As long as the Daily Show team keeps producing entertainment like this, John Stewart will have a job for decades to come:
A Tale of Two Rices
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Category Archives: Politics
Mr. President is Not Impressed
From the description on Flickr:
President Barack Obama jokingly mimics U.S. Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney's "not impressed" look while greeting members of the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics teams in the Oval Office, Nov. 15, 2012. Steve Penny, USA Gymnastics President, and Savannah Vinsant laugh at left. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Election 2012: Four Worthy Men, Justice and Mercy
Here's a fantastic opinion piece from the Roanoke Times that is perfect reading for this day that is exactly one week before the big election:
Like many Americans — and despite the fact that it sometimes makes me squirm — I have watched all the debates. Chances are that you probably haven't, that is if the pollsters who describe you are right in saying that you haven't decided because you really don't feel strongly for or against either candidate.
That worries me a bit, because I talk to so few people who can, with conviction, say: Two dedicated Americans are hoping to become the next president. Both are devoted husbands and fathers. Both have spent a good amount of time in public service. Both have running mates with a combination of experience and skill that will stand our nation in good stead should whoever becomes the president be somehow incapacitated. Both have strong faith in a higher being and concern for their fellow Americans — and for those in the world not fortunate enough to be American.
Should we not all be grateful that, despite a Congress that seems to be able to do little other than argue and say no, four such able individuals have been willing to step up to the plate?
That's some pretty good stuff, but the best part to me is this:
But more than that, I hope that we who go to the polls will recognize that none of us earned the freedoms and opportunities that are ours. Our vote should be for the candidate we believe will assure that every American, no matter how dicey his or her beginning, will still have a chance.
Will some take undue advantage of the programs that offer those opportunities? Of course. Is that fair? No. I learned a very important lesson, though, from a man who grew up one of 12 children within the kind of poverty that dictated he quite literally had no shoes to wear until he went to school. "I hope," he said, "that God is just. But I pray that He is merciful."
That man was my father. Today, were he alive, I really am not sure for whom he would vote.
Of course I think this is the best part because I'm biased. The author of the piece is my mother, and the wise man of whom she speaks was my grandfather. I urge you to read the rest, not because it was written by my mother, but because she makes some great points. You don't even have to agree with her politics – her points are still worthy of thought.
Social Media Political Derangement Syndrome
Every four years we have to suffer through a Presidential campaign, but in the era of social media the agony has truly been heightened to an almost unbearable level. Not only do we have to listen to candidates and pundits, now we have to bear our (supposed) friends sharing their own, often wharped, views about the various candidates and their supporters. I have to admit I kind of snapped this morning and wrote this on Facebook:
An interpretation of modern American politics based on extensive reading of my friends' Facebook and Twitter posts – in four paragraphs:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Teach a Republican to fish and he hires all the non-union fishermen, pays them minimum wage, decimates the fishery, ships the entire catch to the Cayman Islands and has them stored in a secret freezer. He keeps a small portion in the states to live off of day-to-day and pays capital gains on it. Fires all the fishermen and figures out a way to get more fish in China. Blame the lack of fish in American waters on the Godless Democrats' turning us into a non-Christian nation and hope that no one has actually read the Bill of Rights.
Teach a Democrat to fish and he establishes a Department of Fishing, writes 3,425 pages of regulations, hires all the fishermen, pays them so-so wages but gives them killer pensions, accidentally decimates the fishery and taxes the cattlemen to help pay for the clean up. When they get mad he starts talking about rising tides lifting all boats, but gets distracted and starts blaming the Republicans for global warming.
The Green Party candidate doesn't eat fish so he fries up some tofu and calls the Democrat and Republican mean names.
Admittedly it's not very witty, nor very inciteful, but it made me feel better. Sure, I could turn off social media, but then I'd lose out on this unprecedented opportunity to learn exactly how wharped many of my "friends" are.
Credit Where Credit is Due
Remember "It's the economy stupid?" The first President Bush certainly does, because that phrase famously summed up the soon-to-be President Clinton's campaign focus in beating him. Here's the thing – Clinton ended up getting too much credit for the economic recovery that occurred during his first term, and Bush-the-first didn't get enough credit for making the tough and politically disastrous policy decisions that kick started the recovery in the first place.
Why bring that up now? Because it's interesting to see how President Obama is blamed for things that he literally has no control over, like high gas prices, but gets no credit for things he had a direct hand in, like an improving economy. He is also being criticized for budget deficits that were largely made necessary by the policy decisions of his predecessor, President Bush-the-second. Could Obama have made policy choices that kept the deficit from growing as much as it did in his first term? Sure, but many economists think that would have been much worse for the economic recovery we're seeing. In fact some argue that his policies weren't aggressive enough – that larger short-term deficits might have led to a faster, steeper economic recovery.
What further complicates the issue in this election cycle is that President Obama came into office as the US economy was in an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime freefall. In the same way that it's difficult to prove a negative, it's also difficult for a sitting President prove that the economy could have been in worse shape if his policies had been different. Quite frankly it's easier for a challenger to say that things could/should have been much better and that it's the President's fault that they aren't; he literally doesn't have to prove it since it's a matter of opinion. That's how Clinton took out Bush Sr. and that's how Romney is trying to take out Obama.
It remains to be seen if the recent economic improvement will be enough to convince voters that Obama is worth keeping around. If it's not, Romney will inheret a growing economy and unless he really screws up he'll be given far more credit for it than he deserves.
Dilbert on the Debate
Some gems from Scott Adams' review of the first 2012 Presidential debate:
I think Romney has a hypnotist for an advisor, or at least someone skilled in the dark arts of psychology and influence. I just watched him repeatedly lie to me and came away thinking he'd be a good choice for managing the economy. I'm not saying he actually would be a good choice, but he did something impressive: He made me think he wouldn't cut taxes at the same time he told his base he would. As a trained hypnotist myself, I rank his debate performance as breathtakingly brilliant. (Seriously.)
Meanwhile, President Obama was learning the hard way that the worst time to have anniversary sex is right before a debate. He looked a bit too relaxed. I think he should have lit a cigarette, taken a long puff, exhaled, and told the crowd that Romney would do for the country what the President just did for the First Lady. That would be totally bad ass. Then he could toss in a zinger about how awesome the sex was right after killing Bin Laden. I think we all know that evening was ear muff time for the Secret Service.
Jim Lehrer, who apparently died several months ago, moderated the debate. The pundits have been harsh on him today. But who else do you hire for the first debate? Do you hire someone who works for a Republican news network or someone from a Democrat news networks? Apparently the debate producers scoured the United States and decided that the only non-partisan left was a cadaver.
So glad I didn't watch.
The Battle for the Southern, White, Evangelical, Working Class Vote
Reuters has an interesting article about the challenges Romney and Obama face with lower income whites in the south. Let's just say that being rich and Mormon complicates things for Romney:
Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled over the past several months shows that, across the Bible Belt, 38 percent of these voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is "very wealthy" than one who isn't. This is well above the 20 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for an African-American…
According to Reuters/Ipsos polling data, however, 35 percent of voters overall, and the same proportion of lower- and middle-income white Bible Belt voters, say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is Mormon.
Even the fact that a (rather shocking) number of Republicans believe President Obama to be a Muslim (the horrors!) is somewhat offset by Romney being a Mormon:
In a survey conducted this summer by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, almost a third of Republicans said they believe Obama is Muslim, compared with 16 percent of independents and 8 percent of Democrats. The falsehood is a frequent theme of conservative talk radio.
Still, the challenge for the GOP is to ensure that white evangelicals, most of whom voted for other candidates in the primary, are sufficiently enthusiastic about Romney to make it to the polls…
In 2008, Parrish was a fan of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who was defeated in the GOP primary. She counts him as a Facebook friend. She has yet to "friend" Romney, although she plans to vote for him.
"I'm not extremely excited," she confessed. "I'd prefer not to have a Mormon."
Nonetheless, she added, "Romney seems to align himself with conservative values."
Long story short, what would normally have been a slam dunk demographic for a Republican in 2012 ain't necessarily so. The Republicans certainly did themselves no favor by nominating a rich Mormon with the charisma of stale Wonder Bread.
Charlotte During DNC Sounds Like the Triad During Furniture Market
In the months before moving with my family to Lewisville, NC in 2004 I decided to take a couple of road trips down from Washington to check out the business environment in the Piedmont Triad. I'd never had trouble getting a room before so I didn't think to make a reservation, which was a huge mistake the time I made the trip the same week that the Furniture Market was in full swing in High Point. Let's just say I ended up staying in a motel where I suspect I was the only person who didn't pay by the hour.
Apparently finding a room in Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention is a similar experience:
All these political reporters have been complaining about the boring staged political conventions for weeks, but when presented with the opportunity to talk to a real live victim of the "Obama economy" — a hooker — they run away screaming. The National Review's John Fund explains that one of their political reporters was forced to request a hotel change after the Democratic National Convention assigned the reporter to a seedy Charlotte hotel that might have had a hooker working in the parking lot. Fund quotes his colleague anonymously:
The Knights Inn was the worst hotel I have ever seen, and I’ve stayed in many bad motels in my life. Two guys were dealing drugs in the room next to me, and a prostitute was working out of the parking lot. And this was in the early afternoon. The room itself was dirty, full of other people’s stuff, etc.
I have never requested a hotel change in 3 years at NR. This was the first time I felt absolutely compelled.
We Can’t Handle the Truth
Here's a tasty little tidbit from a post titled Why Fact Checkers Fail:
So here's what we did — what I did — and what others have certainly done as well: I downplayed Republican dishonesty while judging Democratic failings with an unfairly harsh bias. I applied this to assignments, to the tone and presentation of stories, and to the various gimmicks we invented to try to evaluate claims. The results didn't reflect the true scale of the dishonesty gap, but they at least demonstrated that a gap existed. At least, they had the potential to demonstrate the gap, but only to very careful readers with a knack for drawing subtle inference. Because we could never come out and tell you what we all knew in the newsroom: Yes, "all politicians lie" (a cynical dodge if ever there was one), but the modern Republican Party is based on a set of counter-factual and faith-based beliefs, and has been for years. Not only has that foundation consistently put the party on the wrong side of fact-checkers, it has led us to where we stand today, with Mitt Romney running a campaign that has abandoned even the pretense of fact.
There has to be some middle ground between partisan media hacks and spineless media hacks but it seems to be unpopulated at the moment.
How Will Amendment One Affect Primary Voting?
If you live in North Carolina and aren't living in utter seclusion, you're aware that the "Marriage Amendment" is on the ballot in today's primary. Normally a primary held after the presidential nominees have alreay been determined would draw only the hard core party faithful, but because of the amendment there's been an extraordinary amount of attention paid to this year's primary and it will be interesting to see how that affects the results.
Some questions to ponder:
- In a state where 25% of the voters are independent how many of those unaffiliated voters will be drawn to the primaries because of the amendment?
- Democrats make up 43%, and Republicans 31%, of registered voters. If independents decide to participate more heavily in the Republican primaries will they affect the outcome of some close races for NC Senate/House, city councils, county commissions, etc.?
- With either the Democratic or Republican primaries will the participation of independents skew the votes towards more centrist candidates?
- If the independents participate more heavily in the Republican primary they will likely have a greater impact since there's a smaller pool of Republican voters. Assuming the independents will lean more towards the center will their participation hurt the more conservative candidates? If so, will the conservative Republicans' strategy of putting the Amendment on the primary ballot end up being viewed as a mistake in hindsight, even if it passes?
The 2008 primary was dramatic on the Democratic ticket because the presidential nomination was still up in the air at the time, but this year's primaries are dramatic all the way around due to the amendment. The debate about the direct consequences of the amendment has been well documented, but there hasn't been much exploration of the potential collateral damage the amendment might incur politically, and it will be fascinating to see how it shakes out.
Befuddled 