Bernie Ward: Insane Liberal of the Week
May 9th, 2008 by Mr. Grey Ghost
Age: 57
Birthplace: San Francisco, CA
Claim To Fame: liberal icon and popular talk show host
Why He’s Insane Liberal of the Week: for admitting to distributing child porn this past Thursday, a confession that got him five years in a federal prison thanks to a plea deal.
For years Ward, a former Catholic priest, used his left-wing radio show to deride President Bush and rail against the Iraq war (he once said that “Saddam Hussein has not shown any threat to anyone”), he even hosted a Sunday morning program called “God Talk” on his program, dealing with topics surrounding religion. Thanks to his severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Ward became an icon within the liberal community, in particular San Francisco, where his show was based and where he grew up. But it was this past December that Ward was fired from his radio station KGO after the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued 3 months prior, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography.
It has also been confirmed that Ward committed two acts of sexual misconduct in 1978 while he was a 27-year-old priest, the irony being that Ward once won a Scripps Howard Awarf for Excellence in journalism for his investigative report, Heaven Help Us, which explored sexual misconduct within the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Now his career is over and instead of Bush, he only has himself to blame.
Told you so
May 8th, 2008 by Dana Pico
Pam Spaulding of Pandagon has an article up, concerning Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) doing exactly what I said she’d do: make her last-ditch appeals explicitly on race:
-
White dog whistles no more
Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”
Is that another variation on “misspoke”?
You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:
I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.
Why not?
“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”
What about race?
“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”
The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.
The wreck
May 8th, 2008 by Dana Pico
It’s like driving, slowly, past a bad accident. The police are waving you by, but you can see the sheets covering the bodies of the victims, perhaps with their feet sticking out. You don’t know who all the victims are, but you see an awful lot of blood, and a car twisted beyond all recognition, with maybe the radiator cap remaining as a salvagable part.
It’s really simple: Hillary Clinton is still drunk on her delusions of grandeur, and she’s owed, owed! Damn it! the nomination, and even though her blood alcohol content is thrice the legal limit and even though she’s taking dead aim at a bridge abutment, she’s not going to stop the car and she’s not going to get out of the driver’s seat.
Her friends tried to tell her, “Hillary, just stay here, don’t drive that car tonight,” but she resisted every effort from them to take the keys out of her hand, and insisted on driving.
Had she given up the keys, she might have just been embarrassed the following morning, that all of her friends had seen her so trashed, but they’d all forgive her. But when she smashes the car because she’s driving flat-out drunk, and kills a couple of people in the process, she’ll find somewhat less forgiveness from her friends.
Will McCain blow it?
May 7th, 2008 by Art Downs
George H W Bush destroyed his re-election chance by alienating his base.
McCain may win on the basis being the least obnoxious of the candidates.
Can he create a positive enthusiasm or his he the candidate that only a partisan hack can love?
Republicans got by with a series of Civil War generals as candidates but the South slowly solidified for the Dems and allowed FDR to put together what seemed to be unbeatable coalition. The GOP then ran candidates who were generic Republicans deemed to lose.
The ‘cult of personality’ Ike victory did not build a party.
Goldwater brought back an excitement then produced a belated victory. Bush I wimped out at the end of his first and last four years. Bob Dole was dull and generic
The people made a proper choice with Bush II but they had little choice.
McCain may be a nice guy and endured a lot. But he just does not seem to have what it takes when it comes to many tough issues. He seems to be on the right side when it comes to dealing with terrorists but seems ready to go along with the radical environmentalists and the anti-energy coalition. He seems indifferent to our de-industrialization but at least is not talking about another round of protectionism.
He will get my vote but this seems to be an election where more people are voting against candidates than for them.
2 + 2 = 4¼
May 7th, 2008 by Dana Pico
For Senator Hillary Clinton, the math just keeps getting worse. She narrowly won in Indiana, and lost big in North Carolina. What the New York Times news analysis below didn’t mention is that, between Indiana and North Carolina, Senator Barack Hussein Obama won 1,506,557 votes to Senator Clinton’s 1,296,194, or 53.8% to 46.2%, between those two candidates.
-
Options dwindling for Clinton
By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times
Published: May 7, 2008
In this case, a split was not a draw.
Despite narrowly winning Indiana, while losing North Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not fundamentally improve her chances of securing the Democratic presidential nomination. If anything, Mrs. Clinton’s hopes for overtaking Senator Barack Obama dwindled further on Tuesday night.
For Mr. Obama, the outcome came after a brutal period in which he was on the defensive over the inflammatory comments of his former pastor. That he was able to hold his own under those circumstances should allow him to make a case that he has proved his resilience in the face of questions about race, patriotism and political mettle — the very kinds of issues that the Clinton campaign has suggested would leave him vulnerable in the general election.
Beating Mr. Obama in Indiana, a state he had once been confident of winning, was an achievement for Mrs. Clinton. But it was hardly the kind of strong victory she posted in Pennsylvania and Ohio. And when paired with his comfortable victory in North Carolina — which Mr. Obama pointedly described in his victory speech as “a big state, a swing state” — it hardly seemed enough for Mrs. Clinton to convince so-called uncommitted superdelegates to rally around her candidacy.
She needed a convincing win, and she just didn’t get it. Yeah, each candidate won one state, but it wasn’t a split decision; Mr Obama won more than 200,000 more total votes than Mrs Clinton, even after some rather poor weeks for him.
The Clinton campaign will make yet another move based on race, because, once again, Mr Obama won a state decisively due to the large black vote: in North Caroline, 33% of the voters are black, and Mr Obama carried them 91% to 6%. But Mrs Clinton carried white voters, who comprised 63% of the Democratic primary voters, 59% to 36%. The racial breakdown was similar in Indiana, but blacks comprised only 14% of the primary voters there.
It is inevitable. Mrs Clinton’s campaign will point to things like this:
- And in Indiana, for example, less than half of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election, while one-third said they would vote for Mr. McCain. About one-fifth of Mr. Obama’s supporters in Indiana said they would vote for Mr. McCain in a general election should Mrs. Clinton get the nomination.
Any way you slice it, that’s a race-based response. Perhaps the following line will give the superdelegates some pause:
- Many of those Democrats can probably be expected to stay with their party in the end, but the figures suggest the intensity of the passion dividing Clinton and Obama supporters at the moment and the challenge facing the eventual nominee in uniting the party.
There’s an interesting sideshow building.
- Still, in a sign of where the Clinton campaign is going, her aides are asserting that the winner will need 2,209 delegates, not 2,025. That higher number reflects the full inclusion of Florida and Michigan, which held their primaries before the date permitted by the Democratic Party.
I guess that’s why 2 + 2 = 4¼! 
But it leaves an interesting problem: for Mrs Clinton to get Florida and Michigan to count, she’ll need to win a floor vote. It’s difficult to see Mr Obama’s people, if they go in with 2,025 or more delegates, allowing the Florida and Michigan delegates’ votes to count if doing so would then give the nomination to Mrs Clinton!
Let’s be blunt here: Mrs Clinton cannot win the nomination without an extremely bitter and polarizing remainder of the campaign, exactly the kind of thing which will cause black voters to stay at home come November. Oh, not all of them, certainly, but enough to worry the superdelegates, who have their own campaigns to consider. And teh Democratic Party can’t stand that.
There’s only one relistic outcome at this point: the superdelegates will get together, probably in June, perhaps by videoconference so that there won’t be a big, public meeting, and they’ll cut the cord, giving Mr Obama the nomination. There will still be a lot of people who want to see Mrs Clinton win the nomination, but it’ll come down to one thing: do these people have greater loyalty to the Democratic Party, or to the Clintons?
In the end, there’s only one possible answer. The only question is: are the Clintons willing to keep tearing apart the party to try to win?
Obama and the gas tax
May 6th, 2008 by Art Downs
Obama, like a stopped clock, is correct in his opposition to the ‘tax holiday’ but the band of economic illiterates we call the American electorate may be into the snake oil supported first by Hillary and then by McCain.
Gasoline taxes are supposedly earmarked for roadbuilding and even mass transit. Will there be a construction hiatus during the tax holiday?
Hillary’s idea of an offsetting ‘windfall profits’ tax on oil companies demonstrates her ignorance of some basic economic facts. The higher tax would be passed on to the consumer or simply not be spent on exploration and innovation.
McCain may not be as stupid as he appears to be on this issues. He really has to give lip service to another form of snake oil. His goal is to get elected and not educate the people. Why cast pearls of wisdom before swine?
My letter to Justin Cardinal Rigali
May 5th, 2008 by Dana Pico
The city of Philadelphia is going to wind up evicting the Boy Scouts of America offices from a building the BSA built, and then renovated.
-
Lean-to skills may soon pay off¹
Dispute over headquarters, gays nears deadline.
By Joseph A. Slobodzian, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
It’s called The Ideal Scout, and the life-size statue has stood outside Philadelphia’s Boy Scout headquarters off Logan Square since 1937.
Whether it remains there four weeks from now is anyone’s guess.
That’s because May 31 is the deadline in a confrontation between the scouts and the city of Philadelphia that has been building for years.
Can the Boy Scouts - specifically, the Philadelphia area’s 69,000-member Cradle of Liberty Council - bar openly homosexual people and atheists from membership?
The U.S. Supreme Court says yes.
Can Philadelphia city officials allow a private organization that discriminates to freely use public, taxpayer-supported property?
The U.S. Supreme Court says no.
Those are the ingredients in a volatile mix of law, emotion and politics that threatens to explode on June 1 - the day the scouts must be out of the elegant Beaux Arts building the scouts built in 1928 on a half-acre of city-owned land.
And to add to the confusion, the Boy Scouts’ National Council in Irving, Texas, seems to be taking an arm’s length attitude toward Philadelphia’s predicament.
Spokesman Gregg Shields said the National Council - which in 2003 ordered Philadelphia scouts to revoke a nondiscrimination policy adopted to defuse the city standoff - will not intercede on Philadelphia’s behalf.
“This is a local issue for the Cradle of Liberty Council, this is their situation,” Shields said.
Shields said National Council officials do not consider Philadelphia’s dispute to have anything to do with atheism, homosexuality, or any other core element of their bylaws.
“This is solely a matter of where they want to place their local offices,” Shields said.
More at the link.
To me, this is where the law becomes an ass, as Mr Bumble said in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. But the law is the law, and this is where, because we have groups which wish to insist on punishing the BSA due to its stated beliefs, the law clashes with good, common sense.
But there is a possible solution, as I note in my letter to His Eminence, Justin Cardinal Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia:
-
The Most Reverend Justin Cardinal Rigali,
Archbishop of Philadelphia
222 North 17th Street,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103-1299
Your Eminence:
As we are all aware, the City of Philadelphia is pushing to either evict the offices of the Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America, or require the BSA to pay a rent which the Council cannot afford, for a building which the BSA built. While such defies common sense, it appears to be what the law will require, and the Boy Scouts, in order to retain a credo that our Church supports, will be forced into one of two unpleasant options.
I suggest a third option. Church membership has been, unfortunately, falling, and there are many closed parishes and schools in the archdiocese, with the possibility of further closings to come. Bishop Joseph A. Galante of Camden previously announced massive restructuring of parochial schools in his diocese, due to declining enrollment. Would it not be possible, between Philadelphia and Camden, for the Church to find adequate office space for the Cradle of Liberty Council of the Boy Scouts of America?
One of the obligations of our Church is charity, and this is one area in which we could do a great deal of good for not much of a sacrifice. An empty parochial school serves no real purpose except to occupy land, and vacant buildings of that sort are prime targets for vandalism and physical damage due to lack of attention and maintenance. While allowing the Council to use vacant Church property would certainly involve the lawyers, and not be cost-free, it would still be a very significant charitable move, one guaranteed to bring the approval of the parishioners and much of the public. The physical presence of people in such a building would help to keep the property more resistant to vandalism and physical damage from neglect.
Sincerely yours,
Dana R Pico, parishioner
St Joseph’s Church
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
_________________________
¹ - Thye Philadelphia Inquirer, Monday, Cinco de Mayo 2008, p. B-1
Talk about arguing over nothing
May 5th, 2008 by Dana Pico
As Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) trash each other over the so-called “gas tax holiday,” I wonder if anybody has noticed that neither one of them is president, and Mrs Clinton’s proposed summertime gas tax holiday would already be over before either one of them could become president?
