Mark Schmitt has an article in The American Prospect about the unity/bipartisanship/hope language used by Barack Obama that has so many liberals and Democrats nervous:

But let’s take a slightly different angle on the charge that Obama is “naïve” about power and partisanship. Suppose you were as non-naïve about it as I am — but your job wasn’t writing about politics, it was running for president? What should you do? In that case, your responsibility is not merely to describe the situation exactly, but to find a way to subvert it. In other words, perhaps we are being too literal in believing that “hope” and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved (e.g. universal health care) puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk. The public, and younger voters in particular, seem to want an end to partisanship and conflictual politics, and an administration that came in with that premise (an option not available to Senator Clinton), would have a tremendous advantage, at least for a moment.

As someone who generally favors Obama over the other Democratic candidates but has been disturbed by his repeated calls for bipartisanship, I found Schmitt’s analysis fairly convincing.

The whole piece is worth a read.

Judging by the number of “01.20.2009″ bumper stickers cropping up, it seems that I am not the only one counting down the days until George W. Bush leaves office. His tenure in the White House has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end, and it will take this country years to undo the damage.

Always one to look for the silver lining, though, I can come up with exactly one positive outcome of the Bush presidency: Al Jourgensen started making good records again.

After spending the mid- to late-Nineties cranking out unlistenably worthless albums (Dark Side of the Spoon, Filth Pig, I’m looking at you…), Al found his muse in Bush the Younger. 2004′s Houses of the Molé was a full-out assault on the Bush presidency, with Rio Grande Blood continuing the attack two years later. In addition to being Ministry’s first overtly and specifically political works, these two albums also represented Jourgensen’s best work since the The Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Taste.

On The Last Sucker, Al gets in one last shot at the boy king, and the Vice President gets his share as well on “The Dick Song.” However, the scope here is wider than on the two previous albums. “Let’s Go”, the first song on the album, opens with the sample “The party’s over for this existence… A storm’s a-brewin,” and that pretty much sets the tone for the next hour. Gone are the fast cars, hard liquor, and drugs of Ministry’s last, well, every record. Instead, it’s wall-to-wall scorched earth—this isn’t about oh, thank goodness, this will be all be over in another year and everything will be better then. No, The Last Sucker is about how we’ve gotten ourselves into a big heap of trouble and we’re all pretty much screwed.

While that sentiment and scope are not particularly uplifting, they make for fairly compelling listening (helped out, of course, by huge guitars, fast drums, and lots of screaming). Jourgensen pulls out all the stops on this record. From the aforementioned opening track, to a surprisingly good and insanely fast cover of the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues,” to “The End of Days, Pt. 2″, the epic closing track, which features an extended sample of Eisenhower’s farewell address, there is not a bad song here. With the uniformly excellent songs and its broadened vision, this album is easily Ministry’s best in more than a decade. I would argue that it gives Mind a run for its money, but need to listen to this one a few more times.

The Last Sucker will supposedly be the final Ministry album. Jourgensen will undoubtedly continue working with his many and varied side projects, but if this is really to be the last outing of his flagship band, it’s good to see them go out with a bang.

This morning’s New York Times:

Not only do substantially more Democratic voters judge her to be ready for the presidency than believe Mr. Obama is prepared for the job, the poll found, but more Democrats also see Mrs. Clinton rather than Mr. Obama as someone who can unite the country.

Were these people even alive in the 1990′s?

Otherwise, the article, titled “Poll Finds G.O.P. Field Isn’t Touching Voters,” does contain the rather unsurprising news that even Republican voters don’t like any of the Republican candidates.

Just so no thinks I’m piling on Giuliani…

Mitt Romney seems to think that only Christians should be allowed to be President.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has supported the quarantining of people infected with HIV. In the same article, we find evidence piling up that, at the behest of the mid-90′s anti-Clinton conspiracy theorist jihad, he convinced an Arkansas parole board to release a convicted rapist, who then murdered a woman once he was out of jail.

Nice work, Republicans!

Maybe we should all just vote for Ron Paul, so that we can return to the gold standard, outlaw abortion, and close our borders.

From yesterday’s New York Sun:

After showing national voters for the first time his caustic personal style of politics, and amid ongoing innuendo about his time in City Hall, Mayor Giuliani is plagued by sliding poll figures in key early states and is being forced to retool his presidential campaign.

My guess? “Retooling” the campaign isn’t going to help. With any luck, the cracks starting to appear in the “America’s Mayor” charade have put an end to the entirely free ride Giuliani has received from the national media thus far.

While I tend to avoid making predictions in this venue, I’m betting that, subjected to increased press scrutiny, Mayor 9/11′s campaign falls apart following crappy results in Iowa and New Hampshire.

I can hope, can’t I?

In an article titled “A Daunting 3 Weeks Ahead for Congress,” today’s Washington Post rattles off a list of major legislation facing Congress before its winter break, and then provides this gem:

But Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) must tackle that agenda and battle a combative GOP minority and an intransigent Republican president without a reliable majority.

“The majority leader’s job is always tough, and his job has been made all the more difficult by the presidential candidates,” said Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who will resign by month’s end. “But if you’re going to run for president, you’ve got to get out there and run for president.”

Because who better to provide insight into the Democratic majority than a disgraced Republican who is escaping out the door before tighter ethics rules kick in?

It is also notable that the mention of “combative Republicans” quoted above is the only reference in the article to the opposition party. Clearly, the largest obstacle to progress on legislation such as untangling the President’s warrantless wiretapping schemes and fixing the alternative minimun tax is that some Democratic member of Congress are out on the Presidential campaign trail—not, say, the fact that Republicans have steadfastly blocked almost every single piece of major legislation put forward since they lost the majority.

Two years ago, we were hearing endless stories about obstructionist minority Democrats and the unjustness of the filibuster. Now, it’s the ineffectiveness of the Democratic majority. Little surprise, given that the go-to guys for feckless reporters on a deadline are hacks like Trent Lott.

While I was at the gym last night, the story about a man holding hostages at Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign headquarters was all over CNN like a rash.

Let’s see— primary campaign coverage… hostage crisis… if only there had been a missing child involved somehow, the 24-hour news networks would most likely have collapsed under the gravity of their collective glee.

If the “U” in the neon “STEAKHOUSE” sign goes out, one ends up with:

STEAKHOSE

Eww.