Category Archives: The Nation

How do YOU define “middle class”?

Today, I went over to AARP’s local office to participate in a discussion about the future of the Social Security system. More about that later.

I just wanted to focus on one thing we didn’t really talk about.

Before our local group started interacting, we watched a video feed being broadcast to groups like ours at AARP affiliates across the country, which featured two experts who pretty much represented the expected “liberal” and “conservative” sides of the issue. They fielded questions from groups like our across the country.

At one point, they were asked to give their definition of “middle class.” Neither of them did, in simple terms, although both were eager to assert that their respective plans would benefit said class.

I don’t blame them. Middle class is a state of mind to a great extent, and as one of the experts noted, it’s hard to find any American who does not think he is middle class, however low or high his income. And of course, assets other than income play into any assessment of economic class.

But… in order to kick off a discussion, I’m just going to pick a couple of numbers and throw them out, and let y’all tell me how wrong I am and why.

I hereby proclaim that one is “middle class” if one’s household income is between:

$50,000

and

$150,000

I’m sure lots of people who make less than 50k will assert they are card-carrying members of the gray hordes of suburbia, but we have to make room for the underclass and working class somewhere, and I’m just going to say that working class ends and middle class starts at 50k. Perhaps higher. And with today’s prices, that pretty much means you are just hanging on to your bourgeois status by your fingernails.

Plenty of arguments could be offered for raising the upper limit as well. For instance, is a person who makes 100k still middle class? I’d say yes. So if a couple each make 100k, would they not be a middle-class couple making a household income of 200k? Sure, you could say that, but for the purposes of this discussion, you have to draw the line somewhere, and I’m drawing it at 150k.

Does that mean I think you’re “rich” if you make more than that? No. I think there’s a broad territory between middle class and “rich.” A place where people are comfortable, but they’d better not kick back, or they could still lose it all.

Of course, all of this is fuzzy. You could have $50 million in assets, but just be making $100k — or even $10k, or not a thin dime– in additional wealth per year, and you’d still be rich.

But given the obvious shortcomings of any definition of class based purely on income, what do you think?

Silly me, for thinking DeMint cared what I thought

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Couldn’t help responding to Jim DeMint today when he Tweeted,

My response was in two parts. First, I answered his question: Yes!

I had read with interest the top story in The Wall Street Journal this morning, which said that the long logjam on national legislation to require online businesses to pay sales taxes just like their bricks-and-mortar competitors may finally have broken:

Republican governors, eager for new revenue to ease budget strains, are dropping their longtime opposition to imposing sales taxes on online purchases, a significant political shift that could soon bring an end to tax-free sales on the Internet.

Conservative governors, joining their Democratic counterparts, have been making deals with online retail giant Amazon.com AMZN -1.09% to collect state sales taxes. The movement picked up an important ally when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—widely mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate—recently reached an agreement under which Amazon would collect sales taxes on his state’s online purchases in exchange for locating distribution facilities there.

Mr. Christie called taxation of online sales “an important issue to all the nation’s governors” and endorsed federal legislation giving all states taxing authority.

This should lead to quick resolution, in a rational universe, since Amazon has said they support a national solution. And that’s very good news for states like South Carolina, which have unwisely shifted so much of their tax burdens to sales taxes just as conventional, “analog” store sales have been drying up.

I was particularly interested because the change that had come about was that Republican governors, such as Chris Christie, saw the need to do something about the fact that their states’ coffers had been depleted by the shift of our economy to online shopping.

It caused me to wonder what it would be like to have a real conservative Republican governor, rather than a darling of the Tea Party or the Club for Growth, one who — like any real conservative — believes in responsible governance, one who sees his or her role as a steward of the state’s public sector.

And then I remembered, that I did experience that, for years, when Lamar Alexander was governor in Tennessee. And so it is fitting that Lamar is the senator pushing this legislation:

Seizing on the recent political shift, Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and co-sponsors from both parties are attempting to speed up action on a bill they wrote to give states authority to compel online companies to collect sales taxes.

One of the co-sponsors, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.,) said, “It gets down to a basic issue…of simple fairness for small businesses that create jobs and opportunities all across America. And with the sales taxes they collect, they provide for local police and firemen, for the sewers and streets.”…

Oh, but wait… as soon as I said, Yes!, I realized that Sen. DeMint’s question was purely rhetorical, meant only to set up his announcement that he’s leaping into the fray to fight against common sense.

You can always rely on Jim DeMint. Unfortunately.

Silly me, for thinking Jim DeMint cared what I thought.

What, Me Worry about what YOU think?/File photo from an editorial board meeting in 2007.

Dueling messages over pointless ‘repeal’ vote

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Believe it or not, long after she gave up her bid for the presidency (shudder!), Michele Bachmann continues to write to me quite often, asking for money. Here’s today’s excuse:

Dear Fellow Conservative,

Today, the House of Representatives will take the first step towards Obamacare’s ultimate demise by voting to repeal it on the House floor.

Today’s vote is an important symbol for our party’s resolve against Obamacare — but with a Democrat-controlled Senate and President who is still in office, it remains just that: a symbol. To really start the work of dismantling President Obama’s disastrous expansion of big government, we must take back the Senate, keep the House, and defeat President Obama in November’s elections.

That’s why I’m asking you to help show the Democrats and the media that we’re ready to take back our government by making a contribution towards victory over Barack Obama’s agenda.

Will you donate $20.12 today to make a statement that 2012 will be the year we take our country back?

Winning in November will not be easy. As the leader in Congress against Obamacare since its introduction, Democrats have already targeted me and if the past is a predictor, they will spend millions to defeat me. They’ve nominated a self-funded, union-backed liberal to oppose me, and my multi-millionaire opponent has already poured in over $100,000 of his own money to defeat me.

Today’s repeal vote is sure to remind them of what they stand to lose when we win. As election day gets closer, the attacks will surely get stronger, but I won’t back down – as long as I can continue to count on you on my side!

You can bet I will be on the House floor fighting in full force for repeal of Obamacare – but I also want to give you an opportunity to fight back by making a special donation of $20.12 today.

Will you help me advance my record of leadership of fighting against Obamacare today by making a special contribution?

To repeal Obamacare we have a lot of work ahead of us. There are less than 120 days until election day, and I’ll spend each of them working from dawn until dusk to put us on the best possible footing to repeal Obamacare and implement our conservative agenda next January.

The future of our nation deserves no less than our full efforts. We don’t have much time, but together we can take our nation back. I hope to have your continued support.

Sincerely,

Michele Bachmann

Sorry, Michele. Promising me more of this same nonsense if I’ll support your team isn’t the way to get me interested.

I’m slightly more charmed by this appeal today from the Democrats:

Brad —

Today, House Republicans will vote to repeal President Obama’s health care reform—for the 31st time. To commemorate this landmark event we’re giving away free stickers, because c’mon. It’s Constitutional: Get Over It.

First, forward this message to five friends. Then, click here and we’ll send you a free sticker (pictured below).

If you can’t believe House Republicans went to the trouble of 31 meaningless votes, then click here to celebrate this historic waste of time.

Jason Rosenbaum
DSCC Director of Online Communications

P.S. Remember to forward this message to five people! Then click here to get this sticker!

Of course, that sort of misses the point, too. Just because something’s constitutional doesn’t mean the House can’t vote against it.

But I’m with you on the “Get over it” part. Basically, the House GOP is going through this farce only as a fund-raising gambit, like much of what Congress does in keeping with its habit of doing what’s best for political parties rather than the country. No one, but no one, expects this idiotic “repeal” nonsense ever to have the force of law. By the illogic of political parties, it’s perfect legislation: None of them who vote for repeal will ever have to pay any price for actually having repealed Obamacare, but by deliberately frustrating the more excitable parts of the party’s base this way, the party pulls in money.

What? You think “perfect legislation” would be something that actually benefited the country? Well, aren’t you just adorable in your Pollyanna notions of how Washington works…

Yes, “trackers” HAVE gone wild, and then some

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A shot from video footage taken outside the home of a candidate.

Earlier today, Politico posed the question on Twitter, “Democratic trackers gone wild?”

While most serious campaigns on both sides use campaign trackers — staffers whose job is to record on video every public appearance and statement by an opponent — House Democrats are taking it to another level. They’re now recording video of the homes of GOP congressmen and candidates and posting the raw footage on the Internet for all to see.

That ratcheting up of the video surveillance game is unnerving Republicans who insist that even by political standards, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. Worse, they say, it creates a safety risk for members of Congress and their families at a time when they are already on edge after a deranged gunman shot former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords 18 months ago.

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Reid Ribble, who said he’s also been followed by a cameraman when shopping for groceries, said the home videos cross a line.

“I feel it’s totally inappropriate,” said Ribble, a freshman facing a competitive race for reelection. “It was disturbing to me that they would put that online. I don’t understand any political benefit that can be achieved with that.”…

Yes, indeed, say I. They’ve gone too far. But then, I think the whole phenomenon went overboard, across the spectrum, years ago. I have a low threshold with this kind of stuff.

There’s nothing illegal, certainly, about following one’s opponent around with a video camera. And everyone does it, right? One can even argue that a conscientious candidate should be fully aware of what his opponent has to say.

But in this era of saturation communication, stalking one’s opponent with a camera hoping for a slipup, a gotcha! moment, is not only unnecessary, there’s something low about it. And I confess that when I’m at a political event, and I spot the opposition’s tracker, I can’t help looking upon that person with something akin to disdain.

I don’t expect many people to agree with me on this. Certainly not many journalists today, since so much of their material comes from this sort of thing.

But I was always a different sort of journalist. I always wanted to know what a candidate has to say after he thinks for a minute, not what he says when he misspeaks. Some pop-Freudians believe the slip is the truth. Sometimes it is, sadly. But I’ve always valued more what the candidate says when you give him or her a chance to think a little harder about it. When a candidate says, “That’s not what I meant,” the gotcha folks snicker. Me, I start paying closer attention to find out what he or she did mean. And I flatter myself that I can tell, usually, if the further explanation is just blowing smoke.

Maybe I look for the second thought because that’s how I hope (idealist that I am) that they will govern — in a deliberative manner, with their ideas morphing and growing and getting better in a ferment with other ideas. I want to be governed by what people think upon further reflection, not the first thing that pops into their heads.

And even if they never achieve that, I want to give them every opportunity to do so. I want to hear the “yes, but…,” the second and third and fourth thoughts. I want depth of consideration. Deliberation, the thing upon which republican government relies.

But the “tracker” is a manifestation of a political culture that does not value further reflection. And therefore is a sign of a political culture in decline.

Russia backs down, somewhat, on Syria

You tell ’em, Hillary! It’s about time somebody called Russia and China on their obstructionism

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When the Cold War ended, we were supposed to finally get this New World Order that made it possible to advance the cause of civilization across the globe, without the agendas of competing superpowers overriding consensus in the United Nations. (Either that, or some global conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and do dirt to People Like You, if you are of a conspiracy orientation.)

But time and time again, two countries — a superpower wannabe and a superpower used-to-be — have repeatedly, usually perversely, stood in the way of any effort to crack down on bad actors from dictators who crush their own people to nutjobs who seek to go nuclear. Time and time again, the best friend of the Assads of the world turn out to be either China or Russia, or both of them. (True, France and Germany also demurred when we were gearing up to go after Saddam, but that was an instance in which reasonable people could disagree.)

Now, Hillary Clinton has called them on it:

Syria crisis: Clinton lambasts China and Russia as Annan urges unity

Hillary Clinton demands rivals ‘pay price’ for backing Assad as UN’s Kofi Annan warns Iran must play role in ending conflict

International divisions over Syria were laid bare today as Kofi Annan issued a blunt warning that world powers must end their “destructive competition” over the future of the Assad regime even as Hillary Clinton demanded that Russia and China “get off the sidelines” and support the Syrian people.

Clinton used a conference of the Friends of Syria group in Paris to demand that Russia and China join the three western members of the UN security council to pressure Assad over an escalating conflict that has left 15,000 dead and is inflaming the wider region…

Clinton called for “real and immediate consequences” for non-compliance with the peace plan, including sanctions against the regime, but with Russia and China boycotting the event, there was no chance of agreement on punitive action under Chapter 7 of the UN charter. “What can every nation and group represented here do?” Clinton asked. “I ask you to reach out to Russia and China, and to not only urge but demand that they get off the sidelines and begin to support the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.

“I don’t think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all, for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime,” she said. “The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price. Because they are holding up progress, blockading it. That is no longer tolerable.”…

I like the “pay a price” part. I think if Hillary Clinton said I was going to pay a price if I didn’t straighten up and act right, I’d believe her.

Wouldn’t you?

You can see video of her address here.

Here’s hoping her tough talk will have a good effect. Just as her apology to Pakistan (which has really had touchy inferiority complex ever since we killed bin Laden in one of their suburbs) did earlier in the week. Sometimes you need to make nice, other times not so much.

Only 80,000 — low jobs figure depresses markets, casts pall on Obama’s re-election

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No virtual front page today, because there’s not much I’d willingly put on a front page. The biggest story of the day by far is the softer-than-expected jobs numbers — which, combined with bad news out of Spain, has sent global markets plunging.

(The only thing competing for the front with that is Hillary Clinton talking tough to China and Russia about Syria. I might do a separate post about that.)

The BBC does the basic overview:

US shares have fallen after official data showed firms had created only 80,000 new jobs in June, leaving the jobless rate unchanged at 8.2%.

Job creation remains below the 100,000 judged necessary by the Federal Reserve for a stable job market, according to the US Labor Department.

Shares slipped after the news, with the opening Dow Jones index falling 1%.

President Barack Obama said the rise in employment was “a step in the right direction”.

Campaigning in the swing state of Ohio on Friday, President Obama acknowledged that “it’s still tough out there” for ordinary Americans…

Republican White House candidate Mitt Romney said from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, that the jobs data underlined the need for a new president, adding “this kick in the gut has got to end”…

Other angles include:

String of Weak Jobs Reports Likely to Set Tone for Voters (NYT)
Obama Promotes a Long View on Jobs (NYT)
Jobs Report And Politics: The Monthly Spin Cycle (NPR)
Jobs report makes it tougher for Obama to tout progress (WashPost)

As you can see, the political angle is getting heavy play. Although the Post did manage to show some concern for the actual economy in its lede headline: Weak jobs report adds to worry of faltering recovery.

The European problems feeding into the drop in markets is at least briefly discussed in this WSJ story. Here’s some more, courtesy of The Guardian.

Romney: No, wait — TODAY it’s a tax…

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photo by Adam Glanzman, Flickr

Wait a minute… I see he said this yesterday, which means, I suppose, we might hear something else today. But in the meantime, here’s what he said yesterday:

UPDATE: And now we’ve come full circle in all the “penalty” vs “tax” talk. Mitt Romney has spoken and clearly affirmed that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is a tax, directly contradicting his senior adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, who had said earlier this week that it was a penalty. Romney tried to explain the contradiction by noting in an interview with CBS News that it was all about the Supreme Court’s majority opinion. “While I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that,” Romney said.

When Romney was asked whether the fact that he was unequivocally calling the mandate a tax meant he had changed positions on the issue, the Republican focused on President Obama, saying he “has broken the pledge he made” because “it’s now clear that his mandate, as described by the Supreme Court, is a tax.”

Obama’s campaign, however, quickly seized the opportunity to say that Romney “contradicted his own campaign, and himself,” reports the Washington Post…

You ever see such a case of somebody trying to have it every which way?

Roughly, here’s the timeline:

Romney pushes through health care reform as governor, and it includes a mandate that everyone have insurance. He goes around bragging about it for years, as well he might…
But then, President Obama pays him the complement of pushing health care reform that does the very same thing, and suddenly Mitt’s not so proud of what he’d done, because he wants the votes of people who spit on the ground every time Obama’s name gets mentioned. If Obama did it, the thinking goes, it’s evil. So Romney quits bragging.
Then, the court says it’s not a mandate; it’s a tax. And the GOP seizes on that, because if there’s anything nearly as evil as Barack Obama in their book, it’s a tax.
But then Romney’s aide says the court’s wrong, because Romney, having created just such a mandate, ought to know a mandate when he sees one. Which stands to reason.
But then Romney adopts a position of Hey, what do I know? It may look like a mandate to me and this other fella, but the court says it’s a tax, so it’s a tax. And taxes are bad, harrumph, harrumph.

At this point, is there anyone left in the country, of any philosophical bent, who’s enthusiastic about voting for Mitt Romney in the fall? Oh, some are eager to vote against Obama; that hasn’t changed. But are they pumped about voting for Romney? I doubt it…

So is fishin’. And eatin’. And watchin’ TV…

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This morning, I saw something that made me feel good, in advance, about any tag lines or campaign themes I might come up with for ADCO this week.

“Huntin’ is good!” it insisted. Not just hunting, but huntin’, which I suppose is meant to convey a certain deep and informal intimacy with this particular activity.

What really grabbed me was the registered trademark symbol, which seemed to assume that this phrase was just so darned clever that it was inevitable that some unscrupulous varmint would be tempted to try to steal it…

But I declare, I don’t believe I’ve ever run across anything as vanilla as that in my life. There was no indication why huntin’ was good, or why anyone might think it wasn’t. It didn’t say it was particularly good in this or that locality, or at any particular time. Nor did it bother to reach for any adjective more descriptive or precise or evocative than good.

It was a marvel, and I had to look it up on my phone during the morning meeting at work. That’s where I found this website, huntinisgood.com, which offers all sorts of merchandise, such as the very decal I had seen.

The website seems dedicated to perpetuating the art or hobby or whatever of hunting at a time when the number of hunters is dwindling in our once rugged, intrepid nation of pioneers. I had known that. I had read before about how the industry was worried about how few children of hunters were taking up their forefathers’ outdoorsiness, and how marketers were trying to entice the kids, as well as women, to the pasttime with such innovations as pink rifles.

But I had never seen such a full litany of threats to hunting as what were detailed on this site:

Hunting Industry Under Attack

Tracking Down An Industry-Wide Problem. Across the United States, and for well over three decades, the population of hunters in our country has been on the decline. Since 1975 alone, the number of hunters in the field has been reduced by over one third.

Since the issue of attrition within the hunting community has only recently become a cause for serious concern, usable research is still limited. But just as writers, industry experts and retailers all speculate on the causes, we have developed our own list of suspects which have created a negative impact on the hunting culture.

Erosion Of The Family Unit. With divorce rates and single parent families on the rise, the number of Dads and Grandfathers in a position to mentor our youth, and pass on an appreciation for the hunting culture, are dwindling fast.

The Anti-Hunting Community. Highly organized, with seemingly unlimited budgets, their goal, simply put, is the elimination of the hunting industry.

The Lure Of Technology. These days, our children are “jacked-in” to video games, hunting only in Cyber Space. They’ve become masters of Wi-Fi and pixels, not the way of the woods.

Industry Fragmentation. We have evolved into a highly fragmented industry… bow hunters, turkey hunters, rifle hunters, safari hunters, duck hunters, muzzle-loaders, gator hunters, low-fence, no-fence, high-fence… it’s all become a lot of nonsense!

One thing we can all agree on 100% is that:
Huntin’ Is Good!®

The day is fast approaching when we all must decide a course of action, or face the reality that our industry, and the way of life it represents, may become extinct.

It’s time we draw the line! The Hunting Tradition, and its’ Way of Life, needs your help! Please wear your HIG gear soon and often. This will let other’s know, what you already know, Huntin’ Is Good!

Whoa. Huntin’ may or may not be good — I’m neutral on that point — but it certainly seems endangered. Either that, or paranoid. (Of course, if some outfit as ominously named as the Anti-Hunting Community got after you, you’d be paranoid, too!)

I’ve never gotten into it myself. I like to go out shooting now and then with my uncle in Bennettsville, who does hunt, but I prefer to shoot at tin cans and pine cones to living things. On account of the fact that pine cones don’t have to be skinned and dressed and butchered and put up in some freezer bigger than the one I have at home. They’re just a lot less trouble.

‘Dewey Defeats Truman,’ 2012 style

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Bud brought our attention to this on an earlier comment:

Everyone knows the famous photo of the Chicago Tribune’s front page declaring, in error, “Dewey Defeats Truman” in 1948. (The newspaper fell victim to its early deadlines and made a guess at the presidential election result at press time, damning itself to history.)

CNN’s erroneous report this morning that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down President Obama’s healthcare reform — live on air for 7 minutes, with a lower-third caption — has spawned its own “Dewey Defeats Truman,” courtesy of Gary He, a product director at Insider Images (and Photoshop,of course)…

I thought I’d just make it easier for y’all to see.

So that you might fully savor the visual reference, here’s a link to the original.

Actually, there were a number of originals shot from slightly different angles, and/or split-seconds apart.

Of course, this iconic image has been spoofed before…

New GOP meme: attacking Obamacare as a tax

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Recovering from the blow to their position on Obamacare, Republicans (except Mitt Romney, whose signature achievement as governor was just vindicated, although you won’t hear him say so in this bizarre political climate) have already shifted tactics.

They are genetically compelled to attack, attack, attack the president. So their new means of doing so is to seize upon the court’s assertion that Obamacare constitutes taxation, and attack it accordingly (all taxes being, according to their ideology, bad). Lindsey Graham, being the smartest Republican in Washington, was among the first to make this shift:

To our Democrat colleagues, stand by your tax increase or stand with us to Repeal and Replace Obamacare.

(Note the way he says “Democrat colleagues.” This is a subtle ruse on his part to hide from his base the fact that he is as smart as he is: Look at me! I don’t know the difference between a noun and an adjective any more than you do! But then, he hurts himself with that same base by calling the enemy “colleagues.”)

Democrats, being partisans, will probably not respond any more intelligently.

But here’s how I wish they would respond: By saying, OK, it’s a tax. So let’s stop fooling around. Let’s replace this with single-payer, which of course we would all support through our taxes.

I’d like to see that, but I’m not holding my breath. I’d done enough of that, waiting on the Supremes to make up their minds.

Fast and Furious and Very Confusing

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Some of my readers have evinced an interest in this Fast and Furious thing that is causing such a stir in Washington. Seeking to learn more about it, I started reading the results of a six-month investigation into the case by Fortune magazine. It left me more or less as confused as I was before.

An excerpt:

As political pressure has mounted, ATF and Justice Department officials have reversed themselves. After initially supporting Group VII agents and denying the allegations, they have since agreed that the ATF purposefully chose not to interdict guns it lawfully could have seized. Holder testified in December that “the use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable, and it must never happen again.”

There’s the rub.

Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It’s a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson’s anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general’s report is submitted.)

“Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false,” says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa’s committee.

The ATF’s accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn’t actually exist. “It gets back to something basic for me,” says Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). “Terry was murdered, and guns from this operation were found at his murder site.” A spokesman for Issa denies that politics has played a role in the congressman’s actions and says “multiple individuals across the Justice Department’s component agencies share responsibility for the failure that occurred in Operation Fast and Furious.” Issa’s spokesman asserts that even if ATF agents followed prosecutors’ directives, “the practice is nonetheless gun walking.” Attorneys for Dodson declined to comment on the record…

A bit further down, I find a description of the thing that has confused me the most about this case, and all the GOP indignation over it:

Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal…

Yeah, but you’re not what I had in mind, Gary

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WARNING! THE ABOVE VIDEO IS EXTREMELY LOUD! So if you want to see it, turn your volume way down first…

Just before routinely deleting another release from Libertarian Gary Johnson, I glanced at the content:

June 25, 2012, Santa Fe, N.M. – In a new video, “The Vote for Freedom is Never Wasted,” Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson has words for Democrats and Republicans who are worried his candidacy will take votes away from Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

“I say, ‘Good,'” states Johnson in the video. The former two-term governor of New Mexico continues, “They deserve to lose your vote. Take as many votes as possible away from the people in both parties keeping us in a state of perpetual war, increasing unsustainable debt, record joblessness, and a bipartisan economic death wish ruining America for 330,000,000 of us.

“You have stated you want a third choice, and now you have one in me.”

Yeah. OK. Here’s the thing, Gary…

When I complain about the choices I have, it’s really not much help to offer me a much, much worse third option. I mean, by your logic, I should be happy for the chance to vote Nazi, or Communist, because it would be a third way.

The only thing worse than the two parties we have is pretty much every party that has emerged to challenge them in this country. Look at the biggest of the pygmy parties — the Libertarian. It takes the worst thing about the main two parties and takes it to a greater extreme. OK, the second-worst thing.

The second-worst thing about the Democratic and Republican parties is their drive toward ideological purity, as opposed to sensible, pragmatic approaches to policy. (What’s the worst thing? The worst thing is party solidarity — or whatever you want to call the phenomenon whereby a member of Party A greets the stupidest thing a fellow member of Party A says as wisdom, while dismissing as foolishness the wisest thing that a member of Party B says.)

Just because something is an alternative doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Not by a long shot. And in this country, the “alternatives” are generally just plain awful.

My very life is thine, my liege! But $3? I dunno…

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POTUS and I are so close, he knows he can ask me for anything. Even three whole dollars.

The leader of my country, the most powerful man in the world, needs my help! Right now! Time to mount my steed and prepare to lay down my life for the sake of God, country, the girl next door, and Mom’s incomparable apple pie!

Brad —

If you’re with me, then I need you right now.

We’re just days away from the mid-year fundraising deadline — this is the biggest test yet of our commitment to win in 2012. We can’t fall short on this one.

Donate $3 or more right now to elect a Democratic majority in Congress.

Thanks,

Barack

Schwinngg! goeth my sword as I withdraw it, and…

…wait a sec….

Three dollars? That’s what this is about? Three dollars? What kind of cheapskate country is this when our supreme leader himself sends up the Bat Signal to get my attention, and all he wants is three lousy semolians?

I mean, if he wanted a sawbuck, would he land Marine One on my lawn and approach my front door on his knees?

Of course, you’ve guessed by now that this message is not actually from Barack Obama, but from the anonymous [email protected], and this is another one of a certain type of political fund-raising message that is more about getting me (or, if I were some other person perhaps, keeping me) in the habit of giving. In other words, it’s not about the money, it’s about conditioning. Sort of like all those begging emails Joe Wilson sent out asking people to give him money to help defeat the existential threat of Phil Black in the primary earlier this month. It’s not that he needs the money; he just needs you to keep giving.

Yet another of democracies more bizarre aspects.

Court strikes down parts of Ariz. immigration law

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As I run out of here to go to Rotary, I toss this up for discussion:

Court rejects parts of Arizona immigration law

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected much of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, but upheld other provisions, giving a partial victory to the Obama administration.

The court ruled that Arizona cannot make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to carry identification that says whether they are in the United States legally; cannot make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to apply for a job; and cannot arrest someone based solely on the suspicion that the person is in this country illegally.

However, the court let stand the part of the law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain, if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is unlawfully in the United States. Even there, though, the justices said the provision could be subject to additional legal challenges. The court said it was “improper” for the federal government to block the provision before state courts have a chance to interpret it and without determining whether it conflicts with federal immigration law in practice….

The court also said the biggie — a ruling on Obamacare — is coming up Thursday…

Conviction speaks to core issue in sex abuse cases

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Every national MSM site is currently leading with this story:

PHILADELPHIA — Msgr. William J. Lynn, a former archbishop’s aide, was found guilty Friday of endangering children, becoming the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States to be convicted of covering up child sexual abuses by priests under his supervision.

The 12-member jury acquitted Monsignor Lynn, of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, on a conspiracy charge and a second count of endangerment after a three-month trial that prosecutors and victims rights groups called a milestone in the sexual abuse scandals that have shaken the Catholic church….

There’s a good reason for that, and it’s not that the MSM is picking on the Church.

A lot of people think the problem is that Catholic priests tend to sexually abuse kids. That’s not the case. They are, if anything, less likely to do so than men in the aggregate.

The problem is that, in the rare (but not nearly rare enough) cases when it does happen, the Church on the whole has not — or at least, did not for far too long — respond effectively to prevent abusers from committing their horrific crimes again.

And that’s what this case addresses. That’s what makes it a “milestone,” as the NYT put it.

Do you really think Obama’s that much ahead?

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I don’t. And even if he is, it’s a long way until the election. But I’m curious what y’all think of the Bloomberg survey everybody’s talking about:

Barack Obama has opened a significant lead over Mitt Romney in a Bloomberg National Poll that reflects the presumed Republican nominee’s weaknesses more than the president’s strengths.

Obama leads Romney 53 percent to 40 percent among likely voters, even as the public gives him low marks on handling the economy and the deficit, and six in 10 say the nation is headed down the wrong track, according to the poll conducted June 15- 18.

The survey shows Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has yet to repair the damage done to his image during the Republican primary. Thirty-nine percent of Americans view him favorably, about the same as when he announced his presidential candidacy last June, while 48 percent see him unfavorably — a 17-percentage point jump during a nomination fight dominated by attacks ads. A majority of likely voters, 55 percent, view him as more out of touch with average Americans compared with 36 percent who say the president is more out of touch.

I haven’t seen anything happen out there that suggests we’ve moved away from our dead-heat impasse in American politics. But maybe it looks different from outside SC…

The worst thing that my generation of journalists did to America

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In advance of the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, Kathleen Parker wrote a column about the harm that Nixon did to the American spirit. The part of the column that spoke most to me, though, was this:

Not incidentally, Watergate also created something else of significance — the celebrity journalist and a generation of wannabe Woodwards and Bernsteins. Those of us who found our way to newsrooms all wanted the big story, if not necessarily the movie with attendant fame and fortune. What most realized rather quickly was that journalism was more like laying bricks than leaping tall buildings. Deep Throat was just a disgusting porn flick, and The Big Story was more likely a city council debate over tax millage rates.

We couldn’t all be Woodwards and Bernsteins, it turned out, but the presumption of corruption and government as the enemy was a pervasive, defining force in newsrooms across the nation. And this force in turn helped shape a relentless cynicism that persists today even as it morphs into something else.

It has been my belief for some time that the adversarial relationship toward government — the gotcha approach — that characterized this generation of journalists did two things to tear down this republic:

It fed the corrosive distrust and even hatred of government that that has come to characterize so much of our politics. There has been, ever since the 1770s, a strong anti-government strain in this country’s character. But after Watergate, journalists did all they could to pour gasoline on that smoldering wariness. From Ronald Reagan to the Tea Party (and on the Naderite left), it became increasingly respectable to think of government as inherently a bad thing. Since the media were saturated with stories of bad politicians and bureaucrats, readers and viewers came to believe that all who served in government were like that, which was very far from true. The process was complete when it became common for Americans to defend the wrongdoing of the pols they liked by saying, “They all do that.” Which they don’t.
Government actually DID get worse, because increasingly good candidates refused to run for office. Normal, well-intentioned people simply will not subject themselves or their families to the perpetual third degree, a state of being in which a large portion of the world never trusts them, perpetually accuses them, and magnifies their flaws (which we all have) to an absurd degree.

What happened was a matter of degree. It has always been a legitimate part of the journalist’s job in this country to hold government accountable. It is an essential function of the Fourth Estate. And perpetual skepticism, captured in the adage “If your mother says she loves you, check it out” — was a legendary feature of the journalistic character long before 1972.

But it’s also a part of a journalist’s job to provide perspective. If it’s unusual for a politician to be a crook, and you give the public the impression that all politicians are crooks, you haven’t done your job, because you’ve presented a false picture to the reader.

At this point my colleagues will protest (as I often have myself), We’re in the news business. If it’s unusual for a politician to be a crook, then when I find a politician who IS a crook, it’s my job to report that. It is not my job to report on the 99 percent of pols who are NOT crooks, because they are not unusual, and therefore not news.

True. And even back when newspapers had a lot of space and people to fill it, resources were finite. You were pretty much out of room after you had reported on the news; you didn’t have space for the vast majority of information that was not news.

And it was ever thus. Newspaper exposes always fed a certain amount of cynicism among the public.

But as I said, it’s a matter of degree. Healthy skepticism took a slight, nasty turn after Watergate. From being a healthy part of the American character, it became a situation in which Americans thought their government was so bad, that the attitude itself was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at South Carolina. Today, hating government is generally considered a prerequisite for getting elected to office. And once elected, those candidates go about showing just how bad government can be.

We can blame Nixon. But the journalists who were inspired by Woodward and Bernstein played their role.

Actually, Wawa IS pretty amazing

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Let’s set aside for a moment whether Mitt Romney was having a “Bush at the checkout” moment of cluelessness, or celebrating technology that denies jobs to the working class, or any of that stuff.

The bottom line for me is that Wawas are pretty amazing.

Have you ever been to one? I have, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It is unlike any other Interstate exit/convenience store/gas station/fast food experience I’ve ever had. I wish I could have taken my late father-in-law to one. Since he was in the convenience-store business in Memphis, he would have fully appreciated it.

It’s a sort of Alice’s Restaurant “you can get anything you want” experience, laid out in an attractive and accessible manner.

The last time I stopped at one, the manager told me that Wawa was about to open some stores in South Carolina. Has anyone seen one down here yet? (If so, they’re not included on this store locator, which indicates they are only to be found in DE. MD, NJ, PA and VA.)

‘Waterloo’ DeMint: President Obama deserves ‘slap in the face’

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In his never-ending quest to chase civility right out of our politics, Jim ‘Waterloo’ DeMint has now contributed the following:

“If the court throws it out, I think it’s a well-deserved slap in the face to the president and the Congress to make us think that what we’re here for is to honor our oath of office, which is the pledge to defend the Constitution, which limits what we can do,” DeMint said.

I realize that you can’t tell from that what the issue is. You might reasonably infer that Mr. Obama is trying to declare himself king or something, with that hyperbolic nonsense about honoring the oath of office and defending the Constitution. But these people talk like this; it doesn’t have to make sense.

No, the administration’s great sin here, the imagined flouting of the Constitution, is trying to address the inexcusable farce of the way we pay for health care in this country.

You know what? I think I’m going to become a straight-ticket voter. I’m going to vote against anyone who advocates Conan the Barbarian politics. You know what I mean: The sort of politics that holds that the greatest things in life are:

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

bradwarthen.com

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