Category Archives: The Nation

Video: IED exercise at Fort Jackson (WARNING — lots of simulated blood)

2 Replies

I mentioned this the other day in my post about the Fort Jackson tour. I shot a lot of video that day — and if I could figure out how to edit iPhone video (when I call it up in my PC-based editing software, the sound drops out), I’d give you a video overview of the tour.

Instead, here is one unedited scene from the tour (I can upload a complete clip directly to YouTube; I just can’t edit it). It’s the most dramatic.

We were warned before we went in that we would see a lot of fake blood — particularly flowing from the sophisticated mannequin. There were two real soldiers in there with fake wounds, and you’ll hear them moaning over the recorded sounds of battle. But the mannequin had the most horrific wounds — both legs missing. The mannequin moves as well as bleeding. We were also told not to be surprised that it was “anatomically correct,” and was wounded in that area, too. There were ladies in our group. Of course, there were ladies among the soldiers going through the exercise, as well.

The scenario was that three soldiers’ humvee had just hit an IED. The mission of the recruits was to secure the site, treat the wounded, and prepare them for evacuation. One of the main challenges was to stop the mannequin’s profuse bleeding with tourniquets.

The trainees had learned about such situations in the classroom, but this was their first hands-on simulation of this kind, with all the sights and sounds. One of the recruits was appointed to be squad leader, and they were thrown into this under the watchful eyes of instructors. You will see four soldiers assume defensive positions with their rifles (the challenge for them was to keep their eyes looking outward, since they were staring at blank walls) while the rest of the squad deals with the wounded. I assume the soldier you see moving about among the group checking on everything was the squad leader.

One thing you can’t see — it was pretty hot in there. We were indoors, but there was no air-conditioning. A little added stress for the exercise.

And yeah, we were standing right on top of them. The room wasn’t very big. We just tried not to get in the way.

A photographic slice of SC political history

11 Replies

Thought y’all might be interested in this huge (about as tall as I am) poster over at GOP HQ. Chad Connelly and Matt Moore showed it to me when I arrived for the interview this morning.

They didn’t know where it came from — they found it when they moved in to the HQ — but they assume from the available clues in the photo that it’s from 1960. Note (if you can; this being too big to put on a scanner, I just shot a picture of it with my iPhone — and it was pretty grainy to start with):

  • The prophetic declaration, “DIXIE IS NO LONGER IN THE BAG” — which was not yet true from a GOP perspective.
  • What you can’t see around the slogan “ALL FOR NIXON” is the names of Old South states (they were hard to see in the original, too).
  • At least one, and probably other, leaflets on the ground say “Kennedy!”
  • I was amused at the van near the State House steps that said “Wilson” on the back. Seems like Joe’s always been in politics, doesn’t it?
  • The flags, which are located far below the dome, and of course do not include the Confederate flag. This is before the General Assembly and Fritz Hollings put the Dixie flag up to mark the Civil War centennial. Are there also flags atop the dome, or were there no flags there then? I don’t know.
  • The men wearing hats. After JFK won South Carolina and the presidency, he put a stop to that style. Or so they say.
  • The license plate on the hearse, which provides proof that Paul was dead before we’d even heard of the Beatles.

OK, I was kidding on that last one. Y’all have fun with the picture, too.

I guess if you’ve seen one John Wayne, you’ve seen ’em all — according to her, anyway

11 Replies

Ya gotta love this:

Michele Bachmann spent plenty of time Monday letting everyone know that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa, a small industrial town she credits with instilling within her many of her conservative ideals.

But in one interview surrounding her formal campaign rollout, the Tea Party favorite seems to have gotten a little confused about some of the finer points of the Hawkeye State’s history.

Speaking to Fox News, Bachmann said that she had the same spirit as Waterloo’s own John Wayne. One can only assume that she was referring to the movie star, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, roughly a three-hour drive from Waterloo. The problem, however, is that Waterloo appears to have much closer ties to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the “killer clown” who had his first criminal conviction there.

Hoh, boy… When they unfreeze the Duke, he’s gonna be ticked.

OK, I was kidding about that. I have only Denis Leary to go by on the Duke being frozen. But I do have a question — didn’t she launch her campaign a couple of weeks ago? She announced it at the debate…

Touring Fort Jackson

5 Replies

I spent more than half of Thursday on a tour, sponsored by the Greater Columbia Chamber, of Fort Jackson. It was kind of weird that I’d never done this. I’ve been to Fort Jackson more times than I can count, but had never seen much more than the golf course and the other more public facilities. Even though I’ve always known what Fort Jackson is for, as the Army’s largest basic training base — I had never actually witnessed any of the training. About the closest I had ever com was hearing automatic weapons fired in the distance while I was playing golf.

On Thursday, I saw a lot, and it was impressive. The basic outline of our tour:

  • We heard remarks from Maj. Gen. James Milano. He gave us the overview about what they do at the place where 50 percent of all U.S. soldiers, and 60 percent of the females, receive initial training. Just one interesting factoid: Only one in four recruits measures up. “That’s a national crisis,” said the general. The biggest disqualifying factor? Obesity, and just generally being out of shape. Young people today just aren’t as physically active as earlier generations, and too many have grown up on junk food. A lot of what they do at the Fort is help soldiers who do get in make it in this regard, from sophisticated physical training and injury treatment to making sure they eat right for a change. The nutritious food is “a shock” to many, but “It they’re hungry enough, they’ll eat it.”
  • Graduation. We had been told it would be an inspiring ceremony, and it was. I was sufficiently struck with awe that I suppressed my natural inclination to say, “Where is Sgt. Hulka’s platoon?” My favorite part was when PFC Joshua Hinton was honored for being the best marksman in his training company. He’s from Jackson, TN, which is one of my hometowns (my wife and three of my kids were born there; I worked at the paper there for 10 years).
  • We visited a recently remodeled barracks.
  • We climbed the Victory Tower, which is recruits’ first big test of courage and confidence. That is to say, we climbed it by the stairs. Two of our number signed the necessary waivers and tried their hands (successfully, fortunately) at rappelling. I did not. I was afraid. Of my wife. If I had even slightly injured myself right after spending 400 bucks on a shot of cortisone next to my spine, she would never, ever have let me forget it.
  • Chow time! At the mess hall, I had a revelation: I always assumed that even if they had let in guys with asthma when I was young, I would have starved to death because of my food allergies. But thanks to the new, healthy menu, I had a great meal — baked salmon, rice, pinto beans, Brussels sprouts and jello. (By the way, the irony is that my allergies cause me to eat healthier than most people, and I was reasonably athletic when I was draft age, so I would probably have been in better shape than most guys who enter the Army.) We entered the mess hall early, but hundreds of soldiers came in after us — all with their rifles.
  • We visited an area where soldiers are taught about teamwork (as opposed to the Victory Tower, which was more about individual achievement via such means as the “quicksand” exercise — they had to work together to cross a wide expanse without touching the ground, using only two or three wooden planks. We watched a couple of groups doing it — each group worked it out slightly differently. I kept thinking about the Twins’ favorite TV show, Wonder Pets, with its song, “What’s gonna work — TEAMwork!”
  • Then, we saw a particularly intense exercise in which armed recruits came upon three soldiers — two real, one of them a sophisticated mannequin that could move and bleed copiously — whose humvee had just been blown up by an IED. They had to secure the area and stabilize the wounded to prepare them for evacuation, with the particular challenge being to apply tourniquets successfully to the mannequin, which had just lost both legs.

A full day, even though we were done by 2 p.m.

Below are a few of the pictures I took. Here’s a key to understanding what you’re looking at, left to right, top to bottom:

  1. I’m sorry I missed when these soldiers’ names were announced at the start of the graduation program, but I liked the picture anyway. They were receiving a huge ovation from the crowd in the reviewing stands, right after we heard about their service in combat zones.
  2. The five companies graduating pass before the reviewing stand. There was no Sgt. Hulka’s platoon, but they all seemed to be go-getters.
  3. You don’t see many pay phones these days, but there were six outside the barracks we visited. Recruits are not allowed to keep cell phones.
  4. While phoning home, the troops can continue their training by studying the chain of command, located above the phones. They are expected to know the chain of command, but they tend to have trouble with the middle parts of the chain. Few have trouble with the top or the bottom: They know who President Obama is, and they will never forget their drill instructor for the rest of their lives. I was struck by how the most faded photo was that of Sec. Gates. But then I realized, he’s had his job longer than any of the others.
  5. The barracks. I think they told us this room was for female soldiers, but that doesn’t sound right. I looked at some of those boots atop the lockers, and they were way too big for any of the women in our tour group, near as I could tell. In the shower area (not pictured), the colonel guiding us noted that there’s not much privacy. Well… there was more privacy than in the shower room in the Honeycombs when I was at USC.
  6. Soldiers at the Victory Tower had to stack arms before climbing.
  7. You’re looking at soldiers atop the tower, about to rappel down a sheer 60-foot wall. I liked listening to the female instructor with the dark hair and wearing the cap, sitting right at the edge and speaking to the bareheaded soldier holding his hands up. With each recruit, she said, “Are you scared?” If they said “no,” she would say, “Well, I would be.” And then she gave them a calming spiel about how to make it through this challenge. And then they went over.
  8. Capt. LeMay was our guide at the Victory Tower and elsewhere on our tour. I finally had to ask him. Turns out that yes, he’s the great-grandnephew of Gen. Curtis LeMay. Small world. He gets asked that a lot.
  9. After you climb the “ladder” at right (partly seen), you rappel down the wall. I managed to suppress the temptation to take part.
  10. Our bus was held up briefly as we waited for this armed column to pass out of our way, en route to the mess hall.
  11. At the team training area, we walked past a company-sized group eating MREs among the trees. When next I looked that way, they were all in the prone firing position with their rifles pointing outward from their large defensive circle. I suggested that we go back another way, in case we had offended them somehow.
  12. Gear piled up outside the building where the troops engaged in the exercises dealing with the aftermath of IED explosions.
  13. Soldiers secure the area around a crippled humvee, while some of them try to help the wounded. The “blood” is made of corn syrup and food coloring, I believe. But it was pretty realistic, though. After they had dragged the wounded out of there and tracked it all over, it was hard to get out of the room without walking through it.
  14. A soldier comes bursting out of the building ahead of his comrades trying to evacuate the “wounded.” I had noticed that soldiers had their names written on tape on the butts of their rifles. I didn’t notice until I was editing these photos that this guys’ said “The Situation.”
  15. The squad awaits evac outside the building.

I’ve got video of that exercise, by the way, complete with the sound of canned gunfire to add to the soldiers’ stress level. I’ll try to post it later. We were in the room, right on top of them. Capt. Collins, who was guiding this part of the tour, told us that the Army had learned some things about staging such exercises from Hollywood. He had been through a similar exercise at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. It turned out to be a little too intense for some of the combat veterans who went through it. They had to take a break afterwards. It had been too much like what they had actually experienced in combat.

By the way, before that exercise, a sergeant demonstrated for us how to apply the high-tech tourniquets that all soldiers carry. He told us that we probably would have had as many killed in Iraq and Afghanistan the past decade as we lost in Vietnam, if not for what has been learned about treating wounds since then. If we had known then what we know today, Staff Sgt. Cheadle said, that memorial wall in Washington would be a lot smaller.

Congressman Joe Wilson, antiwar activist

11 Replies

Here’s another chapter in what I wrote about back here, in the post headlined “Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?”…

I’ll give you the two items backwards. Friday afternoon, I received this release from Joe Wilson:

(Washington, DC) – Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted against authorizing the limited use of the United States Armed Forces in Libya:

“The President’s decision to ignore the Constitution along with the War Powers Resolution has led us to this point. Choosing not to consult with Congress on this conflict was complicated even further by this Administration’s failure to explain and outline a plan of action to the American public.

“NATO is one of America’s closest allies. I do not want to jeopardize the progress it has made in removing Muammar Gaddafi from power. However, the President’s failure to actively engage Congress forces me to vote against committing our Armed Forces on the ground in Libya.”

I hope y’all didn’t get whiplash in that last paragraph. Let’s see, would not want in any way to jeopardize NATO’s mission in Libya (which, last time I checked, was not officially removing Gaddafi, but we can wink and nod at that one), on account of NATO being our great friends and all. BUT… he wants to tie Obama’s hands in supporting that mission, on account of, you know. Obama being Obama.

There are just so many bizarre things going on here. Republicans (especially Republicans of the strong national defense wing, like Joe Wilson) caring about the flippin’ War Powers Resolution. I mean, normally you hear folks in that camp saying the War Powers Resolution is what violates the Constitution. Then… well, I’ll let y’all figure out all the bizarre things about it. Here’s a news story on what Joe’s talking about, by the way.

I wanted to share something else with you. That morning, before the vote, this piece by Kimberley A. Strassel (normal world view: Obama bad, Republicans good) appeared in The Wall Street Journal. It was headlined, “The GOP’s War Powers Opportunism: Republicans abandon principle in a rush to score political points on the president.” I’m going to take a chance here of getting into trouble with the Journal by quoting large chunks of the piece, because it just makes so many good points. Here goes:

But what fun is there in criticizing Democrats on national security when the GOP is offering up a much more embarrassing spectacle? In their rush to score points on the president, what congressional Republicans have actually managed to do is hurt themselves. They’ve highlighted their own divisions and given voters reason to question whether the party is throwing over principle in favor of political opportunism or, more worrisome, a new form of GOP isolationism.

In the space of a few months, Republicans have gone from coherently criticizing Mr. Obama’s timid approach to the Arab awakening, to a few weeks ago incoherently losing 87 members to antiwar Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s resolution to end military engagement in Libya. This caused an open rift in the party, compelling Sen. John McCain to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.

House Republicans have very publicly let it be known that they intend to hold a vote on Mr. McCain’s resolution—solely so that they can very publicly vote him down. Not satisfied that this is an ample enough rebuke to those who would win a war, the GOP is now working to pass legislation to defund the president’s Libya mission. That’s right, House Republicans (not House Democrats) intend to kneecap a commander in chief….

… House leaders are of the view that failing to take action against the president is the equivalent of letting him “get away” with his snubs and bad policy and to “win” on this issue. The only real winner of a Libya withdrawal is, of course, a terrorist named Moammar Gadhafi. But try telling that to a GOP that has come full circle to congressional Democrats, circa 2006, who masked their ambitions to undermine President Bush behind lofty arguments of Iraq “oversight.”

Speaking of 2006, some of this is also the consequence of a party with no obvious leader. Mr. Bush kept his caucus (barely) on Iraq only by constantly reminding members of the stakes. Those GOP candidates who would follow Mr. Bush have been mostly craven on Libya and Afghanistan, with Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann more worried about winning the next public-opinion poll than winning a war. House Speaker John Boehner remains reluctant to openly engage his excitable freshmen. Rather than lead on Libya, his default has been to try to make the best of a fractious GOP—for instance, by offering up a less-bad version of the Kucinich resolution.

To the extent there is political pressure, it comes from the tea party, which has no interest in foreign policy but is instead focused on spending and federal powers. This has helped to drive the growing group of self-described constitutionalists and war-deficit-hawks who are giving rise to a new brand of Republican isolationism.

The prevailing antigovernment feeling has allowed folks like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul to spin the Libya mission as some sort of affront to the Constitution, since Mr. Obama failed to beg Congress’s approval for Libya, as required by the 1973 War Powers Act. Never mind that conservative scholars will point out that it is the War Powers Act itself that is unconstitutional. That used to be the general GOP view, but with “Obama violated the Constitution” making for such a delicious sound bite among base voters, Republicans are willing to forget the past.

Really, I wanted to quote the whole thing, but restrained myself slightly, giving you only the parts that best address what Joe Wilson and the majority did yesterday.

I urge you to go read it all — and browse the site, and give your custom to the Journal’s advertisers, so they will forgive me for quoting so extensively. It will be worth your while.

By the way, other “conservative” pundits are not getting on the House’s case here. George Will is attacking John McCain for, as Ms. Strassel wrote, daring “to stand up for U.S. victory and sponsor a resolution giving Mr. Obama freedom of action for another year.” Mr. Will’s column is headlined “John McCain’s never-ending war.” Mr. Will seems angry with Sen. McCain for daring to call the latest trend among Republicans “isolationism.” But that (coupled with Obama Derangement Syndrome) is precisely the right word. And it’s not entirely a new thing. We’ve been here before.

Talk about the power of advertising — they got “Whitey” Bulger

9 Replies

Well, that was quick. Earlier this week, I read in the WSJ that the FBI was trying something it had never tried before — a major ad campaign aimed at a Ten Most Wanted fugitive. Or rather, at his moll. Or frail. Or whatever they say now.

Fitting, given James “Whitey” Bulger’s pop-culture profile — he was the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed.”

Somebody got the bright idea — based upon the belief that Whitey’s girlfriend, Catherine Greig, was not being as reclusive as he was — of advertising where women would see it. Women who just might have seen her at the beauty parlor or something. From Tuesday’s paper:

On Tuesday, the agency will begin airing public-service announcements in 14 U.S. cities during shows such as “The Dr. Oz Show” and “The View,” focusing not on Mr. Bulger but on his girlfriend, Catherine Elizabeth Greig. Images of the couple also are featured on digital billboards in New York’s Times Square.

The FBI says the advertising campaign is the first of its kind in hunting a most-wanted figure.

The duo went underground just before Mr. Bulger’s 1995 federal indictment for his alleged role in 19 murders during the 1970s and ’80s, according to the FBI. Ms. Greig isn’t implicated in those crimes, but was indicted in 1997 for harboring Mr. Bulger….

While the FBI has sought Mr. Bulger all over the world, it says the new publicity campaign explores the possibility that clues to his whereabouts may lie with friends or co-workers of the 60-year-old Ms. Greig. The agency believes she may carry on a relatively normal routine of frequenting beauty parlors, visiting the dentist and caring for or spending time with animals.

“Have you seen this woman?” asks the 30-second TV spot…

The focus on Ms. Greig is “part of a unique initiative” aiming to reach women her age, said Special Agent Greg Comcowich, an FBI spokesman in Boston. “Our hope is that a friend, or co-worker, or someone she goes to the beauty salon with or interacts with on a daily basis will see it,” he said.

And it worked. Really, really fast.

First bin Laden, now Bolger. The feds and the military are on a roll.

Huntsman files in SC, speaks to sweltering audience

20 Replies

Having noted that Dick Harpootlian had singled him out for abuse, I thought I’d check out one of Jon Huntsman’s appearances in Columbia today. (Here’s what he said at an earlier appearance.) I thought, “I hear the Republicans have this nice new building, and that would be better than going to a barbecue.” I had reckoned without the event being outside the building. In case you wondered, a seersucker suit does not keep you cool standing in the sun on a day like today. The things I put up with for y’all…

This was my first actual official 2012 presidential event. I’m hoping they don’t have any more until October. Or have them inside. Or in England.

Anyway, I’m uploading some video to YouTube now, which may or may not be ready by the time I finish typing this.

When it’s up, you will see the following people standing up with Huntsman and his wife and (some of their) kids: Mike Campbell, John Courson, and the inimitable Henry McMaster. Henry played master of ceremonies, as he did so often four years ago for John McCain. That got me to thinking about something. I asked Henry, after the Huntsman speech, how many of the presidential candidates he had personally backed had won their SC primaries. I said I couldn’t remember him NOT having backed the eventual winner. He thought for moment, standing there sweltering, and said he wasn’t sure, but he wouldn’t to my saying that. So I just did.

This provides an interesting perspective. Jon Huntsman may seem to some like a bit of an outlier in the GOP — at least at the moment. But here we had him with the GOP establishment in SC, just about anyway you slice it. A Campbell. Two of South Carolina’s most ardent Reaganites, McMaster and Courson. He’s got Richard Quinn in his corner, too.

Now you may say that those guys are the OLD establishment, that not it’s about the Nikki Haleys (who swamped Henry and every other establishment type back in the Year of the Tea Party) and the Mark Sanfords. Well, Huntsman has Joel Sawyer running his campaign. And I thought I saw Rob Godfrey posing for a picture with the candidate, but I could have been mistaken.

And indeed, many of the folks there were just there out of curiosity, or to be polite because they were invited — such as Eric Davis, who as chair of the Richland County GOP was sort of there ex-officio. Among those I spotted, but did not get around to asking why they were there, were Frank Barron, Katrina Shealy, Kelly Payne, Mike Green, Adam Piper, Andrew Williams and our own sometime commenter Walter Durst. You may see others on the video. I did not look at it closely because I was in a hurry to upload it. It’s raw, and unedited. Enjoy.

John Courson (his grin, anyway), Jon Huntsman, Henry McMaster...

A candidate to be taken seriously

36 Replies

I don’t know a whole lot about Jon Huntsman. I mean, I know a few things, but not enough to reach critical mass for a judgment in my own mind.

But I know I’ll be watching him closely, now that he’s announced:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Jon M. Huntsman Jr. officially launched his White House bid here Tuesday morning, setting up a campaign for the GOP nomination that, if successful, would lead to a matchup against his former boss.

“I’ve been a governor … I’ve been a businessman and a I’ve been a diplomat. I’m the husband of the love of my life … and the father of seven terrific kids,” Huntsman told a crowd of supporters at Liberty State Park, the Statue of Liberty rising just behind him. “I’m from the American West, where the view of America is limitless with lots of blue sky.”…

I look at it this way: Jon Huntsman has a reference that is almost as good as having the UnParty seal of approval — Barack Obama. The president hired him for a job of considerable responsibility, ambassador to China. You know, that big place across the water that owns all that U.S. debt. The place where all that stuff at Walmart comes from.

So if Obama thought enough of him to hire him, and now he’s turned in his notice in order to run against Obama — well, that’s a guy who might have something to say worth listening to. He might be a credible, informed critic.

So I’m going to listen.

Speaking of listening, I listened in to a conference call Dick Harpootlian had today with media types to talk about Huntsman, after which he put out this release:

Harpootlian welcomes “ambassador, governor, Democrat, Republican Jon Huntsman to South Carolina”

Columbia, S.C. –  South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootilan held a conference call today to welcome Jon Huntsman to South Carolina.

While Huntsman travels to our state to kick off his Presidential campaign Harpootlian welcomes him by saying, “we always welcome Obama administration officials in South Carolina.”  Harpootlian called Huntsman a political “schizophrenic” who’s “very similar to Mitt Romney” in his flip-flopping on key issues such as the Recovery Act.

“Between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, we have, actually, four candidates rather than two,” said Harpootlian.

That’s pretty much what he said to us on the phone. Afterwards, I asked him whether he was more worried about Huntsman than he was the other Republicans. He said he wasn’t. But I think he should be.

Yeah, Huntsman has a challenge before him getting the nomination with his party momentarily in the thrall of the Tea Party. But from what little I’ve seen so far, he seems like he could have a better chance in the general if he could get that far.

But as I say, that’s how it looks so far. I’ll keep watching.

There are more of US than there are of Democrats or Republicans

24 Replies

First, take a look at the awesome image that combine Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan into one face, and the one that does the same with Kennedy and Nixon. Cool. There was another that did the same with Obama and Bush, but I can’t seem to locate it as a still image online — oh, there it is.

I got excited when I saw those, and thought the piece, headlined “Death of the Duopoly,” would be a sort of UnParty manifesto. But no. When  I want an Unparty Manifesto, I have to write it myself.

Unfortunately, this was one of those pieces that saw the WSJ’s sort of libertarianism as the natural successor to the two parties, going on about how the American people, in their supposed wisdom, are turned against the drug war, and toward paying people to abandon public schools. Ho-hum, the usual. Nothing paradigm-breaking at all.

But the pictures were cool. And while the author of this piece may be confused as to the implications, these data were at least confusing:

Perhaps the most important long-term trend in U.S. politics is the four-decade leak in market share by the country’s two dominant parties. In 1970, the Harris Poll asked Americans, “Regardless of how you may vote, what do you usually consider yourself—a Republican, a Democrat, an independent or some other party?”

Fully 49% of respondents chose Democrat, and 31% called themselves Republicans. Those figures are now 35% for Democrats and 28% for Republicans. While the numbers have fluctuated over the years, the only real growth market in politics is voters who decline affiliation, with independents increasing from 20% of respondents to 28%.

These findings are consistent with other surveys. In January, Gallup reported that the Democrats were near their lowest point in 22 years (31%), while the GOP remained stuck below the one-third mark at 29%. The affiliation with the highest marks? Independent, at 38% and growing. In a survey released in May, the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of independents rose from 29% in 2000 to 37% in 2011…

Yes, there are now more of us than there are of either Democrats or Republicans (at least, according to Gallup and apparently Pew). Maybe when we grow to exceed all the partisans combined, we’ll get somewhere. But at least we’re on our way.

Making use of the “women are grownups” argument

16 Replies

A couple of days back, in the midst of an argument about something else, I started griping about a piece I’d read somewhere by a feminist of the “men and women are just alike and don’t you dare say otherwise” variety (there are all sorts of feminism, and that is but one type), suggesting that there’s nothing to the idea that male politicians are inherently more likely to engage in sexual misbehavior than are female politicians.

I begged to differ, citing my oft-asserted belief that, in general, women are more likely than men to be actual grownups. To elaborate:

You know me; I hate Identity Politics. I don’t care whether our legislative bodies are all male, or all female, or all white or all black, as long as we get the best candidates (which we don’t, but don’t stop me; I’m on a roll). I’m not for electing women qua women. But there’s a side benefit apart from the IP one: Elect more women, you get more grownups.

Yes there are exceptions. And we could have a debate, if you’d like, about whether the problem with Nikki Haley is that she “governs like a guy.” But in general, the principle holds….

Well, I’m not the only one thinking that way. The Southern Institute for Women in Politics is pushing the same line:

Retrospective on scandal

Lessons learned from the likes of Anthony Weiner

Comedians will regret the loss of great material provided by Anthony Weiner’s denial and later admission of lewd electronic behavior. Weiner’s Congressional colleagues will be relieved by his resignation so they can return to business. But Weiner’s sad tale of self-destructive and testosterone-induced behavior is just one in a growing list of elected men (of both political parties) that tells a bigger story to tell: In 2011, U.S. politics is still a boys’ club.

When we’re all finished clucking our collective tongues, we need to get focused and recognize that this is a call to action for women – including women in South Carolina.

Research points to a substantial gender gap in the way women and men approach running for office. Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw – all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected.

“The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.”

So, it’s time for more of us to step up to the plate.

Not everyone needs to be a candidate, but all women need to be more informed, more involved, in politics at every level. At a minimum, we need to vote – cast a ballot for everything from who runs our children’s schools to who sets the tax rate for our towns – have a say in who gets to make these decisions that affect our lives.

We desperately need good women to run for office. We can’t win the game unless you play, so come on ladies, let’s get moving.

How you can help clean the political house:

So, friends, let’s learn some lessons from Anthony Weiner (and Elliott Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc., etc., etc.) and make 2012 the year we run and elect more women to office in South Carolina than ever before.

Read news that directs our lessons

Weiner Scandal: A Victory for Women Leaders?
The mentality has to change. The world is half men and half women. The government has to >>

In political scandals, girls won’t be boys
“I’m telling you,” said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., “every time one of these sex scandals goes, we just look at each other, like>>

More Women Needed in Politics
The story of U.S. Rep. Anthony and his Weiner is more disappointing than surprising.Another male>>

Women are better investors, and here’s why
Call it the Weiner principle: men self-destruct. Anthony Weiner has put men in a pickle.Here’s why>>

How about Dan Adams’ new book?
Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else. Read more>>

Welcome to the team, girls. I mean, ladies. I mean — aw, I’d never make a good feminist anyway…

And I take exception to the beer taster thing.

Corey quotes me well in The Nation

12 Replies

Several weeks back, Corey Hutchins of The Free Times called to say he was working on a profile of Nikki Haley for The Nation magazine. He wanted to talk with me about it, and asked if I’d meet him for a beer at Yesterday’s. He didn’t have to twist my arm. (Note the ad — be sure to check out Yesterday’s. Good food, good beer, good company, reasonable prices.)

So we met, and I said a bunch of stuff, and later I got a call from a fact-checker at The Nation, so I knew that the piece was coming out soon. (Yeah, just like in “Almost Famous.” To a newspaperman, the whole “fact-checker” thing is weird. If you’re going to have a staffer check all the facts, why not just send them to do the story to start with? But when you’re using freelance, which magazines do, I guess this is something you have to do to protect yourself. When a reporter works for you, it’s different. You can fire his butt if he tries to put one over on you, and he knows it.)

Anyway, Corey did a pretty good job. Personally, I don’t normally enjoy reading The Nation, but this was good. And he did an excellent job of extracting something intelligent-sounding from my ramblings:

Still, like so many Palmetto State chief executives before her, Haley seems to be angling for a spot on a national ticket. She is already penning her memoir. “Every governor we’ve had since Carroll Campbell has had national aspirations, but with her it’s more naked and obvious,” says Brad Warthen, a Columbia advertising man who until 2009 was the longtime editorial page editor of the State. Warthen endorsed Haley in two legislative elections and chronicled her rise beginning about seven years ago. In that time, he says, she has morphed from a naïve newcomer, to a politician he thought could become a good force in the legislature, to something approaching megalomania.

“I think she’s had her head turned by discovering where demagoguery will get you,” Warthen told me. “I don’t think that’s totally who she was before. I think she has developed in this direction. It’s a B.F. Skinner behavioral reinforcement thing; she has been rewarded and rewarded and rewarded. This has worked for her. And she continues to charm the national media. Because you know what? They don’t care. It’s just a story.”…

You see what just happened? Yep. For the first time ever, after a 35-year career in newspapers, I was just identified in a national magazine as an “advertising man.” Move over, Don Draper. You’re about to be replaced in the national imagination.

There were other good bits. Such as this, the result of an interview with John Rainey:

But Haley has been navigating a series of land mines—IRS disputes, questionable business deals and appointments, multiple adultery allegations—any one of which threatens to blow up her political career. “I believe she is the most corrupt person to occupy the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction,” declared John Rainey, a longtime Republican fundraiser and power broker who chaired the state’s Board of Economic Advisers for eight years. A 69-year-old attorney, Rainey is an aristocratic iconoclast who never bought the Haley myth. “I do not know of any person who ran for governor in my lifetime with as many charges against him or her as she has had that went unanswered,” he told me on a recent afternoon at his sprawling horse farm outside the small town of Camden. “The Democrats got Alvin Greene; we got Nikki Haley. Because nobody bothered to check these guys out.”

OK, so John was way more provocative than I was. But I think I sounded more erudite.

It’s worth a read.

Are we starting to see a geologic shift between left and right on national security?

32 Replies

This is something I’ve been thinking about the last few days, and I haven’t written about it because it’s complicated and I haven’t had time to do something pulling all the threads together. But when I saw this development, I decided I’d better go ahead and throw out the general idea and get the discussion started:

Obama Says War Powers Act Doesn’t Apply to Libya Mission

White House maintains that the president doesn’t need lawmakers’ permission for U.S. role in NATO-led effort.

The White House on Wednesday told skeptical lawmakers that President Obama doesn’t need their permission to continue the nation’s involvement in the NATO-led mission in Libya because U.S. forces are playing only a supporting role there.

Administration lawyers made their case as part of a larger report sent to Congress responding to complaints that the president had yet to provide a sufficient rationale for continuing the Libya campaign, the New York Times reports.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” State Department lawyer Harold Koh told the paper. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”…

OK, digest that. Here’s the NYT version, and here’s the WashPost. And then consider some of the other things I’ve been noticing lately:

  • The fact that, in the GOP debate the other night, we heard some Republicans moving more toward the “get out of Afghanistan ASAP” line. Ron Paul, treated as an outcast for saying such things four years ago, got cheered by the Fox News crowd.
  • The bold way Obama decided to go in and GET bin Laden, without any of that multilateral consult-the-allies (as in, tell the Pakistanis we’re attacking in the heart of their country) touchy-feely stuff. No fooling around.
  • The way the administration is playing on having stunned the world with the bin Laden thing to get its way elsewhere. That prompted me to write that the difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush was Sonny, while Obama is the far-deadlier (that is, more effective) Michael.
  • The way Obama is taking advantage of chaos in Yemen to just GO AFTER terrorists there, without asking Congress or the UN, or presenting arguments about the War Powers Act, or anything like that. Read this, and this.

This has been building ever since the election, with a lot of Obama’s antiwar base feeling pretty disoriented (wait — is this who we elected?), and people like me being reassured by his steady pragmatism.

But lately, the process has seemed to be accelerating. Obama still talks a good war-as-last-resort, multilateral, we-don’t-want-to-be-a-bully line for the base… but watch what happens. (And how about the way he threw everybody off-balance on Libya, letting the FRENCH of all people take the lead, while still managing to get in there and go after the bad guys? That enabled him to have it both ways. The allies couldn’t do it without us, but it came across looking like we were a reluctant junior partner, which bought Obama some support for the move among liberals.)

And I find myself wondering, is anyone else noticing? I mean, while the Republicans get more timid about the U.S. role abroad (in some ways) and obsess more and more about domestic issues (because that’s what the Tea Party cares about), Obama is out there going all JFK and LBJ. He’s going Old School. He’s defining Democratic presidential leadership back to where it was before Vietnam.

Are the parties moving toward switching places?

This is a fascinating development. I think it has the potential to completely realign the country politically, and on more than national security.

Anybody else noticing this?

Could it (finally) be over for Grover Norquist?

50 Replies

Who’da thunk the day would ever come?

Mark Sanford buddy and guru Grover Norquist — whose anti-tax pledge has verged on paralyzing South Carolina government in recent years because he had so many GOP lawmakers signing it and afraid to cross him (thereby preventing comprehensive tax reform, among other things) has apparently miscalculated, leading to a very public rebuke, by Republicans, in the age of the Tea Party:

WASHINGTON — Grover Norquist’s grip on the Republican Party’s tax policy slipped dramatically on Tuesday, a development that is likely to have significant repercussions on the debate over spending, revenue and the federal deficit.

Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading party power broker for a generation, drew a hard line in the sand against repealing ethanol subsidies, arguing that ending the tax breaks is equivalent to a tax increase and therefore a violation of The Pledge — a document nearly every Republican has signed promising never to vote to raise taxes.

Thirty-four Senate Republicans walked nonchalantly across that line on Tuesday, voting to move forward on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would repeal the subsidies.

Norquist has been vicious in his recent talks on Coburn, charging that his amendment means he “lied his way into office” and is breaking the pledge.

Coburn was unmoved. “I think you all think he has a whole lot more hold than I think he has,” Coburn told reporters before the vote. “I don’t disagree with him on a lot of principles. The fact is it’s not a good position to put yourself in when you say, ‘Here’s a tax expenditure that nobody needs, and yet we have to give somebody else a tax cut to take away this.'”…

Could this be the end?

I mean, it should be. Even if you agree with Norquist, for the guy who famously wanted to shrink government to where he could drown it in a bathtub to make his stand on KEEPING one of the more wasteful government boondoggles is not calculated to win credibility.

What is marriage? (Hint: It’s not what Ron Paul thinks it is)

88 Replies

One of the more foolish things said in that debate last night was said by Ron Paul and I responded thusly:

Paul: “Get the government out” of marriage? What? What? What does he think marriage is? A secret agreement between 2 people? It’s a CONTRACT!

(Are you proud of me that I went with the more traditional “What? What?” rather than resorting to “WTF?” I am.)

To elaborate — and I fear I must elaborate, because for whatever reason this seems counterintuitive to a lot of folks — it is instructive to think for a few minutes about why we have marriage. Yeah, I get what Ron Paul thinks — that it’s some sort of private and/or religious thing. And yes, for us Catholics, it is indeed a sacrament.

But we had marriage long before there were Catholics. We had it before the Hebrews discovered monotheism. We had something like it, anyway, if it involved no more than jumping over a stick, or living together openly in the eyes of the whole community (thereby inviting its censure or assent). Because when humans are gathered into tribes or clans or whatever, it’s an important institution. It has to do with the fact that human offspring are so difficult to raise from the time they are born — no clinging to the mother from birth while she goes about her business the way apes do.

It is in society’s interest to have the male responsible be bound in some way to the female he impregnated. Yep, we’re still struggling to accomplish that today. (And much of the social dysfunction we struggle with today arises from our failure to get it right, as a society. Which only underlines the stakes in continuing to try to get it right.) But bottom line, that is the legitimate motivation of the full society in having such an institution. It gives the whole village somebody to yell at when there are all these kids underfoot: “Hey, you! Can’t you control your kids?” The village was wise to come up with this practice, to protect itself. And then, gradually, to develop the idea that it’s wisest to keep males and females apart, or turn hoses on them or something, until you have arrived at this society-protecting contract. (Something we’ve sort of forgotten in the past generation, but some in the more culturally conservative halls of academia are rediscovering it.)

So we started the institution, and developed all sorts of rules and regulations and codicils and rituals around it, such as the rehearsal dinner, and bridezillas. In a time when there was no notion of separation of religion and civil authority, it was perfectly natural that religious rituals and practices would become intertwined with the civil expectations and obligations. We should not, as a result of that, make the mistake of thinking it is “merely” a religious arrangement.

Of course, as well as “What does he think marriage is?” I could ask “What does he think government is?” Well, it’s nothing if it’s not simply the arrangements we come up with among ourselves for living together in a crowded society. I realize that libertarians think it’s some THING “out there” that’s menacing them, but it’s just us. Particularly in this country, the one with the longest-running experiment in self-government, it’s just us.

Anyway, to recap: We have marriage because long, long ago, it was noticed that if you left a man and a woman alone together, there was a tendency to have all these kids running around in short order. Primitive societies realized they needed to mitigate the potential ill effects of that explosive situation, and invented marriage. Put another way, we don’t have marriage for the couple, or for their priest or whatever. We have it for the kids, and the village they have to grow up in.

It’s OK, Mr. President; you don’t have to have a position on this — in fact, please don’t

11 Replies

Just got this little email update from the WashPost:

—————————————-
Politics News Alert: White House calls Rep. Weiner’s actions a ‘distraction’
June 13, 2011 11:32:22 AM
—————————————-

The White House says President Obama believes Rep. Anthony Weiner’s actions have been “inappropriate” and a “distraction.”

But spokesman Jay Carney wouldn’t say whether the president thinks the New York Democrat should resign — something other Democratic leaders have called for.

Wow…

I’ve been bemoaning for years the degradation of the presidency to the point where we expect the president to take a position on EVERYTHING that happens, whether it bears on his job responsibilities or not. I think the moment where it first hit me how bad it got was when I was watching a guy on a cable news station standing outside the White House with a microphone on the night of the Columbine shootings. This guy kept coming back on to assure us that the president would soon have a statement. And I’m like WTF? In what sense is a shooting at a high school in Colorado the responsibility of the president of the United States? Why on Earth would I expect him to say anything about it, or care what he said? I wrote a column about this at the time.

By comparison, though, Bill Clinton making sure to vibrate to the correct emotions over Columbine was the height of relevant leadership, compared to the White House being expected to have a position on some wanker who sends dirty pictures to women. We’ve really sunk low now.

If you have trouble seeing this, try for just a moment to look at the world the way I do, instead of the way the Beltway media does. To me, being the “leader of his party” is NOT a role I expect or want my president to play. To me, playing that role is actually inimical to the one that he is paid to perform.

So please, Mr. President: Don’t have an opinion on this. Ignore it. It’s beneath you personally, and certainly beneath the dignity of your office. Stick with the “inappropriate” and “distraction” thing, if you must say anything. Those characterizations are at least accurate.

Recalling the national overreaction to that Edwards column

13 Replies

A few days ago, Mike Fitts posted this on Facebook:

This seems like a good day to re-post my former boss’ column, written not all that long ago in the summer of 2007, about his gut feeling that John Edwards was “a big phony.” Got Brad Warthen national attention then, but all too obvious now.

Which I thought was nice of him to remember. I suppose it was because a certain person was back in the news…

Mike linked to the version at thestate.com, which is appropriate because that’s the one that got all the page views — 190,000 the first day, as I recall. Totally screwed up the stats for the paper’s website for the next year. Whenever the online folks presented stats at senior staff meetings, they had to explain, “We’re actually doing well, it’s just that is looks down because we’re up against that Edwards column of Brad’s…”

I was jealous of that traffic; it certainly would have been cool if it had gone to my blog. That would have been a huge hit — like months worth in a day. (Back then, I only got about 20,000 or 30,000 page views a month. You may be surprised to know that today, my traffic is closer to 200,000 a month — sometimes more, sometimes less.) Also, the version I had posted on my blog was better. I had written the column at home on my laptop and didn’t realize how long it was, and had to chop it down much more than I would have liked to get it into the paper. The version on my blog — the “director’s cut” — was shorter than the original, but quite a bit longer than the paper version. My point came across better in the blog version, because the anecdotes weren’t quite as truncated.

But still, the lesser version created a weird sort of splash. Still does. I got a letter just a week or two ago from a reader who says that he was an Edwards supporter and gave me grief in a letter at the time (I don’t recall), and is sorry now. But a lot of smart people didn’t see the problems with this guy at the time. In fact… I’ve told y’all before how I talked myself hoarse in a three-hour meeting to get the board to endorse Lieberman in the 2004 primary, right? What I may not have mentioned was that a couple of my colleagues wanted to back Edwards, and I was determined not to let that happen — so determined that I just won my point by exhausting everyone. I’m very glad not to have an Edwards endorsement on my record. (By the way, when people give me a hard time for how horribly Joe did in that primary, I have a ready answer: “Yeah, the voters went with Edwards. I’m more satisfied than ever that I was right.”)

I was shocked at the reaction the column got. It was just something I had had on a back burner for months. I had said something on my old blog about Edwards being a phony, and readers demanded to know what I meant, and when I realized how many words it would take to explain (being based on several encounters with the guy), I told them I would do a column sometime. I had been on vacation the week before I wrote this, and for one reason or another decided to take one more day — the following Monday — off as well. Feeling guilty, I told my colleagues that to make up for it, I’d whip out a column over the weekend, so nobody else would have to write one for Tuesday. This was an easy one to do, the “legwork” for it having been done inadvertently years before. So I dropped by the office Sunday just to check my memory on a couple of dates and such, wrote it that night at home, and turned it in on Monday morning — and didn’t think about it any more.

Then, the next morning, two people stopped me on the way into the building to talk about the column, and the reaction that was already manifest. I think Drudge had already picked it up. Later in the day, the column — or rather, the Edwards campaign’s reaction to it — was the LEDE political story on the Fox News site. As the week wore on, I was about worn out with media interview requests. I did as many as I could, including Dennis Miller’s show, which was fun. It was a day or so before I had any actual contact with the Edwards campaign (it led to no more than a lunch with the lovely Teresa Wells, in which she told me how wrong I was and I told her that no, I wasn’t). But I had heard that Mrs. Edwards, among others, had gone somewhat ballistic.

The media reaction surprised me. I hadn’t thought much of the column myself, and it was some time later before I figured out why the reaction was so much bigger than anything I could have imagined: The thing is, I had SO completely dismissed Edwards in my mind by that time. I had decided years earlier that I didn’t take him seriously, in spite of his having won the primary here in 2004. So who cared what I thought of him at that point, right? I mean, the column was still worth doing on a day when I just needed a column because he WAS still in the news. But I was convinced the nominee was going to be Obama or Clinton. And I just wasn’t seeing the enthusiasm for him in SC that had so alarmed me in 2004.

But a lot of folks, including national media, were very much taking him seriously still. Hence the reaction… And when I saw how the news stories about it were written, I realized: Oh. Everybody’s thinking, the editorial page editor of the largest newspaper in a state where Edwards HAS to win has just totally dismissed him. That’s the deal. The situation reminded me of that Mark Twain quote: “I was born modest; not all over, but in spots; and this was one of the spots.” It was one of those rare occasions when other people thought my opinion was a bigger deal than I thought it was. Doesn’t happen much.

I was reminded of this when the Mark Sanford Argentina thing broke. Sure it was a big story here, and pretty big nationally as well. I got that. But there’s a difference between a big story that everybody talks about, and something important enough to be the lede story in The New York Times. I’ve written before how the NYT has a VERY conservative, old school idea about its lede position — which I respect. As a front-page editor back in the 80s, I’m kind of old-school myself. There is a huge difference between the most interesting story of the day and  the most important. Sometimes, the same story is both. This was not one of those times. I expected it to be a big story above the fold in The Times — maybe with a picture. But no, it was a simple, sober, one-column lede story. Which startled me.

Remember, I was helping out The New York Post on that one. (By the way, my first interaction with the Post had been when they asked to reprint the Edwards column. Dig the headline they put on it.) A story under my byline led that paper. But that was to be expected. That was the Post. I thought the NYT would have a greater sense of perspective — yes, interesting scandal, but not that earth-shattering, I thought they’d harrumph.

Here’s why I was wrong: Again, the national media were overestimating a South Carolina political figure. Since I knew Mark Sanford well, I didn’t take any of that “presidential contender” garbage seriously. The NYT did. Hence this wasn’t just a juicy scandal to them. It was a contender’s White House chances being dashed.

It’s interesting when you suddenly see things from another editor’s perspective…

Talk about a contrast between substance and triviality…

25 Replies

At one moment yesterday on Twitter, about half the Tweets in my feed were about this Weiner guy (or should I say, “this weiner guy” — either way, it makes sense). Something about his wife being pregnant.

It’s not just Twitter. He (or rather, the debate among Democrats over what to do about him) LED The Wall Street Journal‘s “What’s News” column this morning. Normally, that briefing column exhibits a very fine sense of what is significant and what is not. But not today.

Yes, I get why other people think it’s important. It has to do with the never-ending war between the parties in Washington, and who’s up and who’s down, and which party is being embarrassed and which party is taking advantage of the other party’s embarrassment, yadda-yadda. NONE of which, I’m here to tell you, is actually important. I wouldn’t give two cents to have either party in the majority at any time, because as was said by Simon and Garfunkel, either way you look at it, you lose.

So take away that veneer of “importance” laid on by the daily partisan talking points, and all you have is a sex scandal, which is of no greater importance than a similar scandal involving one of those people on “Jersey Shore.”

A Twitter exchange I had a couple of days ago helps illustrate the difference between the dominant view and my own. Todd Kincannon — local attorney and Republican — retweeted this:

How many “objective” journos were more desperate to prove Palin was wrong about P. Revere than proving Weiner was wrong about his P?

I reacted by saying, “Who cares about either? Not I…” I mean, those are TWO “news stories” I was doing my best to know nothing about — and failing, of course. (Oh, and having learned more than I wanted about the Palin thing, I’ll just say that you’ve REALLY got to be a Palin fan to think anyone had to lift a finger to “prove” her wrong; any schoolchild should have known without checking.)

Todd responded: “I would be in your camp if Weiner (a) wasn’t married and (b) hadn’t lied.” To which I said, “He has NOTHING to do with me — nothing. I am NOT a NY voter. And I HOPE Palin never becomes relevant again, either…”

Of course, I can downplay and belittle this garbage all I want, and it’s not going to stop other people from making a big deal about it on a slow national news week.

But what I CAN do is take some pleasure in small things. Such as the above-pictured page in The Wall Street Journal yesterday. I thought the ironic contrast impressive. Here you have a story about this self-involved Weiner loser, whom everyone just goes on and on about and can’t get enough of… right next to a story about a man who lived an extraordinary life of service and accomplishment — but about whom no one is buzzing on Twitter (OK, no one I saw, anyway).

John Alison, who died at age 98:

  • Was deputy commander of the Flying Tigers (actually, the successor unit to the Flying Tigers), defending China from the Japanese
  • Innovated night fighter operations. Actually, that doesn’t describe it. He flew up at night and shot down two Japanese bombers, when no one knew you could to that.
  • Led glider-borne commandos behind the lines in Burma.
  • Played a key role in the Lend Lease program helping Britain and the Russians hold back Hitler.
  • Was there when the German army reached the outskirts of Moscow.
  • Advised Eisenhower on the use of gliders for D-Day.

As I once wrote in an editorial, that was the generation that Did Things. Him especially. And I’ll bet most of you never heard of him before his death. Meanwhile, we just can’t shut up about a guy who supposedly took pictures of his privates and sent them to women. Or something. Like I said, I’m trying to ignore it.

This is what we have come to.

“Again with the negative waves, Moriarty!” (Redux)

7 Replies

Yeah, I used that headline once before. But I’m making the point again.

This morning’s lead headline in The Wall Street Journal was tiresome:

Economic Outlook Darkens

Markets Stumble as Factories, Hiring Slow Down; Biggest Drop in Stocks in a Year

The drumbeat of bad news about the U.S. economy got louder on Wednesday, rattling financial markets and driving stocks to their biggest drop in a year.

The U.S. factory sector, which has been an engine of the recovery, notched its biggest one-month slowdown since 1984 as companies hit the brakes on hiring and production. Another report showed private-sector hiring dropped precipitously in May, prompting economists to ratchet down their expectations for the closely watched nonfarm payrolls report due on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 279.65 points, or 2.2%, to 12290.14, its biggest point decline since June 4 of last year. Investors piled into the safety of Treasury bonds, sending yields on the 10-year note below 3% for the first time this year. Yields move in the opposite direction of price….

Sheesh. I’m not going to go on and on about my own unified field theory of the economy (after all, I couldn’t even get y’all to watch that hilarious Keynes and Hayek rap video), but in a nutshell it is this: All the bad economic indicators result, at some point down the line, from someone having a lousy attitude.

That applies whether you’re talking the stock market, or manufacturing figures, or retail sales, or jobs, what have you. We start tightening up, and things get as bad as we thought they were, or even worse.

So snap out of it, people! I’m a veteran of the front lines of this singularly monotonous war, and have no glory or medals to show for it. Just a lot of PTSD. Don’t need any more, thanks…

And then afterwards, a beer. Or two…

1 Reply

Cleaning out the old IN box, I ran across this Tweet I had sent myself meaning to blog about it last week:

Taegan Goddard @pwire

Taegan Goddard

New poll: Which presidential candidate would you want to have lunch with?http://pwire.at/mJNvAf

Turns out that far more Americans polled — 53 percent — would rather have lunch with Barack Obama than any of the GOP candidates. Sarah Palin came in at a “distant second” with 16 percent.

Last election cycle, all the talk was about who you wanted to have a beer with. Asking the question this way is going to foul up our stats, for comparison purposes.

But it may be a better, more rigorous question. Most of us are probably less picky who we have a beer with. Although it depends on who’s buying.

Bush was Sonny; Obama is more like Michael

18 Replies

I said this as a comment back on a previous post, and liked it enough to say more prominently…

After reading that quote I cited in the WSJ about how the Obama administration is, ever so quietly, without saying anything overt, taking advantage of its stunning effectiveness in taking out bin Laden:

This month’s military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool — akin to, don’t make us do that again — with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking…

… I got to thinking how this was similar to the effect that Bush’s invasion of Iraq had on thugs like Moamar Qaddafi — for a very brief time, before everybody around the world figured out that (given our internal dispute over that invasion) W. wasn’t likely to get the chance to do that ever again…

And then it hit me: In terms of the politics of projecting a credible threat that gets others to do what you want (an idea that I realize makes a lot of us squirm), George W. Bush was like Sonny Corleone. The blusterer, the guy you just know is going to jump in the car and come after you in a mad, blind rage if you touch his sister. The guy who doesn’t want to negotiate; he just wants Sollozzo dead. And ultimately, the guy who has trouble achieving all his goals.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is more like Michael. The clean-cut college kid who was never involved in the muscle end of the business, who held himself aloof from that, even expressed distaste for it. The guy who was supposed to be “Senator Corleone, President Corleone,” and not a wartime don. The guy who speaks softly and reasonably, and never utters a threat. The guy who takes out the heads of the other four New York families in one stunning stroke, right when you’ve forgotten about the bad blood. The guy who keeps on speaking reasonably after that, but nevertheless everybody respects him now, in the uomo di rispetto sense…

Not that, you know, I’m saying either president is a criminal. Far from it. I’m just using very familiar fictional characters in order to draw a comparison…