tend to lag economic recoveries. “It is really sort of the worst as you begin to recover.”
March 17th, 2008
Well, it’s not quite the morning anymore, but let’s just pretend I’m not a little late in posting this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” clips.
On Saturday, former SNL funnyman Tracy Morgan appeared on the ever-popular “Weekend Update” segment of the sketch show. He offered a rebuttal to his former castmate and current boss Tina Fey’s take on the presidential election. (Morgan co-stars in Fey’s hit show “30 Rock”)
If you haven’t watched the Fey’s bit, you should probably watch that first. Then, I recommend watching Morgan’s rebuttal. I must warn you that both segments do include some profanity, so don’t turn the volume up too loud at work.
After watching the Morgan’s take on the presidential race, I couldn’t help but wonder if his guest appearance had anything to do with this article.
On a completely unrelated but also funny note, Slate.com has a piece on its 
Web site today where readers were asked to submit their favorite sports metaphors for the Democratic presidential race. Why did the writers not include Republican contenders in their piece? Well maybe because the nomination was no contest? (Ok, I should probably leave these sort of metaphors to my much more well-qualified sportswriting colleagues.)
Here is an example of the Slate results:
Boxing. Several Gabfest listeners suggested that the perfect Clinton-Obama metaphor was a 15-round heavyweight bout that ends with several knockdowns but no clear winner. Some referred specifically to the famous Ali vs. Frazier matches, with Obama mapping to the faster, graceful Ali, and Clinton to the indestructible gladiator Frazier.
Photo courtesy of Slate.com
March 15th, 2008
In today’s paper, I told you about the six local people who will get to attend the lavish Democratic and Republican national conventions.
These multi-million dollar parties are technically where the Republican and Democratic nominees for president get the official nod. In recent history, the country and the parties have known well before the conventions who will be the presumptive nominee.
This is because of one single word — delegates. These delegates are one part of the complex primary process we use to decide on one candidate for each party to advance to the general election in November. And no one has probably paid more attention to delegates like the country has this year.
In January, it became more and more clear that delegates were going to be an issue in the primary season, so I attempted to give you a lot of background information, including the delegates’ role at the conventions. Also Bernie Schoenberg, who also works for GateHouse newspapers, did a good job explaining what happens at the conventions.
Now after Illinois voters chose their Republican and Democratic delegates during the Feb. 5 primary, only some of those delegates could celebrate when the unofficial results came in. Those were the Republican delegates, because in Illinois, the top four vote-getting Republican delegates go to the convention.
On the Democrat side, however, the selection process is much more difficult. The votes people cast on Feb. 5 was only one part of the equation. In fact, the four people chosen from the 16th Congressional District (which includes Rockford) were ranked first, second, fourth and seventh in order of most votes received.
This is why Clinton delegate Barbara Giolitto was so surprised when I called her about being a delegate. Giolitto, who was a state representative for one term, took seventh place after Feb. 5. Rockford City Councilman Victory Bell and state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, actually received more votes than Giolitto.
So why did this happen?
Well, the national Democratic Party sets rules for the delegate process but allows the state Democratic Party to choose from a few options to ultimately decide how the Illinois delegates are chosen. Not only are the delegates doled out based on the proportional vote in a Congressional District, but other factors, such as gender equality, may play a role. Because of the proportional vote, Obama received three delegates from our district, and Clinton received one.
The gender equality factor is what allowed Giolitto to get the nod, and it is also the reason that Eleanor “Bobbie” Colbert did not. Colbert placed third, but Sunil Puri was able to leap frog her because Mary Tuite placed second and thus was the first woman to be selected.
And before you start thinking all these technicalities is a way for the Democratic Machine to control the delegates, these same rules prevented party chairman Michael Madigan’s wife, Shirely, from getting to join her fellow Democrats in Denver for the convention.
Other people have written about this process recently as well (including the even more confusing Michigan and Florida delegates):
March 10th, 2008
As soon as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. Phone Call” ad invaded televisions across America, I could hardly wait for the weekend because I knew a scare-tactics ad like this nearly begged for a Saturday Night Live parody. And I was right.
Here is another edition of the Monday morning funnies:
(I can’t get the NBC video to embed properly on the blog, but you can watch it here. Warning: This skit does involve censored profanity.)
Here is Clinton’s controversial ad that started it all and that some say helped her snag Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island away from Sen. Barack Obama:
And of course, the Obama camp quickly came out with a rebuttal:
And now for the ironic twist:
March 7th, 2008
A recent column in the New York Times has dredged up some painful memories for me.
Those memories come from the four years I spent working in the most stereotypical teenage job — working at McDonald’s.
Yes, I flipped burgers and asked, “Would you like fries with that?”
I admit this because one of my grease-soaked experiences there helped me understand why identity politics, which has consumed much of this year’s Democratic presidential race, seems to undermine the hard-won battles of women and blacks.
Maureen Dowd’s column brought up a good point about the duel of historical guilt that America, particularly Democrats, is wrestling with in this year.
With (Barack) Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary (Clinton) saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts.
People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?
As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?
But see, guilt shouldn’t be the problem, because the way I see it, both of those groups — women and blacks — fought for choice.
Meaning that I, as a woman, could choose what I wanted to think or what I wanted to do, rather than have it decided for me.
At McDonald’s, the food truck would pull into the parking lot twice a week, and all of the men working that shift would lumber out to unload the fatty burgers and fries.
I never helped unload the truck, and not because I didn’t want to spend an hour hurting my back and sweating profusely. I simply wasn’t allowed to do so.
On one of my first days, the managers explained that only men unloaded the truck. Somehow ability didn’t matter; apparently my gender disqualified me from adequately doing the job.
Even at 16, I knew that the renegade women of the ’70s who are foolishly ridiculed for burning their bras had already fought this fight for me. They fought to give me the opportunity to say, “No thank you, I don’t want to unload the truck,” rather than being excluded based on my gender.
This is the problem with identity politics. Dowd described some overzealous female Clinton supporters:
[…] many shoulder-pad feminists are growing more fierce in charging that women who let Obama leapfrog over Hillary are traitors.
These same women that Dowd describes, and the blacks who do the same, are asserting that women who don’t vote for Clinton are somehow betraying the sisterhood.
But I think they are becoming no better than the McDonald’s managers who wouldn’t let me unload the truck.
If a woman wants to vote for Obama, or a Republican for that matter, then so be it. If blacks want to vote for Clinton, that should be okay, too.
People should not be expected to vote for a candidate because they share certain characteristics, and this election has exposed how far we still have to go before such a choice is acceptable for women and blacks to make.
February 25th, 2008
Hillary Clinton is beginning to look desperate.If she isn’t desperate, she is doing a good job of fooling us.
Over the weekend, Clinton made a few campaign stops through Rhode Island and Ohio. Now I’m sure she said many newsworthy things during her time there, but her decision to “go negative” is what made it on the newscasts.
Here are the two clips.
After a rally at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Ohio:
In Providence, R.I. (and try not to laugh at CNN’s new label for the presidential campaign — Ballot Bowl ‘08):
The line, “Go hard or go home,” comes to mind after watching the videos. In campaigns, the rule of thumb is if a candidate decides to go negative in a campaign, go very negative. Well, in one respect, she’s successfully become very negative.
Clinton has consistently used some of these tactics throughout the campaign, and Obama responded to this in the last debate.
But how much will this strategy help her as the Democratic nomination lurches toward Texas and Ohio? These states have a lot of delegates, and overwhelming wins would help Obama pull further away or allow Clinton gain some much needed ground. According to CNN, Obama leads the pledged delegate race 1,166 to Clinton’s 1,026.
Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont will hold the next primaries on March 4.
February 25th, 2008
Here in Springfield, the sky is dreary and it is probably going to rain. This is not the way I planned to start a new week, especially after such a good weekend. After all, “Saturday Night Live” aired its first episode since the writers’ strike ended.
SNL is at its best when doing political paordies, and it must have been infuriating to be benched during the most exciting political contest in years. Fortunately, Saturday’s episode was rife with these skits.
Here are some of the best. Hopefully, these videos will lighten up your day as much as they did mine.
Good ol’ Huck’s humor is part of what makes him so appealing. Saturday was no different:
Hmmm… Maybe they are on to something here:
If you want another laugh, SNL’s “Weekend Update” rarely fails to deliver. Tina Fey had a great political commentary, but I am unable to post it here. It does contain some minor vulgarity (still within FEC guidelines, of course), and with that caveat in mind, you can find it by searching YouTube under “hillary, tina fey.”
February 12th, 2008
There is something about Hillary.
As the race for the Democratic presidential nomination drags on, the nation remains transfixed on the senator from New York.
Her words, outfits, decisions and personality are continually picked apart on national talk shows, in newspaper columns and around dinner tables.
It’s not only because she is running for president. There is just something about Hillary.
New Yorker editor Susan Morrison also noticed the way Clinton “pushed different kinds of buttons than other politicians pushed.” So naturally Morrison decided to give 30 respected female scribes a national platform to flesh out her theory.
Well, it’s just another book to add to an ever-growing bookshelf.
This weekend, I popped into my favorite Springfield bookstore. Among the vast 20,000 books, I stumbled across three tall bookshelves devoted to U.S. presidents and yet another devoted to their wives.
I scanned the titles and was not surprised that books about Hillary Clinton dominated the section. I even purchased two of the books because it epitomized the Hillary fascination – “The Case Against Hillary Clinton,” by Peggy Noonan and “The Case For Hillary Clinton,” by Susan Estrich.
The other books claimed to be about her failed healthcare initiative of the ‘90s, about her husband’s sex scandal that nearly cost him the office and about her rise to power. On the surface, the books profess to be about Clinton’s policies, but I would be willing to wager my small monthly paycheck that most of the pages are spent parsing her personality, not her policies.
Similarly, Morrison’s book likely has some high points, if the reviews are any indication, but it is also clear that it hits some real lows — namely, an essay about whether Clinton is a dog or cat person and another about her eating habits based on past lunch choices.
Really? Are those facets of Clinton’s life really that fascinating?
Perhaps they are. Something tells me that we would be really bored if we learned Barack Obama enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off or found out that former Vietnam prisoner-of-war John McCain was a cat person.
Even if we were interested, books like that about male presidential candidates will probably never appear on the shelves of American bookstores.
Clinton has been under a microscope for much of her adult life, and largely, by her own volition.
Since the 2008 presidential race actually began early last year, I have kept a keen ear out when people – and by people, I mean the ones at our favorite coffee shops and around our kitchen tables, not the pundits – begin explaining why they dislike Clinton.
It is rare that someone will provide anything but a superficial criticism. There is probably plenty to not like about Clinton – perhaps her hawkishwar stance or the millions of dollars her healthcare proposals would cost the country.
Yet many just don’t like her.
Sometimes politicians are slimy people who betray the public’s trust. Those people deserve our anger and contempt.
But it seems unfair to dislike a politician’s personal attributes, whether it is Clinton and her “Miss Frigidaire” exterior, or Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his perfect hair.
Perhaps if people spent more time dissecting the issues, not the person, then we can truly, as Clinton is wont to say, start the conversation.
What do you think? Is this sort of criticism warranted?
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