Category Archives: The Nation

What if such energy were used for Good?

Karl Rove had an op-ed piece in the WSJ today (he writes for them a lot these days) expressing grudging respect for the "brilliant ground game" Barack Obama’s put together. For Democrats, of course, this is like receiving an admiring nod from The Devil Himself, especially since the Atwater cohort is saying that Obama is using his — Karl Rove‘s — ideas. An excerpt:

For starters, Barack Obama’s manager admitted to the New York Times that he wanted an "army of persuasion" modeled explicitly on the massive Bush neighbor-to-neighbor "Victory Committee" of ’00 and ’04. Those efforts deployed millions of volunteers to register, persuade and get-out-the-vote….
Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has harnessed the Internet for persuasion, communication and self-directed organization. A Bush campaign secret weapon in 2004 was nearly 7.5 million email addresses of supporters, 1.5 million of them volunteers. Some volunteers ran "virtual precincts," using the Web to register, persuade and organize family and friends around the country. Technology has opened even more possibilities for Mr. Obama today.
The Obama campaign is trying to catch up with the GOP’s "microtargeting" program, which uses powerful analytical tools and extensive household consumer information to focus on prospects for conversion and extra turnout help….

All of which emphasized two points: First, people like Karl Rove think this is a "Game," and therefore alternate hitting the opposition as hard as they can with sportsmanlike expressions of admiration when the other side scores a good hit. (Subtext: I’m a professional, not one of this "true-believer" losers.) It’s not about trying to accomplish something for the country; it’s about playing hard and winning.

Second, it makes me think: Why can’t this kind of energy be devoted to accomplishing some good for the country after the hoopla of elections is over? What if we were to enlist millions of motivated and dedicated volunteers to push with all their might for National Health care, or a solution to the coming Social Security crash, or an honest-to-goodness Energy Policy that would improve our economy, our strategic position and the health of the planet?

Or, to think of it another way, what if Mr. Bush, after winning that 2004 election, had put enough boots on the ground in Iraq (the comparison to the army Rove assembled seems apt) to nip the insurgency in its bud, long before he finally agreed to the Surge?

All the money, and all the effort that goes into political campaigns… what a waste, unless an equal or greater effort is mounted after the campaign to accomplish something in office.

But that’s not the way the Game is played, is it?

T. Boone Pickens’ plan for energy independence

18 Replies

Assuming the link works for you, I invite you to go read T. Boone Pickens’ piece in the WSJ today, headlined, "My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil."

Now I know what you’re thinking: Mr. Pickens being an oil man from way back, his plan for independence is likely to be as simple and monolithic as Joe Wilson‘s — specifically, drill.

But while he says, way down in the piece, "Drilling in the outer continental shelf should be considered as well," it plays less of a role in his vision than it does in the Energy Party‘s, if that. It comes after he urges us to "explore all avenues and every energy alternative, from more R&D into batteries and fuel cells to development of solar, ethanol and biomass to more conservation."

Turbines All of that follows his exploration of his main idea, which is to convert a large portion of our energy
generation to wind power, which he lauds by saying "Wind is 100% domestic, it is 100% renewable and it is 100% clean." He would use natural gas thereby freed up from power generation to run our vehicles.

All that is great, but I think the best passage in the piece is when he explains why we must take extraordinary measures to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I leave you with that excerpt:

Let me share a few facts: Each year we import more and more oil. In 1973, the year of the infamous oil embargo, the United States imported about 24% of our oil. In 1990, at the start of the first Gulf War, this had climbed to 42%. Today, we import almost 70% of our oil.
This is a staggering number, particularly for a country that consumes oil the way we do. The U.S. uses nearly a quarter of the world’s oil, with just 4% of the population and 3% of the world’s reserves. This year, we will spend almost $700 billion on imported oil, which is more than four times the annual cost of our current war in Iraq.
In fact, if we don’t do anything about this problem, over the next 10 years we will spend around $10 trillion importing foreign oil. That is $10 trillion leaving the U.S. and going to foreign nations, making it what I certainly believe will be the single largest transfer of wealth in human history…

Samuel notes progress on 55 mph

16 Replies

Samuel Tenenbaum, author of the Energy Party’s 55-mph plank and ardent advocate of that idea (just ask anyone who’s had a conversation with him in the last year or two), writes a hasty note to inform us of progress on that front:

Senator John Warner has asked the Energy Dept to give him info on 55. Time to write… about it again.I was interviewed on Spart. TV about 55 yesterday ! Have you read "Energy Victory " yet . This is the foremost issue of the time ! We need energy security first, not indepence for that is a long way off . Energy security means getting out of the grip of the thugocracies. 55 mph , flexfuel (M85) mandated that all cars and trucks sold here in 2010 and tax credit to excellerate the trade in of old clunkers . Like if you buy flexfuel car that gets 35 mpg then you get half the price back and have a system that decreases until you hit 26mph which then you add a $ 1,000 per mpg below . So if I want a Rolls or Hummer , I can pay for its abuse of the planet . You still have the freedom , but it costs you !

Yes, he’s still on me about the book he gave me. It’s on my desk! It’s on my short list of stuff to read! But right now I’m reading The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which my older son gave me for Father’s Day. At least it’s a related subject…

I’m up to the part where Osama and those who agree with him have just been thoroughly humiliated by the U.S. coming into the Arabian peninsula and kicking Saddam’s butt out of Kuwait and back to Baghdad, thereby illustrating their country’s helplessness and utter dependence on the West.

Of course, it’s a symbiotic relationship — or perhaps I should say, mutually parasitic relationship. We’re just as dependent on their oil, which is the condition that Samuel and the rest of us in the Energy Party would like to change.

Robert’s great Energy Party cartoon

13 Replies

Over the weekend I neglected to mention (in connection with my Sunday column on the subject) Robert Ariail’s wonderful cartoon of July 4, which states the Energy Party position with the same incisive relevance as the original Ben Franklin cartoon that inspired him did the cause of the Revolution.

And I didn’t even put him up to it…

Apparently, Hillary supporters still really ticked

13 Replies

Of course, I could have written that headline a month ago, and I could probably write it five years from now, and it would likely still be true. Hillary supporters are not people with what we could call a forgiving nature — even when there’s nothing to forgive, let me hasten to add. (These folks have less of a sense of humor than our own Lee Muller, if you can believe it.) Anyway, it’s a persistent movement out there.

On the front page of today’s WSJ was this story, which contained the following lame attempt to explain just what it is that Hillary supporters are so ticked about:

The Clinton holdouts are typically most angry about what they say was the media’s sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton during the campaign. And though few, if any, blame Sen. Obama directly, they fault the Illinois senator and other party leaders for what they say was failing to do enough to stop it….

Last Wednesday, Daphna Ziman, a prominent Beverly Hills backer of Sen. Clinton, hosted a conference call of some 70 political activists from around the country, spurred by what she and others on the call saw as the media’s sexism during the campaign.
One high-profile example: pundits both on TV and in print referred to Sen. Clinton’s laugh as a "cackle." Separately, a joke by comedian Chris Rock comparing the candidate to the knife-wielding madwoman played by Glenn Close in the film "Fatal Attraction" was picked up and parroted by others in the mainstream media.

Really: A "cackle." They’re really worked up about stuff like this. For a moment, I thought, "These two WSJ reporters, who are both of the male persuasion, are trying to make fun of the legitimate concerns of the Clinton camp," but then I realized they were doing their best! What those folks are mad about is precisely stuff like this! And they complain about it without smirking or anything.

And poor ol’ Obama is supposed to have made Chris Rock stop it. Or something. Don’t ask me to explain.

Sales tax polar opposites (heads-up, Paulistas: This post mentions Ron Paul!)

19 Replies

One of our regulars sent this from out of town (I’m not identifying him for now on account of his being out of town):

Brad,
We’re up in New Hampshire visiting my mother. Thought you’d be interested to hear what I have observed — in four days of driving around the small towns of NH, I’ve yet to see a yard sign for McCain. But I’ve seen at least ten for Ron Paul. No Obama’s either.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever been up here but it’s a somewhat unsettling experience to go into Wal-Mart and buy $99.75 worth of stuff and pay ZERO sales tax. And on top of that, NH has no income tax either. How do they manage to survive without taxing everything? (yes, higher property taxes but with much less government also). If it weren’t for the snow, I think my wife and I would consider retiring here. I hate snow almost as much as I hate taxes.

This message reminds me of something I meant to pass on from my recent trip to Memphis, which is the polar opposite of New Hampshire when it comes to sales taxes.

The first day we were there, I was driving to the new home of one of my wife’s kinfolks — way out past Collierville, I believe, to the very limits of suburban development, which if you know Memphis means way out East — and traversing all that sprawl caused me to work up a powerful thirst. So we stopped at a new Kroger (right across from a new Starbucks, of course), and I got a bottled water, and a diet Pepsi for my youngest daughter.

It got my attention when the total was exactly $3.00, so after I fed the three ones into the self-checkout apparatus, I looked at my receipt: Yep, 22 cents of it was sales tax. (See the receipt below.)

The reason Tennessee has such outrageous sales tax rates is that the state has no income tax, and none on the horizon (when ex-Gov. Don Sundquist tried to get one enacted, he had his head handed to him). We do have an income tax, but we are hard on Tennessee’s heels when it comes to sales tax. If Richland County manages to pass the penny for local transportation needs, we won’t be far behind.

The reason, in our case, is the severe restrictions placed by the state on local governments’ ability to raise revenue through other means, combined with South Carolina’s utter failure to come to grips with road construction needs at the state level. In the Volunteer State, local governments have wheel taxes and the like to fund roads and other transport needs and wants. (Also, local governments build and maintain far more of Tennessee’s roads; the state of South Carolina reserves to itself the right to mismanage most of our roads.) Or at least they did back when I lived there. If someone has more up-to-date info, it will be welcome.

Memphis_sales_tax

Neither Obama nor McCain meets Energy Party standard

53 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.
They’re also lucky that the Energy Party exists only in my head, because I believe its nominee could tap into a longing, among the very independent voters Messrs. McCain and Obama need to court for victory, for a pragmatic, nonideological, comprehensive national energy policy. This independent voter longs for it, anyway.
What is the greatest failure of George W. Bush as president? If you answered “Iraq,” you lose. His greatest failure was summed up well by Sen. Joe Biden, who said at the 2006 Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting, “History will judge George Bush harshly not for the mistakes he has made… but because of the opportunities that he has squandered.”
The biggest wasted opportunity was when he failed, on Sept. 12, 2001, to ask Americans to sacrifice, to work together to shake off “the grip of foreign oil oligarchs,” and “plan the demise of Islamic fundamentalism.”
Gasoline was between about $1.40 and $1.50 a gallon then. If we had applied a federal tax increase then of $1 or $2 — as voices as varied as Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Jim Hoagland and Robert Samuelson have urged for years — we’d still have been paying less per gallon than we are now, and the money would have stayed in this country, in our hands, rather than in those of Mahmoud Ahmajinedad, or Hugo Chavez, or our “friends” the Saudis (you know, the ones who underwrite the Wahhabist madrassas).
And who, on the day after the terrorist attacks, would have refused? Most Americans would have been glad to be asked to do something to fight back.
We could have used that money for a lot of things, from funding the War on Terror (rather than passing the debt to our grandchildren) to accelerating the development of hydrogen, solar, wind, clean coal, methanol-from-coal, electric cars, mass transit — on something useful. We would have started conserving a lot more a lot faster, reducing demand enough to deliver a shock to world oil prices. Demand would have resumed its rise because of such irresistible forces as Chinese growth, but we would have had a salutary effect.
But we didn’t. We didn’t do anything to defund the terrorists or the petrodictators, or to reduce upward pressure on the national debt, or to respond to rising world energy demands, or to save the planet. We didn’t do it because we can’t do it individually and have an appreciable effect — it would take a national effort, and that takes leadership. And no one in a position of political leadership — not the president, not his fellow Republicans, and not their Democratic opposition — has stood up and said, Let’s get our act together, and here’s how….
Getting our act together would require leaders who are no longer interested in playing the Party Game. In Messrs. McCain and Obama, we had an opportunity. No major Republican is less into party than John McCain, which is why so many Republicans wanted to deny him the nomination. And in Barack Obama, Democrats have finally settled on the far-less-partisan alternative.
But in the energy realm, what have we gotten? Sen. Obama generally sticks to the liberal/Democratic playbook: No drilling offshore or in ANWR. Play down nuclear, play up solar and wind.
Sen. McCain, at least, is not doctrinaire Republican on energy. For that, you have to look to someone like Jim DeMint, whose op-ed piece on our pages a week ago extolled drilling, but excoriated “cap and trade.”
Sen. McCain will at least take some items from the left (cap and trade, CAFE standards) and some from the right (let states decide whether to drill offshore), but he’s mushy about it. And any credit he gets for ideological flexibility is overshadowed by his being the author of the biggest pander on energy this year — the proposal for a “gas tax holiday.”
An Energy Party nominee wouldn’t propose to lower the price of gasoline at the pump, so if that’s what you want — and a lot of you do want that — you can just stop reading now. Making it temporarily easier to buy more foreign oil is in no way in the national interest, and a leader would have the guts to explain that.
The Energy nominee would increase domestic production in the short term and lead a no-holds-barred national effort to take us beyond major dependence on anybody’s oil. He (or she) would put America at the forefront of both energy innovation and environmental stewardship, and would not let any sort of ideology stand in the way. (We must distinguish, for instance, between an environmental goal that matters, such as global climate change, and the inconvenience of a few caribou.) The Energy nominee would, given the chance:

Drill off our coast, something we’ve seen can be done with minimal environmental risk.
Drill in the ANWR (which, as detractors note, would not solve the problem, but it would help, and would demonstrate that we’re serious).
Prohibitively tax the ownership of SUVs, and any other unconscionable, antisocial behavior.
Lower speed limits, and enforce them (use the fines to pay for more traffic cops).
Take money away from highway construction, and devote it to mass transit.
Build nuclear plants with the urgency of the Manhattan Project.
Develop electric cars at Apollo speed.

We need leadership that respects no one’s sacred ideological cows, left or right — leadership that will take risks to do what works, both for the nation and ultimately for the planet.
Is that really so much to ask?

Why we went to war in Iraq

38 Replies

We all read all sorts of back-and-forth about Iraq. There are the coulda-woulda-shouldas of whether we should have gone in or not, how we could have managed things better after we got there (which we sure as anything coulda and shoulda, long before we finally implemented the Surge), and whether we should stay or not now (which, of course, we should).

But few couch the situation preceding the Iraq decision the way I remember it as clearly as Doug Feith's piece in The Wall Street Journal today.

What I remember is that we had an unsolved problem that needed solving. For 12 years Saddam had violated the terms under which we had stopped shooting in 1991. This was not a mere abstract problem, not a question of tidying up loose ends. As Feith writes, Iraq was shooting at U.S. and British pilots enforcing the No-Fly zone almost daily. Regime change had been, for good reason, the policy of this country since 1998 — but we hadn't figured out how to get it done.

Totally apart from the need to "drain swamps" in the Mideast, apart from whether Saddam still had the WMD we had already seen him use on his own people, this was the situation (and had been the situation ever since the first Bush administration):

In the months before the 9/11 attack, Secretary of
State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic
sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win
stronger and more sustained international support. Central Intelligence
Agency officials floated the possibility of a coup, though the 1990s
showed that Saddam was far better at undoing coup plots than the CIA
was at engineering them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
asked if the U.S. might create an autonomous area in southern Iraq
similar to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, with the goal of
making Saddam little more than the "mayor of Baghdad." U.S. officials
also discussed whether a popular uprising in Iraq should be encouraged,
and how we could best work with free Iraqi groups that opposed the
Saddam regime.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worried
particularly about the U.S. and British pilots enforcing the no-fly
zones over northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi forces were shooting at
the U.S. and British aircraft virtually every day; if a plane went
down, the pilot would likely be killed or captured. What then? Mr.
Rumsfeld asked. Were the missions worth the risk? How might U.S. and
British responses be intensified to deter Saddam from shooting at our
planes? Would the intensification trigger a war? What would be the
consequences of cutting back on the missions, or ending them?

However wrong he'd later prove to be about how to conduct our operation in Iraq — and he was WAY wrong — Rumsfeld was at that time raising the right questions.

After 9/11, things changed — among them our willingness to let a problem such as this one fester. As Mr. Feith notes:

To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years.
The U.S. did not rush to war. Working mainly through the U.N., we tried
a series of measures to contain the Iraqi threat: formal diplomatic
censure, weapons inspections, economic sanctions, no-fly zones,
no-drive zones and limited military strikes. A defiant Saddam, however,
dismantled the containment strategy and the U.N. Security Council had
no stomach to sustain its own resolutions, let alone compel Saddam's
compliance.

You may remember it differently. But that's pretty much the way I remember it.

Happy REAL Independence Day!

8 Replies

When I returned from Memphis, the first episodes of the HBO miniseries "John Adams" had arrived from Netflix. I’m saving them for the weekend, but in anticipation, I felt it proper to honor my favorite Founder by noting that, as he said at the time, July 2nd is the day we should mark as the date upon which our independence was declared. That’s the day the vote took place in Congress.

As he wrote to Abigail on July 3, 1776:

But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. — Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Declaration_committee Adams did the heavy lifting that led to our declaration, fighting for independence before the Continental Congress. When the matter was sent to a committee (shown at right) that included him and Ben
Franklin, Adams urged that Jefferson should do the writing of the version for posterity — not because he had done anything to bring it about (Jefferson had sat like a lump through the debates), but because had had style as a writer.

Adams would live to see the wrong day celebrated with "bonfires and illuminations," and Jefferson lionized as the Author of Liberty. Which wasn’t fair then, and isn’t fair now. Short, chunky, irritating, brilliant Adams always deserved infinitely more credit.

Declaration_draft
We people who can occasionally turn a phrase get way too much credit in this life. My moderate skill in that regard enabled me to B.S. my way through school whenever an essay test was given (I dreaded a well-crafted multiple-choice, which measured factual knowledge rather than mere verbal razzle-dazzle), and Jefferson’s has made him way more of a hero than he deserves to be.

So let’s pause today to honor John Adams, who did far more to lead us into nationhood.

Jim Clyburn begs to differ on earmarks

8 Replies

Today’s op-ed piece by Jim Clyburn is one of those responses that make it hard to recognize the original piece to which they are "responding." In this case, a lot of that is a result of the personality and political style of the man whose name appears on the piece. I invite you to go read the original editorial.

Mr. Clyburn asserts that The State "doesn’t understand" earmarks, but doesn’t support that. In fact, it’s hard to square this assertion in his piece:

The State editors’ position on earmarking is based on erroneous
reporting, a lack of knowledge of the facts and a disregard for the
constitutional authority granted to Congress to have power over the
purse. I have always said and will reiterate here that my personal
agenda is to improve the quality of life for the residents of the 6th
Congressional District.

… with this passage from ours:

Mr. Clyburn did not invent congressional earmarks — a point his critics
too often overlook. They are no doubt as old as our federal budgeting
process, and their largest growth spurt came while Republicans
controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency. In a perverse way,
the fact that he is the most successful earmarker in the S.C.
delegation speaks to his clout. And it’s hard to argue when he says he
is serving the best interests of his constituents by pumping federal money into a district that was drawn to include our state’s poorest areas.

Indeed, our editorial was less about Mr. Clyburn and his particular earmarks, and more about the fact that such a system exists.

To find our real area of disagreement, look to the headlines. The one on our editorial is "Clyburn earmarks a microcosm of broken system." The one on the op-ed is "Earmarks serve the public good." And once he gets past his inaccurate complaints about what we said, he gets to the core of the issue, which is that he believes the proper way to appropriate federal funds for infrastructure and the like is via the interested guidance of influential members of Congress, not "unqualified political appointees," which I suppose is the Democratic moral equivalent of the nonpolitical "bureaucrats" that Republicans gripe about. (If all else fails, Blame Bush.)

Finally, I must take issue with the assertion that “if programs that get funded through earmarks were strong enough to stand on their merits, there would be no need for the local congressman to stick a note in the budget demanding that they be funded.” Let’s take a recent Washington Post report that illustrates what happened last fiscal year when there was a moratorium on earmarks.

In the absence of congressional action, funds in the Transportation Department’s discretionary budget were allocated by unqualified political appointees at the department — with no background or experience in public transportation — who chose to spend nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money on toll road experiments in urban cities. All the money was spent on seven projects in five states, not including South Carolina.

No money returned to the national treasury. No investments in rural communities. No investments in mass transit. No equity or fairness. It was a case of the triumph of ideology over the public good. The year before, thanks to earmarks, the same pot of money was spent on 442 grants in 47 states, and this year it is being spent on 313 projects in 43 states — and South Carolina has benefited from these funds.

We disagree. Mr. Clyburn sets up a false choice — either the old way of doing things (disbursement by political influence, which benefits the district of a guy who now has loads of such influence), or wicked Bush Administration privatization schemes. (At least, that seems to be the case. I’m assuming here that the WashPost piece to which he refers is the March 17 one headlined "Letting the Market Drive Transportation; Bush Officials Criticized for Privatization." That seems to fit his description.)

The proper way to select priorities for spending transportation funds is to let the NONpolitical professionals — i.e., "bureaucrats" — choose the specific projects most needed across the nation, according to overall criteria established by the Congress. Or don’t spend the money at all.

South Carolina has had a century of trying it the Clyburn way — Mendel Rivers, for instance, was no slouch at throwing federal largesse in the Palmetto State’s direction — and we’re still poor, still lagging behind the rest of the nation. Mr. Clyburn believes his approach is different in that it directs the money to previously neglected areas and constituencies, and it is. But that doesn’t make his the best way for Congress to set federal spending priorities.

Get into the blues — WAY into the blues

21 Replies

I‘ve been driving around in Memphis today, having made it across Mississippi and all those other states, listening to the all-blues WEVL, which has some great sounds.

If you’d like to hear it, too, you don’t have to drive 10 hours the way I did. Just click on the link here, and choose an application to play the live link (I’m using RealPlayer.)

Enjoy.

Mississippi Burning up the road

25 Replies

And people think we have problems with our troopers. I happened to be driving across Mississippi yesterday, on Hwy 78 between Tupelo and Memphis.

I was just tooling along, getting in touch with my essential Elvisness, and the road between those two foci of the Elvis universe is a perfect place to do it. Hwy 78 is now an interstate-like four-lane with a huge median, rolling across the Delta with almost no traffic, unlike, say, I-20.

So I’m cooling it, with the cruise set exactly to the speed limit (don’t tell Samuel), when suddenly "Whoa, Daddy! It’s the Man!" — a Mississippi state trooper blows past me like I’m standing still.

He was not in what one would call "hot pursuit." No lights, no siren. He was just moving from point A to point B at a high velocity.

OK, fine. Stuff happens. But about 20 minutes later, another Mississippi state trooper flies past me going just as fast.

But get this: This one finds himself blocked by a superannuated RV in the left lane doing about 60, about a quarter-mile ahead of me. So does he sweep around it on the right, seeing as there was no traffic in that lane? No. He tailgates for a seconds, as I start catching up.

When the RV doesn’t immediately pull over, he turns on the blue light. The guy in the RV doesn’t see him right away, and I pass the two of them on the right, still on cruise.

The trooper edges over into the left shoulder just as I’m passing, so the guy can’t possibly miss him. Shortly thereafter, I see the RV pull over in my rearview.

Did the trooper continue on after some felon? No. He turns off his light, engages the afterburner, and zooms past me doing about 90.

He disappears off ahead of me, apparently in a hurry for a donut.

Yeah, we’ve all seen cops in S.C. seeming to use their de facto immunity to speed needlessly. But in Mississippi, such heedless arrogance seems to be Standard Operating Procedure.

Sanford? Jake? No Republicans here

39 Replies

One more thing I meant to say before this runoff was over, and AFTER the Sunday page was done sort of wish I’d written my Sunday column about…

There are few things more ridiculous than Mark Sanford and Jake Knotts arguing over who is NOT a "real Republican."

Folks, neither of them is. Jake certainly isn’t. He is a populist, and will act in accordance with that philosophy, or non-philosophy, pretty much all the time. Once, that would have meant he would have been a Democrat. In recent decades, white populists in the South have flocked to the Republican party.

And Sanford? Come on. Do a poll of the real-life Republicans who serve in the State House — in the aggregate, a pretty good cross-section of the party today — and ask them if they think the governor’s a "real Republican." They’ll laugh in your face. And they probably haven’t been privy to some of the gestures of contempt toward the party that he used to exhibit to me back when we were closer, I suppose because he knew the degree to which I held all parties in contempt. It was sort of a bond between us. Still is, I suppose. Here’s one of those anecdotes, which I wrote about at the New York convention in 2004:

I got a floor pass every night so I could mix with our delegates, but the truth is, the
South Carolina delegation could hardly be said to be "on the floor." They were at the very back, up off the floor, where the risers begin their climb up to the nosebleed section – behind Vermont and Idaho, right next to that other crucial electoral factor, the Virgin Islands.
"Obviously, what they’ve done is put the battleground states up front and personal," says Rep. Harrell from Charleston. He quickly adds, "I want to be clear, it is fine with all of us."
Besides, "I’m closer to the floor than I am during Carolina basketball games." Which is saying something. I’ve seen where he sits.
But on the big night, the night the president speaks, South Carolina was no longer in the cheap seats. In fact, now only New Mexico was between South Carolina and the president as he spoke. It was a choice spot, looking straight into the president’s right ear from about 20 feet away. Any closer — say, where New Mexico was sitting — would be too close. You’d have to crane your neck too much.
…
That night, Gov. Sanford was standing in the shoulder-to-shoulder aisle, quietly
observing the process of whipping up enthusiasm before the acceptance speech. Suddenly he leaned over to me to say, in his usual casual tone, "I don’t know if you’ve read that book, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds . . .."

It was a classic Sanford moment.

Folks, I know Republicans. I’ve known Republicans all my life. As my father has told me, the one thing he knew about HIS father’s politics was that he was a Republican. One of his earliest memories is of Granddaddy Warthen arguing with the man down the street about FDR.

My Granddaddy wouldn’t have recognized either of these guys as members of his party.

Sanfordrnc1

‘Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story’

12 Replies

Kevin Alexander Gray just brought something to my attention, along with the following note:

Tom Turnipseed is mentioned in promo. Point of contention – It’s only because many outside the region don’t know Southern history that they place Atwater above Dent. Atwater was the 1st "master practicioner" of the modern Southern Strategy – Dent was the "architect."kg

The link is to a blog item about a film that debuted Sunday night at the L.A. Film Festival, entitled, "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story."

It’s about the South Carolinian who, in the assertion of the writer, "did more than any political strategist of his generation to help the GOP gain a decades-long stranglehold on the South."

In case you wonder where the blogger is coming from on this, the headline on the post is, "The real Darth Vader of American politics."

I only met Atwater once. Lee Bandy and I dropped by his office to chat when he was chairman of the RNC. When we got back to the now-defunct Knight Ridder Washington bureau, Lee’s colleagues were all over him wanting to know what Atwater thought about this or that (something in the news that day). Nobody else in Washington had the access to Atwater that Bandy had, right up to the end.

I don’t remember much about meeting Atwater except that he was pretty much as I expected, and he kept a guitar in the corner of his office. I want to say it was a Stratocaster.

‘Now away the walking blood bank!’

2 Replies

Back on this post, David shared this blood-donation experience:

Props to you for donating blood Brad! When I was abord Navy ships
and we would do battle training, one of the things that would be called
away during battle exercises would be:

"Now away the walking blood bank!"

This meant that all able-bodied
seamen not otherwise directly
engaged in combat operations were to muster at sickbay to donate blood
so that it was on hand and ready for use as casualties were taken. I
always thought this was a pretty cool thing.

Blood is a life-saver, combat or not.

David

And so it was that when I was searching for something in the AP archives and ran across the above photo, I had to share it. Here’s the caption:

Some of the 750 crewmen of the aircraft carrier Boxer fill beds and line up in the wardroom of the ship to give blood for the wounded in Korea in San Francisco on Jan. 26, 1951. The 27,000-ton Essex class carrier has seen considerable action in the Korean War and is presently being overhauled in the navy yard in San Francisco. (AP Photo/FX)

We should all take a moment and write a note to thank Al Gore for inventing the Internet. It’s way cool. You can find almost anything on it.

For instance, below we have Elvis signing up to donate in Germany in 1959…

Ap590116010

Democrats officially write off the xenophobe vote

31 Replies

Now this one ought to set off the nativists:

In Convention First, 2008 Democratic National Convention To Be Simulcast In Spanish

Comcast Named Official Cable Television and Video On Demand Provider, Will Produce and Distribute Bi-Lingual Convention Coverage to Millions Worldwide

DENVER – In keeping with its commitment to make the 2008 Democratic National Convention the most accessible and technologically-savvy event of its kind, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) announced today that Comcast Corporation will produce simultaneous, online streaming coverage of the Convention in Spanish at DemConvention.com and make available a broad range of Convention content through its signature On Demand service. The DNCC also announced that Comcast has been named the Convention’s Official Cable Television and Video-On-Demand (VOD) provider.
“We set out to ‘bring down the walls’ of the Pepsi Center and make this year’s historic Convention as inclusive and accessible to as many people as possible,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “Comcast is helping us bring the Convention to a growing number of computer screens and televisions throughout the country and around the world.”
From the Comcast Media Center, based in the Denver metro area, Comcast will provide live, gavel-to-gavel Spanish-language interpretation of all Convention activities…
“With Spanish as the primary language of approximately 35 million Americans – not to mention the more than 300 million Spanish-speakers outside the United States – offering bilingual coverage of the Convention makes more people feel welcome under the Democratic Party’s ‘big tent’,” said Texas State Senator and Convention Co-Chair Leticia Van de Putte. “As a Texan and a Latina, I’m proud to belong to a party that embraces the Hispanic community.”

"Ay, caramba!" the English-only crowd is thinking right about now. "No somos listos por eso!" (Or would that be, "no estamos listos"? Randy?) I’m not even going to get into the fact that the last part of Leticia Van de Putte’s name sounds like an insult in Spanish, because that would be digressing way too much…

Does this mean some of y’all will be voting for McCain now?

The ‘Jewish lobby’

22 Replies

Check this letter on today’s page:

Hollings speaks truth about Middle East
I agree with former Sen. Ernest Hollings on his answer, as stated in the June 15 State, to James T. Hammond’s question, “How do you think our policy in the Middle East should change?” Sen. Hollings said, “Settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and 80 percent of the problems will disappear.”
In order to solve a problem, all facts must be truthfully presented. As long as it is considered anti-Semitic to state true but politically incorrect facts about Israel, it is impossible to solve the Middle East problems. If we want to solve these problems, get rid of the Jewish lobby (the biggest lobby in Washington), and get the facts on the table.
HARRY L. NORTON SR.
Summerton

I bring it up to suggest that Mr. Norton should check out this piece in Foreign Affairs that I mentioned previously. It makes it pretty clear that U.S. support for Israel — whatever you may think of it — has long been based in widespread support among NON-Jews in this country. Argue that this nation should take a harder line on Israel if you like. But to complain about the "Jewish lobby" is to miss where most of the support of current policy is coming from.

Apparently, black folks don’t have ‘biographies’

23 Replies

Today, I went to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate I received for Father’s Day. Given the occasion, it seemed fitting to use it to buy a copy of a book I’ve been meaning to read, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.

Of course, I sought it under "biography." No dice. I scanned the shelf where the "O’s" would be repeatedly. I looked to see if it had been mistakenly placed under "New Biography." Nope. Then I looked to make sure it hadn’t been filed by "Barack." Nope. Not under the "B’s."

So I went to the "Current Affairs" section. No luck.

Finally, I did the thing I hate, and went to the information desk. The clerk made a beeline for the "Store Favorites" table, and handed me a copy. As one does under such circumstances, I felt constrained to explain why I had had to ask for help, muttering something about having searched and searched under "Biography."

The clerk told me it wouldn’t have been under "Biography." It would have been under "African-American."

You’ll note that on the Web site, it’s considered to be a biography. But apparently not in the store. In case you wondered, John McCain does appear under "biography." Yes, the subtitle of the book is "A Story of Race and Inheritance." I get that. But it’s still a biography — or, to be technical, and autobiography. If it was right to file this under "African-American" instead of "Biography," then the McCain books — which feature him as a Navy aviator on the cover — should have been under "military history." But they weren’t.

After I got home a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that I didn’t go check what the clerk had told me — I didn’t search the "African-American" section, assuming that such a section exists. I’ll try to remember to check next time. But I do know that there were no copies under "Biography."

More good energy news

7 Replies

Back on this post, I mentioned one tidbit of evidence that was encouraging in Energy Party terms, in that at least one guy had decided to go with mass transit.

Since then, there have been a couple of news items that are, shall we say, a tad more substantial in statistical terms.

First, there was the story about Americans driving 30 billion fewer miles in a six-month period.

Now, we see more folks turning to rail travel.

As a market-oriented guy like Charles Krauthammer would put it, we’re just reacting rationally to $4-a-gallon gas.

But any way you look at it, it does make us look smarter, doesn’t it? Up to a point, anyway.

Wouldn’t it be great if we started doing such things on purpose, because we wanted to reduce our dependence on petrodictators? Is that too much to hope for?

Hillary’s diehards: For them, fight goes on

40 Replies

Did you ever sort of suspect that the Hillary Clinton campaign would never give up — that never-say-die Ap720125012_3
supporters would still be found 40 years from now holed up in a bunker somewhere, like those Japanese soldiers who still wandered out of the jungle on islands in the Pacific for decades after WWII? (Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, right, was found in 1972 in a Guam jungle,
where he had been living on shrimp, fish and nuts — with the emphasis
on "nuts" — since 1943.)

Yeah, so did I.

Well, we were right. I got a release today from a group called JustSayNoDeal.com, to this effect:

June 18, 2008

MEDIA ALERT

Just Say No Deal Asks Obama Supporters To: “Show Some Class”

Tasteless Behavior Like the Booing of Public Officials Has NO Place in Our Election Process

– Online and Nationwide— JustSayNoDeal.com, a coalition of voters, individual activists, blogs, PACs and grassroots organizations, reacts to the scene on Monday night in Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena when Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm received a deafening chorus of boos at her mention of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Moments later former Vice President Al Gore experienced similar jeering when he referred to Senator John McCain.

Just Say No Deal Coalition members will not tolerate such offensive and disrespectful conduct from supporters of Senator Obama aimed at any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large, and the Just Say No Deal organization will not align itself with any candidate that permits this shameful behavior to be exhibited in any forum.

During this lengthy primary process Senator Clinton and many of her 18 million supporters have endured pointedly hurtful behavior and vulgar attacks by unruly and inappropriate backers of Senator Obama in public arenas and in new media outlets. The most prevalent arena of these assaults has been on the most recognized sites within the blogosphere.

Concerned citizens continue to break their silence to express their dissatisfaction with party leaders and the short-circuiting of the nominating process. The Just Say No Deal portal offers those voters a plethora of voting strategies, calls-to-action and blogpostings to guide their general election decision-making. In doing so, they reclaim their voices and vow to Just Say No Deal!

You can, if you wish, take this group at its word that it’s just about being fair and polite toward "any individual— whether they be an elected official or a member of the community at large," and believe it’s not about Hillary. But you can’t do that with some of the sites to which JustSayNoDeal.com provides links, such as:

hillaryclintonnews.blogspot.com — "Want To See Hillary Run As An Independent? Sign the Petition for Hillary to run as an Independent."
clintons4mccain.com — "Malik Obama confirms half-brother BHO raised Muslim."
hireheels.com — "we adore shoes, but we love Hillary"
clintondems.com — "a place where Democrats that feel the DNC and media have acted in bad faith towards the American people can gather to organize, share insights and have their voices be heard"
womenforfairpolitics.com — "a grassroots organization that is reacting to the terrible
treatment that Hillary Clinton has received during her historic run for
the Democratic nomination for President of the United States"
writehillaryin.com — "a
website created by Americans, for Americans who refuse to vote for
Barack Obama in the General Election. We’ve had inadequate candidates
shoved down our throats before, and we’ve often fallen in line. NOT
THIS TIME. Our feelings may be hurt, but that’s not the point. Our
principles have been offended. Feelings pass. Principles do not."
hillaryorbust.blogspot.com — "The left has totally become pornogrified and anti-woman. Do I really care that guys on the left want to save the spotted owl, when on the other side of their mouth they are telling me that I, as a woman, only have value to them when I’m wearing a negligee?"
typicalpawhitewoman.blogspot.com — "This is the diary of a typical white woman in PA. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a typical white woman or a typical woman, but apparently there is and I am it."

This rich vein just goes on and on — dozens of such sites. Some of y’all who have more time on your hands than I do should browse through them and share some of the nuggets with the rest of us.

Nobody could make this up. And the thing is, you get the sense the authors of these sites are not really trying to be funny, although many succeed at being Hillaryous.

But don’t tell them I said that. Some of these folks seem the type who don’t appreciate a little good-natured ribbing.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits