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Friday, October 20, 2006
A Very Scary Scenario
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 1:01PM
Here is part of an interview between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and actor-cum-liberal activist Mark Ruffalo. I want you to read this passage and then guess how Ruffalo's sentence ends:
AMY GOODMAN: How dangerous is it or popular is it to speak out in Hollywood?So, what terrifies Ruffalo? Is he scared that actors are receiving death threats? That the jack-boots in the Bush Administration are threatening to "disappear" the likes of Ruffalo? Here's the end of that sentence:MARK RUFFALO: I'm terrified, really, to be honest with you. I know that a lot of people in Hollywood feel the way I do. A lot of people who have come out, have been, you know…
...severely maligned in the media, this crazy liberal media that we keep hearing about. They come down like a hammer to people who speak out, especially from Hollywood.
The media is criticizing Hollywood?!?! OH NOOOOO!!!!!! How will people like Ruffalo ever survive? This has got to be as bad as when Ruffalo finds out that the restaurant he just arrived at doesn't serve Dom Perignon. No wonder he's panicked.
RE: Conservatives vs. Conservatives
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 12:23PM
I always love it when the New York Times runs one of these stories. You mean conservatives are arguing with each other?!?!?! And in other headlines, Water Is Wet!
Someday maybe the Times and other liberals like them will figure out that the constant debate going on among the conservative movement is one of the sources of its strength. Of course, that would mean that the left would have to realize that by and large they don't like debate. Witness, for example, what happened to Brendan Nyhan when he criticized the blog Eschaton.
Referring to the Liberals Fighting Liberals post, when was the last time you saw conservatives signing a manifesto when they were criticized by one of their own? When I recently took a number of conservatives to task for wanting Democrats to control the House, you didn't see them banding together to sign a "statement of principles." Rather, Bruce Bartlett responded with a letter, as did Stephen Slivinski (albeit a libertarian, not a conservative) with a column.
The fact that the right often debates within its ranks helps us come up with better policies and find better ways to get them enacted. That's why we win so much more than the other side.
John Lynch's B
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 11:42AM
NH Gov. John Lynch received a B in the Cato Institute's latest governor's rankings. He must've been graded on a curve. Lynch was praised for opposing a sales or income tax. Well, no one can get elected governor in NH without making that pledge, so no points are earned there. The question is what has he done as governor to prevent a sales or income tax from being implemented. The answer is: Nothing.
The big budget issue in New Hampshire is education funding. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to define "adequate education" and pay for ALL of it. New Hampshire would be the only state in the nation that relies on state rather than local funds to pay for public education. For his entire first term Lynch embraced the court's ruling, obliquely, but he embraced it. And he worked against attempts to overturn the ruling by constitutional amendment.
Lynch has now said he might support a constitutional amendment. But he unquestionably supports raising education spending to unprecedented and unnecessary levels that likely will require large tax increases. And he has fought attempts to streamline the state's largest department, reform the welfare bureaucracy and raise more money for state parks by privatizing some operations.
He needlessly raised the cigarette tax while blocking efforts to trim spending so that the tax would not be needed.
That gets a B from Cato? Maybe Granite Staters just expect a lot more frugality than the Cato guys do.
The Concise Case for a Republican Congress
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 11:08AM
AP:
Democrats say the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee had no grounds to suspend a staff member who's come under scrutiny for the leak of a secret intelligence assessment.Something else for the Intel Committee to investigate: The possibility that Jane Harman is a GOP double agent.The unidentified staff member, a Democrat, was suspended this week by Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review, Hoekstra's spokesman, Jamal Ware, said Thursday.
The Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Jane Harman of California, wrote to Hoekstra that she was "appalled" by his action, which was "without basis." ...
In a letter to Hoekstra dated Sept. 29, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said the Democratic staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before a Sept. 23 story by the Times on its conclusions.
Liberals vs. Liberals
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 10:41AM
From conservative infighting, we move to liberal infighting. In a recent essay in the London Review of Books, Tony Judt heaved the worst insult you could possibly throw at American liberals - he accused them of being insufficiently anti-Bush. "Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy?" Judt asked as his opening salvo. Not to take that lying down, the American Prospect has published a manifesto signed by prominent liberals, dismissing Judt's claims as "nonsense" and arguing that yes, in fact, they really really hate Bush and have been saying so all along.
Among the 46 signatories are Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (the manifesto's author's), Eric Alterman, Robert Reich, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Jane Smiley, and Michael Tomasky.
Conservatives vs. Conservatives
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 10:39AM
The NY Times has an article today on one of its favorite topics: conservative infighting. The gist of this particular piece is that conservatives are already debating which wing of the movement is most to blame for the current predicament of the Republican Party. Is it the free spenders? Is it the internationally adventurous neoconservatives? Is it the religious right? Did the party turn off its base by not being firmer on immigration? Or did it alienate other voters by being too anti-immigrant?
I think my favorite part of the article was this closing quote from Newt Gingrich:
"I would rather have a movement active enough to bite itself rather than a movement so moribund it didn't realize it was irritated."
In keeping with tradition, I want to take issue with this:
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and another prominent advocate of the invasion, said he doubted that soaring spending was turning off as many voters as tax-cutters like Mr. Norquist or Mr. Armey suggested.
"The spending bill that was supposedly going to destroy the Republican Party was the Medicare drug bill," he said. "I have heard almost no one talk about it one way or the other."
A few things. First, he's kidding, right? He hasn't heard anyone talk about the prescription drug bill? Second, I don't think any single spending bill was going to imperil Republicans, but rather, an accumulated six-year record of runaway spending that now rivals the Johnson era. In 2004, there was plenty of conservative angst over spending, but the prospect of putting John Kerry in charge of the War on Terror was itself enough to make conservatives vote for President Bush. Republicans not only got a reprieve, but another two years to do something about their spending habit. Instead, they went on a post-Katrina spending spree, passed the pork-laden energy and transportation bills, and doled out money for the Bridge to Nowhere, along with tens of thousands of other earmarks. So for Kristol to single out one bill and say spending hasn't had an impact is just absurd.
Watch for a Continuing Image Makeover
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 9:38AM
A Washington Times article today explains how Rep. Nancy Pelosi
is not a shoo-in to become Speaker should Democrats take over the
House, despite a Republican campaign to scare voters into thinking
it's inevitable with a Democrat victory. But in an apparent effort
to fortify her leadership candidacy should that happen, her staff
is playing up qualifications other than the fact that she's a San
Francisco liberal:
Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said,..."Republicans are without a single winning issue, so it's no wonder they are desperately trying to falsely smear a churchgoing grandmother who has made fiscal responsibility, bipartisanship and middle-class tax cuts a priority."
Yeah, and she parks in the handicap spots near the front door, sits in the same front pew every Sunday, and eats dinner at 4:30 every evening so she can get her senior citizen discount.
A Newsweek
profile of Pelosi drifts into this territory also:
A recent addition to her arsenal of barbs scolds Republican leaders for failing to stop former congressman Mark Foley's lurid messages to teenage pages. "As a mother and grandmother, I think 'lioness'," she says. "You come near the cubs, you're dead."
Just keep thinking, "churchgoing grandmother, churchgoing grandmother, churchgoing grandmother...."
Nuclear Japan
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 9:13AM
In his Washington Post column today, Charles Krauthammer joins the list of those advocating that the
The main issue I have with the "nuclear
On the Ground in Athens, GA
Posted by on 10.20.06 @ 8:32AM
I got my start with TAS by writing about Georgia politics and then promptly wandered off into federal politics, culture, and religion. A local election marks my return.
If the race for state senate between Jane Kidd (D) and William Cowsert (R) is any indication, then the Democrats think this is their year and that they have simply got to convert. Kidd's seat is an attempted hold for Democrats, but it's more like a takeover if they hold because the GOP recently redrew the seat.
Literally every day, I receive a glossy full-size mail-out from Kidd's campaign. Some declare her virtues. Others proclaim Cowsert's shortcomings. At the price, she could have just sent me forty bucks or so and asked for my support.
On top of the mail, I have been the target of push-polling. I was asked to participate in a political survey and readily agreed, hoping I could improve poll results for the GOP team. After answering a couple of questions I realized this was no scientific poll and would not be published in the newspaper.
I was asked if it would affect my vote if I were told Republican Cowsert:
Cut lots of money from a state insurance plan that protects children,
Runs a law practice with almost the sole goal of getting drunk drivers off scot-free, AND
Is a big crybaby (they really said it) who got his brother-in-law to redraw the seat so he could beat Jane Kidd who defeated him last time around.
The last two made me laugh and my "pollster" conceded that many people had the same reaction. I'm wondering whether the Kidd campaign might be hurting themselves with this one.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
RE: Grading the Governors
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 5:12PM
Phil: Keep in mind, getting a "C" from Cato is like receiving an "A++" from the rest of us.
Re: Immigrant Army, Continued
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 4:44PM
I think it's a terrific idea, by the way. We need a bigger military, and we need more immigrants. To do the former with a draft is out of the question, both politically and prudentially (conscripts are, almost by definition, inferior soldiers). And we can't get the latter without either lots of illegal immigration enabled by poor enforcement (the current "solution") or guest worker programs that are inferior to a more straightforward liberalization of immigration quotas in every way except in political salability -- and rewarding our fighting men and women generally has broad appeal.
Re: Immigrant Army
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 4:10PM
But Philip, Filipinos do have "knowledge of the languages and mores in the lands where terrorists reside."" Have you forgotten about Abu Sayyaf? As for Latin America, even if rumors of a burgeoning Islamist terror presence there are overblown now, they probably won't be in the not-too-distant future, as Islamism supplants communism as the default ideology of anti-American thugs everywhere.
She's Baaaaaaack!
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 3:27PM
Announcing a new film about voter disenfranchisement among blacks in 2000 and 2004, starring Cynthia McKinney!
Apparently this film won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, proving conclusively that the folks at Sundance no longer have sound judgment, assuming, of course, that they ever had any to begin with.
Re: Grading Romney
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 2:41PM
Wlady, here's Cato's Stephen Slivinski on why Romney received a C:
As Mitt Romney launches his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, his fiscal record as governor should be scrutinized. Romney likes to advance the image of himself as a governor who has fought a liberal Democratic legislature on various fronts. That's mostly true on spending: he proposed modest increases to the budget and line-item vetoed millions of dollars each year only to have most of those vetoes overridden. But Romney will likely also be eager to push the message that he was a governor who stood by a no-new-taxes pledge. That's mostly a myth. His first budget included no general tax increases but did include a $500 million increase in various fees. He later proposed $140 in business tax hikes through the closing of "loopholes" in the tax code. He announced in May 2004 that he wanted to cut the top income tax rate from 5.3 to 5 percent, but that was hardly an audacious stand. Voters had already passed a plan to do just that before Romney even took office. In his budget for 2006, he proposed $170 million more in business tax hikes, almost completely neutralizing the proposed income tax cut. If you consider the massive costs to taxpayers that his universal health care plan will inflict once he's left office, Romney's tenure is clearly not a triumph of small-government activism.
For those interested, a PDF of the full report is viewable here.
Re: Grading the Governors
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 1:54PM
Phil: Romney a C? I assume his presence in Massachusetts kept the rest of state government from earning an F.
In happier news, I see Kathleen Blanco received the lowest of the F's Cato handed out. But wouldn't it be fair to say Katrina might account for her lost homework?
Grading The Governors
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 12:16PM
Cato has published its 2006 fiscal policy report card for governors. Missouri's Republican governor Matt Blunt was the only one to receive an A. Among the crop of potential 2008 presidential candidates, Mitt Romney, Bill Richardson and Tom Vilsack received Cs and Mike Huckabee was given an F.
Via Hit and Run.
Play Hooky, MoveOn Says
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 11:45AM
This was just sent to one of my alternate email accounts:
Dear MoveOn member,
Do you ever wish you could quit your day job and work to take back Congress? Well, on Election Day, you can come close: Take the day off work on Tuesday, November 7th and be part of something big.
Skip your annoying commute. Skip those endless meetings. This election is the best chance we've had in years to change the direction of our country. And we have a plan to put dozens of races over the top by making hundreds of thousands of get-out-the-vote phone calls on Election Day—but we can't do it without your help….
Don't wake up the day after the election wishing you'd done a little bit more. We can decide if there's another right-wing Supreme Court justice. We can decide whether the occupation in
Iraq goes on indefinitely. We can decide whether President Bush gets to privatize Social Security…
2006 vs. 1994
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 11:37AM
The National Journal's Chuck Todd describes five ways in which the 2006 elections are similar to the 1994 elections, and five ways in which they are different.
One big difference that he doesn't mention is that with just a few weeks to go before the election, Democrats still haven't offered anything akin to the "Contract With America." The closest they've gotten is the "New Direction For America," but that's not much of a revolutionary governing agenda rooted in a clear ideology, it's more of a laundry list of liberal pet causes: raising the minimum wage, cutting college costs, making health care more affordable, etc. However, it still could be enough, because another difference between the two elections is that in 1994, Republicans needed to gain 40 seats to take control of Congress (they ended up gaining 52), but this year Democrats only need 15.
Immigrant Army
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 10:53AM
Max Boot and Michael O'Hanlon have co-authored an op-ed for the Washinton Post of the "kill two kill birds with one stone" genre, arguing that the U.S. should offer a military path to citizenship, thus addressing both the immigration issue and armed forces recruitment problems. (The article mainly focuses on addressing the latter, and doesn't suggest that it will solve the former, only that "it could provide a new path toward assimilation for undocumented immigrants...")
The biggest problem I had with their piece was this argument:
Not only would immigrants provide a valuable influx of highly motivated soldiers, they would also address one of
America's key deficiencies in the battle against Islamist extremists: our lack of knowledge of the languages and mores in the lands where terrorists reside. Newly arrived Americans can help us avoid trampling on local sensitivities and thereby creating more enemies than we eliminate.
That means that they want us to recruit Arabic-speaking soldiers from the
Uh, well, not exactly:
Since proficiency in English would presumably be important for those joining the armed forces, we might focus on
South Asia, anglophone Africa, and parts of Latin America, Europe and East Asia (the Philippines would be a natural recruiting ground) where English is common as a second language…. Screening would have to be done to ensure that would-be terrorists did not gain access to the armed forces through this program. That might complicate the process of recruiting from certain countries, especially in the
Middle East, but it would hardly put a huge dent in the likely applicant pool.
So, there you have it. Latin American immigrants speaking Spanish and Tagalog-speaking Filipinos have "knowledge of the languages and mores in the lands where terrorists reside."
Re: Yankee Big
Posted by on 10.19.06 @ 5:28AM
Guys, Big Papi (David Ortiz) had his career year this year, and a lot of good it did the Sox.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
UA, UN, Whatever
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 3:58PM
Ok, I never thought I'd see the day when I not only agree with but dang near cheered for what a WaPo columnist wrote. But today's piece by Ruth Marcus is worth a standing O.
I've flown a few airlines lately, and it's not just a case of some being better than others. Yes, Northwest is fine. Delta is very good. But United? Well, let's put it this way: if there are any differences between United Airlines and the United Nations (in quality of service and value returned for what we spend) I've been unable to discover it. CEO of United would be a perfect retirement job for Kofi. Security, as maddening, time-consuming and misdirected as it may be, is a trivial inconvenience compared to UA.
Re: Yankee Big Rod
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 3:32PM
I agree the Yankees fell short (again) mostly because their pitching was inadequate, but think about this: if the $252-million pay-boy had done just one-half -- or even one-third -- of what Big Papi did for the Red Sox in 2004, don't you think the Bronx Bomb-outs would have defeated Detroit? Instead he ended up batting eighth!
Re: Yankee Big Rod
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 12:52PM
Wlady, you make my point exactly. The playoffs are won on pitching, which is why you you don't go out of your way to spend all of your money/resources acquiring sluggers like A-Rod, Sheffield, Giambi, Abreu, etc. The Yankee teams from 1996-2001 were true "teams" built on solid pitching, stellar defense, and incredibly clutch hitting--not just a collection of all stars. Yes, they also had a high payroll, but they depended on contributions from guys like Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, etc. Check out the 1998 roster, the year they won 114 games and virtually swept through the playoffs--probably the only two hall of famers on that team were Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. A-Rod, the $252 million man, perfectly symbolizes what the Yankees have become in the past five years--overpaid, great during the regular season and unable to deliver when it matters.
Yankee Big Rod
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 12:17PM
Phil: Why is everyone always picking on Alex Rodriguez, one of the finest players of our time? He's become the Don Rumsfeld of baseball, belittled and loathed for not pulling off the impossible and blamed for problems out of his control. The Yankees lost to Detroit not because A-Rod didn't hit. They lost because their starting pitching was lousy. As Yogi Berra should have told George Steinbrenner, 90 percent of baseball is pitching. Only the other half is hitting.
But go ahead, Phil, get rid of Rodriguez. I hear Drew Henson is available to replace him.
Let's Get Back to Washington!
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 12:12PM
The latest Matt Taibbi bit trying to unravel the apparent enigma of whether or not Democrats will behave like mad partisans should they retake one or both houses of Congress in Rolling Stone—posted online at AlterNet today—draws on the wisdom of that paragon of non-partisanship Charlie Rangel:
Among other things, the famed freshman class of 1994 was comprised to a large degree of young congressmen who ran against the institution of congress in their campaigns, promising to shun "
A decade later, congress was setting the record for fewest working days ever, and House freshmen don't even shake hands with the guys on the other side of the floor.
"We used to travel the world together," sighed Rangel. "Now we don't even come to
It is a tragedy, is it not, that our poor Congresspeople are corralled in their districts when they could be on taxpayer-funded junkets? And could the federal budget not be at least twice its current size if representatives stopped spending so much time with their constituents and added a couple days to their workweek? In fact, let’s extend House terms to six years so members can spend less time being held accountable in their districts and more time quaffing chardonnay with Rangel and the Senate gang on overseas flights to super exotic locales cutting deals on new entitlements all the livelong day.
And further down:
The young Democrat sitting next to Rangel who looks at a Republican like a Crip lining up a Blood might be the future of politics generally.
"If Feingold or whoever is president in '08," says defense analyst and former Senate staffer Winslow Wheeler, "don't expect a sudden flowering of oversight."
Excuse me? Feingold?! Personally, I’m no fan of pragmatism and feel much more comfortable with ideological losers, but if Feingold at the top of the ’08 ticket is a real possibility, I strongly suggest my more pragmatic liberal friends get the Draft Or Whoever effort underway immediately.
Broadway Karl
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 9:25AM
Rove pulls a Joe Namath, predicts GOP wins House and Senate.
Re: A-Rod to Cubs?
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 7:54AM
Philip, as a Red Sox fan and an expert on choking, my team still holds the record for longest history because they won many more times to get into a position to choke, whereas the Cubs have for the most part been lovable losers who rarely got into serious contention where they could then blow it.
However, as I'm sure you are painfully aware, neither of the above teams holds the record for the single greatest choke of all time...
Election Arithmetic
Posted by on 10.18.06 @ 2:56AM
Each day, it becomes more difficult to see how Republicans can maintain the House. Democrats only need 15 seats to win control, and with the seats of Delay, Ney and Foley almost certainly lost, it's really more like 12 seats. On top of this, Curt Weldon, whose seat was already considered a toss-up in his Democratic-leaning district, is now under investigation. Even if you question the timing of the investigation, clearly it's going to be an uphill battle for him.
Cook Political Report has identified two more Republican open seats as likely Democratic pickups (Kolbe's in Arizona and Beauprez's in Colorado) and classifies 23 additional Republican seats as toss-ups. If you write off the seats of Delay, Ney and Foley, it means that Democrats can gain control of Congress by winning a little more than half of the toss-ups. If you consider the seats of Weldon, Kolbe and Beauprez to be lost, then it means that Democrats can take over the House even if they were only to win 9 of those 23 remaining toss-up seats. Sure, anything can happen in the next few weeks, but mathematically speaking, things are looking pretty bleak for Republicans.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Tocqueville Forum Inaugural Conference
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 10:48PM
Awash in ennui? Ready for adventure? Set ablaze over the future of civic education in America? Then cab it to Georgetown later this week -- Georgetown campus, that is -- for The Tocqueville Forum's debut two-day conference on that very subject, brought to you by our crack team of political theorists.
Fidget jealously behind the velvet rope as Justice Scalia entertains a packed house on Night One. Then on Day Two rock three heavyweight panels from 9:00 to 4:00, starring such luminaries as authors John Seery, Peter Lawler (who also blogs at No Left Turns), and our own Patrick Deneen; Jean Elshtain from Chicago, David Armitage from Harvard, and More.
What should citizens know? What's the link between a liberal arts education and a civic education? And how does America fit, these days, into the whole Western tradition? Dare to find out. I'll be there. Shouldn't you?
A-Rod To Cubs?
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 10:05PM
ESPN reports that the Chicago Cubs are expected to go after Alex Rodriguez aggressively. As a Yankee fan, I'm all for it. A-Rod would fit right in with the team that has the longest history of choking in baseball.
"Look out Ned and Joe"
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 6:11PM
So said Alan Schlesinger (the other guy in the Connecticut Senate race) in yesterday's debate with Lamont and Lieberman. TPM Cafe has a highlight video of Schlesinger's greatest hits from the debate, in which he rails against Lamont and Lieberman for being liberal Democrats who would stand in the way of Social Security reform. It reinforces the old adage about politics making strange bedfellows that TPM speaks approvingly of his performance and that Kos giddily declares Schlesinger the winner of the debate. Of course, liberals realize that the only hope of Lamont winning is a late surge in support for Schlesinger. I'm not saying this doesn't cut both ways given that the RNC hasn't backed Schlesinger. It's just a testament to how bizarre the
How To Use Kids For Propaganda Purposes
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 2:45PM
FamiliesUSA, a pro government-run health care outfit, is running an essay contest for kids called "When an Apple a Day Isn't Enough." Contestants age 9-13 are instructed, "Many children and young people get sick or hurt and need to go to the hospital or see the doctor. Write one paragraph about a time when you or a friend were helped by a doctor. Then, write a second paragraph about why it is important for all children to be able to see a doctor."
Contestants age 14-18 are instructed, "In the United States, more than 9 million people under the age of 19 do not have health insurance. You or someone in your community may not have health insurance. Describe in the first person a teenager or child with no health insurance and explain how the lack of health insurance affects that person's life. If you do not know someone without health insurance, imagine how not having health insurance can be a struggle."
I wonder if FamiliesUSA will ever sponsor a contest in the U.K. where children are asked to write a paragraph about a friend they know who, say, has to wait two years to see a heart specialist.
Kuo and Seducing Christians
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 1:12PM
Just read the interview with David Kuo that Newsweek has up on its Website, and he sounds earnest enough in what he's saying. However, to me it seems absurd that the media, which has spent years attacking the Bush administration for being run by a bunch of evangelical nutters, are now making an issue of Bush being insufficiently loyal to that same constituency.
Rudy and AK47s
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 11:37AM
In John Tabin's fine column on our main site about when an AK47 is not an AK47, he cites this piece from
"I don't think [the assault-weapons ban] is one of the most critical issues right now"
"The assault-weapons ban is something I supported in the past."
"We need senators who understand that we have to be on offense against terrorism," he said. "Cantwell's ambiguous support for the effort against terrorism probably concerns me more than anything else."
It's clear that what Giuliani was saying was that the terrorism issue is more important than other political differences he may have had with McGavick in the past. By Feit's logic, any politician who stumps for a candidate with whom he has disagreed is a flip-flopper.
To be sure, I think that Giuliani's stance on the Second Ammendment may prove the toughest hurdle for him in pursuit of the Republican nomination, so he may eventually end up doing some flip-flopping on the issue. I just don't see him campaigning for McGavick as an indication that such flip-flopping has already taken place.
Meanwhile, it's worth pointing out that Mitt Romney will face the same problem on the Second Ammendment, because he also supported the assault weapons ban.
News That Doesn't Matter
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 10:44AM
One would think it would be an important story when the leader of the party that is seeking to take control of the Senate on the basis of being an antidote to the ruling party's "culture of corruption" is forced to ammend four years of ethics reports to account for a shady land deal and to reimburse his campaign for using political donations to pay Christmas bonuses to the staff or his ritzy apartment complex, but to the Washington Post it only deserves to be on the bottom corner of page A4.
Maybe She Wanted an Interview with Matt Lauer
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 8:35AM
Hey everybody! The elementary school in my community now has its very own female teacher child rapist! And she carried out the dirty deeds in her own classroom during school hours. Not only that, but get this: She also had an affair with the victim's father! How very proud schools like ours must be to earn this kind of attention, gaining notoriety because they are incompetent to protect children in even the broadest of daylight hours.
But I'll betcha almost all the parents will still keep their kids there. Can't blame all the teachers and administrators for one bad egg, you know.
Meanwhile, on a near-daily basis we are reaffirmed in our decision years ago to homeschool our own children. Any threat will have to beat down our front door and climb over my wife's dead body to harm our kids.
Fox Ruins a Reputation
Posted by on 10.17.06 @ 8:11AM
Boston Herald sports columnist Gerry Callahan nails Fox on its hypocrisy and its horrendous treatment of baseball broadcaster Steve Lyons after the network fired him last week for allegedly uttering an inappropriate racial comment.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Obama and 2008
Posted by on 10.16.06 @ 5:37PM
Joe Klein has a mostly fawning article in Time about Barack Obama, that, nonetheless, explores how the Senator's desire to find common ground could hurt his presidential prospects:
An old-time
politician told me Obama's thoughtfulness might be a negative in a presidential campaign. "You have to convey strength," he said, "and it's hard to do that when you're giving on-the-other-hand answers." Chicago
A lot of Americans are frustrated by what they see as a nasty tone to politics, and it's easy to see why they would be drawn to Obama. However, to be an effective leader, eventually you're going to have to say and do a lot of things that will anger people. I think Obama would be making a huge mistake by running for president in 2008. He would be much better off running for governor first, and gaining some experience in an executive capacity.
The Wrong Cure?
Posted by on 10.16.06 @ 1:58PM
Via Ezra Klein's blog, I found this new survey about health care in the U.S. Lot's of interesting findings, and this is what Klein has to say about the respondents' views on why health care costs are rising:
As for what's driving all these high costs, the reported culprits, in descending order, are excess profits of drug and insurance companies, medical malpractice lawsuits, fraud and waste, overpaid doctors, administrative costs, unnecessary treatments, unhealthy lifestyles, expensive new treatments, the aging population, and better medical care. That's depressing. In order to get an accurate view of what's driving health costs, you'd need to basically invert that list. To say the American people have it backwards is to be unusually precise.
I wouldn't say that they have it backward so much as I would say that the survey didn't ask about the primary driver of health care costs: the third-party payer system (although, in fairness, few Americans would probably know what that is.) In a third-party payer system, the consumer does not directly pay the provider. Rather, a third-party-in the case of health care, an insurance company or the government-pays the provider. Under such an arrangement, the consumer has no incentive to consider costs or quality, or to shop around for the best deal because he perceives that "someone else" is paying the bill. Indeed, most of the problems on that list are really symptoms of the third-party payer system.
The simple fact is that the biggest problem in the American health care system is that we do not pay enough of our own money directly for our health care. As more and more people pay directly for more of their health care, you will see fewer administrative costs, less fraud and waste, fewer unnecessary treatments, more innovation so that new treatments become, over time, cheaper, and people living healthier lives, and doctors' will be paid more market-based rates. It might also have a beneficial effect on providing treatment to an aging population, as more competition results in more innovative ways to provide medical care cheaper.
As for excess profits, it's difficult to know whether such a problem would decline since the term is a lot like the oil industry's so-called "windfall profits" in that no one making such a charge ever defines the term. And getting people to pay for more of their health care directly will have little impact (at least directly) on the tort system.
Health care in this country needs more market-based cures like health savings accounts. Otherwise, we are only treating the symptoms.
N. Korean Nuke Test Confirmed
Posted by on 10.16.06 @ 12:34PM
The explosion may have been relatively small, but it was nuclear, according to U.S. intellegence:
Air samples gathered last week contain radioactive materials that confirm that
conducted an underground nuclear explosion, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office said Monday. North Korea In a short statement posted on its Web site, Negroponte's office also confirmed that the size of the explosion was less than 1 kiloton, a comparatively small nuclear explosion. Each kiloton is equal to the force produced by 1,000 tons of TNT.
Re: Mehlman on The Elections
Posted by on 10.16.06 @ 11:28AM
Quin summed up the major points that Mehlman focused on, and obviously Mehlman's job is to stay on message, so he kept coming back to those points throughout. He also said that the RNC anticipated a challenging environment and "We have planned for this environment for a very long time." There haven't been surprises as far as the races that are competitive, he said. On the turnout front, he argued that there's no evidence of a surge in Democratic participation and cited that in 36 of 39 Democratic primaries this year, turnout was lower than it was in 2002. Republicans, meanwhile, have still been volunteering in large numbers. He also was more confident about the Senate than the House, which shouldn't surprise anybody, but he said that Republicans would maintain control of both chambers.
For those who have been debating whether Republicans would learn the right lessons were they to lose, Mehlman's comments made me see this as less likely. He attributed the current challenging environment to a "6 year itch," the Iraq War, and scandals. This could be a preview of the type of explanations that we'll hear in the event of a Republican loss, rather than that skyrocketing spending sapped the enthusiasm of small government conservatives.
When asked about spending, Mehlman cited the decrease in the deficit, which of course has nothing to do with spending, but with higher tax revenue as a result of a stronger economy. He also cited earmark reform and President Bush's drive for Social Security reform, which wasn't backed up with action by Congressional Republicans. As Quin said, when he named the three key issues of the Republican message, it came down to tax cuts, judges and the War on Terror. Republicans can no longer credibly run on reducing the size of government.
Mehlman on the Elections
Posted by on 10.16.06 @ 9:47AM
There will be plenty of time today for lots of people to blog about Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman's discussion this morning at the American Spectator's monthly newsmaker breakfast, but for now, before I run off to a meeting, here are a few highlights: 1) The election must be framed not as a referendum, but as a choice. When the question isn't "are you happy now?" but "who do you want, going forward, to handle taxes, national security, and judges, the conservatives or the liberals?," then the conservatives (and, by extension in most cases, Republicans) do better.
2) The generic poll numbers in the past few weeks have major errors. a) the polls have sampled a significantly higher proportion of Democrats than actual turnout has shown over the past 25 years. b) the Democratic voters and the Democratic-leaning districts are "less efficiently allocated" than Republican ones, so that whereas the Dems have a big edge in already-Democratic districts, the race in the battleground GOP-held districts is 50-50 -- and that's even with the mis-sampling. c) Despite the polls, actual turnout in primaries has belied the idea that Dems are more motivated. In 39 contested Demo primaries this year, the turnout was below 30-year averages in 36 of them. But GOP turnout hasn't been significantly lower than usual.
All of that said, Mehlman is no pie-in-the sky type. He began the whole discussion by saying this this year represents "the most challenging political environment that Republicans and conservatives have had since...I would argue, 1982."
More later today....
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Now-What Conservatism
Posted by on 10.15.06 @ 2:14PM
Sundays were once held back for contemplation. Now anyone thinking too hard -- meaning at all -- or too long -- meaning five seconds -- is faced with a portrait of conservatism at a crossroads. "Conservatism" itself means nothing if we don't agree on what must be conserved -- if we don't even agree on who "we" are. And yet these are the public conversations, swirling wild-eyed around a world, a nation, a culture, that by all accounts is going wrong. Somehow.
Opening steps, then, in the quickening moves of this fall formal dance -- toward an understanding of what's required of the conservative in postmodern times.
John Kerry and the KOS-ization of the Democrats
Posted by on 10.15.06 @ 10:17AM
If I had a dime for every time John Kerry said "Bush lied" or some variant thereof on his appearance today on Fox News Sunday, I'd have a lot of dimes.
When asked why Democratic primary voters should give him another chance, Kerry replied that he has learned a lot. Yes, and he has learned that the Democratic base has been hijacked by the nutroots. Just keep saying "Bush lied" enough times, Kerry seems to think, and you'll win over those who desperately need to be medicated. And if that doesn't go far enough, you can add on "People died."
Thank goodness that clown didn't win in 2004.
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