GOP can't decide if it wants to look stupid, petty or silly, so it goes for all three

I really don't know what to make of the Republican Party's need to continually top itself withs stupid, petty and silly antics.

It's bad enough that their in-house racists like take-the-bone-from-your-nose Limbaugh and Miamia-is-a-third-world-city Tancredo are calling Sotomayor "racist."

But no, the president takes his wife out for a date on Broadway and they feel the need to criticize it as supposedly insensitive while GM prepares to file bankruptcy. What? The Obamas are supposed to be in mourning, or something?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23122.html

My God, get a grip, you guys!

Chief Justice Roberts

An interesting point by Jeffrey Toobin in Slate: In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

This is, in a nutshell, my primary discomfort with the modern GOP. Surely there are some times when the powerless deserve some help against the powerful?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all

Petreaus

Over at Obsidian Wings they commented about Gen. Petreaus' political savvy, ending with the comment that they hope he doesn't run for political office as a Republican someday.

I think that's short-sighted. I do hope he considers running, if he thinks he has something to contribute.

Currently I'm wishing Obama well. I think he's being a necessary corrective to Bush-era disasters. I said during the campaign and believe still that Bush represented such an epic failure of values and competence that we needed a complete "anti-Bush" as the next president and Obama is about as un-Bush as you can get.

That said, I think Obama is a singular individual and I see very little evidence that Democrats, generally, have improved at all over the feckless, short-sighted, morally cowardly bunch of hacks they've been. While the Bush-era disaster is, rightly, laid at the feet of the GOP, Democrats did not cover themselves in glory as the opposition, either.

Once Obama's 8 years are over (and I do assume he will be re-elected) the country may well be ready for a swing closer to the middle and someone like Petreaus may be a good choice. Generals tend to be pragmatic individuals, especially the good ones, and not particularly ideological. Given that the Republicans seems determined to go through at least one more round of drubbings in 2012, someone like Petreaus (or maybe a Huntsman-Petreaus ticket) could lead them back from the wilderness. A Huntsman-Petreaus ticket might win the White House, but it's highly likely they would start out with the Congress still controlled by the Democrats, which creates some interesting potential political dynamics as well. It may be that most of the legistlation that gets passed by a H-P administration would be Democrat originated but with signifcant concessions to the middle ground of a moderate GOP. Hard-core left Dems and the Rightist GOp rump might both find themselves left out in the cold -- which would be the best possible outcome.

Powerful testament

Sometimes the best things on Andrew Sullivan's blog are not his writings, but the thoughtful comments of his readers.

Here is an exceptional one: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/what-mancow-teaches-us.html#more

Link to President Obama's speech

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-On-National-Security-5-21-09/

Link to former Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks

Cheney's text http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/text_of_cheneys_aei_speech.asp

Slate contrasts Cheney's lies to Obama's straightforwardness

A good read here. http://www.slate.com/id/2218762/pagenum/all/#p2