You know how analysts over here like to say things like “If Obama wins/loses re-election, it will be the first time that a Democrat ever did so in a year ending in the numeral 2,” or some other such meaningless nonsense — as if every election weren’t distinct, and decided on the basis of millions of reasons scattered across the electorate.
It’s political analysis on the level of sports color commentary — Well, Tim, if he swings at this and misses, it will be the first time that an American League right-hander, facing a left-handed reliever in the bottom of the seventh with men on first and third, has ever, yadda yadda.
In this piece, Harry Enten demonstrates that this election, however it comes out, is destined to break all sorts of records — as does every election.
But the part that jumped out at me, and that I want to share with you today, is this passage:
At least one of these rules, and likely more, are going to be broken in 2012. The conventional wisdom will be turned on its head: 2012 will indeed be a “unique year”. Believers of this idea can also point to the primary season for the uniqueness that is 2012.
Here are three of them that have since gone the way of the Linotype.
1. No Republican candidate had ever won the South Carolina Republican primary without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire – until Newt Gingrich.
2. No Republican had ever won the nomination without winning South Carolina – until Mitt Romney.
3. No non-Protestant candidate had ever won the Republican nomination – until Mitt Romney.
Yep, of the three unprecedented things that happened in the GOP primary season in 2012 involved South Carolina.
Before my friends on the left get too wound up telling us what a dangerous right-winger Mitt Romney is, I thought it might be helpful to share with you the sort of thing that actual right-wingers are saying about him. This, and the picture above, are from a release I got promoting a book by a couple of self-styled conservatives:
Des Moines, IA —Just like his lukewarm predecessors Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain, Mitt Romney will lose the election this fall, which means the time is now for patriots to begin planning for 2016 lest they risk getting fooled again by the Republican establishment.
So says best-selling conservative author Gregg Jackson and nationally-syndicated radio host Steve Deace, the co-authors of the explosive new book We Won’t Get Fooled Again: Where the Christian Right Went Wrong and How to Make America Right Again. Endorsed by former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former Congressman J.C. Watts, We Won’t Get Fooled Again documents 30 years of failed political activism by conservatives, including interviews with several of the movement’s leading figures like Ann Coulter, Dr. Richard Land, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family.
“Moderates never win presidential elections and Romney won’t either,” said Jackson, former talk show host at WRKO in Boston. “Every time we have allowed the Republican establishment to have its way the country has lost. And as someone who was on the radio during Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts, I saw up close that he’s a flip-flopper at best, and a total RINO (Republican in Name Only) at worst. You can’t trust anything Romney says in one news cycle, let alone over the long haul. Whenever the American people are faced with the choice of liberal or liberal-light, they always go with the outright liberal. That’s how we got Obama in the first place, and thanks to the GOP and the failure of many conservative leaders, 2008 is repeating itself all over again.”
Deace, who also writes for Townhall.com, concurs. “Romney has all the lame of Bob Dole plus the flip-flopping integrity of John Kerry,” Deace said. “Right now in the White House we have a committed leftist the American people seem poised to reject, but leave it to the Republican establishment to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again by nominating someone who has a record of healthcare mandates, taxpayer-funded abortions, and support for the homosexual agenda that rivals Obama. Coming off of the successful 2010 mid-term election, you would’ve hoped the GOP would’ve gotten the message America wanted something dramatically different than Obama, but sadly that message fell on deaf ears. This is why the time is now for grassroots conservatives and patriots to take it upon themselves to get it right in 2016 and not leave it up to the failed Republican establishment again.”
The headline on the release was “Conservatives Fooled Again!” Which just makes me want to say, Aw, lighten up, Francis…
A fragment from the latest of the DCCC releases that come to me several times a day, which was headlined, “here they come…“:
Since Rick Santorum dropped out yesterday, the Obama-Romney general election has fully engaged.
Just hours after Santorum’s announcement, Karl Rove teamed up with the Koch Brothers to launch a $1.7 million SuperPAC ad buy attacking President Obama in key battleground states.
There’s too much at stake to fall behind Romney, Rove, and the Koch Brothers.
Since the general election kicked off yesterday, we’re only 951 donors away from our goal of 10,000 supporters standing strong for President Obama and a Democratic Majority.
My favorite part, I think, is that excellent example of the way parties use completely nonsensical terminology that they know has a proven track record of stirring the emotions of their base — in this case, “swift-boating.” (A term that hasn’t had any sort of relevance for eight years, and never had the meaning that Democrats ascribe to it — but it stirs the indignation of the faithful, and that’s the point.)
This release can be understood on several levels. One is face value: Now that his chief rival has dropped out, Mitt Romney will turn his full evil machine on our beloved President Obama, so you must give us money so we can fight him! Which is problematic in that the situation is not new. Romney has been trying to ignore his rivals and focus on the general election since before the Iowa caucuses; he just kept getting distracted. Now, you’ll see more of the same, with fewer distractions.
Then there’s another, ironic level. This is but one of a very long series of missives over the past few months going after Mitt Romney (remember how bemused I was that the Dems were totally focused on Romney, even as Gingrich was winning the SC primary?), and also trying to scare you into giving money so the party could keep doing so. No Rubicon is being crossed here, folks. Just another step on a long, boring road.
But there is one sense in which we are seeing a qualitative change at this moment. We are, with the departure of Santorum (although not of Gingrich or Paul), entering waters that partisans on both sides have longed to enter. We are entering the area where, according to the self-justifying propaganda of both sides, they believe they have the excuse to throw off any constraints that might in the past have pulled them somewhat in the direction of truth and proportion.
In other words, here they come — the Dems and Repubs both — and their coming at us with stuff likely to be even more outrageous than what we’ve seen.
For months, the two sides have been preparing their followers for this moment. During the SC primary campaign, I repeatedly heard and saw Republicans excusing the attacks they were hurling at each other by saying, “You’d better toughen up and learn to take it now, because if you’re the nominee, this is nothing compared to the horrible stuff that Obama will throw at you in the fall.” And I would turn and look at Obama, and I would wonder whom they were talking about. We’ve all seen the kinds of campaigns Obama runs. The fact that he was NOT like that was a prime reason why we endorsed him in the 2008 SC primary.
Meanwhile, the Dems have been working as hard as ever to demonize the opposition, building to this moment when they could say, “Now these monsters will stop chewing on each other and come after US!” At which point we’re all supposed to run for the hills or something. No, excuse me — we’re supposed to throw all our money at the Democratic Party (which will FIGHT for us!) and then run for the hills.
Well, thanks for the warning. You’ve reminded me that it’s time to batten down the hatches. A squall of foolishness is headed our way. Here they come…
I was intrigued by this question that The Washington Postposed on Twitter today: “Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal?”
I followed the link and saw that the piece was based on a panel discussion featuring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They had their doubts:
“One of the colleges asked students in a journalism class to write a one-page paper on how Watergate would be covered now,” said Bob Woodward, “and the professor — ”
“Why don’t you say what school it was,” suggested Carl Bernstein, sitting to Woodward’s left in a session titled “Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?”
“Yale,” Woodward said. “He sent the one-page papers that these bright students had written and asked that I’d talk to the class on a speakerphone afterward. So I got them on a Sunday, and I came as close as I ever have to having an aneurysm, because the students wrote that, ‘Oh, you would just use the Internet and you’d go to “Nixon’s secret fund” and it would be there.’ ”
“This is Yale,” Bernstein said gravely.
“That somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events,” Woodward said. “And they went on to say the political environment would be so different that Nixon wouldn’t be believed, and bloggers and tweeters would be in a lather and Nixon would resign in a week or two weeks after Watergate.”
A small ballroom of journalists — which included The Washington Post’s top brass, past and present — chuckled or scoffed at the scenario…
I also enjoyed the way the piece, written by Dan Zak, characterized the Woodstein legacy:
Tuesday’s panel briefly reunited the pair, whose untangling of the Nixon administration inspired a generation of journalists who have since been laid off or bought out in large numbers. Woodward and Bernstein’s main point was evocative of a previous, plentiful era: Editors gave them the time and encouragement to pursue an intricate, elusive story, they said, and then the rest of the American system (Congress, the judiciary) took over and worked. It was a shining act of democratic teamwork that neither man believes is wholly replicable today — either because news outlets are strapped or gutted, or because the American people have a reduced appetite for ponderous coverage of a not-yet-scandal, or because the current Congress would never act as decisively to investigate a president.
For the record, while I may indeed be one of those “who have since been laid off or bought out in large numbers,” I didn’t get the idea to go into journalism from these two guy — however much their example may have encouraged me. I was already working as a copy boy at The Commercial Appeal when I first heard of them…
Mitt Romney has, from the start, based his candidacy for the nomination on the claim that he’s the guy who could beat Obama, if anyone can.
But now we have proof that Santorum could easily beat the president at one thing — bowling.
The ex-senator has been putting in time in some bowling alleys lately. The only actual score I’ve f0und was a 152, which Bloomberg calls “respectable.” Which it is. That’s all it is, but it is that. A guy who can’t go out and roll a 150 basically shouldn’t bowl in front of cameras. That’s about what my average was when I was in a league in high school in Tampa.
Here’s video of him rolling a turkey. And if you don’t know what a turkey is, you shouldn’t bowl for money against Santorum. Or me, even though I haven’t bowled seriously in more than 40 years.
In an interview about his bowling background, Mr. Santorum referred to the famous book about bowling as a thread in the fabric of small-town America, “Bowling Alone,” by Robert D. Putnam, a professor of history at Harvard.
“ ‘Bowling Alone’ is about the breakdown of social capital in this country,” he said. “People used to come together in leagues and groups. Bowling is a social sport. You talk and eat and drink and are together. It’s a commitment to go every week. My dad bowled in a league, and I went with him. He was a lefty. We went on league night, it was part of my childhood.”
I had to laugh at this site, though, which breathlessly stated that “He even has his own bowling ball.” Oh, yeah? So do I. Doesn’t everybody? And in my younger days I had my own two-piece pool cue. Didn’t make me Minnesota Fats.
Thought this was interesting. A public school administrator in Texas penned a letter (last year, but I didn’t see it until now), based on that written by South Carolinian William Barret Travis from the Alamo, describing how he was besieged by ideological “reformers” in his state.
Will anyone ride to his rescue? And if he falls, will there be a San Jacinto?
From: John Kuhn, Superintendent, Perrin-Whitt CISD
To: Senator Estes, Representative Hardcastle, Representative Keffer, and Representative King during these grave times:
Gentlemen,
I am besieged, by a hundred or more of the Legislators under Rick Perry. I have sustained a continual Bombardment of increased high-stakes testing and accountability-related bureaucracy and a cannonade of gross underfunding for 10 years at least and have lost several good men and women. The ruling party has demanded another round of pay cuts and furloughs, while the school house be put to the sword and our children’s lunch money be taken in order to keep taxes low for big business. I am answering the demand with a (figurative) cannon shot, and the Texas flag still waves proudly from our flag pole. I shall never surrender the fight for the children of Perrin.
Kuhn
Then, I call on you my legislators in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy of public schools is declaring that spending on a shiny new high-stakes testing system is “non-negotiable”; that, in essence, we must save the test but not the teachers. The enemy of public schools is saying that Texas lawmakers won’t raise 1 penny in taxes in order to save our schools.
If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and fight for the kids in these classrooms like an educator who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his community. Make education a priority!
To the People of Texas & all Americans in the world——
Fellow citizens & compatriots——
Travis
I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna —– I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man —– The enemy has demanded a Surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken —– I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the wall —– I shall never Surrender or retreat
Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch —– The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country —– Victory or Death
William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt
P. S. The lord is on our side- When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn— We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves—
These and other grievances were patiently borne by the teachers of Texas, until they reached that point at which patience is no longer a virtue. We appealed to our government last spring in this very spot, called upon those in power to encourage and support the teachers who day by day struggle to educate the poorest children in the most neglected corners of our state. Yet they responded to our entreaties with new condemnations of the work we do. Our appeals have been made in vain.
We are forced to the melancholy conclusion that this government favors business interests that want a profit-based education system that would enrich investors, rather than a publicly owned system that enriches our children.
You can keep your for-profit schools. I want a locally elected school board that answers to me, to parents and local taxpayers, not to shareholders. I want a quality public education for ALL Texas children. I want adequate and equitable funding, so that families in every part of Texas can count on the consistent quality of our public school system like we count on the consistent quality of our interstate highway system, because we don’t want to wreck our children any more than we want to wreck our cars.
Texas officials, you build your hateful machine that blames teachers for the failures of politicians; we’ll still be here teaching when your engine of shame is laid upon the scrapheap of history. For now, we’ll bravely take these lashes you give because we know that — no matter what you say — the only crime of the public school teacher in 2012 is his or her willingness to embrace and teach broken children. If that’s a crime, then find us guilty. If caring for the least of these makes us unacceptable, then bring on your label gun. We’re not afraid.
Perhaps I was born too late. I miss speeches like that. This guy’s not afraid of anything, least of all a scrap.
Our friend E. J. Dionne had a column earlier this week accusing the more conservative members of the Supreme Court of implying a wish to usurp the powers of the legislative branch — something more popularly referred to as “judicial activism” — in their comments and questions during the oral arguments on Obamacare:
It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.
Justice Stephen Breyer noted that some of the issues raised by opponents of the law were about “the merits of the bill,” a proper concern of Congress, not the courts. And in arguing for restraint, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked what was wrong with leaving as much discretion as possible “in the hands of the people who should be fixing this, not us.” It was nice to be reminded that we’re a democracy, not a judicial dictatorship.
The conservative justices were obsessed with weird hypotheticals. If the federal government could make you buy health insurance, might it require you to buy broccoli, health club memberships, cellphones, burial services and cars? All of which have nothing to do with an uninsured person getting expensive treatment that others — often taxpayers — have to pay for…
I don’t know whether his inference is correct or not. He seems to be paying closer attention to the arguments than I am, so I’m inclined to give him the benefit on this. Perhaps they are presuming to judge the law on its merits rather than the law. If it were so, it would be a grievous fault — one that you may recall me getting on Sen. Obama’s case about, just before the 2008 election.
In any case, the paragraph in E.J.’s column that appealed most to me was this one:
Liberals should learn from this display that there is no point in catering to today’s hard-line conservatives. The individual mandate was a conservative idea that President Obama adopted to preserve the private market in health insurance rather than move toward a government-financed, single-payer system. What he got back from conservatives was not gratitude but charges of socialism — for adopting their own proposal.
I don’t entirely agreed with the first sentence — it sounds like Bud’s frequent assertions that conservatives are so awful that they should be given no quarter at any time. But the rest of it should be read aloud every day at the start of business in the Congress — and in our Legislature as well, given GOP lawmakers’ penchant for fulminating about the individual mandate rather than concerning themselves with state-level issues.
Yes, boys and girls. The reason there is a mandate to purchase private insurance in this bill is because of all the people on the right who won’t stand for doing the one sensible, rational thing that we should do — create a single-payer system.
Over and over, we hear extremists on the right (and increasingly, extremism has become mainstream among alleged “conservatives”) rant about this. Hey, I’m not crazy about a plan that requires us all to buy private insurance either. But because of opponents on the right, it was the only way we could do the one thing that must be done in any health plan that can be called “reform” — get everyone into the system.
The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with a question that looks increasingly significant after conservative justices battered the individual mandate: Should the rest of President Barack Obama’s health care law stand if the requirement to purchase insurance falls?
Most of the justices appeared opposed to throwing out the entire law, but their views on how much to keep in place were murky, and the divisions between conservatives and liberals were not always as clear cut as they were Tuesday….
If you get rid of the mandate that puts everyone into the system, then just scrap the law. Because without everyone in the system, we’re stuck with the same system we have now, which causes us to pay more than other developed nations for some of the worst health outcomes.
Either everybody is in it, or there’s no hope of affordability. And without affordability, nothing you come up with can work in the real world.
Surely the justices are all intelligent enough to understand that.
Wouldn’t it be horrible if our Constitution — the glory of what America is about — proved to be a barrier to our having a rational health care system? Well, that will be the case if the Court holds that you can’t require that everyone be in the system.
The only hope at that point would be if the barrier was simply this requirement of everyone having to buy insurance. Perhaps we could still have the workaround of a single-payer system that covers everybody. That, of course, would be far better than requiring everyone to purchase a hodgepodge of private products. The fact is that you’d still be requiring everyone de facto to buy in (through taxes) to a system that covers everyone, but maybe it would work as a de jure workaround. It sounds possible to this layman.
But then, the political barriers to taking that far more rational approach were (and will probably remain) so great that the Congress passed the cockamamie Obamacare to start with. So the thought doesn’t cheer me up all that much.
In a previous thread, in response to Bud suggesting that there’s not as much hyperbolic pandering on the left as on the right, I cited the ridiculous rhetoric about a supposed “war on women,” and such other things as the billboard I’d seen near 5 Points that said, “contraceptives could become contraband.”
Over the weekend, I saw the above, which is evidently part of the same campaign as the other one, and doubled back and got a picture. This one was on 378 between West Columbia and Lexington.
Rather than just fulminate, I thought I’d pose some questions, which the above website helped me do. Under the headline, “OK, I’ve just got to ask,” I sent the following email to the organization:
Who on Earth are these lawmakers who supposedly want to “outlaw birth control?” And could you please cite a bill that would do that?
Even though it was Saturday, I got this quick response:
Hi Brad~
Thank you for emailing me with your question (and for the photograph).
Every year for the past 15 years, legislation has been introduced in South Carolina that would outlaw birth control. Currently, there are 4 bills that would do that through establishing personhood (aka defining life at conception). The sponsors listed on these bills are Senators Bright, Verdin, Fair, Cromer, S. Martin, Reese, Bryant and Grooms. Currently, the bills in the South Carolina legislature are S. 165: Life Beginning at Conception Act, S. 245: Life Beginning at Conception Act, S. 616: Personhood Act of South Carolina, and H. 3945: Personhood Act of South Carolina (I know it looks like I’m repeating myself, but they are all named similarly).
“Pregnancy” is established when a fertilized egg has been implanted in the wall of a woman’s uterus. Hormonal contraceptives (“The pill” is the most common form of hormonal contraception, but newer options of hormonal contraception include “the patch” and “the ring” – both of which provide a combination of hormones to control ovulation) act before implantation and prevent pregnancy. Nonetheless, a movement emerged in the U.S. during the decade of the 1990s that seeks to outlaw all hormonal contraceptives on the grounds that these forms of birth control may interfere with a woman’s ovulation, may prevent fertilization of a woman’s egg by a sperm, or may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in a woman’s uterus. Members of this movement consider any form of hormonal birth control to be the equivalent of an abortion in spite of medical evidence to the contrary. They lobby aggressively in state legislatures, including South Carolina’s General Assembly, and they are behind “personhood” ballot initiatives, most recently in Mississippi.
Any legislator, at any level of government, that supports personhood or defining life beginning at conception rather than implantation supports outlawing hormonal birth control. Similar bills have been introduced and failed to pass in numerous states, including Mississippi (ballot initiative), Virginia, and Oklahoma. All of the current Republican nominees for President have pledged their support for establishing life beginning at conception (Mitt Romney did so during an interview with Mike Huckabee; Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have all signed the Personhood Pledge).
I have attached our Personhood legislative fact sheet to give you more information about Personhood bills and how they would affect South Carolina. I hope that this answers you questions, but I would be more than happy to speak with you about this further. Please feel free to email me back with any further questions or comments.
~Emma
Emma Davidson
Tell Them Program Manager
Imposing further on Ms. Davidson’s patience, I responded thusly:
… you don’t think calling that “outlawing birth control” a bit of a stretch? Because they would outlaw one small subset of what some people would call “birth control?”
Do you not think that when most folks say “birth control,” they’re talking about the Pill (and not the “morning after” pill, but the one that’s been around for 50 years), condoms, foam, diaphragms and the like?
In any case, for the statement, “Some lawmakers want to outlaw birth control” to be remotely true, they would have to be outlawing all forms of it — not just one relatively small subset of the category. I don’t see how a reasonable person could possibly read it any other way.
Ms. Davidson hasn’t gotten back to me yet. And that’s cool; I very much appreciate the time she took to answer me so thoroughly the first time, especially on a weekend. (When she does respond, I’ll share it here.)
But really — when you’re driving down the road and see the statement “Some lawmakers want to outlaw birth control,” do you read it as meaning “some very specific and limited forms of birth control”? Because I don’t. And that’s what bugged me about the billboard to start with.
Too bad Ms. Davidson’s very specific and informative email won’t fit on a billboard (actually, it would fit, but you couldn’t read it safely). I wouldn’t have a beef with that, because that would be very clear about what it was the organization opposes, and I could make an informed response to it. But as things are, I hope I can be forgiven for believing the group is looking for a kick-in-the-gut, emotional response from the average motorist.
Which brings up the fact that maybe, with such powerfully loaded issues, it would be better to conduct the debate in a manner somewhat more extensive and specific than the billboard/bumper sticker level.
For perhaps the first time ever, Bill Maher has said a thing or two I sorta kinda agree with, in his “Please Stop Apologizing” piece in The New York Times. (OK, actually, he’s probably said lots of stuff I agree with — were it written out, or said by someone else. But the way he says it almost always repels me. The guy has been really off-putting to me ever since I first saw “Politically Incorrect.” It’s something about his habitual facial expression, which screams “Obnoxious!”)
We are achieving this rare alignment because I, too, believe it absurd that anyone was offended by what Robert De Niro said about first ladies. Specifically:
Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?
Apparently, when he delivered this line in the presence of Michelle Obama, everybody laughed. I probably would have laughed too. And yet we have the absurdity of Mrs. Obama’s press secretary calling the joke “inappropriate.”
There was nothing inappropriate about it. It was a perfectly conventional joke, taking an easily understood cliche — in this case, a line you might have heard four years ago, asking whether the country was ready for a black first lady — and doing an unexpected twist on it. It wasn’t the world’s funniest joke, but it was not offensive.
But absurdly, Newt Gingrich declared the joke “inexcusable,” and demanded that… get this… President Obama apologize for it. That reminds me of a pretty funny joke some conservatives made during the last administration. Mocking BDS sufferers, they would say “I blame Bush” about things that plainly had nothing to do with the president, such as the weather.
I hadn’t realized that Newt — from whom we haven’t heard for some time — was that desperate to attract attention. Well, no one — including the too-ready-to-apologize press secretary — should have given him any.
For his part, Mr. Maher argues that we should assert our freedom to offend each other without anyone going ballistic over it: “I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone,” he writes. “That’s why we have Canada.”
Funny. And if that bothers the Canadians, tough.
However… I won’t go quite as far as he does. I’m not defending any right to be offensive here. As you know, I believe we could use a lot more civility in public life, which is why I so often disagree with Mr. Maher.
All I’m doing is pointing out what should be obvious: That what De Niro said was NOT offensive.
Disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher — alongside gasoline prices — as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to anew Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Increasingly pessimistic views of Obama’s performance on the economy — and on the federal budget deficit — come despite a steadily brightening employment picture and other signs of economic improvement, and they highlight the political sensitivity of rising gas prices.
The potential political consequences are clear, with the rising public disapproval reversing some of the gains the president had made in hypothetical general-election matchups against possible Republican rivals for the White House. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) now both run about evenly with Obama. The findings come just five weeks after Obama appeared to be getting a boost from the improving economy.
Gas prices are a main culprit: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the situation at the pump, where rising prices have already hit hard. Just 26 percent approve of his work on the issue, his lowest rating in the poll. Most Americans say higher prices are already taking a toll on family finances, and nearly half say they think that prices will continue to rise, and stay high…
So basically, when gasoline prices head back down, suddenly Obama will be a great president and get credit for the improving economy? Yes, probably. Which shows how ridiculous this stuff gets.
And then, if the president’s new best friend Israel goes ahead and attacks Iran, and that leads to even higher gas prices, suddenly he’ll be a loser again, right? Yep, and the GOP candidates will probably be criticizing him for not being supportive enough of Israel’s actions, while at the same time they will pound him over the natural economic effect of Israel’s action. And the voters will probably swallow that, too.
Graham Legislation Provides ‘Rebate’ to Consumers, Utilities, and Communities for Obama Administration’s Refusal to Open Yucca Mountain
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), one of the strongest supporters of nuclear energy in the Senate, has introduced legislation, The Nuclear Waste Fund Relief and Rebate Act.
Electric utilities have been paying into the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund to construct and operate a permanent federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The utilities have been charging their costumers a monthly fee in each electricity bill to make these payments. According to the latest information, South Carolina residents alone have already contributed more than $1.3 billion to the fund, which has collected a total of more than $35 billion in fees.
The legislation introduced by Graham would rebate these monies back to electric utilities and consumers. Seventy-five percent of the amount rebated to utilities would be returned to their customers and the remaining portion will be used to make upgrades to on-site storage facilities.
Additionally, the legislation authorizes payments to states currently housing defense nuclear waste scheduled to be transferred to Yucca Mountain. These payments begin in 2017, the date in which Yucca Mountain was to set to receive shipments of defense nuclear waste.
“No one should be required to pay for an empty hole in the Nevada desert,” said Graham. “The decision by the Obama Administration to close Yucca Mountain was ill-advised and leaves our nation without a disposal plan for spent nuclear fuel or Cold War waste. It was a political, not scientific, decision. It is incumbent on the Administration to come up with a disposal plan for this real problem facing our nation.”
The major provisions of the Graham legislation include:
· Presidential Certification: The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars and decades studying the suitability of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository for spent nuclear fuel and defense waste. Consistently, the science has borne out that Yucca Mountain is the best site to dispose of nuclear waste. Within 30 days of passage, the President must certify that Yucca Mountain remains the preferred choice to serve as the federal repository for spent nuclear fuel and defense-related nuclear waste.
· Failure to Certify Leads to Rebates: If the President fails to make the above certification, or revokes the certification at a later date, all funds currently in the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund shall be rebated back to the utilities. Seventy-five percent of the amount rebated to utilities would be returned to their customers and the remaining money will be used to make security and storage upgrades at existing nuclear power plants.
· Defense Waste: Currently, there is at least 12,800 metric tons of defense-related waste at nuclear weapons complex facilities around the country. Unlike commercial spent fuel, this waste has no potential future defense or civilian uses. In many states, the accumulated waste poses the largest potential public health threat. In order to help mitigate the risk associated with the indefinite storage of defense waste, the legislation authorizes payments of up to $100 million per year if defense waste has not begun to have left the states by 2017.
· Waste Confidence: In order to continue to renew or issue licenses for civilian nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must have reasonable confidence that the waste will be disposed of safely. The legislation includes waste confidence language that allows for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue to license nuclear reactors in the event the Presidential certification is not made.
“Our nation needs real options as a result of the uncertainty created by the Obama Administration’s change in policy,” said Graham. “I will push this legislation forward and hope to have the full Senate on-the-record on this important issue.”
Co-sponsors of the legislation include Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).
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I don’t know what y’all think, but personally, I don’t want a rebate. I just want want the president to shove Harry Reid aside and put the national repository where it belongs, at Yucca Mountain.
I sort of think that’s what Sen. Graham really wants, too.
House Speaker John Boehner spoke with theWall Street Journal’‘s Peggy Noonan and implied there are some members of Congress who should not be in leadership positions. “We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest,” Boehner said. “We got some of the best people you’d ever meet, and some of the raunchiest.”
Just now got to this Joe Wilson release from yesterday. The headline, “Wilson Reacts to February Jobs Report,” made me curious to see how Joe would try to make good employment news sound bad, and of course make it the fault of those awful liberal Democrats. Here’s how:
West Columbia, SC – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement regarding the latest unemployment report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning:
“For the past three years, our nation’s unemployment has remained above eight percent. Almost one million Americans have lost their jobs since the President was sworn into office. According to recent Congressional Budget Office study, when considering every American who is currently without a job, our actual unemployment rate is 15.2 percent. The President promised that with the passage of his failed stimulus package in February 2009, the unemployment rate would not exceed eight percent. It is clear that the President’s failed policies and broken promises are not helping Americans find employment, but simply growing our national debt.
“Over the past year, House Republicans have passed dozens of job creating bills, most with bipartisan support. A majority of these pieces of legislation remain stalled in the Senate. Just yesterday, the House passed the JOBS Act, a collection of legislation that will help small business startups grow and expand, which will lead to job creation. It is my hope that the liberal-controlled Senate will take immediate action on the pending legislation in efforts to spur economic growth. It is past the time for Congress to work together to offset the failed policies the President has implemented and help put Americans back to work.”
There’s an art to this. A crude, lumpish sort of art, but an art nevertheless, with conventions to be followed. For instance, do you notice how he pointedly avoids the fact that President Obama supports the JOBS Act that he praises? That’s standard procedure in this genre. The president can only be mentioned in terms of “failed policies.” One must never, ever acknowledge that he supports the same policy that you do, because then you can’t paint politics in terms of a black-and-white battle between pure good and pure evil, and you don’t get to whip up your contributors as to how horrible the opposition is, so that they keep writing checks.
To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up…
— Rick Santorum
But since Bud mentioned it today on a previous post, and I read it again in The New Yorker while eating my lunch today, I thought I’d go ahead and say something that’s occurred to me several times in the last few days.
This sort of thing keeps happening. Someone running for president says something that I wouldn’t say, but I understand what he means, and what he means isn’t that awful — and the Chattersphere goes nuts over it, day after day, as though it were the most outrageous thing said in the history of the world.
It happened with Mitt Romney saying he wasn’t concerned about the poor. Obviously, he meant that there were mechanisms in place to help the poor, and that people like him didn’t need any help, but he was worried about the middle class. Not the best way to say it — and if he thinks the safety net makes it OK to be poor, he’s as wrong as he can be. But he was right to express worry about the state of the middle class, whatever he may imagine the remedies to be.
As for Santorum and the “throw-up” line. Well, to start with, I would recommend that no one running for president ever say that something someone else says or believes makes him want “to throw up.” It makes him seem… overwrought. Not at all cool. How can we trust him with that 3 a.m. phone call, with having his finger on the button, when he keeps running to the john to, in a memorable phrase I heard several years ago, “call Roark on the Big White Phone?”
That said, I get what he’s trying to say about the JFK speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. I used to have a similar response to it, although I was never in danger of losing my lunch. Matter of degree, I suppose. In any case, it put me off. Because, far from being an assertion of the legitimate difference between church and state, I had taken it as an assertion that JFK would not bring his deepest values into the public sphere. I further saw it as a sop to bigotry. If offended me to think of a Catholic giving the time of day to anyone so small-minded as to suppose that a mackerel-snapper couldn’t be a good president, much less trying to tell them what they wanted to hear. Altogether a shameful instance of a candidate putting winning ahead of everything. Or so I thought.
My reaction was somewhat like that of Santorum when he addressed the subject a couple of years ago:
Let me quote from the beginning of Kennedy’s speech: ‘I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.’
The idea of strict or absolute separation of church and state is not and never was the American model. …
That’s correct. There is no such “absolute” separation, and none was intended, except perhaps by Thomas Jefferson (who was not one of the Framers of our Constitution, FYI). Kennedy’s choice of the word “absolute” was unfortunate. Santorum went on:
Kennedy continued: ‘I believe in an America … where no Catholic prelate would tell the president — should he be Catholic — how to act … where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.’
Of course no religious body should ‘impose its will’ on the public or public officials, but that was not the issue then or now. The issue is one that every diverse civilization like America has to deal with — how do we best live with our differences.
There, I can really identify with what he’s saying. The paranoia toward the Church that Kennedy was addressing is so idiotic, so offensive, that one hates even to see it dignified with an answer.
As for the overall point — was JFK’s performance offensive or not? I once thought it was, although as I say, it didn’t make me physically ill. But that’s because I had never read the speech in its entirety, or heard it. I had simply relied on characterizations of it by others, and the way they presented it made it sound as though Kennedy were kowtowing to anti-Catholic prejudice in a way that bothered me. Worse, there was this suggestion that he was pushing his faith away from him, suggesting that he would conduct himself in office as though he had no beliefs.
Implicit in all of it was the suggestion that faith had no place in the public sphere, which, like Santorum, I reject.
The speech itself is so well-rounded, so erudite, so articulate, so thoughtful about the relationship between faith and political power in this country, that I find myself won over to a candidate who could give such a speech…
I then quoted an excerpt:
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals, where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice, where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it — its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him¹ as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.
I went on to wax nostalgic for a time when political candidates had the respect for the American people to speak to them that way. This was far, far from the simple “separation of church and state” speech that I had heard about.
Even before I read the speech, there was never a time that mention of it made me want to throw up. The worst thing I said about it was that “I don’t much like the way Kennedy did it.” But I did, like Santorum, have a negative conception of it.
The thing was, I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Gas prices are too high, and we need President Obama to listen.
With an 8% gas price spike last month and prices expected to rise further this summer, it’s time to solve our energy problems, provide real energy solutions for the American people, and get our economy focused on creating jobs. The president’s energy policy isn’t helping and begs the question: is the president even listening? We need the entire Keystone XL pipeline built, we need to drill domestically, and we need to stop depending on foreign oil. If we can lower gas prices, we also can grow our economy and create jobs for the American people.
Welcome to my new Rally page – where you can rally behind my pro-jobs, pro-growth campaign. Leave comments, donate, and support the campaign.
Let’s get this economy back on track.
What precisely does that mean — “President Obama: Will you listen?” What are we to suppose the president hasn’t heard? That there’s an uptick in gas prices? Hasn’t the predicted advent of $4-a-gallon gas been done to death over the last couple of weeks — even before it arrives?
And what, pray tell, is it that we’re to assume the president should do about the global market forces and geopolitics that are causing this momentary uptick?
And do you really believe that lower gas prices are in the long-term interests of the United States?
I was momentarily encouraged two weeks ago when I saw this headline on a release from Joe Wilson: “Wilson Supports All-Of-The-Above Energy Bill.” I thought maybe Joe was moving toward an Energy Party stance. But then I saw it was just more pandering about the gasoline prices that he and others are always so eager to exploit.
Yep, people don’t like paying more for gas; it’s true. I don’t. Present gas prices are hard for me to pay already. But I also know that Joe’s right when he says we need to “stop depending on foreign oil,” and that keeping prices low is the OPPOSITE of a policy that would encourage that.
Further development of domestic sources of fossil fuels.
A crash research and development program to get us OFF fossil fuels as soon as possible.
A gasoline tax increase that not only pays for research, but discourages overuse of the resource.
Conservation.
Public transit.
Expedited construction of nuclear power plants.
There was a bill, awhile back, that moved in the right direction. Unfortunately, Lindsey Graham withdrew his support for it when Republicans of Joe Wilson’s ilk persecuted him for the “sin” of working with a Democrat.
A rational policy aimed at energy independence would include elements that Republicans hate, and others that Democrats hate — and would require some general sacrifice. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Joe Wilson to push for anything like that. He’d rather pander to us.
On a previous post, we got into a discussion of the importance of character in political candidates. (I have come over time to believe that it is paramount, to the point of paying far less attention to policy proposals by comparison. And of course, as you know, I am positively inimical to ideologies.)
We had a good discussion, and achieved some degree of synthesis. Along the way to that, Phillip happened to mention the fact that many in politics use military service or the lack thereof as a shorthand marker for character. This is certainly true. But as we discussed the relationship of such service to character, I went on a tangent… and decided it would be worth a separate post, as follows…
I believe that our politics started becoming dysfunctional, in the ways that I decry (hyperpartisanship, adamant refusal to listen to, much less work with, the “other side”), when we ended the draft.
Before that, you didn’t find many men (most officeholders today are men, and it was more true then) who had not spent at least a portion of their youth in the military. That certainly exposed them to having to work with all sorts of people from different backgrounds (as Phillip noted here), but it did something else: it forged them into something larger than those differences.
The WWII generation in particular may have had its political differences, but those guys understood that as a country, we all share interests. They may have been (in fact, were) liberals or conservatives or Northerners or Southerners or what have you, but they understood that they were Americans first. For those who served after the war, when the military was on the cutting edge of integration, it helped give black and white a sense of shared identity as well. (Indeed the shared experience of the war, even though it was in segregated units, helped lay the groundwork for the next generation’s gains toward social justice.)
As the first wave of young men who had NOT served (starting with those who were of an age to have served, but had not, such as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich) arrived in the top echelons of political power in the country, they brought with them a phenomenon that we hadn’t seen among their elders… a tendency to see fellow Americans who disagreed with them politically as the OTHER, even as “the enemy,” and a practically dehumanized enemy — one that must be opposed at all costs.
That said, Bill Clinton does deserve credit for rising above that new partisanship in many cases (welfare reform, deficit reduction) in order to accomplish things. And Newt Gingrich often worked with him to accomplish such goals.
But below them, among the young guys coming up in politics — the ones hustling around statehouses and working in campaigns — there was a generation rising that really could not think of the OTHER SIDE as someone to be communicated with, much less worked with.
I really believe that if those young guys had had the experience of being thrown together, outside of their communities, their cliques and their comfort zones, their heads shaved and put into uniforms, and required to work together in a disciplined manner toward common goals — THEY would be different, and consequently our politics would be different.
Mind you, I’m not saying we should reinstitute the draft in order to make our politics more civil (although there may be other reasons to have one). But I am saying that I believe today’s extreme polarization is in part an unintended function of that development in our history.
Maybe you consider the end of the draft to have been a good thing. What I’m asking you to do is consider that even good things can have unintended ill effects. The opposite is true as well. Y’all know how deeply opposed I am to abortion on demand. But it seems reasonable that it would have the effect claimed in Freakonomics of reducing crime over time (by instituting a sort of pre-emptive capital punishment of unwanted children, who are more likely than the wanted to become criminals). Just as it has had the undesirable effect in parts of Asia of drastically reducing the number of females in society.
Good actions have good and bad consequences; so do bad ones. It’s a complicated world.
My friend Bill Day in Memphis sent out this cartoon, which depicts the main rap on Mitt Romney — that he changes his mind.
To me, that’s the man’s saving grace, to the extent that he has one. It’s what made me able to settle for him after Jon Huntsman dropped out of the SC primary — I believe he’s free of slavish devotion to any man’s ideology. That makes him anathema to the extremists in his party, but that’s not the only think I like about this trait.
Whatever else you can say about a man who changes his mind, at least it proves that he’s thinking. Even if all he’s thinking is, “I need to change on this to get elected,” he’s at least thinking.
Here’s my take on Romney: He simply doesn’t care deeply about the kinds of things that left and right tend to get angriest about, such as the Kulturkampf issues that I wish would stay out of our elections. Basically, he sees himself as a manager — he wants to run the United States as he has run other enterprises in the past, no matter what burning issues happen to be at the fore when he’s in office. He believes his executive experience makes him better able to run the country than Barack Obama.
Set aside whether I believe he’s right, I appreciate that that’s the way he seems to approach this.
To some extent, this is akin to what appealed to me about “No-Drama Obama.” I saw him as essentially a pragmatist, particularly on the thing that matters most in picking a Commander in Chief — international affairs and security. His adoring supporters heard something that they liked in what he said on the stump about war and peace and international relations, but I listened a bit more closely than many of them did — it was (as always) the first thing I asked him about when he was sitting next to me in the editorial board room, and I was satisfied with his answers. And I was not surprised when he embraced continuity once in office (although I was surprised when he became even more aggressive than George Bush in prosecuting the War on Terror).
I get a certain amount of that same vibe from Romney, and that’s what reassures me when I think of the possibility (not a very strong possibility at this point, but still a possibility) that he could replace Obama. I don’t think we’d see any dangerous shifts in the policies that matter. And when faced with an unforeseen crisis, I think he’d approach it with sober deliberation.
I am not, however, convinced at this point that he would do a better job than the incumbent. But I’m still watching.
Lin is a common surname in the Chinese-speaking world. According to a government count in 2005, it is the second most common surname in Taiwan after Chen. It is in the U.S., however, that Lin becomes the most popular.
Of course we are talking about Jeremy Lin, the Taiwanese-American NBA former benchwarmer who rocketed to global stardom in less than a month. The Harvard-graduate New York Knicks point guard had the world media performing some rarely seen linguistic gymnastics (at least aside from tongue-in-cheek tabloid headlines): first it was “Linsanity,” then there are “Lincredible,” “Linvincible,” “Linspiration” and pretty much the addition of “L” to any word with a positive meaning that begins with “in-.” On Feb. 14, the New York Post made its contribution: “Happy VaLINtine’s Day.” Jeremy Lin also added an entry of his own by pointing out that he likes the “Super Lintendo” — a pun on the video game console by Nintendo.
Back in Taiwan, the media are also having a good time pulling off wordsmith stunts of their own, mostly by working on Lin’s Chinese name Lin Shu-hao (林書豪).
To begin with, Lin’s given name is an apt description of Lin’s current show of strength. With “shu” meaning books or writing and “hao” leader or heroic person in Chinese, the name fits Lin’s characteristics as a leader in the Knicks’ recent winning form with an Ivy League education.
The Taiwanese puns start with a subtle translation of “Linsanity” by using the close homonym of Lin (林, wood): the English pun becomes “Lin Lai Feng” (林來瘋), with Lin substituting the close sounding “Ren” (人, people) from the Taiwanese idiom “人來瘋” (the three characters literally mean people, come and insane, respectively). The turn of phase originally refers to people who become excited or showy in front of others. Here it pretty much means what Linsanity means.
For local media, however, the character “hao” is a better source for puns because it happens to be the homonym of the Chinese word for “good” or “very” (好) in Mandarin. The Taiwanese press gave the world “Hao Xiao Zi” (豪小子, the great kid), “Hao Shen” (豪神, very amazing), “Hao Wei” (豪威, very mighty), and “Hao Bang Yang” (豪榜樣, good example). The track is actually quite straight forward, just add the term good or very (both Hao in Chinese) to any praise that fits the moment.
If there is an award for best pun, it should go to “Ling Shu Hao” (零輸豪), a term comprising ingenious puns on the first two characters in Lin’s Chinese name: the surname becomes “Ling,” meaning zero and “Shu” has it meanings transferred from its original books (書) to lose (輸). Combined it refers to Lin as the “zero lose Hao,” which was a fitting description of his leading of the Knicks to seven straight wins a few days earlier.
Washington (CNN) – In a move that could again dramatically shake up the Republican primary race, billionaire and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson is expected to donate an additional $10 million to the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, Winning Our Future, a source with knowledge of the donation told CNN.
That contribution is expected soon, before the end of the month, the source said. The timing is important because Gingirch, whose campaign has been lagging, is hoping to do well in several of the upcoming Super Tuesday states that vote on March 6 to boost his effort. His allies will need that money to be in a position to help. Because ten states go to the polls on that one day, money is key in order to do well.
You know, even if I were a billionaire, I doubt I’d throw it away like this. I’d still want to get something for my money, beyond just spinning out the GOP nomination contest a little farther down the line.
The WSJ has speculated that this is more about hurting Santorum than it is about helping Gingrich. (If you can’t get past the pay wall, Slate summarizes the argument.)
Whatever. It’s like this rich guy is playing with rats in a maze — giving this one a reward, that one a shock, to see what they’ll do next.
If I had the money, I’d spend it for something better. Build Habitat houses. Or get myself a new truck. Or burn it to keep warm on a cold night. Something useful…
