Monthly Archives: November 2008

Pass Colombian free trade pact

6 Replies

Hey, don’t just go by me on the need to pass the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Listen to The New York Times, which said this week:

We believe that the trade pact would be good for America’s economy
and workers. Rejecting it would send a dismal message to allies the
world over that the United States is an unreliable partner and, despite
all that it preaches, does not really believe in opening markets to
trade. There is no more time to waste. If the lame-duck Congress does
not approve the trade pact this year, prospects would dim considerably
since it would lose the cover of the rule (formerly known as fast
track) that provides for an up-or-down, no-amendment vote.

Because
of trade preferences granted as part of the war on drugs, most
Colombian exports already are exempt from United States tariffs. The
new agreement would benefit American companies that now have to pay
high tariffs on exports to Colombia.

It also would strengthen
bonds with an important ally in a volatile corner of South America —
that also is the main source of cocaine shipped into this country and
where the United States has very few friends these days.

As for those of you who say you don’t care what the NYT says, this post isn’t aimed at you. It’s aimed at people a lot more likely to care what the Gray Lady says — Democrats in Congress (and Barack Obama), who have against all reason opposed this agreement.

Should we let Detroit go under?

24 Replies

You know, I’m leaning more and more that way. If we let GM et al. go bankrupt, something would take their place, and that something would be geared more to making the cars that the world actually wants with a more reasonable production cost.

A lot of things are pushing me that way, such as:

  • The George Will piece I ran today, which effectively painted the former Big Three and UAW as wedded to failure, and wanting us to subsidize it.
  • The consideration that here in the South we have an example of what is likely to replace Detroit, and it’s certainly a lot more attractive than what we’re being asked to prop up.

This time, Mark Sanford has a point:

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina recently wondered whether BMW
would have ever built its plant in Spartanburg if the government had
been handing out money to its rivals, and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of
Georgia voiced similar concerns about the state’s Kia plant, which
could bring 2,500 jobs to his rural district.

"Let’s face it, who would want to come over here and put their
investment into this country if they knew the government was going to
be subsidizing their competitors?" he said. "It’s just not right. It
just goes against the grain of the free-enterprise system."

It’s too bad he reacts that way to EVERYTHING that involves government action. If he’d only say this stuff when it actually makes sense, people would listen to him more. And this time, it makes sense.

Of course, if it were only good for South Carolina and bad for the country, I don’t think I’d support what he’s saying (at least, I hope not). But the fact is that increasingly, I don’t think propping up the disastrous business model of Detroit is in the country’s, or the planet’s, interests.

That said, Ben Stein gives me pause, warning that a GM bankruptcy would be bad for national security (Shades of "Engine Charlie" Wilson and his notion of "what’s good for the country"). Bueller? Bueller?

But what do y’all think? Bueller?

Parties got souls?

16 Replies

OK, after this one I won’t pick on the parties any more today. But I have to tell ya this release from something called NetRight Nation grabbed my attention with the headline, "The GOP: Losing its Own Soul?"

First, I had to deal with the concept: Parties got souls? You couldn’t tell by me. Then there was the specific hand-wringing about the soul of this particular party… you know why the author thought the GOP was in danger? Because McCain and Graham met with Obama Monday. I kid you not. The very sort of thing that gives me hope for the country, this guy equates with damnation. A sample:

Unfortunately, the GOP didn’t get off to a very good start in Chicago yesterday, where President-elect Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) met to “seek common ground” and “move on” from the past election season, according to an article in TheState.com. Alongside Mr. McCain was close friend, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). According to the report, Mr. McCain and company intended to bring a more bi-partisan tone to the Republican platform.

Now, no shock there, Mr. Graham mentions that there are “areas of bi-partisan solutions [that] are needed.” And there goes the ballgame.

Earth to Mr. Graham: To the Democrats, “bi-partisan” is a code word for “vivisection.” Republicans must not buy into the narrative that their political adversaries have written for them, which is little more than a preemptive obituary.

When Republicans win, the Democrats launch holy war. There is no insult, attack or underhanded assault that could possibly be considered out of bounds. But when the Democrats and liberals win, both parties are supposed to join hands and sing kumbayah. Sure, the Democrats want to bury the hatchet—right in the Republicans’ backs. This is a prescription for disaster and a generation of irrelevance. Mr. Obama should be challenged and fought every step of the way.

Did you notice the reference to thestate.com? So did I. So there’s a South Carolina connection here somewhere. But back to the topic, there’s something else you may have noticed. Yep, it’s that language about "When Republicans win, the Democrats launch holy war. There is no
insult, attack or underhanded assault that could possibly be considered
out of bounds…"

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the mirror image of the stuff I’ve been passing on from the DSCC. Each party says it HAS to engage in partisan warfare because the OTHER side is so mean and nasty. And so it is that the two sides prop each other up and "justify" each other in their efforts to tear the country apart.

They are so unified in that purpose, I don’t even distinguish them any more. Sometimes I get briefly confused, and have to think for a second which brand the more virulent practitioners are advocating. You know it has to get confusing, say, at the Carville-Matalin household. They’re both in the family business; they just have different clients.

One thing I do know, though: I’m against all of ’em.

Republicans seek affirmation

16 Replies

While the Democrats are still fulminating, the Republicans are at least trying to give us something to laugh about:

Dear Brad,

As we as a Party regroup after our near miss in the presidential election, we
must reflect on what our Party has done well and what we can improve moving
forward. It is for that reason we have created a new Web site for you to share
your thoughts on the direction of the Republican Party. Please take a moment to
visit www.RepublicanForAReason.com and
create an account to begin the dialogue.

The Republican Party has always been the party of reason and hope, and I
strongly believe we will continue in this tradition as we work to the
future….

I mean, they were playing for laughs with that bit about "what our Party has done well" stuff, right?

You know, there was a time when I thought of the Democrats as lovable losers, sort of like the Chicago Cubs. They kept losing (in S.C. anyway), but they were hapless and helpless about it, and it was sort of endearing. Nothing like the partisan nastiness you’d often hear from the Republicans back in those days, who always seemed angry about something. Then, in the late 90s or so (during the Clinton impeachment and the Jim Hodges campaign), the Democrats caught up and showed they could be just as angrily organized as the GOP. Then, after the debacle of 2000, they took anger and resentment to new depths.

Anyway, this note from the GOP is so plaintive that it makes me wonder whether the Republicans are about to be like the Dems back when they struck me as a sympathetic underdog.

Lieberman lets Democrats keep his vote

15 Replies

Joementum

That’s all I had to say. I just thought I’d offer the alternative interpretation to the standard headline, such as this one on the NYT site, which was "Democrats Let Lieberman Keep Senate Chairmanship."

I wonder if this development had anything to do with the president-elect’s meeting yesterday with the other two of the Three Amigos? I don’t know, but it’s another positive development. I always like to see Joe get what he wants; he deserves it.

We’re lining up for soup

9 Replies

Soupline

Maybe it’s not the 1930s yet. I haven’t seen more people than usual lining up for free soup.

But apparently, a lot more of us are buying soup, the cheaper the better:

According to a November survey of Wal Mart stores focusing on canned foods by
Longbow Research analyst Alton Stump, the canned soup category is gaining
momentum, and within the category, Cambell’s Soup (CPB) is
gaining share against rival Progresso, made by General Mills (GIS)
as consumers look for less expensive meal
alternatives.

According to the survey, volumes in the soup
category expanded at a rate of 10% annually in November, up from the 7%
to 8% gains registered so far during most of 2008.  “The category volume boost
of late resulted in part from an apparent shift in consumer demand towards
takehome food items, which benefited soup in particular as a less-expensive meal
alternative,”  Mr. Stump said.

That’s from a relief from an outfit known as Longbow Research.

Find a better job for Hillary

16 Replies

Obamaclinton

This advisory just came in:

{bc-broder-column advisory}<
{DAVID BRODER COLUMN}<
{(ADVISORY FOR BRODER CLIENTS: David Broder has written a column for} Wednesday publication on the potential selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Expect the column by noon Eastern.)<
{(For Broder clients only)}<
   <
   (c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Mr. Broder is reflecting the huge buzz inside the Beltway about appointing Sen. Hillary Clinton to State, which I think would be a mistake, for this reason:

Given the reaction his election has gained from around the world, Barack Obama’s best international ambassador is Barack Obama. His policies are more likely to gain acceptance among friends and foes because they are his policies. You put somebody as Bigger Than Life as his erstwhile opponent in the top job at State, and suddenly the State Department becomes the Hillary Department. Everyone, from the U.S. media to foreign potentates, would look at the actions of the State Department in terms of "What Hillary Clinton is doing," rather than what is being done in the name of Barack Obama.

I just can’t see her effacing herself enough not to get between Obama and the rest of the world — even if she wants to.

Sure, one doesn’t have to be a nonentity to be SecState — look at Colin Powell. But Gen. Powell was known as the Good Soldier, a man who serves something greater than himself. That’s not something I can see Hillary Clinton (or her husband; in that they are a matched pair) pulling off successfully.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem the right job for her. What would be the right job? You mean, aside from U.S. senator from New York, which is not too shabby in itself? Something special. Economy Czarina or some such. Something ad hoc, something geared specifically to her. Sure, she failed when she was given the health care thing, but that was a long time ago; I think her political skills have improved since then.

I don’t know; I just don’t see her as the right person for Secretary of State.

As for the other two who have stirred the most comment:

  • I don’t know whether Larry Summers is the best person to be SecTreas or not, but he certainly shouldn’t be given the job because of that Harvard nonsense. Whomever the president-elect chooses, he needs to make it clear he’s not kowtowing to the absurd prating of the sillier feminists. I don’t know whether boys are better than girls at math or not; I do know it’s offensive to this boy’s intelligence to say it just can’t be so, because I don’t want it to be so, which is what I heard from those who ran him out of Cambridge.
  • There seems to be a lot of bipartisan murmuring that Robert Gates should stay on at Defense. I don’t know whether he’s a great secretary of defense or just seems like one because he followed Rumsfeld, but I’ve always liked the guy. So it would be fine by me if he stayed. At the same time, the president needs to know he’s got his own person in that job, so I wouldn’t think it would be horrible if another highly qualified candidate were nominated. Gates sets the bar pretty high, though.

South Carolina’s No. 1! Again!

13 Replies

This just in, from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:

National Report Ranks South Carolina Last in Protecting Kids from Tobacco

Ten Years After Tobacco Settlement, States Falling Short in Funding Tobacco Prevention

Washington, DC (November 18, 2008) – Ten years after the November 1998 state tobacco settlement, South Carolina ranks worst in the nation in funding programs to protect kids from tobacco, according to a national report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.

South Carolina this year is scheduled to spend $1 million on tobacco prevention programs, which is 1.6 percent of the $62.2 million recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  All of this funding is from a federal grant. South Carolina is the only state that is spending no state funds on tobacco prevention this year.

Other key findings for South Carolina include:

  • The tobacco companies spend more than $280 million a year on marketing in South Carolina. This is more than 280 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.
  • South Carolina this year will collect $114 million from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend less than 1 percent of it on tobacco prevention.

The annual report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs, titled “A Decade of Broken Promises,” was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

South Carolina continues to lag behind other states in its efforts to protect kids from the dangers of tobacco. In addition to years of inadequate tobacco prevention funding, the state has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 7 cents per pack, compared to the national average of $1.19 per pack. The state has not increased its cigarette tax in two decades despite widespread support for an increase among South Carolinians. In contrast, 44 states and the District of Columbia have increased cigarette taxes since Jan. 1, 2002, many more than once.
    “South Carolina is the most disappointing state in the nation when it comes to funding programs to protect kids from tobacco,” said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “On this 10th anniversary of the tobacco settlement, we call on South Carolina leaders to raise the state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax and use some of the revenue to increase funding for tobacco prevention. Tobacco prevention is a smart investment that reduces smoking, saves lives and saves money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs.”
    On Nov. 23, 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the nation’s major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs, joining four states (Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota) that had reached earlier settlements. These settlements require the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years.  The states also collect billions of dollars each year in tobacco taxes.
    The new report finds that most states have broken their promise to use a significant portion of their tobacco money to fund programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit.
    According to the report, the states in the last 10 years have received $203.5 billion in revenue from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes.  But they have spent only 3.2 percent of this tobacco money – $6.5 billion – on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
     Other findings of the report include:

  • In the current year, no state is funding tobacco prevention at CDC-recommended levels, and only nine states fund their programs at even half of the CDC recommendation.
  • 41 states and the District of Columbia are funding tobacco prevention programs at less than half the CDC-recommended amount. These include 27 states that are providing less than a quarter of the recommended funding.
  • Total state funding for tobacco prevention this year, $718.1 million, amounts to less than three percent of the $24.6 billion the states will collect from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes. It would take just 15 percent of this tobacco revenue to fund tobacco prevention programs in every state at CDC-recommended levels.

    The report warns that the nation faces two immediate challenges in the fight against tobacco use: complacency and looming state budget shortfalls. First, while the nation has made significant progress over the past decade in reducing smoking, progress has slowed and further progress is at risk without aggressive efforts at all levels of government. Second, the states are expected to face budget shortfalls in the coming year as a result of the weak economy. The last time the states faced significant budget shortfalls, they cut funding for tobacco prevention programs by 28 percent between 2002 and 2005. The cutbacks are a major reason why smoking declines subsequently stalled, and states should not make the same mistake again.
    The report found that there is more evidence than ever that tobacco prevention programs work to reduce smoking, save lives and save money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs. Washington State, which has been a national leader in funding tobacco prevention, has reduced smoking by 60 percent among sixth graders and by 43 percent among 12th graders since the late 1990s. A recent study found that California’s tobacco control program saved $86 billion in health care costs in its first 15 years, compared to $1.8 billion spent on the program, for a return on investment of nearly 50:1.
    In South Carolina, 17.8 percent of high school students smoke, and 6,300 more kids become regular smokers every year. Each year, tobacco claims 5,900 lives and costs the state $1.1 billion in health care bills.
     More information, including the full report and state-specific information, can be obtained at www.tobaccofreekids.org/reports/settlements.
    
(NOTE: The CDC recently updated its recommended funding for state tobacco prevention programs, taking into account new science, population increases, inflation and other cost factors.  In most cases, the new recommendations are higher than previous ones.  This report is the first to assess the states based on these new recommendations.)

Apparently, Pure Evil never sleeps

11 Replies

Here I though all the tomfoolery was behind us, but apparently the Axis of Evil is still at work. I speak here of the Axis of Evil that the Democrats are always going on about: the G, the O, and the P. This came in this morning:

Dear Brad,

Triple your impact. Contribute today and your gift will be tripled.

Sadly, the power of well-funded lies can be hard to overcome with the
underfunded truth. 

Six years ago, Saxby Chambliss won his Senate seat
by running a TV commercial pairing my picture with Osama bin Laden’s.

But with Chambliss now in a runoff against Democrat Jim Martin
scheduled for December 2 in Georgia, we are closer than ever to Martin
winning.  It’s all part of finishing the job started with Barack Obama’s
historic election. 

Beyond Georgia, there are still two other
outstanding Senate races – in Alaska and Minnesota.  President-elect Obama will
need every last legislative vote to change this country.   

The DSCC
never takes a day off and will keep right on working to make certain the makeup
of the Senate fully reflects the will of the people.  But keeping pace with
the GOP will take all of us doing our part to raise $100,000 before midnight
Friday. We’re all so committed to winning these extra seats that a group of
our Democratic senators will triple every gift made before the deadline….

This note is "signed" by Max Cleland, a guy I don’t really know much about other than the fact that he is one of the Foremost Victims of the GOP’s mean, nasty ugliness, according to these releases I receive all the time. To partisan Democrats, he’s sort of what St. Stephen is to Christians.

Not that I think Mr. Cleland wrote the message. There’s a sameness in these DSCC releases that suggest the hand of a common ghostwriter. Although the recent Kerry one did seem to top the others in vehemence, so maybe the putative authors DO have some say over the messages. But even if they do, they try their best to speak as though they had but One Mind, which of course is what political parties are all about — surrendering one’s thought processes to the Party. They all certainly seem to be universally aggrieved, at the very least. And only one thing can assuage their pain: Your money.

The Obama-McCain meeting

27 Replies

Obama_mccain

Not a lot to emerge from the president-elect’s meeting with John McCain (and Lindsey Graham and Rahm Emanuel) today, which is to be expected. Here’s the closest thing to substance I’ve seen, from their joint communique:

We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical
challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy
economy, and protecting our nation’s security.

Of those items, seems to me the greatest potential for collaboration would be on energy. (But I would think that, wouldn’t I?)

Here’s a scene-setter from the NYT politics blog:

Senator John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama are sitting
down together now and metaphorically smoking a peace pipe in their
first face-to-face session since the bruising campaign.

The two are meeting at Mr. Obama’s transition headquarters at a federal building in Chicago, where they just posed for the cameras.

The meeting space has a stagey look, in front of the kind of thick
royal blue curtain you see in an auditorium, not the usual
campaign-rigged blue backdrop. Flags are strewn throughout, with one
planted between the two principals, who are sitting in yellow,
Oval-Office-like chairs.

To their sides are their wingmen, Rahm Emanuel on Mr. Obama’s left
and Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina on Mr. McCain’s right.

They’re all looking jolly (Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanual the jolliest), and we’ll soon get a read-out on the discussion.

The Obama team is hoping they can smooth any ruffled feathers and
build an alliance with the old John McCain — not the one whom the Obama
camp called “erratic” during the presidential campaign but the
self-styled “maverick” who worked across party lines for various causes
that Mr. Obama wants to advance — global warming, immigration, earmark
spending among them.

In the brief moment before the cameras, Mr. Obama said: “We’re going
to have a good conversation about how we can do some work together to
fix up the country, and also to offer thanks to Senator McCain for the
outstanding service he’s already rendered.”

Mr. McCain was asked whether he would help Mr. Obama with his administration.

“Obviously,” he said.

Those pesky reporters tried to shout out other queries, like about a
possible bail-out for the auto industry, but the pool report says they
were “shouted down by the pool sherpas,” and that “Mr. Obama finally
said with a smile, ‘You’re incorrigible.’”

The last in-person meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain took place more than a month ago, at the third and final presidential debate at Hofstra, remembered chiefly as the coming-out party for Joe the Plumber.

Updated | 2:12 p.m.: A joint statement was released from President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain:

“At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of
all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the
bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent
challenges of our time. It is in this spirit that we had a productive
conversation today about the need to launch a new era of reform where
we take on government waste and bitter partisanship in Washington in
order to restore trust in government, and bring back prosperity and
opportunity for every hardworking American family. We hope to work
together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like
solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy, and
protecting our nation’s security.”

Beyond that, here are versions of the story from:

Whither the blog?

58 Replies

Seems like this comment I put on this comment string is worth a separate post, since I’m looking for feedback:

Above we have 32 comments. Seventeen of them are by or about Lee
Muller (10 by him, including the first and the last; seven about him.)

That means the majority of comments are not about the subject at
hand. The subject at hand, of course, is my effort to elevate public
discourse above the level of polarization and pointless shouting.

I’d like to thank Harry, Karen, Phillip, Bart and, eventually bud
(once he decided not to "harp on the past") for engaging the topic
positively, and Randy and David for at least engaging the topic.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what do do with the fact that most
of the string was occupied with polarizing distractions? This is a
serious question, because now that the election is over I’m evaluating
how much energy to put into the blog, given that we are so short-handed
and I’m so harried these days.

When I started this blog, I had a staff of six full-time people
(including four associate editors) and one part-timer to write for,
edit and produce the editorial pages. And even then it was extremely
difficult to squeeze out the time from a 24-hour day to blog. Now I
have three full-timers (down to two associate editors) and one
part-timer in the editorial department. Finding time for the blog long
ago reached the point where most people would say "impossible."

My Sunday column spoke directly to why I do this blog. It’s about
carving out a place that is an alternative to most of the hyperpartisan
blogosphere, which reflects the style of nondiscourse framed by the
parties, the advocacy groups and the shouting-head television "news." A
place where people can interact constructively, and even listen to each
other.

I deeply appreciate those of you who try to have a constructive
conversation in spite of all the shouters in the room. Unfortunately,
there are many, many people of good will who simply won’t try that hard.

Anyway, anybody have any constructive suggestions for going forward?

Of course, the very first comment I get it likely to be from Lee. But after that, I’d very much appreciate some relevant feedback from the rest of you.

Hoping, audaciously

42 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
BACK IN JANUARY, I said — on video; you can view it on my blog — that this year’s presidential election presented the American people with a no-lose proposition.
    It was the first time in my career when the two candidates we (and I) enthusiastically endorsed for their respective nominations actually made it onto the November ballot. So how could we lose?
    Well, there’s one way — the guy we preferred between the two guys we liked didn’t win on Nov. 4. But now that the other guy has won (and did you ever really think he wouldn’t?), I’m putting that setback behind me and looking forward to what happens next, with Barack Obama as my president.
    You could say I have no choice, but you’d be wrong. Unfortunately, we have before us a plethora of examples of how to have a perfectly rotten, stinking attitude when your preferred candidate loses, from the “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bush” bumper stickers that appeared on Republican cars before Bill Clinton was even inaugurated to all that nonsense we’ve heard for eight years from Democrats about how the election was “stolen” in 2000.
    We always have the option of being mean, petty, poor losers. But not me. Call me audacious, but every day I see fresh cause to be hopeful:

  • First, there’s Barack Obama himself. Just as John McCain was the best conceivable Republican to unify the country, Sen. Obama offered himself as the one Democrat most likely to put the bitterness of the Clinton/Bush years behind us. As we wrote when we endorsed him in the S.C. primary, “for him, American unity — transcending party — is a core value in itself.” In a column at the time, I cited “his ambition to be a president for all of us — black and white, male and female, Democrat and Republican.” When a guy like that wins an election, nobody loses.
  • Sen. McCain’s gracious (and typical, for him) concession speech left his supporters no room for bitterness, as he wished “Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.”
  • Sen. Obama’s promise that same night, in his first flush of victory, “to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn.” He said, “I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.”
  • The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. He’s been called a partisan attack dog, but he was defended against those who called him that by our own Sen. Lindsey Graham, John McCain’s close friend and ally. Yes, he ran the Democrats’ successful effort to take over Congress in 2006, but he did it by recruiting candidates who appealed to the political center — something his party’s more extreme elements haven’t forgiven him for. In an interview just before he was offered the job, Rep. Emanuel said, “The American people are unbelievably pragmatic. Have confidence in their pragmatism. It’s the operating philosophy of our country.” (The Associated Press says exit polls back that up: “This year 22 percent called themselves liberal, compared with 21 percent in 2004; 44 percent moderate, compared with 45 percent; and 34 percent conservative, same as four years ago.”)
  • The image of the Obamas visiting the Bushes at the White House a week after the election. No big deal, you say? It is after the way the current president has been demonized by many Democrats. The presidential election of 1800 proved the miracle of the American system — that power can change hands in a peaceful, civilized manner. That never gets old for me.
  • After days in which the more partisan types in the Senate debated just what to do to Joe Lieberman in light of his unpardonable “sin” of supporting Sen. McCain, the president-elect said that of course the senator from Connecticut should still be allowed to caucus with the Democrats.
  • The fact that on Monday, Sens. Obama and McCain will sit down at transition headquarters to chart ways to move forward together. “It’s well known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government,” said an Obama spokeswoman Friday, adding that the two men “will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality.” They will be joined by Sen. Graham and Rep. Emanuel.

    You’ll notice a certain theme in my points, and just in case I haven’t hit you over the head with it hard enough, I’ll say it again: I draw my hope from signs that this country is ready to move beyond the stupid, pointless, destructive  polarization that has been thrust upon us by the two dominant political parties, their attendant Beltway interest groups, the blogosphere and the mindless yammering of 24/7 shouting-head cable TV “news.”
    You might say that mere nonpartisanship — or bipartisanship, or post-partisanship (or my favorite, UnPartisanship) — is not enough by itself. That’s true. But without it, there’s no hope. Fortunately, I see plenty of cause to believe we’re about to see something new, and better.

Join me in hoping at thestate.com/bradsblog/.

Judge Sanders should have used another historical reference

7 Replies

Churchillwinston

Alex Sanders is a great guy, but he is a political partisan. He’s someone I like in spite of that fact.

And like most folks who try in good faith to defend partisanship, he was unconvincing in a letter you no doubt saw on page this past Sunday:

Ignoring candidate’s party seldom works
    As in every election, I heard people say they always vote for the candidate, not the party. People who think like that go to horse races and bet on the jockey, not the horse. That seldom works out for them.
    Incidentally, I wasn’t the first person to express that idea. Winston Churchill was.

ALEX SANDERS
Charleston

It so happens that Churchill provides us with one of history’s most dramatic examples of the madness of putting party ahead of the candidate.

Churchill did as much as any man to save Britain from the Nazis in WWII, and the British people were grateful. But when the war was over they voted him out of office — not because they didn’t want him to be their P.M. any more, but because they chose the Labour Party to rule Parliament.

It was a terrible shame, but that’s the parliamentary system — one that, at least in the case of the executive part of government, makes the individual completely subordinate to party. Thank God we can avoid that in this country, as long as we don’t surrender our ability to think and choose to parties. No matter what Alex Sanders says.

Dick Riley makes TIME’s Cabinet Top 10

1 Reply

Rileydick

Well, this is pretty awesome — Dick Riley, who as we know was no slouch of a governor, has made TIME magazine's list of Top Ten Best Cabinet Members of modern times. It's quite a list:

  1. Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, 1933-1946
  2. Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, 1933-1940
  3. Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, 1934-1945
  4. George Marshall, Secretary of State, 1947-1949
  5. Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General, 1961-1964
  6. William Ruckelshaus, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, 1970-1973, 1983-1985
  7. Elizabeth Dole, Secretary of Transportation, 1983-1987
  8. Richard Riley, Secretary of Education, 1993-2001
  9. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor, 1993-1997
  10. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, 2006-present

You may quibble about some of them after Marshall — as we get closer to our own time, people seem less "great;" we see their flaws all too clearly. For instance, we who admire Gov. Riley may object to his having to follow someone rejected by the voters just last week. But being rejected by the voters should not diminish our respect for past achievement. Just ask Winston Churchill (you know, the guy who wasn't the Labour guy). Besides, one can excel as a Cabinet member but be less respected in other fields of endeavor. For instance, Henry Wallace made TIME's list of worst vice presidents.

And to earlier generations, someone we think of as a giant of history might have been looked upon as, "just this guy, you know." For instance, when he was growing up in Kensington, Md., my Dad used to hitchhike to junior high school on Connecticut Ave. One day, Harold Ickes stopped to pick him up. Dad rode up front with the chauffeur (OK, so he wasn't totally an ordinary guy). Another time, FDR rode by, and waved. (Though I obviously was not there, I have a vivid "memory" of that in my head — FDR in a convertible, the big, encouraging grin, the cigarette holder at a jaunty angle…)

Now we KNOW the GOP is in trouble

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Just in case you thought the GOP might get a grip on itself and find a positive way forward after last week’s election (and if you did, silly you — it is, after all, a political party), this should destroy your hopes:

MIAMI — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was elected the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association on Friday.

Sanford
succeeds Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who will now serve as finance chairman.
The association has been meeting this week in Miami – and some
discussions have revolved around what went wrong for the party on
Election Day.

"I am honored and excited to become chairman of the
Republican Governors Association as we work together to win a majority
of governors by 2010," Sanford said in a statement released by the
group. "Republican governors are natural leaders who will find
solutions to our nation’s challenges and bring back the party."…

See, you people out there who wanted me to be all horrified over Sarah Palin just couldn’t understand that, all along, I was perfectly conscious that McCain could have done a lot worse in picking a running mate — as the Republican governors just demonstrated. Come on, guys — Mark Sanford isn’t even a governor, in the sense of anyone who takes any interest in governing. Normally, governors stand out as people who are pragmatic, and unburdened by the whacko ideologies one finds inside the Beltway. Sanford never lets reality get in the way of his ideologies. He is utterly "unspoiled," in that regard, by the experience of holding the office of governor.

Now that your hopes are utterly destroyed, Republicans, consider the UnParty. Of course, before we accept you, you’ll have to leave a lot of baggage behind.

 

This turbulent priest

40 Replies

A reader, Matthew Butler, sent me this e-mail today:

Obviously I’ve read the news (over the top) about the actions of Fr. Newman
in Greenville, what appears to be NOT over the top is the type of echo
chamber that St. Mary’s is. This is Fr. Longnecker’s, the pastoral associate
(and a married priest!), response to the election. I know we’re supposed to
‘speak truth to power’ and sometimes that involves harsh words, but really?
 
 
Just wanted to get your opinion on the matter.

Here’s the reply I sent:

St. Mary’s is
a very conservative parish. I’ve been to Mass there. I know we’re not supposed
to make judgments about people based on outward appearances, but I have to admit
that that was the most WASPish, Republican-looking, country-club congregation I
ever remember seeing in a Catholic church. It gave me a sense of dislocation.
Not that any of that should matter.
 
As for Fr.
Longnecker (sounds like a guy you’d want to have a beer with, just going by the
name)… in his position, as a person who admittedly doesn’t think much about
politics, I could see having his attitude.
 
I like Obama.
But to like anybody, there’s always something you have to overlook. With Obama,
the biggest thing I have to overlook is his position on abortion (plus the
mental gymnastics he goes through to justify his position constitutionally). If
I did the opposite, if I looked at Obama primarily through his position on
abortion, I would be horrified by him. And being horrified, I could see myself
using some pretty strong language to describe him (although I’d probably be more
likely to invoke Henry II than Herod). Obama does have a cold-blooded view of
the issue that is disturbing, considered in a vacuum.
 
Obviously,
Fr. Longnecker’s view of Obama is untempered by any consideration of him beyond
abortion.

Ironically, that exchange occurred while I was working on my Sunday column, which is all about POSITIVE thoughts I’m having about the president-elect…

How Detroit got to where it is now

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Make_suvs

Earlier today I wrote an editorial for tomorrow’s paper that warns against being too eager to give Detroit the means to keep doing what it’s been doing, as some in Congress seem to want to do.

My reading prior to writing that led to my post about cheap gas, and in responding to a comment on that, I was reminded of something Tom Friedman wrote the other day:

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as
terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if
G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to
rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The
Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit
bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government
aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go.
Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a
government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical —
should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and
return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean
tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers,
closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company
… Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto
Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant
— would be an enormous mistake.”

That, in turn, reminded me of something else Paul Ingrassia wrote recently, and that’s what this post is about. Basically, I wanted to recommend his primer, "How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch," which is a nice reminder of everything the Detroit Three (formerly the "Big Three") and the UAW did to mess up the auto industry in this country.

Make that TWO pings, Vasily…

11 Replies

Sonar1

You probably saw that the Supreme Court sided with the U.S. Navy against the whales off Southern California. While I don’t have all that much to say about it, I thought it would be of interest to some of y’all to discuss the ruling here.

Whales are great, but I thought what Chief Justice John Roberts wrote made sense:

“The lower courts failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers’ specific, predictive judgments,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by four other justices, wrote for the court in the first decision of the term.

For the environmental groups that sought to limit the exercises, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the most serious possible injury would be harm to an unknown number of marine mammals that they study and observe.” By contrast, he continued, “forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained antisubmarine force jeopardizes the safety of the fleet.”

Contrasting with that snappy salute to the brass, Justices Ginsburg and Souter luridly dissented:

“Sonar is linked to mass strandings of marine mammals, hemorrhaging
around the brain and ears” and acute effects on the central nervous
system as well as “lesions in vital organs,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

And
though the Navy has said it can find no previous documented case of
sonar-related injury to a marine mammal in such exercises, Justice
Ginsburg said the service had predicted that a current set of exercises
off the California coast would cause lasting injuries to hundreds of
beaked whales, along with vast behavioral disturbances to whales,
dolphins and sea lions.

The majority was overturning a ruling by the — you guessed it — Ninth Circuit.

And yes, that headline is a reference to Tom Clancy, who, were he an appeals judge, would be more of the Fourth Circuit variety.

Sonar2

Energy Party’s worst nightmare: gas at $1.87

38 Replies

You may think it’s the Republicans who were the big losers last week, but you’d be wrong. It was the Energy Party.

I realized how awful things were last night as I passed the gas stations on the way home. Hess was at $1.879.

Folks, that’s the same as less than 30 cents a gallon back when I started driving in 1968. Which is less than we were paying then. And when I think of the 1968 Buick LeSabre I used to drive (before I bought my Vega, which was really a mistake), and the mileage it got, it sends a chill to the heart.

Even I, Energy Party stalwart that I am, thought about stopping to buy some of that cheap gas, even though I had plenty in my tank.

So now everybody’s going to start buying SUVs again (which of course will create upward pressure on the gas price, but we never learn), and Obama’s going to make sure we don’t drill in Utah or wherever, and Congress wants to bail out Detroit (or perhaps we should say, it wants to bail out the UAW), whether it gets its act together or not.

As The New York Times noted on Election Day,

Just a few weeks ago, the Big Three American automakers convinced
Congress to give them $25 billion in cheap loans to retool their plants
to make fuel-efficient cars. Then, with nary a blush, the Ford Motor
Company introduced the new star in its line: the 2009, 3-ton,
16-miles-per-gallon, F-150 pickup.

Lord help us, because we won’t help ourselves.

Just to review, here’s what we should do, and are not going to do:

  • Impose a tax increase to get the pump price of gasoline back closer to $4, so the money stays in this country, and demand is curtailed, thereby driving down world prices, thereby putting more money in our national coffers for hydrogen research, developing electric cars, paying for the War on Terror, credit bailouts, a National Health Plan, and all the other stuff we can’t actually afford now.
  • Produce more of our oil domestically, whether it’s off-shore, in Utah, in Alaska, wherever — for as long as we continue to need the stuff, which will be for quite a while.
  • Put all the resources we can muster into an Apollo/Manhattan Project to make our need for oil a thing of the past ASAP. How will we pay for it? I just told you.
  • Use "stimulus" funds to build mass transit, nuclear plants and other critical energy infrastructure, rather than throwing the money to the winds the way we did with the earlier stimulus program.
  • Do all the other stuff in the Energy Party Manifesto.

There. I said my piece. Nobody’s listening, but at least somebody said it.

Election results certified (finally)

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Cindi has a column for tomorrow about early voting, in which she more or less expresses support for the idea, and mentions me as the elitist, paternalistic mossback who doesn’t like the idea.

You just can’t get good help these days.

Anyway, I’ll write more about that tomorrow, after she’s had her say. Suffice it to say that my reasons for opposing it (aside from the fact that I am just at heart a traditionalist, which doesn’t change anyone’s mind about me being a mossback) are related to why I oppose the way people like Mark Sanford look at public schools. That will bear explaining, and I will explain it — later. Basically, I look at this as a communitarian, while Cindi is looking at it as a small-d democrat. Or at least, as somewhat more of a small-d democrat than what I am.

But speaking of outmoded ways of doing things, a few minutes ago I got the regular notice that the state election commission has certified the election results:

SEC CERTIFIES 2008 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

COLUMBIA, S.C. – (November 12, 2008) – The State Election Commission met at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, as the State Board of Canvassers to certify the results of the November 4, 2008 General Election.  Official results can be found at www.SCVotes.org.  No recounts were necessary in any federal, state, or multi-county contests.
    The certification, protest, and appeal schedule is attached.
            ###

Every election year, I am struck by how LONG that takes.

Mind you, I’m not being critical. Far as I know, the folks at the election commission have really been busting their humps getting the results certified. And I DO want them to get it right, even if it takes more time.

But it still always strikes me as very horse-and-buggy to take so long — especially with electronic voting. Part of it is that in my business, it’s about getting it right away (AND getting it right, of course). Even long before we used computers for this stuff, we moved Heaven and Earth to get complete election results to the reader the very next morning, moving back deadlines, holding the presses to the limit then holding them some more, to get the job done. And if there were results we could NOT get you in that news cycle (often due to the fact that the poll workers didn’t have our same sense of urgency), you got them 24 hours later.

So it still strikes me as … anachronistic to get the certification a week later. Not that I’m complaining; it’s just something I always think about.