Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > November
November 2008
…and sportswriters still dream of playing center field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The human ego, left unchecked, can lead to many a foolhardy decision. Case in point:
“HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews may be considering a run for U.S. Senate in 2010, a Pennsylvania Democratic party leader says.
The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported that Matthews met with state party leaders this past week in Washington to discuss a possible bid to unseat Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.
Party official Mary Isenhour said she left the meeting feeling that Matthews still hadn’t made up his mind.
The 62-year-old Matthews hosts MSNBC’s “Hardball” and provides political commentary on NBC’s “Today.” His contract with MSNBC expires in June.
Matthews, a Philadelphia native, ran unsuccessfully for a Pennsylvania congressional seat in 1974.”
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Health-care reform fiscal necessity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Talk to the chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions, and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth. Not even close.
“We’re not getting what we pay for,” says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. “It’s just that simple.”
“Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.
Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous….
The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet numerous measures indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.”
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The perverted logic of terror
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once-improving relations between India and Pakistan have been seriously strained with the attacks in Mumbai, which is no doubt the very goal the terrorists sought to achieve.
In the Middle East, Palestinian terrorists and Israeli extremists use violence to keep moderates on both sides from reaching agreement. Every time peace seems it might be within reach, a spate of terror attacks is launched to subvert it.
On September 11, Osama bin Ladin was hoping to provoke precisely the kind of American overreaction that resulted in our invasion of Iraq, an attack that served to bolster his claim that the U.S. was anti-Islamic and imperialistic.
We claim over and over that we will not let the terrorists get their way. And over and over again we react precisely the way they had hoped and give them just what they wanted.
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Fresh thread (you supply the needles)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
… ‘cause I’m busy making homemade waffles and coffee and sausage for 20.
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High productivity=low reproductivity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Japan’s workers are being urged to switch off their laptops, go home early and use what little energy they have left on procreation, in the country’s latest attempt to avert demographic disaster.
The drive to persuade employers that their staff would be better off at home with their wives than staying late at the office comes amid warnings from health experts that many couples are simply too tired to have sex.
A recent survey of married couples under 50 found that more than a third had not had sex in the previous month.
Many couples said they didn’t have the energy for sex, while others said they found it boring.
A quarter of the men surveyed said they were “too tired” after work, while just under a fifth of women said intercourse was “too troublesome”. A study by Durex found that the average couple has sex 45 times a year, less than half the global average of 103 times.
Japan’s birth rate, at 1.34 - the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - is among the lowest in the world and falls well short of the 2.07 children needed to keep the population stable.
If the rate persists, demographers warn that Japan’s overall population will drop to 95 million by 2050 from its 2006 peak of 127.7 million.
Earlier this month the crisis prompted Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business organisation, to implore its 1,600 member companies to allow married employees to spend more time at home.
Several firms have organised “family weeks” during which employees must get permission to work past 7pm, but most continue to squeeze every last drop of productivity from their staff.
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Taliban forms its own OPEC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Taliban seem to have formed their own version of OPEC — in their case the Opium Producing and Exporting Cartel — complete with export limits designed to keep the price of their commodity high. The proceeds are used to fund Taliban operations against the U.S. and the Karzai government.
Says The New York Times:
UNITED NATIONS — Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says….
Last year, the insurgents made as much as $300 million from the opium trade, by United Nations estimates. “With two to three hundred million dollars a lot of war effort can be funded,” said Mr. Costa, an Italian diplomat who has served at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for six years.
But after three years of bumper crops, including this one, the Taliban have succeeded almost too well, producing opium in amounts far in excess of world demand. The result, Mr. Costa said, was now a glut that was putting downward pressure on the price, which had dropped by about 20 percent.
The fact that prices had not collapsed already, he said, was evidence that the Taliban, drug lords and even some farmers have stockpiled the opium, more and more of which is also being processed in Afghanistan. “Insurgents have been holding significant amounts of opium,” Mr. Costa said.
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The nightmare in Mumbai continues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, while we were feasting surrounded by friends and family, a group of well-trained, well-armed terrorists were wreaking havoc in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay.
The violence continues, with government forces still trying to hunt down and kill or capture terrorists. The death toll has topped 140, and will likely go higher. The English-language Indian press and blogs (here’s a site compiling blogs, including first-hand reports) are full of reports of horror, bravery, anger, threats — the reaction an echo of our own responses not that long ago to Sept. 11.
A lot of the anger is directed at a perceived lack of security in India, but the truth is that a dozen or more well-trained gunmen, acting in coordination, could wreak similar havoc in any major city in the world. The terrorists were reportedly dropped off in dinghies by a larger ship offshore, and it is all too easy to imagine similar attacks against Miami, New York, Los Angeles or other US ports.
Initial indications are that the attackers were Islamic extremists and may have trained in Pakistan, heightening India-Pakistan tensions as well as those between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations. In other words, the terrorists are succeeding in that goal as well.
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Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the markets tanking, unemployment soaring, millions in danger of losing their homes and home values falling nationwide by almost 17 percent in just the last quarter, we’re supposed to take a day off to count our blessings?
Well, yes. In fact, Thanksgiving couldn’t have come at a better time. After months of increasing fear and an understandable focus on what many of us have lost or could lose in this crisis, today offers a chance to refocus on all that we still have, on all that is more precious to us. It is a chance to remind ourselves that the richness of life can’t be measured in terms of dollars or numbers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
In strictly logical terms, it might seem harder to give thanks in tough times such as these, but that’s not how the human minds works. In fact, the opposite is often true: It is hard for most of us to be grateful in good times when everything is going well. We tend to get cocky, both as a nation and as individuals, and we take the good times for granted, assuming incorrectly that such a state of affairs is normal, that this is how it always ought to be and will be.
Conversely, it is human nature to appreciate your blessings most when those gifts seem more fragile and temporary. We suddenly live in an era when just having a steady paycheck and a roof over our heads might be more than cause enough to be thankful.
In fact, as extended circles of friends and family gather today, the odds are that somebody in the group — maybe several somebodies — will have lost their job, their businesss or their home, or have real fears that such a thing could happen in the not so distant future. The economic crisis is so widespread, touching so many industries and regions and economic classes, that no Thanksgiving gathering is likely to be immune to such fear.
But we’ve been through a lot worse before, as families if not as individuals, and we have things to draw on. A lot of folks, for example, still have Depression-era lore as part of their family history. It’s the wisdom of elders, passed down in narrative form by those who lived through hardships that we still have a difficult time imagining.
In my own family, the story that strikes deepest might be called the Night of the Oranges.
Back in the ’30s, my grandmother and grandfather were raising six kids in a West Virginia coal-mining town. That was tough enough, but it got worse when my grandfather, a machinist, was paralyzed by a stroke and bedridden for the rest of his life. Suddenly, my grandmother had seven mouths to feed and no breadwinner to help out.
When I’ve heard stories from that era, my aunts and uncles always seem to point out that other people had it worse than they did. But my Uncle Pat does tell the tale of a night somewhere around Christmas when a group of my grandfather’s co-workers showed up at the door bearing a holiday basket of canned food, candy and fresh oranges.
Uncle Pat recalls being transfixed at the sight of those oranges, which were apparently quite the luxury item in that time and place.
But my grandmother, a tough little wisp of a woman, bridled at what she saw as the offering of charity. She turned the men away and told them to take the basket with them, much to the dismay of the children standing behind her in the doorway.
(I should point out that Dad doesn’t remember the scene quite so cinematically, but hey, Pat always was the better storyteller.)
Those were tough people, people you could count on. At some point today, look at those around you; they are your certainty and security, and you are theirs.
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Major terror attack in Mumbai, India
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNN reporting 78 dead, violence ongoing, perpetrated by multiple gunmen, hostages reportedly held.
UPDATE: Westerners apparently targeted. Here’s an English-language blog from Mumbai in real time.
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Obama governing style takes form
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his morning press conference today, Barack Obama had a telling and important response to criticism that his appointees may not reflect the agenda of change championed in his campaign.
I don’t have his direct quote yet, but in general, Obama pointed out that “the change begins with me.” He made it clear that he intends to be the one who sets policy, and he is appointing competent people who can carry it out. It’s an assertion of authority and quite a change from the more hands-off style practiced by the current president.
UPDATE: Here’s the direct quote:
“”What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job.”
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Obama gets a break in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Michael Yon, the conservatives’ favorite war blogger and a guy who deserves a lot of credit for his work in Iraq, has a piece in the New York Post headlined “Iraq’s New Dawn: Victory Across the Board.”
That’s a little broad and premature by my reading. Nonetheless, Yon’s overall assessment seems accurate. By his and other first-hand accounts, Iraq has turned an important corner.
Veteran NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins, for example, said the following back in September in an email interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
“The progress here is remarkable. I came back to Iraq after being away for nearly two years, and honestly, parts of it are difficult for me to recognize. The park out in front of the house where I live — on the Tigris River — was a dead, dying, spooky place. It’s now filled with people — families with children, women walking alone, even at night. That was inconceivable in 2006. The Iraqis who are out there walking in the parks were making their own judgments Âthat it is safe enough for them to go out for a walk. They’re voting with their feet. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”
But as Yon and Filkins both note in various ways, the future is uncertain. The Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis still have very different ideas for the future of Iraq, as do individuals within those groups, and their buy-in to democracy as a way of resolving those conflicting ideas is shallow. They also have a lot of guns and a tendency to use them.
“It’s pretty clear that the calm is very fragile,” says Filkins. “The calm is built on a series of arrangements that are not self-sustaining; indeed, some of which, like the Sunni Awakening, are showing signs of coming apart. So the genie is back in the bottle, but I’m not sure for how long.”
Personally, I will be very pleasantly shocked if the democratic structure we see in place in Iraq is still there five years from now. But for the moment, let’s accept the progress for what it is. A lot has been written about the immense challenges facing Barack Obama as he assumes the presidency, and it’s justified. But on Iraq, he’s gotten a break. Events there have broken in such a way as to allow him to pursue the withdrawal he has long advocated under conditions more positive than most people thought likely.
He’s also putting together a defense/foreign policy team as pragmatic, experienced and sober as his economics team. Clinton at State, Gates at Defense, Marine Gen. Jim Jones (ret.) as national security adviser. This is not the wild-eyed, Marxist/socialist administration that the Republicans depicted in the campaign — quite the opposite. But nobody who paid honest attention to Obama’s statements should be surprised by the fact that the GOP’s caricature was so inaccurate.
On Iraq, Obama’s Cabinet picks would be quite comfortable carrying out the policies laid out by the president-elect in the campaign, and it’s unlikely to be controversial. In effect, the fate of Iraq can increasingly be left in the hands of the Iraqis, where it belonged in the first place. We’ve got other things to worry about.
UPDATE:
I just got off the phone with Michael Yon, who’s embedded with a unit in southern Afghanistan. He wanted to explain that he too thought the headline in his New York Post piece was a little too broad and premature. He is indeed optimistic about the direction things are headed in Iraq, he said, but “Victory Across the Board” is far too sweeping a statement.
He wished me a Happy Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t help thinking that mine will be a lot more comfortable than his will.
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The huge, very large, gargantuan, colossal, unbelievably big bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, so you knew the bailout was big, with lots of huge numbers being thrown about. But HOW big is it, exactly? If you take the money committed by the federal government and the Federal Reserve — that’s more than $3.92 trillion — how would it stack up compared to previous massive government expenditures, after adjusting for inflation? (Understanding of course that the spending hasn’t run its course yet).
(h/t to Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture)
“Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation-adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big-budget government expenditures - COMBINED:
Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $115.3 billion
- Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million
inflation-adjusted cost: $217 billion
- Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $237 billion
- S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $256 billion
- Korean War: Cost: $54 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $454 billion
- The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est)
Iinflation-adjusted cost: $500 billion (Est)
- Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b
inflation-adjusted cost: $597 billion
- Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $698 billion
- NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion
inflation-adjusted cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion”
To review: The bailout has cost us more than the Marshall Plan, the Louisiana Purchase, the invasion of Iraq, the Vietnam War, the moon-landing program, NASA, the Korean War, the savings and loan crisis and the New Deal ALL PUT TOGETHER.
As the president would say, that’s big. Very big.
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Ohmigoodness … the goddess descends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let the swooning begin.
From my colleague Jim Galloway at Political Insider:
Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss just announced that Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the former GOP vice presidential nominee, will campaign for him in Georgia on Monday, capping off his U.S. Senate runoff effort.
“I was thrilled when I got the call that Governor Palin would be able to make the trip to Georgia to campaign with me the day before the runoff election,” Chambliss said in a press release.
Four rallies have been scheduled for Dec. 1: 8:30 a.m. in Augusta, 11 a.m. in Savannah, 1:30 p.m. in Perry, and 4 p.m. in north metro Atlanta.
I’m sure Palin’s arrival is going to help Chambliss get the GOP base fired up to turn out to vote Tuesday, and it’ll be interesting to see how many folks show up at the rallies. (If you plan to attend, you have to register by name at http://www.procatalog.com/saxby/). You could also see this as Palin’s unofficial kickoff of the 2012 campaign.
But back to the present: The polls continue to show Chambliss leading Jim Martin, but within a margin that could conceivably be swung by turnout. However, early voting turnout among black Georgians is well off the pace in the general election, which makes Martin’s climb even steeper.
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Guantanamo an American failure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Almost 800 men have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, “the worst of the worst” as Donald Rumsfeld called them in trying to fend off demands that they be treated humanely. Yet roughly 520 of those alleged “worst” have since been grudgingly released, the latest being Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver.
Hamdan is being sent to his home nation of Yemen, where he will be kept in prison until Dec. 27 and then set free. The Bush administration had long claimed Hamdan to be a major terrorist threat too dangerous to be released, but a military commission, formed over the administration’s repeated and extended objections, found that Hamdan was a minor figure who in effect should be released for time served.
Likewise, a federal judge in Washington — an appointee of George W. Bush, who has been sympathetic to administration claims of great executive leeway in such cases — last week ordered the release of five native Algerians held since 2001. Originally they had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, but no evidence was ever found to sustain that claim.
Nonetheless, they have been held in Guantanamo ever since. As Judge Richard Leon revealed, the sole evidence against them was a uncorrobarated claim by a single unknown source claiming that they intended to go to Pakistan for training as jihadists.
Based on that, they were arrested and imprisoned for seven years, and perhaps subjected to torture as well.
Another federal judge has ordered the release of 17 ethnic Uighur detainees from China also still held at Guantanamo. The administration now concedes that they were never enemy combatants and should never have been held, but claims it must continue to imprison the men because no other country is willing to take them.
Some of the “worst of the worst” undoubtedly were just that, and should never be released. But clearly, many if not most of those so labeled by Rumsfeld have turned out to be much less dangerous and in some cases absolutely innocent.
That reality demonstrates both the moral bankruptcy of the Bush approach and its essential anti-American nature. One of the key insights of our Founding Fathers was that government power should never go unchecked, because great unchecked power leads inevitably to arrogance and great unchecked abuse.
The Bush administration nonetheless claimed and exerted such power, and for a time the American people, judicial system and political leadership allowed that claim to stand. It was not our finest moment as a people.
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Will Jan. 20 ever get here?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I don’t know if there’s a way out of this economic mess. But I do believe that Barack Obama is giving us our best shot at finding one.
He has named smart, experienced, hard-headed people to important positions. He seems to be thinking things through (although in uncharted waters like this, “decision-making” can be an inflated term for making an educated guess). He recognizes that a leadership vacuum exists at a critical point in our history, and he is attempting to fill it as best he can given that he won’t take office for almost two months.
Perhaps best of all, he understands the seriousness of the situation, and wants the American people to understand it as well.
“There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making - and the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better,” he said today. “Full recovery won’t happen immediately. And to make the investments we need, we’ll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well - something I’ll be discussing further tomorrow.”
In effect, Obama is serving much the same role in this crisis that President Bush served in the aftermath of 9/11, when Bush effectively rallied the nation behind him. And I suppose that’s a cautionary tale, because as later events demonstrated, getting the atmospherics right helps only in the short term; getting the decisions right and the people right is a lot tougher and more important in the long term.
For weeks before the election, it seemed like Nov. 4 couldn’t get here soon enough. But that was nothing compared to the wait for Jan. 20.
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Obama may delay tax hike on most affluent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Given how bad things have gotten — and how quickly — this move to delay a tax increase on the richest Americans probably makes a lot of sense.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama may consider delaying a campaign promise - to roll back tax cuts on high-income Americans - as part of his economic recovery strategy, two aides said on Sunday.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist who was chosen to be a senior White House adviser, was asked if the tax cuts could be allowed to expire on schedule after tax year 2010 rather than being rolled back by legislation earlier.
“Those considerations will be made,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Bill Daley, an adviser to Obama and Commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the 2010 scenario “looks more likely than not.”
President George W. Bush’s tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. After that they would revert to 2001 levels, when the top individual tax rate was 39.6 percent.
It’s also important to remember that this “radical Marxist” Obama merely proposed to return the top tax rate to where it was for most of the ’90s, not raise it to 80 or 90 percent, as some of the hysteria might have you believe.
The president-elect will announce his economic team in a noon press conference in Chicago, and will no doubt address the larger issues at that point.
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Congratulations! Overnight, you became the proud owner of Citigroup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON - (Dow Jones) - U.S. federal regulators Sunday agreed to inject an additional $20 billion into Citigroup Inc. (C) and back up to $306 billion worth of the giant bank’s assets in a bid to help stabilize the firm and the broader financial system.
In exchange for the rescue, Citigroup will issue preferred shares to the federal government, adhere to executive pay limits and implement a government program designed to help make home loans more affordable for struggling borrowers….
Under the broad rescue package, the Treasury and the FDIC will provide protection against the possibility of unusually large losses on an asset pool of approximately $306 billion of loans and securities backed by residential and commercial real estate and other such assets, which will remain on Citigroup’s balance sheet.
…..According to a term sheet officials released Sunday, Citigroup must absorb all losses in its portfolio up to $29 billion in addition to its existing loss reserves. The federal government will absorb 90% of losses above that - it’ll take on the first $5 billion through funds provided in the $700 billion bailout plan Congress approved last month and the next $10 billion would come from the FDIC.
Those printing presses down at the Mint must be rolling 24 hours a day…
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Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special … not so special
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We just watched Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special. It was funny — good, but not great. The family consensus was that Colbert owes royalty payments to Pee-Wee Herman, because he “borrowed” so heavily in style, attitude and plot from Pee-Wee’s holiday special from ‘88, which honestly was a lot better.
Besides, Colbert didn’t have the heavenly intonations of the Del Rubio Triplets. Need I say more?
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The GOP’s crush on Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
.
PRINCETON, NJ — Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are most interested in seeing Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Those three received the highest scores among the 10 possible candidates evaluated in a recent Gallup Panel survey.
According to the poll, 67 percent of Republicans would like to see Palin run four years from now, with 62 percent favorable toward a Romney run and 61 percent toward Huckabee.
And which potential candidates would the party faithful least like to see on the ballot? The least popular by far was Jeb Bush — 61 percent said they would NOT want to see him run, a pretty strong indication of how badly burned the party feels by all things Bush. The second least popular was Newt Gingrich — 48 percent would not like to see him run.
But I have to confess: I am absolutely baffled by the continued GOP support for Palin. I do not get it. My best guess is that those who support her have a very different concept of the presidency than I do. I see the president as someone who actually has to run the country, so I value traits such as competence and knowledge. They see the presidency in more symbolic terms, which means they value those candidates who epitomize America as they wish to see it.
I acknowledge that those are not mutually exclusive categories, that every candidate represents a mixture of pragmatism and symbolism. It’s just a question of which is more important to you as a voter, and to my mind Palin backers have by definition stated that competence and knowledge are less important to them.
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Don’t worry, be happy and turn off that damn TV
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you folks watch the Sunday morning talk shows? What’s your favorite?
Personally, I don’t watch and never have and doubt I ever will. Maybe it’s because I deal with this stuff so much already that watching on the weekend seems like doubling your heroin intake. Then again, I also don’t watch during the week. Bill O’Reilly, for example, will always say something within the first 30 seconds to make me change the channel, and I’ve yet to see Keith Olbermann in anything but a sportscasting role.
And then there’s this:
“Happy people spend more free hours socializing, reading and participating in religious activities, while unhappy people watch 30 percent more television, according to new research on American life.
In a study that is among the first to compare daily free-time activities with perceptions of personal contentment, researchers found that television hours were elevated for people who described themselves as “not too happy.” On average, the down-and-out reported an extra 5.6 hours of tube time a week, compared with their happiest counterparts.”
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Obama tries to calm the fear…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President-elect Barack Obama is still almost two months from taking office, but in the meantime he’s stepping in to do what he can to build confidence and give people hope that help is coming.
Here’s the New York Times version:
CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that he had started work on a sustained, two-year economic stimulus plan designed to create or save 2.5 million jobs, funnel money toward public works programs to repair the country’s failing infrastructure and invest in alternative energy programs.
Mr. Obama’s plan, which he announced in the Democratic radio address, is broader than the pledges he offered while campaigning for president. He said the deepening financial outlook demanded more robust action, so he directed his economic team to devise “a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office.”
Mr. Obama said he hoped to have the plan completed, approved by Congress and ready for his signature shortly after he takes office in January.
“The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions,” Mr. Obama said. “We now risk falling into a deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further.”
If you face a big problem, you do big things to fix it. But it’s also true that there are no guarantees.
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A Marine general may be national security adviser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is getting all the headlines, for obvious reasons. But the most intriguing and revealing of the likely nominations would be that of Gen. Jim Jones, the retired four-star general and former Marine commandant, as national security adviser.
Barack Obama, the supposed wild-eyed Marxist from Illinois, is already building a seriously mainstream national security/foreign policy apparatus, stocked with experienced people with impeccable credentials. The selection of Jones, a close friend of John McCain, would cement that impression. The general is revered among his fellow Marines and is also highly regarded in Washington and elsewhere for his wisdom and independence.
Some on the left may see such selections as a betrayal of sorts, but it is entirely consistent with everything Barack Obama said during the campaign. And as Obama starts to do the controversial but sensible things he needs to do, such as withdrawing from Iraq to focus on Afghanistan and restoring fiscal sanity to the Pentagon budget, he’ll have the people within his administration to both point out the landmines and provide him political cover.
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Hillary taking State Department
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The high-profile seats in the Obama Cabinet are filling up: Clinton at State, Geithner at Treasury, Richardson at Commerce, joining Holder at Justice and probably Daschle at Health and Human Services.
They’re all strong picks — Wall Street in particular seems pleased by Geithner, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These are smart, competent people.
Personally, I’m a little surprised that Clinton chose to take the job and leave her Senate seat, but reports are she wasn’t all that happy as one of 100 anyway. Some politicians are born legislators, others are meant to run things. I think she’s the latter, and apparently she thinks so too.
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More ominous news for the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An irrelevant Republican Party does no one any good. It isn’t good for the Republicans, obviously, and over the long term it also isn’t good for the Democrats, who need an effective opposition to keep them in line.
Most of all, it isn’t good for America.
But take a look at the latest Gallup Poll findings:
PRINCETON, NJ — The Republican Party’s image has gone from bad to worse over the past month, as only 34 percent of Americans in a Nov. 13-16 Gallup Poll say they have a favorable view of the party, down from 40 percent in mid-October. The 61 percent now holding an unfavorable view of the GOP is the highest Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992.
Democrats, on the other hand, are viewed favorably by 55 percent of Americans. That’s a spread of more than 20 points between the parties, and it’s a margin that is proving durable. The last time the two parties had fairly equal favorability ratings was almost three years ago.
Among independents, 32 percent rate the GOP favorably, while 47 percent feel favorably toward the Democrats. And while 59 percent of Republicans say the solution to their party’s problem is to become more conservative, that sentiment is shared by only 35 percent of independents. Getting more conservative may make a lot of Republicans feel better about themselves, but it’s not going to bring in new supporters.
For a lot of people in Georgia, where the GOP is still dominant, those Gallup numbers may be hard to believe. It doesn’t jibe with what they see everyday. But when you account for the party’s continued strong standing in the South, its numbers in the rest of the country must really be low to produce national numbers this bad.
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Delayed inauguration date has to be fixed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is a dangerous interregnum for the American people, with a lameduck president whose mistakes have stripped him of credibility, influence and apparently confidence, and a new president still two months from taking power. That’s a problem we’ll eventually need to address with a constitutional amendment that moves up the date of inauguration for future presidents.
The current date was set by the 20th amendment, which accelerated the transfer of power from the original March 4 to the current Jan. 20. Not surprisingly, that change occurred in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when Americans decided they couldn’t afford to wait four months between presidents. The amendment was passed by Congress in 1932 and in less than a year it had been ratified by enough states to take effect, which suggests the seriousness with which it was taken.
Now, with another major financial crisis underway, the lack of leadership from Washington could be a real problem. In one sense there’s not a lot a president could do — there’s no magic bill he could sign or rule he could change to make things better. But the markets are always driven by psychology, and never more so than in a moment like this. The difference between a sense of drift in Washington and a sense of strong leadership at the helm could be significant.
As the New York Times reports:
“We can’t get from here to Feb. 1 if the current ‘who’s in charge?’ situation continues,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG, an investment firm, arguing that Congress should adopt a stimulus package, including temporary tax cuts, as rapidly as possible. Instead, he said, Washington seems paralyzed…
The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks fell by more than 6 percent on two consecutive days, Wednesday and Thursday, something that had not happened since July 20 and 21, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when panic was brought on by collapsing commodity prices.”
The current collapse may halt, at least temporarily, when the New York markets open this morning, given what happened overnight. According to the AP, “European and Asian stock markets rebounded Friday as expectations of a recovery on Wall Street prompted investors to scoop up battered financial and energy shares.” But it’s hard to argue with any certainty that this is the worst of it.
Back before the election, legal scholar Sanford Levinson foresaw just this calamity, even proposing a possible if unlikely solution:
“As it happens, one doesn’t need to amend the Constitution to ‘solve’ this problem at least for this year: Dick Cheney could resign on November 5, to be replaced by the winner of the election. This could take place simply by following the procedures of the 25th Amendment, which allows a president to nominate a new vice president should the office become vacant, subject to congressional confirmation. Upon such confirmation, President Bush could then resign, to be succeeded by the newly installed Vice President….”
As Levinson acknowledges, that’s not going to happen. For the moment, we’re stuck with both our current president and our current system. One problem is two months from a solution; fixing the second will take a little more time.
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The Fairness Doctrine boogeyman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Talk-radio hosts play their listeners as well as Yo Yo Ma plays the cello, stroking a string and making their audience respond exactly the way they want. It’s bizarre how easily they can manipulate people who like to think of themselves as sturdy, independent-minded Americans.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the fabricated right-wing outrage about reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine. Under that long-abandoned rule, radio and TV stations that use the public airways were required to give equal time to various sides of every political issue. The rule was well-intended, but in practical terms radio and TV stations found it safer to avoid political discussion altogether rather than risk running afoul of the law.
For that and other reasons, the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned more than 20 years ago, a change that quickly led to the boom in right-wing talk radio.
However, with Democrats in control of Congress and Barack Obama about to become president, the maestros of talk radio are eager to take advantage. They know that the more threatened their audience feels, the higher their ratings get. And what better way to get their listeners riled up than to claim that the Democrats are out to silence talk radio itself, the medium that brings conservatives the truth as they want to know it?
So for months, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others have been warning their audiences that once in power, the Democrats plan to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Politicians such as Newt Gingrich have joined the chorus, and the issue is now being cited as a critical reason why Saxby Chambliss has to be re-elected to the Senate. Right-wing pundits insist the issue will be part of Obama’s agenda in his first 100 days in office.
But of course, it’s all made-up nonsense, backed by no evidence whatsoever. In the current issue of the New Republic (subs. req. online), Marin Cogan goes looking for those Democrats supposedly plotting to kill talk radio but ends up empty handed.
Obama, for example, is on the record as very clearly opposing a new Fairness Doctrine (To which the paranoid replies: “That’s exactly what he WOULD say, now isn’t it?”) Other top Democrats questioned by Cogan either laugh off the idea or dismiss it as ridiculous. “That’s a completely made-up issue,” the press secretary to Sen. Dick Durbin told Cogan, stressing that Durbin has “no plans, no language, no nothing.”
The bottom line is that the Fairness Doctrine is not going to come back and it never was going to come back, and those on the right who got suckered by this scam ought to be angry at being played for fools.
But they won’t be. To the contrary, just as quickly as one justification for paranoia disappears, another one is certain to emerge. Among a certain crowd, paranoia is a steady state that continues independent of evidence or proof.
In a famous essay written back in 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter traced the evolution of what he called “the paranoid style in American politics” from the earliest days of the country up to what was then modern times. More than four decades later, his description of the paranoid narrative remains as fresh and accurate as the day it was written:
“But the modern right wing … feels dispossessed,” Hofstadter wrote. “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.”
Again, that was written more than 40 years ago, a passage of time that confirms Hofstadter’s wisdom that the paranoid style is enduring. The only thing that has changed is the degree of influence that the paranoid style has since achieved through talk radio, and the grip it now holds on the Republican Party.
In fact, the Democrats have every reason to encourage rather than break that relationship, and they seem to know it. As the paranoid right talks amongst itself on radio, Fox News and conservative web sites, egging each other into ever higher fits of hysteria, they construct an alternative America and alternative reality that is increasingly divorced from the reality perceived by mainstream America.
And when conservative politicians make the mistake of exposing that alternative reality to the mainstream, as U.S. Rep. Paul Broun did recently, they only make that alienation more obvious.
In his piece, Hofstadter made it clear that he was not using the term “paranoid” in the clinical sense. As he put it, “it is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”
“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point,” Hofstadter wrote.
Again, nothing has changed. In a piece this week in the Wall Street Journal, writer Thomas Frank quoted the words of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus in an Oct. 17 conference call.
“This is the demise of a civilization,” Marcus is quoted as saying about the election. “This is how a civilization disappears. I’m sitting here as an elder statesman, and I’m watching this happen, and I don’t believe it.”
Marcus was not referring specifically to Obama in those remarks, but there’s no question that the president-elect stokes such emotions by his mere existence. Everything about Obama — his race, his age, his intelligence, his name, his back story — feeds the paranoid’s sense of dispossession identified by Hofstadter.
In fact, if you had to design someone to perfectly epitomize their deepest fears, Obama would be it. Over the next four to eight years, he’s destined to make Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk even richer than they are today, and make their listeners seem even more crazy.
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GOP appealing to a shrinking America
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I wrote a few days ago about the idea that there is no single “America,” that the country is constantly evolving and that each of us has our own personal concept of what America ought to be and is.
One of the biggest problems confronting the Republican Party is the fact that they have built their party on the basis of an America that no longer exists demographically.
Alan Abramovitz, the very sharp political science professor at Emory here in Atlanta, runs the numbers for us:
“The declining proportion of married white Christians in the electorate has important political implications because in recent years married white Christians have been among the most loyal supporters of the Republican Party. …. Between the middle of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the proportion of whites has fallen by about 15 percentage points, the proportion of married persons has fallen by about 25 percentage points, and the proportion of Christian identifiers has fallen by about 10 percentage points.
“Married individuals still make up a large majority of the electorate, whites are still close to 80 percent of the electorate, and Christians are still over 80 percent of the electorate. However, the combined impact of the changes illustrated in Figure 1 has been enormous. Married white Christians have gone from close to 80 percent of the electorate in the 1950s to just over 40 percent of the electorate in the first decade of the 21st century. Moreover, the data displayed in Figure 2 show that the decline in married white Christians has been even more drastic among younger Americans. The proportion of married white Christians among voters under the age of 30 has plummeted from almost 80 percent in the 1950s to less than 20 percent in the first decade of the 21st century.”
Robert Lang, writing in Politico, makes a similar point after noting how quickly the minority population of the United States is growing:
“The bottom line for Republicans is that no matter how this population is defined, an increasing number of current minorities are voting for Democrats.
Republicans can, of course, switch their strategy and make more direct appeals to minority voters. As recently as 2004, President George W. Bush almost won the Latino vote. But at the moment, the Republicans seem branded as the party of white people. Furthermore, much of the Republican base — especially those listening to talk radio — believe the U.S. is being flooded with immigrants (legal and illegal). It may be hard to pivot and embrace diversity without alienating the GOP base. By contrast, many whites in the Democratic Party are comfortable with diversity and now form a transracial coalition with minority voters.”
I have some sympathy for the GOP because, in a sense, the party faces a very similar challenge to that confronting newspapers. Changing demographics, technologies and lifestyles are undercutting their traditional customer base, and to survive they’re going to have to find a way to reach out to woo new customers without alienating their old ones.
It ain’t easy.
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I’m with Mitt Romney on the Detroit bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve been reading everything I could find on the proposed bailout of Detroit, trying to come to a definitive conclusion. Part of me wanted to let them fail as punishment for being so blind and obstinent for so long; another part of me worried about the consequences that failure would have, with ripples affecting the livelihoods of millions of innocent people.
At the very least, it was clear that we had to demand some serious concessions from both the United Auto Workers and industry management if we were to rescue them from bankruptcy. Otherwise, the $25 billion would only delay the inevitable pain.
Over the last few days, though, it became more and more obvious that Detroit didn’t quite grasp the seriousness of the situation, and that the concessions they were willing to offer wouldn’t be sufficient. Clarity came in reading Mitt Romney’s piece in today’s NY Times, in which he argued against a bailout and in favor of a managed bankruptcy.
Romney’s professional work in private equity and leveraged buyouts, combined with his family background in the auto industry, gave the piece a lot of credibility, and he argued his case well. I found it convincing. (It also reminded me of how intelligent, moderate and well-informed Romney had seemed in his primary-season interview with the AJC editorial board, a side he unfortunately kept largely hidden in his effort to woo the conservative wing in his party).
Romney’s piece also made me reassess how Barack Obama is handling the issue. He’s a sly one, that guy. The president elect has come out publicly in favor of a bailout in return for concessions, as he had to do given his labor backing and campaign rhetoric. But he doesn’t seem to be pushing hard for the immediate action that GM, Ford and Chrysler claim is needed.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense that he too is willing to let the companies fail, knowing that once they do, he’ll have a lot more freedom in trying to put them back together in a way that makes sense.
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Obama shows no sign of taking it slow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Barack Obama ran on a platform of change, a rather vague theme that left many legitimately asking just what kind of change he had in mind. Last night, in a discussion sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, we got some early clues about what’s coming. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s White House chief of staff, suggested the administration will seek change on a large scale across a range of issues.
“What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed for too long and were long term, are now immediate and must be dealt with,” Emanuel said. “This crisis provides us with the opportunity to do things we could not do before.”
With Obama still two months from taking office, details are still sketchy. But the ambitious tone of the administration is already pretty clear, and it presents Republicans with a dilemma about how to respond.
Conceivably, they could argue that big changes aren’t really needed, but I don’t think that’s going to get them very far with the American public right now. In the latest Gallup poll, only 13 percent of those polled said they’re satisfied with the country’s direction, while 84 percent said they were dissatisfied. Those are pretty damning numbers.
The better alternative would be to accept the need for large-scale change but offer a competing GOP vision of what such changes should be. I don’t see any evidence that Republican leaders are prepared to engage on that level. Their only remaining option would be to simply oppose ideas suggested by Obama without offering alternatives of their own, an approach that casts them as mere obstacles to change and guarantees they get steamrolled.
In other words, Emanuel and Obama are correct to see a great political opportunity to transform this country and finally address issues too long delayed.
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“The Republican Party needs a new base — or the nation may need a new party”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As punishment for her columns on Sarah Palin, Kathleen Parker found herself excommunicated as a heretic by the Church of Right-Wing Orthodoxy. So, with nothing left to lose, she has apparently decided to go for broke.
Her column in the Washington Post today isn’t exactly the “95 Theses” that Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church to start the Reformation, but the spirit sure is there:
“As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.
Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.
The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.”
The piece pulls no punches, concluding that “Either the Republican Party needs a new base — or the nation may need a new party. “
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Time to abandon ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ foolishness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back in 1993, a brash young president named Bill Clinton tried to force an important cultural change upon the U.S. military by requiring acceptance of gay men and women in uniform. The resulting controversy forced Clinton to back off that policy change and damaged his presidency, but it also helped bring the question of gay rights to the forefront of the national conversation.
A lot has changed since then. The military, like the rest of the nation, is now much more comfortable with gay Americans as a part of our national fabric. In 1993, only 44 percent of Americans supported letting gay people serve in the military; today, the number stands at 75 percent.
President-elect Barack Obama has said he wants to repeal the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but not by signing an executive order.
“I would not do it that way,” he said during the campaign. “The reason is because I want to make sure that when we reverse ‘don’t ask-don’t tell,’ it’s gone through a process and we’ve built a consensus or at least a clarity of … what my expectations are, so that it works.”
“I believe that the way to do it is make sure that we are working through a process, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of what our priorities are going to be. That’s how we were able to integrate the armed services to get women more actively involved in the armed services,” Obama said.
That’s a wise approach toward a good and necessary end. In fact, a group of more than 100 retired senior officers recently signed a petition urging the outdated policy be changed. The petition stated:
“We — the undersigned — respectfully call for the repeal of the ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ policy. Those of us endorsing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish. Scholarly data shows there are approximately 1 million gay and lesbian veterans in the United States today as well as 65,000 gays and lesbians currently serving in our armed forces. They have served our nation honorably.
“We support the recent comments of former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. John Shalikashvili, who has concluded that repealing the ‘don’t ask-don’t tell’ policy would not harm and would indeed help our armed forces. As is the case with Great Britain, Israel and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion and sexuality. Such collaboration reflects the strength and the best traditions of our democracy.”
That’s well put.
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Lieberman gets off light
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) offered a qualified apology — and accepted a relatively light punishment — in exchange for a deal that keeps him firmly in the Senate Democratic fold.
Democrats, meeting in the Capitol this morning, voted secretly to allow Lieberman to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — despite his support for John McCain and criticism of Barack Obama during the presidential race….
“It’s a resolution of reconciliation and not retribution…I appreciate it,” Lieberman told reporters after the two-and-half hour meeting in the Old Senate Chamber.
Sources who were inside the meeting said Lieberman did not apologize for supporting McCain during the campaign, but that he did say he was sorry for some of the statements he made about Obama….
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who pushed for tougher punishment prior to Obama’s intervention, bristled when reporters asked if he had let Lieberman off lightly….
“There is a time in Joe Lieberman’s career I will never understand or approve,” he added. “The question is, ‘Do I trust Sen. Lieberman?’ The answer is “Yes, I trust Sen. Lieberman.’”
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A veritable river of spam runs dry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At roughly 4:30 p.m. Eastern time last Tuesday, the volume of junk e-mail arriving at inboxes around the world suddenly plummeted by at least 65 percent, an unprecedented drop caused by what is believed to be a single, simple act.
According to security experts, one Silicon Valley based computer firm was playing host to computers of various organizations that controlled the distribution of much of the world’s spam. Confronted with evidence tracing the spam activity back to the hosting firm, McColo Corp., Internet service providers pulled the plug, severing McColo’s online connections.
By nearly all accounts, spam volumes have remained at far diminished levels, though experts interviewed for this story expect spam to soon bounce back or even exceed previous levels. But the question remains: How could such a massive concentration of spam activity be hosted for so long from the servers at a single U.S.-based facility, in the belly of the security and tech community in Silicon Valley?
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Race, the Deep South and the Obama vote
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charles Franklin at Pollster.com takes a look at a volatile issue, assessing the role that race may have played in a state-by-state analysis of the presidential race:
“Normally when a party improves from one election to another, it does so across most demographic groups. This holds true for Obama vs Kerry in general and among whites in particular …. (But) three of the four deep south states dropped clearly below their 2004 white support for Kerry.
Georgia did not, matching its 23% white support for the Democrat in both years. Mississippi, the lowest state in 2004, shifted from 14% to 11%, while my home state of Alabama dropped from 19% to 10%, claiming the prize for lowest white support for Obama of any state in the Union. Louisiana went from 24% to 14%, the largest point drop of all….
There were a number of states with considerable increases. The most interesting are North Carolina (up from 27% to 35%) and Virginia (up from 32% to 39%.) Clearly Obama could not have won those states on the white vote alone, but those shifts amount to roughly a 5-6 point boost in statewide vote share, certainly enough to matter.
Keep it reasonable and respectful, please.
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Obamamania gets a bit unrealistic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I confess I hadn’t bought into the concern of those warning that Barack Obama might have become TOO popular, that the American public had unrealistic expectations of what he or anyone could accomplish under some very trying circumstances. It seemed to me that most people understood just how hard this was going to be, but maybe I was wrong ….
WASHINGTON (CNN) — At the start of a week that could see Barack Obama make his first Cabinet secretary announcements, a new national poll suggests that most Americans are confident that the president-elect will make the right decisions when it comes to picking those officials.
Forty-three percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday morning are very confident that Obama will make the right choices, with 34 percent somewhat confident and only 23 percent not confident.
“Obama is having the kind of honeymoon that no president-elect has had in at least 30 years,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “It’s no surprise that Americans have a positive view of anything Obama might do — at least until he does something controversial.”
Personally, I’d place myself among the 34 percent who are “somewhat confident.” I’ve long thought Obama was the best candidate in the field, but believing him to be the best available does not mean you banish all doubts about how he’ll perform when the time comes. Nobody comes into that job prepared; nobody knows what might be thrown at you as you walk in the door, or even how you’ll react.
Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post has a good piece on Obamamania, including this gem of a quote:
“The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent.”
That was James MacGregor Burns in the New Republic in 1961, writing about John F. Kennedy. And as Kurtz points out, “soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.”
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Wow. All that in one little pill?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to MIT’s Technology Review:
“A pill that delivers the health benefits of diet and exercise without any of the effort is one step closer to becoming a reality.
European scientists have found that mice fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet and prevented from exercising regularly can be protected from weight gain and metabolic disorders when given a drug that targets a gene linked to longevity. The treatment even increases the animals’ running endurance…. The drug also protected the animals from the negative effects of high-calorie diets: metabolic disorders, obesity-related diseases, and insulin resistance. It even improved the mice’s cholesterol.
(David Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School) says that a cousin molecule of SRT1720, which is even more potent, is currently in human trials and will enter clinical studies for the treatment of diseases like type 2 diabetes in 2009. “We could know as early as next year if the same types of benefits we see in mice, we see in humans,” he says.
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Bill Kristol experiments with sincerity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I don’t have much regard for columnists who write and say things they know to be untrue just to score points or defend a position. It is an act of disrespect toward their readers and toward their profession. Nor should writers use a column as a tool for acquiring or wielding personal political power. Journalists should not be politicians.
While none of us, journalist or otherwise, is given to know The Truth, we can at least try to honestly describe the small-t truth as we glimpse it from time to time. If there is any value in what we do, that’s where it comes from.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and columnist for The New York Times, has never subscribed to that theory. He is a manipulative Washington player and he writes like a manipulative Washington player, willing to deceive his readers if that’s what it takes to achieve what he thinks of as his larger, more important purpose.
Which brings us to today’s column. It is that rare Kristol column that rings true and honest in every single word. I’m not saying I agree with it all, because I certainly don’t. But I do think Kristol believes it all, and was honest this one time with himself as well as his readers.
Unless of course he’s fooling me….
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Obama lays out general terms for auto bailout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a wide-ranging interview with “60 Minutes,” President-elect Barack Obama laid out in general terms his thinking on whether to try to save the U.S. auto industry. You could describe it as “Yes, but….”
“Well, let’s see how this thing plays itself out. For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment, not just for individual families but the repercussions across the economy would be dire. So it’s my belief that we need to provide assistance to the auto industry. But I think that it can’t be a blank check.
So my hope is that over the course of the next week, between the White House and Congress, the discussions are shaped around providing assistance but making sure that that assistance is conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan — what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like? So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere. And that’s, I think, what you haven’t yet seen. That’s something that I think we’re gonna have to come up with.”
That’s a pretty general statement, but I think the tone is right. Simply handing a lot more money to failing organizations without forcing them to address their basic problems would be foolish and in the long term helps nobody.
The statement over the weekend by United Auto Workers head Ron Gettelfinger that the union would make no further concessions to save the companies didn’t help matters much. Nor did his claim that “We’re here not because of what the auto industry has done. We’re here because of what has happened to the economy.”
That’s simply untrue. Detroit was struggling badly long before the financial crunch hit, with long-simmering problems that can be traced to mistakes by both labor and management. Congress and the president, whether it’s Bush or Obama, have not just the right but the obligation to force painful changes on the industry as a condition of a bailout because without such changes, we only delay the inevitable.
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It was NOT McCain’s fault….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina believes that John McCain was a big part of the problem for the Republicans:
“McCain, who is a proponent of campaign finance reform that weakened party organizations and basically put George Soros in the driver’s seat. His proposal for amnesty for illegals. His support of global warming, cap-and-trade programs that will put another burden on our economy. And of course, his embrace of the bailout right before the election was probably the nail in our coffin this last election. And he has been an opponent of drilling in ANWR, at a time when energy is so important. It really didn’t fit the label, but he was our package.”
So if I understand DeMint’s thinking — and I’m not claiming I do — he believes that McCain’s position on those issues drove millions of Americans to vote for Obama instead? I don’t think so.
Conservative Republicans have to understand that the policies and rhetoric that make them all giddy and weak in the knees just don’t have the same effect on the rest of America. Even in the Republican primaries, a battlespace dominated by conservatives, the least conservative candidate won, which ought to tell them something but apparently doesn’t.
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Iraqis make progress on troop deal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How about a bit of good news to start a Sunday?
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a security pact with the United States that will allow American forces to stay in Iraq for three years after their U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year, the government said.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all but one of the 28 Cabinet ministers present in Sunday’s meeting, in addition to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, voted in favor of the pact by a show of hands.
The Cabinet has 37 members and it was not immediately clear why some ministers stayed away. Several of them were believed to be traveling abroad.
Al-Dabbagh said the agreement will be submitted to parliament later Sunday, but did not say when the 275-member legislature will vote on the document.
The Cabinet vote came a day after the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, indicated that he would not object to the pact if it is passed by a comfortable majority in parliament. That cleared a major hurdle to the agreement.
It provides for the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and gives Iraq the right to try U.S. soldiers and defense contractors in the case of serious crimes committed off-duty and off-base. It also prohibits the U.S. from using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, like Syria and Iran.
They want us gone. We want us gone. And that timetable gives everybody enough time to do it right, or as right as it can be done. It also doesn’t mean that we have to stay until 2011. That’s the deadline for departure, meaning it can be accelerated if conditions allow or require.
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ll be surprised if Barack Obama is standing at a podium soon introducing Hillary Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state. I don’t understand why Obama would seriously consider Clinton for that post, nor do I understand why Clinton would consider taking it.
It’s all very strange. The easiest explanation is that neither party is truly interested in seeing the deal go through, but is playing it for whatever advantage the process may offer them.
On the other hand, if Clinton is indeed offered and accepts the job, it would make quite a statement. By ceding her seat Clinton would also be ceding her independence, in effect acknowledging that the Era of Obama has begun and is likely to last a while.
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More on the challenge to the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The esteemed Charlie Cook, writing at the National Journal on the lessons of ‘08:
“We … learned that there are two Souths. There is a “New South,” which includes Virginia, North Carolina, and, to a lesser extent, Georgia. In this South, which has lots of suburbs, transplants, and younger college graduates, Obama and other Democrats won or ran well above the norm for their party. In the older South, which has more small-town and rural voters, fewer transplants, and a more downscale electorate, Obama actually performed worse than Kerry….
Republicans have lost an enormous amount of support among upscale voters, basically just breaking even among those with household incomes above $50,000 a year, a traditional GOP stronghold. Similarly, McCain’s losing to Obama among college graduates and voters who have attended some college underscores how much the GOP franchise is in trouble. My hunch is that the Republican Party’s focus on social, cultural, and religious issues — most notably, fights over embryonic-stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo — cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.
The question now is whether Republicans will quickly learn from their mistakes — retooling and rebranding their party soon, putting themselves in a position to capitalize on the missteps of the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic Party — or will languish, reduced to waiting for the Democrats to collapse and for GOP candidates to win simply because they aren’t Democrats.
Those who write off the 2008 election by saying that Republican candidates weren’t conservative enough are in denial. They are political ostriches, refusing to acknowledge that the country and the electorate are changing and that old recipes don’t work any more.”
That’s exactly right, Mr. Cook. And I see no sign that the GOP recognizes its problems and is ready to do what is necessary to fix them. They’d rather wait for Ronald Reagan to come back and save them, and as plans go, that one seems unlikely to pay off.
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Why is it OUR job?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama is reportedly skeptical about putting a U.S. missile defense system in eastern Europe, a system ostensibly built to shoot down Iranian missiles when and if they get them.
Good. Because even if the system works, no one has been able to answer a basic question:
Why is it the financial and military obligation of the US taxpayer — a cost of up to $50 billion over five years — to install a missile defense system to protect Europeans from Iranian missiles, particularly when many of those Europeans don’t want us to protect them in the first place?
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The battle for the conservative soul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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says Newt Gingrich in a Politico interview: “The Republican Party right now is like a midsize college team trying to play in the Super Bowl. It is pretty hard to say our losses were because of John McCain’s campaign. McCain performed way above plausibility compared to where the Republican president was in the polls. We have to look honestly at what went wrong.”
That is the truth. McCain did better than any other Repubican candidate could have done because he was perceived to be the least Republican among them, and still he couldn’t shake the GOP taint. I’m not a fan of Gingrich, but his
It’s not a broadly held assessment, however. Politico also quoted Greg Mueller, described as “a political consultant who specializes in conservative candidates,” who insisted that the next RNC chairman be an “ideological conservative.”
“It is very unpopular to be a Republican right now, but it is very popular to be a conservative. The conservative brand is the most popular brand in the country, but we didn’t run as conservatives.”
Conservatives keep telling each other that, but the hard truth is that no “real conservative” could even win the Republican nomination, when only other Republicans and conservatives were doing the voting. What passes for “modern conservatism” is an ideology born in the ’60s, reached its culmination in the ’80s and has been living on past glories ever since.
Conservatives who look at what the youth vote did in the past election and at the demographic changes coming in this country and then still insist that returning to the old ways will cure them … well, good luck with that.
Christine Todd Whitman, one of the last of a dying breed of Northeast Republicans, lays it out in a Washington Post piece. Her bottom line:
“Unless the Republican Party ends its self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists, it will spend a long time in the political wilderness. On Nov. 4, the American people very clearly rejected the politics of demonization and division. It’s long past time for the GOP to do the same.”
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Pop quiz, ladies and germs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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“The measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left.”
Which of the following describes the statement above:
A. CNN political analyst Bill Schneider Wednesday putting the outcome of the 2008 presidential and congressional election in historical context.
B. One of the Seven Aphorisms that believers of the Summum religion insist be posted in a city park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
C. The secret to Tiger Woods’ golf swing, as imparted to him by golf guru Butch Harmon in this month’s Golf Digest.
Answer: I ain’t telling. But this will.
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Pawlenty paints a picture for the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“We cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes states, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the mid-Atlantic states, and the Democrats are now winning some of the western states. That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation.”
“And similarly, we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African-American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.”
— Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, addressing the Republican Governors Association Wednesday in Miami.
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Obama, Dems wrong on labor vote
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The push by organized labor to sidestep the secret ballot and instead establish unions by collecting worker signatures already promises to be one of the hottest political issues of 2009. President-elect Barack Obama, who was elected with strong labor support, has promised to fight for the “card check” signature system, and conservatives have made it clear that they are drawing a line in the sand against that change.
On this issue, the Democrats and labor are wrong. There’s no secret why they seek the change — it would make union organizing easier. But allowing formation of unions through the gathering of signatures rather than the secret ballot also would expose workers to unfair and unnecessary intimidation, in some cases all but forcing them to take stances against their better judgment. That’s hard to justify.
That said, there’s a lot more to the story.
For the past eight years, the Bush administration has worked diligently to defang agencies created to protect workers, consumers, patients, investors, the environment, etc. The consequence of that deregulatory approach has been felt most directly and obviously in the financial system, where the Bush administration’s reluctance to regulate Wall Street contributed significantly to the collapse now sending the economy into a deep recession. But that’s just one example of a pattern across the federal bureaucracy.
At the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the number of inspectors was cut from 605 in 2002 to 496 in 2006 even as mining increased; enforcement and fines were cut back significantly. At the Environmental Protection Agency, enforcement actions and fines against polluters also have been drastically reduced as staff is discouraged from confronting business. Enforcement also has been cut at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration in favor of “voluntary compliance,” the same approach that regulators took to Wall Street.
And as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission now acknowledges, the financial upheaval has “made it absolutely clear that voluntary regulation does not work” and that the concept “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning.”
Something similar took place at the National Labor Relations Board, the agency created to ensure a fair playing field between labor and management. Under the Bush administration and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the NLRB consistently and single-mindedly has taken the side of management against labor, in many cases overturning precedents that are decades old. Labor has understandably concluded that the system is stacked against it. In one case last year involving a nursing home, for example, the board allowed an existing union to be decertified not through secret ballot, but through a petition signed by a majority of nursing home employees.
While that was a significant change in the NLRB’s previous practice, it also casts the card-check issue in a whole new light. Conservatives argue —- somewhat correctly —- that it is a violation of the democratic process and all that is true and good about America if you abandon the secret ballot and try to create a union through collecting signatures. Yet somehow, they deem it legal, acceptable and proper to decertify a union by that same illegitimate means.
As the Bush administration exits, a lot of scandals are going to bubble up out of the bureaucracy about favors done, rules ignored, employees intimidated, etc., on behalf of industry and other special interests. And people and groups that have been on the losing end for eight years are eager for retribution.
Natural as that sentiment might be, it’s a bad way to run government. The goal of the Obama administration should be to correct inequities, not create new ones. A new labor secretary, a revamped labor-relations board — the five-member panel has three vacancies — and a new commitment to applying the law fairly and reforming it where needed can go a long way toward correcting inequities that the card-check system is supposed to fix.
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A pox on all your houses, O’Rourke-style
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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In the history of “I despise everybody, including my friends and enemies, but especially my friends, and my enemies too, because they all earned it, and by the way I despise myself too, because I deserve to be despised and by the way, so do you” rants, this one by PJ O’Rourke is right at the top.
In fact, if it could fit on the tombstone — which it can’t — it might make a great epitaph for modern America, just in case we end up needing one, which according to O’Rourke, we will.
Feel free to quote your favorite paragraph. I was going to post mine here, but there were so many….
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When Rush Limbaugh is the real RNC chairman…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Right-wing blogger Dan Riehl makes a critical point about the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Malkins and Coulters that the conservative movement ought to ponder deeply:
“For all the benefits the Right realizes from Right-side talkers they are, by and large, entertainers. There are plenty of exceptions more interested in discussion and informing, certainly. But some of the largest also tend to be the most provocative. That shouldn’t be a surprise as with all entertainment today, the most provocative and even outrageous gets the most attention and even the highest ratings.
But that also makes it rather easy for the opposition to paint conservatives as unreasonable, intolerant and, on a few occasions, even hateful. The fact is that is not the case for the overwhelming majority of conservatives and Republicans.”
The modern conservative movement has no real leaders at the moment, and the “right-side talkers” are filling that vacuum — setting the party’s agenda, deciding which political figures will become popular and which will be cast aside, and in effect performing all the functions that those legendary (and pretty smart) guys in smoke-filled rooms used to perform for the party.
But at the end of the day, they are indeed just entertainers, and their primary self-interest is to focus on the issues and controversies that will bind their audience more closely to them for their own financial reward. You see the consequences of that everywhere. U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, for example, was just repeating the garbage he hears on talk radio when he called Barack Obama a Marxist with tendencies toward dictatorship, a statement for which he has now apologized. Talk radio is providing the party’s talking points, rather than vice versa.
Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly et. al don’t really care whether there’s a Republican in the White House; in fact, their ratings go UP when they have a Democratic administration to rail about. They are quite content to fixate on silly little things that don’t resonate at all among the general voting public but that get their own audience all fired up and angry. And again, if that makes their audience seem foolish to the rest of us, they don’t care. They still cash those seven-figure paychecks.
With the exception of Riehl, the conservatives haven’t figured that out yet. They don’t yet realize how often they get played, how often their own best interests and the best interests of their entertainer/leaders diverge.
Until they do….
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The people got what they wanted
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wow.
These numbers from CNN are surprising. To some of you, they will be downright revolting. (And let me guess: You’re gonna claim the pollsters just made the numbers up to suit their liberal bias — you remember, just as you did before the election, when you claimed the American people would never elect a black Marxist Muslim? How’s that working out for you?)
“In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday, 59 percent of those questioned said Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, compared with 38 percent saying such one-party control will be bad.
“That much good will from the public opens a window of opportunity for the Democrats,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “But the public expects results, and may not listen to excuses for very long if a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House can’t get their act together in time.”
The poll also indicates that the public has a positive view of the Democratic Party, with 62 percent saying they have a favorable opinion and 31 percent an unfavorable opinion of the party. For the Republicans, a majority, 54 percent, said they have an unfavorable view of the GOP while 38 percent hold a positive view.”
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Obama has free hand at Defense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice.
Nominating Gates to stay, “would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.
A better bipartisan fit for Obama, they say, is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who brings out what they like about Gates - his ability to deal with Russia, Iran and Syria - without the direct link to Bush’s policies.”
Hagel would make a fine Defense secretary. But so would Gates. Obama doesn’t need to placate the anti-war folks with this pick; he’s the president, he’ll set the policy, and the secretary will carry it out. He should take the best person in his judgment for what will be one of the most crucial jobs in his administration, and anybody who doesn’t like it can find a way to deal with it.
Gates does have a lot of respect among the Pentagon brass, not least because he replaced the reviled Donald Rumsfeld and brought rationality back to the place. That credibility could be useful for Obama as he makes tough decisions about Iraq and Afghanistan. But anybody who suggests Obama owes them?
Uh uh, not on something this important.
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Secret Service nicknames Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to the Chicago Tribune, the Secret Service has adopted the code name “Renegade” for President-elect Barack Obama.
That no doubt disappoints Paul Broun, who was pushing for “Adolph.”
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U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Crazy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Georgia congressman, Paul Broun of Athens, has accused Barack Obama of being a Marxist with secret plans to take over the country, abolish all rights and rule as dictator just as Hitler did.
That’s a U.S. congressman, yes. From Georgia.
Broun might as well have claimed that he had been abducted by aliens and appointed queen of their planet Bogusia. It’s a claim with just as much basis in fact as what he actually said, and it probably wouldn’t have done more damage to what remained of Broun’s credibility.
I don’t doubt for a moment that Broun feels threatened by the prospect of Obama in the White House. But he can’t admit the real reasons for that feeling, probably even to himself, so he resorts to fantasy as a way to express it.
Sane people all over the country are snickering at Broun, as they should be. He is the point at which the lunatic fringe and Republican officeholders intersect.
Here’s his direct quote:
“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force. I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”
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Happy Veterans Day, everyone..
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
…. especially to Amvet and the Corporal and anyone lurking here who served their country. And of course, a special shoutout to my mom and dad, both of whom wore their country’s uniform proudly, Dad for 28 years. (Back then, women had to leave the service if they got married. But military spouses deserve our thoughts too, especially in those times when the active-duty parent gets called away, as many are today).
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Merle Haggard, precious memories how they linger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve always been a sucker for the Bakersfield sound, and I’ve also long been of the opinion that they stopped making real country music somewhere ‘round 1980 … but I digress.
The news that Merle Haggard, 71, is recovering from lung-cancer surgery is a bit sobering (for me, if not for Merle). I’ve seen him a couple of times in concert, missed him a third time when he didn’t show, which is a story almost any Merle fan can tell.
He’s always been an ornery type, but there’s no question about his talent or impact. Listening to Merle is like sipping on a good bourbon — mellow with a bite to it. So, to wrap up this Monday, another work day is over: Merle playing Lefty — you can’t get much more roots than that:
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The highs and lows of political life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama met at the White House today, a meeting that as Gallup puts it “presents a remarkable contrast between one of the least popular two-term presidents in modern times at the close of his administration, and one of the most popular candidates to win the presidency.”
“According to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Nov. 6-8, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president. This contrasts with the 70 percent of Americans holding a favorable view of Obama….
Additionally, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are confident in Obama’s ability to be a good president, similar to his 70 percent favorable reading.”
Only 25 percent of those polled said they had an unfavorable impression of Obama, a segment that must have included a pretty good cross-section of people posting on this blog.
As Gallup points out, Bush’s ratings have set records both for how low they have fallen and how long they have remained at those levels. I doubt history will judge him any easier.
Obama’s ratings will probably never be so high once he takes office and has to start making tough decisions. But that wave of good feeling he’s riding at the moment could help him get a lot done pretty quickly in Washington. He shows every sign of wanting to spend that capital.
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168,785 missing voters in Senate race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s a strange number:
More than 168,000 Georgia voters went to the polls on Nov. 4 and cast ballots for president, then walked out without bothering to cast a vote in the highly advertised U.S. Senate race between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin.
That seems like a lot — an undervote of 4.3 percent. To put it in context, in a Senate race in 2004 pitting Johnny Isakson against Denise Majette, the undervote here in Georgia was only 2.3 percent.
So maybe this was an ‘08 phenomenon, something unique to the heightened emotions of the Obama-McCain race?
That doesn’t appear to be the explanation either. Minnesota, with a hotly contested Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken, reported only 14,000 undervotes, a rate of 0.5 percent. The same pattern holds with most other states with tough Senate races.
In North Carolina, the Senate undervote was 1.1 percent of the presidential total. In Oregon it was 3.3 percent, and 2.3 percent in New Hampshire. The only state where the total approached Georgia’s was Louisiana, at 4.0 percent.
So who were these people? Were they Obama voters who just cast their ballots for their favorite and walked out? The evidence for that is weak. In Fulton County, which went for Obama by more than 2-1, the undervote was 2.85 percent, lower than the undervote rate in McCain counties such as Cobb (3.4 percent) and Cherokee (3.1 percent). In DeKalb County the rate was 4.4 percent, about the state average.
So what’s YOUR explanation?
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Truth even more important in wartime
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The media get blamed for a lot of things, and that’s OK. We dish out the criticism freely, and sometimes we get too thin-skinned about facing return fire.
In some cases, though, we get blamed simply for being the messenger. It is not the media’s fault, for example, that Sarah Palin wasn’t qualified to be vice president. We didn’t pick her, and it’s not our fault that, according to the McCain campaign staff, she didn’t know that Africa was a continent.
Back in the early days of the Iraq war, you may recall, the media also got a lot of criticism for “not reporting all the good things that were happening in Iraq.” Everybody from the president and generals to actor Bruce Willis and citizens writing letters to the editor were complaining about the harsh reports coming out of Baghdad and Anbar province.
There were insinuations and even allegations of treason, and claims that the left-wing media wanted the United States to lose the war or were simply playing out their anti-Bush bias. Conservative commentators such as Ralph Peters, a former infantry officer, claimed that “the body count cherished by the media is the number of our own troops dead and wounded,” suggesting that reporters were playing into al-Qaida’s hands.
But what happened next is important. That reporting created a political momentum for change in both U.S. strategy and leadership. After the ‘06 midterm elections, President Bush finally ended months of denial and acknowledged the truth, that events in Iraq were spiraling out of control and that “the situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me.”
Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, appointed a new commanding general for Iraq in David Petraeus, and announced what came to be known as the surge.
Whatever the future holds for Iraq, it is undeniably a more secure place today than it was a few years ago. And it was the media, doing its duty by reporting honestly, that helped create the political space and political momentum to allow that change to take place.
A similar dynamic could be seen recently in Afghanistan. After a firefight and aerial assault in a village called Azizabad, initial reports from the U.S. military insisted that civilian deaths had been minimal, an account confirmed by Oliver North with a Fox News crew in the area. But when Afghani sources insisted otherwise, claiming a significant number of deaths to women and children, U.S. media reported those claims as well.
To some, the media was once again playing into the hands of al-Qaida. But forced to look further by pressure from the Afghan government and the media, the U.S. military discovered that the Afghani version of events appears to have been closer to the truth. Because of that discovery, U.S. rules involving use of air power have changed for the better, reducing the risk of civilian casualties and thus improving American hopes for success in the region.
Denying the truth, as some tried to do, would have saved the United States some embarrassment and criticism in the short term, but it also would have allowed the previous policy to continue, with long-term harm to our interests.
The American system is built on a faith in the truth. And while none of us can know that truth in its entirety, we do know that our nation’s best interests are not served by trying to silence information either through government rule or by public intimidation.
That applies across the board. At the moment, conservatives have worked themselves into a frenzy at the thought that Democrats might try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. That rule, abolished in 1987, required broadcast outlets to give equal amounts of time to competing viewpoints. Conservatives fear that if the policy is reinstated, it will doom conservative talk radio.
Personally, I think that fear has been ginned up by the conservatives themselves to satisfy their need to feel persecuted. If Democrats really did try to push such a change, it would be both a big surprise and a foolish mistake, and I expect it wouldn’t get very far.
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Might be a busy first 100 days…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It doesn’t sound like a go-slow agenda….
“President-elect Barack Obama plans to push ahead with a middle-class tax cut soon after taking office, his choice for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said today.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Emanuel also hinted that the president-elect would not postpone a tax hike for families earning more than $250,000 a year, despite the deepening economic slowdown….
Once the new administration takes power on Jan. 20, Emanuel said Obama would take quick action to expand health care coverage, revamp energy policy and make education more affordable. He called all of those initiatives part of a wider plan to shift federal policy to address the mounting economic concerns of middle class Americans.
The ongoing economic crisis “provides the opportunity, as the president-elect has said repeatedly, to do things that Americans have pushed off for years,” Emanuel said.
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The global symbolism of President Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Desmond Tutu writes in today’s Washington Post:
“I am rubbing my eyes in disbelief and wonder. It can’t be true that Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan, is the next president of the United States.
But it is true, exhilaratingly true. An unbelievable turnaround. I want to jump and dance and shout, as I did after voting for the first time in my native South Africa on April 27, 1994…
Today Africans walk taller than they did a week ago — just as they did when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Not only Africans, but people everywhere who have been the victims of discrimination at the hands of white Westerners, have a new pride in who they are. If a dark-skinned person can become the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, what is to stop children everywhere from aiming for the stars? ….
And the president-elect has one additional key quality: He is not George W. Bush. Because the Bush years have been disastrous for other parts of the world in many ways, Obama’s victory dramatizes the self-correcting mechanism that epitomizes American democracy.”
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Anybody going out to dine tonight?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
because I doubt you’ll have a problem getting a reservation…:
(Washington, D.C.) The outlook for the restaurant industry worsened in September, as the National Restaurant Association’s comprehensive index of restaurant activity fell to a new record low….
“Nearly two out of three restaurant operators reported negative same-store sales and traffic levels in September, while 50 percent expect their sales in six months to be lower than the same period in the previous year,” said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research and Information Services for the Association.
Along with weak sales and traffic levels, capital spending activity remains extremely soft. Forty percent of operators said they made a capital expenditure for equipment, expansion or remodeling during the last three months, which equals the lowest level on record.
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Is the GOP now a regional party?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican Party dominates the South and has for quite a while. But conversely, the South more than ever now dominates the Republican Party. In fact, the issues that make the GOP the majority party in the South make it the minority party in most of the rest of the country.
The party will have a hard time breaking out of that trap, as an AP story suggests:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tuesday’s elections leave little doubt that the Republicans’ Nixon-era strategy to win over white Southerners has been a resounding success. But have they lost the rest of the country along the way?
For all the talk of President-elect Obama’s inroads in “New South” states like Virginia and North Carolina, the numbers in the Deep South are stark. Some 90 percent of white voters supported Republican John McCain in Alabama and Mississippi, according to Associated Press exit polls. In South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas, it was about 75 percent or more.
Three of the Republicans’ four congressional pickups came in the region, which remains dark red from Charleston, S.C., to Dallas.
“The South ought to tell the Republican Party to hold its primaries down here because we’re the only region of the country that Republicans can count on,” said Bernie Pinsonat, a Louisiana pollster. “It’s the only base left.”
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‘Talkin’ ‘bout (their) g-g-g-generation’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Obama proves a successful president — and given his “to-do” list that’s a big “if” — this is the kind of thing that could cement the Dems in power for a long time:
“President-elect Barack Obama’s 34-point margin of victory with voters under 30 was the largest in a generation, cut across lines of class, color and education—and the most impressive youth mandate in modern American history, according to an exclusive Politico analysis.
Sixty-six percent of voters under age 30 preferred Obama while just 32 percent favored McCain—nearly four times the size of John F. Kennedy’s lead with the group in 1960, which led him to famously declare in his inaugural address that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
In other words, never in post-war American politics have youth voted so differently than older generations as they did in 2008.”
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Silk boxer shorts? Spray tanners?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You know, this is so far over the top that it’s bizarre. I’d honestly like to have some sympathy for Sarah Palin as a naive but ambitious person who was plucked out of obscurity and placed suddenly in the harsh glare of the national spotlight. You don’t have to want her as president or vice president to feel bad for someone who is thrown into shark-infested waters and told to swim.
She was so naive that she didn’t have a clue about how naive she was, and that’s not her fault.
But this is really excessive. Says the Washington Post:
“On top of the $150,000 first outlined in Federal Election Commission filings, Palin spent “tens of thousands of dollars” on additional clothing, makeup and jewelry for herself and her family, including $40,000 in luxury goods for her husband, Todd, our colleague Michael Shear reports. The campaign was charged for silk boxer shorts, spray tanners and 13 suitcases to carry all the designer clothes, according to two GOP insiders.
“The shopping continued after the convention in Minneapolis, it continued all around the country,” one source said. “She was still receiving shipments of custom-designed underpinnings up to her ‘Saturday Night Live’ performance” in October. Sources said expenses were put on the personal credit cards of low-level Palin staffers and discovered when they asked party officials for reimbursement.”
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The president-elect’s press conference
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President-elect Obama’s first post-election press conference went well. He set the right tone, deferred to President Bush appropriately and looked and sounded very much like the guy who’s going to be in charge.
He was somber and straightforward about the economy, pressing hard for passage of a stimulus package to soften the recession’s impact on jobs. He came across as confident, composed and competent.
Your mileage may vary.
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This isn’t going to be pretty….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers slashed 240,000 jobs in October, sending the unemployment rate soaring to 6.5 percent, its highest level since March 1994, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The agency also sharply revised September’s jobless figures, saying that the preliminary estimate of 159,000 jobs lost that month was far off, and there were 284,000 workers tossed into the ranks of the unemployed that month. It revised August estimates of 73,000 job losses to 127,000.
The revisions are as significant as the higher-than-expected October losses because they suggest that the economy was suffering a steep drop even before the financial crisis exploded into a global problem in September. Many of the September job losses preceded the financial meltdown.
With numbers like that, and with significant job losses even before the financial meltdown …. well, it’s hard to tell just how bad this could get. Clearly we’re in for hundreds of thousands if not millions of additional layoffs before we can hope to turn it around, and those are Americans with children to feed and mortgages to pay and hospital bills to worry about.
Retail sales fell as well, particularly at the upper end. Nordstrom, for example, reported that its same-store sales fell 15.7 percent in October. Something tells me Santa’s sleigh will be a little light this year.
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The Obama administration takes shape
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President-elect Barack Obama’s first personnel decision, naming U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, is both smart and a little dangerous, a description you could also apply to Emanuel himself.
Obama knows Emanuel and trusts him, and nobody ever questioned Emanuel’s intelligence or work ethic. But he also has a reputation for doing whatever it takes to achieve what he wants, which can be real trouble in a job as powerful as chief of staff.
On the other hand, one of Obama’s biggest challenges as president will be exerting discipline on a Democratic Congress. President Bush refused to perform that executive function, allowing congressional Republicans free rein, to the detriment of himself and Congress as well.
Emanuel should prove helpful in keeping the congressional Dems in line.
Typically in transitions, names are leaked for publicity or symbolic reasons — rumors of Colin Powell being offered a Cabinet post and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being named to head the Environmental Protection Agency probably fit into that category.
Kennedy’s appointment would be a disaster. He has been very effective as an environmental activist, but the EPA doesn’t need an activist as its administrator, and Obama knows it. Business and industry want and deserve a fair hearing at EPA, and they aren’t likely to feel they’re getting one if Kennedy is at the helm.
On the other hand, the suggestion that Obama keep Robert Gates as secretary of defense deserves serious consideration. Gates has done an excellent job for the American people in trying to repair the damage done to U.S. policy and to the U.S. military under Rumsfeld, and that experience at unwinding the mistakes of others could be invaluable for President Obama.
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What is the future of the GOP?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before they turn their attention back to the Democrats, Republicans have some scores to settle within their own movement. It’s not going to be pretty.
For example, Michelle Malkin, Erick Erickson and others are organizing a blacklist of those Republicans who say bad things about the sainted martyr of the cause, Sarah Palin. I guess they’re not too worried by reports that Palin didn’t even know that Africa was a continent. I can see their point, in a way: It’s not as if Palin could SEE Africa from Alaska, so how was she to know?
Says Erickson:
“We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others…. We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.
It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.”
That seems to be a natural instinct among many Republicans when they lose. The immediate reaction is to want to purify the party, cast out the unbelievers, so that their movement might be more worthy of the role that history has prepared for them. They believe that by making their party smaller and more conservative, they will get bigger, a sort of quantum politics I confess I cannot follow.
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker has already been cast into the wilderness for daring to speak her mind about Palin.
“The picture is this,” says Parker. “Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn’t sound American to me, but Stalin would approve. Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one’s own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)”
Here’s the problem in a nutshell: The GOP base has become more and more alienated from the modern American mainstream. In fact, that alienation defines the GOP base, as Palin’s sainthood makes clear. It is more important to the GOP to have a candidate who personifies their sense of alienation than to have a candidate who knows what Africa is.
So how do you make a party defined by its rejection of the mainstream attractive to that same mainstream? By making it more ideologically inflexible? By casting out those who advocate a change? Yes, say people like Rush Limbaugh and others.
So I propose a counterpoint to Operation Leper. I think we need a list of all the conservative figures who believe that the route to political salvation is political suicide, who argue that Republicans need to march in lockstep to the right and leap off the cliffs like so many lemmings to the sea.
We can call it Operation Leaper.
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And the winner is…..
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s Thursday, two days after election day, and only now have they called North Carolina. Missouri by some counts is still too close to call, although McCain has a slight lead there with 100 percent of precincts reporting.
Imagine if this had been a close race, with the presidency at stake and North Carolina and Missouri still dangling two days later. The lawyers would be fighting, the media would be going nuts — a nightmare revisited.
Which brings me to the announcement of our winner in our unofficial election prediction contest. With North Carolina in Obama’s column, and assuming Missouri stays red, Obama’s electoral vote total will be 364. Five entrants correctly predicted that total — Tom, ByteME, Allman, TNGelding and Logical Dude.
The tiebreaker was the winner’s percent of the popular vote, which at last count was 52.5 percent. On that basis, the winner of the contest is ….
D R U M R O L L ……
Allman! With a prediction of 52.1 percent!
And yes, for those who have inquired, the dollar that Jim Wooten bet me right after the Palin announcement is now sitting in my wallet.
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How many wakeup calls can they sleep through?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I see where Karl Rove and others are still insisting that the United States is a center-right country, despite what the election returns say.
Let’s assume they’re right, just for the sake of argument. An obvious question then arises:
In a center-right country, how badly did the Republicans have to screw up to lose the presidency to a black alleged socialist-Marxist named Barack Hussein Obama? Maybe he’s not a socialist, or maybe the country isn’t center-right.
The same question can be asked about Congress:
In a center-right country, how incompetent do the Republicans have to be to lose more than a dozen Senate seats and more than 50 House seats to the liberal Democrats in the last two election cycles? I mean, that’s hard to do.
The GOP has long had a hard time making its version of reality match up to actual reality. But that mismatch is particularly glaring when the topic is the party itself.
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Tell me again how the media were unfair to Palin…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Election reveals ‘real America’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An election is much more than a mechanism for picking leaders. It’s part of the process by which a nation defines and reinvents itself, the means by which it expresses its dreams and fears.
The election of 2008, for example, was not merely a battle over whether Barack Obama or John McCain would be our next president. That’s an important decision, but it alone could never have stirred the depths of passion we saw on both sides.
This was also a battle for higher stakes, a fight over what America means to its citizens and to the world.
That kind of debate happens in other nations too, but I think the stakes are higher here. We are a nation defined by boundaries on the map, but not by boundaries of the mind or heart or history. There is nothing fixed or final about America, no limits to what we might do or become beyond those set in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And even those limits are more plastic than many would admit.
For example, we Americans have agreed since our founding that “all men are created equal.” It seems a simple, straightforward premise, but those words have a very different meaning today than when they flowed from the quill of Thomas Jefferson.
His concept of equality did not extend to black Americans or Native Americans or to women of any race, but subsequent generations have fought to realize the untapped potential in Jefferson’s phrase. More than 200 years later, the words are the same but the meaning has changed.
That’s why it’s so foolish to talk about a “real America” or “real Americans.” There can be no “real America,” at least not in the singular sense. Instead, each American citizen has his or her own concept of America — an image of what our country was in the past, what it is today and what it ought to be tomorrow.
We each have our own private America, so to speak, and it is very real to us.
For that reason, we can all be un-American or even anti-American in someone else’s eyes, in the sense that we challenge the America they carry around in their head. Elections are part of the means for working out such conflict peaceably, to come to some sort of consensus.
Sometimes it isn’t easy. In the last few weeks of the campaign, as polls began to make the final outcome pretty clear, I was struck by the number of people insisting that the America they knew could never elect a man like Obama as president. It simply could not happen.
Others were certain that if Obama were elected the nation would be doomed.
In a way, they were right. Their America, the America in their heads, could never elect Barack Hussein Obama as president.
Now that it happened anyway, their concept of America is in need of some serious recalibration.
A lot of black Americans have also been forced to recalibrate, although for them the surprise is a little more pleasant. They too had an image of an America — forged through centuries of heartache, pain and repression —- that could never elect a black person as president.
As we saw Tuesday night, seldom have so many been so joyous about being so wrong.
Another great moment came Wednesday morning, in a statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“One of the great things about representing this country is it continues to surprise; it continues to renew itself; it continues to beat all odds and expectations,” Rice said, her eyes watering. “You just know that Americans are not going to be satisfied until they really do form that perfect union. And while the perfect union may never be in sight, we just keeping working at it and trying.”
“As an African-American, I am especially proud because this is a country that’s been through a long journey in terms of overcoming wounds and making race not the factor in our lives,” she said. “That work is not done, but yesterday was obviously an extraordinary step forward.”
Unfortunately, words on paper can’t make you hear the marvel in Rice’s voice as she spoke. Her “real America” turned out to be a better place than she knew, and the discovery thrilled her.
She wasn’t the only one.
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Who does the GOP rally around?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So, a question to the conservatives out there:
Who do you rally around now? McCain is defeated, Bush is discredited. Who is the party leader? Mitch McConnell? Really?
The folks at MSNBC posted this item at First Read:
NBC-WSJ GOP pollster Neil Newhouse did a post-election survey last night, and here’s what he found: Just 12% of those surveyed believed Palin should be the GOP’s new leader; instead 29% of voters said Romney, followed by 20% who say Huckabee. Among GOPers, it was Romney 33%, Huckabee 20% and Palin 18%.
Palin has considerable support here in Georgia, I suspect, where Romney’s Mormon background is a problem for evangelicals. But in exit polls, more than 60 percent of Americans said she wasn’t qualified to be president. She’s got a lot of work to do to repair that image, but it’s not impossible.
If I had to bet right now, I’d put my money on Bobby Jindal as the 2012 nominee. But he won’t begin to move in that direction for a while yet, leaving the national party leaderless and rudderless.
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Very nicely said…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Voters protect personal privacy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In conservative South Dakota, John McCain beat Barack Obama by 10 points. It wasn’t even close. However, by that same 10-point margin, those same conservative South Dakota voters resoundedly defeated a ballot proposal that would have banned most abortions in the state. It wasn’t even close.
That was the second such rejection in two years by the people of South Dakota. In 2006, anti-abortion advocates explained away their defeat by saying their proposal went too far, banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest. This year’s version was less extreme, but the verdict was the same:
No.
In Colorado, home of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, voters rejected a ballot proposal that would apply the legal status of “person” even to embryos. If approved, the measure would have given legal force to the claim that human life begins at conception.
It was defeated with 73 percent of the vote.
In Washington, voters overwhelmingly approved a law allowing doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The vote was 59 percent in favor, 41 percent opposed.
The American people are trying to send the Republican Party a message: Stay out of our personal lives. But the phone keeps on ringing and ringing and ringing….
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History was made, and they were part of it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As I was walking into the AJC building this morning, I saw people coming out the doors clutching several copies of this morning’s newspaper, with its banner headline “Historic win.”
The big surprise was inside the lobby, where people were lined up along the walls like voters at a polling place, waiting their turn for souvenirs of the occasion. Apparently the morning edition has been sold out all over the metro region as people rush to get a tangible reminder of an event they can tell their grandchildren about.
And the cool thing is, their grandchildren will probably wonder what the big fuss was about.
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This election had to be different, and was
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The American people have given President-elect Barack Obama more than a political victory; they have given him a resounding vote of confidence and a mandate of change. In fact, as the results rolled in from across the country Tuesday night, it was impossible to escape the conclusion that dramatic change is under way already, bubbling up from an American public deeply concerned about its nation’s future and demanding a new approach.
For all of his powers of persuasion, Obama did not create that call for change. But for reasons both obvious and subtle, he has come to personify it. When he is sworn into office Jan. 20, he will become not just our first African-American president, but the first to come of age in the years after Vietnam, Watergate, feminism, the civil rights movement and other old battles that in many ways have continued to rage to this day, like an underground fire smoldering for decades in an abandoned coal mine.
Obama’s opponents in this campaign wanted to keep fighting those earlier wars, in part because they knew how to win on that terrain. They had become adept at dividing the American people into almost equal halves, ensuring that the slightly larger half would be on their side. They believed that with Obama’s race, relative youth, background and name, surely it was possible to fight and win that kind of battle one more time.
But consistently, persistently, Obama insisted on looking forward. Like the American people, he understood that this election had to be different. He saw that while we argued about morals and values instead of government and competence, the future had been slowly slipping from us. Important decisions were ignored. Critical adjustments to a changing world were set aside. As a people and a nation, we were coasting on past accomplishments, trading on the good name, wealth and power built in earlier times.
As events from Wall Street to Main Street have made clear, that course is no longer open to us. Such pettiness is a luxury of easier days and smaller challenges.
In fact, no incoming president since Franklin Roosevelt has faced a more difficult situation than that confronting Obama. The combination of military challenges and financial and economic woes will require sacrifices of a sort not asked of the American people in a generation or longer.
That task will be complicated by the fallout from this bitter election season. Every campaign stirs anger and frustration, but the emotions in this election cycle have run deeper than most. While many saw in Obama a change for the better, others have seen him as a figure to be feared. The senator from Illinois has been villified as a Marxist, a socialist, a secret Muslim and friend of terrorists. His election has even been compared by conservative political commentators to Adolf Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933.
Such talk is dangerous and irresponsible, not least because to some minds it hints that the unjustifiable can perhaps be justified after all. Less dramatically, it also suggests that even with his margin of victory, Obama may not enjoy the presumption of unity and support traditionally granted to newly elected presidents. It seems remarkable to have to state such things, but it is important that the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency be acknowledged by even his most vociferous of critics if we are to make progress.
In a country as diverse as ours, unity can be a fragile commodity. In fact, perhaps the most famous and poign-ant cry for unity in American history was ignored with tragic consequences.
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies,” Abraham Lincoln pleaded in his first inaugural address in 1861, on the eve of civil war. “Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
In our current situation, though, the more relevant example may be that set by a candidate who suffered one of the more heartbreaking defeats in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Democrat Al Gore won a plurality of the popular vote but lost the presidency after an extended and bitter legal fight.
In his gracious concession speech, Gore took as a model the words of Sen. Stephen A. Douglas to Lincoln after the 1860 election. “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism,” Douglas told Lincoln. “I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”
“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside,” Gore said that night, “and may God bless his stewardship of this country. … I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new president-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends.”
Sen. John McCain, an American patriot, expressed similar sentiments Tuesday night, describing Obama as his former opponent and as his president. That is the way real Americans do things, here in these United States of America.
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President-elect Barack Obama….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We have witnessed history.
And President-elect Barack Obama understands that. But as he pointed out in his speech Tuesday night in Chicago’s Grant Park, this election is not the change that we seek. It sets the stage for change, but it is not the change. That will be more difficult.
No one can know how Obama will perform as president. Obama himself cannot know or even pretend to know. The challenges that he faces, that we face, are too profound for such conclusions. As he acknowledged, he will make mistakes. But he is an intelligent man, a caring man. And I confess that I do not understand those who fear him as a danger.
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The (non) fat lady sings …. very well
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Roll the credits, folks. It’s over. Fox has called Ohio.
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Fox: Fair, balanced and very very blue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Boy, those folks on Fox look glum. No, glum doesn’t do Bill Kristol’s face justice.
They look like their favorite dog died. It’s a funeral there. All that’s left is to throw dirt on the coffin. Barack takes New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin.
You can read the electoral map on Brit Hume’s face. It’s blue.
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Still nothing definitive, Va. and Ohio dangling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, still nothing definitive. Things seem to be going as predicted. Elizabeth Dole has lost in North Carolina, Mark Warner has won in Virginia, but those two Senate seats had been baked into the predictions, so to speak. Waiting for a call on Virginia or Ohio, but Pennsylvania has been called by MSNBC and ABC, and McCain had put at lot of effort into that state. Doesn’t appear to have worked.
Georgia way too early to call, either presidential or Senate. Could be a long night before the home game is decided.
UPDATE: CNN just called New Hampshire for Obama, which closes off another escape route for McCain. Something big has to break for him — several somethings — and so far none have.
UPDATE II: McCain needs to take every swing state — a total of 90 electoral votes — and then get another additional 23 EVs from states that have been leaning toward Obama. Of those leaners, three have been called — Pennsylvania (21), New Hampshire (4) and Maine (4). All for Obama.
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A referendum on the modern GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In today’s Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal makes an argument that readers of this blog will find familiar: The election of 2008 marks the end of the Reagan era.
Says Blumenthal:
“Today’s election is poised to end the Republican era in American politics - an era that began in reaction to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Vietnam war and the civil rights revolution, was pioneered by Richard Nixon, consolidated by Ronald Reagan, and wrecked by George W Bush.
Almost every aspect of the Republican ascendancy has been discredited and lies in tatters - its policies, politics, and even its version of patriotism - down to the rock-bottom notion that progressive taxation itself, initiated by a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who John McCain hails as his personal icon, is unpatriotic.”
As Blumenthal notes, it’s ironic to have McCain “make the last stand on behalf of a party he has been at odds with for virtually his whole career,” but that in itself demonstrates how disconnected the party has become from the American mainstream. Its only chance for success was in picking a candidate who made his name as the anti-Republican, and even that ploy has failed.
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The Obama effect on Ga. turnout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pollster.com’s Brian Shaffner does a brief analysis of Georgia’s possible impact on tonight’s outcome, and comes up with a rather startling number:
“In 2004, 834,331 African Americans voted in Georgia’s presidential election. Already this year, 705,203 African Americans have voted early in that state.”
According to Shaffner, if the black vote in Georgia comprises 30 percent of today’s turnout, “there is a reasonable chance that Obama can win Georgia and that a landslide may be in the offing. To do this, he needs to perform slightly better among whites than Kerry did. According to exit polls, Kerry won just 23 percent of the white vote in 2004; Obama would need 27-30 percent of the white vote to capitalize on the high turnout among blacks (or he would need Bob Barr to peel away a significant share of McCain’s support). This is still a bit of a long shot, but Georgia has one of the first poll closings, so it will give us something to look for during the 7pm-8pm hour.”
It’s been a long time since Georgia got much attention in a presidential race. And if our Senate race ends up in a runoff, we’re gonna get more attention than we ever wanted between now and December.
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Report from the polling madness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just got back from voting. I showed up at 7:30, voted at 10:15, so two and a half hours at John Hope Elementary in intown Atlanta.
Where did you vote today, and how long did it take?
Also, in a little aside, I note that the Investor’s Business Daily poll, the one that has been drawing so much interest on the conservative side because it was supposedly the most accurate in ‘04, and because it showed a race as close as two points just a couple of days ago, now puts its final margin at seven.
Funny how that happens.
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Some people scare too easily
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The alarm radio went off at 6 a.m. and the first sound I heard was the voice of Barack Obama saying something about having traveled to every corner of this great country, etc. Typical end-of-the-campaign stuff.
I turned it off, but I think we’re going to be hearing that voice a lot over the next four years.
That prospect has some people downright terrified. One of them is Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com, who writes today in a piece headlined “Sorry, but Obama scares me.”
(UPDATE: Townhall.com has since posted a correction. The piece it originally attributed to Jonah Goldberg was instead written by David Limbaugh, which I actually find reassuring. I had been surprised and dismayed to see something like that under Goldberg’s byline, which is why I commented on it; it is no surprise whatsoever to see it under Limbaugh’s. So for the rest of the piece below, substitute Limbaugh for Goldberg. I’d pull the whole thing down, but then folks would miss the correction.)
Buck up, little Jonah. Take a bravery pill. Somebody pat the boy on the head and tell him it’ll be all right. The tall black man won’t hurt him … much.
But really, you can tell Goldberg is shaking at the knees.
He writes himself a darling little melodrama, casting America as the victim who is beaten down year after year at the hands of dastardly Democrats. Their plan is to whip the American people “into a frenzy of desperation, setting the table for a charismatic leader to deliver us from the despair they’ve manufactured with relentless precision.”
And you know who that charismatic leader will be: Cue the organ and fog as the villain enters stage left, complete with swirling cape and handlebar mustache, ready to tie Lady Liberty to the railroad tracks.
Or, as Goldberg puts it:
“Barack Obama, with his mysterious past and messianic aura, then burst upon the scene … as if the script had been written just for him.”
This mysterious messiah has mayhem on his mind. After stealing the election, Obama’s going to turn us communist. He and his brutal thug tactics are going to silence any opposition to his power, yet in his dreamy naivete about good and evil in the world, he will also disarm us unilaterally and leave us defenseless.
Apparently, Obama is that rarely seen combination of Mr. Rogers and Stalin.
Goldberg even complains about Obama’s “sordid background in ‘community organizing’.” “Sordid community organizing?” What does he think Obama was organizing? Orgies? Voodoo ceremonies? Republican fundraisers?
Get a grip, son.
Goldberg goes on to call Obama Marxist, reckless, misguided, “the most radical man ever to run for this office credibly.” But that’s OK. When Goldberg wakes up tomorrow morning, he can add another name to that list: Mr. President-elect.
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Rove says it won’t even be close
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Karl Rove has posted his last pre-election electoral prediction:
“The final Rove & Co. electoral map of the 2008 election cycle points to a 338-200 Barack Obama electoral vote victory over John McCain tomorrow, the largest electoral margin since 1996.”
And as we all know, Karl has THE math.
Also, A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m not sure about this, so if you know better please correct me, but aren’t the liquor stores closed tomorrow? You know, for the mourners and celebrants both?
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Palin the last ‘culture warrior’?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Peter Beinart, writing in The Washington Post, argues that Sarah Palin represents the last dying gasp of the culture wars that have dominated American politics for a generation:
“It’s no coincidence that Palin’s popularity has plummeted as the financial crisis has taken center stage. From her championing of small-town America to her efforts to link Barack Obama to former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Palin is treading a path well-worn by Republicans in recent decades. She’s depicting the campaign as a struggle between the culturally familiar and the culturally threatening, the culturally traditional and the culturally exotic. But Obama has dismissed those attacks as irrelevant, and the public, focused nervously on the economic collapse, has largely tuned them out.
Palin’s attacks are also failing because of generational change. The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud just isn’t that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage. And just as younger Protestants found JFK less threatening than their parents had found Al Smith, younger whites — even in bright-red states — don’t view the prospect of a black president with great alarm.”
I hope Beinart’s right, but the culture wars have dominated so much of my adult life that it’s hard to believe they can recede. As Beinart points out, though, such wars have come and gone before in America’s past, generally fading when more important concerns rise to the top.
In that light, Gallup’s last three-day tracking poll of likely voters puts the margin nationally at 11 points:
PRINCETON, NJ — The final Gallup 2008 pre-election poll — based on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 Gallup Poll Daily tracking — shows Barack Obama with a 53% to 42% advantage over John McCain among likely voters. When undecided voters are allocated proportionately to the two candidates to better approximate the actual vote, the estimate becomes 55% for Obama to 44% for McCain.
Other polls put the margin at five or six, and my own best guess is that the final margin will be around seven, which is very large. But if the final margin is indeed double digits, then I’m with Beinart: The old politics are dead.
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Long live the King (of the Hill)!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was a sad weekend at the Bookman household with the announcement that “King of the Hill” is being canceled. It wasn’t for everybody, but those folks just cracked me up everytime I saw the show. Bill, Hank, Boomhauer, Dale — they were like friends of mine, or people I grew up with.
In fact, a couple of them WERE friends of mine, as my daughters like to remind me:
“I think Dale looks and acts just like Wallace, Dad.”
“Yeah, and Olson is so like Boomhauer!”
RIP, Hank.
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Let me reiterate the policy…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
…. posted Sunday for those who weren’t reading the blog over the weekend (what, you had better things to do?!?!):
“I’m sick and tired of this endless personal abuse you people throw at each other, and I’m drawing the line.
No more name-calling, no more personal abuse… It’s not going to continue like this.”
That’s as clear as I can make it, and I’d also like to honestly thank you folks for trying to adhere to it. The atmosphere is notably improved, and I do appreciate it.
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GOP high-water mark: March 21, 2005
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you walk a bit along Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, you’ll come to a place that historians describe as the high water mark of the Confederacy.
Right there, at that spot on July 3, 1863, a massive Confederate assault known as Pickett’s Charge broke against Union lines and then was forced to withdraw. From that point on, the once-bright fortunes of the Confederacy declined into defeat.
Another defeat — although of somewhat less historic significance — looms Tuesday for the modern Republican Party. In the Senate, Republicans may fall below the 40 votes needed to filibuster. In the House, they may lose 20 seats or more. And unless the polls are mistaken, the GOP’s grip on the presidency will end as well.
Conceivably, a defeat of that size could exile Republicans from power for a decade or even a generation, particularly given the party’s poor reputation among younger voters. If so, when future historians go looking for the high water mark of the Republican Party, the moment when its power in this era peaked and then began to decline, I’d suggest the date March 21, 2005.
Back then, a majority of Americans still thought favorably of President Bush, who had won re-election just a few months earlier. Republicans had taken control of the Senate in the ‘04 election, picking up four seats. Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority seemed quite plausible.
But then, perhaps a little giddy with power, party leaders did something extraordinarily stupid. Egged on by their masters in talk radio and the Christian Right, they called Congress back for an extraordinary emergency session. Their purpose was not some great matter of state. Instead, they passed legislation demanding that the federal courts intervene in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo. On March 21, that bill was signed into law by President Bush, who had hurried back to Washington from his Texas ranch for just that purpose.
As far as impact, that law had almost none. But symbolically its impact was enormous. That was the moment, I believe, that the vast majority of the American people began to suspect that the Republicans had lost their collective mind. Voters who usually go about their daily lives without paying much attention to the politicians in Washington were transfixed by the case, in part because it had little to do with government and everything to do with the literal life-and-death decisions confronted by every human being at some point.
What they saw in Washington was a blatant abuse of government power — ignorance compounded by arrogance. Afterward, in fact, more than 80 percent of Americans said they disagreed with what Congress had done, but Republican leadership was so out of touch that they had actually believed they would reap political benefits by intervening. An internal GOP Senate memo had called the Schiavo case “a great political issue” that would excite “the pro-life base.”
From there, the GOP decline began. A few months later, Hurricane Katrina hit over Labor Day, and the Bush administration’s apathetic, incompetent response shocked the country. In stark contrast to the Schiavo case, the president did not pry himself from his ranch vacation for days after the storm came ashore.
Slowly, voters began to realize that in the eyes of GOP leadership, government was just a useful weapon in the culture wars, not a tool to try to improve the lives of the American people. Many voters who had themselves thought of government in those terms began to question that belief, a process that quickened as the nation’s economic crisis deepened. As a result, they began to seek leaders who took a more serious approach to government, leaders to whom competence was more important than ideology.
The Schiavo case did not in a major sense cause the GOP’s decline, just as Pickett’s Charge did not doom the Confederacy. It’s just that at certain moments, weaknesses that were once hidden become glaringly apparent, and at those moments the tides of history begin to turn.
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Second-guessing the McCain nomination
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They’re asking the political professionals at The Arena an interesting question: Could any GOP candidate be doing better than McCain?
Personally, I think the answer’s no, not a chance. The Republicans nominated the only candidate who could have hoped to make it close, the only candidate who could credibly claim to be, well, a maverick Republican. A lot of the pros say the John McCain of 2000 would be doing better, but that discounts the impact of that old McCain on the GOP base.
The latest Gallup poll, by the way, puts the margin at nine among likely voters. And John Zogby, who yesterday sent conservative hearts fluttering by announcing that McCain was making a big surge, now says nevermind, just kidding. “”Obama has consolidated his lead over McCain.”
As to yesterday’s excitement, says Zogby: “A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else’s) health.”
He has the margin at 5.7 percent.
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Time to stop stealing from our future
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve had my differences in recent years with the NYT’s Tom Friedman, but his column this morning nails it:
“I can’t remember a presidential campaign that was so disconnected from the actual challenges of governing that will confront the winner the morning after. When this election campaign began two years ago, the big issue was how and for how long do we continue nation-building in Iraq. As the campaign comes to a close, the big issue is how and at what sacrifice do we do nation-building in America.
Unfortunately, you’d barely know that from the presidential debates. … McCain says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true.
We are all going to have to pay, because this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.”
We’ve been stealing from our children and grandchildren, taxing their futures with neither their knowledge or permission. That’s how we’ve financed our tax cuts, social programs, wars, etc. The national debt has essentially doubled — from $5 trillion to $10 trillion — just in the past eight years.
And a reminder: Play nice.
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Stupid people doing stupid things
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whoever ordered this check (reported in the Columbus Dispatch) ought to be ferreted out and fired:
“Vanessa Niekamp said that when she was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case.
Niekamp didn’t know she just had checked on “Joe the Plumber,” who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain’s example in a debate of an average American.
The senior manager would not learn about “Joe” for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry.”
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The post-election Republican Party
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Matt Yglesias, writing on his blog at ThinkProgress, worries about the long-term impact of so many moderate Republicans, such as former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, publicly endorsing Barack Obama:
“On some level, I sort of regret seeing people like this hop onto the Obama bandwagon. Realistically, at some point the Republicans are going to come back into power and I’d prefer that to be a less-crazy version of the GOP. That’s going to require less-crazy people, people like Duberstein, to exert some influence and have some credibility.”
I understand his point, but I think the problem he identifies will solve itself. A Republican Party that is too conservative and inflexible to woo back moderates such as Duberstein, Colin Powell, David Brooks, Doug Kmiec, William Weld, Chris Buckley, Kathleen Parker, Charles Fried, Dick Lugar, etc., will by definition not be capable of returning to power.
The party’s initial instinct after this election will be to purify itself by growing smaller and more conservative. If it surrenders to that instinct and expels those whom its base derides as RINOs, it simply extends its time in the political wilderness.
A return to power will require a return to the center.
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Is there a football game today?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve heard rumbles from the natives recently about some sort of big football game being played in these parts today. It seems to be scheduled about the same time as some big cocktail party, if I understand things correctly.
Since my own alma mater, the No. 3 ranked and undefeated Pennsylvania State University, is taking the week off, I might have to watch and see how you locals try to play our game. Might be amusing…
OH, AND ONE MORE THING: I was just going through the comments from last night. I’m sick and tired of this endless personal abuse you people throw at each other, and I’m drawing the line.
No more name-calling, no more personal abuse. Trash — you’re banned until Sunday, Bud — cross the line and you’re next, and Management, call somebody a moron again and you’re gone. It’s not going to continue like this.
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