Mark Casey Online

Most would never have guessed that a Republican candidate would be the first to reintroduce the concept of a Works Progress Administration in a major presidential campaign. But then again, Mike Huckabee–a fierce social conservative with a serious case of liberal financial morality–isn’t your typical presidential candidate.

The WPA was a program introduced by Franklin Roosevelt during his “New Deal” to help pull America out of the depression. Among other things, it was a government agency that hired unemployed laborers to do anything and everything–building bridges, digging ditches, paving roads–and paid them for it. It was the absolute best thing to do after an economic crash, and Huckabee’s own ideas for curbing our current recession are notably similar. In tonight’s debate he said:

“If we are going to spend a $150 billion, I’d like to suggest we add two lanes of highway from Bangor all the way to Miami on I-95. A third of the U.S. population lives within a hundred miles of that. This nation’s infrastructure is falling apart, and if we built those lanes of highway, with American labor, American steel, American concrete, I believe it would do more to stimulate the economy.”

It may be a bit extreme for our mild recession, compared to the Great Depression, but then again it does seem a bit more productive–and “conservative”–than Bush’s current plan of just giving away money.

Barack Obama appeared on Letterman last night with a ‘Top Ten List’ of campaign promises. Here’s the rundown:

10. To keep the budget balanced, I’ll rent the situation room for sweet sixteens.

9. I will double your tax money at the craps table.

8. Appoint Mitt Romney secretary of lookin’ good.

7. If you bring a gator to the White House, I’ll wrassle it.

6. I’ll put Regis on the nickel.

5. I’ll rename the tenth month of the year “Barack-tober.”

4. I won’t let Apple release the new and improved Ipod the day after you bought the previous model.

3. I’ll find money in the budget to buy Letterman a decent hairpiece.

2. Pronounce the word nuclear, nuclear.

1. Three words: Vice President Oprah.

Barack Obama appeared in Nevada today, reassuring supporters after his blandish debate performance earlier this week, and let me tell you, he may have casually released the best quote of the campaign thus far.

Discussing a funny moment in the debate, in which the candidates were asked what their biggest flaws were, and in which Obama said he’s not good at keeping track of paperwork, and Edwards and Hillary spun it to be a positive point about themselves (saying they were too passionate about the poor and too impatient for change, respectively) Obama decided to make fun of them.

Here’s the gold:

“Now, I didn’t, nobody had clued me in, that ya know, see, if I had gone last I would have said ‘My biggest weakness? I like to help old ladies across the street…”

[laughter]

“I didn’t understand the question,” he said, laughing. “But this is what I mean. This is political speak. This is what you learn in Washington from all those years of experience — it’s funny, except its sad, because it means that the American people are constantly having to sort out ‘what do people really mean?’”

BAM! Perfect. That is what all those years in Washington do to people–they can’t answer a single question without spinning it into a false positive. Look at any of them, or their advisers, when they go on talk shows–they ignore the questions, and work it back around to their talking points. Bleh.

In an apparent effort to get southern fried Christians in South Carolina to believe that Mike Huckabee is their best gal-durn pal in the whole wide world, ol’ Huck has really amped up the “aw, shucks” charm and the “I’ll put a boot up yer ass” rhetoric.

Here are just a few choice lines dropped lately by the hopeful Pastor in Chief:

“That’s what we need to do — we need to amend the constitution so that it’s in God’s standards.”
–Jan. 16, 2008

Apparently Huckabee wants to sell our daughters into slavery.

“If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole, that’s what we’d do.”
–Friday Jan 18, 2008

haha! Sodomy is funny to the religious fanatic. Strikes one as kind of queer, don’t ya think?

“When I was in college we used to take a popcorn popper, ’cause that was the only thing that they’d let us use in the dorms, and we would fry squirrel in popcorn poppers in my dorm room.”
– Jan 16, 2008

Whoo doggy, that’s good eatin’.

• Time has a great piece on the recent uptick of hope and achievement in the African continent, as well as the harrowing pockets of extreme violence that still threaten the continent’s fragile economy and political systems.
• In less significant news, the University of New Hampshire has released a new study proving that winters in New England, which are notoriously severe, have warmed and lightened significantly in the last 30 years, namely the post-Global Warming awareness era.
• Researchers are developing new drugs that may promise to “Vaccinate” against addiction–effectively canceling the addicting and, ahem… “appealing” effects of drug and alcohol abuse.
• John McCain does well in opinion polls against “The Democrats”–far better than any other Republican candidate, though the GOP is still at a major disadvantage. Thanks, Dubya!
• Pakistani Prez Musharraf tells the United States to “stay out” after the NYT reported that the CIA was thinking of starting covert initiatives against Al Qaeda, wherever they are. Of course, Bill Maher and I (and select others) have argued all along that that’s how you fight terrorism, not by blowing up airports in Baghdad. So… good job, CIA, I guess?

In an opportunistic visit with a largely African American church in South Carolina today, the always earnest Hillary Clinton took the opportunity to suggest how *cute* it is that Barack Obama, as a black man, has his own campaign and everything. Moments before comparing herself, and the struggle for women’s rights, to the civil rights marches in the 60’s.

I quote:

I am so proud of my party, I am so proud of my country and I am so proud of Sen. Barack Obama, because together we have presented our cases to the people.

I am standing here, Senator Obama stands before you as a result of the generations of men and women who protested and picketed, faced dogs and tear gas. Who were beaten and jailed who had night sticks crush their skulls. Some who lost their very lives. They risked their lives because they looked into the eyes of their children and saw the promise of a better future. We stand here today because of their sacrifice.

Dogs and tear gas? Listen, I respect and support the suffrage of women as much as anyone, but to so blatantly conflate her own position as a rich, white politician with the violent Civil Rights struggles in the Old South, survivors of which are still living, and may have even been in that audience–that’s just wrong. That’s playing politics with an entire people’s culture.

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Brief primary update:

John McCain has bounced an astounding 21 points in the national polls after his New Hampshire win, with voters apparently heartened by his apparent ability to appeal to an electorate. He now leads Huckabee by ten points, and Rudy “Let’s Just Win Florida” Giulianni is in a distant third.

Meanwhile, Hillary leads Obama by nearly ten points, though he is also up six points from his pre-Iowa stance. No word yet on whether or not she rigged New Hampshire by buying the electronic votes.

Rudy Giulianni has a much-discussed strategy for winning the GOP nomination, and that strategy is “if no one is going to like me, I might as well pretend the feeling is mutual.”

Also known as “The Florida Strategy,” Rudy is completely forgoing the usually-important caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and elsewhere, instead focusing all his time and resources on Florida, the final primary before the big show next month.

The only problem?  He’s falling nationally in the polls, and he has absolutely no money.  No, seriously.  His staff and consultants are forgoing their salaries, based on the presumed promise that he’ll pay them later.  I guess, you know, after he becomes president or something.

Everyone’s favorite “acting” Governor (hah–see what I did there?), Arnold Schwarzenegger, has just released his new budget plan. If he had released the details in a speech, it would’ve went something like this:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to announce that I’ve come up with a bold new plan to improve our state and enrich all of our lives.

As part of this groundbreaking initiative, I promise to shut down one out of every five public parks. And, rest assured that nothing but the most mediocre education is good enough for Cali-fornia’s students, because I’ll make it my personal business to slash the education budget by ten percent–that’s four billion dollars that won’t be holding back our kids any longer!

But wait, there’s more! Our streets have never been safer than they will be after today, because I’m flooding them with 22,000 newly released state prison inmates. It is my firm belief that this powerful plan will result in lower crime, because these inmates will obviously scare all the other criminals out of their lives of crime. I say, why overpopulate the prisons when we can simply overpopulate our streets?

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