NOONAN: OBAMA STOOD NEXT TO A SCARY FAKE INTERPRETER, SO WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE IN A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

In a blog post published yesterday, Peggy Noonan attacks the Obama administration for incompetence -- not just for the botched Obamacare rollout, but because the president stood next to an unstable and seemingly dangerous fake interpreter at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, which is apparently the administration's fault:

My worries came home with a certain freshness after the Mandela memorial, where the United States Secret Service allowed the president of the United States to stand for 19 minutes next to the famous sign-language interpreter who, it was quickly revealed, was not only a fraud but a schizophrenic con man who is now said to have been involved in two deaths. In fairness, the event was in another country and the Secret Service wasn't strictly in charge.

Um, yeah, there is that.

That said, it still looks like very basic negligence, as if no one is keeping enough of an eye on the Secret Service, no one's checking the quality of the advance or sending emails asking: "Hey, what do we know about the sign language guy -- any chance he's a mentally ill criminal?"

First of all, this was done on short notice. Second, if this reflects an extraordinary level of incompetence on the part of the Obama administration, then it also reflects an extraordinary level of incompetence on the part of the governments of Brazil, India, China, Namibia, and Cuba, because speakers at the memorial service included the head of state from each of these countries, or, in the case of China, the vice president. And let's not forget the large number of other heads of state who didn't speak but attended the service. That selfie with the prime ministers of Britain and Denmark? Maybe Britain and Denmark should have vetted the interpreter, too, before letting their leaders sit in the audience.

We're talking about Peggy Noonan, of course, so eventually we get fantasies of apocalypse:

I'm worried, finally, that lines of traditionally assumed competence are being dropped. The past few weeks I can't shake from my head this picture: The man with the football -- the military aide who carries the U.S. nuclear codes, and who travels with the president -- is carrying the wrong code. He's carrying last month's code, or the one from December 2012. And there's a crisis -- a series of dots on a radar screen traveling toward the continental U.S. -- and the president is alerted. He's in the holding room at a fundraiser out west. The man with the football is called in and he fumbles around in his briefcase and gets the code but wait, the date on the code is wrong. He scrambles, remembers there's a file on his phone, but the phone ran out on the plane and he thought he could recharge in the holding room but there's no electrical outlet. All eyes turn to him. "Wait -- wait. No -- uh -- I don't think that’s the code we use to launch against incoming from North Korea, I think that one takes out Paris!"

I have to say, I’ve never worried about this with any previous administration, ever.

Right. She worries about this because of a botched health care rollout and Crazy-Interpreter-Gate. She somehow didn't worry about this during the administration in which 3,000 people were murdered by terrorists on one day on U.S. soil.

In fact, 9/11 and its immediate aftermath made Noonan feel more secure in the president's leadership. Here she is on November 16, 2001:

In the early days of the current struggle he immediately understood the situation -- "We are at war" -- but did not immediately strike back. He seemed, at first, in the day after Sept. 11, to have been as shocked by history as Harry Truman -- the moon and the stars had fallen upon him. He was eight months into a new presidency, and now all the facts of the world changed. But he righted himself as Truman did, and he made his plans. There were no showy and meaningless kabooms with our missiles hitting aspirin factories in the desert. Instead Mr. Bush prepared, pushed, waited and struck -- and now the Taliban are on the run and Afghanistan is teetering on something that whatever it is will surely be better than what it had been. Al Qaeda is not done, but as Mr. Bush said again yesterday in his news conference with President Vladimir Putin, we will not rest until it is.

It was in that remarkable news conference that Mr. Bush displayed once again in public what is reported of him in private -- that he has an instinctive command in his private dealings, a way of appealing to his guests with a well-meaning warmth that is both ingenuous and ... yet another little weapon in the Bush armory, an armory whose job it is to provide him with what he needs to get what he wants. In this case and for some time now what he wants has been a personal bond with President Putin that both reflects and promotes a new and deep alliance between America and Russia....

Mr. Bush was at his best, and I realized there is a way you can tell that he is and knows he is in full command. He signals it by talking the way he talks; that is, he signals it through bad grammar, or if you will highly colloquial usage.

When Mr. Bush is uncomfortable or being formal he says, "The tax structure in Russia is exemplary in many ways." When Mr. Bush is in full command he says, as he did yesterday, "And by the way they got a flat tax in Russia." They got one indeed, and it's turnin' that country 'round big-time....

You also know when Mr. Bush is in full command when he's not afraid to let his merriness out. His natural verbal style is Texas wise-guy: asked by a student if he had any advice for her life he said, "Yeah, listen to your mother." This got a lot of laughter but then, to show respect for a child who asked an honest question, he turned serious, and what he said was moving. "Follow your dreams.... You never know where life's gonna take ya. I never sat and thought, 'Gosh, if I work hard I'll be president of the United States.' It wasn't in my vocabulary. But you never know. You never know. Trust the Lord."

Harry Truman couldn't have said it better himself.

So when Peggy Noonan expresses apocalyptic fear and tells you what aspects of the Obama administration worry her, just remember: these are the kinds of things that reassure her: bad grammar, sanctimony, "merriness," and a sense of judgment that deemed Vladimir Putin a natural ally.

*****

Oh, and I'm the last person who should take anyone to task for blogging glitches, but the text of Noonan's post from yesterday appears twice in succession at the link, as if she copied it out of Word and pasted it in twice. We all make mistakes, but (a) this is The Wall Street Journal, where you'd think someone might notice the glitch, and (b) it's rather an embarrassing thing to do with a post titled "Incompetence."

HEAD-TOO-BIG-GATE!!!

There's a story at Fox Nation right now titled "Creepiest Obama Story Yet Just Got Creepier." Really? We're being told something is the "creepiest Obama story yet" by Fox? It's got to be staggeringly creepy! What's the story?

The story (via American Thinker) is this:

Rick Moran called the hanging of a huge Barack Obama portrait at the US Embassy in London the "Creepiest Obama story yet" yesterday. But it gets worse. Check out the size and placement (hat tip: Weasel Zippers) of the portrait, a tapestry by renowned Chuck Close, a government-approved (National Medal of Arts winner) artist. Ladies and gentlemen, we are well into Dear Leader territory:

Following along so far? There's a large portrait of the president by Chuck Close -- one of the best living portraitists in the world. But because he's won a National Medal of Arts, he's a "government-approved" artist. And because the portrait has been hung at our embassy in London, and Obama's head is bigger than the heads of nearby photos (because, y'know, that's Chuck Close's style), this is morally equivalent to something one of the Kims would do in the totalitarian hellscape of North Korea.

This became a brouhaha on the right over the weekend, when Twitchy posted this:

The newly installed tapestry of President Obama casts a warm smile over guests at an event @USAinUK last night. pic.twitter.com/tYKwyXcDIA

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) December 13, 2013

and this (photo credit: U.S. Embassy, London):





That, by the way, is the same embassy outside which you'll find this Ronald Reagan statue, unveiled in 2011:





Here's the whole thing:





Yeah, nothing creepy about that.

So why do right-wingers think this sory has become "even creepier"?

Here's the kicker:

"The tapestry is one of 10 that will be made available for sale (at $100,000 each) as part of a fundraiser supporting the Obama Victory Fund." [italics in original]

That's right: our Embassy to the United Kingdom is displaying a propaganda portrait created for the purpose of raising a million dollars to propel President Obama to a second term.

Um, no -- our Embassy to the United Kingdom is displaying a portrait made by a serious artist. Yes, he made ten such tapestry portraits and sold them to benefit Obama. But this is his art. It's not something you wheat-paste on a wall.

That Reagan statue? That was connected to a campaign, too -- the permanent campaign, on both sides of the Atlantic, to sell conservatism as the ideology to which (as Margaret Thatcher would have put it) there is no alternative. Here's some information about that statue:





"The Conservative Way" is actually the Conservative Way Forward, which, according to The Telegraph, was described by Prime Minister David Cameron "as the largest and most effective pressure group within the Tory party." The statue is clearly part of Reagan/Thatcherism's ongoing propaganda efforts. No complaints from the right about that.

FRANK BRUNI JUST GIVES UP, ADMITS HE'S IN WAY OVER HIS HEAD

Most of the snark directed at the New York Times op-ed page today is aimed at David Brooks for his column on how young people can attain the rarefied status of "thought leader." The column is facetious (it's as if Brooks just now realized that he used to have a sense of humor), and it's been pointed out that Brooks wrote a very similar column for The Weekly Standard in 1995, when he was much less pompous and self-righteous. Because I think he was trying to get in touch with his younger, less gaseous self, I'll give him a pass on this one.

I'm ready to forgive Brooks in part because there's a far worse column on the Times op-ed page today. It's Frank Bruni's column, which is about ... the Umami Burger restaurant chain. Yes, maybe the last few years have drastically lowered your expectations for how insightful the commentary in the Times opinion pages will be, but I'm sure you still expect that the columns will focus on politics, or at least on noteworthy aspects of the cultural landscape. Maybe every column won't deliver the goods, but even the worst will try to offer inight into how the country and the world are run, or about The Way We Live Now.

Bruni doesn't even try. The column is just a food-section puff piece that seems to have gotten lost and wandered over to the op-ed page. Bruni tries, halfheartedly, to make it About Something, but the best he can do is bad self-help:

Just five years ago, Adam Fleischman was in a two-bedroom rental with his wife and their year-old son, fumbling around for a career that might stick. Screenwriting hadn't worked out. Same for finance. He was 38 and, he told me, "It was do or die."

Today he owns two houses here, one with six bedrooms and a makeshift vineyard out back. He said that he's toying with the idea of a third in London. He has stakes in multiple businesses and plans for more.

All because of a burger.

This is an op-ed lede? No. This is the lede for an article from an in-flight magazine.

Bruni looks for life lessons here, but the best he can come up with are lessons in niche marketing (and not particularly useful lessons at that):

... what of the enterprise? What secrets does it yield?

Most attention to the inventive stars of the ceaselessly expanding culinary world focuses on what they've done in the kitchen, not on their shrewdness as businesspeople. I turned to Fleischman for the lessons beyond the bun.

With Umami Burger, he demonstrated that a seemingly saturated market sometimes harbors unoccupied niches, unmet needs. While you could get venerated burgers in plenty of fast-food joints and in many upscale restaurants that did fancy riffs, it wasn't as easy to find a carefully made, determinedly original burger at a casual place with prices and a style of service between those poles.

And few casual places devoted themselves as wholeheartedly to burgers as he decided to.

... During his initial expansion, he didn't have the budget to give the different Umami Burgers a consistent design. So he let each look entirely unlike the others, thus communicating that Umami wasn't any old chain. It had a more elevated, independent spirit.

It's like ... PUNK ROCK, maaan! No -- Bruni doesn't even say it's like punk rock. Or like Apple vs. Microsoft, or like some other corporate or cultural David doing battle with Goliath. I don't know what Bruni's point is. If he could make a case that there's some special spark that tapped into the zeitgeist and made Umami Burger successful, I'd say he was writing a column that passes muster, if barely, as a state-of-the-zeitgeist op-ed. If he could find a way to explain how Umami took advantage of new technology, or a world that's flat, or a multicultural America, he'd be writing an insufferable Tom Friedman column. But at least there'd be a point to it. This has no point.

(He does tell us that the burgers are put together in a way that makes them visually appealing, and thus suitable to be photographed for social media. How that distinguishes these burgers from, well, pretty much everything else made by foodie chefs these days, I don't know.)

When Bruni tries to sum up what it all means, the column turns into a Reagan-era Hollywood movie about Holding On To Your Dreams:

... But when I asked [Fleischman] for the most important takeaway from his story, he mentioned something else -- passion -- and the fact the he had finally embraced an endeavor fully reflective of his most profound obsession, which was flavor.

"Do a business that you can't live without, that you're not going to be able to sleep at night if you don't do," he said.

He meant that as a practical matter. Passion gave him the energy for the 18-hour days that were necessary during that first, whirlwind year.

And without passion in the creation of a business, he said, there's not likely to be passion in the reception of it....

Yeah, my high school guidance counselor told me that, too. Sorry, but this is ridiculous -- there are a hell of a lot of people out there with a work ethic and passion for their work who put in 18-hour days but just don't get the breaks, or just get beaten down by circumstance. People who succeed always think they know what worked for them, oblivious to the fact that what worked for them didn't work for other people.

I don't know why Umami Burger succeeded. Maybe the notion of a burger with umami -- the pungent flavor found in foods as diverse as Parmesan cheese and Asian fish sauce, both of which are worked into Umami's patties -- just caught on with The Kids. Maybe Fleischman spent more time marketing the concept than most restaurateurs, and did it successfully. Who knows? Bruni doesn't. He has nothing profound to say about Umami Burger, so he palmed off this fluff as an op-ed.

Frank Rich, the columnist Bruni replaced, came to the op-ed page from outside politics -- but he knew politics, cared about politics, had interesting things to say about politics. He's still saying interesting things about politics at New York magazine. Frank Bruni has been a reporter on the campaign beat and at the Vatican, but he has nothing interesting to say about politics or American culture. He's lost on the op-ed page. The Times should show him some mercy and pull the plug on his sorry column.

THEY HATE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, NOT REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGY

At The Washington Post, Scott Sullivan and Scott Clement make an important point about poll numbers that appear bad for the GOP:

Meet the haters.

We’re talking about the voters who've had it with all Washington politicians: President Obama, congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. Despite their distaste for, well, everyone, when push comes to shove, these voters are lining up squarely behind GOP candidates for Congress.....

Seventy-two percent of voters who disapprove of the job Obama, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans are doing say they’d vote for the GOP candidate for U.S. House in their district if the election were held today, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday. Just 14 percent say they'd vote for the Democrat....

Well, of course. As Sullivan and Clement note, 72% of these people are either Republicans or independents who lean Republican. It's quite likely that a large percentage of those independents are the teabaggiest of teabaggers -- it's very hip in that crowd to insist that you have no loyalty to either party, even if you've never voted for a Democrat in your life, and even if your fondest wish in life would be a takeover of the GOP by your teabag soul mates, followed by a similar takeover of America (usually described as "taking our country back").

I've said it before: when pollsters ask for respondents' opinions of the parties, they should tease out whether the right-leaners who disapprove of the GOP do so because they think it's not conservative enough. That's the group that will always vote GOP -- and it's a large group. In any race, that group will vote for the most right-wing candidate, who will inevitably be a Republican.

So, yeah, it's nice that the approval ratings of Republicans, and congressional Republicans in particular, are extremely low, and lower in nearly every poll than the approval ratings of Democrats and the president. But it doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means. A large number of the disapprovers see two unacceptably left-wing parties -- and always vote for the one they see as occasionally being just right on the ideological spectrum, a spot defined by the rest of us as "so far to the right it's almost off the edge."

I'M NOT EXPECTING JUDGE LEON'S RULING TO STAND

At first I was an Edward Snowden skeptic. But I learned to separate my feelings about Snowden and (especially) Glenn Greenwald from my feelings about what they've exposed -- NSA surveillance violates constitutional principles so blatantly that I've stopped caring about Snowden's motives or Greenwald's journalistic practices. There's too much here, as has been confirmed by journalists who've written about it and aren't named Greenwald. And I don't believe it's keeping us safe -- it just seems to be the creation of a massive power center, by an agency capitalizing on the establishment's sense that huge, grotesque, aggressive things have to be done in the name of protecting the nation, which must be the right things to do because they're huge, grotesque, and aggressive. In this way, NSA data collection is like war: the people in power pursue this course because the level of aggression and size of the effort are so massive and full of testosterone. In reality, I think the NSA is just creating the world's largest haystack, then claiming that's the best possible way to find needles -- which is crazy. But we love throwing money at war-fighting, so we do it.

Federal district judge Richard Leon has ruled that the program "almost certainly" violates the Fourth Amendment. I don't care if he's a Bush appointee; I don't care that the lawsuit was brought by the usually appalling Larry Klayman. Klayman is on the wrong side, as far as I'm concerned, 90% of the time, but our politics are full of people who are wrong 100% of the time. He's right on this, as he was right when he tried to unearth information about Dick Cheney's energy task force. I don't know when he'll be right again, but I'm glad he filed this suit.

Judge Leon's ruling is likely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. This is not my area of expertise, but I'm expecting the ruling to be overturned, and I'm not expecting the program to be upheld by a strictly partisan majority -- I see that Marcy Wheeler thinks Stephen Breyer is inclined to go "law and order" in cases like this. I think most if not all of the GOP justices would also vote for the preferences of the establishment -- that's how they'll see it, because the establihment is what they're creatures of.

The key issue here seems to be Judge Leon's determination that a 1979 ruling doesn't apply in this case, because the nature of phones has changed so much since then:

... there is a practical sense, often lacking, of what it means to have someone's phone records in this day and age. That leads Leon to confront, in the opinion's most sweeping section, Smith v. Maryland, the 1979 Supreme Court decision that the N.S.A. has leaned on extraordinarily heavily in justifying its collection of telephone (and other) records.... Smith v. Maryland involved ... telephones that are hardly recognizable as the same things we carry around in our pockets. As Judge Leon writes, "Some undoubtedly will be reading this opinion on their cell phones." Not only is the government able to collect more phone data, more easily, and sort it in new ways, "the nature and quantity of the information contained in people's telephony metadata is much greater, as well."

If higher courts want to overturn this ruling, it would seem ridiculously easy just to reject this reading of the earlier case's relevance: Of course the Smith ruling still applies. Phones are phones. And that will be that.

I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't think there are more than a handful of people with power -- a small number of liberals and libertarians in Congress, a few judges like Leon -- who have any inclination to curtail power this way. So I don't expect this ruling to stand.

NORTH CAROLINA SENATE CANDIDATE THINKS CONSTITUTION WAS VIOLATED WHEN PRESIDENT GAVE BURT BACHARACH A SONGWRITING AWARD

Molly Redden has a great story at Mother Jones about a leading candidate for the Republican Senate nomination in North Carolina, a state where the GOP thinks it can beat the incumbent Democrat, Kay Hagan, in 2014:

Of all the tea partiers running for Senate in 2014, Greg Brannon, a GOP primary candidate hoping to topple vulnerable North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan, is one of the most extreme. He opposes public education, claiming it "does nothing but dehumanize" students. He doesn't believe that states have to follow Supreme Court decisions. He contends bipartisan compromises in Washington "enslave" Americans. He hails the the late Sen. Jesse Helms -- who died in 2008 without ever renouncing his support for racial segregation -- as a "modern hero." He claims that "all ten of [Karl] Marx's planks of Communism" -- including the abolition of private property -- "are law in our land today." In October, Brannon cosponsored and spoke at a rally supporting nullification -- the notion that states can invalidate federal laws at will -- that was cosponsored by the League of the South, a secessionist group seeking "a free and independent Southern republic." And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has endorsed him.

... In addition to Rand Paul, RedState editor Erick Erickson, who featured Brannon as a speaker at his annual RedState confab in November, and Ann Coulter have award Brannon their blessings. In a recent survey conducted by Public Policy Polling, Brannon was the only Republican who beat Hagan in a head-to-head matchup....

As Redden notes, he's best known as an unswervingly anti-abortion OB-GYN who advised state representative Paul Stam on extreme abortion legislation, which became law in 2011. He also serves as the medical director for a so-called crisis pregnancy center.

It's an important story, and there's more at the link. I'd just like to add a couple of things.

We're told on the biography page of Brannon's campaign site that he "was a Charter Family and Board member of Cary Christian School." This page at the FreedomWorks website says that Brannon was still a board member as of 2011.

If he was a charter member of the board of the school (which was founded in 1996) and he was still a board member in 2011, then I'd like to know if he was a board member in 2004, at the time of this controversy:

Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.
Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective," he said.

The booklet isn't the only connection its two co-authors have with the school.

One of the authors, Douglas Wilson, a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, wrote a book on classical education upon which the school bases its philosophy. Wilson's Association of Classical and Christian Schools accredited Cary Christian, and he is scheduled to speak at the school's graduation in May.

And the book's other author?

The booklet's other author, Steve Wilkins, is a member of the board of directors of the Alabama-based League of the South. That is classified as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group....

A passage from that booklet:

Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence...

...Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.

Did Brannon had anything to do with that? I'd like to know.

But here's a lighter item, and it's straight from Brannon's own lips. He appeared on Bill LuMaye's radio show back in May 2012, and this discussion actually took place (at 24:22 in the audio file here):

LUMAYE: Let me just -- to give an example just what the government can't do -- and I didn't know this, I just found this out. And I'm not even going to pretend that I came up with this. I got it from Dr. Brannon. Stevie Wonder was given an award the other day. Right? By the president of the United --

BRANNON: Well, he was there, yeah, for the Burt Bacharach award. Burt Bacharach got a medal for the "king of music."

LUMAYE: Oh, it was Burt Bacharach. For the "king of music" or whatever it is.

BRANNON: And I just -- and this is a small token. I'm not saying nothing wrong with that. I love Stevie's music and all that stuff. But in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution it says there shall be no titles of nobility given.

He says it's no big deal, but he's serious about this.

In fact, Bacharach and his longtime lyricist, Hal David, were awarded the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. In his remarks, President Obama called them "two kings of songwriting."

Dr. Brannon, that is not the conferral of a title of nobility. You are nuts.

****

The clip that could sink Brannon's campaign is at approximately 21:30 of the first part of this interview with Bill LuMaye. To understand this, you need to remember that Brannon has a Ron Paul outlook on a lot of issues, even when it conflicts with GOP orthodoxy. He opposes various provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act having to do with targeted killings and the like (which will probably get him a lot of love from the Greenwalds and Friedersdorfs if he gets to the general election, his other insane policy positions notwithstanding), all of which has led him to a take on patriotism that, um, might not play well with the larger electorate:

BRANNON ... I was talking before, I was at a USC-Notre Dame game a few years ago, and the jets flew over, the flag going -- that's Americana. I was telling you, man, when "Johnny B. Goode" comes, I literally cry, and -- because I wonder, what happened to that? Or "Back in the USA" is the other one. What happened to that? We get so foc-- and I think those that would manipulate us, they play on our love of our country. The Pledge of Allegiance, we talked before -- that was written by a communist, OK? And they used to giove it with your hand up high --

LUMAYE: Just like the Hitler --

BRANNON: -- because they wanted national government. No, we are a union of states and a federal government. So they play on our patriotic -- We love this country. It's the greatest country the world's ever seen, based upon individual liberty.Now we're becoming Western Europe. Now we're becoming a national socialist government....

It would be nice if Brannon's racist ties or anti-abortion extremism or Paulite views on money sunk him. But if it's this, which is partly correct and partly crazy, I won't shed any tears.

MAINSTREAM REPUBLICANS ARE AFRAID THEY'LL BE SENT TO THE CORNFIELD IF THEY ACT TOO REASONABLE

A lot of people thought the GOP was retreating from the conscious embrace of chaos and dysfunction when that nice young Paul Ryan helped negotiate a bipartisan budget agreement. But Ryan acknowledged yesterday that his fellow Republicans haven't really quit their old ways:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) signaled that Republicans would not raise the debt ceiling next year without some sort of concessions from Democrats, saying lawmakers were still crafting their strategy.

"We, as a caucus, along with our Senate counterparts, are going to meet and discuss what it is we want to get out of the debt limit," Mr. Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. "We don't want 'nothing' out of the debt limit. We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight." ...

Reportedly, Ryan is counseling the GOP to come up with "targeted demands that Democrats might be willing to accept," demandes that are "nuanced." But targeted, nuanced demands are still demands, backed by the threat of default.

So Ryan's party isn't truly tamed. We Americans thought we were sending a message to the GOP in October that we were appalled by government shutdowns and default threats. The first part of that message got through, at least to some Republicans -- Ryan's budget deal would give us two shutdown-free years if it passes -- but not the second part.

And the budget deal may not pass. It needs eight Republican votes in the Senate to overcome the inevitable filibuster, and Republicans who either face tea party challenges in 2014 or want to run for president in 2016 are signaling that they intend to vote against it.

That group includes Mitch McConnell. Yup, even as McConnell, according to The Wall Street Journal, is out there begging military contractors to donate to the kinds of establishment Republicans who won't support cuts to the military budget there's a budget agreement that alleviates sequester cuts to the military budget, and he's voting no:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently delivered a direct pitch to one of America's top defense contractors: Get off the sidelines and start backing Republicans who will protect military spending.

Mr. McConnell's message, according to people who attended a Nov. 6 fundraiser with officials from BAE Systems Inc., was that if Republican lawmakers lose primary elections from challengers further to their right who have few qualms about trimming military budgets, the defense industry could expect dwindling support in Washington.

"In the current debate, spending cuts have trumped robust national-security spending," said one person at the McConnell fundraiser, held at a Capitol Hill townhouse. "The main message he was pushing was: Get involved, mainly to teach those who are primarying incumbents that it is not helpful to run against incumbents who are champions for the industry." ...

But Mitch, you're about to vote to sustain "spending cuts [that] have trumped robust national-security spending."

Well, Ryan and McConnell have taken baby steps, and I suppose that's bravery of a sort. Hey, if the defense contractors and others come through big time on behalf of the establishment GOP, maybe the party will go back to just screwing the poor instead of also threatening to inflict collateral damage on everyone else, including the rich and powerful. At this point, that would actually be progress.


(The post title alludes, of course, to "It's a Good Life," the classic Twilight Zone episode about what happens when you combine bratty immaturity with limitless power.)

IOWA REPUBLICANS APPARENTLY LIVE IN THEIR OWN INFORMATION BUBBLE, NOT THE BELTWAY'S

I know that my interest in the 2016 race is premature and ridiculous, but I'm going to write about this new Des Moines Register poll because it suggests, especially on the Republican side, that Iowa voters aren't docilely following the lead of the insider media:

Iowa Republicans are wowed by Paul Ryan, a new Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows.

Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate is wildly popular here with a 73 percent favorability rating....

Two former winners of the Republican caucuses have the second and third highest favorability ratings among voting-age GOP'ers -- 66 percent for Mike Huckabee, 58 percent for Rick Santorum -- among 10 buzzed-about Republicans tested in this poll.

... Texas Gov. Rick Perry ranks fourth among Iowa Republicans with a 55 percent favorability rating.

Tied for fifth most popular are U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who are viewed favorably by 51 percent of Republicans. But when it comes to negative feelings, Christie's numbers are the worst of the potential GOP hopefuls -- 30 percent of Iowa Republicans don't like him.

Fewer than half of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The three ranked lowest on their party's popularity scale, tied for 46 percent, mostly because at least a third of Iowa GOP'ers don't know enough about them to form an opinion....

Iowa voters are apparently not obsessed with the post-2012 media flavors-of-the-month, Chris Christie and Ted Cruz. You think maybe they're just not following this stuff as obsessively as politics junkies are? It would be nice to think that all the buzz-creating and groundwork-laying Cruz and Christie and the other lesser-known wannabes are doing is for naught, though it matters because the piquing of insiders' and donors' interest builds war chests and organizations, and eventually catches ordinary folks up. But for now, Iowans aren't all that interested.

They're also not buying Scott Walker as a force to be reckoned with. The notion that Walker is a potential A-lister has always seemed like a media creation, backed up by the hopes and dreams of the Koch brothers and their pals, and maybe this suggests that real people are impervious to that hype.

Real Iowans are buying Paul Ryan's Boy Scout act, and after that they like three God-botherers (yes, they still like Rick Perry). Maybe they see Ryan as another Jesus-y figure -- he has sold himself as a devout Catholic, probably more in heartland campaign appearances than in conversations with Ezra Klein, so that could be a big part of his rep in Iowa. (Chris Christie and Ted Cruz, take note: if you want to win in Iowa, talk a lot about Jesus.)

And if you're wondering how Ryan's budget deal affects all this, a separate Register story on the GOP results notes that the poll was conducted before the budget deal was announced. We're told that follow-up interviews suggested no negative fallout:

Several GOP poll respondents said in interviews last week that although they don’t like the budget plan, it doesn't tarnish their opinion of Ryan, essentially because at the end of the day they believe he's a true conservative.

Um ... OK. Or maybe they just don't feel like telling a reporter, "Yeah, I told you Ryan was the best of the bunch, and now I feel like a chump."

*****

And over on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has an extremely high 89% favorable rating. Joe Biden's favorable rating is 71%. The only other Democrats polled are former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer (16% favorable, 14% unfavorable) and Maryland governor Martin O'Malley (18% favorable, 13% unfavorable).

Dave Weigel snarks off and Glenn Greenwald declares the coronation premature:

@daveweigel I wonder what it was in 2006 when people were scoffing at the prospect of an Obama challenge.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 15, 2013

Well, Glenn, in one '06 CBS poll, John Edwards actually led Hillary Clinton. I haven't seen any poll in which Biden beats Clinton, or comes close. (In fact, Clinton leads Biden in Iowa by anywhere from 42 to 60 points.) By contrast, as Weigel has pointed out elsewhere, Hillary led most Iowa polls in the run-up to the 2008 caucuses, but not by more than 11 in any legitimate poll.

There could be a compelling challenger to Hillary Clinton -- but it's not going to be Joe Biden. And Warren swears she's not running. So there's no contest now unless something changes significantly.

DEPICTION OF SCHOOL SHOOTER AS LIBERAL RATHER THAN SOCIALIST UPSETS PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY'RE THE SAME THING

Online right-wingers are flipping out about this:

Denver Post Stealth Edits Out 'Socialist' from Profile of Arapahoe School Shooter

On Friday, Colorado's Arapahoe High School was put on lockdown while a student armed with a shotgun took over the school in an attempt to confront a teacher who he believed had wronged him. The student, identified as 18-year-old Karl Pierson, took his own life before he could be taken into custody.

In a profile on the shooter in the Denver Post which focused on his "strong political beliefs," several of Pierson's classmates offered their impressions of the shooter. One of the shooter's classmates described him as a "very opinionated socialist." Shortly after that post was published, however, that description was edited out. The current copy simply describes him as "very opinionated." ...

Well, actually the current copy of that paragraph in the Denver Post story describes Pierson as "very opinionated." Much of the rest of the story is very clear about Pierson's actual political beliefs, based on real evidence rather than one fellow student's possibly unreliable description:

In one Facebook post, Pierson attacks the philosophies of economist Adam Smith, who through his invisible-hand theory pushed the notion that the free market was self-regulating. In another post, he describes himself as "Keynesian."

"I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn't the market correcting itself?" he wrote. "If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn't it be able to overpower regulations?"

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing "you republicans are so cute" and posting an image that reads: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"

In the story as currently edited, the Post is telling its readers quite clearly that Pierson's politics leaned left. So why is the right throwing a fit? The right doesn't think there's any difference between liberalism and socialism. If you express support for what used to be considered mainstream economic ideas -- Keynesian stimulus in times of recession, for instance -- there's no difference between you and Stalin or Mao, according to, well, every right-winger in America in recent years.

So if The Denver Post is describing Pierson as a Keynesian, isn't it in effect calling him a big fat commie, as far as the right is concerned? Why isn't the right satisfied with that?

"CAN'T YOU PEOPLE TAKE A JOKE?" SAYS HUMORLESS WOMAN ON HUMORLESS TV CHANNEL, HUMORLESSLY

Last night on Fox News, Megyn Kelly defended her Jesus-and-Santa-are-white segment from earlier in the week, telling viewers she'd just been joking. The problem isn't merely that she clearly wasn't joking -- she actually plays the clip from the earlier segment at 0:50 below, and her dead seriousness is unmistakable -- it's that she's telling us haters through clenched teeth that we should just lighten up. (Check that out starting at 3:27.)





Pretending to smile, claiming unconvincingly to be the only one with a sense of humor in a humorless world, Kelly says:

This would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race-bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel....

For me, the fact that an offhand jest I made during a segment about whether Santa should be replaced by a penguin has now become a national firestorm says two things. Race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country, and Fox News, and yours truly are big targets for many people.

But this is the formula that works for the right. America is a country in which two-thirds of the voters are either moderate or liberal, and yet the conservative third of the country maintains control on a wide range of issues. Partly that has to do with the influence of right-wing billionaires -- but it's also the result of conservative propagandists' success in getting right-wing Americans to take politics very, very seriously.

They have Fox and talk radio on all day and all night. They buy every right-wing book that's published. (As I type this, the three top nonfiction hardcovers on the New Yok Times bestseller list are by Charles Krauthammer, Bill O'Reilly, and Brian Kilmeade, with Glenn Beck at #5.) Politics means everything to these people. They feel permanently under siege. Everything they don't like is a threat to the very existence of America, if not of Western civilization or the human race.

Even the promotion of the Fox News brand in Kelly's monologue -- "the very powerful Fox News Channel" -- doesn't come off as shameless for the base, because the base identifies with Fox, as its defender against a relentless liberal juggernaut.

If you're liberal or moderate, you probably agreed or disagreed with Aisha Harris's original essay on de-racializing Santa, or just thought it was food for thought -- but it probably didn't seem like the most vitally important thing you'd read.

That's because you're not right-wing. If you're right-wing, everything is for all the marbles. Everything is a fight to the death. And thinking everything is a fight to death is why right-wingers -- and Fox -- rack up so many wins.

A few blogroll adds: Paul Canning (though he hasn't been blogging lately), Tom Hull, The Intersection of Madness & Reality, Levees Not War, BillMoyers.com (featuring Joshua Holland), Yastreblyansky's The Rectification of Names, Redeye's Front Page, and This Week in Blackness.

YOU SEE A GOP CIVIL WAR. I SEE GOP BRAND PROLIFERATION.

I think there's real friction in the GOP right now. I don't think John Boehner's outburst this week was utterly fake. And yet I don't see any actual downside for the GOP in this skirmish. The party just seems to be reestablishing its "mainstream" brand, now that its "tea party" brand is losing popularity outside certain market segments.

You understand the concept of brand proliferation, right?

... in brand proliferation, ... the firm has several brands in the same product/product category....

Brand proliferation can help expand the market as well as the company's market share in the category. It can also increase the company's clout at the retail level by offering variety....

If different brands are designed to deliver different benefits to different segments of markets, it can restrict competition among brands.... To avoid cannibalization completely is often impossible. It is not essential either, but one has to be sure whether a net incremental benefit that justifies the additional cost and complexity accrues by adding one more brand....

John Boehner and Paul Ryan did a fine job this week of reintroducing "mainstream GOP" as a brand. This is an appealing product to a lot of traditional Republicans, as well as to the swing-voter market niche.

The "tea party" brand has lost some appeal among traditional Republicans, but this civil war will actually increase Brand Tea Party's appeal in certain market segments where it remains popular. Those voters will be motivated to turn out for tea party candidates because they're angry once again at the mainstreamers, and want to destroy them.

In some districts and states, this brand competition is going to result in a Brand Tea Party candidate beating a Brand Mainstream candidate. Elsewhere, now that Brand Mainstream has been rejuvenated, mainstream candidates will win more swing votes and will take votes away from Brand Democrat.

But once the Brand Tea Party loyalists have elected a certain number of members of Congress and the Brand Mainstream loyalists have elected others, they're all going to count as Republicans on the party's bottom line. These folks may fight in primaries, but they're going to be one party when the dust settles and it's time to determine who has majorities in the House and Senate.

Ed Kilgore is right:

... this whole "war" between Boehner and "the groups" is pretty much inside baseball, and about Boehner's role as Republican tactician rather than any deep matter of ideology or principle.

Everyone in the GOP has the same basic goals, either out of passionate commitment or pragmatic group solidarity, as Kilgore has written:

... conservative activists ... are perfectly happy accepting an unprincipled "pragmatist" who is totally in their thrall via highly public litmus test signatures and specific commitment to future action. By the time he went down to defeat in 2012, Mitt Romney was an absolute prisoner to the very forces in his party who trusted him least. The same thing happened to "maverick" John McCain in 2008; by the end of his campaign, he was basically a figurehead on a ticket led emotionally and ideologically by Sarah Palin.

My iron conviction is that if Mitt Romney had won last year and Republicans had retaken the Senate, we'd be well into a reign of fire and blood characterized by instant reconciliation-enabled enactment of the Ryan Budget, the total destruction of the Affordable Care Act, and for added measure, a "nuclear option" more thoroughgoing that that recently imposed by Senate Democrats.

During the presidential campaigns, the previously more-or-less moderate McCain and Romney couldn't conceal their rebranding. After the October government shutdown, the entire party had that problem, including Boehner, who seems distinct from the tea party types now but has been "totally in their thrall" for quite some time. But the old mainstream brand is back. The GOP's task now is to make sure that the public doesn't recognize that the two GOP brands contain almost exactly the same ingredients.

KARL ROVE JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW BRAZEN HE CAN BE BEFORE BEING CALLED ON IT BY THE BELTWAY

MC Rove ...





... said on Fox last night that using hip-hop to promote Obamacare is unseemly:

Karl Rove is not happy with a new rap parody of Snoop Dogg's "Drop It like It's Hot" that promotes Obamacare, saying it "crosses the line."

In the video, which directs viewers to Covered California-led efforts TellAFriendGetCovered.com and promotes #GetCovered, artist Alphacat is featured impersonating President Barack Obama rapping about the healthcare law in addition to other issues....

"I worry about something that seems aim to glorification of the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States as opposed to simply advocating young people go out and sign up for this entitlement program," Rove said Thursday on Fox News's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."

Rove continued, "This disturbingly gets too close to the line. I think it, in fact, crosses it."

Right, because no previous White House would have promoted a policy by promoting the president:





But here's my favorite bit:

"Could you imagine if such a thing had been run by George Bush or Bill Clinton or Bush 41 or Reagan?" Rove asked. "'I have two terms, I'm really cool, I'm really hip.’ How much public outcry there could have been?"

Oh yes -- can you imagine if Saint Ronald Reagan had tried to promote himself using black popular culture? It's unimaginable!

In 1984, Michael Jackson was approached to donate "Beat It" as backing music for a commercial on drunk driving. Jackson agreed and it was arranged for the singer to be awarded with an honour from the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan....

The presentation took place on May 14, 1984, at the White House. Upon reaching the podium, Reagan remarked, "I hope you'll forgive me, but we have quite a few young folks in the White House who all wanted me to give you the same message. They said to tell Michael, "Please give some TLC to the PYTs." A reference to Jackson's Grammy Award-nominated song, "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"...

And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the elderly Reagan met with this young star in 1984, the year he ran for reelection.

The Nancy Reagan-Mr. T photo op had happened a few months earlier:





Now, here's the video Rove is pretending to be so horrified by.





Find anything objectionable in it? Me either. But it's rap, so Rove's audience on Fox will assume that it's shockingly obscene and full of nightmare scenarios of rape and pillage, and that it takes the centuries-old tradition of Western music and curb-stomps it in a dark alley. So of course this attack was irresistible.

A MASTER CLASS IN BOTH-SIDES-DO-IT-ISM

Republicans in the Senate have drastically increased the use of the filibuster in recent years, and have essentially declared that the president of the United States loses his right to have lower-court judges and other appointees approved and seated if he's a Democrat. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have responded to this state of affairs by voting to curtail the use of the filibuster, so appointed positions can actually be filled by the president with Senate consent, as the Constitution's Framers intended.

This has led to consequences in the Senate. Whose fault are these consequences? According to a front-page story by Jeremy Peters, they're everybody's -- naturally.

If there is a rock bottom in the frayed relationship between Senate Republicans and Democrats, it seemed uncomfortably close as the final days of 2013 on Capitol Hill degenerated into something like an endurance contest to see who could be the most spiteful.

Equal spite? Explain, please.

As the sun rose on Friday, the Senators had worked through a second straight all-night session -- called by Democrats as a way of retaliating for Republicans' delaying tactics on confirmations....

Oh, is that why these all-night sessions were called? Purely as a retaliatory measure? Or were they called because...?

Republicans, furious that Democrats last month stripped away most of their power to filibuster presidential nominations, are using every procedural barricade available to them in the Senate's two-century-old rule book, forcing it to run the clock as long as possible while they vote on a series of President Obama’s nominees.

Democrats, hoping to make the situation so unpleasant for their colleagues across the aisle that they eventually break, are scheduling votes at all hours of the day and night. Mr. Reid is threatening to refuse to let anyone go home until a backlog of dozens of nominees is gone -- even if that means spending Christmas Eve in the Capitol....

So one party -- the Republican Party -- is engaged in delaying tactics to prevent the Senate from doing its work. The other party -- the Democratic Party -- is scheduling all-nighters so that the Senate can actually do some of that work, the work we citizens pay the Senate to do.

Yeah, that sounds pretty much equivalent.

What members of both parties bemoaned more than anything was not the lack of civility or bipartisan cooperation -- which they seem to have given up on long ago -- but what they said they see as the irreversible damage inflicted on an institution they claim to revere.

"If Bob Byrd had been here he would have had a stroke," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, referring to the late Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the senator whom Republicans and Democrats hold up as the embodiment of senatorial dignity and forbearance.

May I just say something right now to everyone who works in Washington? We don't give a rat's ass about the sacredness of your precious institutions. They are a means to an end -- nothing more. Senators work for us. The Senate is where they do it. That's it. It's the work that matters, not the goddamn institution.

Some senators expressed concern that this moodier, more intemperate Senate would become the norm now that Democrats have unilaterally changed filibuster rules....

Not, you will note, because several intemperate Senates, prior to the rule change, unilaterally changed the use of the filibuster:

Republicans complained that instead of tackling the many substantive issues that the Senate should resolve before the end of the year -- whether to impose sanctions on Iran, passing the annual defense authorization bill and settling a long-running dispute over federal subsidies to farmers and food stamps -- lawmakers were wasting their time on midlevel nominations.

You know why this is happening now? Even Politico does a better job of providing an answer to that question:

With a deadline looming at the end of the year that requires the president to resubmit all unconfirmed nominees and go through paperwork, background checks and committee hearings all over again, Democrats have decided to forge ahead and get as many nominees through as they can.

So all these appointees would -- to put it in ordinary-people terms -- have to return to the back of the line and start the whole process all over again. Democrats are trying to prevent that. It that so irrational? Could the Newspaper of Record possibly have told us that?

Back to the Times story:

Much of [the Senate's] business is accomplished through unanimous consent, which allows senators to move quickly through mundane tasks like approving low-level nominations.

Except that that hasn't been happening.

Republicans have held up the votes on dozens of Mr. Obama's pending nominees by refusing to provide unanimous consent to waive the time that is allotted for debate. Instead, they are using the debate time to take to the Senate floor to vent.

If you'd never read anything about this issue except this particular New York Times story, you'd think that sort of Republican obstruction began only after Democrats curtailed the filibuster. There isn't a word in this story about why there's a huge backlog of appointees.

Senator Angus King, a first-term independent from Maine who usually votes with Democrats, brought his toothbrush and a change of clothes on Wednesday. He said he had an uncomfortable night on a couch that was about eight inches too short. And when he rolled over in the morning, he set off the motion sensor that turned on his office lights.

The experience drove home for Mr. King a stark realization: This is no way to run the Senate. "It's not a very constructive use of time," he said. "I don't fully understand it."

You don't understand it, Senator? You don't understand how it came to this?

Maybe it's because you get your news from the mainstream press.

DEAR MEGYN KELLY: IS SANTA CLAUS IRISH?

Megyn Kelly of Fox News told viewers last night that Santa Claus is white, as was Jesus. This was in response to a Slate piece recommending that we replace our traditional Santa Claus with a Santa that transcends race -- a penguin, actually -- as a more appropriate mythical figure for a multi-ethnic world.

I just want to point out that while the author of the Slate essay, Aisha Harris, is African-American, non-whites don't have a monopoly on the wish to see a Santa that looks more like themselves. This rather pricey item, for instance, is sold out as I type:





Precious Moments sells Italian and Polish and German and Norwegian and Russian Santas. And I'm sure I've just scratched the surface.

My people like to express ethnic pride at this time of year in song -- here's a timeless classic forom one of my paesans:





And here's a newer one:






And, of course, Real Americans do this as well:





One more:





So let's be a little more understanding, OK, Megyn?

WE HAVE THREE OPTIONS ON GUNS, AND THE LEAST POPULAR ONE PREVAILS

Two graphic representations of how we deal with gun laws. First this, from a new CBS poll:





Nearly half the country wants gun laws to be stricter -- and more than a third of the country wants gun laws to stay as they are. Only 12% of the country wants gun laws to be more lenient. Only 17% of Republicans want more lenient laws.

But what do we get? What have we gotten in the past year? This:





Last night, Rachel Maddow described the glass as half full, noting that gun-law looseners have been winning for years, while the year since Newtown has seen the passage of gun restrictions for the first time in years:

Before Newtown, conservative lawmakers in the states had already been on a years-long spree to loosen gun rules, right? To increase gun access, to loosen gun safety regulations wherever they could. Florida governor Jeb Bush signed the nation's first Stand Your Ground law back in 2005.... After Florida passed Stand Your Ground in 2005, more than twenty other states followed Florida's example. The gun lobby flipped those states like dominoes, with help from corporate-funded conservative groups like ALEC. In 2009 and 2010, red states started passing new laws that let you carry a gun into bars....

So, after Newtown, some red states kept up their efforts to get more guns and more powerful guns into the hands of more people, to give law enforcement less to work with, to loosen the restrictions that are supposed to keep guns away from criminals and the mentally ill. Some red states have kept up their long-standing efforts in that regard even after Newtown -- yes, that's true. But that kind of thing really was already happening. The thing that changed after Newtown ... was some new restrictions on guns. Movement in the law in that direction had not been happening at all before Newtown basically anywhere in the country. And that has changed in this past year....

But the gunners are still winning. They won last year. And they'll win next year, because the post-Newtown momentum is gone for gun control.

What's the flaw in democracy that permits the 12% to trump the rest of us on this issue? When do the rest of us win?

THE GAME IS RIGGED, BUT THEY WANT TO PLAY ANYWAY

I have a lot of political journalists in my Twitter timeline, and they've been very angry lately about the restrictions placed on photographers covering President Obama. The White House Correspondents Association complained about the restrictions last month, and today there's a New York Times op-ed on the subject by Santiago Lyon, director of photography for the Associated Press.

... Manifestly undemocratic ... is the way Mr. Obama's administration -- in hypocritical defiance of the principles of openness and transparency he campaigned on -- has systematically tried to bypass the media by releasing a sanitized visual record of his activities through official photographs and videos, at the expense of independent journalistic access.

The White House-based press corps was prohibited from photographing Mr. Obama on his first day at work in January 2009. Instead, a set of carefully vetted images was released. Since then the press has been allowed to photograph him alone in the Oval Office only twice: in 2009 and in 2010, both times when he was speaking on the phone. Pictures of him at work with his staff in the Oval Office -- activities to which previous administrations routinely granted access -- have never been allowed.

Yes, this is extreme -- but the Obama administration's approach to press photographers differs from the practices of other recent administrations only in degree. This administration practices total control; previous administrations attempted near-total control, and used press picture-makers for their own ends.

Lyon looks back to what he regards as a better past:

American presidents have often tried to control how they are depicted (think of the restrictions on portraying Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair). But presidents in recent decades recognized that allowing the press independent access to their activities was a necessary part of the social contract of trust and transparency that should exist between citizens and their leaders.

Consider these moments: John F. Kennedy's son peeking out from under his desk; Richard M. Nixon flashing a two-armed V-for-victory sign as he departed office in disgrace; Ronald Reagan waving from a hospital window after cancer surgery to assure America that he was O.K.; George W. Bush's astonishment on learning of the 9/11 attacks, and his remarks to rescue workers at the rubble of the World Trade Center days later.

I'm not sure why that photo of Bush at Ground Zero is on the list -- it was taken by Eric Draper, who was Bush's official White House photographer -- he was Bush's equivalent to Pete Souza, the Obama photographer whose work supplants that of press photographers now.

Yes, the other photos on Lyon's list were taken by press photographers -- but past presidents controlled access to themselves as much as possible, and had the upper hand in their relationship with photojournalists. Consider the story of Stanley Tretick, the photographer who took that picture of JFK and John-John:

... Tretick went on to do 68 stories on the Kennedy family for Look magazine, but the relationship wasn't always smooth. As Tretick soon realized, Kennedy looked closely at the photographer credits of all pictures of himself to make a mental list of which camerapersons to avoid. Traveling all across the country during what would be then the closest presidential race of the 20th century, Kennedy and Tretick played a cat and mouse game when it came to photo opportunities. Kennedy avoided being photographed eating, drinking, or combing his hair, realizing as a former journalist himself the awkwardness of such shots.... "He plays a game, enjoys the game," Tretick said later of his attempts to catch Kennedy off guard, "but when he loses, he never cries about it." ...

Of course, Tretick and Kennedy worked their magic best when Kennedy was on his guard, as fully conscious of imagery as those photographing him. Scenes of adoring throngs pressing in on candidate Kennedy, every hand hoping just to brush his, give the viewer a sense of just how powerful Kennedy's charisma came across....

Jackie protected her children's privacy fiercely, and JFK deferred to her on most requests from the press. But when a cover photo by Tretick of JFK riding on a golf cart with his nieces and nephews became a smash, Tretick pressured for photos of the president with his children. In October 1963, a few months after the death of the Kennedy's baby Patrick, Jackie went on vacation to Greece with her sister, Lee. Seizing the moment, Kennedy allowed Tretick to photograph him and "John John" playing together before bedtime in the Oval Office. Thus, the iconic shot of John, Jr. peeking out from beneath the president's desk -- a hideaway the two and a half year old called his "secret house." ... When Jackie returned from Greece, she resigned herself to the deed as done, permitting it as part of JFK's reelection drive for the 1964 presidential election....

So while administrations shouldn't freeze photojournalists out, Stanley Tretick was not exactly Woodward and Bernstein with a Nikon -- he was identified by JFK early on as a photographer who could be useful to him, he and JFK had a relationship that was of mutual benefit, and the iconic photo of the president and his son happened because the president wanted some warm-fuzzy pictures out there in advance of his reelection campaign.

That's how the game is regularly played, as we know from the classic book on the subject, Mark Hertsgaard's On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency. A typical Hertsgaard anecdote:

After Reagan visited the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea in November 1983 (fresh from his triumph in Grenada), the evening news shows, newspapers and newsweeklies across the country were filled with inspiring photos of the Leader of the Free World, dressed in a flak jacket, staring down the Communists through field glasses. As was their habit whenever Reagan made a foreign trip, [deputy chief of staff Michael] Deaver and his aides visited the site in advance, accompanied by representatives of the major networks, to plan the media event down to the smallest detail.

"I saw the toe marks for him," Andrea Mitchell of NBC later recalled. Terming the DMZ visit "one of the great advanced events of all time," Mitchell added, "When he didn't stand on his toe mark he was signaled by one of the advance men to move over into the sunshine."

And this, from Deaver himself in Hertsgaard's book:

In the 1984 campaign the Defense Department and the Air Force continually wanted us to do a rollout on the B-1 bomber. And of course one of the negatives on Reagan was that he was more likely to get us into a war, so I was always shying away from military kinds of events. But jobs were just as important during the campaign in California, and the B-1 accounted for something like 40,000 jobs in southern California, so I agreed to do a stop at the Rockwell plant in Palmdale. But I said, across the B-1 I want the biggest sign you can make saying "Prepared for Peace." So you never really saw the B-1. All you saw was the President with this big sign behind him.

So when Lyon touts the photo of Ron and Nancy peering out from his hospital room after his cancer surgery, it's safe to assume that the press was cordoned off in a particular spot, the Reagans were sent to the window, and Ronnie and Nancy were urged to smile and wave. He knew what to do. He was an actor, and this was a process of following a script.

The same could be said of most images of presidents in our lifetime.

BOOK PRAISING FEMALE SUBMISSION PUBLISHED BY ONE OF THAT NICE POPE FRANCIS'S REGIONAL OFFICES

This morning I learned that Pope Francis was named Time's Person of the Year. This afternoon I read about this:

A book advising newly-wed women on how to be "submissive" has become a publishing phenomenon in Spain....

The polemic book by married Italian author Costanza Miriano titled 'Cásate y sé sumisa -- Get Married and Be Submissive -- was published by the Catholic Ar[ch]bishopric of the southern city of Granada in November and soared up the bestseller list.

The book, which was a bestseller in Italy, preaches a message of "loyal obedience, generosity and submission" on the part of the new wife and offers nuggets of advice for the newly-wed on how to please one's husband....

One passage suggests: "We [women] like humiliation because it is for a greater good."

The author claims the book is based on the teachings of St Paul and that a perfect wife should be submissive.

"It's true, you're not yet an experienced cook or a perfect housewife," she writes. "What's the problem if he tells you so? Tell him that he is right, that it's true, that you will learn. On seeing your sweetness and your humility, your effort to change, this will also change him....

Yes, that's right -- this was published by an archbishopric of the Catholic Church. The book has also been praised by L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.

Here's a translation of another passage from the book:

In that very moment, perform an act of trust towards your husband. Get out of the logic of the world, "I want to get the better of him", and enter the logic of God, who put at your side your husband, that saint who bears you after everything, and who, incidentally, is also a handsome guy. And if something he does is not fine with you, it is God Himself you have to confront, to begin with: get down on your knees, and most time you’ll solve anything. Luigi is the way God chose to love you, and he is your way to heaven. When he says something, then you must listen to him as if God was talking to you. With full discernment, clearly, in wisdom and cleverness, of course, because he is a creature, but with respect, because he often sees more clearly than you do.

And another, from the English-language page at Miriano's own site:

You'll see, I can swear on it, a man cannot resist a woman who respects him, recognizes his authority, who makes a sincere effort to listen to him, to let aside her own way of seeing things, who tramples on her ever-biting, teasing, failure-highlighting tongue (we're very good at that, no doubt), who accepts to walk on paths that are extremely different from those she would naturally choose, just out of love.

Oh, and here's a translation of Miriano's open letter to the pope, which focuses on her opposition to letting women into the priesthood ("the true revolutionaries are women who want to, like Mary, to serve, not those asking for greater power in the Church").

It's good that the pope talks about the poor and gets up right-wingers' noses. It's good that he models charity and compassion. But then there's this gender thing. It's not changing.

THE BUDGET DEAL AND THE COMING MAINSTREAM-MEDIA GOP MANCRUSH GLUT

Gawker's Adam Weinstein is one of many people who think Paul Ryan is making a 2016 move, and, in disgust, he predicts it's going to work:

... Ezra Klein accurately described the Ryan/Murray plan as a "mini-budget deal." ... it reaffirms that our government ... cannot actually do any new tricks -- it can only, at best, agree to keep in place the pro-market anti-safety-net minimalist performance-art-as-policy that it's executed in years past.

But in an atmosphere where our expectations are so vulgarly low ... a "mini-budget deal" appears as a Marshall Plan, and its architects are as statesmen.

Say that aloud: "Paul Ryan, statesman." He's probably saying it, now, to himself on the House elevator. It probably forms the whispery thesis of his soon-to-be-published book....

It really is a remarkable achievement, doubly so if you're the kind of person who doesn't remember that Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand groupie who not long ago declared open war on Grandma, decrying her and minorities, and children, and mothers as "takers," not "makers." That he wanted to kill Social Security and Medicare, then denied it and falsely claimed it was the current president who wanted to kill Medicare, then tried to kill them again.

Now he wants to be a great compromiser. Oh, my! How courageous! Won't he be savaged by red-meat conservatives and tea partiers for working with Democrats? Isn't that a huge risk for the young congressman? But in standing up to the ideologues of his own party, he shows us that he is a new Paul Ryan, a grownup, serious, a real adult in the room....

Weinstein thinks Ryan can sail right into the White House on this. I'm skeptical. I agree that Ryan will probably be the mainstream-press mancrush of the next couple of weeks -- but can that last?

The heart of the MSM still beats for Chris Christie. And Scott Walker hasn't really started putting the moves on the scribes yet.

I think 2016 could be the year when Republicans have too many Koch-friendly ideological wolves wearing the sheep's clothing of whatever they're going to call "compassionate conservatism" this time around. It never occurred to me that there'd be multiple candidates trying to take this route to victory, but that seems to be the case. (And I suppose this list could include could add Rand Paul, he of the cockamamie libertarian plan to save Detroit with tax cuts.)

If one of these guys begins to be treated as the grown-ups' candidate by the mainstream media, and if that candidate is acceptable to the GOP power brokers, then we'll probably have our McCain/Romney, with Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum and other crazies left to vie for the table scraps. But if several of these phony right-centrists run effective campaigns, could they cancel one another out? Could that be how we get a wide-open race, and thus a victory by a 2016 version of Barry Goldwater, the kind of nominee the voter base really wants?

Cross your fingers and hope for that.

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Meanwhile, as for the deal itself, I find myself thinking that BooMan has a point:

If I were a congressional Democrat under orders to vote for this deal, I would tell the leadership to stuff it. It's obvious that the Republican leadership is desperate to avoid another government shutdown, and it appears that Speaker Boehner will have to rely heavily on Democratic votes to pass this budget. If it doesn't do anything for people who have been out of work for a year or more, then the bill is unconscionable and should not be supported. Even from a cynical political point of view, it's better to force the Republicans into another government shutdown than it is to impotently criticize them for their callousness.

If the Dems can't help desperate people during the holiday season when the GOP is eager to make a deal, then they can't help them at all. If the House Republicans want this budget, let them vote for it. If they want progressive votes, let them come to us with an offer. This deal isn't good enough.

But wouldn't the Democrats get the blame for causing a shutdown, or near-shutdown? Yeah, but it shouldn't matter, should it? Republicans shut down the government in October and their poll numbers plummeted -- briefly. The Obamacare rollout happened and the entire country totally forgot about the shutdown. Why couldn't the hit to the Democrats be similarly evanescent? And why couldn't a shutdown instigated by Democrats be blamed on "Congress" rather than one party?

I know, I know -- because that's not how it works. The rules are different for the two parties. Republicans get endless do-overs from the voters; Democrats are permanently blamed for everything any Democrat (or liberal or leftist) did in the past half-century. Unpopular deeds by Republicans in Congress are blamed on Congress; unpopular deeds by Democrats are the Democratic Party's fault.

Is it that bad, really? I'm thinking, Screw it. Test the premise. Demand more. Too bad that won't happen.