After seeing a lot of tweets yesterday about Up with Chris Hayes and the Melissa Perry-Harris Show, I finally watched both shows (or most of Up and all of MPH) via TiVo. I’ve never watched political wonk shows before (comedy shows like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher shouldn’t count, but they do), and it was fun!
They’re shown Saturday and Sunday mornings and seem to have an enthusiastic fan base that hang out on Twitter under hashtags #uppers and #nerdland respectively. A lot of dumb sex-link spambots and anti-factists hang out too, so I quickly learned who was reality-based and who had drunk the anti-truth serum.
One thing about this election cycle; the thugs are desperate not to lose to the black man again so my tag line (and the Karl Rove-attributed quote that inspired it) keeps showing up in my newsfeeds. But that’s a whole other blogpost.
President Obama’s former protege, Tammy Duckworth, is running against Tea Party extremist Rep. Joe Walsh in the district, and she will speak at the convention again. Good, I hope to volunteer at a phone bank for her. Walsh is useless in office, unreasonable, and famously irrational when confronted by constituents armed with inconvenient facts (see video below).
He’s an embarassmen and a waste of Congressional space. Tammy is rational, calm under fire (hero! hero! Hero! Nyah Nyah Nyah!) and solid on policy and getting the work done. Hope she does well in her speech, which will probably only be seen on C-SPAN by the wonk types. As long as she doesn’t let any cranky old white men offer her an empty chair, she’ll be fine. She may have prosthetic legs (because, HERO) but she stands on her own two feet. And Joe? Keep it classy. You can see Joe’s famous tirade yelling at unhappy constituents at that link, highly recommended.
Oh what the heck, here it is:
Another good development: It’s likely that 2 of the 3 most corrupt Democrats in the Illinois delegation aren’t going. On Up with Chris Hayes, they had several young-ish candidates explaining their positions, and they all struck me as competent, real, and mammalian frontal cortex thinkers.
I know, right?
Most of today’s GOP and Tea Party extremists seem to be reptilian hind-brain thinkers; that’s why the phrase “red-meat Republicans” makes me think of the Tyrannasaurus Rex strips in Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, all these Bright Young Things were asked to give their Last Word (a regular feature) on what needed to change in Washington.
Arizona State Senator Kyrsten Sinema (@kyrstensinema), Democratic congressional candidate in Arizona’s 9th district, answered succinctly “elect different people.” Not just “get rid of the other team/tribe/faction,” but replace the lot. Presumably you’d clear out the deadwood on both sides and get a do-over on competence.
Illinois’ famously corrupt political “system” (and despite the Right’s best efforts, Obama was not a team player in that game) isn’t quite as influential as it was, since Blago got his orange jumpsuit and Daley has left office. There’s more that need to go, but maybe the Better Government Association will keep working on weeding out corruption, at least at the entry level.
In 2008, the inaugural Obama presidential campaign was so fearful of being associated with the tainted Blagojevich that it denied him a speaking role. This year’s Obama-orchestrated convention will feature speeches by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as well as congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth. Unlike the Republican convention, where no Illinoisans addressed delegates, Duckworth is making her second consecutive appearance before the Democratic convention audience. A second-time candidate for Congress, Duckworth is challenging tea party-icon freshman Republican Rep. Joe Walsh in a northwest suburban district drawn for her by Democrats. Walsh chose not to attend the GOP convention. Duckworth, a former assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Obama administration, is among several prominent women given a speaking role. Obama and Democrats are attempting to take advantage of the controversy over Missouri Republican Senate nominee Rep. Todd Akin’s remark that victims of “legitimate rape†have an internal body mechanism to prevent pregnancy. Democrats have sought to use the comments to reheat their allegations that Republicans are waging a “war on women.â€
Link: Chicago Tribune – Illinois Democrats see changes in convention delegation