AZ Politics

I attended a forum with the five GOP candidates for Congress in CD 8 today.

A couple of take-away points:

None of the GOP candidates differ significantly from current GOP orthodoxy; they are all so lost in their own ideological funk, they can’t smell the limburger of voter discontent under their noses. As such, I don’t believe that any of the them can possibly overcome the disaffection within the Repulican Party to prevail in CD 8 despite a 20K voter registration edge. Independent voters will rule this election and will hand it to the Democrats.

The standout of the whole bunch is certainly Steve Huffman. He’s endorsed by Kolbe, which plays as both political capital, and political liability. He’s also the annointed of the GOP money men. Despite a few bright points in Huffman’s performance – such as acknowledging that the growing trend toward ending employer health insurance plans constitutes the major public health policy challenge we face (rather than tort reform and health savings accounts – the panaceas embraced by all the others) – his answers mark him as just as clueless as his fellows on every other issue, though possibly more generally competent.

The most popular of the bunch among the groundlings and the Right wing of the GOP is clearly Randy Graf. His supporters were massively predominant among the 100-150 people who bothered turning out for the event. He remains, rightly, the great white hope of the Democratic party. Hell, I even recommend donating to his campaign to keep him in the game. My opinion was only confirmed by his performance in this forum.

Hellon is dead in the water. Talks like he’s half-asleep. The establishment wants him out, and he’s got no traction with the activist types. He has no original ideas to recommend him to either the money men, or the values voters. His main pitch seems to be that he’ll bring backroom politics into office and that some Independents and Democrats might consider supporting him. And that he won’t live long enough to get cozy with the devils in D.C.

Antenori is a dark horse man of action who may do surprisingly well among security voters, and might eat into Graf’s base. He’s articulate and has a very macho bio, and is a direct answer to vets like Latas and Rodriguez running on the Dem ticket. Seems to support public schools, unlike many of these other goons. He also vows transparency in his stewardship of the office – he will open his meeting schedule to public scrutiny. If the GOP voters had any brains, this is pobably the guy they would choose.

Mike Jenkins is just a loud-mouthed crackpot. Talks about self in third person. Frightens children.

“Religion is under assault by secularism in America.”

You’ve heard it so often that it even sounds true to many liberals. However, like so much the Right says these days, it is just rhetorical covering fire for a political manuever with exactly the opposite objective.

In reality, politicians are far to eager to give religious activity and organizations special treatment not afforded to others. Our political institutions have been so solicitous of religion, that they have put in place a formidable array of legal protections and exemptions for religious practice and organization without questioning whether the general welfare is harmed thereby.

Like any other human endeavor, religion, when unshackled from a common social contract and protected from the consequences of behavior, can become destructive to the common welfare. Marci Hamilton’s book explores exactly what has gone wrong in the American legal system’s handling of religious activity and organizations that impose costs and cause harm to others. She finds that religious organizations have systematically freed themselves from the social contract under the banner of religious freedom. The catalog of abuses her book records is long and ranges from the distortion of local land use laws that protect the heath and welfare of our families, to the lawless response of the Catholic church to predatory abuse of our children.

I don’t often write about movies, except perhaps documentaries, but Blackballed is different. First, it’s a largely improvised mockumentary, much in the vein of the sublime Best in Show or Waiting for Guffman. Second, it’s premise is the struggles of disgraced star of a fairly rediculous ‘sport’, like Dodgeball. Thirdly it has a ‘losers to … Read more

If you are like me at all (and you probably are if you are reading this
blog) then you look forward to January 20th 2009 with a mixture of
great anticipation and a certain nagging dread. Anticipation that the
long dark night of two misbegotten and utterly tragic Bush terms will
be over, and dread as to who will be taking the oath on that day.

I’d like to offer you some hope: I don’t think it will be another
Republican (but then I never do, so my objectivity is questionable as
to this point). In conjunction with the Republican Congress, Bush has,
for now, exhausted the credibility of the conservative movement with
the American people. I think I have some plausible ideas about which
Democrats may be taking the oath, and it may not be anyone you expect.

Many progressive Democrats have angst about current polling that shows
the most likely Democratic candidate to be taking the noontime oath
from Justice Roberts is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let me reassure you,
it’s not going to happen that way.

I want to appologize for the mysterious disappearance of your Drinking Liberally hosts last week. Tasha was on vaction and I was suddenly taken ill. I hope that the Drinkers who showed up made the best of it and had a great time. Perhaps someone(s) would like to volunteer as a sort of emergency reserve … Read more