Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Quick Hits: Volume XCIII

- Let's get rid of any wiggle room: Tom Emmer will be elected to the U.S. House this November, representing Minnesota's 6th Congressional District.

With that said, that doesn't mean Emmer's opponents for the Republican nomination (i.e. Rhonda Sivarajah and Phil Krinkie) will cease trying to peal off support. The one area where many seem to think Emmer is vulnerable was his advocacy for National Popular Vote in 2011. And while I agree with my NARN colleague Mitch Berg that NPV needs to die a painful death, Emmer's past support for it is of little consequence here. Quite simply, it's up to the individual states to decide how their electoral votes are allocated. Emmer will have absolutely no say on what the MN state legislature decides on the issue. The same goes for Sivarajah and Krinkie despite their staunch opposition to NPV. 

The fact that Emmer's opponents for the GOP CD6 nomination have been so aggressive on an issue irrelevant to the job they are seeking indicates desperation. That's not the aura one should give off three months away from a primary election. 


- Speaking of candidates with no chance of being elected to Congress, Democrat Trish Causey is seeking her party's nomination in Mississippi CD4, which happens to be an R +22 district. Since she has about as much chance of winning in the general election there as a Republican in MN CD5, why not save the trouble of running a fruitless campaign?





Yeah, nothing like using self-abuse humor when speaking of a tragedy where four innocent Americans were brutally murdered.


- So Monica Lewinsky broke her long, self-imposed silence recently.


“It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” She also says: “I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply. Regret. What. Happened.”

After 10 years of virtual silence (“So silent, in fact,” she writes, “that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out? I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth”), Lewinsky, 40, says it is time to stop “tiptoeing around my past—and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”

Some theorize that Lewinsky re-emerging is an attempt to undermine a Hillary Clinton presidential run (how long before Clinton herself re-invokes her invented phrase "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy?"). After all, the Clintons were waging a "war on women" long before they were projecting such nonsense on Republicans.

Lewinsky herself gives some insight as to why she's breaking free of her exile.

When Tyler Clementi, the 18-year-old Rutgers freshman who was secretly streamed via Webcam kissing another man, committed suicide in September 2010, Lewinsky writes, she was brought to tears, but her mother was especially distraught: “She was reliving 1998, when she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She was replaying those weeks when she stayed by my bed, night after night, because I, too, was suicidal. The shame, the scorn, and the fear that had been thrown at her daughter left her afraid that I would take my own life—a fear that I would be literally humiliated to death.” Lewinsky clarifies that she has never actually attempted suicide, but had strong suicidal temptations several times during the investigations and during one or two periods after.

Lewinsky writes that following Clementi’s tragedy “my own suffering took on a different meaning. Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation. The question became: How do I find and give a purpose to my past?”
I don't know Lewinsky at all, so I'm not about to question if her motives are that pure or not. All I know is she made a horrific error in judgement, one for which she has been made to suffer. But is it even possible that she can live a normal, productive life in light of her last name being turned into a euphemism for....well, y'know...? I have my doubts, given the crush of constant media outlets that have evolved over the past decade. But I do feel she should at least have the opportunity to do so.

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