Political Irony

Pollsters with a sense of humor

Monday, November 10, 2008

A polling organization just sent out an email with the subject line:

Marist Poll: Matchups for the 2012 Presidential Election – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

If you opened the email, it contained the following:

Did you really open this email?!
Haven’t you had enough?!

You’ll be hearing from us soon…but, not this soon.

Best wishes,
Your friends at The Marist Poll

But just in case you really really want to read about possible presidential contenders in 2012, Politico has an article about it.

Thanks to Political Insider and Electoral Vote.

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Forgive and Forget?

Monday, November 10, 2008

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Hitting a milestone

Monday, November 10, 2008

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Pinkos on Parade

Sunday, November 9, 2008

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I guess you had to expect that with our extended election season finally over, a media looking for stories would jump on Obama’s promise in his acceptance speech to get his daughters a puppy. But I for one will feel sorry for the new presidential pet. Why?

For an answer, I present this photo of Socks, President Clinton’s pet cat, being hounded (pun intended) by the media back in 1992:

The hysteria has already started. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the new website obamafamilydog.com. But the fascination with presidential pets has been around for a long time. President Bush’s Scottish terrier Barney has his own government funded website. Believe it or not, there is a Presidential Pets Museum, whose founder counsels that picking a presidential pet “is a very, very, very important decision.” Some historical pet tidbits — John Quincy Adams had a pet alligator, William Henry Harrison had a pet billy goat, and JFK had Macaroni the Pony.

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Would you like your injustice tinged with a little irony?

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Jon Stewart comments on the fact that the large African-American turnout for Obama in California also voted 70% for the ban on gay marriage, which helped it pass.

Also contributing to the irony, and definitely worth a read, is Robert Kirby’s column in the Salt Lake Tribune. Utah Mormons are estimated to have contributed 70% of the funds to pass the gay marriage ban in California, at the direct encouragement of the Mormon church. Even so, Kirby says “Not only do I not care if gays get married, it is none of my business.” But the last line of his column is the best one: “if you’re really serious about putting a stop to gay sex, let them get married.”

And finally, isn’t it ironic that the Mormon Church — famous for its early support of polygamy, and founded by a man who had 30 wives — now fights so hard to define marriage to be between one man and one woman?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic (who is gay) has a very interesting piece pointing out the hypocrisy of gays attacking blacks because blacks voted for banning gay marriage in California, because there is evidence of racism among those same gays. More gays voted Republican in the 2008 presidential election (27%) than in the 2004 election (23%), even though Obama has a far better record on gay rights issues than McCain. As one of his readers puts it:

As a married gay man I’m upset about Prop 8, but I’m also upset about this blame-the-blacks line. The black vote in California simply wasn’t large enough to make a difference, so why are people focusing on that? The eagerness to jump on the black vote for Prop 8, together with the statistic above, points to a smoldering issue in the gay community.

More evidence supporting the old saw that victims of intolerance ironically sometimes learn to be more intolerant of others themselves?

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Ted Stevens rolls the dice

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Even though the recent corruption trial of Senator Ted Stevens found him guilty on all charges, he currently has a slight lead of approximately 3,200 votes in his reelection bid. Unfortunately for him, the numbers may not be all that lucky for him. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has analyzed the data, and predicts that the early and absentee ballots that have still to be counted will go against Stevens and put him out of a job.

And Stevens might not be the only thing that is corrupt in Alaska. The election results in Alaska just don’t add up. The official count of ballots cast in Alaska show that 14% fewer people voted this election than in 2004, even though voting was up everywhere else. Not to mention that Alaska provided a major party candidate for the first time in history, which normally increases turnout dramatically.

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The Republican Spirit of Cooperation

Saturday, November 8, 2008

You might recall the term “nuclear option” from 2005, back when the Republicans still controlled both houses of Congress (not to mention the Executive and Judicial branches). Even if you remember the name, do you remember what it was all about?

Bush had successfully gotten over 95% of his judicial nominees approved by the Senate (who have the constitutional duty to review such appointments), but he was greedy. He wanted the rest approved, but the Democrats were threatening to filibuster the remaining nominees. As Senator Dick Durbin put it:

People across the country understand what it means to change the rules in the middle of the game, which is what the nuclear option would do. It would eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominees, a tradition of the Senate that’s been here for over 200 years. … He wants more power. It’s not just the power to govern. It’s the power to rule.

The “nuclear option” would require an “up or down vote” on judicial nominees. So who was promoting the nuclear option? Here’s Senator Jon Kyl (the junior Senator from Arizona, where McCain is the senior Senator) in an interview from June 2005 on PBS, defending the nuclear option:

For 214 years it has been the tradition of the Senate to approve judicial nominees by a majority vote. Many of our judges and, for example, Clarence Thomas, people might recall, was approved by either fifty-one or fifty-two votes as I recall. It has never been the rule that a candidate for judgeship that had majority support was denied the ability to be confirmed once before the Senate. It has never happened before. So we’re not changing the rules in the middle of the game. We’re restoring the 214-year tradition of the Senate because in the last two years Democrats have begun to use this filibuster.

In the end, the Republicans prevailed, not because they actually used the nuclear option, but because the threat of it caused the Democrats to back down. Kyl even warned the Congressional Democrats after the 2004 election that “voters will be watching for more cooperation and less confrontation when we gather again in January.”

Now, fast forward to yesterday, just three days after the election of Barack Obama and the Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Jon Kyl (now the second-ranking Republican in the Senate), giving a speech at the conservative Federalist Society in Phoenix, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Where is your 214-year tradition now, Senator Kyl? The voters are still looking for more cooperation and less confrontation, but you can’t even wait for Obama to be sworn in before you draw your sword.

One has to wonder what he would do if the Democrats proposed Kyl’s own solution — the “nuclear option” — in response to his threat of a judicial filibuster. I would love to hear the dripping hypocrisy of what he would say against it.

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Late Night Political Humor

Saturday, November 8, 2008

From Bush to Obama

“Starting today, Barack Obama is now going to receive the daily White House intelligence briefing on things like, you know, security and terrorism, stuff like that. It’s the same briefing President Bush gets every day, but without the pictures and the color by numbers.” -Jay Leno

“People are now asking if the Obamas being in the White House will be a return to Camelot. You know like what it was during the Kennedys? As opposed to the last eight years, which is return to the ‘Dukes of Hazzard.'” -Jay Leno

“Political analysts are saying today that Barack Obama’s win was unprecedented. Which again confused President Bush. He said, ‘Unprecedented? You mean, he didn’t win? He got unpresidented? Already?'” -Jay Leno

“Barack Obama spent his first day as president-elect putting together his transition team. And if you believe MSNBC, by tomorrow he will have chosen all 12 of his disciples.” -Jay Leno

“Barack Obama’s wasting no time. He has chosen Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Rahm Emanuel. Apparently Barack’s first order of business, no guys with regular names. Okay, that’s it! No Larrys, no Bobs! Just Barack and Rahm.” -Jay Leno

“And as you know, like they say, Barack Obama hits the ground running. He is already naming people to be part of the staff. He picked a guy Rahm Emanuel. Rahm Emanuel, is that the holiday the writers are always taking off?” -David Letterman

“I get this feeling that the country’s starting to come together. And actually, it was borne out today in the newspaper. Yesterday, apparently, First Lady Laura Bush called Michelle Obama and invited her and her young daughters to the White House. Isn’t that nice? And Laura Bush told Mrs. Obama, ‘While I give you a tour, the girls can watch ‘Spongebob’ with the president.'” -Conan O’Brien

“Barack Obama promised a new America in which the powerless will have a voice. So, he’s already reaching out to Republicans.” -Jay Leno

“I love stuff like this, because it so early that everything now is new and cute and the Obama family looking for a White House dog. … Once the Obama’s choose a dog, he must then be confirmed by the Senate.” -David Letterman

“President-elect Obama promised his daughters a puppy when they move into the White House. You see that, he promised them a puppy. There’s a long tradition of presidential pets. The first President Bush had Millie. Remember Millie, the White House dog? The current Bushes have two dogs, named Barney and Scott. Do you know the name of the dog in the Clinton White House? Bill. Bill was the dog.” -Jay Leno

“But I was thinking about this, the Obamas want to adopt a stray dog from the pound. And I think that is admirable. I believe the last president to bring a stray dog into the White House got impeached.” -David Letterman

The end of the campaign

“Of course, a lot of famous sound bites will be remembered for this campaign. There were some good ones. Barack Obama saying, what was his one? Oh, ‘We are the change that we seek.’ John McCain saying, ‘I would rather lose an election than lose a war.’ Sarah Palin saying, ‘Do you have this in size 6?'” -Jay Leno

“Right about now, John McCain is at home, saying, if only I didn’t anger Dave, if only I didn’t anger Dave. And Obama believes that the election results gave him a mandate. A mandate, that is what got that Senator Larry Craig in trouble, wasn’t it?” -David Letterman

“After this week’s election, this is true, thousands of mothers in Kenya are expected to name their babies Barack Obama. Isn’t that cool? Yeah. And then, they’ll all be adopted by Angelina Jolie. She’s going to have 600,000 kids named Barack Obama” -Conan O’Brien

“Rumor is, still a lot of infighting within the McCain campaign, between the Palin people and the McCain people. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but earlier today, Sarah Palin put McCain’s campaign bus on eBay.” -Jay Leno

“But what’s interesting about these stories is they come from inside the McCain camp. … But they’re even more horrified by all the money she spent on clothes than they initially let on. Apparently, they told her buy three suit for the convention, and instead she went out and bought $150,000 stuff for her and her family. Every time she put her foot in the mouth, she ruined a $1,200 pair of Manolo Blahniks. The McCain aides described it, and this is a quote, as ‘Wasilla Hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.'” -Jimmy Kimmel

“Sources from the McCain campaign are starting to talk. And they said today that when they were prepping Sarah Palin for the debates, they found out that she thought Africa was a country, not a continent. Now, to be fair to Sarah Palin, it is hard to see Africa from Alaska.” -Conan O’Brien

“Newsweek magazine and Fox News are reporting that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa is a continent, she thought this was a country. She didn’t know what countries were in the North American Free Trade Agreement, even though it’s just us, Canada, and Mexico in North America. Another story said two top McCain aides came to her hotel room to brief her, she came out wet, and wearing nothing but a towel. It sounds a little bit like they’re talking about Jessica Simpson, but they’re not.” -Jimmy Kimmel

“President-elect Barack Obama spent the day thanking the people who helped him win the election. Yeah, and actually, Obama’s first phone call was to Sarah Palin. He sent her flowers.” -Conan O’Brien

“Sarah Palin thinks the alphabet has 22 letters. She’s so dumb she thinks the capital of China is Chinatown. Sarah Palin is so dumb, she thinks billboards are postcards from Giants. The governor of Alaska is so dumb, she thinks soy milk is Spanish for ‘I am milk.'” -Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac

“Now that the election is over, people around the world are hoping that America will be less arrogant. Yeah. Ah, who the hell cares what those foreigners think? To heck with them. Lousy foreigners.” -David Letterman

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White House

Saturday, November 8, 2008

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Eerie resemblance

Friday, November 7, 2008

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Republicans! How to get away from it all

Friday, November 7, 2008

Thanks to All Hat No Cattle.

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Late Night Political Humor

Friday, November 7, 2008

Obama

“You know, do you realize this is our first black president since the first season of ’24’?” -Jay Leno

“Really, an historic night last night. You may have heard, Barack Obama will be the first black president of the United States of America. … Obama is also the first Democrat to receive more than 50 percent of the vote since Jimmy Carter, the first senator to be elected since Jack Kennedy, the first Muslim to be … I said too much.” -Jon Stewart

“You know, it’s amazing, Barack Obama won in Florida and still became president. That never happens. In fact, today, Democrats are asking for a recount. They can’t believe they won.” -Jay Leno

“I watched Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park. I actually loved watching the shots of the crowd, which looked like a Benetton ad — different races, different ages, all different kinds of people. I thought it was fantastic. Meanwhile, over at McCain’s speech, there were all different kinds of white people. They had tons of them — yuppies, golfers, Osmonds.” -Craig Ferguson

“And, of course, it was a huge celebration over at Barack Obama headquarters, otherwise known as MSNBC.” -Jay Leno

“All the major networks declared Barack Obama the winner at 11 last night, except for MSNBC, which declared Obama the winner six months ago.” -Conan O’Brien

“Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama is our new president. And I think I speak for most Americans when I say, anybody mind if he starts a little early?” -David Letterman

“Well, right after Barack Obama clinched the [election], did you see TV cameras caught Jesse Jackson standing at the celebration with tears in his eyes? Not because Barack won, because he makes more than $250 thousand a year.” -Jay Leno

“Obama’s victory would not have been not possible without the help of the leaders who came before him — Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, and most importantly, President Bush, who has set the bar pretty low.” -Craig Ferguson

“Last night, after Barack Obama was declared the winner, President Bush called Obama, promised to work with him to guarantee a smooth transition. Yeah. Yeah, when we heard this, Obama said, ‘Thanks, but you’ve done enough.'” -Conan O’Brien

“President Bush called Sen. Obama last night to congratulate him and this is an actual quote. He said, “What an awesome night for you and your family.” I think his eloquence is what we will remember most about Bush.” -Jimmy Kimmel

“Obama thanked the President for his call and for all he did to help him get elected.” -Jimmy Kimmel

“See, I got to admit, as a comedian, I’m gonna miss President Bush. Because Barack Obama is not easy to do jokes about. He doesn’t give you a lot to go on. See, this is why God gave us Joe Biden.” -Jay Leno

McCain

“I would like to say one thing to Senator John McCain . Listen, senator, you don’t show up for me, America doesn’t show up for you.” -David Letterman

“Attention passengers, the Straight Talk Express is no longer in service.” -David Letterman

“Last night’s results mean one thing for John McCain. That is that Sunday’s debate will be even more crucial. He’s really up against the wall now.” -David Letterman

“Did you see the concession speech last night? John McCain was generous. He was gracious. He was statesman-like. And I was thinking well, he should have tried that earlier.” -David Letterman

“His concession speech last night was so effective, so positive, that he shot up 4 points in the polls.” -David Letterman

Palin

“How about Sarah Palin, ladies and gentlemen. Right now on her way back to Alaska. And I’m thinking oh, I wouldn’t want to be a moose now.” -David Letterman

“But on the bright side, at least now Tina Fey can spend Saturdays with her family again, so that’s a good deal.” -David Letterman

“After congratulating President-elect Obama, President Bush called John McCain to commend him on his well-fought campaign. President Bush also phoned Sarah Palin and she said, ‘Oh yeah, I’m sure this is the real Bush, I’m not falling for that again.'” -Jay Leno

“People all over the world are celebrating Barack Obama’s victory. In fact, Sarah Palin watched the Russians celebrating from her house.” -David Letterman

The Vote

“At the end of the evening, the electoral vote count was 349 for Obama, 148 for McCain. Or, as Fox News says, too close to call.” -David Letterman

“Barack Obama won the popular vote by a 52 percent to 46 percent. And electoral vote 360 to 173, so basically a six percent popular vote victory translates into a two-to-one Electoral College drubbing, proving once again the Electoral College makes perfect sense.” -Jon Stewart

“People were worried about the Bradley effect. Apparently, it was not nearly as strong as the Bush effect.” -Jay Leno

“Hey, did I call it or what? Six months ago I predicted Ralph Nader would come in third. Did I call it?” -Jay Leno

“But Republicans had a bad night all around. I mean, anywhere you look. Even the crooked voting machines in Florida broke down.” -David Letterman

“A huge turnout in Hollywood. In fact, for the first time ever, there were more celebrities in voting booths than in rehab. That has never happened. They say this was most expensive election in history, costing over $1 billion. Do you realize that is the equivalent of three Wall Street CEO bonuses?” -Jay Leno

“The stock market dropped over 400 points today, which is not a reflection on Obama. No, the brokers just realized they’ve still got three months of George Bush.” -Craig Ferguson

“Hey, did you get a lot of those robo-calls over the weekend? Those stupid things. I got one from Governor Schwarzenegger. Then again, isn’t every call from Arnold Schwarzenegger a robo-call, really?” -Jay Leno

Loose ends

“But right about now Joe the plumber is meeting with his transition team. They’re going to help ease him from obscurity back to oblivion.” -David Letterman

“One good thing did come out of this for Joe the plumber. He’s branched out into heating and air conditioning.” -David Letterman

“Well, California passed a bill banning gay marriage, and San Francisco voters defeated a ballet proposition that would have decriminalized prostitution. So, it’s a bad day for straight guys and gay guys.” -Jay Leno

“In California, the ban on gay marriage passed. Gay people are furious. They stormed the State Capitol in Sacramento and caused $3 million in improvements to the city.” -Craig Ferguson

“And of course the big mantra was ‘Yes, we can!’ Unless you’re a gay couple in California, then it’s, ‘No, you can’t.'” -Jay Leno

“And in what has to be one of the most ridiculous moments yesterday, it looks like convicted Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska has won re-election. How does that make the guy who lost feel, huh? What’s that concession speech like? ‘We gave it our best, but the voters are preferred a convicted, 84-year-old felon who’s going to prison.'” -Jay Leno

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Obama Hair Don’ts

Friday, November 7, 2008

From The Root.

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Pollsters with a sense of humor

Forgive and Forget?

Hitting a milestone

Pinkos on Parade

Pity the Presidential Pet

Would you like your injustice tinged with a little irony?

Ted Stevens rolls the dice

The Republican Spirit of Cooperation