SHARK JUMPED: WE'RE INVOKING ARENDT AND MLK WHEN TALKING ABOUT BRIAN WILLIAMS

I said a couple of days ago that we seem to be treating Brian Williams "as if he deserves to be in a dock in The Hague." I meant that to be somewhat hyperbolic -- but now we have David Brooks literally invoking the writings of Hannah Arendt and the sermons of Martin Luther King in a column about Williams, and no, he's not joking:

... I do think we’d all be better off if we reacted to these sorts of scandals in a different way. The civic fabric would be stronger if, instead of trying to sever relationships with those who have done wrong, we tried to repair them, if we tried forgiveness instead of exiling.

... many writers -- ranging from Hannah Arendt and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to modern figures like Jeffrie Murphy and L. Gregory Jones — have tried to think hard about rigorous forgiveness, which balances accountability with compassion.

... Martin Luther King Jr. argued that forgiveness isn’t an act; it’s an attitude. We are all sinners. We expect sin, empathize with sin and are slow to think ourselves superior. The forgiving person is strong enough to display anger and resentment toward the person who has wronged her, but she is also strong enough to give away that anger and resentment.

In this view, the forgiving person makes the first move, even before the offender has asked. She resists the natural urge for vengeance. Instead, she creates a welcoming context in which the offender can confess....

Can we stop right there? Here's some of what Dr. King said about forgiveness in a 1957 sermon:

It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression.

Read the last few words again: "the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression." We're talking about King in reference to Brian Williams. Exaggerating a war story is not a "tortuous injustice" or a "terrible act of oppression," not even if you really, really love TV news.

This just confirms my belief that we're lashing out against Williams in a sustained way because we're powerless in the face of real enemies who actually have done serious harm to us. We can't get people who took away all the good jobs, we can't seem to reverse the sense of societal decline, but we can turn Brian Williams into some combination of Hitler and Bull Connor in order to purge our own feelings of powerlessness.

Brooks does thinkwe should forgive Williams and let him get on with his work. But he says Williams must first undergo a "season of shame." After this,

The offended are free from mean emotions like vengeance and are uplifted when they offer kindness. The social fabric is repaired. Community solidarity is strengthened by the reunion.

Jesus, if our "social fabric" and "community solidarity" are predicated on our relations with Brian Williams, we're in worse trouble than we thought.

I'm struck by Brooks's language in this column -- when he's not writing about a "season of shame" for Williams, he's telling us this:

Some sins, like anger and lust, are like wild beasts. They have to be fought through habits of restraint.... Some sins like vanity -- Williams’s sin -- can only be treated by extreme self-abasement.

Shame? Self-abasement? Restraint? Do you get the feeling Brooks already has his tickets for this weekend's opening of Fifty Shades of Grey?

STUFF I LEARNED FROM FOX TODAY

According to Fox Nation, we're winning!

And we're doomed!



The folks at Fox would say this isn't a contradiction because President Obama is failing, but the brave Jordanians are getting the job done -- never mind the fact that it's the U.S. that's conducting the vast majority of airstrikes against ISIS, including 90% of those in Syria. But golf Teleprompter leading from behind argle bargle bargle, therefore clearly Obama's policies are failing and we're all gonna die.

SCOTT WALKER: A WINGNUT PITBULL IN NED FLANDERS CLOTHING?

Kevin Drum looks at Scott Walker's recent efforts to gut the University of Wisconsin's budget and rework its mission statement ("the search for truth": out) and concludes that Walker may still be trying to find the right balance between red-meat Republicanism and unthreatening right-centrism:

My guess is that his inner circle thought the changes might win Walker some brownie points with the tea party crowd, which has always been suspicious of long-haired academics and their lefty ideas, but failed to see how bad it would look among the less wild-eyed crowd that looks to Walker as a pragmatic executive type. Walker's team is having trouble balancing those two constituencies, and that's a problem since Walker's key appeal is that he bridges the gap between them.

Needless to say, this dumb little affair won't do Walker any long-term damage. It's just a minor dust cloud. Nonetheless, it's an instructive dust cloud. Clearly Walker still hasn't quite managed to polish up the balancing act that's his biggest source of strength in the 2016 presidential race. That's something he needs to figure out in short order.

But I worry that Walker's going to be able to get away with being a right-wing attack dog because he can also dish up innocent-seeming traditionalism in a way that's equally pleasing to the base while seeming harmless to all but the jaded sophisticates. I include myself among the jaded sophisticates, but I worry that much of America -- including many, many heartlanders who have voted Democratic in the past -- will be reassured by a guy who gives speeches like this one, while conservatives will hear their own "traditional values" language being spoken:

... Walker gave a speech this weekend to Maranatha Baptist University’s “Developing Leaders for Ministry in the Local Church and the World” seminar.

Walker’s father was pastor of First Baptist Church in Delavan, Wisconsin in the 1970s.

The governor called on those in attendance to pray for America’s leaders....

While he acknowledged his political support, “more than anything, I appreciate the prayers.”

The base loves that sort of talk. And yet it's not the sort of religious aggression we're used to from Rick Santorum and, lately, Mike Huckabee.

... The governor ... spoke of what he learned from his mother.

“Even though she was very quiet, [she] was always looking out for the needs of others. She never backed away from what she believed in, but she was never pushy about it, she just did it; she just lived it,” Peters quotes him as saying.

Mom stuck up for herself ... but she was never pushy about it. Not like those horrible liberal feminists.

More, from an article on the university's website:

His grandmother, in particular, a widow for 34 years, understood the value of money. She “didn’t buy anything on credit” and taught him not to spend money that he didn’t have. “Always save up for it.” Walker noted this principle has guided the way he governs.

Can you say "Balanced Budget Amendment"?

There's a shout-out to the Boy Scouts. There's a shout-out to the American Legion. And, of course, there's a shout-out to Saint Reagan, though it's an apolitical one:

President Ronald Reagan was in office during Walker’s high school years, providing yet another influence on his leadership development. “When I think about President Reagan, what inspired me most about him wasn’t just his political stance, it was his eternal optimism in the American people. The more you do to empower people, not just the structures of government, the better off we will be.”

I don't know how well this speech was received. I don't know if Walker delivered it well. But it suggests that he seeks to conjure up the kinds of images of a vanished America that are catnip to the right without alienating the middle. We learned in the Reagan years that a lot of Americans were hungry for a president who could turn the clock back this way, and who really seemed to believe in the Ozzie and Harriet world he was conjuring up. And George W. Bush mastered the aw-shucks religiosity in his two presidential runs.

I keep saying it: Watch out for this guy. He's going to gull a lot of people.

WHOSE GUILT IS THE BRIAN WILLIAMS SCANDAL EXPIATING? AND FOR WHAT?

Steve Almond thinks Americans are angry at Brian Williams because we feel guilty about our own relationahip to war:

Americans consume more violence -- both real and imagined -- than any other nation on earth. Yet as a population, we move about our daily lives with almost no threat of actual violence from enemies abroad.

We’re a nation of coddled cheerleaders who have offloaded the physical risks of our imperial adventures to a volunteer army consisting mostly of working-class kids. We cheer for them in the same vicarious manner we do the muscled ubermensches who risk brain damage by ritualizing combat on our bright gridirons.

In this sense, what Williams did is merely an exaggerated version of what any of us might do. He got close enough to the action to appropriate the manly courage of his military escorts. This is why his lies so offend us. In vilifying him, we help cleanse ourselves of the hidden shame we feel at sanctifying war while living amid such decadent safety.

I don't think America has that sort of communal guilt -- many Americans have fought in wars, worked in physically demanding jobs, dealt with serious illness, and faced day-to-day economic uncertainty, so I really don't believe a sense of "decadent safety" is universal.

Also, I don't believe that outrage at Brian Williams is universal. My hunch is that many Americans aren't following this story very closely, and even many of those who are don't feel unbridled disgust at what Williams did, though I'll wait for polls to confirm or disprove that.

But I'm intrigued by the idea that those who are lashing out at Williams are trying to purge themselves of guilt.

Almond goes on to write:

To howl about how Brian Williams has a “credibility problem” because of his famous fibs is to miss the true nature of his fraudulence: that he and his team were happy to render the Iraq War as a form of entertainment, a righteous crusade in which badass high-tech G.I. Joes defend the holy Christian homeland by slaughtering and eventually civilizing Islamic savages.

I think the media is trying to expiate guilt by lashing out at Williams -- not guilt at cheerleading for war necessarily, but guilt because so much of what passes for news is sheer fluff.

Some of it is macho fluff, like the Williams war reports. Some of it is human-interest fluff: weather disasters, plane crashes, viral videos of plucky Down's Syndrome kids hitting three-pointers from halfcourt to their classmates' delight. Huge percentages of television news airtime are devoted to this sort of trivial material, even as Americans become more and more ignorant about their government and their world. If anyone is lashing out at Williams out of guilt, maybe it's the press, out of an awareness of how the press has failed America for so many years. Television has long been the nation's preferred medium for the transmission of information, and it's been allowed it to abdicate its responsibilities. And maybe Brian Williams is now the scapegoat.

SO RIGHT-WINGERS NOW THINK DRONE ATTACKS ON JIHADISTS ARE ATROCITIES?

I'm not going to weigh in on the appropriateness of the drone war. I just want to note the fact that right-wingers hate Barack Obama so much that even though they enthusiastically advocate a vigorous military response to Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and similar groups, and even though they continue to regard critics of such a military response as traitors and quislings, they're willing to refer to drone strikes that kill Al Qaeda, Taliban, and ISIS combatants as atrocities.

Or at least that's true of PJ Media's Patrick Poole:

Obama’s Drones Have Killed More Than the Spanish Inquisition

Controversy still swirls around Obama’s comments during the National Prayer Breakfast this week, where he chastised Christians for getting on their “high horse” over the ongoing global jihad, invoking medieval abuses that occurred hundreds of years ago during the Crusades and Inquisition.

But perhaps it is Obama who should avoid getting on his high horse, since according to recently published statistics, Obama’s drone campaign has killed more people during the six years of his presidency than were killed the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition.

In his speech on Thursday, he said:

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

Fair enough. But how is Obama himself doing on that score?

Well, on Monday of this week the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published their annual study of deaths from U.S. drone strikes, and reported the following:

At least 2,464 people have now been killed by US drone strikes outside the country’s declared war zones since President Barack Obama’s inauguration six years ago, the Bureau’s latest monthly report reveals.

Of the total killed since Obama took his oath of office on January 20 2009, at least 314 have been civilians, while the number of confirmed strikes under his administration now stands at 456....

... So how does that number of 2,464 killed in Obama’s drone program -- not including those killed in Iraq or Afghanistan -- compare to, say, the Spanish Inquisition?

A decade ago the Vatican published the results of a six-year study of the Inquisition, including the number of those killed across Europe. With respect to the 350-year-long Inquisition in Spain, the BBC reported that the study found the following:

...Professor Borromeo says for example that for 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, less than 2% were executed.

A quick calculation finds that 1.8 percent of 125,000 would represent 2,250 killed during the Spanish Inquisition if Prof. Borromeo’s estimates are correct....

Obama referred to "terrible deeds in the name of Christ." Pope asks how Obama is "doing on that score," then cites statistics for drone deaths. Is Pope -- a right-winger -- telling us that drone deaths are "terrible deeds in the name of Christ"? And given the fact that his gotcha comparison -- more drone deaths than Spanish Inquisition deaths -- includes the deaths of combatants, is Pope saying that he regards killings of jihadist fighters as "terrible deeds"?

So that's the new right-wing line?

If you're a drone critic, the entire drone campaign is an atrocity. But if you're a right-winger, I'm surprised that you're a drone critic.

****

Oh, and please note that the BBC story quoted by Pope also tells us this:

According to the [Vatican] study, in the Inquisition's heyday Germany killed more male and female witches than anywhere else, with some 25,000 people being put to death.

In fact, it's estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft throughout Europe during the time of the Inquisition. And note that Obama did not single out the Spanish Inquisition.

MAUREEN DOWD INADVERTENTLY EXPLAINS WHY THE BRIAN WILLIAMS SCANDAL IS ABSURD

Because it's a celebrity story that looks like a news story, Maureen Dowd predictably directs her attention to the Brian Williams scandal in this weekend's column, joining the pile-on:

THIS was a bomb that had been ticking for a while.

NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division.

But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and “there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top,” as one NBC News reporter put it.

It seemed pathological...

She has no named sources and no fresh anecdotes, but we'll pay attention because, well, everyone hates Brian Williams, right?

But Dowd goes on to undermine the entire fatwa against Williams, even though that's clearly not her intent:

... Social media -- the genre that helped make the TV evening news irrelevant by showing us that we don’t need someone to tell us every night what happened that day -- was gutting the institution further.

Although Williams’s determination to wrap himself in others’ valor is indefensible, it seems almost redundant to gnaw on his bones, given the fact that the Internet has already taken down a much larger target: the long-ingrained automatic impulse to turn on the TV when news happens.

Although there was much chatter about the “revered” anchor and the “moral authority” of the networks, does anyone really feel that way anymore? Frothy morning shows long ago became the more important anchoring real estate, garnering more revenue and subsidizing the news division. One anchor exerted moral authority once and that was Walter Cronkite, because he risked his career to go on TV and tell the truth about the fact that we were losing the Vietnam War.

But TV news now is rife with cat, dog and baby videos, weather stories and narcissism. And even that fare caused trouble for Williams when he reported on a video of a pig saving a baby goat, admitting “we have no way of knowing if it’s real,” and then later had to explain that it wasn’t. The nightly news anchors are not figures of authority. They’re part of the entertainment, branding and cross-promotion business....

As the late-night comic anchors got more pointed and edgy with the news, the real anchors mimicked YouTube....

Right -- and so why are we all being so freaking self-righteous about this? Yes, with great power comes great responsibility, but network anchors don't have great power anymore. Their broadcasts aren't driving the conversation about significant news events -- and even if they were, Williams didn't lie about a news event (the war), he lied about his experiences in that event. So why are we so worked up?

For three reasons, one each for the three groups who are driving this.

The left can't do anything about income inequality, can't get Gitmo closed, can't stop drone attacks, can't get Officers Wilson and Pantaleo indicted, can't persuade Liz Warren to run for president ... but the left can now hold Williams accountable for Iraq in a way it can't hold the real villains accountable -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of that motley crew, along with real media war criminals like Judy Miller.

The right believes that every news organization that isn't overtly conservative is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy America and deny Republicans electoral victories (to the right, those are essentially the same thing). A victory over Williams will be one more battle in the defeat of socialism and the rooting out of treason. If NBC fires Williams, the biggest victory parade will be led by Murdochians.

And, finally, there's the mainstream media itself, which is obsessed with this story out of sheer narcissism -- it's a story about us! it's about what we do! As long as some people are paying attention to the press, the press is going to bask in the attention and engage in endless chin-scratching about media ethics. There's no news judgment involved here. This is a pure ego trip.

Many stories about how the media operates actually are important -- but this is not one of them. No one's understanding of the Iraq War was materially altered by what Williams falsely said. We have his apology, we now have him removing himself from the air for a few days, and there are reportedly investigations under way. Suspend him, fine him, whatever -- but stop treating him as if he deserves to be in a dock in The Hague. Until you show me that he lied about important facts (and no, those floating bodies in Katrina's aftermath don't count, because there's a good chance they were real), I say that this story is a shiny object we've allowed to distract us for too long. And as long as anyone on Fox still has a job, Brian Williams should be very low on any reasonable person's media enemies list.

SEND A THRILL UP RIGHT-WINGERS' LEGS AND YOU CAN SAY ISIS ISN'T MUSLIM

Lucianne.com highly recommends this opinion piece from Investor's Business Daily, where the editorials are even further to the right than the ones in The Wall Street Journal:

Jordan's King Gets Medieval On Them

Leadership: Jordan is taking the war to the terrorists -- not only on land but on the propaganda front, where Islamic State has had the high ground for a while. Jordan's will to win is injecting new energy into the war on terror.

This, of course, is contrasted with the quisling behavior of the Obama White House:

As the West dithers under the weak leadership and wavering resolve of the Obama administration, the Jordanians, however small and threatened they are as a nation, have injected the force multiplier of moral passion into their war effort.

And how have the Jordanians done this? Air strikes (um, I thought the U.S. was conducting the majority of air strikes against ISIS, and was aiding the Jordanians in their air strikes, but never mind), plus bellicose rhetoric ("King Abdullah's fiery vow to make the 'earth shake'").

But this as well:

The king also morally delegitimized the terrorists, saying they had zero claim to the name Muslim -- powerful, given that the king is a direct descendant of Muhammad. He was buttressed by Jordanian officials, who called the terrorists "daesh" -- a derogatory word in Arabic that's as nasty as it sounds, and one that IS hates.

Wait -- what? I thought those who refer to the Islamic State as "Daesh" were just being hypersensitive because they wanted to avoid any name with the word "Islamic" in it. That's what right-wingers told me, so it must be true!

And now it's OK to say that ISIS has "zero claim to the name Muslim"? It's OK to say that ISIS isn't Islamic? Haven't thousands of jeremiads been directed at the Obama administration by right-wing pundits because the administration says precisely this? Haven't there been multiple columns with titles such as "Why Does Obama Insist That Mideast Terrorists Are Not Islamic?" in publications such as, um, Investors Business Daily?

Well, Jordan's King Abdullah not only talked tough (he quoted Clint Eastwood!) but also personally donned a military uniform, to the delight of the American right, amid rumors that he would personally fly a sortie, which later proved untrue but also delighted the right. American right-wingers love tough talk almost more than they love action; as we learned in our last presidency, it thrills them to see tough-talking leaders in military uniforms, just as, thirty years ago, it thrilled them when a president who never saw action used to salute giddily at the slightest prompting. I'm not sure American conservatives even want to defeat ISIS -- often it seems that they just want the (vicarious) experience of the fight, or they just want to see fighting acted out. Give them that and you can say anything you want.

HOW REPUBLICANS HOPE TO START (AND KEEP) WINNING ON OBAMACARE

Brian Beutler notes that Senator Richard Burr, co-author of an outline for a terrible Republican replacement for Obamacare, has acknowledged that no permanent replacement is likely to be passed before President Obama leaves office -- and he suggests that Republicans will agree to a temporary fix:

On Fox News Thursday, [Burr] acknowledged that this Congress won’t coalesce around his or any other plan before Obama leaves office. But he also suggested Republicans won’t be empty handed when the ruling in King v. Burwell comes down.

“I think that there are going to be a lot of ideas not only in Congress but around the think tanks here in Washington and around the country,” Burr said. “But I do say this, we're going to know a lot more after the Supreme Court hears the King v. Burwell case, and that's going to be a short-term interim response. The long-term is, how do we revamp this in 2017 and after so it works for America's patients?"

The suggestion buried in there is that Republicans will proffer a stopgap of some kind, to patch the law between this summer and the end of Obama’s presidency, and then let the presidential election determine the shape of a permanent solution.

Beutler is skeptical about this:

... I think there’s something a little too cute about Burr's idea. Proposing a temporary patch is basically a tacit admission that it'd be extremely straightforward to fix it permanently. If you’re only willing to paper over the problem for a year and a half, you’re implicitly asking the justices to give you legislative leverage -- and to meddle in presidential politics -- to stack the deck for conservative policies that wouldn’t stand a chance without their intervention.

I’m not sure that provides the Court much cover.

... [The justices] surely know that even under the best of circumstances, ruling for the King plaintiffs will create a huge substantive mess and an even bigger legitimacy problem for the Court.

But how much cover does the Court need? Ordinary people understand next to nothing about how the law works and how the legislative process works. If Republicans act all innocent and say, "We have a patch, and we're working diligently on a permanent replacement," why should we expect voters to see the cynicism behind all this?

Beutler adds:

... I’m ... unsure that Republican leaders could pass a temporary patch if they wanted to -- both because I suspect absolutely livid Democrats would accept nothing less than a complete fix, and because, without Dem participation, Republicans would be unable to convince their own hardliners to spend billions of dollars on a two-year stopgap, during which the law-as-implemented would take deeper and deeper root.

But at that point, Republicans won't care. They hate the law. They're perfectly happy to walk away and see it not fixed, even temporarily -- as long as they can persuade the majority of Americans who want it fixed that it's going unfixed because the Democrats refuse to accept the perfectly reasonable GOP patch. Some Americans will see through the ruse, but most of them will be people who already lean Democratic.

So Republicans will offer a temporary fix, and if Democrats reject it, then there'll be chaos -- and Democrats will either have to take what the Republicans give or (as the conventional wisdom will develop) share the blame for the fact that the law isn't patched. I assume they'll capitulate.

And that forces Hillary Clinton to either campaign on full, permanent restoration of a law a lot of people don't like or propose yet another health care overhaul. I don't know how that will work out. Republicans will try to say that her plan, whatever it is, is "old and tired" -- like her! -- and theirs is shiny and new and full of Freedom! We'll see who prevails.

If Hillary wins in 2016, we'll probably still have at least one Republican house of Congress, so the best we can probably hope for on health care is the renewal of the temporary patch indefinitely. If a Republican wins, gird your loins -- Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and even Sam Brownback proved that you can infuriate voters with wingnut legislation and still get reelected. So anything could happen, very possibly including repeal without replacement. If that happens early enough in 2017, I bet most Republicans can survive it and get reelected in November 2018. So I really think they'll go for it.

NO, REPUBLICANS WILL NEVER LEARN

The Washington Post's James Downi thinks Democrats should be pleased if Republicans nominate a movement conservative like Scott Walker in 2016:

As John Sides and Lynn Vavreck show in their must-read 2012 postmortem “The Gamble,” polls suggest that Obama, not Mitt Romney, was the candidate less ideologically similar to the average voter, and Obama’s liberalism may have cost him several percentage points with independent voters.... in what the fundamentals suggest will be a very close race, running a more moderate Democrat in Clinton against a stridently more conservative Republican in Walker could provide [the necessary] difference.

Furthermore, a losing Walker-led ticket would provide the best proof for the GOP base that the “our guy would have won if he was more conservative” argument is a myth. As much as outsiders rolled their eyes at post-election claims that Romney and John McCain “weren’t conservative,” it’s certainly true that they were on the more moderate side of their respective primary fields. It’d be impossible to claim that with Walker.... Maybe, just maybe, that will be enough to stop or at least stall the Republican Party’s sprint to the right and finally bring the GOP back to the bargaining table.

Nahhh. If Republicans lose with Walker (or Cruz, or Carson), they'll find all sorts of excuses to avoid blaming the candidate's strident conservatism. The evil Republican bosses made him pick a RINO as a running mate! Or if that doesn't happen: The evil Republican bosses deliberately threw the election because they felt threatened!

And, of course, all-powerful totalitarian liberalism will be at fault. The Clinton machine threatened people with death! Obama made his thug friends in ACORN and the New Black Panthers available to Hillary! The press had a slobbering love affair with Hillary! George Soros stole the election! Tom Steyer stole the election!

I used to think nothing but an LBJ-in-'64 shellacking would ever make Republicans see reason. Yes, that would help matters, but unless the GOP runs Cruz/Carson or a similarly fanatical ticket, it's unlikely to happen (and sorry, but it would be no more likely with Warren or Sanders as the nominee) -- and I don't think even that sort of blowout would matter much anymore. Republicans got shellacked in 2006 and 2008 congressional races and they just dug in their heels, working every lever they had available to them. They'd do the same thing after a presidential blowout in 2016, and they wouldn't modify their positions. They just can't bring themselves to do it. Republican Nation is a society within American society, and it's extremely averse to change. And Republicans have done too well in non-presidential elections to think they ever have to change.

And that's the key: Republicans have to suffer at the polls after 2016, and the suffering has to be sustained, in elections at every level of government. One presidential election isn't enough.

WAS ABRAHAM LINCOLN A KENYAN SOCIALIST?

It looked as if the Brian Williams story would keep the right occupied for days, but many right-wingers have moved on to a new Mass Rage Event, this one concerning remarks the president made at yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast about atrocities committed in the name of religion:

President Obama spoke for about thirty minutes and used almost three thousand words ... , but the only part of the speech the right wing media is focusing on is when he brought up the Crusades.

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ....

For this he's being attackd by everyone from Victor Davis Hanson ("This is banal") and Peggy Noonan ("He always says these things as if he’s the enlightened one") to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (who's upset because the president "singled out the Crusades and the Inquisition"), not to mention the former Virginia GOP candidate for lieutenant governor who thinks yoga is Satanic:

"Instead of closing Guantanamo Bay, frankly sir, you ought to close your mouth." -Bishop E. W. Jackson pic.twitter.com/fgODluX0S4

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) February 6, 2015

On Sean Hannity's show, radio ranter Mark Levin compared Obama unfavorably to Abraham Lincoln:

LEVIN: What’s ironic about it, Sean, is if Abraham Lincoln took the position of Barack Obama it would have been something like this: Lincoln saying “we’ve had slavery on every continent, in every country since the beginning of mankind.” The Egyptians enslaved the Jews, the Romans enslaved the Christians -- slavery is almost a human natural act, is it not? And Lincoln would say, following Obama’s argument, don’t get on your high horse, this is not an existential threat Obama said the other day of the genocide in the Middle East. And Lincoln might say, “why in the world would I send hundreds of thousands of men to their death to end slavery?”

Now, when I think of Lincoln, I think one of the best-known remarks ascribed to him. It was reportedly uttered during The Civil War and first appeared in Francis B. Carpenter's 1867 book, Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln:

"No nobler reply ever fell from the lips of a ruler, than that uttered by President Lincoln in response to the clergyman who ventured to say, in his presence, that he hoped 'the Lord was on our side.'

"'I am not at all concerned about that,' replied Mr. Lincoln, 'for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.'"

(Emphasis added.)

Did Lincoln really say this? It's not clear. But it's ingrained in our sense of Lincoln, so much so that even Sarah Palin felt motivated to quote it (in a somewhat garbled form) a few years back, in reference to the Bush-era wars.

The reply to the clergyman doesn't accuse Christians of crimes. But it does question whether America is on God's side, and is worthy of God's blessing.

Can you imagine the reaction to the remark if it had been publicly uttered in the Fox News era by a president Fox didn't like? Questioning whether God favors America? Implying that God might be on the enemy's side? How dare you, Mr. President!

This remark is now grandfathered as a Noble Patriotic Sentiment from a Great American. But if it hadn't attained that status, it could have outraged jingoists as much as Obama's remarks have.

MAYBE SAYING ISIS BETRAYS ISLAM ACTUALLY HELPS WIN HEARTS AND MINDS

Right-wing idiots attack President Obama every time he says that ISIS and other such groups betray Islam -- but maybe the point is that the president is trying to reach out to persuadable Muslims worldwide, in words that echo the way they are known to denounce ISIS and similar groups. Consider this, from a New York Times story about the Jordanian pilot who was burned alive by ISIS:

The pilot’s father, Safi Youssef al-Kasasbeh, an influential tribal sheikh, had earlier questioned whether Jordan should even be fighting the Islamic State. But after his son’s death, his qualms were gone. “I ask the international community to carry out just punishment against those terrorist groups that have no religion or traditional values,” he said in a telephone interview.

Emphasis added.

America's right-wingers pride themselves on their hatred of ISIS, but they can't possibly hate ISIS more than this man. And how does he express his contempt? By saying ISIS has "no religion."

I'm a Western white guy. I've never lived in a majority-Muslim society. But even I can tell, just from reading news stories, that many Muslims talk this way about ISIS or Al Qaeda or similar groups, especially after acts of brutal violence. American idiots can't grasp the fact that there are many Muslims who think it's extremely important to be a good Muslim but oppose the people we oppose. Why shouldn't we try to understand their perspective and reach out to them in ways that reflect that understanding?

ON BRIAN WILLIAMS, A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE

Yes, Brian Williams recently claimed that he was in a helicopter that was hit by an RPG while reporting in Iraq in 2003, and yes, his version of this story has changed over the years -- in earlier tellings, he accurately stated that his helicopter was behind the one that was actually hit. I'm supposed to be appalled and scandalized, but I'm deferring to John Cole on this, not just because he's a veteran and you probably aren't, any more than I am, but because he's right about the fact that memory can be tricky thing even for people who aren't millionaire talking heads, and because Williams uttered this falsehood while trying to honor a soldier who defended him while he was in Iraq, then rapidly (and I'd say sincerely) apologized. In the past I've pointed out that a story John McCain told in a 2008 campaign ad about his POW years -- that a kind-hearted guard secretly drew a cross in the sand to commemorate Christmas -- was never mentioned in McCain's earlier accounts of his imprisonment, and the anecdote is strikingly similar to stories that appear in other well-known accounts of imprisonment. But I'm not sure McCain is cynically lying when he says this -- at this point, he may really believe it happened. My father died when I was young, but I suspect his World War II stories would have become more dramatic over time. I think that's just how it is with strong memories.

But here's the key point about Williams: Whatever you think of him, this was not a distortion of the news. We need an informed citizenry, and Williams may not be doing a very good job of informing the public about what it needs to know -- his nightly news broadcasts are heavy on fluff -- but his claim didn't misrepresent any critical fact about the war itself. It wasn't Lara Logan deceiving the public about Benghazi or Judy Miller defrauding the public on Iraqi WMDs. It was just about Williams himself. Condemn them all, sure -- but remember that what Logan and Miller did was far worse, because they misinformed the public about critical issues. Williams just misinformed the public about Williams.

SCOTT WALKER IS NOW THE GOP FRONT-RUNNER

Maybe it won't last, but he's not just leading in Iowa -- Walkermania is spreading:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) holds a big lead among New Hampshire Republicans in the early primary state, drawing 21 percent support among likely voters in a poll by news network NH1 released Wednesday.

The governor is the biggest beneficiary of 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s decision to sit out 2016. Two weeks ago, when Romney was flirting with a bid, Walker won 8 percent of the vote. Romney led that poll with 29 percent.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is second, with 14 percent, followed by Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, each at 8 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee follow, at 6 percent, with Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 5 percent....

More on that poll here.

And, as The Washington Post's Aaron Blake notes, there's more:

... another automated poll in North Carolina from Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling showed Walker tied with Bush and Ben Carson for the lead at 14 percent, with Mike Huckabee at 13 percent. North Carolina could be one of the first states t0 vote, shortly after South Carolina.

Blake adds:

Oh, and there was that whole Drudge Report poll which, while not scientific in the least, certainly isn't a bad thing for Walker. He took 44 percent, after all.

Drudge isn't the only one running an unscientific but Walker-friendly online poll of right-wingers. There's also this, from the Daily Caller:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the current favorite of Republicans for 2016, according to a unique form of online polling conducted in partnership with The Daily Caller that gauges conservative interest for potential GOP presidential candidates.

The survey -- operated by the organization Contract From America -- asks users to pick favorite candidates in multiple head-to-head match-ups. It’s not scientific, but does indicate which candidates are popular with conservatives.

“By doing so, we elicit the deeper preferences of users well beyond their top choice, which prevents the kind of ‘gaming’ that is often seen in other online polls,” said Ryan Hecker of Contract From America, which runs the poll.

For example, a user may be asked to choose between Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. After that, the user may be asked to choose between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. That process continues on and on with a variety of potential presidential candidates.

With 935,119 total votes, here are the latest results, as of Wednesday:

1. Scott Walker 80% 2. Ted Cruz 77% 3. Ben Carson 69% 4. Rick Perry 67% 5. Bobby Jindal 62% 6. Marco Rubio 57% 7. Rand Paul 56% 8. Mike Pence 50% 9. Mike Huckabee 47% 10. Mitt Romney 45% 11. Susana Martinez 42% 12. Rick Santorum 41% 13. Rob Portman 35% 14. Donald Trump 31% 15. Jeb Bush 22% 16. Chris Christie 19%

Ryan Hecker, a Houston teabagger, was named chief operating officer of FreedomWorks for America in 2011. FredomWorks has hitorically deep ties to the Koch brothers, of course, although the Kochs now say they have nothing to do with it. Ryan Hecker developed the Contract from America (from which hisorganiation takes its name) in 2009 and 2010 with the help of Dick Armey from FreedomWorks.

Does an online poll from Matt Drudge seem a little hinky to you? Or one from FreedomWorks and the Daily Caller? Yeah, me too. But there's a lot of effort going into the process of making Walker seem like the people's choice. And -- for now, at least -- it seems to be working.

TODAY IN REPUBLICAN IRRATIONALITY

I'm not saying that all Republicans care about this sort of thing, but I suspect that all the people in Washington who've ever cared about this sort of thing are Republicans:

Rep. Joe Barton (Texas) isn't about to have his prized legislation get tagged with a 666 -- the number of the beast.

Barton on Wednesday successfully changed the bill number for his legislation repealing a decades-old ban on crude oil exports from 666, a figure frequently tied to the antichrist and Satanism, to the more anodyne 702.

“It quickly became clear that the original bill number carried many different negative connotations,” Barton spokesman Sean Brown said in an email. “We decided it was best to change it so people will focus on the content of the legislation, not the bill number.” ...

Some of you may recall that when Ronald Reagan left the presidency, a group of friends bought him and Nancy a house in Bel-Air, California, located at 666 St. Cloud Road. The Reagans accepted the gift, but had the address changed to 668 St. Cloud Road, to avoid intimations of the apocalypse. Yes, really.

(And I know -- a lot of people noted at the time that "Ronald Wilson Reagan" consisted of three six-letter names. But people say ridiculous things about the Obamas, and that doesn't mean the Obamas actually take that sort of nonsense seriously. Ron and Nancy apparently did.)

SO WHY DIDN'T FOX POST PREVIOUS EXECUTION VIDEOS IN THEIR ENTIRETY?

The Guardian reports:

Fox News has chosen to embed on its website the video of Islamic State burning a hostage to death, a move which makes them the only US media organisation to broadcast the video in full.

The extremely graphic 22-minute video shows Muadh al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot, being set on fire and burned to death in a cage. Fox News did not post the videos of the killings of previous Isis hostages....

The video hasn't been televised on Fox News, but Shepard Smith did narrate it in detail.

Here's Fox's explanation for this decision:

Fox News executive vice president John Moody issued this statement today explaining the decision:

After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video. Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content.

But Islamic State operatives also videotaped the executions of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig, and Haruna Yukawa. Why didn't Fox solemnly declare the need to share those videos?

I have to assume it's because those victims were all white, with the exception of Yukawa, who was Japanese.

Fox posted this video, obviously, looking for increased traffic on its various media platforms, and hoping to increase hatred toward various enemies (not just the Islamic State but the Obama administration, which is, to all Fox viewers, completely to blame for IS's existence). Fox can handle the criticism that it's doing IS a favor by disseminating one of its nastiest (and, probably, most effective) propaganda videos. However, it probably couldn't have handled outrage from the family of any of the white execution victims, who would have been horrified to see a family member's brutal death exploited by Fox, and probably would have expressed anger in public. The American people would have agreed that what Fox did was outrageous -- and I imagine most Americans would have been able to relate to outrage from a Japanese victim's family as well.

But Fox presumes that Heartland America sees Muadh al-Kasasbeh as just some guy from the Middle East. He's a Jordanian -- who cares what his family thinks? He may be a victim of appalling violence perpetrated by America's most hated enemy, but the people at Fox know that its audience won't care if the channel is attacked by Jordanians after Fox exploits his death for clicks and ratings.

If I'm wrong about this -- if this killing was just the last straw, and Fox top brass now thinks it's appropriate to post IS execution videos -- then there's nothing preventing Fox from retroactively posting all the execution videos, right now.

But that won't happen, because some dead people get more respect than others at Fox.

SCOTT WALKER HAS HIS SCRIPT MEMORIZED

Here's Scott Walker in a "tele-town hall" on Monday, as reported by the Des Moines Register (emphasis added):

During a question-and-answer session, a Des Moines man mentioned that when Mitt Romney officially bowed out of any 2016 speculation on Friday, the 2012 nominee said it's time for fresh leadership in the Republican party.

"What do you think he meant by that and is that you?" the caller asked Walker....

"I thanked him specifically for pointing that out," Walker said. "I think, you know, there's others -- my friend Sen. (Marco) Rubio is about the same age and so in terms of fresh faces I guess he and I would be in a similar vein," Walker said....

"If we're going to if defeat someone like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2016," Walker told the listening Iowans, "I just believe if we're taking on a name from the past, then we can't have another name from the past. We need a name for the future."

But the key isn't just a fresh face, Walker said, it's someone who can offer "big bold ideas and we need the courage to act on them," Walker said.

And here's Scott Walker the day before, being interviewed by Martha Raddatz on ABC's This Week:

RADDATZ: Mitt Romney dropping out this week said, "I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders who may not be as well known may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee." Is he talking about you?

WALKER: I think there's a whole number of people. I mean, folks like my friend Marco Rubio. I think fit that bill as well, but I think what he's heard is what I've heard across the country, is that people want new, fresh leadership with big, bold ideas, and the courage to act on it. And if we're going to take on a name from the past, which is likely to be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I think for the party we need a name from the future.

Yes, Walker clearly has these bullet points committed to memory, so he can recite them even in seemingly casual conversation.

And there's more. Here's Walker on Monday:

"I see a president who seems to feels success should be measured by how many people are dependent on the government," Walker said.

Now here's Walker in a National Republican Governors' Association speech last fall:

"I believe (Obama) measures success in government by how many people are dependent on the government, on how many people are on Medicaid, on how many people are on food stamps," the Republican presidential nominee wanna-be proclaimed. "I personally believe we should measure success in government by just the opposite, by how many people are no longer dependent on government."

And Walker in his book Unintimidated:

"Washington measures success by how many people are dependent on government. I measure by how many people are no longer dependent."

Well, that's not exactly an original sentiment on the right. But Walker likes working other people's material into his script. In Monday's call, there was this:

Under Obama, government assistance has become less of a safety net and more of "a hammock," he said.

That, of course, is a cover version of a song Paul Ryan recorded but no longer plays in concert.

Oh, and there was this, in Walker's now-legendary Iowa Freedom Summit speech:

"There's a reason we take a day off to celebrate the 4th of July and not the 15th of April," he said, almost yelling as his voice grew hoarse. "Because in America we value our independence from the government, not our dependence on it."

That's awfully similar to something Ronald Reagan said about Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential campaign:

He sees an America in which every day is tax day, April 15th. But we see an America in which every day is Independence Day, July 4th.

(Reagan fans usually reduce that to "Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July. Democrats believe every day is April 15.")

The key to beating Walker is going to be to knock him off script. Because he clearly likes scripts.

THOM TILLIS AND ASYMMETRIC POOP INFORMATION

I understand what North Carolina's new U.S. senator, Thom Tillis, is getting at here:

During a Q&A at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday, Tillis related a story from his time in the state legislature in 2010, complaining that the U.S. is "one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet," video via C-SPAN shows.

“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,'" the senator said.

Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to "opt out" of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom.

The senator said he'd be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in "advertising" and "employment literature."

“I said: ‘I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,” Tillis said.

“The market will take care of that," he added, to laughter from the audience.

Wingers love the idea that markets are perfect, or ought to be (and when they aren't it's because they've been mucked up by all sorts of liberalism and socialism). They love to believe that if you have perfect information, or as close to perfect information as possible, you'll never have a bad transaction, even in a thoroughly unregulated marketplace (or if you do it's your own damn fault). Who cares if you have to take the extra step of screening for a suitable hand-washing policy when you just want to grab a quick cup of coffee and go? An entrepreneur ought to have the right to run an establishment where the risk of E. coli is higher, because freedom.

NEWSFLASH: WORSHIPER OF CAPITALISM KNOWS BUGGER-ALL ABOUT CAPITALISTS

I was amused by this, from Politico:

How Rand Paul bombed at Koch brothers gathering

Some of the most influential players in big-money conservative politics gathered late last month to discuss government’s role in society, but their focus kept shifting to a less weighty topic: Rand Paul’s outfit.

The Kentucky senator and prospective GOP presidential candidate ... appeared at the annual winter meeting of the Koch donor network wearing a boxy blue blazer, faded jeans and cowboy boots.

Some attendees commented that Paul’s appearance was “cavalier,” said Frayda Levin, a Paul supporter and major donor who attended the conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, California.... “This is an older crowd and much more establishment crowd. They are used to a Romney. They are used to a Jeb Bush,” Levin said.

“Jeans might work for a younger audience,” said another attendee, “but these are old bulls who put on a tie every day to go to the office.”

The libertarian myth tells us that capitalists are idealistic visionaries devoted to the pursuit of profit as an almost spiritual exercise. To a large extent, Rand Paul probably believes this myth. He probably thinks that capitalists are, to a large extent, mystics. Unfortunately, at the Koch confab he found himself among actually existing capitalists, and he didn't understand what really makes them tick: They want to be deferred to. They want their rings kissed. They want those who approach them to grovel.

Anyone who's paid attention to the billionaires bemoaning their fate in the Obama years and comparing the alleged disrespect they've experienced to the suffering of Hitler's victims would have understood this going in. Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush also get it, because they've had more years of experience trying to do deals with billionaires, both in politics and in business (and, of course, it's their world too, by birthright). But getting all your knowledge of capitalism from Ayn Rand novels and "philosophers" of laissez-faire is a bit like getting all your knowledge of sex from Internet porn: Um, real people don't act like that. As Senator Paul has now learned.

SCOTT WALKER: WATCH OUT FOR THE QUIET, GLASSY-EYED, UNCHARISMATIC ONES

I don't agree with Chris Cillizza that Matt Drudge "might be more powerful now than ever before," but he still helps drive conversation on the right, so this matters:

Matt Drudge is currently running a "poll" on his website ... that asks readers to choose their preferred 2016 Republican presidential candidate. As of 3:15 pm eastern time, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was dominating with 47 percent (more than 84,000 votes) followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 14 percent and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 13 percent. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who has been anointed by the party establishment as the frontrunner in the race, takes 5 percent....

So far in this cycle, Drudge has been hard on Bush (highlighting lots of stories that suggest the former Florida governor isn't all that conservative) and quite kind to Walker. Here's the current lead of the site:

Drudge was awfully good to Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign -- even in mid-2011 it was clear that Romney was winning the "Drudge primary," and in March 2012, when Romney finally secured the nomination, Drudge's front page was almost Riefenstahlian:



Obviously, Drudge's fondness for Romney didn't help him in November. But it sure didn't hurt in the primaries. And now it seems that Walker is Drudge's guy and Jeb Bush is Drudge's sworn enemy, just as Gingrich and Santorum were targets of Drudge attacks in 2012.

This reaffirms my sense that Walker, Droopy Dog affect notwithstanding, is going to be a tough guy to beat. One additional reason: His team plays hardball. I'm seeing reports that there's now strong circumstantial evidence of a payment from a Walker crony to James O'Keefe, the gotcha videographer, just before O'Keefe happened to goad state senate president Mike Ellis, a Republican but a sometime Walker foe, into saying embarrassing things on camera, with the result that the shamed Ellis chose not to run for reelection. This is being touted as a story that hurts Walker, but he got what he wanted, and what are the odds that he'll pay a price for this?

He's not likely to pay a price for that or anything else if he succeeds in his efforts to change the way the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is chosen. A constitutional amendment to make the change has now passed both houses of the Rep;ublican-dominated Wisconsin legislature and will be put up for a vote in an off-cycle election on April 7, at which it's safe to predict that Democratic voters will, as usual, not show up. If the change happens, it's expected to remove current chief justice Shirley Abrahamsohn, a liberal who's made trouble for Walker. The court, in all likelihood, will then be run by a conservative judge, Pat Roggensack. That will be the effective end of the case stemming from a so-called John Doe investigation into charges that Walker's campaign operation has illegally coordinated its efforts with those of deep-pocketed national right-wing groups, if only because the right-wing judges on the court rely heavily on cash from precisely those groups to get reelected.

So, yeah, Walker looks like a nebbish, but he's got some muscle behind him. Watch out for him.

(O'Keefe story via Yastreblyansky. Abrahamsohn story via Charlie Pierce.)

WE NEED A NEW WORD: #RANDSPLAINING

Was this sexism? Or is Rand Paul a jerk toward anyone, male or female, who offers him even a mild challenge in an interview? I really don't know:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) squared off with CNBC host Kelly Evans in a testy interview on Monday, at one point "shushing" the host as she challenged him on a tax proposal.

In discussing Paul's plan for a tax "holiday" for companies bringing back cash from overseas, Evans said that research shows that plans like Paul's cost more money than they save over the long term.

When Evans interjected, Paul raised his finger to his lips and said "shhh."

"Calm down a bit here, Kelly, let me answer the question," he said.

... Asked about his plans, the senator said biased media coverage is one of the obstacles in his path.

"Part of the problem is that you end up having interviews like this where the interview is so slanted and full of distortions that you don't get useful information," Paul said. "I think this is what is bad about TV sometimes. So frankly, I think if we do this again, you need to start out with a little more objectivity going into the interview."

Paul said at one point,

"You have taken an interview and you've made an interview into something where we got no useful information because you were argumentative and you started out with so many presuppositions that were incorrect."

He was arrogant and condescending from the first question (which was about vaccines -- more on that later). I don't know why Paul thinks he was unable to impart any "useful information" -- he did 70% of the talking and then complained when he was talked over once or twice by his interviewer, as if she was silencing him. Here's the whole thing, if you can bear it.



I don't get it. Here's a guy ho's chosen to be a politician, and a controversy-courting one at that -- and he can't handle a mildly combative interviewer without snarling and sneering? And he wants to be president? Does he think everyone's going to be nice to him if he runs or, God help us, wins?

On the subject of vaccines, yes, as you probably know already, he said that "most" should be voluntary, and he had one full-on conspiratorial booga-booga moment:

"I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines," he said.

But his argument for vaccine voluntarism was mostly laissez-faire -- which is crazy. It's the same one-size-fits-all notion that libertarians have about everything: treat vaccination as a marketplace product and the free choices of free people will result in the best of all possible worlds, because markets are perfect that way. Government can act as vaccination's ad agency, but it shouldn't do any more than that.

PAUL: I think public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids and how they are good for public health is a great idea. We just appointed a surgeon general. These are some of the things that are things that we should promote as good for our health. But I don't think there's anything extraordinary about resorting to freedom.

The problem is, of course, that you can't laissez-faire your way to herd immunity, because we need to agree to banish certain diseases through vaccination as a society, or it fails.

I don't think Paul is too stupid to understand this. It's just that, for him, freedom!!! trumps everything else.

CHRISTIE, OBAMA, CLINTON: VACCINE SKEPTICS?

The Daily Beast's Olivia Nuzzi notes that Chris Christie expressed quite a bit of sympathy for the anti-vaccine position back in 2009:

While running for governor in 2009, Christie wrote a letter wherein he seemed to acknowledge a link between autism and vaccinations—a theory for which there is no scientific proof.

“I have met with families affected by autism from across the state and have been struck by their incredible grace and courage. Many of these families have expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.”

Also in 2009, Christie told The Don Imus Show that he struggled with then-Gov. Jon Corzine’s flu-shot mandate and the problems some parents have with vaccines.

It's since been pointed out that Barack Obama expressed some skepticism about vaccines in the 2008 campaign; this was criticized at the time as "autism pandering."

"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it." --Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.

Obama pushed back, noting through a spokesman that when he said "This person included" he was referring to someone in his audience, not himself. By September 2008, however, Obama was angering the anti-vaxx community by telling an vaccine-skeptic blogger that he supported vaccination:

Last Friday evening, September 5, 2008, I had the opportunity to ask Senator Barack Obama about childhood vaccine safety/choice. His response, “I am not for selective vaccination, I believe that it will bring back deadly diseases, like polio.”

The Daily Caller, meanwhile, points out that Hillary Clinton expressed some vaccine skepticism in 2008:

But as a 2008 presidential contender, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton indicated that she was a vaccination skeptic as well.

As The Huffington Post and The American Prospect reported in April of that year, Clinton called for more research into the autism-vaccination link in response to a questionnaire from A-CHAMP, an autism awareness group.

Clinton wrote that she was “committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines.”

And in response to the question of whether she would support more research into a link between vaccinations and autism rates, Clinton wrote: “Yes. We don’t know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism -- but we should find out.”

Which is odd, because an anti-vaxx blog recently called Clinton "the mother of the autism epidemic" because, in the first year of her husband's administration, she pushed for a law intended to increase childhood vaccination rates. (She was also attacked from the right for that program: The Wall Street Journal editorial page said in 2003 that the program, under which the government purchased a large percentage of available vaccines at a discounted and redistributed them to uninsured and underinsured, was responsible for a vaccine shortage.)

Her pro-vaccination stance also angered vaccine skeptic Don Imus:



Oh, and a major focus of the Clinton Foundation is speeding up the rollout of new vaccines.

So Obama and Clinton seem unquestionably pro-vaccine. Christie? Um, he's getting there.

****

UPDATE, TUESDAY:

The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let's protect all our kids. #GrandmothersKnowBest

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2015

(Via Ali Elkin at Bloomberg Politics.)

Also, via Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times, here's the April 2008 clip of Obama talking about vaccines in Pennsylvania. When he says "This person included," he unquestionably refers to a person in the audience.

TODAY IN PEOPLE WHO AREN'T GOING TO BE ELECTED PRESIDENT IN 2016 (updated)

Michael Barbaro of The New York Times reports on Chris Christie's latest trip:

... Mr. Christie, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2016, ... has traveled to London on a three-day trade mission, the kind of jaunt intended to build his credibility as a potential commander in chief.

So ... are we all feeling the credibility? Do we sense it building? Did you even know Christie was overseas?

Not only is this trip failing to get Christie much media coverage, the Times story reports that the Brits have no idea who he is:

“Who?” asked Graham Upson, a 55-year-old soccer fan inside the frigid Emirates Stadium on Sunday, seeming blissfully unaware of Mr. Christie’s presence in the stands, not to mention his very existence.

New Jersey? Brash governor? Presidential hopeful? Mr. Upson, dressed in a blue down jacket with a red knit cap over his heard, stared back blankly. “I’ve been to New York a few times,” he offered....

“I’ve vaguely heard of him,” said Michael Rabbett, 67, as he sipped red wine from a plastic cup (“wine beer,” he noted). He paused to let the name roll around in his head. “He’s in the background of my head. But not really,” he concluded.

Alerted to Mr. Christie’s reputation for voluble candor as well as his party affiliation, Mr. Rabbett asked his own question. “Has he told that lady from Alaska to shut up?”

No, he was informed. Mr. Christie had not tried to silence the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. “Well why not?” he inquired.

And no one will even hug him in the owner's box.

This guy thinks he's going to be president and he's this bad at optics? Why did he expect to get attention for an overseas trip on Super Bowl weekend? For that matter, why is he overseas on Super Bowl weekend? And at a soccer match? What the hell kind of American is he?

Some people still think Christie's going to get a boost from Mitt Romney's departure from the presidential race, but in Iowa, according to that new Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll, he's tied with Rick Santorum for eight place, with 4% of the vote. Ninth place, actually, if you count "Not sure" (5%). Oh, and:

More troubling for Christie: He's viewed unfavorably by 54 percent, among the highest negative ratings in the potential field.

In fact, he has the highest negative rating in the potential field, because the only person whose negatives are higher is a loudmouthed fraud who's never going to run, Donald Trump (68%).

Christie was also in eighth place among Republicans nationwide, at 4%, in a Fox poll conducted last week. Mitt Romney was included in that poll -- but when he was removed from the candidate list, Christie landed in, um, seventh place, at 6%.

Other polls have different results, but I think Christie is out of the running. I'd say it's not Bridgegate. He'll just never overcome that Obama moment after Sandy in the eyes of the Republican base. Once again, what looks good to general-election voters will kill you in the Republican primaries.

****

UPDATE: Holy crap.

Christie Says Parents Should Have ‘Choice’ on Vaccinations

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Amid an outbreak of measles that has spread across 14 states, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on Monday said that parents “need to have some measure of choice” about vaccinating their children against the virus, breaking with President Obama and much of the medical profession.

In remarks here, Mr. Christie stopped short of recommending that parents immunize their children against measles, or any other illness, calling for “balance” and “choice.”

Mr. Christie, when asked about the connection between the new measles cases and parents who object to the long-recommended vaccine against it, said that he and his wife had vaccinated their four children. He called that “the best expression I can give you of my opinion.”

But he added: “It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”

Mr. Christie said that “not every vaccine is created equal, and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

Governor Christie? Michele Bachmann on Line 3.

I half-wondered whether President Obama's endorsement of vaccinations in an NBC interview might inspire wingnuts to stop getting shots for their kids, but I assumed even Obama-hate wouldn't motivate the wingers to go that far, especially when Marin County liberals are getting most of the blame for anti-vaccine hysteria. I certainly didn't expect Christie to be the first presidential aspirant to leap to the front of this particular parade, if it developed.

And the bizarre thing is that, as The Telegraph reports, Christie is in Cambridge, in part, "to highlight New Jersey's pharmaceutical industry." So he's not just reinforcing superstition, he's insulting the industry he's there to promote. What an embarrassment.

****

UPDATE:

As @nomoremister has said before, if Foxistan joins the anti-vaxx movement, we are f***ed. Hope that's not what Christie's staement about

— DougJ (@DougJBalloon) February 2, 2015

Yes -- but the fact that the first Republican to say something like this was Christie may have been a lucky break. The wingers think he's a hopeless RINO, so I think they'll see this as a clumsy attempt at pandering to them by someone who's not of their tribe. Now, if vaccination is denounced by Ben Carson or Scott Walker or Ted Cruz, we really may be in trouble. If some talk radio demigod (Limbaugh, Mark Levin) goes anti-vaxx, flee to Canada.

****

UPDATE: Christie's office walks it back, unconvincingly:

"The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," Christie's office said in a statement. "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."

So, why was he saying that "parents need to have some measure of choice"? No explanation.

****

AND: Excellent point from Aunt Snow in comments:

“not every vaccine is created equal, and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

Says the guy who forcibly detained a nurse who didn't have Ebola.

You can catch measles by being in the same room as someone. Ebola? Not so much.

Please, media, make this connection the next time you're questioning Christie.

****

UPDATE: I guess that's going to happen:

Next level troll game pic.twitter.com/N5keQdEUUL

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) February 2, 2015

STOP ASSUMING JEB BUSH IS THE GOP FRONT-RUNNER

It looks as if Karen Tumulty and Matea Gold were just putting the finishing touches on a story for The Washington Post about Jeb Bush's front-runner status...

Mitt Romney’s decision to forgo a third try at the White House has settled the question of whether the 2016 GOP presidential field has a front-runner — bestowing a coveted status on former Florida governor Jeb Bush that also raises new challenges and perils.

... and then this happened:

Walker Surging in Iowa Poll as Bush Struggles

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is surging, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is an also-ran...

The Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, taken Monday through Thursday, shows Walker leading a wide-open Republican race with 15 percent, up from just 4 percent in the same poll in October. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was at 14 percent and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, stood at 10 percent.

Bush trailed with 8 percent and increasingly is viewed negatively by likely Republican caucus-goers.... At 9 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson pulls more support than ... Bush...

Mitt Romney was included in this poll (he was at 13%, far ahead of Jeb) -- but Jeb doesn't get the bulk of Romney's votes. Far from it:

When [Romney's] supporters are re-allocated to their second choice, Walker's backing grows to 16 percent, followed by 15 percent for Paul, 13 percent for Huckabee, and 10 percent for Carson. Removing Romney from his third-place spot had no effect on the ranking order of the other top potential candidates and offered the biggest boost to Huckabee. Bush's overall number inched up just one point, to 9 percent.

Tumulty and Gold shoehorned these poll results into paragraph 16 of their story. Maybe that seems reasonable if you assume that Iowa is anomalous, that Walker is just getting a momentary boost from an unusually well-received Iowa speech, and that Bush has the fat cats sewn up. But I think what Byron York wrote about Walker a week ago in his much-read piece "12 Keys to the Presidential Race Right Now" is essentially correct:

As a lot of Republicans see it, the Wisconsin governor is the most accomplished candidate in the race. Who can match his achievement staring down the mighty public-sector unions and then winning a recall and re-election in a blue state? For Republicans, those are simply huge victories.

No, the word "accomplishment," when applied to an elected official does not mean to Republicans what it means to you or me. "Accomplishment," to the right, doesn't mean improving the lot of citizens -- it means smiting liberals and crushing unions. But, of course, this is precisely what Republican voters want from government.

I also like this quote about Walker from the Bloomberg poll story:

“I like what he did to Wisconsin, and I think he'd be great at getting rid of a bunch of stuff that the government is doing to us,” said Kerri Vaughn, a carpenter from western Iowa who has followed Walker's career mostly on Fox News.

Right -- Vaughn doesn't like what Walker did in Wisconsin, or for Wisconsin -- Vaughn likes what Walker did to Wisconsin. Politicians are, or ought to be, like the worst kinds of cops or CEOs -- they should go into a situation and do stuff to people, smacking them around for their own good. Note what in particular Vaughn would like our next president to "accomplish": "getting rid of a bunch of stuff that the government is doing to us."

And please read what Peter Beinart wrote about Walker last week. Beinart makes the point that Walker isn't trying to make centrist moves that will appeal to mainstream journalists and pundits, and that's very appealing to RINO-averse Republican voters:

... the most striking thing about Scott Walker’s speech at the Freedom Summit, and his emerging campaign message more generally, is how retro it is. Walker concedes nothing to the conventional wisdom about what the GOP must do to compete in a more culturally tolerant, ethnically diverse and economically insecure America. And the GOP faithful love it....

His speech in Iowa not only slammed President Obama’s executive action legalizing some undocumented immigrants. It didn’t even include the love-letter to legal immigrants that Republicans typically use to shield themselves from charges of being anti-Hispanic. In addition, Walker said nothing about reaching out to African Americans and boasted about Wisconsin’s voter-ID law....

In recent months, many of Walker’s likely GOP opponents have moved beyond a purely anti-government message to suggest conservative-sounding ways government can give Americans an economic boost. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio have proposed new anti-poverty tax credits. Mitt Romney has backed a higher minimum wage.

Walker’s having none of it. His message is simple and old-fashioned: “Take control from the federal government and big-government special interests and give it back to hard-working taxpayers.”

And yet he's won three elections in an Obama state. He apparently doesn't scare Democrats, apart from the small subset of politically engaged, Maddow-watching progressives.

If you're a Republican voter or fat-cat donor, what's not to like?

I'm not saying Walker will be the nominee. But he's what Republicans want, so he should be the nominee. After the Iowa Freedom Summit, Slate's John Dikerson wrote, "as Walker spoke you could almost hear the political boxes being checked off." He bargain-shops at Kohl's like a good, thrifty heartlander! He thanked Iowa voters for their prayers like a good Christian conservative!

Walker's not the front-runner -- but I think he will be.