I thought of writing something of substance about "No Labels" (talk about an oxymoronic sentence) and then realized I had already done so months ago. http://www.r8ny.com/blog/gatemouth/as_centrist_and_substantial_as_the_hole_in_a_bagel.html www.r8ny.com
I may be a centrist, but Yglesias still gets it exactly right about "No Labels".
Would you buy a can of something without a label on it? Yglesias » In Praise of Labels yglesias.thinkprogress.org
As I've noted before, "Centrists" come in many flavors, not all of them safe for human consumption. The So-Called "Centrist" Democrats (and the Real Ones) | Room Eight www.r8ny.com
The emptiness of the entire "No Labels" circle jerk is best exemplified by the self contradictory nature of what seems to be the two main points of consensus:
1) We need to abandon partisanship to make the tough decisions to deal with the deficit which is the number one problem which confronts us.
2) Hooray for the tax cut.
Another sign of the uselessness of the whole enterprise is the absence of Republicans, essentially rendering the whole thing into a self inflicted effort to divide the opposition to the "American Phalange;" the better to ensure that they achieve total victory. http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1210/No_Republicans.html?showall http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1210/No_Labels_contd.html?showall
As is often the case with Hitch, when he publishes a must read column, he first says a few things which range from the edge of annoying to the edge of infuriating, but like any foreplay, it’s worth plowing through the underbrush to get to the fucking point.
Hitch: " Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded. No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting… of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places. But the latest revelations from the Nixon Library might perhaps turn the scale at last…Chatting eagerly with his famously racist and foul-mouthed boss in March 1973, following an appeal from Golda Meir to press Moscow to allow the emigration of Soviet Jewry, Kissinger is heard on the tapes to say:
"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."
(One has to love that uneasy afterthought …)
In the past, Kissinger has defended his role as enabler to Nixon's psychopathic bigotry, saying that he acted as a restraining influence on his boss by playing along and making soothing remarks. This can now go straight into the lavatory pan, along with his other hysterical lies. Obsessed as he was with the Jews, Nixon never came close to saying that he'd be indifferent to a replay of Auschwitz. For this, Kissinger deserves sole recognition.
It's hard to know how to classify this observation in the taxonomy of obscenity. Should it be counted as tactical Holocaust pre-denial? That would be too mild. It's actually a bit more like advance permission for another Holocaust. Which is why I wonder how long the official spokesmen of American Jewry are going to keep so quiet. Nothing remotely as revolting as this was ever uttered by Jesse Jackson or even Mel Gibson, to name only two famous targets of the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League. Where is the outrage?" The Nixon tapes remind us what a vile creature Henry Kissinger is. www.slate.com
Katz: "Back in 2005 when he ran, Weiner was the stickball-bat swinging, stoop-sitting champion of the outer boroughs. He impressed enough Dems with his rolled-up-shirt-sleeves style to get into a runoff with Freddy Ferrer – and then bowed out in the name of "party unity," essentially feeding Ferrer to the Bloomberg behemoth…."
WRONG!!!
After initially looking like he made the runoff in the unofficial returns, Weiner fell behind when the votes were actually counted for real. While it is true he took a dive on monitoring and contesting the count, there is no assurance he'd have made the runoff if he did (in the same situation in 1997, Sharpton did contest, and lost anyway). And, if Weiner had made the runoff, there was no legal way of bowing out; the runoff would have taken place regardless. Anthony Weiner makes the rounds of pundits' shows hoping to raise profile for mayoral bid www.nydailynews.com