FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE EXPERIENCED PAUL TSONGAS-MANIA
A lot of the reaction has been snarky, but I actually think a third-party presidential bid by Sam Nunn could garner positive press -- at least it could if he weren't calling the Iraq War a "fiasco" and seeking a global ban on nuclear weapons.
If he were the guy he used to be -- a hawkish Democrat who threw Bill Clinton an anvil when Clinton struggled to keep his head above water after trying to overturn the ban on gays in the military early in his term -- the press would absolutely love him. Really, what the press wants is someone who'll bash the Democrats from the right on foreign policy and social spending while not seeming quite as ickily right-wing as the Republicans on an issue or two. Paul Tsongas filled the bill for a while in '92, as did Ross Perot until we all figured out he was crazy.
This year it would be pretty simple: Charge Democrats with recklessness on Iraq (while also criticizing Bush), say Democrats are going to spend us into the poorhouse with their universal health plans (while arguing that more tax cuts would blow up the deficit), and be pro-evolution and kind of pro-choice. That's what David Broder and other Unity '08 types want -- not a guy who's seriously proposing that we melt swords into plowshares. (Though he'll get points for his advocacy of nuclear power -- hating nukes is for hippies!)
Monday, August 20, 2007
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT ISN'T DUE
Over the years I've sensed the Hand of Rove in a number of events he probably had little or nothing to do with, but even I think this is going too far:
...In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush's opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
... instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry.
Their thinking went like this, [former Rove lieutenant Matthew] Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most....
"Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters' minds.
"So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards," Dowd said....
Do you remember the White House attacking Kerry to the exclusion of all other Democrats during the primary season? I don't. (It seems to me that the target of most GOP attacks was Dean, even after his candidacy sputtered out.) I certainly don't remember thinking, "These guys really hate Kerry -- golly, he must be worth voting for!" Anyone else remember feeling that?
Do you even remember thinking Edwards could win? I don't. I remember he seemed to go from being an also-ran behind Dean to being an also-ran behind Kerry.
In any case, this all comes in an L.A. Times article that advances the theory that Rove is attacking Hillary so we'll vote for her (because he's thinks she's the easiest top-tier candidate to beat). Er, I don't know -- I think he's attacking her because he sincerely thinks she's the easiest top-tier candidate to beat.
The Times could be right, however. But does this kind of psych-out even work? Maybe Democrats should test the proposition -- maybe Democratic candidates should increase their attacks on the apparently rather beatable Mitt Romney. In any case, if he does get the nomination and he loses, some Democratic political operative should certainly try to puff up his reputation after the fact by claiming that Romney's primary-season success was all a Democratic trick.
Over the years I've sensed the Hand of Rove in a number of events he probably had little or nothing to do with, but even I think this is going too far:
...In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush's opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
... instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry.
Their thinking went like this, [former Rove lieutenant Matthew] Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most....
"Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters' minds.
"So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards," Dowd said....
Do you remember the White House attacking Kerry to the exclusion of all other Democrats during the primary season? I don't. (It seems to me that the target of most GOP attacks was Dean, even after his candidacy sputtered out.) I certainly don't remember thinking, "These guys really hate Kerry -- golly, he must be worth voting for!" Anyone else remember feeling that?
Do you even remember thinking Edwards could win? I don't. I remember he seemed to go from being an also-ran behind Dean to being an also-ran behind Kerry.
In any case, this all comes in an L.A. Times article that advances the theory that Rove is attacking Hillary so we'll vote for her (because he's thinks she's the easiest top-tier candidate to beat). Er, I don't know -- I think he's attacking her because he sincerely thinks she's the easiest top-tier candidate to beat.
The Times could be right, however. But does this kind of psych-out even work? Maybe Democrats should test the proposition -- maybe Democratic candidates should increase their attacks on the apparently rather beatable Mitt Romney. In any case, if he does get the nomination and he loses, some Democratic political operative should certainly try to puff up his reputation after the fact by claiming that Romney's primary-season success was all a Democratic trick.
NO EXCITEMENT, PLEASE, WE'RE CLINTONS
I find this Robert Novak item rather plausible:
Clinton backers see Warner -- not Obama -- as best V.P. choice
Anticipating that Sen. Hillary Clinton will clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, some supporters are beginning to argue against her choosing her principal rival -- Sen. Barack Obama -- for vice president.
They maintain Obama provides no general election help for Clinton. As an African-American from Illinois, he represents an ethnic group and a state already solidly in the Democratic column.
This school of thought advocates a Southerner as Clinton's running mate. The last time Democrats won a national election without a Southerner on the ticket was 1944. Prominent Democrats from the South are in short supply today. The leading prospect: former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.
Yeah, I don't think it'll be Obama or Richardson -- the Clintons are so cautious that she's not going to want to frighten the public by (gasp!) offering them a ticket with two people who aren't males of northern European extraction. I also think she thinks having Obama on the ticket would undercut her foreign policy credentials (of course, she's the principal reason he's seen as shaky on foreign policy).
I'm not sure Warner is her ideal choice -- her ideal choice would probably be a male WASP Southerner with some foreign policy expertise, but not enough to make her look inexperienced by comparison.
Er, Hill -- if you're going to pick a white guy from the South, how 'bout James Webb? Naaah, never happen -- not bland and reassuring enough.
As for the Republicans, Greg makes the point in the comments to this thread that Giuliani, if he gets the nomination, could well pick Fred Thompson. I agree with Greg that that would be a hard ticket to beat. ("Wow -- two people I've seen on TV!") And they're well matched -- Southern/Northern, tightly wound/lackadaisical, etc., etc.
And banish any notion that Giuliani would be Thompson's or Romney's #2 -- Rudy has an ego the size of Texas, and he'd never be anyone's #2. (Attorney general or Homeland Security secretary, maybe, and that's a terrifying thought.)
*****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
I find this Robert Novak item rather plausible:
Clinton backers see Warner -- not Obama -- as best V.P. choice
Anticipating that Sen. Hillary Clinton will clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, some supporters are beginning to argue against her choosing her principal rival -- Sen. Barack Obama -- for vice president.
They maintain Obama provides no general election help for Clinton. As an African-American from Illinois, he represents an ethnic group and a state already solidly in the Democratic column.
This school of thought advocates a Southerner as Clinton's running mate. The last time Democrats won a national election without a Southerner on the ticket was 1944. Prominent Democrats from the South are in short supply today. The leading prospect: former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.
Yeah, I don't think it'll be Obama or Richardson -- the Clintons are so cautious that she's not going to want to frighten the public by (gasp!) offering them a ticket with two people who aren't males of northern European extraction. I also think she thinks having Obama on the ticket would undercut her foreign policy credentials (of course, she's the principal reason he's seen as shaky on foreign policy).
I'm not sure Warner is her ideal choice -- her ideal choice would probably be a male WASP Southerner with some foreign policy expertise, but not enough to make her look inexperienced by comparison.
Er, Hill -- if you're going to pick a white guy from the South, how 'bout James Webb? Naaah, never happen -- not bland and reassuring enough.
As for the Republicans, Greg makes the point in the comments to this thread that Giuliani, if he gets the nomination, could well pick Fred Thompson. I agree with Greg that that would be a hard ticket to beat. ("Wow -- two people I've seen on TV!") And they're well matched -- Southern/Northern, tightly wound/lackadaisical, etc., etc.
And banish any notion that Giuliani would be Thompson's or Romney's #2 -- Rudy has an ego the size of Texas, and he'd never be anyone's #2. (Attorney general or Homeland Security secretary, maybe, and that's a terrifying thought.)
*****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Sunday, August 19, 2007
THRILL-SEEKING RISK-AVOIDERS
In The New York Times, Charles McGrath reveals a secret truth about The Dangerous Book for Boys, the runaway bestseller that's been lavishly praised by Rush Limbaugh and other right-wingers:
What's odd about "The Dangerous Book" ... is that, with the exception of shooting and cooking a rabbit, the activities it recommends are not dangerous at all. The book includes almost none of the underground know-how that was part of the birthright of an American boy who grew up, say, in the 1950's: how to fashion a raft out of empty oil drums; how to siphon gasoline using just your mouth and a rubber tube; how to make a slingshot out of coat-hanger wire; how to light a cigarette in the wind; how to make a bomb from match heads and a piece of pipe. There is a chapter on how to build a go-cart, but no suggestion about how you might soup it up with a pulley, a belt and a lawnmower engine....
What I keep wondering is: Why do we believe that modern boys are emasculated wusses who avoid danger because feminism and political correctness have made them that way?
Weren't we just being told fairly recently about new "teen crazes" like ghost-riding the whip ("leaving the wheel of a moving car and walking, running, or dancing beside it"), as seen in videos like this? Or fence plowing ("The concept is simple: Pick out a fence, run toward it at high speed, and launch yourself like a missile to plow through the wood"), as seen here? Wasn't it only a few years ago that we were hearing about kids hurting themselves imitating Jackass stunts? And, of course, there's the ever-popular sport of falling off your skateboard while trying to do something scary and dangerous.
Isn't all this stuff done mostly by boys? And don't large numbers of boys do reckless things at least some of the time? If so, then why do we let the media -- why do we let Rush freaking Limbaugh -- tell us that boys don't do dangerous things anymore?
People looking to sell products will tell us anything they think we'll believe, even if what they're saying can be debunked by anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism. It's bad enough that we're not skeptical when someone's trying to sell us a product -- why aren't we more skeptical when Rush Limbaugh's trying to sell a product and his usual feminist-bashing ideology?
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
In The New York Times, Charles McGrath reveals a secret truth about The Dangerous Book for Boys, the runaway bestseller that's been lavishly praised by Rush Limbaugh and other right-wingers:
What's odd about "The Dangerous Book" ... is that, with the exception of shooting and cooking a rabbit, the activities it recommends are not dangerous at all. The book includes almost none of the underground know-how that was part of the birthright of an American boy who grew up, say, in the 1950's: how to fashion a raft out of empty oil drums; how to siphon gasoline using just your mouth and a rubber tube; how to make a slingshot out of coat-hanger wire; how to light a cigarette in the wind; how to make a bomb from match heads and a piece of pipe. There is a chapter on how to build a go-cart, but no suggestion about how you might soup it up with a pulley, a belt and a lawnmower engine....
What I keep wondering is: Why do we believe that modern boys are emasculated wusses who avoid danger because feminism and political correctness have made them that way?
Weren't we just being told fairly recently about new "teen crazes" like ghost-riding the whip ("leaving the wheel of a moving car and walking, running, or dancing beside it"), as seen in videos like this? Or fence plowing ("The concept is simple: Pick out a fence, run toward it at high speed, and launch yourself like a missile to plow through the wood"), as seen here? Wasn't it only a few years ago that we were hearing about kids hurting themselves imitating Jackass stunts? And, of course, there's the ever-popular sport of falling off your skateboard while trying to do something scary and dangerous.
Isn't all this stuff done mostly by boys? And don't large numbers of boys do reckless things at least some of the time? If so, then why do we let the media -- why do we let Rush freaking Limbaugh -- tell us that boys don't do dangerous things anymore?
People looking to sell products will tell us anything they think we'll believe, even if what they're saying can be debunked by anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism. It's bad enough that we're not skeptical when someone's trying to sell us a product -- why aren't we more skeptical when Rush Limbaugh's trying to sell a product and his usual feminist-bashing ideology?
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
DON'T MEASURE THE DRAPES YET
Frank Rich in today's New York Times:
...Bush dead-enders are in a serious state of denial. Just how much so could be found in the [Wall Street] Journal interview when Mr. Rove extolled his party's health ... the latest New York Times-CBS News poll of Americans aged 17 to 29 found ... that the percentage of young people who identify as Republicans ... is down to 25, from a high of 37 at the end of the Reagan era.
Er, yeah, but that may be more of a harbinger of long-term trends than short-term trends. Remember that, despite the fact that there were all those kiddie Republicans around, Michael Dukakis had a 17-point lead at one point in the 1988 campaign -- he lost because he was the target of a vicious campaign and he didn't fight back well at all, but he was on his way to victory that year. So don't assume that trends among youth voters can tell you how the next election is going to turn out.
Frank Rich in today's New York Times:
...Bush dead-enders are in a serious state of denial. Just how much so could be found in the [Wall Street] Journal interview when Mr. Rove extolled his party's health ... the latest New York Times-CBS News poll of Americans aged 17 to 29 found ... that the percentage of young people who identify as Republicans ... is down to 25, from a high of 37 at the end of the Reagan era.
Er, yeah, but that may be more of a harbinger of long-term trends than short-term trends. Remember that, despite the fact that there were all those kiddie Republicans around, Michael Dukakis had a 17-point lead at one point in the 1988 campaign -- he lost because he was the target of a vicious campaign and he didn't fight back well at all, but he was on his way to victory that year. So don't assume that trends among youth voters can tell you how the next election is going to turn out.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
GIULIANI'S TEFLON
One of yesterday's big stories was a report in The New York Times that Rudy Giuliani spent a hell of a lot less time at Ground Zero than the typical recovery worker in the aftermath of 9/11, despite having claimed several times that his exposure and the workers' was the same. And earlier this week, Giuliani became emotional and defensive when asked about his strained relations with his family (his daughter, of course, has said she's backing Barack Obama).
Too bad none of this will have any effect on his chances of becoming president.
I keep hearing that bad news in going to sink Rudy's campaign any minute now. I've been hearing that for months. Yet the latest Rasmussen poll shows him pulling away from Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup, while a CBS poll shows him pulling away from his Republican rivals.
Here's the problem: Giuliani isn't like most presidential aspirants -- he's already well known (or, to be precise, voters think they know him), and his image is already so pleasing to so many people that they don't want to believe bad things about him.
In other words, he already has Teflon.
How does this happen? I think it happens when voters think a politician has truly fought for ordinary people and suffered attacks while doing so. (Try to suppress your gag reflex -- I'm talking about what the public thinks, not what I think.) Voters think Giuliani cleaned up New York all by himself and then personally took a direct hit 9/11 on America's behalf. They thought Bush took a hit on 9/11 on America's behalf, too, and then fought to keep us safe. They felt that Clinton battled political enemies and forged a more prosperous nation. And they they saw Reagan as a champion of ordinary people who was mocked and shot.
All these guys had Teflon. With the exception of Bush, they were forgiven when they subsequently made mistakes.
The people trying to take down Giuliani think they can do it by revealing his flaws, and by making embarrassing revelations about his past. But that's how you bring down an ordinary presidential aspirant about whom the public hasn't made up its mind. A huge chunk of the public has already made up its mind about Rudy -- they think he's a hero -- and they don't want to be confused by the facts. They hear about a new criticism of him and they think his attackers must be more of the small and/or evil people he's fought all along.
So how do you beat him? Well, the one guy on my list who's lost his Teflon is Bush. Now, most people think that Bush's popularity has plummeted because of the whole list of his failings, but I don't -- I don't think Plamegate and Alberto Gonzales and even Abu Ghraib have hurt him very much with people who once voted for him.
Obviously, the #1 reason is the war -- it's the fact that he's sending ordinary Americans to die in a war we can't win, and that everyone now knows was fought for a series of lies. He seemed like a tough guy who was keeping us safe; now he seems like a reckless guy whose desire for confrontation is making us unsafe. He had macho swagger, but now we know he's like a guy who goes into a bar and picks fights with people who can beat him, and that endangers everyone he's with. Even admirers of macho men don't want to be around a guy like that.
If people think Giuliani is a macho hero, they'll overlook his family troubles. They may not even be impressed if someone says he lied about his exposure to Ground Zero toxins. (They may just regard the Times reporter as a pathetic bean-counter; the criticism seems so actuarial.) But if they can be made to believe that Rudy won't keep us safe, his Teflon may get scratched.
That's why I keep saying we have to make him seem as reckless as Bush, and as likely to get us into fights we shouldn't fight. The country has to see that his flashes of temper when he was mayor were habitual, as was his habit of declaring anyone who disagreed with him an enemy for life. And they have to see that his foreign policy is going to be as bellicose and as black-and-white as Bush's. Combine the two and you've got a guy who's going to keep miring us in conflict. He's not a hero -- he's a borderline psychopath. He loves fighting too much. He won't keep us safe, and that's why.
If people can be made to believe Rudy has an anger-management problem, they might just stop admiring his pugnaciousness. It's the only line of attack that's going to make him seem less than heroic to a large segment of the country. And if we don't call his hero status into question, no other criticism is going to stick.
****
Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
One of yesterday's big stories was a report in The New York Times that Rudy Giuliani spent a hell of a lot less time at Ground Zero than the typical recovery worker in the aftermath of 9/11, despite having claimed several times that his exposure and the workers' was the same. And earlier this week, Giuliani became emotional and defensive when asked about his strained relations with his family (his daughter, of course, has said she's backing Barack Obama).
Too bad none of this will have any effect on his chances of becoming president.
I keep hearing that bad news in going to sink Rudy's campaign any minute now. I've been hearing that for months. Yet the latest Rasmussen poll shows him pulling away from Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup, while a CBS poll shows him pulling away from his Republican rivals.
Here's the problem: Giuliani isn't like most presidential aspirants -- he's already well known (or, to be precise, voters think they know him), and his image is already so pleasing to so many people that they don't want to believe bad things about him.
In other words, he already has Teflon.
How does this happen? I think it happens when voters think a politician has truly fought for ordinary people and suffered attacks while doing so. (Try to suppress your gag reflex -- I'm talking about what the public thinks, not what I think.) Voters think Giuliani cleaned up New York all by himself and then personally took a direct hit 9/11 on America's behalf. They thought Bush took a hit on 9/11 on America's behalf, too, and then fought to keep us safe. They felt that Clinton battled political enemies and forged a more prosperous nation. And they they saw Reagan as a champion of ordinary people who was mocked and shot.
All these guys had Teflon. With the exception of Bush, they were forgiven when they subsequently made mistakes.
The people trying to take down Giuliani think they can do it by revealing his flaws, and by making embarrassing revelations about his past. But that's how you bring down an ordinary presidential aspirant about whom the public hasn't made up its mind. A huge chunk of the public has already made up its mind about Rudy -- they think he's a hero -- and they don't want to be confused by the facts. They hear about a new criticism of him and they think his attackers must be more of the small and/or evil people he's fought all along.
So how do you beat him? Well, the one guy on my list who's lost his Teflon is Bush. Now, most people think that Bush's popularity has plummeted because of the whole list of his failings, but I don't -- I don't think Plamegate and Alberto Gonzales and even Abu Ghraib have hurt him very much with people who once voted for him.
Obviously, the #1 reason is the war -- it's the fact that he's sending ordinary Americans to die in a war we can't win, and that everyone now knows was fought for a series of lies. He seemed like a tough guy who was keeping us safe; now he seems like a reckless guy whose desire for confrontation is making us unsafe. He had macho swagger, but now we know he's like a guy who goes into a bar and picks fights with people who can beat him, and that endangers everyone he's with. Even admirers of macho men don't want to be around a guy like that.
If people think Giuliani is a macho hero, they'll overlook his family troubles. They may not even be impressed if someone says he lied about his exposure to Ground Zero toxins. (They may just regard the Times reporter as a pathetic bean-counter; the criticism seems so actuarial.) But if they can be made to believe that Rudy won't keep us safe, his Teflon may get scratched.
That's why I keep saying we have to make him seem as reckless as Bush, and as likely to get us into fights we shouldn't fight. The country has to see that his flashes of temper when he was mayor were habitual, as was his habit of declaring anyone who disagreed with him an enemy for life. And they have to see that his foreign policy is going to be as bellicose and as black-and-white as Bush's. Combine the two and you've got a guy who's going to keep miring us in conflict. He's not a hero -- he's a borderline psychopath. He loves fighting too much. He won't keep us safe, and that's why.
If people can be made to believe Rudy has an anger-management problem, they might just stop admiring his pugnaciousness. It's the only line of attack that's going to make him seem less than heroic to a large segment of the country. And if we don't call his hero status into question, no other criticism is going to stick.
****
Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Friday, August 17, 2007
MISTY WATERCOLOR MEMORIES OF THE WAY WE WERE
Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:
... it is hard to recall of any war in our history -- the Vietnam hysteria aside -- that a sitting Senate majority leader declared it lost in the middle of hostilities. We have not previously witnessed senior opposition senators alleging that their own American servicemen were analogous to Nazis, Stalinists, Cambodian mass murders, Saddam’s Baathist killers, or engaging in habitual terrorizing and killing of innocent civilians.
I guess Vic doesn't remember the way Republicans talked about the Balkans war in 1999.
In Slate, William Saletan collected some of their greatest hits. The particulars are slightly different, but the effect is the same:
The atrocities are America's fault. "Once the [U.S.] bombing commenced, I think then [Slobodan] Milosevic unleashed his forces, and then that's when the slaughtering and the massive ethnic cleansing really started," [Senate Majority Whip Don] Nickles said at a news conference after appearing on Meet the Press. "The administration's campaign has been a disaster. ... [It] escalated a guerrilla warfare into a real war, and the real losers are the Kosovars and innocent civilians." On Fox News Sunday, [House Majority Whip Tom] DeLay blamed the ethnic cleansing on U.S. intervention. "Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode," DeLay charged in a House floor speech replayed on Late Edition....
We can't win. "I don't know that Milosevic will ever raise a white flag," warned Nickles. DeLay agreed: "He's stronger in Kosovo now than he was before the bombing. ... The Serbian people are rallying around him like never before. He's much stronger with his allies, Russians and others." Clinton "has no plan for the end" and "recognizes that Milosevic will still be in power," added DeLay. "The bombing was a mistake. ... And this president ought to show some leadership and admit it, and come to some sort of negotiated end." ...
Slip your mind, Vic?
Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:
... it is hard to recall of any war in our history -- the Vietnam hysteria aside -- that a sitting Senate majority leader declared it lost in the middle of hostilities. We have not previously witnessed senior opposition senators alleging that their own American servicemen were analogous to Nazis, Stalinists, Cambodian mass murders, Saddam’s Baathist killers, or engaging in habitual terrorizing and killing of innocent civilians.
I guess Vic doesn't remember the way Republicans talked about the Balkans war in 1999.
In Slate, William Saletan collected some of their greatest hits. The particulars are slightly different, but the effect is the same:
The atrocities are America's fault. "Once the [U.S.] bombing commenced, I think then [Slobodan] Milosevic unleashed his forces, and then that's when the slaughtering and the massive ethnic cleansing really started," [Senate Majority Whip Don] Nickles said at a news conference after appearing on Meet the Press. "The administration's campaign has been a disaster. ... [It] escalated a guerrilla warfare into a real war, and the real losers are the Kosovars and innocent civilians." On Fox News Sunday, [House Majority Whip Tom] DeLay blamed the ethnic cleansing on U.S. intervention. "Clinton's bombing campaign has caused all of these problems to explode," DeLay charged in a House floor speech replayed on Late Edition....
We can't win. "I don't know that Milosevic will ever raise a white flag," warned Nickles. DeLay agreed: "He's stronger in Kosovo now than he was before the bombing. ... The Serbian people are rallying around him like never before. He's much stronger with his allies, Russians and others." Clinton "has no plan for the end" and "recognizes that Milosevic will still be in power," added DeLay. "The bombing was a mistake. ... And this president ought to show some leadership and admit it, and come to some sort of negotiated end." ...
Slip your mind, Vic?
LATE FOR THE SUNRISE, THE ROOSTER GETS CREDIT ANYWAY
A lot of people are addressing the main points in Michael Gerson's Washington Post op-ed today, in which he praises and defends Karl Rove. I just want to mention one point that's not unique to Gerson -- it's actually conventional wisdom:
[Rove's] background in direct mail, along with the experience he gained while converting Lyndon Johnson's Texas into a Republican stronghold, has given him a comprehensive understanding of the technologies and trends of politics.
I see this all the time: Rove made Texas Republican! What an amazing accomplishment! But why is this a big deal? The whole damn South went from Democratic to Republican at precisely the same time. What did SuperRove accomplish in Texas that wasn't also accomplished by mere mortals in the rest of the region?
And to what extent was the job already done before Rove even had any impact? Look at the presidential vote in Texas in 1972, when Rove was still in the College Republicans: Nixon beat McGovern in the Lone Star State by a two-to-one margin. Yes, Nixon blew McGovern away nationwide, but his margin of victory in Texas was 5 points greater than in the country as a whole. How is that a sign that turning Texas Republican was a herculean task that required a giant such as Rove?
A lot of people are addressing the main points in Michael Gerson's Washington Post op-ed today, in which he praises and defends Karl Rove. I just want to mention one point that's not unique to Gerson -- it's actually conventional wisdom:
[Rove's] background in direct mail, along with the experience he gained while converting Lyndon Johnson's Texas into a Republican stronghold, has given him a comprehensive understanding of the technologies and trends of politics.
I see this all the time: Rove made Texas Republican! What an amazing accomplishment! But why is this a big deal? The whole damn South went from Democratic to Republican at precisely the same time. What did SuperRove accomplish in Texas that wasn't also accomplished by mere mortals in the rest of the region?
And to what extent was the job already done before Rove even had any impact? Look at the presidential vote in Texas in 1972, when Rove was still in the College Republicans: Nixon beat McGovern in the Lone Star State by a two-to-one margin. Yes, Nixon blew McGovern away nationwide, but his margin of victory in Texas was 5 points greater than in the country as a whole. How is that a sign that turning Texas Republican was a herculean task that required a giant such as Rove?
PEGGY NOONAN BLAMES AMERICA FOR THE NEXT 9/11
Peggy Noonan has been reading the NYPD's report "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat" and she has her own thoughts about why someone in America might turn radical:
...all modern young people come from two environments. The first is the immediate family, which is human and therefore by definition imperfect, sometimes to a serious and destructive degree. The other is the broader culture in which we all live, and which includes everything from schools to the neighborhood to the media. It's not a new thing to say but it's still true that the latter, which is more powerful than ever, is wholly devoted to the material. People are money winners or luxury item enjoyers. They just want stuff. It is soulless.
The view we show of life to ourselves, and to whatever lost young men are watching, is not broad and inspiriting. It is limited and dispiriting. It is every man for himself.
We make it too easy for those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media, which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good....
Yup -- by maintaining a soulless culture, we make the terrorists want to kill us. It's our fault.
Noonan's in Dinesh D'Souza territory here.
An interesting sidelight to this is that Noonan's view of American culture was cited in a Mitt Romney campaign ad last month:
GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: "I'm deeply troubled about the culture that surrounds our kids today.
"Following the Columbine shootings, Peggy Noonan described our world as 'the ocean in which our children now swim.'
"She described a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.
"She said that the boys who did the shooting had 'inhaled too deeply in the oceans in which they swam.' ..."
So, Mitt, do you think the next 9/11 will be our fault?
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Peggy Noonan has been reading the NYPD's report "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat" and she has her own thoughts about why someone in America might turn radical:
...all modern young people come from two environments. The first is the immediate family, which is human and therefore by definition imperfect, sometimes to a serious and destructive degree. The other is the broader culture in which we all live, and which includes everything from schools to the neighborhood to the media. It's not a new thing to say but it's still true that the latter, which is more powerful than ever, is wholly devoted to the material. People are money winners or luxury item enjoyers. They just want stuff. It is soulless.
The view we show of life to ourselves, and to whatever lost young men are watching, is not broad and inspiriting. It is limited and dispiriting. It is every man for himself.
We make it too easy for those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media, which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good....
Yup -- by maintaining a soulless culture, we make the terrorists want to kill us. It's our fault.
Noonan's in Dinesh D'Souza territory here.
An interesting sidelight to this is that Noonan's view of American culture was cited in a Mitt Romney campaign ad last month:
GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: "I'm deeply troubled about the culture that surrounds our kids today.
"Following the Columbine shootings, Peggy Noonan described our world as 'the ocean in which our children now swim.'
"She described a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.
"She said that the boys who did the shooting had 'inhaled too deeply in the oceans in which they swam.' ..."
So, Mitt, do you think the next 9/11 will be our fault?
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Thursday, August 16, 2007
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS UNKILLABLE
Jennifer Rubin, in a New York Observer article entitled "What the G.O.P. Hopefuls Need From Bush":
Some vetoes and clearly enforced budget priorities would remind voters that fiscal restraint may require a Republican president to offset the excesses of a Democratic Congress, and that there is a real difference between the parties on fiscal responsibility.
Yeah, you're right, Jennifer -- there is a difference between the parties on fiscal responsibility:
And, of course, the leading Democratic candidate for president is the wife (and a key adviser) of the only president in decades to have balanced a budget, while the leading Republican candidate envisions a "massive military buildup," plus tax cuts, just like the president he invokes so often, Ronald Reagan (he's also planning to pay for infrastructure repairs with tax cuts). But Democrats are the fiscally irresponsible party, according to Jennifer Rubin.
I hate these people.
Jennifer Rubin, in a New York Observer article entitled "What the G.O.P. Hopefuls Need From Bush":
Some vetoes and clearly enforced budget priorities would remind voters that fiscal restraint may require a Republican president to offset the excesses of a Democratic Congress, and that there is a real difference between the parties on fiscal responsibility.
Yeah, you're right, Jennifer -- there is a difference between the parties on fiscal responsibility:
And, of course, the leading Democratic candidate for president is the wife (and a key adviser) of the only president in decades to have balanced a budget, while the leading Republican candidate envisions a "massive military buildup," plus tax cuts, just like the president he invokes so often, Ronald Reagan (he's also planning to pay for infrastructure repairs with tax cuts). But Democrats are the fiscally irresponsible party, according to Jennifer Rubin.
I hate these people.
THE EVER-POPULAR TWO-LEGGED STOOL
It's just like good news, except for the missing good-news part:
The Iraqi prime minister and president announced a new alliance of moderate Shiites and Kurds in a push to save the crumbing government Thursday, saying a key Sunni bloc refused to join but the door remained open to them....
They actually bother to announce this stuff. They actually proclaim to the world, "Look! We've fixed our problem -- at least the part that wasn't broken! That's progress, isn't it?" Pathetic.
****
Oh, and Patrick Cockburn in The Independent ends a story on the horrible bombings in Sinjar Province with what Juan Cole correctly calls a "priceless bit of anti-spin":
The US military has suggested the bombers are operating more ruthlessly in northern Iraq because they can no longer operate in Baghdad because of the success of the American "surge". In reality, the number of car bombings in Baghdad in July was 5 per cent higher than last December and civilian casualties in explosions have increased by about the same percentage.
It's just like good news, except for the missing good-news part:
The Iraqi prime minister and president announced a new alliance of moderate Shiites and Kurds in a push to save the crumbing government Thursday, saying a key Sunni bloc refused to join but the door remained open to them....
They actually bother to announce this stuff. They actually proclaim to the world, "Look! We've fixed our problem -- at least the part that wasn't broken! That's progress, isn't it?" Pathetic.
****
Oh, and Patrick Cockburn in The Independent ends a story on the horrible bombings in Sinjar Province with what Juan Cole correctly calls a "priceless bit of anti-spin":
The US military has suggested the bombers are operating more ruthlessly in northern Iraq because they can no longer operate in Baghdad because of the success of the American "surge". In reality, the number of car bombings in Baghdad in July was 5 per cent higher than last December and civilian casualties in explosions have increased by about the same percentage.
AND I MAY HAVE OVERLOOKED A BRIEF SAT-PHONE EXCHANGE WITH THE PENNYSAVER
A lot of you have already seen this by now:
Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense....
So let me get this straight: Just since the beginning of June, Petraeus has given interviews to (I'm not sure this is a complete list) Fox News, CBS, ABC, ABC again, NPR, CNN, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, The Times of London, Hugh Hewitt, Alan Colmes, and WBZ in Boston -- but the White House didn't want him to speak publicly before the Congress?
I guess the restrictions put on journalists when they're talking to Petraeus are so great that even the lily-livered Congress can be expected to ask tougher questions. Or maybe the White House thinks he's been a bit off-message, and there's concern that he might screw up his big moment all by himself by telling the truth.
A lot of you have already seen this by now:
Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense....
So let me get this straight: Just since the beginning of June, Petraeus has given interviews to (I'm not sure this is a complete list) Fox News, CBS, ABC, ABC again, NPR, CNN, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, The Times of London, Hugh Hewitt, Alan Colmes, and WBZ in Boston -- but the White House didn't want him to speak publicly before the Congress?
I guess the restrictions put on journalists when they're talking to Petraeus are so great that even the lily-livered Congress can be expected to ask tougher questions. Or maybe the White House thinks he's been a bit off-message, and there's concern that he might screw up his big moment all by himself by telling the truth.
POUNDING ON DEMOCRATS, WITH PINKY EXTENDED
Rush Limbaugh interviewed Karl Rove yesterday. Mostly it's what you'd expect (Karl andRove Rush agree that Bush is wonderful and Republicans are right about everything all the time), but this seems rather forced:
RUSH: Something I've always wanted to ask you and I just never have. Could you tell us what it was like in the first months of the administration, following the aftermath in Florida? You had made the strategic decision to adopt a new tone. You wanted to try to build bridges back to Democrats after the divisive nineties. The president had done it in Texas with Democrats, and you consulted them on legislation. Do you have any regrets about that approach?
Show of hands: Who here thinks this is something Rush has "always wanted to ask" Rove?
Of course it's nothing more than a setup, so Rove can talk about how nice Bush was -- and is:
KARL ROVE: No. Look, when we were able to find willing allies who are willing to work across party lines, it was the right thing to do.... [President Bush is] not going to engage in the kind of personal name-calling that makes Washington... Look, there ought to be politics in politics. But after the elections are over, people ought to be able to put things aside and look at things with the best interests of the country at heart, and if they don't agree, they don't agree, but if they ought to agree and should agree, they ought to try and move something forward....
...and on and on in that vein. And that's a setup for the real point of the interview, which follows immediately: an extended (and I'm sure highly enjoyable) round of Hillary-bashing.
KARL ROVE: ...You know, this is a woman who has been less than supportive of the policies that those men and women who are in the frontlines of the global war on terror fighting. This is like a woman who has opposed the Patriot Act that gave us the tools to defend the homeland. This is a woman who opposes the terrorist surveillance program that allowed us to listen in on the conversations of bad people who are calling into the United States. She opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through US telecom networks. You know, again, I'm a little bit surprised that somebody with a record so weak on these things would somehow deign to lecture this president, who is very popular among the military and military families because they see him as a strong commander-in-chief who supports them, loves them, and gives them everything they need and want.
They just won't be honest and get straight to the point: "We hate these people. Here comes the bashing!" They have to pretend that they're the nice guys and we're the ogres. They can't bash without piously denouncing bashing first. They're like preachers at a whorehouse who tell the hookers that they're depraved demon-driven harlots before screwing them.
The base falls for this. Present-day Republicans will all go to their graves thinking not that Bush was stupid and vicious and hell-bent on vanquishing his enemies, but that he was the soul of kindness and it just so happened that everyone who supported him bashed Democrats at every opportunity, coarsening our political dialogue and making compromise impossible -- Bush had nothing to do with it.
*****
By the way, in the course of the interview with Rush, Rove talks about his big book-reading contest with Bush -- which, for the moment, I'm going to discuss as if everything I've read about it is actually true:
KARL ROVE: I beat him last year, 110 to 94, and I'm ahead this year.
Well, bully for you, Karl -- and that was quite a comeback, because U.S. News reported at this time last year that Bush was ahead, 60 to 50.
And Bush, we were told, was reading big books up through August: Kai Bird and Martin Sherman's Robert Oppenheimer biography, for instance (784 pages), and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography of Mao (801 pages). But Rove now tells Rush:
When we got too competitive last year, we both started reading John D. MacDonald mysteries, which are really delicious. He's a wonderful writer, a Floridian, who writes a wonderful set of mysteries, Travis McGee mysteries, and we both decided that we loved them. We were reading them quickly, enjoying them a lot, and then we realized this was being far too competitive. So we limited the number of John D. MacDonald mysteries we were both reading, so we could get back to the serious stuff.
Yet Bush, who early in the year was devouring 800-page tomes at the rate of seven a month, couldn't increase his monthly total even though Rove was beating him and they were reading 300-page mysteries. Curious, that.
I know, I know -- I'm taking this way too seriously. I can't wait to see how the numbers change as the tale of the great book-reading contest gets told and re-told by Bush and Rove.
*****
P.S.: Yeah, I know I said in the previous post that there seems to have been a sudden uptick in Bush-bashing among Republicans. I said Rove might be urging that course; I was, at most, half-serious about that. I didn't put the "big eyebrows" on the post, in Frank Zappa's phrase.
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Rush Limbaugh interviewed Karl Rove yesterday. Mostly it's what you'd expect (Karl and
RUSH: Something I've always wanted to ask you and I just never have. Could you tell us what it was like in the first months of the administration, following the aftermath in Florida? You had made the strategic decision to adopt a new tone. You wanted to try to build bridges back to Democrats after the divisive nineties. The president had done it in Texas with Democrats, and you consulted them on legislation. Do you have any regrets about that approach?
Show of hands: Who here thinks this is something Rush has "always wanted to ask" Rove?
Of course it's nothing more than a setup, so Rove can talk about how nice Bush was -- and is:
KARL ROVE: No. Look, when we were able to find willing allies who are willing to work across party lines, it was the right thing to do.... [President Bush is] not going to engage in the kind of personal name-calling that makes Washington... Look, there ought to be politics in politics. But after the elections are over, people ought to be able to put things aside and look at things with the best interests of the country at heart, and if they don't agree, they don't agree, but if they ought to agree and should agree, they ought to try and move something forward....
...and on and on in that vein. And that's a setup for the real point of the interview, which follows immediately: an extended (and I'm sure highly enjoyable) round of Hillary-bashing.
KARL ROVE: ...You know, this is a woman who has been less than supportive of the policies that those men and women who are in the frontlines of the global war on terror fighting. This is like a woman who has opposed the Patriot Act that gave us the tools to defend the homeland. This is a woman who opposes the terrorist surveillance program that allowed us to listen in on the conversations of bad people who are calling into the United States. She opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through US telecom networks. You know, again, I'm a little bit surprised that somebody with a record so weak on these things would somehow deign to lecture this president, who is very popular among the military and military families because they see him as a strong commander-in-chief who supports them, loves them, and gives them everything they need and want.
They just won't be honest and get straight to the point: "We hate these people. Here comes the bashing!" They have to pretend that they're the nice guys and we're the ogres. They can't bash without piously denouncing bashing first. They're like preachers at a whorehouse who tell the hookers that they're depraved demon-driven harlots before screwing them.
The base falls for this. Present-day Republicans will all go to their graves thinking not that Bush was stupid and vicious and hell-bent on vanquishing his enemies, but that he was the soul of kindness and it just so happened that everyone who supported him bashed Democrats at every opportunity, coarsening our political dialogue and making compromise impossible -- Bush had nothing to do with it.
*****
By the way, in the course of the interview with Rush, Rove talks about his big book-reading contest with Bush -- which, for the moment, I'm going to discuss as if everything I've read about it is actually true:
KARL ROVE: I beat him last year, 110 to 94, and I'm ahead this year.
Well, bully for you, Karl -- and that was quite a comeback, because U.S. News reported at this time last year that Bush was ahead, 60 to 50.
And Bush, we were told, was reading big books up through August: Kai Bird and Martin Sherman's Robert Oppenheimer biography, for instance (784 pages), and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's biography of Mao (801 pages). But Rove now tells Rush:
When we got too competitive last year, we both started reading John D. MacDonald mysteries, which are really delicious. He's a wonderful writer, a Floridian, who writes a wonderful set of mysteries, Travis McGee mysteries, and we both decided that we loved them. We were reading them quickly, enjoying them a lot, and then we realized this was being far too competitive. So we limited the number of John D. MacDonald mysteries we were both reading, so we could get back to the serious stuff.
Yet Bush, who early in the year was devouring 800-page tomes at the rate of seven a month, couldn't increase his monthly total even though Rove was beating him and they were reading 300-page mysteries. Curious, that.
I know, I know -- I'm taking this way too seriously. I can't wait to see how the numbers change as the tale of the great book-reading contest gets told and re-told by Bush and Rove.
*****
P.S.: Yeah, I know I said in the previous post that there seems to have been a sudden uptick in Bush-bashing among Republicans. I said Rove might be urging that course; I was, at most, half-serious about that. I didn't put the "big eyebrows" on the post, in Frank Zappa's phrase.
****
(Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo.)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
EVERYBODY SKATE COUNTERCLOCKWISE!
Did some kind of memo go out to Republicans in the past 48 hours -- a memo telling them it's now time to start slagging Bush?
Monday:
Ann Coulter joined Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Monday to discuss the departure of Karl Rove. "What I think is going to be fun," she said, "is finding out how much of the architect Karl Rove actually was. I've gone back and forth between blaming Karl Rove for the stupid things Bush does and blaming Bush for the stupid stuff Bush does."
Coulter cited illegal immigration, the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, and civil unions as Bush's biggest missteps....
Tuesday:
Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback on Tuesday criticized President Bush and two GOP rivals, saying the presidency isn't a foreign policy classroom.
..."We've got to walk more humbly and a lot more wisely than the current president," said Brownback....
"I really believe this next president needs to go in with knowledge on foreign policy and not learn it on the job," said Brownback....
Tuesday:
...Last night on Fox, right-wing pundits Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes disputed the White House's contention that it has an agenda:
KRAUTHAMMER: When [White House deputy chief of staff Joel] Kaplan talks about an ambitious agenda, he is really taking one for the team. That is absurd, there is no agenda.
BARNES: Charles is right, Bush has no agenda.
Tuesday:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday he is "sickened" that President Bush and Congress went on vacation "while young Americans in our cities are massacred" by illegal immigrants.
Gingrich ... was referring to a recent crime in Newark, N.J., where three college students were murdered execution style in a school playground....
Gingrich said that President Bush should call Congress back into special session for three days to pass a bill in honor of the slain students....
Maybe Karl Rove -- on his way out the door and probably more interested in salvaging his own reputation as a party-builder than serving his president -- sent the word around that it's time to unload on W, as a way of helping to wash the Bush stench off those Republicans who'd still like to be in D.C. after January '09. He'll get that permanent Republican majority yet, just you wait!
(Yeah, I know Coulter slagged Rove as well as Bush, but maybe that was Rove's idea, too -- some weird Rovian double-reverse, like the time he bugged his own office so a political opponent could be blamed.)
(Link #3 via Carpetbagger Report.)
Did some kind of memo go out to Republicans in the past 48 hours -- a memo telling them it's now time to start slagging Bush?
Monday:
Ann Coulter joined Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Monday to discuss the departure of Karl Rove. "What I think is going to be fun," she said, "is finding out how much of the architect Karl Rove actually was. I've gone back and forth between blaming Karl Rove for the stupid things Bush does and blaming Bush for the stupid stuff Bush does."
Coulter cited illegal immigration, the nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, and civil unions as Bush's biggest missteps....
Tuesday:
Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback on Tuesday criticized President Bush and two GOP rivals, saying the presidency isn't a foreign policy classroom.
..."We've got to walk more humbly and a lot more wisely than the current president," said Brownback....
"I really believe this next president needs to go in with knowledge on foreign policy and not learn it on the job," said Brownback....
Tuesday:
...Last night on Fox, right-wing pundits Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes disputed the White House's contention that it has an agenda:
KRAUTHAMMER: When [White House deputy chief of staff Joel] Kaplan talks about an ambitious agenda, he is really taking one for the team. That is absurd, there is no agenda.
BARNES: Charles is right, Bush has no agenda.
Tuesday:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday he is "sickened" that President Bush and Congress went on vacation "while young Americans in our cities are massacred" by illegal immigrants.
Gingrich ... was referring to a recent crime in Newark, N.J., where three college students were murdered execution style in a school playground....
Gingrich said that President Bush should call Congress back into special session for three days to pass a bill in honor of the slain students....
Maybe Karl Rove -- on his way out the door and probably more interested in salvaging his own reputation as a party-builder than serving his president -- sent the word around that it's time to unload on W, as a way of helping to wash the Bush stench off those Republicans who'd still like to be in D.C. after January '09. He'll get that permanent Republican majority yet, just you wait!
(Yeah, I know Coulter slagged Rove as well as Bush, but maybe that was Rove's idea, too -- some weird Rovian double-reverse, like the time he bugged his own office so a political opponent could be blamed.)
(Link #3 via Carpetbagger Report.)
Once again an armed society, astonishingly, turns out not be a polite society:
MEXICO CITY -- Authorities are sounding the alarm about an influx of assault rifles, armor-piercing pistols and fragmentation grenades from the United States, weapons that they say are increasingly being used to kill police and soldiers fighting drug cartels.
...At least 11,752 U.S.-sold guns have been found in Mexico since January 2003 -- a tiny fraction of what remains on the streets, according to the report.
... one indicator of a new gun glut is the fact that hit men drop their guns at crime scenes rather than be caught with them afterward, knowing they are easily replaced, a senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico said....
Particularly worrisome are U.S. sales of Belgian-made FN-57 pistols. These fire bullets that "will defeat most body armor in military service around the world today," according to the Remtek weapons site on the Internet. They sell for $800-$1,000 each at dozens of gun stores within a day's drive of the border.
The weapons were unheard of in Mexico until they were used to kill at least a half dozen police officers this year....
"U.S. laws allow citizens to have guns that are authentically warlike," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora complained at a recent news conference. "We have to find a more effective way of stopping these arms from flowing into the country and giving these gangs such significant firepower."
Yeah, well, good luck with that. We have our precious culture to defend!
The U.S. Congress has so far resisted these calls. It's particularly easy to buy weapons at the thousands of U.S. gun shows held each year, where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stopped checking addresses of gun buyers after the National Rifle Association complained that sales plummeted.
Mexico also wants lawmakers in Washington to loosen restrictions on who can see gun-purchasing data, but that's unlikely given the strong opposition from the NRA.
The U.S. government is now restricted in many cases from sharing such information with local police departments, let alone the Mexican government, making it difficult to trace illegal guns or arrest weapons traffickers.
Mexican officials also complain that U.S. judges give firearms traffickers lighter sentences than drug dealers.
Hey, Mexico should enforce the law better (never mind that smugglers are so well armed that they're literally threatening to kill Mexican border agents who try to enforce the law). Or maybe the citizenry should demand repeal of Mexico's strict gun laws so the country can be even more awash in guns, because, as everybody knows, more guns equals less crime (after all, near-universal ownership of guns is doing such a great job of deterring armed thugs in Iraq). Oh, and America should seal the borders! (That's what the Freepers say in response to this article, when they're not snickering over a few mistakes in the use of gun terminology, as if that invalidates the whole story. And really, they're right, aren't they? Let's just seal the border -- it wouldn't cost us more than a few billion dollars, right? Oh, and throw in another tax cut while you're at it.)
Whatever you do, don't touch America's gun culture! Hey, the right of any scumbag on the planet to walk into a gun show in Texas and buy any weapon he wants, no questions asked, is sacrosanct!
MEXICO CITY -- Authorities are sounding the alarm about an influx of assault rifles, armor-piercing pistols and fragmentation grenades from the United States, weapons that they say are increasingly being used to kill police and soldiers fighting drug cartels.
...At least 11,752 U.S.-sold guns have been found in Mexico since January 2003 -- a tiny fraction of what remains on the streets, according to the report.
... one indicator of a new gun glut is the fact that hit men drop their guns at crime scenes rather than be caught with them afterward, knowing they are easily replaced, a senior U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico said....
Particularly worrisome are U.S. sales of Belgian-made FN-57 pistols. These fire bullets that "will defeat most body armor in military service around the world today," according to the Remtek weapons site on the Internet. They sell for $800-$1,000 each at dozens of gun stores within a day's drive of the border.
The weapons were unheard of in Mexico until they were used to kill at least a half dozen police officers this year....
"U.S. laws allow citizens to have guns that are authentically warlike," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora complained at a recent news conference. "We have to find a more effective way of stopping these arms from flowing into the country and giving these gangs such significant firepower."
Yeah, well, good luck with that. We have our precious culture to defend!
The U.S. Congress has so far resisted these calls. It's particularly easy to buy weapons at the thousands of U.S. gun shows held each year, where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives stopped checking addresses of gun buyers after the National Rifle Association complained that sales plummeted.
Mexico also wants lawmakers in Washington to loosen restrictions on who can see gun-purchasing data, but that's unlikely given the strong opposition from the NRA.
The U.S. government is now restricted in many cases from sharing such information with local police departments, let alone the Mexican government, making it difficult to trace illegal guns or arrest weapons traffickers.
Mexican officials also complain that U.S. judges give firearms traffickers lighter sentences than drug dealers.
Hey, Mexico should enforce the law better (never mind that smugglers are so well armed that they're literally threatening to kill Mexican border agents who try to enforce the law). Or maybe the citizenry should demand repeal of Mexico's strict gun laws so the country can be even more awash in guns, because, as everybody knows, more guns equals less crime (after all, near-universal ownership of guns is doing such a great job of deterring armed thugs in Iraq). Oh, and America should seal the borders! (That's what the Freepers say in response to this article, when they're not snickering over a few mistakes in the use of gun terminology, as if that invalidates the whole story. And really, they're right, aren't they? Let's just seal the border -- it wouldn't cost us more than a few billion dollars, right? Oh, and throw in another tax cut while you're at it.)
Whatever you do, don't touch America's gun culture! Hey, the right of any scumbag on the planet to walk into a gun show in Texas and buy any weapon he wants, no questions asked, is sacrosanct!
HUCKABEE: THE CLASS WARFARE CANDIDATE?
Last week, Tom posted a denunciation of economic inequality and CEO greed from Mike Huckabee, and now David Sirota posts several more Huckabee quotes along the same lines.
Hmmm ... Huckabee regularly denounces the lavish pay of "wealthy CEOS," and he comes in second in the Ames straw poll -- coincidence? Sirota doesn't think so. And he provides some concrete evidence (from a Raw Story report) that this kind of talk has real appeal:
"If you want to know how to fix it, I've got a solution," Huckabee said at the Republican debate. "Either give every American the same kind of healthcare that Congress has or make Congress have the same kind of health care that every American has." As he spoke, the electronic graphs rose dramatically for both moderate and conservative Republicans, from a neutral reading of 50 into the 80's.
I think Sirota's wrong to concern himself with this, however:
As a Democrat who wants to see Democrats win the White House in 2008, I shudder to think about a candidate like Huckabee using this posture to triangulate in a general election. You can, for example, pretty easily imagine him seizing the rhetorical mantle of populism against a candidate like Hillary Clinton -- a candidate who brags about pocketing big cash from lobbyists, who surrounds herself with K Street mercenaries, who takes in more health industry money than any other lawmaker in Congress, and who appears on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Money's handpicked candidate.
Sirota's wrong about this because Huckabee simply isn't going to win the nomination -- in modern presidential politics, populists (Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan) never do. They're always outgunned by candidates who are getting the big bucks, and they're always hurt by media coverage that portrays their populism as weird and scary, whether or not it really is. Such candidates do often make it to the top gadfly position in a nomination fight, surprising everyone by rising to #2 or #3 and hanging in longer than expected; when this happens, pundits invariably argue that the success of the gadfly candidate will influence the campaign of the actual nominee, but that never seems to happen. And the gadfly never gets asked to be VP. (Given the pro-greed leanings of Thompson, Romney, and Giuliani, I'd be astonished if Huckabee gets the #2 slot.)
But what would happen if a party actually stopped trying to make certain that Wall Street was always appeased and actually embraced such a candidate, rather than offering the back of its hand? And if that ever happened, wouldn't it be nice if it were the Democratic Party? Sirota makes more sense when he says this:
... as I've stated so many times before, the only way to fight off a general election candidate like Huckabee -- or any other Republican candidate -- is for Democratic candidates to finally embrace populism for themselves, rather than shunning it in an effort to get approval from their Wall Street wing.
I don't know if it's "the only way," but can we try it for once? Can we actually try being the party of the people for a change? It seems to be working fort Mike Huckabee.
Last week, Tom posted a denunciation of economic inequality and CEO greed from Mike Huckabee, and now David Sirota posts several more Huckabee quotes along the same lines.
Hmmm ... Huckabee regularly denounces the lavish pay of "wealthy CEOS," and he comes in second in the Ames straw poll -- coincidence? Sirota doesn't think so. And he provides some concrete evidence (from a Raw Story report) that this kind of talk has real appeal:
"If you want to know how to fix it, I've got a solution," Huckabee said at the Republican debate. "Either give every American the same kind of healthcare that Congress has or make Congress have the same kind of health care that every American has." As he spoke, the electronic graphs rose dramatically for both moderate and conservative Republicans, from a neutral reading of 50 into the 80's.
I think Sirota's wrong to concern himself with this, however:
As a Democrat who wants to see Democrats win the White House in 2008, I shudder to think about a candidate like Huckabee using this posture to triangulate in a general election. You can, for example, pretty easily imagine him seizing the rhetorical mantle of populism against a candidate like Hillary Clinton -- a candidate who brags about pocketing big cash from lobbyists, who surrounds herself with K Street mercenaries, who takes in more health industry money than any other lawmaker in Congress, and who appears on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Money's handpicked candidate.
Sirota's wrong about this because Huckabee simply isn't going to win the nomination -- in modern presidential politics, populists (Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan) never do. They're always outgunned by candidates who are getting the big bucks, and they're always hurt by media coverage that portrays their populism as weird and scary, whether or not it really is. Such candidates do often make it to the top gadfly position in a nomination fight, surprising everyone by rising to #2 or #3 and hanging in longer than expected; when this happens, pundits invariably argue that the success of the gadfly candidate will influence the campaign of the actual nominee, but that never seems to happen. And the gadfly never gets asked to be VP. (Given the pro-greed leanings of Thompson, Romney, and Giuliani, I'd be astonished if Huckabee gets the #2 slot.)
But what would happen if a party actually stopped trying to make certain that Wall Street was always appeased and actually embraced such a candidate, rather than offering the back of its hand? And if that ever happened, wouldn't it be nice if it were the Democratic Party? Sirota makes more sense when he says this:
... as I've stated so many times before, the only way to fight off a general election candidate like Huckabee -- or any other Republican candidate -- is for Democratic candidates to finally embrace populism for themselves, rather than shunning it in an effort to get approval from their Wall Street wing.
I don't know if it's "the only way," but can we try it for once? Can we actually try being the party of the people for a change? It seems to be working fort Mike Huckabee.
APOCALYPSE NOW
If you don't believe the Bushies will really bomb Iran sometime before W heads to Crawford, read this.
And if you don't believe that a Rudy Giuliani presidency would be a neocon hawk's wet dream, read this.
If you don't believe the Bushies will really bomb Iran sometime before W heads to Crawford, read this.
And if you don't believe that a Rudy Giuliani presidency would be a neocon hawk's wet dream, read this.
KNUCKLE-DRAGGING SEXUAL POLITICS FROM RUPERT MURDOCH
Headline for a current AP story in Newsday:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
Headline for the same story in the San Luis Obispo Tribune:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
Headline for the same story in Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
OK, so what's the headline for (a truncated version of) the same story in the New York Post?
MRS. EDWARDS PLAYS BATTLE-AX
Battle-ax? Battle-ax???
I guess "bitch," "shrew," "termagant," "harpy," "harridan" and "she-demon" didn't have quite the right number of letters.
Enjoy your new boss, Wall Street Journal.
Headline for a current AP story in Newsday:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
Headline for the same story in the San Luis Obispo Tribune:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
Headline for the same story in Pennsylvania's Centre Daily Times:
Elizabeth Edwards Assails Obama, Clinton
OK, so what's the headline for (a truncated version of) the same story in the New York Post?
MRS. EDWARDS PLAYS BATTLE-AX
Battle-ax? Battle-ax???
I guess "bitch," "shrew," "termagant," "harpy," "harridan" and "she-demon" didn't have quite the right number of letters.
Enjoy your new boss, Wall Street Journal.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
WHY DO THEY LIKE HIM?
I just finished "Mayberry Man," Peter Boyer's article on Rudolph Giuliani in this week's New Yorker. I have to admit I was expecting a bit more from an article with this subtitle:
Is what New York never liked about Rudy Giuliani exactly what the heartland loves?
I think there are a few ways in which that's true, and Boyer touches on one of them, but he backs away from the others.
Boyer does seem to think -- it's the point of his article's title -- that Giuliani may be succeeding in part because his opinion of New York jibes with America's:
It is also possible that the rest of the country knows all it wishes to know about Giuliani. It was Giuliani who was depicted in the Times as imposing "the mores of Mayberry" on the city. Stephen DiBrienza, the former City Councilman, says, "All the things that a lot of New Yorkers, myself included, hate about this guy are the things that are actually fuelling his campaign."
But the fact that he made New York more like Mayberry isn't enough to make a pro-choice cross-dresser from Sodom the #1 guy in the GOP, even with 9/11 thrown in. So what else is there? Well, how about this?
When Giuliani's tenure as mayor ended, in 2002, he left behind a city that was ... more than a little relieved to see him go.... it had felt like an eight-year fistfight. Giuliani had fought with teachers and with Yasir Arafat, with the Brooklyn Museum and with Fidel Castro, with squeegee men, tennis fans, street venders, taxi-drivers, his own police chief, and, of course, his wife. He had repeatedly chastised New Yorkers for their incorrigible jaywalking and careless bicycling. ("All of these things are part of making the city safer. There's been a lot of ridicule about it, which is unfortunate.")
Boyer adds,
Many Manhattanites felt that when the rest of the country experienced the Rudy Giuliani they knew -- the flashes of pique, the slashing remark -- the celebrity glow would quickly fade.
Not this Manhattanite. I thought this was exactly what Republicans, at least, would love about him. And as far as I can tell, it is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: He hates. A lot of people can tell he hates. He's a bully who's barely in control of his anger. They find that rather thrilling.
And there's one other item New York (or at least some New Yorkers) never liked about Giuliani that's surely helping him as well -- and I'm surprised Boyer shies away from it, given the first sentences of his lead paragraph:
The South Carolina State House, a grand, copper-domed structure in downtown Columbia, is a showplace for the state's long history of hellbent defiance. The most prominent feature on the grounds is a monument to fallen Confederate soldiers, whose virtues "plead for just judgment of the cause in which they perished." Beside it, atop a thirty-foot pole, waves the Rebel flag, the object of fierce national debate a decade ago, when it flew above the capitol dome, and no less conspicuous now, in its new location. Among the nearby statuary stands a life-size likeness of Benjamin R. (Pitchfork Ben) Tillman, the four-term United States senator who led the movement that disenfranchised black voters in 1895 and instituted Jim Crow. Inside the building, cast-iron staircases rise to an elegant lobby, and portraits honor the men who shaped the state's querulous history, including John C. Calhoun, who contrived the rationale -- nullification -- for Southern secession, and Strom Thurmond, who led the South out of the Democratic Party.
OK, kids, let's make two lists and see if we can find some commonalities.
List #1:
* The Confederacy
* Jim Crow
* States' rights
List #2:
* Abner Louima
* Amadou Diallo
* Patrick Dorismond
Anyone see where I'm going here?
When heartlanders think about Giuliani changing the nature of New York City, aren't quite a few of them thinking of him wresting control of the city from ... well, you know: them? Think of the picture conjured up in the average American's mind by the word "criminal." Or the phrase "homeless person." Or "welfare recipient." These are the people Giuliani says he brought under control. Is it any surprise that he can walk into a statehouse festooned with Confederate flags and bring down the house?
I just finished "Mayberry Man," Peter Boyer's article on Rudolph Giuliani in this week's New Yorker. I have to admit I was expecting a bit more from an article with this subtitle:
Is what New York never liked about Rudy Giuliani exactly what the heartland loves?
I think there are a few ways in which that's true, and Boyer touches on one of them, but he backs away from the others.
Boyer does seem to think -- it's the point of his article's title -- that Giuliani may be succeeding in part because his opinion of New York jibes with America's:
It is also possible that the rest of the country knows all it wishes to know about Giuliani. It was Giuliani who was depicted in the Times as imposing "the mores of Mayberry" on the city. Stephen DiBrienza, the former City Councilman, says, "All the things that a lot of New Yorkers, myself included, hate about this guy are the things that are actually fuelling his campaign."
But the fact that he made New York more like Mayberry isn't enough to make a pro-choice cross-dresser from Sodom the #1 guy in the GOP, even with 9/11 thrown in. So what else is there? Well, how about this?
When Giuliani's tenure as mayor ended, in 2002, he left behind a city that was ... more than a little relieved to see him go.... it had felt like an eight-year fistfight. Giuliani had fought with teachers and with Yasir Arafat, with the Brooklyn Museum and with Fidel Castro, with squeegee men, tennis fans, street venders, taxi-drivers, his own police chief, and, of course, his wife. He had repeatedly chastised New Yorkers for their incorrigible jaywalking and careless bicycling. ("All of these things are part of making the city safer. There's been a lot of ridicule about it, which is unfortunate.")
Boyer adds,
Many Manhattanites felt that when the rest of the country experienced the Rudy Giuliani they knew -- the flashes of pique, the slashing remark -- the celebrity glow would quickly fade.
Not this Manhattanite. I thought this was exactly what Republicans, at least, would love about him. And as far as I can tell, it is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: He hates. A lot of people can tell he hates. He's a bully who's barely in control of his anger. They find that rather thrilling.
And there's one other item New York (or at least some New Yorkers) never liked about Giuliani that's surely helping him as well -- and I'm surprised Boyer shies away from it, given the first sentences of his lead paragraph:
The South Carolina State House, a grand, copper-domed structure in downtown Columbia, is a showplace for the state's long history of hellbent defiance. The most prominent feature on the grounds is a monument to fallen Confederate soldiers, whose virtues "plead for just judgment of the cause in which they perished." Beside it, atop a thirty-foot pole, waves the Rebel flag, the object of fierce national debate a decade ago, when it flew above the capitol dome, and no less conspicuous now, in its new location. Among the nearby statuary stands a life-size likeness of Benjamin R. (Pitchfork Ben) Tillman, the four-term United States senator who led the movement that disenfranchised black voters in 1895 and instituted Jim Crow. Inside the building, cast-iron staircases rise to an elegant lobby, and portraits honor the men who shaped the state's querulous history, including John C. Calhoun, who contrived the rationale -- nullification -- for Southern secession, and Strom Thurmond, who led the South out of the Democratic Party.
OK, kids, let's make two lists and see if we can find some commonalities.
List #1:
* The Confederacy
* Jim Crow
* States' rights
List #2:
* Abner Louima
* Amadou Diallo
* Patrick Dorismond
Anyone see where I'm going here?
When heartlanders think about Giuliani changing the nature of New York City, aren't quite a few of them thinking of him wresting control of the city from ... well, you know: them? Think of the picture conjured up in the average American's mind by the word "criminal." Or the phrase "homeless person." Or "welfare recipient." These are the people Giuliani says he brought under control. Is it any surprise that he can walk into a statehouse festooned with Confederate flags and bring down the house?
Here's a follow-up to Kathy's post from Saturday about Southwestern Baptist Seminary, which is introducing a degree program in homemaking for women only: Dr. Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist and the driving force behind this and other moves to make Baptist women into second-class citizens (including the dismissal of a female professor for teaching men), was interviewed on Fox News (video here), along with Robert Parham of EthicsDaily.com. EthicsDaily followed up with an article that includes a couple of choice Paige Patterson nuggets:
Although Patterson claimed that he believes women should be able to choose if they work, previous comments by him have suggested otherwise. In 1997, Patterson remarked about women: "I think everybody should own at least one."
In October of 2004, Patterson spoke in Southwestern's chapel service on the role of women in the church and society ...
During the address, Patterson used a metaphor that made the husband like a police officer to correct the evil ways of his wife.
"However, he is above me," Patterson said of the police officer. "God gave him an assignment that affects me and made him a minister of God to correct my evil ways. I am obligated to submit to him, not because he is a superior human being, but because his assignment from God is such that it is."
Dr. P. really knows how to sweet-talk a girl, doesn't he?
Oh, but there is this:
Patterson also told women not to write "homemaker" in small letters on paperwork. Instead, he urged them, "Write it in bold letters with a big magic marker."
Bold letters -- yeah, that makes everything better.
****
Oh, and here's Dr. P. denouncing a Baptist congregation in Decatur, Georgia, for having a female pastor ("totally unacceptable to most Southern Baptists"). Northing if not consistent is Dr. P.
Although Patterson claimed that he believes women should be able to choose if they work, previous comments by him have suggested otherwise. In 1997, Patterson remarked about women: "I think everybody should own at least one."
In October of 2004, Patterson spoke in Southwestern's chapel service on the role of women in the church and society ...
During the address, Patterson used a metaphor that made the husband like a police officer to correct the evil ways of his wife.
"However, he is above me," Patterson said of the police officer. "God gave him an assignment that affects me and made him a minister of God to correct my evil ways. I am obligated to submit to him, not because he is a superior human being, but because his assignment from God is such that it is."
Dr. P. really knows how to sweet-talk a girl, doesn't he?
Oh, but there is this:
Patterson also told women not to write "homemaker" in small letters on paperwork. Instead, he urged them, "Write it in bold letters with a big magic marker."
Bold letters -- yeah, that makes everything better.
****
Oh, and here's Dr. P. denouncing a Baptist congregation in Decatur, Georgia, for having a female pastor ("totally unacceptable to most Southern Baptists"). Northing if not consistent is Dr. P.
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