The Next Open Thread

by DemFromCT

So many topics, so little time. There's SOTU tonite (the Bush rehab plan continures, but it won't work). There's the reality of Iraq (best wishes to Woodruff, his family, and everyone there, and their families... it's a tragedy that now has a face, and there's on-air proof it ain't safe there. The bullshit happy talk is another casualty of war). There's the reality of a corrupt GOP electing new corrupt leaders in the House. There's the NBC/WSJ poll which had Bush at 39% and says

Who do you want to see take the lead role in setting policy for the country--President Bush or Congress?

Congress 49%
Bush 25%

Say your piece, but read the interesting stuff my co-bloggers have been putting up here.

Comments

[emptypockets]

"Are those really the only choices?" 26%

[DemFromCT]

"Do we really have to wait until 2008?" 79%

[emptypockets]

speaking of 2008, are pet issues getting staked out yet? Arkansas governor Republican Mike Huckabee lost 110 pounds (down to 180 lbs from 290 lbs) after being diagnosed with type II diabetes (now gone) and seized it as a revelation to get Arkansas thin, with tricks like getting rid of soft drinks in schools and letting food stamps buy more dollars' worth of fruit and vegetables than of junk food. Now, I don't want President Huckabee, but it's not a bad racket. After tax cuts and health care, who doesn't want to be promised they'll lose 20 lbs in 20 days? He's even figured out how to avoid right-wing criticism that he's instituting a mommy gov't: "I don't want to be the sugar sheriff," Mr. Huckabee explained in an interview in his office. "I don't want to be the grease police." Republicans can't argue with things that rhyme. (Also, he's realized that keeping workers working and off disability and welfare rolls is pragmatic economically.)

Interesting to watch these pet issue eddies as they're still swirling. With the rate of divorce in the country what it is, not to mention parents who never wed, I think someone could make a good go of the child support (& separate-parent child-care) issues emptywheel raised the other day. Obviously energy, security, health care will always be the serious issues. But these side ones, I think, let a poltician bring something personal to the public and can capture our attention and spotlight a candidate in unique ways.

[DemFromCT]

an interesting comment from the Note:

link

ABC News' Polling Director Gary Langer also offers these two contextual points.

1. "Partisans watch these things; rather than torturing themselves, people who don't like the guy can just turn to another of their 100 channels. When we polled on the SOTU in 2003, we found that the president's approval rating among speech watchers was 70 percent, versus 47 percent among those who didn't watch. As we put it at the time: 'Simply put, people who don't like a particular president are considerably less apt to tune him in.'"

2. "These speeches tend to be composed of poll-tested applause lines, so the people who watch are already predisposed to like what they hear."

"We haven't done immediate post-SOTU reax polls in years (pre-war 2003 was an exception) because, given 1 and 2 above, they are so dreadfully predictable."

[Steve]

Kevin Drum had an excellent point about why the SOTU rebuttal invariably sucks.

I wish the Dems, at some point, would decide not to play 2006 as business as usual.

[DemFromCT]

More SOTU factoids:

PRINCETON, NJ -- President George W. Bush's speech tonight is billed as focusing on the state of the "Union," not his presidency per se. But there is no doubt that the administration views the occasion as an opportunity to advance Bush's agenda and bolster the standing of the president in the eyes of the public as much as a chance to neutrally evaluate the state of the nation.

Such a bolstering of Bush's standing is clearly needed. Recent polling by Gallup shows that a majority of Americans consider the Bush presidency a failure so far. That's true both when the public is asked to evaluate his entire first five years in office and just his presidency since his second term began a year ago.

[Meteor Blades]

Love the Huckabee story. Thanks, ep.

[James]

RIP Coretta Scott King.

I wonder if Bush is going to push the we-hate-homos amendment in tonight's speech. What a sad statement that would be, especially since Coretta was always supportive of equal rights for gay Americans.

[jonnybutter]

I have to admit that I just can't bear to watch SOTU tonight, or any speech Bush gives. In a way, I want to see it for the bizarre, not-very-funny black humor of it all - 'interesting times' and all that - but I just can't do it...reading it is hard enough.

President George W. Bush's speech tonight is billed as focusing on the state of the "Union," not his presidency per se.

Nice.

yeah, thanks for the Huckabee story, EP. I don't know about you all, but I'm keeping an eye on him, for various reasons.

[jonnybutter]

Oh, he won't bring up the 'I hate fags' stuff tonight, at least not directly. And of course the best way to empty someone or something of its significance is to co-opt them/it, so we'll have to endure some nod to CSK. It is just so hard to watch. Since I'm quoting Hitchens today, here's another good and appropriate one: 'You can't eat enough to vomit enough'.

And the 'previews' all tell us that Bush will co-opt more 'moderate' ideas tonight ('moderate ideas' meaning sort of about reality). God help us.

[Mimikatz]

I can't bear to watch him, so I just skimmed the transcript. He really did call for legislation to prevent human-animal hybrids. And not in the section on energy efficiency.

[Robert]

Cross-posting my comment from FireDogLake:
People may be finally coming around these days but that's because they needed 5 years to finally understand what we could see clearly. That wasn't because of some clear, consistent message from our side, and I really wonder if the public is even interested in buying into another political party's unified message.

Think about it this way: what are we doing right now that very few people are? In 5 years, that's where the masses will finally be moving. We need to build a solid foundation to receive these people when that time comes instead of trying to develop a message now to push them in any direction. Right now the 'revolutionary' things we are doing is communicating freely together in an atmosphere with very little hierarchy. The old, helpless feeling one has in a republic, i.e. "what can one little person do?", is no longer holding folks like us back. And who wouldn't want to be involved? Unlike PTAs, VFWs, churches and bars, there has never been a popular meeting place for politically like-minded people to gather without it feeling heavy, formal or intimidating. But an honest, welcoming, nonjudgmental, patient and transparent body of liberal bloggers have more power to change the future than another impotent speech by Kerry or edgy speech by Gore.

Our mission is absolutely clear to me: build a solid foundation of political networks that have access to raw information and the intellectual means to decipher it, as well as the humor and wit to make this whole experience easy, informative and enjoyable. Politics is around us everywhere: in the home, at the office, in your neighborhood. But it's pervasive because politics is how humans interact in groups of more than 1. People are apathetic and unassertive to protect themselves from the complications of politics. Let's make it as easy to the masses as e-mail has become.
-Robert

[Field Marshall Stack]

Pfft, that damn liberal media, always showin' the bad stuff instead of the good stuff. How come they don't report stories about journalists who /don't/ get blown up? Huh? Huh?

[emptypockets]

Mimikatz, good one. I didn't watch or read it. Depending on how it's written, that legislation could block everything from therapeutics like insulin production (human genes and proteins in non-human cells) to well-established assays for cancer research (like putting human tumor cells into a mouse, after various manipulations, and asking whether they are still able to form a tumor). Not to mention my own "pet project" of putting a retarded goldfish brain into a human. I call it, "The President."

[emptypockets]

p.s. sort of an interesting web filtrate of theology on human-animal hybrids, dating from 1984 (how they put it on the web in 1984? God works in mysterious ways.)

"ASK ME" column from Catholic newsletter the Angelus.

Q. Several people have questions about the baboon heart transplant for Baby Fae. Is it permissible to place an animal part into a human body. Various questioners.

A. This is question which was not even considered by moral theologians in the days of my seminary training. However, since this historic operation by the doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center, I am sure some theologians of the Church will be forced to study the questions involved and make some practical replies.

I stand to be corrected on my opinions, but I hold that operations of this type would be valid and licit as long as there is some hope of saving a life. The use of mechanical hearts (which are somewhat primitive) have been tried and have proved partially successful. No one questioned the ethics of this. Using an animal part, if it works, would not be anything further from the nature of things created by God. Moreover, no one questions about the use of pig heart valves in humans or pig skin in certain burn cases. Why worry about a heart transplant? The person receiving the animal part would not become less a human being because of it. It is not wrong for man to use animals in a humane fashion. Surely there is nothing like murder in taking a baboon's heart in order to save the life of a human being. We do this all the time in order to have pork chops and beef steaks! No moral principles that I have learned in my course of Sacred Theology would gainsay the actions of the California doctors in the case of Baby Fae.

He goes on to call in vitro fertilization "a crime against nature and a mortal sin against God" so he's the real deal. Yet human-animal hybrids pass muster. Let's hear it for the humanzees!

[Charles]

boisnqqozie fwuevdu