This guy was not—as Oregon state Rep. Bill Post has claimed—a Republican.
John Nichols at
The Nation writes
Mr. Spock Was a McGovernite: Remembering Leonard Nimoy’s ‘Live Long and Prosper’ Politics:
George McGovern’s anti-war candidacy for the presidency in 1972 attracted a good deal of celebrity support. But few Hollywood figures worked as hard as [Leonard] Nimoy to advance the cause of the Democratic presidential contender.
Beginning in January of 1972, when he trekked to New Hampshire on behalf of what was then considered to be McGovern’s uphill battle for the nomination, Nimoy traveled to thirty-five states on the South Dakota senator’s behalf. Grainy photos and news reports from more than four decades ago tell the story of a young Nimoy campaigning in the southwest with Latinos, in urban centers with African-Americans, in rural Oregon and even in Alaska.
Nimoy did not mind trading on his Star Trek celebrity to appeal for McGovern. He even joked at campaign stops that “I’m at a disadvantage. I’ve spent most of my previous life on Vulcan, so I don’t know too much about the people in this country.”
But, of course, he did know a lot about the country and its politics. Referencing infant mortality rates and poverty issues in a land of plenty, he declared, “We don’t need another campaign that avoids these issues, another nice-guy campaign.”
On the campaign trail, Nimoy spoke against not just the war in Vietnam but against bloated Department of Defense budgets and misguided priorities. He decried the influence of Henry Kissinger on the Nixon administration and fretted that it was undermining traditional diplomacy. He condemned the Watergate break-in and complained about win-at-any-cost politics.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Someone help me find the political genius here?:
Politico on the fight by New Democrats and Blue Dogs to stop the mortgage relief bill coming to the floor this week:
Moderates worry Pelosi is routinely staking very liberal positions to push House versions of big bills as far to the left as possible to enhance their standing in negotiations with the historically centrist Senate. This might be a smart tactic, but it often hurts Democrats who rely on Republican votes to win reelection. Put bluntly, it makes them look too liberal. |
"Moderates worry."
Stop the presses! Hahahahahahahaha! "Dog bites man!" "Sun rises in East!"
Yes, trying to help the nearly 2.5 million homeowners projected to go into foreclosure in 2009 "makes them look too liberal," and the only way to make this bill "moderate" enough is to side with the banks, who had the gift of the Republican bankruptcy bill handed to them in 2005, but still couldn't manage to survive as a viable industry without at $700 billion bailout (with more to come).
So the genius of Ellen Tauscher's (D-CA-10) position? Democrats need to side with the banks who converted their 2005 gift into the complete meltdown of the world financial order, then siphoned off trillions of public dollars to "stabilize" themselves, and now want still more blood from the homeowners they killed in creating this mess.
Tweet of the Day
48,000 Oakland workers get a raise today! 52,000 receive paid sick days. @LiftUpOakland @workingeastbay #RaiseTheWage #MinimumWage
— @dcmarla
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, Texas weighs heavy in weekend GunFAIL.
Greg Dworkin rounds up the Republican DHS collapse and the obscure rule that could possibly provide a way out, Chris Christie's engineering of a major environmental settlement from ExxonMobil to close his budget gap, and Scott Walker's possibly premature surge to frontrunner status.
Armando primes us for
King v. Burwell week, focusing on his Sunday piece on how and why the plaintiffs' textual arguments in the case fall flat. And Aaron Schock is in still more trouble, for taxpayer-paid private planes and hiring full-time personal photographer.
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