Category Archives: Spin Cycle

Mayor Bob, master of qualification

Columbia Mayor Bob Coble seems to have set a new standard for caution and qualification in his statement in today's story about the city's long-standing, inexcusable inability to keep its books straight (today, we learned, it has sometimes paid the same bill — including to its external auditor brought in to deal with the mess — two and even three times).

Here's what the mayor said:

"With the new hires and new procedures, hopefully we feel confident that
we are on the way to getting the very best finance department we can."

He couldn't just say, "We've solved the problem," because among other things, Mayor Bob is a truthful man. But let's count the qualifications, counting backwards:

"the best finance department we can" — Not the best, just the best we can get.
"we are on the way to getting" — He's not gonna claim we're there.
"confident" — He doesn't even know that we're on the way; he's just "confident" that we are.
"feel" — OK, he doesn't know we're confident, but he feels that we are.
"hopefully" — Actually, he's not even sure that we feel that way; he just hopes that we do.

I don't know about you, but I'm impressed. No one can hedge like our Mayor Bob.

Looks like Blago’s pick WILL be seated now

30 Replies

It appears that now the Senate leadership is bending over backwards to seat Roland Burris. What a mess. There is, of course, no good and honorable way out of this for any of us, given the following absurd facts:

The ridiculous person who is STILL governor of Illinois is utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling shame, or honor. There was a time (I think — or am I just romanticizing?) when anyone caught in a wringer this way would bow his head and disappear (in ancient Rome, he'd have sliced himself open in a hot tub — which I am NOT advocating here, I'm just noting the contrast). Not now. Not Blago.
The fact that Mr. Burris had no more pride than to stand up and accept the appointment. That was my first reaction when I heard about this over my vacation: Who would accept this under these circumstances? The answer: Mr. Burris would. This guy has no particular big strikes against him, they say. But this is a pretty big strike all by its lonesome. What's in the water up there?
The fact that this jerk is still the governor, and hasn't even been indicted, and we've got this "innocent until proven guilty" shtick in this country. Situations like this can make you hanker after the Napoleonic Code.

I figure that's enough to get y'all started on the subject. Fire away.

Find a better job for Hillary

16 Replies

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.

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,

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.

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?

http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2008/11/prez-herod.html

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…

Make that TWO pings, Vasily…

11 Replies

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

‘Boogie Man:’ Atwater on ETV

3 Replies

Did any of y’all see "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story" on "Frontline" tonight?

That was the first time I’d seen it, and you know what struck me? It was the first documentary I can remember seeing in which I personally knew practically everybody who came on the screen — Lee Bandy, Tom Turnipseed, Tucker Eskew, on and on. Even leading characters I don’t know well were people I had at least met or interviewed, such as both George Bushes.

You know what that says to me? It says I’m really getting old. Forgive me for citing Stranger in a Strange Land twice in one week, but we old Boomers do that. Do you grok that? Anyway, Jubal Harshaw observed that "…one advantage of a long life was that eventually a man knew almost everybody of importance…" That meant one thing when I first read it when I was 17, something else altogether now.

I’m no Harshaw, and if the man from Mars was hanging out at my house I don’t think I’d get as far as he did calling on the powers that be. But I’ve at least met these people. I’ve sat and talked with John McCain a number of times over the years; same with Joe Biden, multiple times. I’ve only interviewed Obama that once, not counting that abortive phone thing where he tried, but my phone kept dropping the call — hey, don’t look at me; he hasn’t been around as long — but that once was impressive. Never met Sarah Palin at all — does that mean I’m out of the loop, or she is?

Maybe y’all have more relevant things to say about the film. I already told my one, short Lee Atwater story. Anyway, I’d better go to bed. We cranky old people need our rest.

My predictions

13 Replies

Here are my predictions as to what I think will happen on the contested races that we dealt with in our endorsements. As always, endorsements are about who should win, not who will win. To fill that vacuum — and to help you see the difference — here are my prognostications (in which I place far less faith, because they are not nearly as carefully considered):

Obama will win the presidential election — the real one (electoral college, with at least 300 electors) as well as the popular vote. He’ll win it decisively enough that we’ll know by midnight. BUT McCain will win in South Carolina, probably 55-45. We endorsed McCain.
Lindsey Graham will easily win re-election. No prediction on the numbers; I have no idea. In fact, I’m only doing numbers on the presidential, because I really have no idea on any others. We endorsed Graham.
Joe Wilson will win against Rob Miller, but it will be close. We endorsed Wilson.
Jim Clyburn will have a blowout victory over his GOP opponent. We endorsed Clyburn.
John Spratt will win with a margin somewhere between Wilson’s and Clyburn’s. We endorsed Spratt.
Nikki Setzler will survive the challenge from Margaret Gamble, and thanks to the Obama Effect, it will be the first time it helped him to be a Democrat in 20 years. We endorsed Setzler.
Anton Gunn will beat David Herndon, but it will be fairly close. We endorsed Gunn.
Joe McEachern will cruise to victory over Michael Koska. We endorsed Koska.
Chip Huggins will roll right over Jim Nelson, who will NOT benefit appreciably from the Obama Effect. We endorsed Nelson.
Nikki Haley will win big, again in spite of Obama. We endorsed Ms. Haley.
Harry Harmon will again be Lexington County coroner. We endorsed Harmon, although we again made the point that this should NOT be an elective office.
Elise Partin will — I hope I hope — win the Cayce mayor’s office (this is the one I have the LEAST feel for, since we’ve never endorsed for this office before). We endorsed Ms. Partin.
Gwen Kennedy, despite being best known for a Hawaiian junket the last time she was on Richland County council, will ride the Obama Effect to victory over Celestine White Parker. We endorsed Ms. Parker.
Mike Montgomery should prevail (note my hesitation) over challenger Jim Manning, who seems to be running as much as anything because he felt like there should be a Democrat in the race with Obama running. We endorsed Montgomery.

Oh, and Ted Pitts will roll to victory over his last-second UnParty challenger. We didn’t endorse in this one, but if we had, we would have endorsed Ted.

Kerry calls GOP ‘depraved’ and ‘sickening;’ I call Kerry ‘overexcited’

23 Replies

Folks, Barack Obama is the most flush candidate in the history of the world. Surely, he can lend some to his party’s senatorial campaign, so they can stop it with the hysterical, slavering begging. Such as this e-mail I just got from our ol’ buddy John Kerry:

Dear Brad,
It is sickening. But not surprising.

Today’s Republican Party is so depraved that they’re running ads in Florida trying to connect a Democratic candidate to 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta. They’re in North Carolina attacking Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan’s faith and character. And in Colorado, Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall is the target of a GOP robocall campaign making the insane accusation that he supports human cloning.

It’s the same political strategy of fear and resentment we’ve seen for 30 years.

But this year they will fail miserably. Because our side has the answers America is looking for. And no two-bit attack ads will change that reality.

Our job in the hours and days ahead is to make sure our Senate candidates have every resource they need to rise above the attacks. We need more ads, more phone calls, and more voter-to-voter contact….

Yadda, yadda, you know the drill. The Republicans are evil incarnate, so we must do absolutely anything and everything we can to crush them, drive them before us, hear the lamentations of their women, etc.

These people would probably do this stuff even if they had the kind of cash on hand that Barack Obama has. This is what political parties do — they demonize the opposition, without let-up, on and on and on. I have a mental picture of the kind of donor who actually responds positively to this sort of appeal: He’s wild-eyed, half his hair is torn out, and he’s muttering like the proverbial deranged street person as he writes his check, "Those rassenfratzin’, mother-grabbing @*&^%!!! … THIS’ll show ’em!"

This is one of the main reasons I hate political parties. Equally.

I gotta say, though, that lately the Democrats — except Barack Obama, who is always cool — have seemed more hysterical than the opposition. Maybe that’s what it takes to win in this insane system.

It use to not be that way. Back in Lee Atwater’s day, the Republicans actually WERE as bad as Kerry’s e-mail implies. Well, I take that back — nobody’s THAT bad. But just discount the keening hyperbole a bit, and you’ve got an accurate picture. Not necessarily "depraved." Just very bad. And the Democrats just sort of took the punishment, seeming dazed and confused.

But along about 1998, the Democrats caught up with them. Something just sort of snapped along about the time of the Clinton impeachment. Democrats started screaming, and once W. was elected, they turned up the volume to 11, and if Obama were to lose next week’s vote, they’d turn it up even higher — so it’s probably a good thing that he’s going to win, right? For our ears, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are pretty quiet, by comparison. If anybody’s getting mainstream, official-party e-mails from the GOP as crazy as this one from Kerry, I’d like to see ’em. Well, I wouldn’t LIKE to see ’em, but I probably should in the line of duty. But I think the GOPpers aren’t nearly this pumped up this year. These "atrocities" that Kerry cite may very well be real. But the national GOP’s not sending me stuff like this, and the Dems are.

Anyway, whoever’s doing it — Democrats, Republicans, Federalists — it’s really, really off-putting. I would say let’s get next week over with, but I know that won’t end it. I’ll keep getting e-mails like this one. They never stop coming, because for these people, the campaign is forever.

Why I’m not worked up about ACORN

81 Replies

You may have gathered from this post that poking around into the doings of ACORN isn’t exactly a high priority of mine. Anyone who looked at what I have to do over the next few weeks would certainly understand that, regardless of his point of view. But it extends beyond that.

The ACORN stuff is just the kind of spin-cycle junk that does not interest me. Does that mean I don’t think voter fraud is a serious matter. No, of course not. It’s just that I don’t see it as that big a factor. Nor do I agree with this writer, who holds the precise opposite point of view of those who are worked up over ACORN:

By George Curry
The Philadelphia Inquirer
There have been some blatant and indefensible voter-registration violations committed by people acting on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). But the greater threat to preserving the integrity of the ballot box on Nov. 4 is voter suppression.

You see, liberal Democrats and their ideological fellow-travelers get extremely indignant over the idea that somewhere there’s somebody who’s legally (or at least, in their view, morally) entitled to vote and yet will not be allowed to. Conservative Republicans and their fellow-travelers get just as indignant over the idea that somewhere there’s somebody voting who either legally or morally should not be.

And you know what I think? I think humans, and the systems they devise, are imperfect. I think that in any national election, there are going to be a certain number of people (or imaginary people) voting who shouldn’t, and a certain number who are entitled who won’t be allowed to. But I think that with the two groups of people who are worked up about those two problems being all over it, and with a system that tries in good faith to avoid either problem, those two categories will be kept to a minimum, ohne mich. And overall, the competing effects will be something close to a wash.

You want something to worry about? Consider this: Neither problem will involve nearly as many people as the number who are entitled to vote who won’t bother, or the number who WILL vote who are clueless about who or what they’re voting for. It’s an imperfect world, and therefore a fundamentally flawed system for choosing our leaders. It’s just the best we’ve been able to devise so far.

Back to ACORN — yes, I understand that some people think the ACORN scandals provide a window into the character of one of the men running for president. I just don’t find that narrative all that persuasive. I find the Ayers and Wright connections much more relevant, and I don’t even consider those to be central — just relevant, something to take into consideration.

Anyway, that’s my view on the matter. What’s yours?

Palling around with terrorists in S.C.

27 Replies

A lot of y’all think I’m way harsh on our gov. Well, the guy deserves to have someone stick up for him on this one. Barack Obama’s campaign has done him a rather grave, although ridiculous, injustice.

As Sanford says, the attempt to tie him to Obama’s old friend Bill Ayers (that’s him above with Bernardine Dohrn in 1980, and below in 1981) is "bizarre." From the story in the Greenville News:

Obama’s campaign responded in recent days, noting in a fact-check release to reporters this week that Ayers "is currently a distinguished scholar at the University of South Carolina where Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, who supported Sen. McCain’s campaign as far back as the 2000 primaries, serves as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. By Gov. Palin’s standards, that means Gov. Sanford shares Ayers’ views."

In an interview with Fox News, Bill Burton, Obama’s press secretary, said Sanford "employs" Ayers.

"He’s the governor of the state and he’s in charge of the board, so that means he employs Bill Ayers," Burton said, adding that, "We don’t think that Mark Sanford or John McCain share the views or condone what Bill Ayers did in the 1960s, which Barack Obama said were despicable and horrible."

Gosh, where do we start?

First, if supporting John McCain is a crime, then Mark Sanford is as innocent as a lamb. Did he, years ago (as, once upon a time, Obama associated with Ayers)? Yes. But he basically gave the McCain campaign the big, fat finger this year. Sanford was the only leading Republican in the state (and in his case, one uses the term "Republican" loosely, which is one thing I’ve always liked about the guy, but even that can wear thin) NOT to take a stand as to who should win the primary in S.C. As one McCain supporter complained to me, Sanford never so much as invited McCain to drop by for a cup off coffee during the primary campaign; his disdain was breathtaking. His post-primary "endorsement" came through a spokesman, in answer to a question.
Next, and this is the most telling point, one must have a staggering ignorance of South Carolina to hold the governor of the state responsible for ANYTHING that happens at a public college or university. Should he have such say? Absolutely. Sanford thinks so, and we’ve thought so for a lot longer. But the higher ed institutions continue to be autonomous fiefdoms answering to boards of trustees appointed by the Legislature — one of the powers that lawmakers guard most jealously. USC and its fellows are famously, notoriously independent of executive control, which is one reason why we lag so far behind such states as NORTH Carolina, which has a board of regents. You say the gov is an ex-officio member of the trustee board? Yeah, with the emphasis on the EX, in the original Latin meaning. He’s also an honorary member of my Rotary Club, but I can’t remember seeing him at any meetings.

So I’ve defended Sanford, who in this case was most unjustly accused. But what the silly Obama allegation DOES do, however, is raise this very good question: What on Earth is USC doing paying stipends to an unrepentant terrorist?

Dohrnayers

What did you think about the Nashville debate?

73 Replies

Well, I’ll go out on a limb and say something contrary to the "instant analysis" I just heard on PBS. I think McCain did better in this debate than Obama. I didn’t feel that way about the first debate, in fact I was at times put off by McCain’s condescending attitude toward his opponent in Mississippi, the repeated charge that Obama didn’t "understand"…

But this time, I think he caught Obama, and the professional observers, off-balance. Obama obviously came out expecting McCain, running behind, to be aggressive, so he started counterpunching before McCain could come after him. But McCain, comfortable wih the town-hall format, focused more on the questions rather than scoring points.

At no point was this more in evidence than in response to the first two questions, when McCain responded directly, including offering a new proposal to buy up bad mortgages. He said nothing critical about his opponent at all at that point, concentrating on the questions. Obama came out swinging with the usual stuff about "eight years of failed policies" causing the current financial crisis, as though John McCain had been president the last eight years (as he SHOULD have been, I might add), rather than McCain’s old rival, W. The really bizarre thing was the Obama kept doing the class warfare thing with accusing his opponent’s party of caring only for Wall Street and not Main Street, but in order to do that, he had to completely ignore the proposal McCain kept repeating about buying troubled mortgages. It was weird, as though Obama had gone deaf and couldn’t react to what was actually being said.

On the third question, McCain finally said something critical about his opponent. After that, things were more evenhanded, and I think both men did reasonably well, with some false notes (such as when McCain called Obama "that one," which contributed to the "frosty" tone described afterward on PBS).

At the very end, though, McCain again demonstrated his greater comfort with his surroundings. Obama simply didn’t answer the question about "what don’t you know?" As he was going on about his childhood, I remarked to my daughter that I knew how McCain SHOULD answer the question, but I doubted he would think of it. I was wrong. He answered along the lines of what I would have done in his shoes. He said the main thing he does not know is what the future holds, and suggested he believes he is ready to deal with what will come. That’s a particularly appropriate answer for a guy who touts his experience, but is not guided by an ideology. McCain approaches issues pragmatically, depending on what comes down the pike, rather than according to an overall program or philosophy. He didn’t develop the thought the way I would have, but in essence he got it right.

Now, do I think this reversed McCain’s fortunes? No. But it sure made me think better of him than if he had done what so many had said he HAD to do, which was to attack Obama’s character. And Obama, seeming to expect a fight, was thrown off-balance — for him. As always, he was poised, but he was off-point more than usual.

But enough with that. What did YOU think?

By contrast, Barrett LIKES this bill — the one with all the fixin’s

6 Replies

Earlier this week, we had on our op-ed page, all ready to go, a piece from gubernatorial wannabe Gresham Barrett about how keen he is on nuclear power. That was all well and good, but it was neither here nor there (I can keep the pretentious figures of speech coming all day) when it came to the issue of the moment, which was as that piece was being put on the page, Mr. Barrett was stepping out as the only member of the S.C. delegation to vote against the bailout, I mean rescue, bill.

Seemed sort of, well, off-topic to me. So I pulled the piece (you’ll see it online Saturday) and got Cindi to ask his office for a column explaining his vote. They expressed interest, and the next day we held space on the page past our deadline, but it didn’t show. Which was a shame because it would have run the same day as this editorial, which would have given you a sort of point-counterpoint on the subject.

It never did show. But today I get this via e-mail:

Barrett Releases Statement on Upcoming Vote concerning Economic Recovery Plan

Washington, DC – Congressman Gresham Barrett (SC, 3) released the following statement regarding the vote on the updated economic recovery package expected on the House floor tomorrow:

“Today we are faced with what Warren Buffet called an ‘economic Pearl Harbor’ that includes the ugly reality of an across the board credit freeze. The ability for companies to meet payroll and fund activities is threatened, and let’s be clear I’m not talking about Wall Street businesses, but 3rd district employers. Whether it is a small business that may have to close its doors, or major corporations employing thousands of my constituents, jobs are at risk. If Congress does not act the effects will be serious for American small business, families and consumers.

“Monday’s bill relied purely on government activity failing to consider fundamental free market principles that I believe must be part of any solution. I was aware of the gravity of the situation then as I am now, but was optimistic that working with relevant parties and my constituents through the legislative process we could produce a better bill. This legislation contains proven free market principles like tax relief and regulatory changes that will move our economy forward helping to mitigate the pain on Main Street. While this bill continues to contain a number of provisions that I oppose, I believe we are at the end of the legislative process and action is required.”
###

OK, so he understands it’s an "economic Pearl Harbor," but he didn’t feel like shooting back at the Mitsubishis on Monday. Now that the plan’s been beefed up with lots of fixin’s, so it’s not $700 billion, but $810 billion — more than I make in a year, for those keeping score at home — he likes it. Of course, he covers himself on that, with his airy "While this bill continues to contain a number of provisions that I
oppose, I believe we are at the end of the legislative process and
action is required."

So glad we’ve got your permission now, Gresham. Can we get on with the saving-the-country thing? Thanks.

Bill Clinton explains why Palin is ‘hot’ (and praises McCain, too)

10 Replies

Consider this post to be a taste of sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses of history-making political/economic news.

Katherine Q. Seelye on the NYT’s Caucus blog says "Barack Obama might be forgiven for wondering which side Bill Clinton is on," since the former president has taken advantage of several opportunities to praise John McCain this week. Finally he DID say some good stuff about Obama, but still…

This reminds me of a tidbit I read in the WSJ this morning, in which Bill had some nice stuff to say about Sarah, too:

"I come from Arkansas. I get why she’s hot out there, why she’s doing well. People look at her, and they say: ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married. . . .’ [Voters will think] I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful children. They’re wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy."

Seems to me Bill had best hush before he gets himself into some more trouble with Mamanem.

Why is Fritz so shy all of a sudden?

20 Replies

Were you as intrigued as I by the fact that Fritz Hollings declined twice to endorse Barack Obama yesterday? Read about it here.

I could imagine Fritz preferring John McCain to Obama purely on the grounds of having served with him. And when you’ve got as much experience as Fritz, you tend to value the commodity.

But what I can’t quite get my head around is why he wouldn’t endorse a ticket that includes one of his best friends in the Senate, Joe Biden.

It’s a puzzler.

Curses: An election about the economy

70 Replies

Well, my worst nightmare for this election year has been realized. I had thought that this was a no-lose year for me. I liked McCain and I liked Obama, so what could happen to mess things up?

But if you’ll recall, back in January I said that this was shaping up as a very good year, except for one thing — the possibility that we’d be talking about the economy.

I freaking HATE talking about the economy. My entire career, a newspaper front page that leads with an economic story has always been, to me, a signal that nothing interesting is happening in the world.

It’s not the economy per se. It’s money. It bores me to moaning, retching tears. Talking about it, or being forced to hear other people talking about it, is torture, torture of a sort I’d hope even W. would disapprove of. (I suspect some of y’all feel the same way — the post I reluctantly put up about it has drawn only seven comments so far — even though I tried to dress it up in Looney Tunes language.)

And now, this mess on Wall Street, whatever it’s all about, has BOTH candidates for president — guys I used to like — talking about it. So it looks like McCain HAS flip-flopped on torture…

How did this happen?

Carol Fowler: An uptick explained

33 Replies

Before I left the office last night, I glanced at my stats page in Typepad and noticed something odd: I was getting a lot of hits from Google on a year-old post headlined "Carol Fowler and the Dark Side" (which, now that I look back at it, was an odd headline for the subject).

Later that night, I realized why — the quote from Ms. Fowler on Politico. Sheesh. What a bunch of nothing — my post last year was more interesting.

Folks, compared to the usual overheated rhetoric from Democrats of a certain persuasion about those of Fowlercarol
us who oppose abortion, this was nothing. When I heard the quote on TV (my wife watches TV news, even local "if it bleeds it leads" TV news, usually when I’m not in the room; but there I was trapped in my recliner holding a grandbaby and begging somebody to pop in a DVD — I ended up staying up way too late to rewatch "The Graduate"), I thought sure it would be something provocative. When I heard, "Choosing someone whose primary qualification seems to be that she has…," I thought the next thing would be a reference to some distinguishing feature of female anatomy. But when I then heard, "…n’t had an abortion," I could not freaking believe that someone was making an issue of it.

Come on, folks — at least what Don said was offensive, and I was fairly dismissive of that meaning anything, either. As any rational person who knows the way human beings talk with friends would be.

Anyway, that explains the uptick in interest over Carol Fowler. Again, sheesh.

And again, I will urge the partisans: Get over it. Democrats, quit your whining about "Swiftboating," which, I’m sorry to tell you, is not a real word, much less something for you to keep wetting your pants about, expecting the GOP to do it to you at any minute. That "quit picking on me" pose doesn’t work on anybody but your whiniest base. (And Barack, dismissing the GOPpers for acting hurt about "lipstick," then whining yourself about "Swiftboating" is about as petty as I’ve heard you get.)

And Repubicans, get over your crying about the lipstick and the Fowler remark and the mean media and the pregnant daughter and the rest.

And then let’s try to have a grownup election, OK?

MSNBC: Two perspectives

23 Replies

This morning Samuel Tenenbaum joined me at my breakfast table as I was having my second cup, the first time I’d seen him since before the Democratic Convention. But what was on his mind was a shake-up at MSNBC, which he had read about in the NYT this morning. An excerpt:

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory
would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night.
Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the
coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election
cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s
perceived shift to the political left.

Samuel saw this as the news media caving in to political pressure on the right. I told him I had no opinion on the subject other than that my uniformly low opinion of cable TV "news" in general. It’s nothing but a bunch of talking heads who play an integral role, along with the staffs of ideological interest groups, in the intellectually offensive polarization of America. Samuel agreed, noting that he watches them less and less — but the NYT story still disturbed him.

He would have been far MORE disturbed by the cover story of the National Review I found on my desk when I got in today: "Barack Obama’s Pet Peacock." Expecting a piece alleging that MSNBC leans Obama-ward, I turned to it and found something that went way beyond that:

Despite what you may have heard, Olbermann’s MSNBC is not becoming a network for liberals — not for your average hybrid-driving, New Yorker–reading, fair-trade-coffee-drinking liberals, anyway. Those liberals already have networks: They have ABC, CBS, CNN, National Public Radio, as well as Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and its mock-talk counterpart, The Colbert Report.

No. Under Olbermann, MSNBC is becoming something different. It is becoming a network for people who write furious diatribes on group blogs like Daily Kos; who think that President Bush should be indicted for war crimes; who use phrases like “vast right-wing conspiracy” unironically — a network for people who agree that the Republican party has reduced to lapdogs most of the journalists at ABC, CBS, and CNN, to say nothing of the contemptible Fox News. MSNBC was a liberal network. It is now in the process of becoming a network for the far Left.

Wow. I wonder who’s right. Does the truth lie somewhere between Samuel’s worrying and the NR’s indictment? Or somewhere else altogether.

I haven’t the slightest idea. Keith Olberman was a new name to me. I can’t even picture the guy. Chris Matthews I’m familiar with, if only from having seen him impersonated on SNL for years. But on Olberman I draw a blank.

Community organizers strike back

18 Replies

I‘m beginning to suspect that community organizers are organized on a level somewhat larger than the "community."

The first letter on tomorrow’s editorial page sticking up for community organizers as a breed. Last week, within a day after Sarah Palin’s remark about their ilk vis-a-vis being a mayor, I got TWO e-mails sticking up for community organizers. Then, when I got home Friday, there was a panel discussion on PBS, and the person speaking when I walked into the room was defending community organizers.

The two e-mail releases came in within two hours of each other on Thursday. Here’s the first one:

Leading National Organization Responds To Attacks On Community Organizing Statement from the Center for Community Change
Washington, dc- Recently, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and several commentators and surrogates surrounding the presidential contest have attacked and misrepresented community organizing. The following is a statement from Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a 40-year-old national organization that builds the field of community organizing with hundreds of local organizations nationwide:

“When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition — one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors.

"All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face. The candidates for President and Vice President should be working to solve our shared problems, too, rather than attack others who are trying to do the same.

"From winning living wages to expanding affordable housing to improving the quality of public schools to getting health coverage for the poor and elderly, community organizers have made and will continue to make our communities and our country better for all of us.

"The values that community organizers and grassroots leaders represent are not Washington values or Wall Street values but American values–that we care for each other and look out for each other and know we’re all interconnected and have a valuable role to play in making our country work for all of us. Candidates should be courting these Community Values, not condemning them.”

Since 1968, the Center for Community Change has strengthened the leadership, voice and power of low-income communities nationwide to confront the vital issues of today and build the social movements of tomorrow. The Center leads the Campaign for Community Values, a national movement of more than 300 grassroots, community-led organizations mobilizing voters in this election and beyond to demand policy changes that reflect our nation’s founding principles of shared responsibility, inclusion and interconnectedness.
###

Here’s the second one:

America is Built on the Contributions of Community Organizers
Statement of Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

“The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is a coalition of nearly 200 organizations, much of whose work is done through community organizers. These advocates have provided the leverage for Americans to organize themselves into unions, get the five-day work week, voting rights for every citizen, paid maternity leave and the curb cuts used by people with disabilities and young mothers with strollers.

We’re a nonpartisan coalition but we do take exception when anyone disparages the vast contributions of community organizers to American society.

The United States has had a long and proud history of contributions made by community organizers, from Benjamin Franklin who organized the first volunteer fire department in this country to Clara Barton, who organized assistance for soldiers during the Civil War, to Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped our great nation correct a historic wrong. Over the years, many more community organizers have brought changes to American society that benefit all of us.

Nothing is done in a vacuum. Someone has to organize it to get it done. That is the simple and great role of a community organizer.”

# # #

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. For more information on LCCR and its nearly 200 member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

So, however you define "community," one can’t say that these folks aren’t organized.

Please don’t tell me there are people who think Palin’s daughter is an ‘issue’

77 Replies

A day or so after John McCain announced his choice of Sarah Palin, sometime over that long weekend, I remarked to someone that her great disadvantage was that she was a blank slate, and the Very First Thing she said — that is, the very first thing anyone focused on — would be blown out of all proportion and define her for the rest of the campaign, if not the rest of her life.

Joe Biden — or Joe Lieberman, or McCain, or anyone we’ve known, or think we’ve known, for years — can say something outrageous, and we’ll set it alongside all the other things we know he’s said or done, and it won’t be a make or break thing (and the reason Joe B. came first to mind is that one of the things we know about ol’ Joe, from long experience, is that he has a penchant for saying things that some regard as outrageous).

Not so with Sarah P. The first thing she says or does that makes an impression — which hasn’t happened yet — will fill up the vacuum in her "conventional wisdom" dossier.

Therefore, the stakes for her speech tonight would be extremely high. And so it should be; we don’t have years to get to know her.

Of course, I reckoned without the idiocy of the 24/7 TV "news" spin machine. It has to have something to masticate EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY, and whatever it’s chewing at a given moment is by its foolish definition THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD, so it couldn’t possibly wait until her speech Wednesday night.

If she had made the mistake of saying sometime since Friday that she doesn’t like the color blue, THAT would be the object of endless, fascinated conjecture, "analysis" and "judgment" by the talking heads: How could she not like blue? What sort of person is this? Everybody likes blue — all Americans, anyway. And what hypocrisy to be running with a Navy man, not liking blue! Or will she now claim, implausibly, that it’s only SKY blue that she dislikes? Watch for campaign releases claiming that she’s always liked NAVY blue…

And so forth. The cable TV talking heads make me think of Ford Prefect’s theory about Earthlings: "If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

So yesterday — or the day before; I get all confused in weeks that contain holidays — we heard that Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. To which I responded — to myself — Uh-huh. Well, I’m sure that’s been hard for them. And then I continued with my life, waiting for someone to say something that actually had any bearing whatsoever on this young woman’s suitability to be vice president.

But, apparently because her speech wasn’t until tonight, the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter, of all absurd things, was dubbed an "issue" worthy of discussion, and even more implausibly, sufficient grist for snap conclusions as to Sarah Palin’s viability as a candidate. And yet it’s not even anything that I had deemed relevant (OR appropriate) to discuss on the blog, and as y’all know, I don’t have a high standard for such things.

Yes, I know; I should have expected this. Yet I was actually surprised when I picked up newspapers this morning and read that the McCain campaign (which had known about the pregnancy, the husband’s DUI, etc., and didn’t think any more of it than I did) was actually having to COPE with this "issue," that it was causing consternation throughout the GOP convention, yadda-yadda.

Oh, come ON, people! Get a freakin’ life!

Get back to me when you have something of substance to say about this woman…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits