Subsumed ... resumed.

Here in the Real World.

2012-01-29T14:24:00.011-06:00

Stopped at Kwik Trip for bananas and bagged milk this morning, the Rice Lake Northside one... Only two copies of the News-Shield left on the stands -- we cover the county, but that's The Chronotype territory.

Still, I think our courtroom photo, and prominent play above the fold, sold this week. Plus, new Macs at work, so they're still working out the bugs this weekend...

Nevermind, as the kids say.

ADDED: Oh, and make it a warm week out there. (With a deliberately shaggy dog who really, really likes to walk, even with morning temps in the teens and single digits, this winter is shaping up to be a great one here. 2012 -- it's about time...)

Back...

2012-01-26T13:12:00.005-06:00

When I started here last May, the boss told me that putting out a weekly paper was a bit like giving birth, or helping to give birth, once a week.

Tuesday night was probably our best paper yet, the most news and decent pictures. Yet we didn't get out until about 1:30 a.m., flowing the copy, writing captions, placing photos (him, not me) and figuring out what to hold for next week, to get all the ads in. Then, things weren't jumping right...

When I called in this morning, I reminded him of that "birthing" analogy and said this week, it was like having to yank that baby out! Yet ... it turned out great, the end product. (Links to come, when the stories are online.)

I was in and out of court last week -- my first defamation lawsuit (not me!) And the highway worker won, against a former county administrator. A high legal standard to meet, but the jury -- they're not know as softies here in conservative Barron County either -- awarded the man $175,000 overall, on three verdict forms (for the three instances the man was defamed in the press and at public meetings.)

This civil suit had been dimissed previously, but the Appeals Court ruled it didn't classify as a workers' comp case, because the worker was no longer employed by the county when the defamatory statements were made. Again, when we get it online, I'll link. Quite an interesting case...

Anyway, after a Wednesday sleeping in, catching up at home, and romping on the trails with Buddy (we got 3+ inches of the lightest fluffiest snow Tuesday night/Wednesday morning), I'm recharged. The snow made for an interesting drive home up Cty. Hwy. 25 early Wednesday morning, a straight shot but more guessing where the lane/fog lines were, as the plows hadn't made it through yet.

Still, all's well that ends well, and have I mentioned earlier how satisfying it is to hold your week's work in your hands on Wednesday, seeing the fruits of your efforts come in to play?

Make it a great day; I've got a meeting to cover tonight, and we're already looking ahead here, with another one due out next week. Fertile ground in Barron County, Wisconsin, indeed!

Andrew Updates...

2012-01-24T16:59:00.006-06:00

It turns out I shouldn't have blogged that I was even briefed about the SOTU. I thought I just had to keep the contents to myself. One thing you learn pretty quickly about this White House: transparency is a theory, not a reality.

Sounds like somebody got ... spanked!

Remember kids: the better the quality, the less "hype" needed.

UPDATE: Poor Andrew. Played for a sucker, again:

The future is understood by Chris Christie who just nominated an openly gay African-American, married for thirty years, to the state supreme court. Christie still opposes marriage rights for gays, but has left the door open if the legislature moves forward, as it wants to do. But when you are treating a potential member of the state supreme court as a second-class citizen, in the end, the position becomes untenable.

*slam* That's the sound of one door shutting...
They don't like you.
They really, really don't like you.
Stop pandering, already?
It really is offputting* to so many out here...

NJ gov says he'd veto gay marriage bill

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Republican Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday he'd veto a gay marriage bill advancing in the Legislature and instead wants same-sex unions put to a referendum. Angry Democrats said lawmakers have an obligation to protect civil rights and the issue should not be put off for a public vote.

* I wish he'd just accept his second-class role already, and stop pretending that the libs and moderate Republicans will dance to his self-called tune... Then, he might prove a decent fighter for the team. As it is? See how quickly those promises and special guarantees you've procured for you and yours can evaporate? Better to move together, and not sell out the rest of the team for personal gain.

"Let's Stay Together..."

2012-01-24T16:40:00.000-06:00

Maybe it will work out better for President O. than it will for Seal, eh?

(Don't you wish couples were a little less selfish and figured out if things were permanent BEFORE they brought children, even well-financed children, into the mix?? Or is that just my conservative nostalgia -- put your children first, parents -- coming into play?)

What Romney Supports.

2012-01-24T16:22:00.001-06:00

Via his tax dollars, that is:

Typically, liberal rhetoric on taxes makes it seem as if the wealthy are getting a free ride on the backs of middle and lower-income Americans who are doing all the work and are really paying the taxes. But to put things on perspective, here’s what $3.2 million in federal taxes — Romney’s estimated 2011 burden — pays for:
— The monthly food stamp allowance for about 23,909 people.
— The cost of educating 302 elementary and high school students.
— The base salary (before bonuses and allowances) of 178 privates in the U.S. Army.
— The federal contribution to the benefits of 636 Medicaid enrollees.
In addition to his taxes, Romney has given around 16.4 percent of his income over the past two years to charity through his family charity, the Tyler Foundation. In addition to donations to the Mormon church, here’s where else Romney and his wife Ann donated money: the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, the Center for the Treatment of Pediatric MS, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Homes for Our Troops, and the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, among others

Sadly, if the Supreme Court doesn't step in, and President Obama is somehow re-elected, (never underestimate the Chicago cabal) in future years we might even learn how many abortions exactly the Romney's are paying for ... you know, keep those little potential Downs syndrome kids out of mix, can't have "unperfect" offspring, afterall.

The curious case ... of the dead kitty.

2012-01-24T16:15:00.000-06:00

Erik Wemple reports:

This past week, The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher attacked this country’s great media divide. He embedded with South Carolinians of differing political viewpoints and tracked their divergent news diets. “There’s more campaign news and commentary out there than ever before,” writes Fisher, “but more and more citizens are tucking themselves inside information silos where they see mainly what they already agree with.”

For further evidence of this phenomenon, try pumping “liberal dead cat arkansas” into Google News. Those search terms fetch a chilling and apparently partisan story from Russellville, Ark. The skinny is this: Jacob Burris, the campaign manager for Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden, found his family’s cat slain in front of his house, the word “liberal” painted on its dead body.

The extended version, as Burris relates it to me, has more sickening detail. On Sunday morning at about 8:30, the 31-year-old Burris loaded three of his kids into his van for a trip to the gas station. When they returned, Burris’s 5-year-old boy got out and went around to the other side of the vehicle to help unbuckle the other kids, who are nearly 2 and 3 years old. On his way to assisting with the arrival, the 5-year-old spotted something. ”Dad, think the cat’s dead,” said the youngster to Burris.

The child wondered what the letters on the cat meant. Burris tried to explain them away. “It could be tire tracks,” the father said. Once the kids were inside, Burris moved the cat with a shovel into a wooded area behind the house. That night, he called the police, and the events were on their way into the country’s news stream, to Burris’s dismay.

The Russellville Police Department is investigating the incident and animal-rights groups are offering rewards. PETA is offering a reward

“I don’t enjoy, after something like this happens, having the thing be high-profile. . . . I understand that a news story is a news story and they’re gonna run it, but I’d much rather it be on something else, for sure,”Burris said.

There’s some consolation for him on that front, and it has to do with the country’s partisan media divide.

Many local Arkansas outlets have picked up the story, as have the Huffington Post, CBS News, and Gawker, among other broader platforms.

Yet the nation’s conservative media machine hasn’t yet jumped on it, according to Google News. FoxNews.com, for instance, just posted a wire piece on it, about a day after the story broke.

Vince Leibowitz, a principal with the Austin, Texas-based Dawn Group and the general consultant to the Aden campaign, characterized the conservative media response this way: “My honest impression of it is that the conservative media probably looked at this story and said there’s really no point in giving a progressive candidate any coverage at all at this point,” says Leibowitz. “We don’t want to give a progressive candidate like Ken Aden airtime on the network or bandwidth on the website.”

A story like this, however, will have the cardiovascular chops to last a few news cycles, according to Leibowitz. So more news organizations will jump in. “When conservative media realizes that even conservatives are outraged by such a despicable act as killing a child’s pet for political purposes, that they will have to pick up the story unless they have simply lost all news judgment,” says Leibowitz.

Burris hasn’t had a chance to play media critic on this one. He’s had some technology problems, and last night he went off grid to spend some time with his family. “From everybody, I’ve talked to, everybody’s as disgusted as I am,” he says.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm...

Catholics say: "No way. Why should we pay?"

2012-01-24T15:36:00.001-06:00

or, The Trouble with ~~Tribbles.~~ Mandates:

[S]uddenly, we have headlines about the president's "war on the Catholic Church." Mostly they stem from a Health and Human Services mandate that forces every employer to provide employees with health coverage that not only covers birth control and sterilization, but makes them free. Predictably, the move has drawn fire from the Catholic bishops.

Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.

The message Mr. Obama is sending, says Mr. Winters, is "that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us."

Mr. Winters is not alone. The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.

In the run-up to the ruling, the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Jenkins, suggested a modest compromise by which the president could have avoided most of this strife. That would have been by allowing the traditional exemption for religious organizations. That's the same understanding two of the president's own appointees to the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in a 9-0 ruling that recognized a faith-based school's First Amendment right to choose its own ministers without government interference, regardless of antidiscrimination law.

A few years ago Father Jenkins took enormous grief when he invited President Obama to speak at a Notre Dame commencement; now Father Jenkins finds himself publicly disapproving of an "unnecessary government intervention" that puts many organizations such as his in an "untenable position."

Here's just part of what he means by "untenable": Were Notre Dame to drop coverage for its 5,229 employees, the HHS penalty alone would amount to $10 million each year.

The irony, of course, is that the ruling is being imposed by a Catholic Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working in an administration with a Catholic vice president, Joe Biden. A few years back the voluble Mr. Biden famously threatened to "shove my rosary beads" down the throat of those who dared suggest that his party's positions on social issues put it at odds with people of faith.

Does he now mean to include Mr. Winters, Cardinal Mahony and Father Jenkins?
...
Conservatives may enjoy the problems this creates for Mr. Obama this election year. Still, for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith.

And publicly going to church on Sundays now with the family is not going to easily fix things, I don't suppose...

A State of the Union ... snoozefest?

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-06:00

Tuesday's our deadline day here, so I won't be listening myself but reading text, but Andrew's (Sullivan, that is) insider description is not promising:

I just got briefed a little, in a rare moment of outreach from the White House communications team. Everything is embargoed, so no details. And being briefed about the contents is not the same as listening Obama deliver the case. But sheesh. Get some caffeine ready.

ADDED: Curious that they "brief" bloggers like Sullivan beforehand. Do you suppose they've got him down as a "gay constituent representative" or something? Or perhaps The Daily Beast has more political power in Washington that we in the heartland suspect?

I wonder if he's one of a select few, or if the Obama administration is reaching out and touching a good number of "journolists" this afternoon...

Whatever. Happy Telepromter Reading, Mr. President.

Took 'em long enough...

2012-01-24T11:57:00.001-06:00

but today, the NYT editorial board concedes: Ross Perot* was right!

That race to the bottom is exactly what was warned against in the rush to globalization. And the response was that the low wage stuff would go away and we would retain all the high “value added” stuff. Didn’t work that way.

* the funny plainspoken guy, with those charts, remember? Someday, we'll look back on Ron Paul in the same way, I suppose. Dislike the messenger, but ignore his message at your own risk.

ADDED: Here's the first comment up, on Rosenthal's invitation to readers to put their own special requests on the federal "wish list", of things they'd like to see the President promise tonight:

I wish for a song and a dance.

No, really.

Some Al Green.

He could do his own half-time show.

Lol. Shattering stereotypes daily!

C'mon Paul ... don't just be bashful.

2012-01-24T11:47:00.002-06:00

Show us your numbers!

PS: Yes, my tax rate is a lot higher than Romney’s. And I support policies that would raise it further.

Is he saying that he paid more than $6.2 million in taxes the past two years? Or just that, as a percentage, he pays more (like me), but it comes nowhere close to what the Romney's are contributing to the growth of the federal bureacracy and preferred entitlement funds?

I suspect the latter. Still, why the secrecy?

Couldn't the Krugman's voluntarily release their returns? Just like, if they believe they are paying too little in taxes, couldn't they add on an additional cool million or two to their preferred charity -- the federal government?

Why not? Who says that by paying more yourself, instead of demanding from others first, is against the law? Try it this year, Mr. Krugman. Who knows? Your "extra donation" might just save a life or two. Or at least lower the amount we need to borrow from China this year to pay for all these preferred social policies that you think we should all share in.

(If ObamaCare is partially overturned, I suggest he and Mr. Klein team up to sponsor a ... "Adopt and Uninsured" private charity. They could get a picture, and a sob story, from an actual American out there that their elite tax dollars are helping save. You know, to cover the millions that die daily without federally funded healthcare.)

His Elitism is Showing.

2012-01-24T11:24:00.001-06:00

Ah, Andrew (Sullivan, not Rosenthal this time).
A self-confessed one-percenter, just listen to this logic:

The future is understood by Chris Christie who just nominated an openly gay African-American, married for thirty years, to the state supreme court. Christie still opposes marriage rights for gays, but has left the door open if the legislature moves forward, as it wants to do. But when you are treating a potential member of the state supreme court as a second-class citizen, in the end, the position becomes untenable.

Nevermind the awkward writing (how do you marry, or stay married, to a supreme court, exactly?)

Check out the elitism on display there: a potential member of the state supreme court can't be treated as a second-class citizen, surely!

But all those now living under state constitutional marriage amendments of one-man, one-woman (rinse and repeat, in the case of easy divorce)? Well, it's not like they are elite citizens, supreme court justices or anything!!

In reality, "gay rights activist" (can we stick with that, rather than writer or philosopher?) Sullivan pushed hard to earn himself and his husband the benefits they now enjoy, where they are at. His life is veddy veddy good! (smoke yer pot, and not have to pay the piper either, it seems...)

Still, you wonder, had Andy and his equally motivated gay rights activists take a ... longer-view term? In actually what happened was: The push for equality for some, led to even greater second-class citizenship -- now enshrined in State constitutions via longstanding amendments -- for others, do to the backlash that Sullivan and his ilk wrought.

Instead of moving forward together, he helped advance the rights of some at the expense of others. Sure, you can blame this on the GOP and Republican candidates. (I always forget: is Andrew identifying as a conservative catholic republican today, or not? Seems to change day by day, issue by issue, no?)

But I wonder, had "leadership" like Sullivan's not occured, would equality for all (no second-class citizenship, period) have occurred faster in the states, or slower? That is, if you look overall, how has his "movement" helped -- and harmed -- American gays throughout the country?

No fair just adding up your successes, without taking responsibility for the "backlash" either. (and no, despite how it might be trumpeted tonight, I don't think that reversing the Clinton-era policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military is all that much a concession or victory won by the Obama administration. More, please! Much, much, much more work needs to be done, and now undone, thanks to the elite me-me-me! Sullivan types, who had so much more to lose as a second-classer.)

The Wrong Message to Send ... ?

2012-01-24T11:11:00.001-06:00

The eternal borrowing,
and entitlement programs,
are ... Built to Last !

Ditto that "policeman to the world / our drones are always watching" thing. If he tries to bring up Clinton's foreign policy leadership "success" in Libya, and our seemingly newly created responsibility to ... protect by participating in civil wars , then it kinda seems inconsistent with what's been going down in Syria and Africa, no?

That was another overreaching policy of this administration, and a costly one too in terms of lives and dollars. (Re. lives, rememember: I could the civilians casualites too.)

Do You Love Me ... ?

2012-01-24T11:02:00.001-06:00

Andrew Rosenthal asks:

Whatever Obama says tonight, GOP will reject it out of hand. Actually will they even wait for speech?

Doubtful. He can try to talk his way out of his performance, but to so many Americans these days... talk is cheap. Results matter more than promises.

And getting the job done?
Despite promises of light at the end of the tunnel, for America to somehow magically transform herself without proper competitive educations and any semblance of a manufacturing base to compete with... -- add in a double dollop of increased reliance on entitlement programs, solely for survival and reproduction -- I don't see us "getting over" any time soon.

I suspect many, outside of Mr. Rosenthal's elite circles, have given the president and his administration the benefit of the doubt for several years but are unwilling to continue. "Borrow More" is not really a credible plan to be pushing these days.

And again, outside of those special circles? I suspect the president has fewer and fewer fanboys -- and fangirls -- these days...

Call it a hunch.

2 + 2 = ?

2012-01-24T10:12:00.004-06:00

For those of us concerned about the encroaching reach of government into our daily lives and finances, consider Ilya Somin on Volokh today, and then George Will in the WaPo last weekend. (I wrote about Will's piece, then parked it, but found it adds in directly to Somin's piece today: Do we really want to encourage such dependence on federal funds? At what price? Freedom?)

Somin:

The Dangerous Growth of State Dependence on Federal Funds Ilya Somin • January 23, 2012 11:57 pm

Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute has a good post highlighting the data on state governments’ growing dependence on federal funds. Since 2001, federal grants have risen from 25.7% of state government spending to 34.1% today. Most of that growth has occurred since the present recession began in 2008.

One of the main distinctive benefits of American federalism is that, historically, state governments have had to raise most of their funds from their own taxpayers, rather than relying on grants from the feds. This gives states incentives to compete for taxpayers and improve the quality of their policies and public services, thereby increasing the effectiveness of voting with your feet. I cover these points in more detail here.

In most other federal systems, the central government provides the lion’s share of subnational governments’ funding. If present trends continue, the United States may join this trend. State governments will increasing look to Washington for most of their funds, and incentives for competition and innovation will be undermined. It’s possible that fiscal policy will return to “normal” as the economy improves. But state governments are likely to lobby for current grant levels to continue even after the recession ends. Current federal subsidy levels could easily become the new normal.

From the comments:

rimfire says:
Take the king’s gold, dance to the king’s tune

Grants and such are the way the federal government takes over state/local institutions such as schools.

George Will in today's WaPo:

The Supreme Court can pack large portents in small details. When in late March it considers the constitutionality of Obamacare, there will be 51 / 2 hours of oral argument — the most in almost half a century.
...
An hour of argument will be devoted to whether Obamacare’s enormous expansion of Medicaid is so coercive of states that it is incompatible with federalism — the Constitution’s architecture of dual sovereignty. The court’s previous rulings about compulsion point toward disallowing this expansion.

Spending on Medicaid, a theoretically cooperative federal-state program, is approximately 40 percent of all federal funds given to states and 7 percent of all federal spending. Enacted in 1965 as a program for the poor, it has exploded. The increase in its costs by the end of this decade is expected to be $434 billion. Its cost is projected to rise 7.9 percent a year — faster even than Medicare’s (6.9 percent).
...
In theory, state participation in Medicaid is voluntary; practically, no state can leave Medicaid because its residents’ federal taxes would continue to help fund the program in all other states. Moreover, opting out of Obamacare’s expanded Medicaid would leave millions of poor people without affordable care. So Obamacare leaves states this agonizing choice: Allow expanded Medicaid to devastate your budgets, or abandon the poor.

The Constitution created a federal government of limited and enumerated powers and promptly strengthened this with the 10th Amendment

lBut even with the federal government paying most of the costs, in many states their portion of Medicaid costs is the largest item in their budgets, even exceeding education. And Obamacare, which forbids states to restrict the eligibility criteria it adopted before this new burden, would deny all Medicaid funds to noncompliant states.
...
The Constitution created a federal government of limited and enumerated powers and promptly strengthened this with the 10th Amendment. The Supreme Court has held that the states therefore retain “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty” incompatible with federal “commandeering” of states’ legislatures and executives. Under Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, states are dragooned for the furtherance of federal objectives.

In 1987, the court upheld a federal law denying a portion of federal highway funds to states that refused to implement a drinking age of 21. The court held that the threatened loss of funds — only 5 percent — was a “relatively small” inducement and hence “not so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.” The court thereby said the federal government cannot behave like Don Corleone, making offers states cannot refuse. At some point, government crosses the threshold of unconstitutional compulsion.

George doesn't go on here, but ask yourself: how many states have the 18+ drinking age now? When they can be military, vote, work and are considered adults. (except in the eyes of the healthcare insurance policies.)

That's right, none. In reality, even those states with drinking cultures, Germanic like Wisconsin, eventually caved and danced to the federal rules for federal dollars. Before the MADD presentations and driving stats kicked in. It reality it was about that federal money at the time, not about saving lives, that every state raised their drinking ages to 21. Hello then, Don Corleone?

Will goes on:

The crucial consideration is the degree of threatened impoverishment. Because of Obamacare, the nation needs clarity from the court. If it now thinks Congress has unfettered power to place conditions on states receiving money from it, the court should explicitly disavow its coercion doctrine. But if the coercion doctrine is to survive, Obamacare should not.

The Obamacare issues of Medicaid coercion and the individual mandate are twins. They confront the court with the same challenge, that of enunciating judicially enforceable limiting principles.

If there is no outer limit on Congress’s power to regulate behavior in the name of regulating interstate commerce, then the Framers’ design of a limited federal government is nullified. And if there is no outer limit on the capacity of this government to coerce the states, then federalism, which is integral to the Framers’ design, becomes evanescent.

So, the time the court has allotted for oral argument about Obamacare is proportional to the stakes. This case is the most important in the more than half a century since the Brown v. Board of Education cases because, like those, it concerns the nature of the American regime.

He's not really being racial, really.
For the issue of the future of federalism, this one compares to Brown.

Andrew Sullivan Comes Out of the Closet...

2012-01-24T10:01:00.004-06:00

No, not that closet.
The "I AM ... a rich man!" one-percent closet:

I pay almost half my income in taxes of various sorts. It's nuts that I should be paying far, far more as a precentage (sic) than a man like Romney. And I'm a one percenter.

Now just think what Andrew Sullivan has directly contributed to American society, to earn wealth like that ...

...

*crickets*

Oh c'mon, folks. Be charitable.
Without Andy working the beat, who amongst us would have ever thought to question Sarah Palin's personal delivery records, or to suggest -- in his ever so sly way -- that daughter Bristol, not Mrs. Palin, actually bore Trig, the son with Downs Syndrome...

Surely the fella deserves to be veddy well compensated for that ?!?

Priceless.

;-)

Andrew and Althouse on Romney's Taxes

2012-01-24T09:54:00.002-06:00

Remarkably sane! Imagine that...

It seems to me that this is not about Romney and shouldn't be about Romney. He broke no laws; he seems admirably charitable; his massive wealth is not a marker against him.

The issue is the system.

and

“I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” Mr. Romney said during Monday night’s debate. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”
Exactly! The question isn't what he paid — unless he cheated — but what his tax policy for the country would be.

Good for those two!
If anyone would play this issue for performance art, I suspect (raggedy?) Ann and Andy would be the two bloggers to do it. Still, I suspect the tax system treats them ... veddy, veddy good as well, considering what they take home for the work they do.

(and no. For the record? That's not coveting, either. ;-)

Here We Go...Ugh!

2012-01-24T09:18:00.004-06:00

Andrew Rosenthal:
Romney Tax Returns Show 2-Year Income of $45 Million. What do yours show?: http://t.co/1NNNZsc3 about an hour ago

Andrew Rosenthal:
Romney got about $13 mill in "carried interest" last 2 years. Not familiar? Don't worry, not avbl to you. http://t.co/iDaPUolx about an hour ago

-------------------
C'mon Mr. Rosenthal: Work it, work it, work it!

If you can only sell the "Coveting Another Man's Wealth" envy theme, then surely right-thinking people, out of jealousy and spite, will turn against Mr. Romney, who's clearly just playing under the same tax system as Mr. Rosenthal and the rest of us. By the rules as the status quo has determined. (Much like plenty of heterosexual couples benefit by the status quo tax rules that disadvantage others. Do we hear daily whines of envy and jealousy out of Mr. Rosenthal on that meme? I wonder why not... other than that happens to be off the current Democrat scorecard.)

The fact that Mr. Romney -- and his family -- have seemingly acquired more marbles in the game than Mr. Rosenthal and his kin, surely outrages us all?!?

Not. Next thing you know, he'll have us coveting the candidate's classy wife and photogenic sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren.

"Do I smell personal prosperity out there that the rest of us don't share?!? Gather your pitchforks, and start your fires, peasants! This way everyone..."

Luckily, I don't think many other Americans, outside Mr. Rosenthal's cocktail and dinner party set, are that covetous of other people's choices. How many of us -- even if we magically could -- would swap our own situations for Mr. Romney's blessings?

"They'll have theirs,
and you have yours,
and I'll have mine....
and together we'll be fine!"

Name that Tune?

...

Answer: Different Strokes theme song.
Remember that one, Mr. Rosenthal?
Conrad Bain played a very generous, kindly (white -- if that need be added...) rich guy. (Culturally, you're really gonna have to work that Rich=Evil meme for it to pick up any steam, I'll bet...)

1-2-3...

2012-01-23T03:58:00.001-06:00

ah buh-buh buh buh-buh buh... :

A-B-C.
It's easy as 1-2-3.
It's simple as Do-Re-Mi ...
A-B-C, 1-2-3,
Baby, you and me...
That's how easy love can be.

Beat that, President Obama.

And the rest of you:
Make it a great Monday, out there...

Page 198.

2012-01-23T03:47:00.000-06:00

Ibid, W.L. White:
"Back at the quarters I found an old navy captain who'd arrived the day before -- used to be in charge of the industrial department at Cavite. He listened to my story, and MacArthur's promise, and then said, "The way it looks, I don't think I'm getting out.' Then he talked about the thirty years he'd spent in the navy, all of them training so he would be useful in case of war, and you could see it was discouraging for him to end like this -- apparently forgotten by the country he had wanted to serve. What had his life been for?

"He warned me not to count on it -- 'There aren't enough planes and gas to take us all.' He was discouraged himself, and for the next six days the old man talked it all the time -- we are not getting out, can't get out, won't get out. I suppose he was afraid to get his own feeble hopes up.
...
"I went back to my quarters and had just packed to go when the phone rang. I was to report to General Sharp at the landing field at once, and bring everything I had with me.

"The old navy captain who shared my quarters knew what that meant. 'Good luck, Kelly! You were right," he said. There were tears in his eyes, and I could see why. He'd devoted his life to his country, and yet here at the end, in spite of rank and those years, it wasn't enough.

"What they needed outside now was technicians in the new weapons, and that meant young fellows like me. So now, in spite of the many things he was able and trained to do, and wanted to do, they weren't quite enough, so he was to stay and die in a fox hole or be captured. I said what I could, but it wasn't much, because the old man already knew."

--------------------
Btw,
R.I.P. Joe Paterno.
Sincerely. You did nothing wrong, and were robbed of due process by those to whom you were loyal. Cause of death? Broken Heart.

Page 186.

2012-01-23T03:12:00.003-06:00

Ibid, W.L. White:

"The second day we heard planes at dawn and all scrambled back out of sight in the hut -- peering up through the palms. It was three bombers in formation at about fifteen hundred feet.

Somebody said, pointing, 'Why look -- they're ours!' But I could hardly believe it -- even when I saw the stars on their wings, even when I heard the faraway rumble of their bombs dropping on the Japs in Cebu. They were the first American bombers we had seen since before the start of the war. Then we heard more planes -- looked up and again they were American, a new type with a split tail I'd never seen before but which I learned later were B-25's, and now I realized that here was our big American offensive -- the one which we though had pooped out on us the morning after we sunk the cruiser. Here it was at last -- three days too late! Because in the meantime, Bataan had fallen, and Cebu, and all they could do now was pester the Japs and sink a few empty transports. I was sore as hell.

"Because we little guys -- the ones who are expended -- never get to see the broad picture of the war, never find out the reasons back of the moves or failures to move. We only see our part -- look up through the palm trees at the seamy side of it. So when something poops out, and help doesn't come, and everything goes to hell, we can only hope help didn't come in time for some sensible reason like bad weather conditions in Australia. We hope, but at the time we can't be sure, and we get mad.

Expect to hear that in President Obama's Tuesday address to the nation: Blaming the weather conditions in ~~Australia~~ Asia, in part...

Page 189.

2012-01-23T03:03:00.002-06:00

Ibid, W.L. White:

"Finally we hit a little native village on the coast and started looking for boats, but the major said there were none -- the native troops had used them to evacuate that day. But they were swell to us -- always out in the country they were swell to us -- ignorant guys, maybe, but nice and kind as they could be. I remember on the trail we overtook a ramshackle cart and a few natives, and an old native woman gave the cart driver hell for not putting the baggage in his cart -- said we Americans were fighting for their people and they should help us.

"The driver tried to pile it on, but it broke his cart down. He wouldn't take any money -- just said he was sorry he couldn't help us more. In those days in the jungle I learned more about how nice the simple Filipino people are than I'd learned in months in Manila; I also learned the more Americanized they are, the lousier they are.
...
"We arrived at the next island soaking wet but thankful, and glad we were halted on the beach by native volunteer guards with home-made rifles, instead of by the Japs.

"Here I said good-by to the American civilians. They owned sugar and coconut plantations and wanted to get to their families. Then they would try to get them to safety, but where was safety? Or maybe, instead of wandering from island to island, it would be better to wait for the Japs in their homes. They couldn't decide. The whole easy, comfortable American world was cracking up fast in those islands. It wasn't nice to watch."

Cliffs Notes Krugman.

2012-01-23T02:57:00.003-06:00

Save a bit of your time this Monday; here's the summary:

How goes the state of the union? Well, the state of the economy remains terrible. Three years after President Obama’s inauguration and two and a half years since the official end of the recession, unemployment remains painfully high.

But there are reasons to think that we’re finally on the (slow) road to better times. And we wouldn’t be on that road if Mr. Obama had given in to Republican demands that he slash spending, or the Federal Reserve had given in to Republican demands that it tighten money.

Why am I letting a bit of optimism break through the clouds?
...
We have failed to provide significant mortgage relief, which could have moved us much more quickly to lower debt. And even if my hoped-for virtuous circle is getting under way, it will be years before we get to anything resembling full employment.

But things could have been worse; they would have been worse if we had followed the policies demanded by Mr. Obama’s opponents. ...

And if this year’s election brings the wrong ideology to power, America’s nascent recovery might well be snuffed out.

He's primarily a Journolist, remember, who came up in the Ezra Klein school of factual analysis in his media writing.

Plus, like with the ladies, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Krugman was musically moved by that, "Good or bad, happy or sad ... I'll be loving you forever, together". Barry that tease. Turning it on 3 years in, just enough to give 'em a taste of what they might be missing out on, and surely this time he'll perform as promised, no? Crazy, sexxy, cool. ;-)

Hope springs eternal,
and Journolists like Krugman seem to time their opto-mism accordingly:
Find the data that support "Have to admit it's getting better..." happytalk; point out that no matter how low the bar, warmed-over mediocrity surely beats what the Republican fiscal conservatives have planned on the menu...

The Southern Guy Won in the South.

2012-01-21T21:54:00.000-06:00

Democrats rejoice.

Eh. News at 10.

2012-01-21T13:45:00.002-06:00

Another Week Over...
and a new one just begun...

Page 180.

2012-01-21T13:01:00.002-06:00

They Were Expendable. W.L. White:

"Then I went out to this sympathetic American stranger's home, which was on the outskirts on a hill overlooking Cebu City and harbor. I went right to bed after supper, but first I turned on the radio by my bed. It said that Bataan had just fallen. Maybe if they could have been told that those seven fat interisland steamers were on their way loaded with food and quinine, maybe those poor, starved, fever-ridden guys could have held the line a little longer. Well, we in the torpedo boats had done what we could. And I wished that Peggy could know that, and that I could thank her for those two codeine tablets, and tell her how they let Reynolds sit out on the deck and really enjoy his last cigarette.

"Right now Peggy was probably standing in the tunnel entrance on Corregidor, where she and I had sat so many evenings, looking across the narrow waters to the tip of Bataan where the Japs now were, and back up from the water in the hills would be bright pin-points of rifle fire, where the Japs were hunting down like rats those few brave, silly expendables who still wouldn't admit they were expended, who still had a little fight left and so kept on fighting even after the generals had said it was done. Looking at this, probably she was, and knowing their turn on the Rock would come soon. Well, we in the MTB's were expended now, but we had done what we could for Bataan. and I wished that the swell brave gang on the Rock could know this. Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ! Finally I got to sleep. "

Break It Down for Me Now...

2012-01-20T09:18:00.000-06:00

A missing phrase might add more to my meaning in this past post:

But if we can change expectations and lifestyle choices, if we can build back the economy bit by bit by breaking things down to the basics (as Mitt Romney did with the SLC Olympic Games, and plenty of underperforming companies), then maybe the underclass can learn something from the successful non-libs, black white and Hispanic, in how they got what they did. Hint: it really ain't all about being born with a rich daddy, no matter how much the media would like to sell that meme.

That's all.

Upping the Ante...

2012-01-19T12:25:00.001-06:00

What'd I tell ya this year's theme would be, again? Here's Ta-Nehisi Coates today, a young black writer in his The Atlantic blog:

When a professor of history calls Barack Obama a "Food Stamp President," it isn't a mistake to be remedied through clarification; it is a statement of aggresion. And when a crowd of his admirers cheer him on, they are neither deluded, nor in need of forgiveness, nor absolution, nor acting against their interest. Racism is their interest. They are not your misguided friends. They are your fully intelligent adversaries, sporting the broad range of virtue and vice we see in humankind. If you are a praying person, you should pray for their electoral destruction in November. Surely they are praying for yours:
Let his days be few; and let another take his office
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

His dad is a black publisher and former Black Panther remember, so perhaps you can give the son a pass for automatically thinking along these lines? Call it out when you see it though, folks. I, for one, don't like where this racial nonsense is leading...

The Empire ... Strikes Back.

2012-01-19T12:12:00.001-06:00

James Taranto writing in the Wall Street Journal takes issue with Lee Siegel's recent racial analysis piece:

Siegel writes that "Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory." That sounds like a promising start to a Chris Rock comedy riff, but Siegel means it as a serious thesis.

"I'm not talking about a strict count of melanin density," Siegel writes. Rather, he refers to something he imagines is less ludicrous: Romney's "whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America."

This is almost like a Peggy Noonan observation from a few months ago:
Mr. Romney's added value is his persona. He's a little like the father in one of those 1950s or '60s sitcoms that terrorized and comforted a generation of children from non-functioning families: Somewhere there was a functioning one, and it was nice enough to visit you on Wednesday at 8. He's like Robert Young in "Father Knows Best," or Fred MacMurray in "My Three Sons": You'd quake at telling him about the fender-bender, but after the lecture on safety and personal responsibility, he'd buck you up and throw you the keys.
Almost but not quite, for Noonan did not racialize the type. In her telling, it is Romney's confident, responsible masculinity that is reassuring. In Siegel's, it is the color of Romney's skin.
...
Siegel isn't the first to define the "opportunity society" as being for whites only. Last June, as we noted, MSNBC's Chris Matthews accused Romney of having employed a "slur" for observing of Obama that in his approach to economic policy, "he's awfully European." Matthews apparently is unaware that Europe's biggest export to America has been white people.

Slam!
He goes on:

Romney and his fellow Republicans are making a case (at least relative to President Obama) for economic freedom and against the expansion of government. To be sure, one may prefer Obama's policies on reasoned grounds that have nothing to do with race. It is also true that for most of America's history, and as recently as the 1960s, blacks were denied the freedoms, economic and otherwise, that whites took for granted.

But no Republican running for president is proposing a return to Jim Crow or a repeal of civil rights laws. Siegel's implicit notion that only whites are capable of benefiting from economic freedom under a regime of legal equality amounts to an insidious theory of racial supremacy.

That is the idea that Newt Gingrich repudiated in answer to Juan Williams's (not particularly objectionable) question. That is what brought the crowd to their feet.

WaPo's Ed Rogers Weighs in this Morning.

2012-01-19T11:13:00.011-06:00

Romney will release his tax returns. Then what?

By Ed Rogers
Mitt Romney is going to release his tax returns. No doubt he made a lot of money and has followed the rules when paying his taxes. Will Republicans gasp and have a negative reaction to his wealth and the amount of taxes he paid? Aren’t we for more Romneys in America? That is, people who have made money and who are allowed to keep it and invest their savings in ways in which their money isn’t taxed twice at the full rate?

Is there now some amount to have paid in taxes that sounds right and feels right politically, based on a candidate’s income, and if you fall below that number, you have a political problem? Do we think that a wealthy candidate who is following the rules but paying below the “feels right” amount in taxes, is somehow a less desirable candidate for president?

Should GOP candidates now boast, “I paid a higher income tax rate than you did,” as if that distinguishes them in a positive light?
...
It will be revealing to see how we Republicans handle it when we are suddenly confronted with not just the abstract concept of wealth and low taxes, but with its personification in the front-runner for our party’s presidential nomination. We are for success, wealth and low taxes in theory, but when these are personalized in a GOP candidate, do we think it’s bad politics? Is it disqualifying? Much more to come.

He forgot the ... at the end. ;-)

ADDED: I think Romney's defense lies in the numbers he paid in taxes, not the percentages. How much, exactly, is "enough"? It's awful hard to imply somebody is "cheap" when they are contributing 15% of a huge number to begin with...

(and it's even harder to make the point that he's hypocritical, because he's not pushing for more and more tax dollars to be confiscated from middle-class paychecks either to continue to feed Washington's growing government bureaucracy, where clearly they don't know the value of a buck.)

Then, tie that in with the "NOBODY wants to pay a dime more than they have to for a growing menu of social programs they disagree with, sometimes morally and definitely for poor efficiency/rate of return on the dollar investment."

This way,
the problem isn't that richer people pay less, or don't pay enough; the problem is this continually growing vacuum suck out of everyone's pockets, to Washington for redistribution in ways that provide perverse incentives and don't live up to the promises they make.

Not enough "bang for the buck" so to speak...
Not that there's simply not enough bucks floating around in the system for government to access, as the liberal elite Dems might try to convince you.

Some Gave All. Some Grabbed All.

2012-01-19T08:17:00.007-06:00

An attitude adjustment must come first, if we're to truly make change in this country. If we seek to reduce reliance on entitlement programs, open up as many choices and provide as much independence to the individual as possible, we've got to start changing mindsets.

and please, for the overly sensitive out there?
I do not think that the biggest entitlement attitude adjustments need to come from our underclass, or our current minority ethnic/racial populations.

It's the bigger players, who take out more and more, who use the "safety net" as a cushion really and think the answer is more skewing of the gameboard. It's not a game, the numbers need to add up one day, and the elite liberals who push this entitlement mentality prosper, simply can't lose by being protected by other taxpayers, big and small, from the consequences of their risk-taking.

Let's not be fooled by pretending this is about poor children, racial hatred, or otherwise pitting this group against that. We've had enough of that falseness, and need to properly frame the issues. Then, get onto the serious job of reforming our social progams via policies that step back and provide as much opportunity as possible, with the newfound understanding of the natural importance of cause and effect, actions and consequences, and paying one's own way/carrying your own weight in the world.

That's my hope, still. Backed by daily work, prayer, and small steps (so you don't slip and fall) toward well-envisioned goals.
You go, Mar.

Ruth Marcus gets smarmy.

2012-01-19T07:43:00.003-06:00

Seems she thinks she's got a winner in the "Release the Returns!" drive. (romneys-campaign-botches-his-tax-returns)

Funny but I don't think all Americans are as convinced as she that this issue is the biggest one facing the country and worthy of all the ... Drama! And learning that a Republican candidate practices what he preaches in seeking to lower tax rates. That's a killer. Not.

It's been interesting to watch Romney's Republican opponents doing the Obama campaign's dirty work in roughing up Romney over his record at Bain Capital. That damage was not completely foreseeable — Bain was an obvious general election target but not necessarily an issue for the GOP primary — nor was it self-inflicted. The same cannot be said about Romney's income taxes. Somewhere in the White House, David Plouffe is smiling.

Yeah, it's really helping said Republican opponents too eh? I can hear it now: "I paid in the 30% bracket -- vote for me!" "Yeah well, they dinged me for 50% of my income -- surely I'm the better man for the job!"

Heh.

(I think libs like Marcus confuse voluntary charitable contributions to the poor, through self-chosen smaller effective programs, with mandatory taxing of the State, for programs that provide perverse incentive, "reward" in ultimately harmful ways, and oftentimes, simply don't work. Voters want more Choice, not less.)

C'mon Shelley...

2012-01-19T07:25:00.001-06:00

You worked too hard yourself to settle for this.
As a fellow Chicago girl myself (Thornwood 1986), I'd advise you don't exchange ... a walk-on part in the war for a leading role in a cage.

Anger can be a decent motivating force afterall, especially if there's a reason for that anger, don't let them tell you otherwise. Just make sure you've got the proper targets to "change" or blame. Hint: I don't think it's Mitt Romney's team or supporters.

Test question.

2012-01-19T07:07:00.004-06:00

If the Supreme Court gives thumbs down on the legality of the individual mandate, which pushes non-consumers into the hands of privately profitting health insurance companies, do you see that as a victory for the Obama administration, or a big embarrassing slap in the face to his legal skills?

Can you imagine how his numbers would drop if all he's worked for and accomplished, some say sacrificing the economy in order to get this big new federal entitlement program through, is undone in the bright light of day? (None of these Christmas Eve eve sneak plays needed)

Oh Gelman!

2012-01-19T06:28:00.002-06:00

Cherrypicking the past (I remember a Mass. liberal named Dukakis! *)... but missing out on today. (Where exactly are voters going to go? Obama??)

When November arrives, the election is likely to be close, and will depend on economic conditions, just as the experts have said all along.

If my scenario comes to pass, I expect we’ll be hearing a lot in the spring and summer about Romney’s political savvy, and then when the inevitable narrowing of the polls comes in the fall, we’ll hear all about the ineptitude of his campaign. Really, though, it will just be voters working out where he stands on the issues.

Something similar happened in 1988. Out-party candidate Michael Dukakis...

------------------------------
* I don't think the likes of liberal Susan Estrich is advising Mitt Romney's campaign, so you can start with one serious distinction there...

ADDED: Does it ever seem to others that there is an abundance of Jewish political pundits making political predictions? Wouldn't that skew the analysis, the numbers you think you're seeing where you're at, but don't take into account perhaps how other minds think and what they value across the country too?

Which is one way of saying, I think the "non-Christian Momon" fear meme is way overplayed in Jewish eyes. They (the black, jewish and other minority political analysts) perhaps see things that aren't there to the rest of us. It only gets offensive when they insist their view or longterm eyesight is the better. The "correct" one.

Why I Dislike Ann Althouse .

2012-01-19T06:06:00.005-06:00

From yesterday's blog:

Ann Althouse said...
I worked in a big law firm for 2 years. The first year I was pregnant and took a 3-month maternity leave. Paid! The second year I searched for a lawprof job, traveled to interviews, and accepted an offer, then continued to work until my new job started.

It was very rewarding.

Remember, she majored in Art at Michigan in the 70s, and popped into the corporate workplace during the women's lib heydays, right when the big push was on to add some female names to the roster, to "equalize" things out...

But it's not her own personal choices I'm criticizing. It's the "me, me, me" celebrating -- boy, I got it good, didn't I? Suck-ahs!

It's what she does with those poorly practiced logic skills, the conclusion her story tells us:

Does that make you think it's harder or easier to make partner if you enter a big law firm and you are female?
Most people who end up in Biglaw have no desire to make partner. They want to do it for a few years, pay off their debts, and build up some credentials so they can do what they really want to do. But some people show up at the firm so hungry for the brass ring that they can taste it. You know what they say: “Making partner is like winning a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.” Yet there isn’t a lot of analysis and study about what one actually has to do to win this career race.
See the point of my question?

Here's what she was fishing for as an answer:

" A smart, talented female attorney who is prepared to bust her *ss and jump through the same hoops as the men has a significantly better chance of making partner than a male of equal caliber..."

That was my guess (and the reason I asked the question I did in the post).

Soooo... because she worked 3/4 of the time that first year, drawing full salary, and used her second working year to interview for a softer on-campus job, taking time off -- presumably with pay -- to interview elsewhere, thus: women who make partner today have it easier than equally qualified, similarly situated men.

Makes your head spin!

First, I have a sister, who works as an engineer at GE. Wash U education, worked 100% since graduating and has earned her way up. I can tell you: women work hard today to get what they've earned. They're not coddled or treated different in job expectations anymore. It's not the early 80s, women-unique-to-the-workplace situation now. Women compete, hard, and most can't afford to play the "me mommy: mercy?" special cards, if they want to succeed.

What Althouse is doing here, is casting doubt on the worth of all career women -- in law, doctors, engineers and other fields. Suggesting they got "helped up" because way back when, for two years in the late 70s/early 80s, she took full advantage of her special woman status.

Times have changed. With more and more women honestly competing, I believe her actions way back when would not be so tolerated now: flaunting her lack of committment to work, to advance ... herself.

Which, again, is wonderful. Sounds like she ended up with no law career (choosing to go the "safer" on-a-liberal-campus-in-Madison route, and the family failed too -- her two boys were raised with no father in the home, if I've got the longstory accurate.) But if she is happy for those early "choices", bully for her.

I dislike her for turning around now and casting doubt on the qualifications of all those women who indeed do take the work seriously, and commit to the job.

Sure, some today are still built like that -- "What can you the employer do for ME -- the career lady with young children at home who wants to have it all?" But less and less and less....

Reminds me of Justice Clarence Thomas, who learned because of affirmative action, his degree was worth much less than equally qualified white men, because it was assumed he took advantage and was "helped". No wonder he wants to do away with it, and let black men and women, and other "minorities" today compete equally and prove themselves equal in the workplace.

I often wonder where Althouse would be today in so many of her viewpoints, if she'd gone on to have a daughter instead of two (half) Jewish boys. Or even a surviving niece. Would she still be an "alpha female", taking for herself and her boys, without playing fair?

Or would she be more a team player, with a long game, understanding you don't screw the pooch and then complain how nobody's taking career women seriously, because they just up and make their babies then want you to pay them whilst they travel about, "exploring their options", and seeking accommodations for their children, who surely need their time with mama at home.

Again, that's fine for you (though notedly your career with the firm* and family might be pulled apart and you end up with neither.) But let's not pretend the reaason Johnny can't make partner today is because a lesser-qualified Jane had some leg up the career ladder on him, because she was a woman "competing" instead of a hard-working committed male.

------------

* Interestingly enough, while she worked at Sullivan et al. law firm, she induced her boy John .... on St. Patrick's Day. Ah. I bet the paternalistic fellas at the firm during that time LOVED to have a "redheaded" little lady on staff -- even a short timer -- who was fertily bearing babies on St. Paddy's Day, and naming em "John" to boot. "Can't we give that girl a little gift, she's such a friendly one there! Everyone in the office likes having her around, afterall. That Jewish fella staying home, raising the babies while he writes ... I don't think she gets much support there. Wonder if that combo will work out myself. Let's be especially good to the girl, eh? Like a going-away bonus maybe even..."
It was very rewarding. (Except, the rewards were perhaps unearned. It happens when you tilt the board, preferencing this "group" over that. Later perhaps, those favored feel guilty for advancing, specially, at the expense of others. Guilt gets to em, and then they end up backing "special" programs: affirmative action for men, to equalize out the extra help the women go. Special programs for minorities, since they were cheated when some grabbed all, unearned and unequally, and put them at a systemic disadvantage....)

Wouldn't it all be easier if we truly stopped discriminating, and played fairly. The winners* win, with no extra special rewards. (why she's a fine-looking one, that lassie!) Unless, of course, you think the men at her firm at the pre-FMLA time were rewarded equally for their special procreation skills...)

*Those willing to take the job seriously, who honestly put in the time and committment within the team where their work is valued more than their social grouping, or superficial characteristics.

"Does a String of Beads Come With That?"

2012-01-18T14:57:00.001-06:00

Ah, Bawdy Humor in the Headlines:

Election 2012
Show Me Your Taxes!
Brooks and Collins wonder what’s too much...

I like!

2012-01-18T11:20:00.000-06:00

Happy Wednesday, you.

"There You Go Again..."

2012-01-17T22:56:00.002-06:00

The NYT, like a stubborn child, simply refuses to let go of their black racial analysis, and instead doubles down on the theme: If you're against entitlement programs, you're against the blacks.

No, no, a thousand times no.

If you look at the actual language used, (and not this double-secret-probation "codespeak" that apparently only elite New York liberals can pick up on), Newt Gingrich steered Juan Williams' questions away from talking solely about black people. (Btw: Why in this 21st century do we divide up by race, and ask questions about this particular racial group or that, when in reality, where exactly do biracials fit in? Black immigrants? Can we please get over this noxious "special" designation?)

Using his own daughter as an example, he explained how children of all races could learn to use work as a means to make their own money. To start off small, at a "menial" job (and surely all those elite libs who employ ... household help to clean their own toilets look upon janitorial work as lowly and menial), and work their way up: to essentially "own" that job, while developing a work ethic that works to enrich the poor population.

Is it wrong to teach that today?
To blacks, as well as whites, and every color in between?

You see, that's the key distinction Republicans like Mitt Romney are making this year: these almost 50+ years of Democrat-sponsored entitlement programs? They are not working, instead trapping people in a cycle of poverty, where government handouts, rather than competitive performances in schools, in the workplaces, in life are the "reward", the best hope promised by non-delivering Democratic politicians.

G-d bless the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's departed soul. He, and his brothers, surely meant well. But how'd it work out in reality? Meritorious rise via equal opportunities of poor people of all races? Or a slow slide into the world as we know it now -- with rich elite libs on top, surrounding themselves with paid help to care for their elderly, pick their crops, and do society's dirty work ... while the middle class gets squeezed in being asked to pick up the tab for these generous social programs for who libs deem society's biggest losers.

Thankfully, welfare was reformed, built on a Wisconsin initiative. The incentives to break up homes, stay on the dole, and breed (again, for whites as well as blacks and others) was taken away. We've got to do this, again and again, with the unaffordable entitlement programs that take away options and breed dependence.

America as a whole gets it. You've got to have somebody call to bring down costs of these behemoth and growing social programs. Not simply promise to rope more suckers into the mix (see the health insurance mandate) or take more from those with the most to keep on with the current status quo.

A social safety net is just that: a rarity that should be pulled out in case of emergency to help the truly "needy" in our society. Not something to build a long-term lifestyle around.

Unemployment insurance simply has to end at some point. The SNAP (food stamp) numbers should be there for emergency needs only, for a short period of time while the person gets back on their feet. The role of the President is to lead the economy -- not to parent us personally -- so that people indeed do have opportunities open to them.

President Obama, blessed coming into this with a Democratic Congress, didn't heed those needs. He gave us instead MORE entitlement promises. "Kids" over 26 from wealthy families that can afford to continue coddling them, who are blessed to be covered by a private insurance plan themselves, got promised care under their parents' plan. Who pays for that exactly? The young healthy under 26-year-old who is struggling himself to make ends meet, who now has to incur an expense which he likely will see no benefit. (Healthy young people simply do not incur the same medical expenses as the ill with pre-existing conditions, middle age Boomers confronting their own morality, or the elderly, often more wealthy themselves than those starting out. Do you think -- be honest here, please -- that this helps the poor, struggling upward Horatio Alger's still believing out here? Honestly?)

Again and again,
we see the entitlement programs "reward" the wrong types. If you can't afford a baby, please don't conceive and bear her on the public dime. Practice preventative maintenance (contraception) or if it will be a struggle from the get-go to bear, clothe, shelter and feed this new little life, admit it and give her up at birth to some loving family that clearly can. Plus, please don't breed again until you are in a better financial situation.

Do you see that as racist advice? Why exactly? Don't plenty of white mothers rely on these programs for their white or bi-racial children too? Is that ok? Even when the money is running out, and we're calling for those making money to subsidize more and more the growth of the underclass?

I don't think it's racist to address, honestly, these issues.
I think it's simply common sense. Seeing what's coming demographically (Hel-lo Boomers!) and understanding that unless we reform our definition of "safety net" now, more and more people will fall on their head in the future. Including the truly needy.

But if we can change expectations and lifestyle choices, if we can build back the economy bit by bit (as Mitt Romney did with the SLC Olympic Games, and plenty of underperforming companies), then maybe the underclass can learn something from the successful non-libs, black white and Hispanic, in how they got what they did. Hint: it really ain't all about being born with a rich daddy, no matter how much the media would like to sell that meme.

Most of us understand, like it or not, America is still the best, greatest hope for so many seeking out a land of opportunity. Not of entitlements, not of handouts, not of long-term paternalist programs that promise to provide good health, healthy food, medical care, good educations, clean air and water, etc. etc. etc. all for free, without anybody working for it themselves.

Nope nope, a thousand times no.
America is rejecting that language, just as we rejected the bloated liberal programs and polices that discounted merit and artificially got us here. If you can compete, and you can do better than the next guy in the seat next to you, you win. Just like in sports, there's no "fixing the game" to help the preferred you pity.

Sure, keep the safety nets, but keep them in reserve. For the people that really need them. All us others, it's ok to draw short term, but eventually, you've got to be flexible, cut back and adapt, as necessary. Elite liberals don't really know much about this. They've never had to practice thriftiness, it seems.

If you really care about America's poor though, you'll stop carving us up into this racial group or that, and start concentrating on the roots of the problem: too many high-end elites still feeding at the public trough, who expect others to pay their bills. Did Mitt Romney and his family do that, like the Kennedy bloated legacy? I don't think so... whether this election is about substance, or just hangin' on to the status quo, remains to be seen.

Maureen Dowd...

2012-01-17T21:09:00.003-06:00

compares Mitt Romney to George H.W. Bush.
Though she pokes fun, she never gets all nasty and thankfully never disses the fellas for "acting white".

She simply can't understand, being a nice Irish Catholic woman from a working-class background herself, the ... oddities under which these gents operate. It's like, they're from a different world than the rest of us, or something.

Eh.

I read the whole thing. Chuckled once or twice. And again, admired her tone. She can make a point, without bullying readers into buying into her own prejudices and preferences. Nice like that.*

But one question in my mind remains: Really? You think in her younger days MoDo dropped acid? Or was that just a phrase?

Watching Mitt Romney in the Myrtle Beach debate gave me acid flashbacks to Poppy Bush.

---------------
* Plus no lazy lazy lazy doggie-do reference. We're not electing a pet caregiver here, elite ladies! Think beyond your own little worldly needs about the major economic troubles still confronting the country? Next thing you know, they'll be calling for petcare entitlements/deductions for all...

A few years ago, Rosie, who helped me raise my children and now helps me raise my dogs, found a hungry and bedraggled dog at the local dog park. He was wearing a tag, so she called the number. It turned out the family had been away during the Malibu fire, and when they finally got home, the dog was gone. He walked all the way to our neighborhood. It is one of my favorite stories.

Good Lord ... those Californians are importing help now to care for their ... doggies?

How lazy can you be? Props to the Romney family, for keeping the dog with them on their travels, and not pushing off their own responsibilities on the ... hired help.

"Journolist" Annie Lowrey of the NYT...

2012-01-17T19:18:00.005-06:00

is taken to task by "expert" Dan Drezner, for missing the gist of what he was explaining to her in a phone conversation about President Obama's proposed reorganization of foreign economic policy agencies.

Now, based on that quote,
“If you look at American exports, it’s dominated by big business,” said Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University. “If you want small and medium enterprises to get more involved in exporting” — a goal of the Obama administration — “having small business and the trade office in the same agency makes sense,” he said. “So this could be a boon for that.”
you might think that I'm pretty enthusiastic about this initiative. If, however, you checked my initial tweets about this proposal, you would notice a lot more agreement with what Stephen Teles said in the paragraphs above me.
“My gut tells me those benefits will end up being much smaller than advertised, and the costs much larger,” said Steven M. Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, pointing to the time wasted during the consolidation and the changed political dynamic between the agencies and Congress.
My instant assessment was that this was one of those "reorganizing government" initiatives that makes a lot of sense in the abstract but probably leads to more transition costs than long-term benefits. Indeed, the first thing that came to mind could be summed up in four words: Department of Homeland Security.

So what gives? This is what happens when I talk to reporters. I had a long chat with Annie Lowrey during which I listed A) the various ways in which Congress won't go for this; and B) why merging different organizational cultures will likely be a big mess. Lowrey then asked me if there was any rationale for this kind of reorganization. At which point I said what was quoted in the paper of record.

Now if you know my views about the National Export Initiative, you'll see I don't hold out much hope of this accomplishing anything. Still, to repeat, Lowrey's quote of me is completely accurate, and it is a decent motivation for this kind of initiative.

This is one of those mismatches between reporters and experts. It's not really the reporter's job to convey the full gist of a conversation with an expert. This story isn't "What Dan Drezner The Expert Thinks About Something," after all. Still, this is often the natural expectation of many experts, because we think about the entire conversation, not just one part of it.
...
This is a long-winded way of saying that what I said in the Times was the truth but not the whole truth. And that the odds are good that I'm probably going find myself in this situation again. And that's OK -- one of the perks of having this blog is that when this sort of thing happens, I can ramble my way to a more fuller explanation of my views.

Readers, real readers, be warned.

Drama !

2012-01-17T16:37:00.008-06:00

Apologies to Erasure,
but that was my first thought upon reading this:

Megyn Kelly has declared that I am "not a real journalist." She has also just said that I have written that Trig is not Sarah Palin's child. As longtime readers well know, I took great pains never to state that and merely to ask Palin, given her insane story about the birth of her child, to provide some evidence for it, which she said she would but never did. The Beast has asked for a correction. Real journalists do not tell untruths on air without correcting them.

Lol. Real journalists don't work for ... The Beast.
But nevermind, he's on a roll/role...

What I want to know is why they cannot invite the author of an essay to debate it, rather than two random individuals (including Rich "Starbursts" Lowry) to discuss. Surely that's only fair - unless, of course, I am on a blacklist.

It's all about ... me. Surely they're discriminating against me, probably because I'm a gay man with HIV. Eh?

So this is an open challenge to Fox News. If you want to trash my work, have me on to defend it. Any time, Megyn. Any time. What are you afraid of?

Apart from the truth, that is.

Say what you will about Andrew Sullivan, he's always prepared to promote himself. A bit like President Obama in that regard, you might say...

Mama Said ... Knock You Out!

2012-01-17T14:46:00.002-06:00

Oh goodness:

Charles M. Blow
FoxNews: Newt on Obama: "I Don't Want to Bloody His Nose. I Want to Knock Him Out"

Keep it classy Newton Leroy

Take about name calling! (Personally, I like the Leroy in there. Like "Lester" myself too...)

But that qualifies as non-classy? C'mon. He might have said, "I Want to Quash Him Like a Grape", but clearly, that's vanilla kinda talk.

I think he was going all LL Cool Jay myself. Circa 1990, but still...
Pretty Fly (for a white guy). I think Newton Leroy might just be trying his darndest to get hip with the times. You wanna criticize a man for stepping outside of his cultural norms, and trying to compete like that?

Oh Andy...

2012-01-17T13:12:00.008-06:00

Haven't we been through this before?

I actually believe that getting rid of free-riders in an already-socialized system is a good, conservative idea, as once did Gingrich and Romney. So sue me.

The lawsuits are ongoing already.
If you can't afford your expensive (some would say, self-incurred) medical needs without ~~bringing~~ forcing healthy, younger others into the pool to pay your bills (you surely don't think what you pay in premiums is covering the cost of the care you're taking out of the American system, do you?), don't cry to me.

Free-riders, by definition, take more than they give.
If young healthy people don't incur outstanding medical bills that they can't pay for and push onto the state, they're not the free-riders.

Look in the mirror Andrew, if you dare.
There's the problem with the way the "private" healthcare insurance system in America is set up. And I don't see you running back to the old country, where you'd be guaranteed HIV treatment in their healthcare system.

Don't pretend that young people free ride, just because the costs of our most medically vulnerable aren't incurred by people with wealth like yours. You want ... to have your cake and eat it too. To participate in a medically risky lifestyle, and then when you ... "lose", to keep your wealth and push your financial medical costs onto innocent bystanders. With no outstanding medical bills of our own.

That's the definition of a free-rider. Just like somebody who smokes, gets popped for it, and then pays ... his lawyers to get him some special treatment under the law, shouldn't be preaching to the rest of us about the way the American legal system works, or not.*

Why not curtail some of your lifestyle needs (2 homes, right? sell one?) and instead take the bulk of your earned wealth to pay for the bulk of your earned medical care. You know ... yourself. Without ~~asking~~ forcing American young people to bail you out on the health front.

That would make you both fiscally conservative (taking care of your own needs first) and a bit more independent. C'mon ... let the young, still healthy ones teach you how it's done. How to minimize your health risks, so you don't incur needless treatment bills. All in the prioritizing, and lifestyle values, friend.

---------------
*

Andrew M. Sullivan, the British author, editor, and political commentator, is one of the best-known figures in the new-media elite, and his blog, The Daily Dish, is among the most popular on the Web. But a federal judge says Sullivan did not deserve preferential treatment from prosecutors who dropped a marijuana possession charge after the journalist was recently caught smoking a joint on a federally owned beach on Cape Cod.

In a strongly worded memorandum issued Thursday, US Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings said the decision by Acting US Attorney Michael K. Loucks to dismiss a federal misdemeanor possession charge against Sullivan flouted a “cardinal principle of our legal system’’ - that all persons stand equal before the law.

Three other defendants charged with the same offense had to appear before Collings the same day as Sullivan, the judge noted. But Sullivan’s case was the only one prosecutors did not pursue, out of concern that the $125 fine carried by the relatively minor offense could derail his US immigration application.

“It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances,’’ Collings wrote in the 11-page memorandum, adding that prosecutors’ rationale for the dismissal was inadequate.

Collings added with obvious irritation that he had no power to order prosecutors to pursue the case, and granted their motion to dismiss it. The fact that he did, however, “does not require the Court to believe that the end result is a just one,’’ he wrote.

Language I Like.

2012-01-17T12:36:00.005-06:00

Schettino has insisted that he stayed aboard until the ship was evacuated. However, a recording of his conversation with Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco that emerged Tuesday indicates he fled before all passengers were off — and then resisted De Falco's repeated orders to return.

"You go on board and then you will tell me how many people there are. Is that clear?" De Falco shouted in the audio tape.

Schettino resisted, saying the ship was tipping and that it was dark. At the time, he was in a lifeboat and said he was coordinating the rescue from there.

De Falco shouted back: "And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!"

"You go aboard. It is an order. Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'Abandon ship,' now I am in charge," De Falco shouted.

Sometimes, you need to kick a little ass to get the work done.

Sometimes, "leading from behind" is a bit like leading from a lifeboat.

Don't you wish, instead of making excuses, that the American people demanded better from their presidential leader, and the Congress he is supposed to work with to lead? Let's not pretend he didn't know the dire situation when he agreed to take the job either.

Maybe a little less partying for pay, and a little more leading for real, would show results. Heavens knows, taking rich money from the elite, and making campaign promises to them in exchange for them financing your home property (in Chicago) and your campaign, can make your actual on-the-job performance suffer.

And sadly, not everybody is blinded by the "but he's the first black president, go easy on him" meme that the media is uniting to PUSH.

"Don't make any more excuses. You have declared 'Abandon ship,' now I am in charge"
...
The 52-year-old Schettino, described by the Italian media as a genial, tanned ship's officer, has worked for 11 years for the ship's owner and was made captain in 2006.

Schettino hails from Meta di Sorrento, in the Naples area, which produces many of Italy's ferry and cruise boat captains. He attended the Nino Bixio merchant marine school near Sorrento.

A judge is to decide Tuesday if Schettino should stay jailed, as requested by prosecutors. He could face up to 12 years in prison on the abandoning ship charge alone.

Earlier Tuesday, Italian naval divers exploded holes in the hull of the grounded cruise ship, trying to speed up the search for the missing while seas were still calm. Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TV 24 the holes would help divers enter the wreck more easily.

"We are rushing against time," he said.

Release those Returns!

2012-01-17T12:14:00.002-06:00

Paul Krugman / Robin Wells:
I'm looking at you two kids!

Oh, and don’t give me the argument that private equity is special because it’s a risky business, in which you put in a lot of effort for an uncertain return. So is any kind of small business venture; and so, as it happens, is textbook writing. Yet small businessmen and textbook authors pay normal tax rates.

Don't we readers deserve to know the personal finances, and tax rates, of he who would assume such an important fiscal position? (the Nobel Prize winner, not the yogini, but they're a package deal, taxwise, no?)

If we call for Mitt to tell all,
why not do the same for the pundits, the economic advisers, and all those who would play poor, and pretend they're in this for the working class.

Something tells me, Mr. Krugman won't release. Why? Because he's an elite who took home Enron money, over a million in "prize winnings", and gets more than $20K for an hours work ... predicting and pontificating.

Eh. To each his own, as they say.
But if he won't leave other men rest, and demands to know personal details, let Paulie and the second wife go first? You show us yours, and then demand the Romneys show you theirs. Deal?

*I'd also be curious to know what kind of money Paul's parents collect in Social Security -- you know, that "safety net" program for the struggling elderly, who don't have wealthy family to fall back on.

Remember: the more you and yours take out today, the less that will be there tomorrow, when the truly needy arrive with their hands out, only to find that it was already pre-redistributed to the parents of the wealthy liberal elite, who surely could afford by now to support their own...

Getting Over.

2012-01-17T09:27:00.002-06:00

It's not unique to the American black experience.
Plenty of other races, ethnicities have horror stories in their past too.

It's a shame our liberal culture encourages our young black people to wallow in their ancestors' mistreatment, concentrating on Black Studies and roleplaying sadistic ways of beating "slaves" in their private black fraternities, who have no choice still but to ... "take it".

Every now and then though,
you get a sense that they can peer out of their self-imposed shackles some, and see a better world a-waitin'. Turn off the rants, and look and see things for what they really are, not what your culture has conditioned you too see.

Welcome, to the human race.

Charles M. Blow
Sorry I'm ranting this morning ppl ...

It's ok, man.
Go, find yourself a hug somewhere out there...
And stop all that "thinking like a black man" nonsense.

Privacy in the Bedroom, in the Boardroom.

2012-01-17T07:34:00.000-06:00

I kinda hope Mitt Romney has it in him to buck tradition and be a rebel: Keep his tax returns private.

Just because others have done it -- allowed the privacy veil to be pierced, doesn't mean anyone owes it to us, as part of the job application.

Suffice it to say:
He's a Rich Man.
With more money than you.

Nobody has (yet) suggested he got it in any illegal way, and we all know about his father and the son's privileged upbringing. There's no allegations in the background stories about anything unsavory, other than committing hard, early to succeeding in business and providing for his growing family.

Nobody owes the release, unless there are lingering questions. Just like, I thought it was small of President Obama, after so much time lapsed, to partially respond to those who questioned his qualifications.

Sorry, can't have 'em. Try this:

My financial documents will remain private, not because there's something there to hide, but because the issue at this time is not, and has never been, my own personal financial background. Let's concentrate on the numbers that matter: opening and exploring the nation's fiscal books. I'm eager to get started, and I'm confident that I can make a difference, and I'm not just running for this office because of my daddy or because I need to take care of my wife and child. I want to help America, because like so many others out there, I know already: It's not about me. It's bigger than that. It's about this country we love so much that people will ridicule us for almost being cornball about it. Those are the numbers we need to look at now, in the harsh open sunlight, in black and white. I'm sorry if this disappoints those of you who want to make a story about my personal financial choices and decisionmaking. But again, I'm not here asking for a handout or a loan, so I don't think my own numbers are relevant. I'm comfortable, but I'm not overly spendy. I think people can appreciate that in a leader. And if anyone has any doubts about the high premium I place on privacy, rest easy. I'm not blindly following tradition here, and on principle, I'm keeping my records private.

Wrong Charles. or, Beat It! ...

2012-01-17T06:28:00.007-06:00

When I see the Jewish and black pundits misinterpreting the white men, I must speak up a bit louder...

Do you see any distinction made here between black people using food stamps (SNaP cards) and white people relying on them, from the government, to feed themselves?

[W]e actually think work is good (applause). We actually think saying to somebody “I’ll help you if you’re willing to help yourself” is good (applause). And we think unconditionally efforts by the best food stamp president in American history to maximize dependency is terrible for the future of this country (applause).

It's the concept, the absence of independence, that is saddening. Not "picking" on black victims, or poor whites either. Just holding out the hope, that we can offer them something better here.

Ditto this:

Gingrich went on to say that he was going to continue to “find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job.” (Roaring applause. As if poor people don’t work. As I’ve pointed out before, most of them do.)

Friend, haven't you seen the numbers? Young men are having trouble finding jobs these days, white young men, black young men... especially, poor and ill-educated young men. Even if they have jobs, likely they could use a more challenging, better paying, more skilled one, particularly if they one day aspire to feed a famiy, say.

Let's not be so gushy in trying to defend the president from perceived racial animosity that we become ebony Pollyanna's, pretending "po folk doing fine. Nothing wrong here, move along..."

If you don't like Gingrich's prescriptions (and heaven's knows, I'm defending his speech more than his candidacy here), so be it. But don't make a racial discrimination case -- or see a return to independent, self-sustaining values -- as a wish to turn back the clock to the time Whitey was artificially on top, and there was so much less of this grey component in America's racial classifications.

Lick your wounds, then think about it at least?

ADDED:
Also, is addressing someone by their first name in our oh-so-casual informal times, seen as a sign of disrespect in some cultures these days? My goodness we can be sensitive when we're hurting...

You saw some of this during your visit to a black church in South Carolina where a woman askePresident Obama as “the food stamp president.” It sounds as if you’re seeking to belittle people.

(More boos from the crowd.)

Gingrich: Well, first of all, Juan —

(Crowd giggles. Talk about belittling people. “Juan.”)

The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history (applause). Now, I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable (more applause and laughter).

LOL @ these rose-colored glasses...
Poor Charlie Brown. He thinks we all see things at street level, through his eyes. Whoop -- no.

Charles M. Blow
Anyone who can't see through Newt's tainted language needs a dog and and cane... He may try to fix it up with fancy phrasing, but the framework is the same...

Ppl try to tell you that you're not seeing what you're seeing. "Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?" My eyes...every time.*

As for me and mine?
Mine eyes have seen the Glory,
of the Coming of the Lord...
and He is trampling through the Vintage
where the Grapes of Wrath are stored...

Can I get an Amen at least?

* Well-rested eyes perceive conditions differently. Don't drive, just analyze. Safer for us all that way...

What's Wrong with Whiteness ?

2012-01-15T11:46:00.007-06:00

No really. Mr. Lee Siegel's piece here says so much more about his fears -- does he think America's greatness of the past, combined with her ill treatment of racial minorities, is a package deal? -- than of the real America so many of us still live in.

Contrast that with Mr. Romney’s meticulously cultivated whiteness. He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is implacably polite, tossing off phrases like “oh gosh” with Stepford bonhomie. He has mastered Benjamin Franklin’s honesty as the “best policy”: a practiced insincerity, an instant sunniness that, though evidently inauthentic, provides a bland bass note that keeps everyone calm. This is the bygone world of Babbitt, of small-town Rotarians.

Mr. Romney does not merely use the past as an inspirational reference point, as the other candidates often do. He conjures it as a total social, cultural and political experience that must be resurrected and reinhabited. He speaks of the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as phases of national creativity that we are destined to live through again. He frequently accompanies his recitative with verses from “America the Beautiful.”

And while Mr. Romney may, in some people’s eyes, be a non-Christian, he is better than any of his opponents at synching his worldview with that of the evangelicals. He likes to present, with theological urgency, a stark choice between, in his words, President Obama’s “entitlement society” and the true American freedom of an “opportunity society.”

Why does he fear small towns, back to the basics, and an honest assessment of political times?

Despite a general revulsion against George W. Bush and his policies, despite John McCain’s lack of ideas and his remoteness from contemporary American problems, the Republican ticket was ahead of Mr. Obama by several points in September 2008. Then came the fall: Lehman Brothers, the stock-market plunge and skyrocketing unemployment (not to mention Sarah Palin).

By the iron law of elections, the country threw the bums out and rejected anyone even remotely tied to them. The result? America’s first black president.

Would he feel better if one of the Romney clan had adopted a dark-skinned baby, as the McCain's and Huntsman's have done? What's wrong with being white?

If Mitt Romney, like Tim Tebow, is authentic in his personal beliefs, what's wrong -- by gawrsh, Mickey -- with that, exactly? Not your culture? Cool, but if it's his ... so what? Vanilla is a flavor too, and plenty of Americans still enjoy it, they tell me.

Don't forget: Mitt had his eyes set on the prize of the presidency long before he learned his opponent's skin color.

Mitt Romney knows this. He knows that he offers to these people the white solution to the problem of a black president. I am sure that Mr. Romney is not a racist. But I am also sure that, for the many Americans who find the thought of a black president unbearable, he is an ideal candidate. For these sudden outsiders, Mitt Romney is the conventional man with the outsider faith — an apocalyptic pragmatist — who will wrest the country back from the unconventional man with the intolerable outsider color.

Don't tell me he's "the great white hope" in any eyes other than those who can't stand to think a black man running for president might get honestly beaten by another of a different color. That's not backwards progress. There's nothing "regressive" about the idea that both black people and white people still too, qualify to compete to lead this great nation made up of many people. E pluribus unum. Divided, we fall.

There's always some, who will stand to profit, by stirring up racial fears and viewing every action through a racial prism. Today, Mr. Lee Siegel apparently wants to play that part.

Keep an eye cocked towards what's coming... first Rosenthal, now this.

Let's don't let him, this time around.

W.L. White and Robert Sherwood.

2012-01-15T07:16:00.004-06:00

One nice thing about cutting the cable, if you don't put out for the free tv box which doesn't get you much here without an antennae -- is no tv.

You can catch the scores online, learn the latest (Miss Wisconsin for the win!), but spend more time with hardcover books and dvd's/tapes.

This weekend, I'm spending time with the son -- W.L. White -- who apparently wasn't all that well liked in Emporia, but who was a top writer nonetheless. Never saw Ford/Wayne's They Were Expendable, but it's waiting atop the tv set. If it's anything like the book... They really could write then, no?

Then I've got a collection of three of Sherwood's plays in decent-sized print, hardcover, waiting too. So, rich lives, character studies, are accessible still. Even when you turn off the tv, stay in, and have just yourself to follow.

ADDED: Eating good, and romping the trails with Buddy twice or thrice a day too. Take care yourself.

What do Newt Gingrich and Gail Collins have in common?

2012-01-12T16:59:00.002-06:00

They're both pet lovers ... (aren't we all?)
with no sense of priority / relevance.

Hint: The dog lived people. If he had died, maybe, maybe, you'd have a decades old story there. But people? He died a natural death.

Get over it. We've got bigger things, more important issues to concentrate on out here... Hello?

One Twelve, Two Twelve...

2012-01-12T16:04:00.000-06:00

Red Twelve, Blue Twelve.

WWFS?

2012-01-12T10:45:00.000-06:00

What Would Feynman Say?

Alas, he was gone well before I began to read him...
Still, wouldn't you have loved to know his thoughts regarding Israel/America's new improved policy of allegedly killing off the scientists who were doing scientific work you disagreed with?

Numerical Storytelling.

2012-01-12T09:27:00.003-06:00

The Washington Post recently ran this story, minus the numbers.

A woman with two young children at home was asked to make a decision about reviving her husband, who had suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain. She chose to bring him back from the dead, so to speak. Later, missing companionship, she divorced and remarried a childhood friend. Interesting story, but they left out the numbers...

How much does this man qualify for in Social Security disability benefits? How much of his medical care does Medicaid pay for directly? How much, if anything, do his daughters receive monthly for being minor children of a disabled man? How much does/did Social Security pay monthly for his personal caregiver? What types of additional government services does he qualify for?

Then, I'd like to see the salary numbers of the woman, as well as her second husband.

We all agree -- the older generations, as well as the younger -- that we need to reform Social Security benefits. That it should be preserved as a social "safety net". So -- if this woman has wealth, why shouldn't she first be called on to finance her personal choices, and not draw millions off of the social safety net if she can pay out-of-pocket for much of his care?

I understand, the man has paid in. But how much? How long will the State be asked to collectively pay for his personal needs, when so many others are being asked to work until ... age 70? in order to keep this social safety net system afloat.

Maybe they could put Ezra Klein on it. He's a numbers guy, they tell me. And questions like mine, surely also in the minds of younger others, are not going away. If anything, as the Ron/Rand Paul libertarian generation awakes, we will want to know more and more where our confiscated tax dollars are going -- to whom -- and what kind of choices we as a society are permitted to make in the deciding.

This isn't FDR's elderly generation of poor, nor is his social safety net program for the poor elderly and disabled designed for these kinds of losses, second families, and medical/life prognosis. Let's reform. Now. Bring it up to 21st Century standards, and put some numbers to these poor human interest stories.

Yes We Can.

Wrong Paul. Simply Wrong.

2012-01-11T10:34:00.001-06:00

Romney isn't talking like a privileged man, or an elite uncompassionate man here. He's talking the language of a ... free man. An independent man, who knows he has choices and isn't cowed into not exercising them.

Krugman quotes another, approvingly:

But most of all, we don’t see the health insurance company as providing us a service. We see ourselves, rather, as indentured supplicants forced to pay exorbitant monthly rates for a basic need that responsible people with means can’t get out of paying for if we can help it. We don’t see ourselves as in control of the relationship with them. They are in control of us–and no more so than when we get sick and need the insurance most. If the company decides to restrict our coverage or tell us we have a pre-existing condition after all, we’re in the position of begging a capricious and heartless corporation to cover costs we assumed we were entitled to based on a contractual obligation. It’s precisely when we need insurance most that we’re least able to “fire” the insurance company.

The same goes for the rent/mortgage, for the utilities, for the car, for the cell phone bill, for nearly everything.

Think you're getting ripped off on your cable package? Cancel the home cable. Don't like what you're getting charged, or how much you're paying monthly for your cell phone service? Turn it off and pick up a prepaid Trac phone.

Don't like paying so much to insure your car? Get an earlier model, and soup it up the way you like. Choice, choice, choice.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that they're soon coming for the free man. Those who understand, at some base level, that our health is our wealth, and our choices indeed have consequences. We know how "low" we can go, in terms of what we need to survive. The rest is just ... gravy.

The problem with liberals like Krugman lecturing us on the realities of everyday life that Mitt Romney does not understand, is that Krugman is not a working man either. He simply ... knows better. He has ... compassion. He has ... pity. He is bursting at the seams with empathy, because deep in his heart of hearts?

He knows he's got it better. He can lecture, and teach, and choose other free men's choices for us, because he sees how "bad" off we free ones are, and he wants to guarantee us more of his own material commercial successes.

I moved to Wisconsin for good when I read that Jerry Reinsdorf (or was it Eddie Einhorn?), the rich Chicago sports owner, told a newspaper reporter he was dealing with his ill cardio health by stealing every moment he could to get away and fish in Wisconsin. Why wait? Why build up a fortune, only to pay a fortune for a place of peace in the country? Why knock yourself out making money, only to have to spend big for what plenty of simpler people already have? Contentment. Inner quality of life. No need for the "extras": the industrial processed foodstuffs, the poor air and packed neighborhoods competing for the basics, the spending half your life pining over how you'll spend your allotted "days off".

Don't get me wrong. You have to "work" and support yourself. But all these extra "needs"? All those who would counsel: You simply can't support a family on one salary. You need to let someone else raise your children in a mass daycare setting. You need the house on the hill ... the latest safest vehicle, the newest electronic toy for contentment.

No, you don't. Just like, if you take good care of yourself when you are younger, you don't need to be paying for somebody else's misfortunes and need for a pill to self correct. Your body is a gift -- like a vehicle really. If you treat it right, and practice preventative maintenance, knowing it and proactively doing what needs to be done, you can influence how long it runs. Keep as many original parts as possible. Sometimes the taking out and transplanting isn't worth the price paid.

People like Krugman can't fathom how immigrant families live. How "low" they are able to go, stretching a dollar and lifting themselves in the land of opportunity, America. Not everyone can, but still, some can.

They can't themselves anymore, they've gotten to "big" to access such a simple kingdom. But please: don't make the rest of us share in your costs now. Take your own falls, pay your own ways, and leave the rest of us to the benefits of our bargains.

Romney opportunity over Kennedy opportunity anyday. In the latter, the liberal elites can't lose. They grow fatter and fatter, and then -- in an Oprah-like fashion -- want to "gift" rights and entitlements onto others, once they realize how fat they have grown...

Problem is, instead of contributing privately, they want the rest of us to use the powers of the state to support their philanthropic endeavors. But... some of the rest of us don't live so richly. We think people should pay first for the basics: food, shelter, clothing and only then think of the extras: cell phones, cable tv ... children.

I don't want to criticize your choices: what you eat, when you conceive, how you choose to spend your "free" time. And for the most part, Americans don't. We respect each others choices, and observe the consequences.

But if we continue this trend of bailing out private industries: the car makers, the finance houses, the insurance companies ... at the price of the everyday working taxpayer, then the rest of us do want a say. We do want to criticize your costly choices, and point out your lack of results.

Keep charity, and religion, private. I don't care what you do internally, if it doesn't cost me. There might be need, in extreme cases, for society to intervene, but for the most part? Let people choose what they can, if they can pay for it themselves. Want fertility options? If you can pay, you can access the technologies. Want a large family, as our country people often do? Bully to you, the bigger the better, when they are well provided for and taken care of...

Nevermind the liberals who simply can't see how you can afford more than one or two or three... Nevermind the elite pillpoppers who can't imagine paying for their own medical costs, without a healthy insurance pool also contributing. Nevermind those Whole Food shoppers, who can't understand how people can stock their freezers and pantries with "live" food, freshly frozen in the summers or harvested in the fall, and eat "naturally" and for a fraction of the specialty-market costs, all winter long.

They can't do it, so none of us can.

No thank you, Mr. Krugman. You keep what you've got, you might just need it. The rest of us? We'd like the benefit of our bargains too. To live by our choices, without being called upon to bail out the health insurance endgame, or to be called named when we decline to contribute to the growing problem of an undereducated, undernourished society. You see, if these people more "felt" the costs -- like once the children of cigarette smokers, alcoholics and stressaholics did -- they, or their offspring, would learn to choose differently.

Fate strikes, people and private charities help, but for the most part? You reap what you sow. If you're not starting with good seed stock, and a healthy environment, you're probably not going to be satisfied with what you end up with. No fault of the planter, but in years to come? He shouldn't stick -- Kennedylike -- with failed policies and sickly prescriptions if we want true change in America.

The only hope we have now rests on the shoulders of our free men and women. They're younger, still strong, and significantly less hampered by societal success than the likes of preacher Krugman.

Money for Nothing...

2012-01-10T21:09:00.002-06:00

and the Chicks for Free?

Dana Milbank spills the beans on how little our "campaign media" really does out there on the trail. I know, I know, it's supposed to be a "humor" piece.

But what he's missing is how his honesty comes across. (psst. Dana? We really don't need you fellas out there anymore. We've got other, better sources of info now, and since so many of you aren't really reporting, just carrying water for this meme or that, why not hang up your notepads and get a real reporting job?)

I’ve long suspected that if editors knew how little journalism occurs on the campaign trail, they would never pay our expenses

Forget door-knocking. In reality, it’s more trainspotting. Reporters hang out at candidate appearances — and restaurants — talking primarily among themselves and comparing notes on which canned events they attended. (Did you see Santorum in Salem? No, I went to Romney in Hudson so I could catch Newt in Nashua.)
...
This year turned out to be a particularly wasteful one in the Granite State. Once Romney won in Iowa, the question was not whether he would win here but by how much. Yet the reporters descended anyway: Our hotel rooms were nonrefundable.

The good residents of New Hampshire, uninspired by the candidates, seemed less interested in attending candidate rallies than in years past. The result was that traveling mobs of journalists routinely outnumbered the “real people.”

As Jon Huntsman wound down his New Hampshire campaign with a stop Monday at Crosby Bakery in Nashua, he was trailed by about 150 journalists. Total number of New Hampshire voters: Perhaps a dozen. And some of them seemed more focused on taking pictures of “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory than in seeing the candidate.

As I played sherpa for my editor, it was hard to conceal the fact that I was leading her on a journalistic road to nowhere.
...
Next day, we headed to a Gingrich appearance that had great metaphorical promise: He reached out to Manchester’s Hispanic community by holding an event at Don Quijote’s Mexican and Caribbean restaurant. But it turned out to be more stagecraft for the media mob.

The campaign handed out “Newt Con Nosotros” buttons and had a local man with a Spanish accent introduce the candidate. A Gingrich daughter attempted what sounded like first-year Spanish on the crowd. But her proficiency didn’t matter, because two rooms in the restaurant, and a good part of a third, were crammed with journalists.

“All I see are white faces,” complained one news photographer.
...
Later, my editor and I retreated to Jackie’s Diner in Nashua, around the corner from the Huntsman event. Waitress Barbara Justason, 77, told us she had tired of the campaign events. “It’s all reporters and no real people,” she said.

The “real people” just weren’t into the campaign this year. “Usually I research everything and have big arguments at the counter. This time, I found myself not even wanting to read the articles in the paper,” she said. “Maybe I’ll close my eyes and it’ll be eenie, meenie, mynie, moe.”

That’s just what we were afraid to tell our editors: The New Hampshire primary just wasn’t much of a story.

Your work is what you make of it, Dana.

Maybe you need to hire some hungry questioners. Some people who live and work in the real world, and who are actually affected by these political policies. It seems funny now, and you got another column out of it, but in the end I suspect, the joke's on the 21-Century "journolists".

We don't really need you much anymore...
That's all.

Santorum ... Rejected.

2012-01-10T19:43:00.000-06:00

Romney takes two early contests, first Iowa and now New Hampshire.

Looks like the Republican primary voters are looking past a stale old Speaker whose political expiration date was years ago, and also rejecting an attempt to model our civil laws on what works well within one religion, at least. And we're just not ready for that fella who speaks Mandarin fluently -- not a skill set required of an American president just yet, it seems...

Now tell me: will the liberal pundits applaud these rejections? Give credit where credit is due, in acknowledging that media fears of the party embracing extremists has been ... unfounded?

Naw ... if they drop the race game, and call a truce on the social cultural wars, what will they have to write about tomorrow? Instead, they'll double down on the "Republicans Hate Gays" theme and continue scraping the bottom for some "truth" to support their memes. And heaven knows, our rejection of President Obama's limp policy prescriptions to date surely can only be classified by ... racist leanings.

Oh what fun it is to watch the media wallow in what they've made of our current public discourse. I suspect the bandwidths on "Journolist 2.0: The Secret Cabal" are furiously fired up tonight, as Ezra works with his buddies to craft a "media" response that will help rescue his favored candidate, liberal Obama...

Successfully ... Resisting.

2012-01-10T19:16:00.012-06:00

When Charles Bond wrote about his hazing heroics, he didn't much mention what he did, when he was an upperclassman himself. Who he chose to beat, and why.

More details are emerging about the Florida A&M student who was ... hazed to death. Beat ... bad.

Turns out, the African-American musician was ... gay. And he was "untouchable", meaning he resisted the routine violence, and perhaps was targeted more because of his resistance.

They try to beat it out of you. They try to make you one of them. And when they can't, they kill you.

On Tuesday, Champion's parents, Robert and Pam Champion of Georgia, described how their son had urged fellow band members not to give in to the practice — a long-standing tradition at the historically black university in Tallahassee.

The parents and Chestnut think his beatings were meant as retaliation. Champion, they said, was proof that a musician could be successful in the band — he was slated to be the head drum major next school year — without submitting to the abuse and humiliation some students endure to become part of such a prestigious group.

Not only do students who participate in hazing suffer pain and humiliation, but they also risk being suspended from the band and losing their scholarships. University officials have repeatedly warned that hazing is illegal and could lead to suspensions, fines and arrests — something Champion wanted no part of, his mother said.

"Robert was known for being a stickler [for rules]," Pam Champion said. "If I thought about it, Robert was known for being what a true leader should be."*

Here's hoping Bond follows up. This column was kinda cringeworthy -- there's no admission of guilt, nor of his own criminal stupidity. In fact, I read it as kinda bragging. "I was a big (little) man on campus, popular, non-thinking and so I did what I had to do to get ahead."

The beatings became more frequent and more severe. Some pledges broke and cried, others flinched and cowered. Others stepped up and stood tall, toeing the line for those who couldn’t.

The point was to test our mettle, to lay bare the depths of our character and commitment, to break the individuals so that the group could be built — amalgamated from the debris of our former selves.
...
No one gave voice to the fact that it was against the rules and possibly against the law. No one stopped and thought. We simply drifted forward, moved along by the momentum of a thing done because it had always been done.

One of the most brutal sessions was dedicated to breaking the breakable, to forcing anyone who couldn’t withstand the beatings to leave the pledge group. It was called “Turn Back Night.”

That session took place in a secluded, mudhole-pocked oil field. As the pump-jacks bobbed and creaked, we were subjected to an unfettered, gladiator-style hazing session so brutal it almost defies description.

The night air was punctuated by the swats of paddles, boards and even two-by-fours, by slaps of hands on flesh, by groans of pain from pledges, and by shouts of profanity from brothers who’d lost themselves in the frenzy and were caught in a chaotic feedback loop of alcohol and adrenaline.

And we weren’t Animal House-like alcoholics and louses. We were campus leaders. The fraternity prided itself on receiving the high-G.P.A. award, and I was the freshman class president.

Still, legends were to be made by the brothers who were most inventive, brutal or relentless, or by pledges who never flinched or cried aloud.

Who knows how much his frat membership might have opened doors for Bond, in his future. Maybe he can take time away from his "black people are sooo oppressed" beat, and tell us in greater detail what he did to whom, and why exactly he felt compelled to behave that way. Did his crew of blacks target gays with their 2x4's dancing around in the dark whacking away at each other? Did you advance further in the black frat for displaying hatred of homos? Is Blow gay himself? (I know he has children; still, sometimes I get that vibe and you gotta wonder why he was chosen as a black columnist, coming up the graphic design route, when surely there were better writers out there, including those from an African-American background.)

---------------------

* Turns out, from the lede on, Blow read Robert Champion ... wrong:

The tragic loss of Robert Champion may be another sad case of a college student literally dying to belong.

Champion, a drum major for Florida A&M University’s famous marching band, died on a bus a few weeks ago after a performance. The suspected culprit: physical hazing, a behavior that’s proving remarkably resistant to being scrubbed from our culture.

His death refocuses attention on college hazing and illustrates just how pervasive and intractable the problem can be, how rooted it is into some organizations, how far some will go to belong and feel bonded

No Charles:

~~No one~~ Robert Champion gave voice to the fact that it was against the rules and possibly against the law. ~~No one~~Robert Champion stopped and thought.

*Corrected that for ya, little man with the big fancy job...*
----------------

ADDED: More to the story here:

Robert Champion Sr., and his wife, Pam, discount homophobia as a major motive in their son's hazing since other band members had known about his sexual orientation for years and had never bothered him about it.

"His sexual orientation was not something he was defined by," Chestnut said. "He was more defined by music. This was not something that he quote, unquote 'advertised.' It was a part of who he was."

FAMU's band director, Julian White, released a statement through his attorney Tuesday saying that Champion's beating may have been because he was gay rather than as a result of ritualistic hazing. White was fired by FAMU President James Ammons after Champion's death, then reinstated and put on administrative leave.

Chestnut and Champion's parents dismissed that suggestion.

"It's an attempt to exonerate the band and the band administration for their negligence, for their part in Robert's hazing by saying because of sexual orientation, this is a hate crime," Chestnut said at a news conference at the hotel where Champion died. "This is not a hate crime. This is a hazing crime."

The parents are suing the bus company, where the crime is alleged to have occured. They ought to instead go after the little animals who did the beating -- over 18 is an adult, no matter how stupid and unthinking they might be, like Bond admits he was.

At the very least, "out" these violent people** and ruin a few career paths on the way up. If you're so stupid you got where you got by beating down others, you deserve to to take a few blows -- non lethal -- yourself. And no, virginia: That doesn't make you more a "man" because you didn't have the common sense to cry out or flinch.
----------------
** From the article:

Any death involving hazing is a third-degree felony in Florida, but no charges have been filed so far in Champion's death. In a separate case, three band members were arrested in the Oct. 31 beating of a woman band member whose thigh bone was broken.

Four students dismissed by the university were also reinstated while authorities work on the investigation.

G-d Bless the Pooch.

2012-01-10T16:59:00.000-06:00

Mama may have
Papa may have
But G-d bless the pooch
that's got his own.

After his owner is killed by a drunken driver, a Hungarian Vizsla swims 1/2 mile out to a kayaker, who helps bring him home.

G-d Bless the Pooch...

Eating Rainbow Stew...

2012-01-10T15:12:00.003-06:00

with a silver spoon
underneath that sky of blue...

It's the countryfolk cure for premature hypertension. ;-)
Laughter, that is.

Diss at your own risk...

Full lyrics here.
------------------
ADDED:
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. ~James A. Baldwin

Dave George on Tebow. Again.

2012-01-10T09:36:00.002-06:00

George can write. Better still, he's got some wisdom and knowledge, something substantive to write about:

Do you believe this guy? Doesn't really matter one way or the other, of course. Just asking.

Tebow is like a muscle car with a couple of bad valves. He spits and sputters and even stalls on occasion but it remains extremely dangerous to stand idly in his path.

The New England Patriots certainly won't. Bill Belichick will throw everything he's got at Denver in the next playoff round, and everybody, too.

That includes Josh McDaniels, the former Denver head coach who took the big risk of drafting Tebow in the first round two years ago and suddenly, in a reverse burst of Tebow magic, finds himself on the Patriots staff just in time to provide insider information on the flaws and frailties of the Broncos' bracket-busting quarterback.

McDaniels was with the St. Louis Rams until last week, calling plays for Sam Bradford. That was the first job he could find after being fired by Denver in 2010, and it wasn't going all that well. The Rams finished the season Jan. 2 with a record of 2-14, costing head coach Steve Spagnuolo and general manager Billy Devaney their jobs.

McDaniels, though, is a special case. He still has value to the Patriots as their former offensive coordinator and Tom Brady's good buddy.

And if he just happens to be Tebow's buddy, too, and the coach who shaped Tim's rookie season in the NFL, isn't that a happy accident? Sort of like the coincidence of New England officially announcing McDaniels' hiring on Sunday night, the same night that Denver bounced Pittsburgh out of the playoffs.

Belichick certainly isn't waiting around until next season, when offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien leaves the New England staff to coach Penn State and needs replacing. He's adding McDaniels right now because he can, and because a league that punishes players for nastiness has no remedy in the rulebook for this particular strain of coaching craftiness.

Belichick is a master of espionage (spying on the Jets' defensive signals in 2007), camouflage (check out that hoodie) and, for all we know, decoupage, so comprehensive are his skills.

*giggle snort*

Belichick even took Tebow to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Boston's North End prior to the 2009 draft, gauging up close a player whose power can't be measured by statistics alone. The two broke bread that night, friendly as you please, but on Saturday Belichick will try to break the kid's spirit.

Thing is, it can't be done.

Tebow just keeps churning and he just keeps learning, regardless of circumstances or criticism. That's true whether he's on a six-game winning streak like the one that made the bumbling Broncos into a playoff contender or a three-game slide like the season-ending disaster that threatened to point John Elway and Denver in an entirely different direction at quarterback.

If nothing else, Sunday's entertaining upset of the Steelers in the opening playoff round locks down his spot in the Broncos' starting lineup next season, and that is a significant step for a player who everybody has been wanting to turn into a fullback or a tight end since his grade-school days.

Tebow is far from perfected as an NFL-caliber passer. He may always be more of a throw-back quarterback than a dropback clone. As for next weekend's short-term satisfaction rating, Brady and the Patriots have outscored Denver once already this season (41-23 on Dec. 18) and they'll probably do it again.

For all those, however, who said that Tebow would never be a starting quarterback in this league, or he'd never take a team to the playoffs, or he'd never win a postseason game, or he'd never make the Pro Bowl or win a Super Bowl, that list of imaginary limitations is dwindling.

The Broncos, who hadn't won a playoff game in six years before Sunday's overtime thriller, will take him as he is today, and McDaniels, the boy genius who initially tied his star to Tebow's in 2009, will wonder why he and the franchise didn't start the guy sooner, and use him for more than just souvenir jersey sales.

De-fense! D-fense!

2012-01-09T11:24:00.003-06:00

Nothing wrong with a little "D", says Dave George...

On Dec. 28, Baylor won a game 54-52 over Mississippi State. The following day Baylor won another game 67-56 over Washington. The first was regular-season basketball. The second was the loony-tune Alamo Bowl, where a total of 17 touchdowns were scored by the two teams.

LSU's defense, by contrast, has allowed 13 touchdowns all season. Bama's defensive unit, even stingier, has limited an entire season's worth of opponents to nine.

That's old-school football, folks, and we ought to be out clapping erasers in celebration of it, rather than pretending that the only game worth watching is the one where every incompletion calls for a replay and quite possibly an investigation.

Never worry, either, if the BCS rankings system got this thing right.

LSU and Alabama undoubtedly are the two best teams in the nation, if for no other reason than Oklahoma State and Stanford and all the rest are not true teams at all. They are fractions of a whole, with all the best athletes on the offensive side of the ball and the defensive units left merely to play a role in the overall entertainment package, like the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters.

This is more than just an opinion. It's a natural fact, demonstrated by the results of the four major BCS bowls that served as the undercard for Monday's championship match. In those games, Stanford, Wisconsin, Clemson and Virginia Tech combined to score an average of 32.25 points, and they were the losing teams, for crying out loud.

A touchdown ought to carry more value than that. It ought to make you jump up and down. It ought to make you hug a stranger.

Instead, the growing trend is to slump deeper into the couch when your team crosses the goal line, mumbling something like, "Oh, man, we scored way too fast. Our defense has already given up 40 points and they needed a few more minutes to rest. It's going to get really, really ugly now."

LSU and Alabama went to overtime in November and never scored a single touchdown between them. Spectacular? Not especially. Pathetic? Only if you're convinced another team could have done more against the same ornery level of resistance.

The last five BCS title games say otherwise, with SEC teams shutting down the flavor-of-the-month scoring machine of some other power conference in every case.

Ohio State, for instance, averaged 36 points per game in 2006 but managed just 14 against Florida in the national title game. Half of that, remember, came on Ted Ginn Jr.'s 93-yard return of the opening kickoff.

Auburn's 22-19 BCS title win over Oregon last January is the most recent example. The supersonic Ducks rolled into that one having scored at least 50 points in half of their 12 regular season games and an obscene high of 72 against New Mexico.

Monday night could be another punting festival between the Tigers and the Tide, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Wrong is 49 points by halftime, which was West Virginia's cartoonish Orange Bowl total.

Wrong is 1,129 yards in total offense, like Oregon and Wisconsin rolled up in the Rose Bowl. The grandaddy of them all used to be "Whoa, Nelly," with Keith Jackson. Now it's just "Whoa!"

If it matters, I'll take LSU to earn a two-game sweep of the Tide, figuring that Les Miles makes it happen with one of his classic fourth-down gambles.

How refreshing that too would be. In so many of this year's scoreboard-scarring bowl games, the defenses rarely even forced a fourth down.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

2012-01-06T16:59:00.003-06:00

A bit of good news to kick off your Friday evening...

The freeing of the Iranians by sailors from the very same carrier threatened earlier this week offered the United States an unexpected public relations coup, but Admiral Faller denied that the rescue was motivated by anything but routine concern for the safety of fellow sailors. “One of our obligations as mariners out here is to save lives at sea,” the admiral said. “We’d do that for any country in the world.”

We have a pretty sizable population of Somali's here in Barron, if you can believe that. Many are workers at the Turkey Store/Jennie-O (formerly Jerome.) Just today, I was coming back from the courthouse mid-afternoon, and watched the kids at one apartment complex getting off the bus, in what turned out to be springtime-like weather...

Oh, the skinny long legs on some of them! Reminds me of the time I was seated next to a Somali woman flying into Minneapolis. She remarked on the thinness of my wrists, and asked me where I was from. Then she told me a bit of her story...

I hope we feed these young pirates, and I hope the Iranian fishermen return home with a tale of their own to tell... Are you still proud to be an American tonight? I am.

Busy, busy, busy. bump

2012-01-06T09:18:00.003-06:00

We put out a good paper this past week.
Added: Updated daily with stories from Wednesday's paper.

Inspiration is where you find it...

2012-01-05T18:06:00.010-06:00

If you're looking out at autumnal cornfields, waving in their rows in a strong wind... you're still permitted to call to mind beautiful "amber waves of grain" if it so strikes you.

You still get to access America's rich cultural legacy. If that's what you see, and that's how you relate it, you still get to do that. Stir that patriotic feeling. Take the song lyrics, and apply them to what's around you.

Nevermind having to retrace the writer's original paths, to properly interpret what exactly she saw to feel what it was she was expressing in her art. How ... limited.

Is corn a grain? Is tomato a fruit? Does it matter when we're talking the subjective internal interpretation of a song easily accessible to all Americans, even those perhaps without the proper background, technical analysis?

Is there some mandate I missed?

Not in this America. But maybe in the one the imposing liberals in their know-it-all, we think better attitudes have planned for us, eh? (Don't talk to me unless you've read the definitive book! I'm right and you're wrong., binary-kinda thinking. ;-)

* ASIDE: Isn't it rather sad that modern "political analysis" has fallen to this? Quibbling over the song choices, and "ownership", of campaign songs and cultural references?

I wonder when they'll ask this one?:
"Candidate: with much of America experiencing, or talking about, the risks and benefits of the emerging Fracking Industry, do you believe this will bring down the price at the pumps that many Americans believe is a contributing reason in recent years to crippling the economy?"

Follow up: "Will those benefits trickle down to the American car-driving consumers? Affect the prices at the pump, or just be absorbed into the profits of the multi-national oil companies?"

Another topic:
"Candidate: do you think -- whether or not the Court strikes down the mandate guaranteeing plenty of "good" customers (ie/paying in more than they'll get out) into the insurance companies' hands -- that insurance premiums will be LOWER in coming years, or that the insurance companies will simply absorb the profits themselves and see them continue to go up, year after year.

Remember -- they are in a for-profit business, suddenly with a forced consumer base whose choices have legally been taken away. What role, if any, do you see the government taking in coming years to make sure insurance companies price policies fairly?" (pause for laughter...)

Or should the suckers simply be being buying stock themselves, watching the lobbying dollars go to both of your parties and understanding insurance consumers will continue to be the big losers, with no choice of opting out and using their valuable dollars elsewhere?"

Busy, busy, busy.

2012-01-05T11:24:00.000-06:00

We put out a good paper this past week. Nice family picture too, of our first New Year's baby.

Here It Comes...

2012-01-03T17:05:00.018-06:00

Didn't plenty of us suspect that we'd soon be hearing cries of "racism!" when voters overwhelmingly reject the performance of the Obama administration and the policies he's chosen to push?

Not like to talk about it? Heck, in the days to come, I suspect this will be a bread-and-butter meme for publications like Mr. Rosenthal's, who have papers to sell and no substantive or expert analysis by their diverse staff of pundits to offer us instead.

Despite the black skin, perhaps because of it, Barack Obama got elected as President of the United States... Funny how that could have happened in a country of bigots and racists, eh?

Why oh why must the liberal white elite turn the current rejection of the man's policies -- not his family, not him personally, not his race -- into cries of racism? For the same reason they insist the corn in Iowa is green. They simply know better.

If it makes you sleep easier at night thinking your fellow countrymen (and women, for those who don't see us already included in that non-pc term) are bigots voting out of fear or nonsensical hate, go for it.

But one day, we'll have to have that honest conversation: Will black Americans ever be measured solely on performance-neutral grounds and not through the prism of race, or because of the slavery legacy -- even for those who immigrated well after it was illegal -- will their skin color always afford them special exceptions, affirmations, and a way of viewing ... everything based on who they are as creatures of color?

Will we ever have a critical mass of black scientists, engineers and mathematicians again? Or will they drop out and gravitate to the "black studies" of such race-neutral fields? Will there ever again be strong independent black communities in America, with their own businessmen and professional class serving them? Or will the legacy of special asides, forced integration, and viewing all blacks (not just African-Americans) as somehow ... different be the long-lasting legacy bestowed by well-meaning liberals who simply can't see that sometimes, a man is just a man. (Which can be a very good thing, in a freeing way, dumping that racial baggage -- not having to "represent".)

And a junior senator with no executive leadership experience, despite his color and personal appeal, simply might not be up to the job of running a complex country, and an economy, in troubled times. Simply no time for "learning on the job" how things really work. Or don't.

That's not racism.
That's realism.

And I hate to see where aging liberals like Mr. Rosenthal (he for real this time) will drag the country once they see that their paternalistic ways of thinking are indeed in the minority, and the rest of us want results over identity politicking, no matter our race, class or ethnicity. They can't turn the clock that far ahead it seems, saddled with the baggage they were raised with. Sad really.

Time for a new generation to step it up, it seems... and reject all this race-based nonsense that skews the game, tilts the board, and helps mediocrities artificially flourish. (and if you read that as thinking that no racial minorities can compete honestly without the liberal elite paternalistic ways, shame on you for having such low standards.)

------------------------------

ADDED:

as Mary C. Curtis put it on the Washington Post’s new blog She the People: “Can you imagine how the incident would play out if an African American congressman made a crude remark about First Lady Laura Bush’s body? It certainly would have taken more than an insincere apology to wash that sin away.”

It was crude, surely. But then again, I don't remember Laura Bush wiggling her tushie to an "I Carly" episode on Nickelodeon*. Ah, those were the days!

* In an honest effort to ... help the kids see how to lose weight, I guess. (???)

FINALLY:

Is Mr. Romney playing the same chords when he talks about how Mr. Obama wants to create an “entitlement society?” The president has said nothing of the sort, and the accusation seems of a piece with the old Republican saw that blacks collect the greatest share of welfare dollars.

Ask yourself: do you really think that if a popular white president had rammed through such a healthcare bill, that the American public would be accepting? If you think that, boy oh boy are you out of touch with the rest of us.

I think it's safe to say, most of us alarmed at the entitlement spending are concerned with dependence. Remove the stigma from food stamp programs, the idea that there's something very, very, wrong -- long-term -- with having to rely on government help to feed your family, and you'll see more and more that are on now will not be getting off the public dole any time soon.

Ditto the idea of public-funded, out-of-wedlock births.

Black, white, brown, yellow, pink or purple -- this is not healthy for society. It's a shame really. And those numbers have simply taken off in our tougher economic times. Entitlement is not about black people -- plenty of whites, bi-racials, ethnics and WASPS might find it easier -- in the short term -- to surrender some of their privacies, pride and freedom and accept the easy dollars. Whether for food programs, mortgage bailouts, student loan reimbursements or whatever.

But everytime the government gives, they also take. If you need them to live, they're taking something from you too. I guarantee Mr. Rosenthal 100% that racism is not behind America's rejection of this proposed healthcare overhaul where "everyone is equal, premiums for the sick users are the same as healthy" with no distinctions made for those with expensive pre-existing conditions vs. those who have been blessed, and worked for, good health.

If we start trying to "equalize" the end games there, I tell you what: I want to drive a better car. I deserve it. Somebody else has a better ~~body~~ ride than me, so please: take from them, and up my portion. Make it all more ... artificially "fair" please. Why should he, or she, have better ~~health~~ rides than other Americans, and why should how much we can pay determine what we end up with??

Ditto with talent. Why should those who have studied, and been blessed since birth, with strong verbal aptitude be placed in the same league as those writers who are still struggling (a beautiful struggle, at that ;-) to remember when to use you're and when to use your? We see it -- you can try to artificially empower it, but the distinctions obviously remain. Who exactly is helped by all this ... pretending?

(slippery slope ... and again, it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with how the game is played, and the rules governing what we can and can't do with our individual choices, regardless of how other members of society are faring... Get it yet? The results are what they are -- we can keep pretending, for the sake of liberals like Rosenthal, that there's an easy fix to all this: dump enough money into HeadStart and dietary education info to replace the favored home conditions some babies are simply blessed with at birth, and better breeding (yep I said it: physically, some women are ready to be moms, and have better physical conditions to pass on, since so much of our physical makeup is indeed genetic. How about ... if nature tells an obese woman she cannot successfully conceive, and that her child(ren) are likely to share her poor health, we don't override that with medical miracles and state-sponsored dependence help -- ie/WIC food, and childbirth expenses paid for. Parenthood is a privilege, not a right. And sometimes, Nature wisely says ... No. Or, No More. Maybe we should all be listening, instead of thinking we know better who to breed, especially when the offspring immediately fall on the public dole for survival. Black or white, this is not the sign of a healthy society, Mr. Rosenthal. Don't you understand that, sir?)

I Smell... Desperation!

2012-01-03T13:01:00.025-06:00

Aw, those know-it-all New Yawkahs! Spend a few weeks (days?) in America's heartland, and they're all ready to ejumacate'm us dumb Midwest folk.

Can he really be this corny? (And I mean that literally, since in Iowa he claims that the amber waves of grain include corn. Note to Mitt: corn is green...)

Here, ~~Andrew Rosenthal~~ David Firestone, blogging under an illustrated graphic "From the Desk of Andrew Rosenthal", informs us that, in his expert opinion ... corn is green.* And America the Beautiful lyrics should not be personally interpreted, being that a lesbian lady wrote them and people today are ... misinterpreting!

But it quickly becomes clear that Mr. Romney has a point to make in dissecting the song. He sees its vision as matching his, and that is where he makes a serious mistake.

“O beautiful, for patriot’s dream, that sees beyond the years,” he said, discussing the fourth verse and asserting that this dream referred to political and especially economic freedom. “The freedom to choose one’s course in life, to be an opportunity nation, a merit-based society” – that, he suggested, conflicts directly with the president’s vision of America as an entitlement society, where everyone is equal and thus more impoverished.

If, over time, this turns out to be his rebuttal to the president’s new campaign theme of reducing economic inequality, he will have to do better than “America the Beautiful,” because that is not at all what the song was originally about. The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age.**

Imagine that: I thought once you set something free in the art world, it was to the reader/listener/observer to take and make it their own, fitting it into their own world as they see fit. Instead, ~~Rosenthal~~ Firestone recommends that darned cultist Mormon man should ... stick to G-d songs he might know a bit more about. (or not.)

Under the circumstances, Mr. Romney might want to switch to a far more simple song with absolutely no underlying meaning. Maybe, “God Bless America.” ***

Open those minds a bit, fellas? The condescension surely must be choking off vital growth, helping lead to the nation's continuing intellectual stagnation. Imagine if we had a functioning press that focused on the important issues facing the nation today, instead of these horsetrading prognosticators all trying to be Carnac the Magnificent in their gambling abilities.
------------------

* Oh come ye back...
when the yellow tassles are ripening, pre-harvest, and the blonde stalks drying and waving in the wind. A September scene ... those golden fields of corn, as far as the eye can see...

And if you peel back the dry husk, you'll see ... golden kernels, packed inside.

The only thing truly green about corn is springtime, and the growing season before maturity ... and growing NYT writers, who still obviously have a lot to learn, outside their basic geographical beat.

** Funny thing that. Were Romney a Dem, I betcha ~~Rosenthal~~ Firestone would nod approvingly at his choice of diverse songwriters to quote. Here I would think that Mr. ~~Rosenthal~~ Firestone might be impressed by Ms. Bates' ability to both love her country, and be a lesbian (if that bit of trivia is true. I'm still wondering about the Hillary/Huma link myself, but surely if there were anything to that, Mr. ~~Rosenthal's~~ Firestone's brand of personal reporting would have that covered.)

*** Nobody's asking you to cling to values you don't share. But honestly? Who sounds bitter now?

ADDED:
This bit is just ... laughable.

President Obama has lately begun to channel that movement, invoking the spirit of its greatest champion, Theodore Roosevelt.

Given his positions, he has a better claim to the spirit of the song than does Mr. Romney, who appears to have no problem with inequality.

That's great that -- 3 years in -- he's "begun to channel that movement". Out here, we call it, "Shit, or get off the pot. Someone else wants to use it already."

Plus, how desperate are ya, when your argument is: But... but... our guy interprets patriotic songs better!!

Still, enjoy your Iowa stay, Mr. ~~Rosenthal~~ Firestone. Come back when the corn is golden, and times are better throughout the country! Keep America Green: spend your New Yawhk money wisely, please!

Iowa = Too Rural? Too White?

2012-01-03T12:13:00.000-06:00

This article made me chuckle.
Andrea Mitchell (Mrs. Alan Greenspan) and A.G. Sulzberger -- a Brown grad who started at the family paper in Feb. 2009 -- both assert that unnamed critics are criticizing the state as being unrepresentative of America's population.

Now, Mitchell wasn't making that charge herself, of course. She was merely citing unnamed "critics" who hold that view, she said.

As was the New York Times' A.G. Sulzberger, who in mid-December wrote this: "Iowa has long been criticized as too much of an outlier to be permanently endowed such an outsize influence in shaping the presidential field. Too small, critics say. Too rural. Too white."

The unnamed critic certainly is getting a lot of media coverage these days. But the issue isn't who the critics are - but whether the criticism itself is true.

Turns out, those Iowans are a pretty remarkable lot.

In fact, Iowa is the 12th-most representative state, say political scientists Michel Lewis-Beck of the University of Iowa and Peverill Squire of the University of Missouri. In 2009, they took 51 different indicators of social, cultural, political, and policy activities and measured how Iowa compared with the rest of the US, including such things as state average income, consumption of alcoholic beverages, percentage of vanity license plates, and voter turnout. Their report concluded that while Iowa is whiter and older than other states, on most everything else, it was among the more average states in the US.

But let's let the critics win this one - let's have the media declare Iowa to be too this or that to accurately represent the views of the American people as a whole. Let them instead report on how Barack Obama is doing by camping out in the state that is the most-representative state, at least according to political scientists Lewis-Beck and Squire.

That would be Kansas.

Where, according to the latest SurveyUSA poll, Romney leads Obama by 9.

C'mon kids... catch up already!

2012-01-03T11:35:00.003-06:00

Back in 2007, Mitt Romney was our most experienced, best bet.
But we still had the luxury back then of thinking about ... historical firsts. Helping out the black population by providing them a flesh-and-blood leader they could believe in... showing them that the rest of America indeed could vote for a black man for president, a gentler seemingly smarter version than Jesse Jackson.

Here we are 4 years later. The hopes and promises have been dashed... and the realities are setting in, by hook or by crook. The Supreme Court has been called on to assess the Constitutionality of the healthcare "master" plan, what happened when the policymakers and the pundits put their resources together to push something that the country didn't want and wasn't ready for...

(If you can't distinguish between the state government and the federal government in terms of responsibilities in caring for the health and welfare of its citizens, you've got basic homework to do.)

I'm glad to sit back, and not have to participate professionally in this current media kerfuffle. Safer to say, he should have been the country's preferred candidate in 2008. And if we've wised up and vote smarter this time around, he'll be the incoming president next year...

Poor paid professional media. They've got to continue pretending that the rest of the field is credible, and c'mon now: aside from the pundits, who took Cain, and the rest of the field seriously, except to plug their own bit of political performance nonsense?

-----------------

ADDED: I have to chuckle a bit at the pretentiousness of he who writes for the NYTimes, but seemingly doesn't participate much in political conversation elsewhere in the country.

Obviously, as a charter member of the inevitability caucus, I think Romney will be the nominee under just about any scenario.

Lol. The "charter member" link goes way back to ... October 23, 2011.

Funny thing is, for an aged intellectual like Ross Douthat (he's a young 32), I suspect he was being serious in thinking he was wise ... 3 whole months ago.

Careful going out on those limbs so early Ross... with your kinda weight, best to let lighter and more limber others test things out first. Your types tend to shimmy up the trunk after only after others have shown it's ... "safe". But welcome, nonetheless, Mr. ... "charter member".

;-)

Night is Here.

2011-12-31T18:06:00.003-06:00

Oh, I see so very clearly now.
Close at hand, I'm better for the smile you give,
and while I live...

I will follow you, will you follow me?
All the days and nights that we know will be.
I will stay with you; will you stay with me?
Just one single tear in each passing year there will be.

We could have a carryover option* too, if it's an especially good year...

----------------------

ADDED: * For the unexpended tear(s).

5...4... 3 2 1! Welcome to the G-Force.

2011-12-31T09:09:00.005-06:00

Twelve men on the defense; we take no nonsense.
Feel the power from the stands: every woman, child and man.
Tap in to the G-force, and use your outside voice!
Whether sun, rain or snow, we're gonna scream and let 'em know...

If 2011 was the year for doubling down,
2012 will be the year we up the ante.

It will be interesting to watch the not-yet-retiring Boomer generation continue to attack the Millennials as "the generation that expects a trophy just for showing up", when really? Who is it exactly that expects to "age onto" the generational social entitlements (that they didn't have a hand in winning) simply for being born to sacrificial parents, at the right time on the continuum?

We'll continue to watch the Democrats with an aging plan (entitlements for the poor, and many others, as we all become part of "one governmental family, caring for all, non-privately" ) battle those who understand why the gaps are widening between the two Americas: if you willingly invest in your own, and practice discipline above and beyond, rewards will come. If you need to be cajoled all the way, to get your work done on time, eat your vegetables, spend time with your children, and put your own first, it will be harder to compete with those who have invested resources, over generations, in their own. Honestly.

We can't erase away motivation, values, character and flexibility. Or success. If you go out and get it, you deserve more than he who stayed home, protesting that it wasn't equally handed out to him.

This coming year, more and more, we'll see the definitions begin to flesh out, and the distinctions in how we're going to get to that more equitable place. We all agree, as Americans, where we need to go -- or not.

It's identifying who has the better strategic plans, which work to get us there in reality -- not just in theory but in time-tested practice -- that matters now. And I'm talking well past just winning an election; "getting the part" / "making the team".

Enjoy the night, and the extended weekend. We've got a lot of work ahead in the coming years. Upping the ante ... remember, you heard it here first! Happy 2012.

Erik Wemple Slams Stephen Glass to the Mat.

2011-12-29T09:45:00.004-06:00

And wouldn't we all like to, really? Reward wrongdoers, cheaters, and those who think they're smarter than the rest of us for finding an unethical ... shortcut, and you get a society where the poor little rich boys never have to grow up, it seems.

I'm merciful, don't get me wrong, and believe in contrition and forgiveness, but Stephen Glass will do fine as a well-paid paralegal, without the big-league temptations dangling in front of him where he can do more damage to the societal trust fabric* on which so much depends...

Character Counts, if we've any hope collectively of lifting society from the juvenile trashheap of our collective culture, that so many have been willing to contribute to over time, but not clean up properly themselves after the messes they make.

Nothing wrong with proving yourself an honest paralegal, afterall. And acceptance of fundamental change takes time...

-------------------
* More important to America in a long-lasting way than any government-funded "safety net", if you ask my humble opinion.

"Get me to the ceremony on time..."

2011-12-29T09:27:00.003-06:00

Ah, here's one to warm the cockles of your heart:

"That's what volunteer firefighters do: they help people,” said (Chippewa Fire District Deputy Chief Ron) Wolf.
...
He says the unexpected road trip was well worth it.

"It's a big deal to become an American Citizen and so I did what I had to to help them," says Wolf.

An accident on the roads, no injuries but delays, and an everyday American "hero" steps in to make things right...

Imagine what those children will remember of the first day they were officially Americans.

Speaking of Freedom...

2011-12-15T16:59:00.004-06:00

Just like something inside always lifts when a bird takes wing, an oppressed breaks free, or a "little guy" takes a step up and beyond those that would be content to hold him back...

So too we cheered here at the news Christiane Amanpour no longer has to cripple herself rubbing elbows with what passes for America's current political class.

Let George Stephanopoulous -- fresh from the morning-tv fluff -- handle that trick. Her skills were surely being wasted there.

That’s why yesterday’s news — that Amanpour is leaving “This Week” for assignments at both ABC and CNN — liberates both her and her fans. In a statement on the move, Amanpour tried to cast her experience as a panel mediator as something transcendent:
It’s been an incredible experience to have had a ringside seat to democracy in action at ‘This Week.’ It’s been an incredible honor to anchor such a prestigious program and I thank all of you who have helped me on that journey.
You can almost hear the strain required to spit out those words, not a single one of which I believe. For Amanpour, an “incredible experience” is to shuffle around in the royal palaces of dictators and feeding back the results of her reporting on camera. For Amanpour, an “incredible experience” is hovering in a Baghdad courtroom to witness the proceedings against Saddam Hussein. Here’s what she reported to a CNN anchor after that moment. Feel the energy!
AMANPOUR: Well, I’ve just raced back from the courtroom to this convention center, where we’re going to get the video distributed. So let me tell you about what we just saw. We saw first of all Saddam Hussein coming from an armored bus — explosive-proof, we were told — a tan-colored bus, very heavily armored.

He was handcuffed; he had a chain around his waist. He was flanked by two Iraqi guards, and there were other guards standing on the stairs as he was coming down from the bus into the courthouse area. He walked in; he was not shackled by the feet.

For Amanpour, an “incredible experience” is to chat on the phone with Yasser Arafat while his compound is getting bombarded, and then getting hung up on by same.

It’s said that Amanpour didn’t really want to join the Washington crowd that feeds “This Week.” It’s said that her insistence on staying in New York was a reflection of such anguish. It’s said that she couldn’t manage to boost the ratings of “This Week.”

Great, great and great. All of that means this star player may move back to her position. Like the time Michael Jordan retired from baseball.

ADDED: That's a very nice description -- MJ too "failed" with the Sox, remember? -- by the WaPo's Eric Wemple.

Happy Bill-of -Rights Day.

2011-12-15T12:58:00.003-06:00

Shame on the President for pulling this on this day of days.
Many of us have observed, long ago, that he's a go-along-to-get-along coward. That having "his word" is not much good.*

Some are still catching on, and perhaps, in these days of ever-declining standards, they will try to tell us he's the best we've got...

Don't you believe them. Again.

Most broadly, the bill continues the work President George W. Bush started. Mr. Bush and his supporters exploited the nation’s fear and insecurity after the Sept. 11 attacks (and Democrats’ insecurity about national security) to ram through several unnecessary bills, including the Patriot Act and a dangerous expansion of the government’s ability to spy on Americans’ international communications without judicial supervision. Now, Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress have proven that they’re equally willing to curtail civil liberties, and, in the process, further damage America’s global reputation as a defender of human rights.

Simply put, if he can't find political backbone at this late stage, when he's simply got nothing left to lose, then he does not have the character needed to lead the nation at this point in time.

You're Fired. Next...

--------------------

*Flipp-flopp... flop-flop-flip.
Hip to the, hip to the, hop hop hip!

We Interrupt this Previously Scheduled Sabbatical...

2011-12-13T15:47:00.004-06:00

to bring tidings of great joy. Last week, I visited my hometown to celebrate Christmas with my family. Got to see my parents, brother and sisters, brother-in-law and nieces and nephew.
Only one missing was the other brother from NYC.

Today, I got to see him too ... and he looks great! Sharp guy --referring to his bantering with Jeanne Moos -- not to mention the personal style.

Sabbatical.

2011-12-06T08:44:00.005-06:00

Now that we've reached the Advent season, I think it's time to pull back on the hobby blogging ... We're truly in a winter wonderland up here now, owing to the approximately 6 inches of the fluffy white stuff that's fallen this past weekend, and in the overnights.

13 degrees at 7:36 according to the bank thermometer when I was pulling out of the neighborhood this morning. G-d bless the kiddies waiting for the bus in the soft morning light; there is something indeed magical about the twinkling snow, the boys (mostly) standing atop the snow piles at the curb, the rosy cheeks and increased appetites...

Happy holidays, if you celebrate, and stay sane and sober, even if you don't. We'll catch you back here sometime in the coming year, then.

Madonna to Play at Super Bowl Half Time.

2011-12-05T10:34:00.001-06:00

She can string together a medley of past hits, parade around in some skimpy get ups, and make us remember the 80s, before shocking slut schtick went commonplace.

It's about the game,
not the entertainment escape.

But you can't have anybody feeling left out, hence the added enhancements.

Blow on (Black) Leadership: Hazing and Following.

2011-12-05T10:10:00.000-06:00

NYT columnist Charles Blow is still processing that band hazing death at FMU. He's thinking back to his younger days ... back when he thought in order to be a campus leader, in order to follow what all the "best and brightest" black men did... he had to haze and be hazed.

"Every body was doing it, dontchaknow!" "Never thought twice about it myself -- I was busy growing my leadership skills..." "Nigga-wha? It's NOT the evil white man beating us down... we choose to lead others by doing this to .. ourselves?"

He's on to something here. Some ephipany of true independence, some unshackling of what it means to be a man, and perhaps, to have have others voluntarily follow... The first rule is: you can't whip them all into following, Charles.

Almost every one of them belongs to one of the black greek letter orgs, and they all hazed, brutally (I include myself among those)

Gravitational pull of the best and brightest into these groups was strong. Ppl who didn't join were labeled GDIs: God Damned Individuals

I never thought twice about it. If you were a campus leader, you pledged. You wanted to, and everyone expected you to.

And here's the third rail of the blk greek letter org brutal beating convo: is it an echo of a past in which others brutalized blks

It has to be the only form of cultural brutality that I know of that is widely-known/widely-accepted in modern blk culture/social circles.

I know these groups are still hazing to this day, even though their national chapters have banned it. Everyone knows, but turns a blind eye...

Speaking as a lifelong G.D.I. (G-d Damned Independent), I'm glad to see when men -- especially black men -- like Blow finally grow up and admit that their "leadership" skills indeed, were lacking when they resorted to private violence for bonding.

Even bigger props for owning up that it's other blacks who propagate the violent cultural whippings and paddlings these days (one pledge mentions being burned) and not the working white man laying on the blows to bring such self-appointed black "leaders" down...

"The Pugilist at Rest" *

2011-12-02T16:15:00.005-06:00

We've been keeping busy enough here. (Typos are even up; better luck next week.) "Deer Kill Off 20 Percent in County"** ... that's our headline follow up for the stats on last week's hunt. Up here, compared to the southern part of the state, numbers were down.

Blame weather, but several unsuccessful hunters have told me now -- they saw more bears than deer, and in those areas where there was bear scat, very few deer. They take care of the fawn's early, and I suppose it's like how you rarely see squirrels/especially rabbits in the backyard when you have a dog...

This week, newswise, promises to be even busier. Blame the change in weather (temps have dropped into the teens, and we've a dusting of snow on the ground now), the moon cycle (?), the "settling into hibernation but still out now" activities... but that Sheriff's dispatch log reading today was quite interesting, indeed.

A working weekend here perhaps, pushing the stories out before next week's evening meetings. So not so much at rest, I guess.

---------------

*Decent stories, excellent title and author background story from a few years back...

** No, not "Man Bites Dog" though I can see how initially you might read it that way...

ADDED: Here's more of my paid work. Not every story goes online though, or earns me the byline. Still, 74 in the past 6 months isn't shabby output.

Charles Bond Asks...

2011-12-01T15:03:00.004-06:00

World AIDS Day & it's hard to find a mention on major news sites. Did we stop caring when it became more blk & brn?

No, (funny how your mind immediately went there though!)

Once the disease became treatable, and not a death sentence; once it became clear that there are simple ways to minimize one's risks, even for the target high-risk population groups, it thankfully became a less immediate overall concern. The luxury of being ... "safe" and all.

That's a good thing, right?

Btw, I wonder if Mr. Bond parades around in a pink ribbon during "their" month for breast cancer (blk & brn women-- and men -- suffer that too, no?) the same way he needs to see special mention on a very special day for a very special group of persons suffering from a very preventable and very very special disease.

Personally, I like my news stories to "hit" when they're timely and actually, you know, make news for something new to report. Designating one "very special day" to trot out your news stories seems a step back, you ask me...

To me, Dec. 1 isn't World AIDS day.
It's a relative's birthday -- and thus, indeed making it a very special day for good reason! Happy birthday, if you're later reading this! Love you much.

ADDED:

Charles M. Blow:
This is one issue where Obama has shown tremendous leadership.

Oh dear G-d: must we politicize everything?

Can We Build It? Yes We Can!

2011-12-01T14:57:00.001-06:00

Bob the Builder's at work in Haiti, it seems.

“Haitians don’t want a gift,” Mr. Martelly said. “They want work.”

Funny. That slogan worked so well for President Obama too, but then amounted to nothing really.

I hope for Haiti, but I won't hold my breath...

The Port Au-Prince Marriott Hotel will give elite vacationers some place to hole up in -- presumably one of those all-exclusive hotels where you never have to leave the grounds to spend a dime -- like those that dot Jamaican beaches too. Where plenty of relocated Haitians try to sell their products on the beach (like fresh-squeezed juice -- not dope; you're stereotyping if you immediately went there).

Of course, it takes a bit of adventure to trust in the simple blessings of the locals. To trustfully drink the juice, leave the hotel grounds, or stay in a simpler, locally owned "native" hotel.

Something tells me, like elsewhere, the financial benefits post-building won't necessarily trickle down to the local economies, even if some lucky Haitians are hired as hotel staff, or provide goods served inside. Pretty much, that money will be channelled back to Marriott -- that's what the all-inclusive is all-about (that, and the much trumpeted "safety" factor...)

To make a difference, private businesses, too, will have to hire and empower Haitians — not just as low-wage workers but as managers, and at all levels in between.

C'mon. Clearly, the top management positions will go to someone -- probably white -- already within Mariott who wants to transfer to someplace warmer and already knows Mariott policy by the book.

Much Ado Over Nothing.

2011-12-01T13:23:00.012-06:00

Linda Greenhouse, bless her liberal heart, tries her hardest to make the case that students who are American citizens need not prove their parents are legal residents of the state of Florida in order to receive in-state resident tuition discounts.

Problem is, Linda:
plenty of students who are American citizens are required to produce such proof, or else pay the significantly higher, non-resident rate. (At Wisconsin, there's an appeals board made up of faculty that you can plead your case to, if you are lacking such proof and want a special dispensation. I suspect other state schools with such residency requirements operate much the same way.)

If a student can't prove their parent/s -- assuming they are still dependent*, a very special caveat, key to much of it here -- hold/s legal residency in the state, no in-state tuition breaks for you.

So... is it really such unfair discrimination if the reason the student can't prove their parents are legal residents is that ... they are residents, but not here legally? I say not.

A commenter sums it up simply:

Hard Choices, Connecticut:
I don't agree with this policy; however, in order to receive in-state tuition rates, one must be able to prove that one is a resident of that particular state. Since most people applying to college are minors, their state of legal residency is based upon their parent's state of legal residency. Since these students' parents are here illegally, they cannot establish that they are legal residents of Florida. But there should be some other way for these kids to establish that they themselves are legal residents of Florida, such as having attended a Florida high school for at least the last two years, or if they are older than nineteen, having a Florida-issued drivers license or ID and proof that they themselves have resided, voted, and filed taxes in Florida for over one year. Unfortunately, Ms. Greenhouse doesn't mention this issue, which is the gist of the matter.

If we start picking winners and losers based on pity, we lose overall, just as if we start rewarding the offspring of those who make poor social choices (think of all those parents who indeed are NOT well-to-do, but who don't qualify for all the government entitlement plans, but are being asked not only to take care of their own, but also to help pick up the tab for those unable to afford that primary parental duty.

That is why the new Democrat strategy is so dangerous -- the elites want to help, but instead of doing it privately, they pick the pitied (some say, the permanent underclass) and via government programs, divvy up the costs to be split amongst all.

You can't keep rewarding the elites in this unbalanced system, taking care of the reproducing permanent poor (via likely government handouts should the system's employment/salary imbalances remain until enough Boomers are out of the market opening up what meager job options will remain), and passing the costs -- borne "equally" natch, and mandatorily too -- onto those barely getting by on what little they make on their own, often one, salary.

In short, if the policy treated all the American citizen, but non-legal-resident offspring students fairly and waive the requirements showing legal proof, that's consistent. But to single out those citizen-students who were blessed enough to have parents who decided it was not in their best interests make the whole arrangement legal for the discount without extending that ... empathy to others, that's not consistent.

Greenhouse is respinning the facts to try and prove some discrimination here, in what is simply a sad situation that impacts plenty of Florida youngsters, unfortunately.

Perhaps a private charitable organization, funded by concerned empathetic people like Greenhouse, could help the non-resident offspring (particularly the non-papered immigrant offspring) afford their non-resident tuition rates. And then they could discriminate too: picking and choosing for whatever reason which students to privately help, and which to turn reject help.

As it is, I think Florida has this one exactly right. "If you can't prove your parents are lawful residents of the state, sorry but you don't qualify for the in-state residence discount."

Perhaps those affected could do what plenty of students not qualifying for resident tuition in other states do: become independent financially. ie/ get any kind of legal/on-the-books paying job that they clearly qualify for with their documents, (in FLA especially: think CNA, boys and girls !) establish your own residence, and after time, apply -- on your own -- for the in-state resident tuition. No parental papers.

Sure, it might take longer. A little inconvenient perhaps, a little slower timeline for graduation than those who have ualifying parents who can prove residency.

Best of all, the costs are not borne by others, who might even be paying out-of-state tuition someplace else ... for their own.

And, with those learning experiences under their belts, imagine how much better students and parents, in years to come, those do-able strivers will prove to be for their own. Dare to Dream... but understand that dreams are powered by hard work and self-reliance, not pity or asking for special favors not available to other similarly situated American citizens either.

-----------------

EXCELLENT COMMENT:

Calvert Cliffs
A good lawyer is taught never to ignore the strong parts of the opponent's argument. Greenhouse makes a strong case, and I agree with her conclusion. But it would be stronger if she could somehow explain why assigning the official place of residence of the parents to their dependent children is wrong. It's perfectly possible for an American-born citizen to reside somewhere other than Florida, and if so, their American citizenship doesn't earn them in-state tuition in Florida.

Of course that can look like sophistry when the children do in fact live within the state, but legal distinctions often look like sophistry. Greenhouse weakens her argument by ignoring that point, which is the central point upon which the policy is based. She ought to deal with it.

ADDED: Here's a take on a similar topic: George Will on race-based preferences in school admissions, and what actually happens when those unfair rules are tossed?

Does the "pity" and lowering of standards for some really help the students, or is it just some liberal program to make the elites feel better, that they are "helping" their ... lessers, without actually leveling the playing field, or remaking the system they clearly are beneficiaries in? .

-----------------

* For many now, isn't there an incentive to stay "dependent" until age 26, at least. Not that I worry, but what will happen if the economy is still down, with less and less affordable employer healthcare options offered for the minimal treater, as these "dependent" children eventually age off their parents' plans, btw?

Granted there is likely little overlap in those cases and the situations Greenhouse is discussing, as the unpapered p rents are less likely to have private qu lifying insurance

Tommy's In.

2011-12-01T11:57:00.004-06:00

The 70-year-old former Wisconsin governor officially throws his hat into the ring for the seat being vacated by the (non-openly gay) Sen. Herb Kohl. Given his (Thompson's) popularity here, and the rise of conservative sentiment, I think he's got a good shot at it.

Right now, Tammy Baldwin, the (openly gay*) Madison representative to the House, appears to be his primary competition, and statewise, I'm not too sure how well her liberalism will sell throughout the state.

Backlash catching up, and all...

---------------

* In a college town like Madison, that surely helped her establish herself -- identity politics and all -- because she really hasn't done much all these years to distinguish herself in Washington, they say.

Plus, please don't think I'm "outing" Kohl. It's common knowledge, he has nothing to fear now if voter learn that simple fact, and I abhor identity politics myself, I do think it's a shame he's had to hide it all these years. So what? If you did a good job for us Herb Kohl, and generally, you did -- it really doesn't matter.

I wonder, and wish that, Baldwin thinks this way too.

Wordsmithing.

2011-12-01T10:21:00.009-06:00

The nice thing about being naturally attracted to wordplay, and having an extensive enough vocabulary -- in reading and use, if not in verbal conversation -- is that you eventually develop an intimate familiarity with words, many of them.

Then, when you come across a misspelling, or a mispronunciation, while bothersome, you can often place the proper word in context, if you're so inclined, and extend the benefit of doubt to the writer, or the speaker.

For example, if someone mistypes they're for their, or a similar mistake, you might think: slow down. quick typing. proofread and edit before printing.

But if the same writer continues making that mistake, or a continued misspelling (like me with "marriage" say), you generally can assume they're unsure exactly how to spell it correctly, by habit.

Which is a very long way of bringing us around to this post. Read it -- the shrill criticism, the stinging laughter "Yu SOOOO Stupet!" in the comments, and tell me if you think the writer was familiar with the (actual) word "unadulterated" before she wrote the post.

I'm guessing ... not. If, like me, you were familiar with that one, wouldn't you just assume a misspeaking and place the proper word there in context? I think ya would... No harm, no foul, simply read -- or converse -- on. Heavens know, you wouldn't waste time actually GOOGLING for the meaning of the mispronunciation, or misspelling, would you?*

but, if one was unfamiliar with the word being grasped at (and if pronounced properly, clearly it was the correct word in context), then your laughter might be more pronounced thinking your verbal sparring partner was simply making up words out of the blue...

I think somebody ought to consider buying their stay-at-home loved ones a big-boy dictionary this Christmas, expanding that vocabulary and all. I mean, if you're going to have a mixed-class marriage, and you're taking a former "commoner" into educated circles, it might help if he, and you too for guidance purposes, were able to understand what others are talking about, even if they sometimes misspeak and misspell.

Nothing personal. Just sayin'...

---------------

*(and if you found something ... harsh there, in your Internet search, would you tie that mispronunciation or misspelling with the clearly wrong word? Only if it was blogs sweepstakes month, I think, where you're trying to attract new eyeballs and cajole them to hit your Internet site, to compensate your "writing" and supplement your income and need for more Christmas gifts. Go on, click that link and help 'em out. A good dictionary, afterall -- hard copy, not online -- ought to be found in every home where the non-wordy are striving for better... Especially if they have media ambitions as a ... second/replacement career.)

Praying for Time...

2011-11-30T21:09:00.000-06:00

I neglected to YouTube link in the post below, but here's the song, for your Wednesday night listening pleasure...

Rubin ... on Robinson on China.

2011-11-30T12:58:00.004-06:00

WaPo black columnist Eugene Robinson visited China, got put up in a nice Westernized place, and he's warming to the regime:

This is my first visit to China, and I plan to spend the next few columns reporting what I see and learn. I spent enough years as a foreign correspondent to know how tricky first impressions can be. The subtleties and complexities of any society are — unsurprisingly — subtle and complex.

But not all first impressions are unreliable. Some are such no-brainers that they can only deepen with experience. One thing I already know is that the way many U.S. politicians talk about China is surely wrong.

With the exception of Jon Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador here, all the Republican candidates seem to want to be “tough on China.” Mitt Romney apparently has decided to be the toughest, at least on the economic matters most often cited as a reason to display toughness.

“We can’t just sit back and let China run all over us,” he said in one of the debates. “People say, well, you’ll start a trade war. There’s one going on right now, folks.”

Really? From here, it looks more like an embrace than a war. My hotel is in the chic, yuppified Chaoyang District, just up the street from an Apple store, a Starbucks, a Calvin Klein boutique and just about every luxury retailer you could possibly name. An hour’s drive away, at the visitors center for the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, the first restaurant you see is a Subway. High-status automobile brands in China include not just Porsche, Audi and Mercedes, but also Buick.

None of this remedies China’s unfair policy of manipulating exchange rates or its laxity in protecting intellectual property rights. But when you walk the streets of Beijing, you see a huge, rapidly growing consumer society that in many ways looks much like our own. I know this is an oversimplification. I know that boomtowns such as Beijing, Shanghai and others near the coast do not reflect conditions in the less-developed hinterlands.

But I also know that the U.S. and Chinese economies will be the two largest in the world through much of this century — and that they are so codependent that talk of one country running all over the other is nonsensical.
...
But this ignores the big picture. Yes, China is governed — in an authoritarian, repressive, at times shockingly brutal manner — by a regime that calls itself communist. But communism self-immolated two decades ago. Walk down any commercial street in Beijing and you see storefronts, venders and hawkers selling anything under the sun. Communism is no longer a system in China. It’s just a brand name that officials haven’t figured out how to ditch.

I’m aware, of course, of the shameful human rights violations that the Chinese government commits every day — and of the government’s selfish, corrupt insistence on maintaining a monopoly of power. These atrocities can never be forgotten.

I think this is what happens when you get a "commercial class" of people, as Robinson clearly is, equating materialistic success elsewhere as being "the same" as the way our American society was built here at home. The elites identify with the elites, and look past the oppression and persecution of minorities. Same as it ever was...

(I identify Robinson as a "black" columnist here, not necessarily because you'd expect more nuanced thinking from a minority class, but how interesting it is that a bit of nouveau wealth, coupled with all the Western goodies your money can, can so simply ignore history or discount the sufferings of others who serve the growing regime.)

Rubin rightly rips him:

I asked Daniel Blumenthal, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, for his opinion. (He has spoken regularly with Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign about Asia but was speaking here purely for himself.) He was a bit dumbfounded by the column. He said that he would “suggest a visit by Robinson to the many women in China who have been forced to abort their second child thanks to the One Child Policy.” Blumenthal was just getting warmed up: “Or perhaps an orphanage where he can find untold numbers of abandoned baby girls. How about Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in his jail cell? Or some Tibetan monks who have taken to burning themselves to protest religious repression. If he does have time to leave Beijing he can visit some of the villages where people’s homes have been taken from them without compensation to make way for some pet project of a favored Communist Party crony.”

A former Bush administration official, now at a think-tank specializing in China, was nonplussed, e-mailing me: “The bit about communism ‘self-immolating,’ in addition to not being factual, is in unbelievably bad taste when Tibetan monks actually are self-immolating under very communist, Cultural Revolution-style, Chinese rule in Tibet. Beyond tacky.”

Robinson does, in cursory fashion, recognize “the shameful human rights violations that the Chinese government commits every day — and of the government’s selfish, corrupt insistence on maintaining a monopoly of power.” So maybe China isn’t much like the U.S. after all? A Starbucks doesn’t make you pro-Western or just like America. It says nothing about your political system, to be honest. (It reminds me of the euphoria that greeted each new Soviet dictator. He drinks Scotch — just like us!)
...
Actually, China’s rulers very much cling quite cynically to their ideology, which it uses, as all totalitarian ideologues do, to crush dissent, brutalize its people and murder minorities. It’s very appropriate to hope for such a system’s decline, just as Ronald Reagan rooted for the rotting, corrupt Communist Soviet government to fall. But not to worry, Robinson is confident “the burgeoning middle class will find a way to cast off these shackles.” He wants us to cheer that, and we should. But cheering suggests that we do little or nothing about the regime itself. Blumenthal argues, “Yes, we should cheer the reformers on. Maybe Robinson can come home and visit with Obama. He can tell him to meet with just one of these dissidents and reformers. To my knowledge, our president has not yet done so.”

Perry and Mitt Romney, whom Robinson also dismisses as a hothead, see what Robinson does not: oppression, military aggression and economic criminality (especially with regard to theft of intellectual property). Blumenthal reminds us, “China has undertaken the largest military build-up since the end of the Cold War. Yet no nation threatens China. President Obama has responded by cutting our defense forces across the board, and make no mistake, our Pacific forces will be profoundly affected. Robinson should visit Taiwan, Japan, Australia, India, the Philippines. All have been intimidated by the Chinese military. They are the ones calling for a tougher China policy. Australia pushed Obama to place Marines in Darwin. They are frightened, as they should be. China’s military grows and we retreat.” He adds: “Obama is now pounding his chest with his ‘we are back in Asia’ rhetoric, but there is much less firepower to back up our supposed ‘return.’ ”

I hope Robinson’s column was the result of jet lag, and not the first in a series of Tom Friedman-like apologies for the brutal regime. I look forward to his accounts of meetings with monks, Christian minorities, mourning mothers, human rights activists and the rest.

Also, isn't it amazing how often somebody who can write, and is given an expenses-paid trip and national platform, succumbs so easily to thinking they have an immediate "expertise" on the topic matter that others have spent their careers investigating and learning about, so quickly dismissed by the Robinson's of the world, who slip in, assume they know better, and spout off too quickly?

Really, it is a shame what's happened to the independence of the Fourth Estate, a crucial "check" in true democracies. Don't suppose they've had that, or have need of that, in a Communist country like China though.

I sure hope, despite our collective addiction to materialistic things for their own status sake, America doesn't begin to emulate China, swapping government "choices" in formerly private areas like health or family rearing, for the guaranteed rights of individuals to freely choose otherwise, if they can pay their own way for said choices.

Whoops ... wait a minute ... we're already getting there now, no?, as the gambles some took didn't pay off, and we're all now asked to pony up and "be in this for the whole" to ensure our collective survival.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Learning the wrong lessons, we are.

Santa Got Hisself Stuck!

2011-11-30T11:02:00.004-06:00

File this under, Keep It Simple Stupid.
The brilliant idea to have Santa rappel down into the waiting crowd quickly goes wrong at a mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida...

Santa's a fat, jolly man who don't do extreme sports, dontchaknow??

(Really, the link is well worth clicking ... I predict viral video here: "Go Santa! C'mon, Santa, you can do it!! Hilarious -- Dangling Santa! -- and ... unscripted.)

Kaus Slams Pseudo-Journolist Weigel.

2011-11-30T10:23:00.003-06:00

Remember Dave "I dance funny" Weigel? The potty mouth (whom I'm loathe to admit, graduated from Medill) who played at being neutral, but was called out in his "conservative journalist" game when he was caught sneering and namecalling his conservative sources?

What a fisking he's been given:

Sneer Will Find a Way: Note to Dave Weigel, who found a way to turn Thomas B. Edsall’s clarifying post on Obama’s strategy into a constituency-pleasing sneer at Fox News: 1) It’s “Edsall,” not “Edsell;” 2) The Ruy Teixeira essay Edsall commented on was co-authored by John Halpin, not by John Judis; 3) It’s “Teixeira” Not “Texiera;” 4) Fox’s headline, “NYT: Obama Campaign Plans to Abandon White Working Class” is a completely fair summary of Edsall’s thesis, which (as Weigel himself notes) is that ”preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.” It’s the New York Times’ headline (“The Future of the Obama Coalition”) that’s scandalously boring. 5) Teixeira and Halpin’s point isn’t just that Obama will be “continuing to lose voters who have been voting Republican since 1966″–voters he only got 40% of in 2008. It’s that Obama should be planning to make up for unprecedented presidential-year losses among these less educated whites–in Edsall’s words, a “repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63- 33.” That’s not a non-story, as both right-wing Fox and left-wing Talking Points Memo understood. 6) Is it really true that Obama “isn’t switching policies in or out of a playbook because whites won’t vote for him,” as Weigel confidently asserts? Arguably, for example, Obama might have not delayed a decision on the jobs-producing Keystone XL Pipeline if he were as eager to mobilize a base of working class whites as a base of elite environmentalists. And he almost certainly would pursue an altered immigration policy–focusing more on protecting jobs from ~~illegal~~ ~~undocumented~~ unauthorized immigrant competition and less on suing states (like Arizona and Alabama) that have passed tough enforcement measures. …

Cmon Davey boy, get back to the basics? Accuracy first ... little things, getting the names/spellings right, accurate headlines, proper source attribution. Then and only then, you can insert your juvenile opinions (Beavis and Butthead: Heh... heh, heh), your political "expertise" gleaned from things secretly learned by only the Journolisters, things they never taught ya at school, I'm sure...

Shame more people read Friedman than Bernstein.

2011-11-30T09:36:00.007-06:00

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy (a law blog primarily populated by Jewish law professors discussing primarily legal issues), David Bernstein has some wise words today:

Thugs in Jerusalem
David Bernstein • November 30, 2011 8:44 am

Jerusalem Post [no link provided]:
After 20 months of attacks and a quarter million shekels in damage, a religious bookstore in the ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem decided on Monday to accede to the demands of extremists responsible for the violence.

Under the terms of the compromise, Ohr Hachaim/Manny’s put up a large sign requesting that all customers dress modestly. A mashgiach, who checks the store’s inventory to make sure there are no controversial books, will go over the books in the coming week and require that some books be removed from the shelves, though they will not be permitted to remove any English books, said Marlene Samuels, one of the store’s managers.

A haredi group called Sikrikim deemed the store as “promoting immodesty,” and since Manny’s opened in March 2010, the group has smashed its windows more than a dozen times, glued its locks shut, thrown tar and fish oil at the store and dumped bags of human excrement inside. The owners were also personally threatened multiple times.

One of the group’s leaders has been arrested, which apparently allowed the bookstore owners to reach a “compromise” than fell short of acceding to all of the extremists’ demands. Nevertheless, this strikes me as a result an abdication of responsibility by Israeli authorities. The owners had to pay for their own security guards. How about a police patrol protecting the store? The leader was arrested, great. But what about all the lower-level thugs who perpetrated the vandalism and threats? The Israeli government has long permitted Haredi extremists to be above the law, permitting them enforce “modesty” rules on public streets via violence and threats, illegally segregating the sexes on public buses, tolerating violent demonstrations against construction projects allegedly taking place on ancient cemeteries, and so on. Not to mention the greatest malfeasance of all, allowing Haredi extremists to take control of domestic relations law. With the Haredi population increasing exponentially, the government needs to stand up for liberalism while it still can.

We need more reporting on extremists, particularly religious extremists. Calling out those on your own team is essential to reform.

Here's a pretty fair comment on Friedman's latest column too (see blogpost below):

Binyamin Netanyahu is a political evangelist who has drunk a little too much of his own whiskey. He believes that you can establish an official state religion, as do many Islamists, and that this will solve all of one's governing problems.

The beauty of the founding of America was that its leaders started out accepting a dozen different Protestant sects of Christianity and thereby established religion as a protected class. They did this to escape what was going on in Europe at the time which was warfare between the different sects in which each believed they had the right version of the gospel and church organization. Protestantism, recall, was a religious revolution against the "Papists." Catholicism went through the same kinds of civil wars during its first 500 or 600 years while the "Real Gospels" and the church hierarchy were decided upon and cemented.

Ultimately the Islamists and the Jews have to learn to live side-by-side and develop constitutions that establish religion as a protected class too.

There are no sustainable shortcuts here.

You have to wonder though... with our bestest colonial-ally bud Great Britain recently experiencing in Tehran a lesser version of our own 1979 weakness and hostage period, with our young people stating we should "take allies' interests into account even if it means making compromises" (like bankrupting our domestic game here at home? abandoning the American principles of democracy and "all men are created equal in the eyes of the law/Lord"?)... you have to wonder whether thinking people of all races and creeds will go along with whatever killing actions our multinational corporations, and their own supporting political class (of both parties here in America) deem "necessary" to protect our "allies" interests.

I hope we all wake up soon, reject the religious/traditional extremists where ever they might be found, and instead of trying to game the system as it currently is, honestly work to provide a more balanced playing field for all those healthy competitors who still have something to contribute.

I know, I know ... dare to dream even in these seemingly nightmare (kill! kill! kill!) days of pursuing peace...

I guess somewhere along the way...
He must have let us all our to play...
Turned his back, and all G-d's children...
crept out the back door.

~ George Michael, Prayin' for Time, off the Listen Without Prejudice album.

Too Late, Tom.

2011-11-29T21:45:00.001-06:00

Friedman worries that Israel might soon regret its actions, "wake up one day and discover that, in response to the messy and turbulent Arab democratic awakening, the Jewish state sacrificed its own democratic character."

I think they've already blown well past that point, extinguished the beacon on teh hill idea, what with the indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians, the use of white phosphorus shells over densely populated Gaza, and the "Jews Drive Here/Non Jews Drive Here" segregated road system...

They just haven't awoken to real reality yet. "Call It Sleep" as the better writer Roth would have put it...

Remember, those Arab peoples are going to have a lot more say in how they are ruled and with whom they have peace. In that context, Israel will be so much better off if it is seen as strengthening responsible and democratic Palestinian leaders.

This is such a delicate moment. It requires wise, farsighted Israeli leadership. The Arab awakening is coinciding with the last hopes for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli rightists will be tempted to do nothing, to insist the time is not right for risk-taking — and never will be — so Israel needs to occupy the West Bank and its Palestinians forever. That could be the greatest danger of all for Israel: to wake up one day and discover that, in response to the messy and turbulent Arab democratic awakening, the Jewish state sacrificed its own democratic character.

Will Urban Meyer Stick it Out at the OSU?

2011-11-29T21:18:00.002-06:00

Sportswriter Greg Stoda of the PB Post says, "Don't Bet on It":

The smart money says Urban Meyer will quit on Ohio State, too.

And if he does fulfill the terms of the six-year deal he just signed to become the Buckeyes' coach? The same smart money says Meyer never will match the success he had at Florida with two national titles in six seasons.

The question no longer is whether Meyer punked the Gators - he absolutely did - when he bolted after last season and then popped up at Ohio State less than 11 months later. All that talk about his health concerns and desire to spend more time with family, while true, provided convenient cover. He was an arrogant man expediting his own agenda.

Meyer jilted Florida to escape a deepening slump and avail himself of whatever possibility might arise.
...
The team Meyer inherited at Florida from Ron Zook for the 2005 season was much better than the one he'll inherit at Ohio State. Meyer won his first national championship in his second Florida season with Zook recruits at the team's core. That's not how it's going to go so immediately for the Buckeyes, who'll need Meyer to be at his recruiting best if they are to regain powerhouse status out of the wreckage of this season.

Meyer managed three 13-1 seasons with the Gators, but said he burned out in the process. There were esophageal spasms and headaches and worries about a wife and children having to make too many concessions to his work. He contemplated leaving Florida a year before he actually did, took an ill-shaped leave of absence and kept the job.
...
It seems a leap of faith - not to mention the risk of spending $4 million per year even before bonus clauses kick in - for Ohio State to believe Meyer is refreshed enough to do heavy lifting for six years.
...
Bulletin: The Gators gave Meyer every opportunity to undertake a journey of such self-discovery when they granted him the leave. Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley, who cultivated a close friendship with Meyer, ought to feel insulted.

What? Meyer had an ... epiphany?

Umm, not really.

"I think, 'Go hard.' I mean, like, relentless," Meyer said.

That's quite a conundrum. Meyer could be pinched if professional ambition comes at the cost of personal angst, or if personal satisfaction comes at the cost of professional success. Is compromise even possible in such circumstance? And at a place where the college football cauldron burns as blazingly hot as it does at Ohio State and where there suddenly is so much work to do?

The 47-year-old Meyer the Buckeyes are getting isn't the same youngish firebrand the Gators got when they hired him out of Utah seven years ago, and the proof is irrefutable. Meyer decided he wouldn't or couldn't fix the mess Florida was in of his own doing after the 2010 season, so he walked away. Will Muschamp was said to be appalled at the drop in Gators' stock upon succeeding Meyer, and called this season's 6-6 team "soft" in a particularly cutting recent evaluation.

Now, it appears that Meyer's task at Ohio State will be more difficult than the one he first undertook at Florida despite a returning Buckeyes quarterback in Braxton Miller who looks plenty capable of triggering the kind of high-powered offense his new coach prefers.

Sure, it'll probably be easier for Meyer to win a title in the Big Ten than it ever was in the Southeastern Conference. But the reward for SEC supremacy is more often a chance to win a national crown.

It won't take long for the Buckeye crowd to be screaming for Meyer to produce what he produced at Florida.

Is he committed enough to do so?

The smart money says no.

Oh, I think the way Meyer measures, he's already won. (Show ... Me ... the MONEY !) Pity the family thing, though.

Maureen's Back ... Talking Smack 'bout Newt.

2011-11-29T20:44:00.003-06:00

Remember though: she got to observe Gingrich in action his first time around in Washington political circles, so she obviously has some observable experience here:

In many ways, Newt is the perfect man.

He knows how to buy good jewelry. He puts his wife ahead of his campaign. He’s so in touch with his feelings that he would rather close the entire federal government than keep his emotions bottled up. He’s confident enough to include a steamy sex scene in a novel. He understands that Paul Revere was warning about the British.

Mitt Romney is a phony with gobs of hair gel. Newt Gingrich is a phony with gobs of historical grandiosity.
...
Franker than ever as he announced plans to retire from Congress, Barney Frank told Abby Goodnough in The Times that Gingrich was “the single biggest factor” in destroying a Washington culture where the two parties respected each other’s differing views yet still worked together.

Newt is the progenitor of the modern politics of personal destruction.

“He got to Congress in ’78 and said, ‘We the Republicans are not going to be able to take over unless we demonize the Democrats,’ ” Frank said.

In the fiction he writes with William R. Forstchen, Gingrich specializes in alternative histories. What if America hadn’t gone to war with Germany in World War II? What if Gen. Robert E. Lee had won Gettysburg?

The Republican also weaves an alternative history of his own life, where he is saving civilization rather than ripping up the fabric of Congress, where he improves the moral climate of America rather than pollutes it.

Romney is a mundane opportunist who reverses himself on core issues. Gingrich is a megalomaniacal opportunist who brazenly indulges in the same sins that he rails about to tear down political rivals.
...
Gingrich boasts that he’s full of fresh ideas, but it always seems to essentially be the same old one: Let’s turn the clock back to the ’50s. Just as Newt, who dodged service in Vietnam, once cast the Clintons as hippie “McGovernicks,” now he limns the Occupy Wall Street protesters as hippies who need to take a bath and get a job.

Maybe the ideal man to fix Washington’s dysfunction is the one who made it dysfunctional. He broke it so he should own it. And Newt has the best reason to long for the presidency: He’d never be banished to the back of Air Force One again.

Kinda makes that big "Mormon issue thing" pale by comparison, no?

Estrich weighs in as well.

2011-11-29T19:37:00.002-06:00

She's obviously an Obama supporter, who made the belated switch from professionally supporting Hillary Clinton (flop flop flippety flopp flopp), and knows a trick or two about primary positioning, it seems:

Nobody is whispering in my ear, but speaking for myself, between Romney and Newt Gingrich, Democrats have far more to fear from Romney. Gingrich's hard-core conservatism helps him a lot more in January and February than it does in November. Maybe it's just a wonderful coincidence, but anyone paying attention to campaign news this week — and by anyone, I mean anyone planning to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses — will be seeing footage of the "pro-choice" Romney that they will not like.

The president's supporters are doing Newt's work for him. Now why would they do that? To win swing voters 11 months from now? Call me a cynic, but I don't think so. Go, Newt.

If you want to wallow in political paralyzation... Vote Gingrich!

2011-11-29T19:16:00.008-06:00

Afterall, if you're old enough to recall the results* of the "Contract On/With America" (prolly Ezzie was still being diapered), you know where this "government shutdown" phase was invented.

I suspect, after one more year wallowing in this mess, with no effective leadership coming out of DC, right-thinking people will overwhelmingly reject what Gingrich stands for...

And by then, surely some of those who honestly want to know, will begin to take Mitt Romney at his word: "Smaller, Simpler, Smarter ... Believe in America."

It will surely be a refreshing change of pace for those currently unsatisfied with the aging status quo...

-----------------------

* Wiki has the basic facts:

When the previous fiscal year ended on September 30, 1995, the president and the Republican-controlled Congress had not passed a budget. A majority of Congress members and the House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, had promised to slow the rate of government spending; however, this conflicted with the president's objectives for education, the environment, Medicare, and public health. According to Clinton's autobiography, their differences resulted from differing estimates of economic growth, medical inflation, and anticipated revenues.

When Clinton refused to cut the budget in the way Republicans wanted, Gingrich threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit, which would have caused the United States Treasury to suspend funding other portions of the government to avoid putting the country in default.

Gingrich and the incoming Republican majority's promise to slow the rate of government spending conflicted with the president's agenda for Medicare, education, the environment and public health, leading to a temporary shutdown of the U.S. federal government
...
On November 14, major portions of the federal government suspended operations.[5] The Clinton administration later released figures detailing the costs of the shutdown, which included payments of approximately $400 million to furloughed federal employees who did not report to work.

The first budget shutdown concluded with Congress enacting a temporary spending bill, but the underlying disagreement between Gingrich and Clinton was not resolved, leading to the second shutdown.

A 2010 Congressional Research Service report summarized other details of the 1995-1996 government shutdowns, indicating the shutdown impacted all sectors of the economy. Health and welfare services for military veterans were curtailed; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped disease surveillance; new clinical research patients were not accepted at the National Institutes of Health; and toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites was halted. Other impacts included: the closure of 368 National Park sites resulted in the loss of some seven million visitors; 200,000 applications for passports and 20,000 to 30,000 applications for visas by foreigners went unprocessed each day; U.S. tourism and airline industries incurred millions of dollars in losses; more than 20% of federal contracts, representing $3.7 billion in spending, were affected adversely.

Clinton's approval rating fell significantly during the shutdown. According to media commentators, this indicated that the general public blamed the president for the government shutdown. However, once it had ended his approval ratings rose to their highest since his election.

During the crisis, Gingrich made a complaint at a press breakfast that, during a flight to and from Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Israel, Clinton had not taken the opportunity to talk about the budget and Gingrich had been directed to leave the plane via the rear door. The perception arose that the Republican stance on the budget was partly due to this "snub" by Clinton and media coverage reflected this perception, including an editorial cartoon which showed Gingrich having a temper tantrum. Opposing politicians used this opportunity to attack Gingrich's motives for the budget standoff. Later, the polls suggested that the event damaged Gingrich politically and he referred to his comments as the "single most avoidable mistake" as Speaker.

The shutdown also influenced the 1996 presidential election. Bob Dole, the Senate Majority Leader, was running for president in 1996. Because of his need to campaign, Dole wanted to solve the budget crisis in January 1996 despite the willingness of other Republicans to continue the shutdown unless their demands were met. In particular, as Gingrich and Dole had been seen as potential rivals for the 1996 presidential nomination, they had a tense working relationship. The shutdown has also been cited as having a role in Clinton's successful re-election in 1996

Let's agree that none of us wants to return to those ugly, politically parazlyzed days? Bad enough as it already is... Let's not choose to Double Down, eh?

Parker picks up the baton...

2011-11-29T18:42:00.001-06:00

... and runs with it:

Titled “Mitt v. Mitt: The story of two men trapped in one body,” the ad traces the many, now-familiar “flip-flops” of Romney’s political career, including pro-choice to pro-life and his disapproval of “Obamacare,” which, as the president never tires of pointing out, was modeled on “Romneycare.”
...
Watching the ad closely, you see not only a changing position but also a changing Romney, from a youngish man with black hair to an older model with graying hair. Might the man have matured?

This is not to suggest that Romney hasn’t changed his mind. There is a record. Then again, who but the most-barnacled ideologue hasn’t had a change of heart given new information (abortion), experience (Romneycare) or circumstances (a national election vs. a state one)? Ironically, Romney has become a more conservative candidate because of his shifts, while the narrative that he is merely politically expedient rather than principled seems to be a contest between the pot and the kettle. Mirror, mirror.
...
Whether one agrees with ... Romney’s conclusions, this was at least a flip-flop of a higher order. Would that all our politics were so painstakingly crafted.

Good job, Kathy! Keep this up, and the "flip flopping" meme might just lose steam before it's trotted out again this election cycle as some kind of litmus test.

Let's stick with simply measuring by the results, shall we? If we can properly direct them, the media foot soldiers like Parker here might be able to stay focused on the issues of importance in the year's worth of columns to come.

Here's to Hope, eh?

"This lake-studded swath of Northern Wisconsin."

2011-11-29T18:06:00.006-06:00

MMmmmm, mmmm, mmmm....
Getting past the "guns and Gods" bitter language spewed in SanFran, liberals at the NYT seek better understanding, apparently, of what white people in Wisconsin like*.

And as they bravely note in the headline, "In Wisconsin, Supper Clubs Open to All."

What -- do they still turn paying people away at the NYC and DC finer dining establishments? Do tell...

Personally, I think the story might have benefitted though had the editors axed all personal references and made it more about the Wisconsin people and places ... and less about the author, his wife and daughter. Enough already with the personal stories, people? Can't you save that stuff -- my daughter's first cheese curd!! How adorable!! -- for the private family blogs?

My visit to the Al-Gen was the culmination — or nearly so — of a three-day road trip I’d embarked on with my wife, Michele, through a hundred-odd miles** of northern Wisconsin in search of these living vestiges of the pre-Interstate era.
...
Growing up in Chicago, I spent my summers in Wisconsin, weaned on the iceberg salads, cold relish trays, char-broiled steaks and Friday-night perch dinners that constitute the bill of fare at a typical supper club. I fell in love with these restaurants long before I’d ordered my first cocktail, and for good reason: the food was always tasty — supper clubs were doing custom-cut dry-aged steaks long before the practice became an urban fetish — and the vibe was always pure Wisconsin gemütlichkeit, leavened by a lively mix of locals and vacationing families.
...
To this day a supper club meal remains the common touchstone for me and my far-flung siblings whenever we pay a visit to my parents in Wisconsin. I actually choked up when my daughter, now 4, tried her first fried cheese curd (a classic Wisconsin appetizer) at the Sister Bay Bowl, a supper club in Door County that my family has been going to for 35 years.
...
After our meal, at Mr. Swearingen’s suggestion, Michele and I drove north on Route 17 to a supper club called the White Stag Inn to end the evening with an ice cream cocktail, an after-dinner tradition in Wisconsin that merges dessert with digestif.
...
Our ice cream drinks — a brandy Alexander for me and a grasshopper for Michele — came in coupe glasses and were thicker than milkshakes.

Perhaps rather than, "Supper Clubs Open to All" a better title might have been, "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things..." (when the wait staff... brings a drink that stings... to the back of my throat, I throw down an ice-cream float!)

Same kinda misty nostalgia, same kinda "these folks really be living in the past!" mentality... These are a few of my fav-o-rite things!

------------------------

* heavy on the alcohol over-emphasis, of course. We got stereotypes to keep up, people!

** Betcha he and Michele wrote off, at 50 cents a subsidized mile, the recent family holiday vacation with this story. Dawg! (or, You can take the boy out of Chicago...)

(... but you can't take the Chicago out of the boy! Don't let that cheese curds kidstuff fool ya. ;-)

Oh, and Pay No Attention ...

2011-11-29T11:46:00.001-06:00

to that Herman Cain sexual sideshow.

Eyes on the ball now voters, don't be lazily distracted by personal fluff, stick to the substance and nevermind the media's need to fill 11 upcoming months with ... *all breathless now* irrelevant news you don't choose!