October Surprise, Anyone?

 

I don't think this is what Obama had planned to lay in front of Mitt Romney, but I'm thinking he'll accept the gift graciously.

 

Two items:

 

1) Chris Stevens, US ambassador to Libya, killed in Benghazi attack

The US ambassador in Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack after the diplomat's car was targeted in the eastern city of Benghazi, it was confirmed on Wednesday.

A statement from President Obama "condemned the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens".

[...] The assault followed a protest in neighbouring Egypt where demonstrates scaled the walls of the US embassy, tore down the US flag, and burned it during a protest over the same film which they said insulted the prophet Muhammad.

2) Obama Calls Netanyahu on Iran Nuclear Threat Amid Tensions

The two leaders spoke by phone last night for an hour, the White House said. While providing no further details, the White House said in a statement that Obama and Netanyahu “reaffirmed that they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Netanyahu declared earlier yesterday that the Obama administration has no “moral right” to keep Israel from attacking as long as the U.S. doesn’t set its own “red lines” for Iran. His remarks reflect differences within his government about an Israeli attack on Iran and a bid to pressure Obama less than two months before the U.S. election. The call came after Israeli media reports, denied by the White House, that Netanyahu’s request to meet Obama later this month was snubbed.

(How is that last one a gift? We were reminded yesterday of Netanyahu's initial reaction to 9/11: "It’s very good." Then he edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.")

 

The Islamic world is in flames, the Israelis are acting like douchebags again, and Obama, just ahead of his re-election, gets the opportunity to make a real-world demonstration of the differences between him and Mitt Romney's foreign policy shortfalls. And he gets to raise the spectre of a nuclear Iran for free. That's a three-bagger.

 

Romney, by the way, had this to say about the Egyptian protest: " 'It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,' Romney said in a statement released late Tuesday."

 

It's disgraceful that the Romney campaign's first response was not to support the administration in finding a peaceful solution to a mostly preaceful protest incited by someone who could be one of his campaign's biggest supporters (Israeli-American real estate developer Sam Bacile,) perhaps through a superPAC, but to inflame passions against those who perpetrated this abuse of our First Amendment rights.

 

That this all happened on September 11 is no coincidence, I'm sure. Egyptians rallied around us, just as nearly every other nation on the planet did, including Libya. There's a deliberate syncopatic response in yesterday's actions in Egypt and today's in Libya.

 

So while Romney is left flailing about for a response and allowing Reince Priebus to cheerlead the death of Americans and failure of the current administration, President Obama gets to appear presidential and og by the way, behave precisely the way an administration should behave in the face of aggression by nebulous and angry mobs.

 

Unlike, say, eleven years ago...

 

 

 

How Fragile We Are

And so it goes...eleven years on. I'm going to try to keep politics out of this post, but it will be impossible. Please bear with me.

 

September 11 was a pivotal moment in your life. It was in mine, it was in hers and his, it was in all of ours. The trite saying, the trite excuse, is "everything changed on September 11."

 

But it did. Nearly everything was altered. Some things were immediately clear. Some things took a while to unfold. Some things are still unfolding. And some things will not change, but those are things that couldn't change if the world ended. Time still marches on, the sun burns, the planets turn in their orbits.

 

I can still hear the high whine of the engines of Flight 11 storming past my office. It sounded so foreign, so miniscule. I've had jets shoot up Fifth Avenue before on Veterans' Day and you knew it was a massive plane. When Flight 11 slipped down Manhattan island, it sounded like a small Cessna as it whined past. Even the wound to the North Tower looked insignificant, but then I was ignoring the scale of my knowledge...the floors were vast...and focusing on the data my ears had given my brain: small plane.

 

On September 11, we saw the entire range of humanity on display in one brief unforgettable moment. We saw the rage of a group of men so profound to exercise power over people less powerful than themselves. We saw the abject terror of first a neighborhood, then a city, then a nation, and finally, a world. We saw the courage and heroism of the first responders and the civilians who pitched in to help people get out of harm's way and to try to prevent the unpreventable.

 

We saw the chilling wake of the empty hospitals, emergency staff standing outside the doors during the blackest night in American history, waiting...waiting...waiting...

 

And no one came. No flashing lights scurrying up the block to drop off a patient in need of care, then flying back down the block, doors barely closed, to pick up another casualty. We only saw silence. We only heard blackness. We only felt the deepest sadness any of us could feel.

 

Mostly, we saw the confusion of a people who grasped to comprehend what had happened. We hadn't moved onto the "why" yet. We hadn't even really gotten our minds around the "how." We wanted desperately to understand.

 

September 11 changed you. It changed me. It changed him and her. It changed all of us.

 

On September 10, 2001, we all of us lived secure in the knowledge-- some would say "smugly"-- that America was nearly invincible. Sure, we'd had terror attacks on our soil before. Hell, even Wall Street was bombed at one time. But they were minor, slivers in the fingertips of the American soul.

 

Even the 1993 bombing barely stopped traffic for a day, despite the deaths and destruction it did cause.

 

We lived with the notion that an ocean protected us from the horrors of war, even if Japan had put paid to the invincibility idea. Even there, we played the "outside the 48, doesn't count" card. Besides, Hawaii wasn't even a state yet.

 

We lived with the notion that America was the strongest nation in the history of the world, and truth is, it was, and may still be. But our naivete is vanished.

 

Starting at 8:46AM on the morning of September 11, 2001, we endured what President Obama might have called a "teachable moment." Certainly it was a humbling event.

 

Some of us chose to take it as such, to acknowledge our lives had been changed and to move forward. To make our lives meaningful, and to realize that our petty concerns with respect to what had been important vanished in the roaring explosion of a plane crash. Sure, we still go to work or to school, and love our families (perhaps that became even more important that day), and watch the ball game on TV, but always in the backdrop are reminders of that day, tugging at our hearts and minds.

 

Singing "God Bless America" at the seventh inning stretch leaps to mind. Which brings me to my next comparison.

 

Some of us refused to take the note. Some of us clambered to get our lives back to normal, to act as if nothing had happened. Some of us wanted to ignore the amputation the nation had suffered in those four villianous acts, and to go on as if we still had four good limbs, two good eyes and ears.

 

And some of us even want to take the nation further back, to a time when we all rode bikes with baseball cards in the spokes to the park.

 

We can't go back. We can't even stand still. We have to move forward.

 

On September 11, we saw the best of American values on display: community, charity, compassion, the knowledge that each of us is equal to everyone else, that everyone is valuable and that no one is disposable. We could have advanced from there, grown up as a nation, and shown the world our most cherished value: resilience.

 

We could have straightened up, dusted off, and told the world we want this to end. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have brought the fiends to justice, we should have, and we should have sooner. But we could have joined hands with those who reached out to comfort us in a bleak hour. We could have added our most powerful voice to the rising chorus of those for whom terror and violence is a daily occurence. We could have moved a world.

 

Sadly, those who were in charge saw things differently. They took their fear, and amplified it, and passed it on like crack cocaine.

 

I'm not just talking about the Bush administration, altho they share a large part of this responsibility. I'm talking about the loyal opposition who almost unanimously capitulated to anything the administration asked for out of fear of being deemed traitorous. I'm talking about the media who dropped in line with the administration rather than take the patriotic stance of asking "why?"

 

"Why?" may be the most patriotic thing any citizen can ask of its government. Information is the blood that flows through the veins of any democracy. An informed citizenry is one that can make rational decisions.

 

I'm even talking down to the level of individual citizens who questioned the loyalty and patriotism of anyone who felt any concern about perhaps, you know, savaging innocent people who did us no harm in the pursuit of...what? A terror organization? An agenda? Both?

 

Both.

 

Instead of showing our strength, we flexed our muscles, and anyone who's been in a street fight will tell you, balling up a fist is the first sign of weakness.

 

Consequently, the great debate this nation needed to have, what to do next, became "we're not marching to war fast enough." And each of us to some degree or other bought into that.

 

Personally, I remember what I felt that day and subsequently. I watched the towers burn and became angry. I was angry at Al Qaeda. I was angry at the administration, possibly because I knew in my subconscious that they somehow had to know this was being planned and did nothing.

 

Mostly, I was angry it came down to this: a desperate act of attention-getting by a group that rightly should have been ignored from the get-go, but for some really asinine trails of logic down through the years, starting with funding the bastards to fight the Soviets.

 

Anger is fear in motion. You can flee. Or you can fight. Anger is the latter. So I recognized I was afraid. I was not afraid of the attacks themselves, or even that Al Qaeda might have had a more cunning plan in store that day.

 

I was afraid of what came next.

 

My biggest fear was also my fondest wish in the immediate aftermath of the attacks: clear a thousand square miles out in the Afghani desert, drop the biggest fucking nuke in our arsenal and turn to Al Qaeda and say "Any questions?"

 

There's an old joke about the drunk looking for his car keys in the gutter under a streetlamp. A cop walks over and asks him, "where did you lose them?"

 

"Over there, across the street."

 

"Why are you looking here, for heaven's sake?"

 

"Because the light's better."

 

Had I known the alternative being contemplated was that we'd open a second war against a people and a tyrant who had nothing to do with the attacks on our soil and bankrupt our economy and our global credibility, all for want of "better lighting," I'm not sure my first instinct of a massive A-bomb would not be the better one.

 

Not the best solution, I want to be clear, but a war with Iraq was a solution in search of a problem.

 

Gradually, it dawned on me that not only had the macro world changed profoundly, but each of us had as well. Our cocoons had been stripped away, and damn if that isn't the scariest proposition for any human. Things you had come to rely on, to be background noise, now took front and center. Airport security, once a pass at keeping guns off planes, now searched for shampoo and sneakers. Bridges we monitored by cameras, and trucks kept on the upper levels to minimize damage in the event of. Trains became a constant scan of backpacks and jackets too bulky for the weather outside.

 

People stopped flying. People stopped traveling. Rather than defy the tyranny of terror, we gave into the apprehension and literally, the terrorists won, albeit a Pyrrhic victory.

 

But "Pyrrhic" has a cultural definition. It measures wins and losses on a different scale than a society or culture that measures in absolutes: "Did I draw blood? Then I won. It doesn't matter that I died trying. Someone else will step in."

 

We, the People gave Al Qaeda an even bigger victory. We gave up our liberties, the one thing that defines us as Americans. We proved that those liberties are a sham. Even today, in the wake of the Teabagger movement--ostensibly bragging that they are recapturing our liberties, only to give up many more in the bargain-- we cower and whimper behind those security measures, rather than find ways to reclaim our freedom.

 

Rather than stand up in the gale force winds of the terror attacks, we crouched behind a rock, even when those winds blew themselves out, and we fired spitballs and paper clips when what we could have done-- should have done-- was stand up and let them try to do their worst, then work to make our nation stronger. We could have led rather than react.

 

In many ways, the decade following September 11 parallel the decade following the Kennedy assassination: we had the rise of populist movements for civil rights (in the 60s, racial; in the 00s, sexual orientation) and we've seen unpopular wars fought and abandoned as "won" when in truth, nothing really was won. We're still as secure today as we were on September 12, based on just the war footing.

 

Even the killing of Osama bin Laden might not have made us more secure. Al Qaeda could have been exhausted on September 12 anyway.

 

Indeed, the rise of a Democratic administration promising an almost idyllic liberal landscape (still-born, to be fair) could have been ripped out of the pages of the RFK campaign in 1968 or the McGovern campaign of 1972. It's not a perfect parallel but the comparison is striking.

 

Most important, the lessons of September 11 feature as a frontispiece the simple fact of humanity: we are fragile. We are connected to this planet and this existence for only a brief time, and to try to hoard ourselves in that moment is foolish, for how fragile we are.

 

On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star, like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are

If I was President, I would declare September 11 a day commemorating peace. We have a few days that commemorate or memorialize war: The Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, but only one that commemorates peace and even that is in the abstract and not universally recognized: Martin Luther King's birthday. How wonderful would it be, how great a show of American values, if we decided for one day that you could not work and instead live a day in peace?

 

Stimulus Works

Finally, we may be seeing the renewable energy debate ending, and the renewable energy era beginning:

U.S. solar-panel installations more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier led by demand in California, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Installations totaled 742 megawatts in the quarter, up 45 percent since the first quarter, and may reach 3.2 gigawatts by year end, the Washington-based trade group said today in its quarterly market report. California led installations with 217 megawatts, followed by Arizona with 173 megawatts.

The U.S. now has 5.7 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, enough to power 1 million homes, according to GTM Research, a Boston-based consulting company that prepared the report with SEIA.

The boom was driven by large projects that sell power to utilities, with little growth in residential installations and declines in non-residential projects, Shayle Kann, vice president at GTM, said in an interview Sept. 7. “It’s an indicator that the utility market will be the main story this year and probably for the next few years.”

What does this all mean? It means that commercial developers are finally hooked on being both energy independent and turning what had been a cost into a profit center. It means that the cost per megawatt to install solar panels is going to start coming down. The 3.2 gigawatts installed this year is the tip of the iceberg, as the US has about 13 gigawatts in planned solar installations under contract, with 3.4 gigawatts slated to go online in 2013.

Developers are the mission-critical market in terms of getting acceptance of solar energy in the United States. By deploying solar energy in office buildings, retail spaces and condo complexes, word of mouth at the consumer level will begin to build, and soon, you and I will be at The Home Depot, augmenting or even replacing our worn-out furnaces.

And we have President Obama to thank for all this. If he hadn't made a firm commitment to weaning the nation off foreign oil and backed that up with stimulus funding for the renewable energy industry (which has been growing in a nation where industries have taken a hard hit over the past thirty years), this would not be happening.

 

I See This Man's Future

 

He has a WWE contract with his name on it.

There Is Hope

 

Somebody gets it:

Workers at a Queens car wash became the first in the city to unionize this weekend, hoping to combat what they say are low pay and poor working conditions.

Immigrant “carwasheros” at Hi-Tek Car Wash & Lube Inc. in Elmhurst voted 21 to 5 Saturday to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

“This is a huge victory for us,” said Tara Martin, a spokesperson for the labor group.

Workers who voted for the union said they want better wages and steady hours in an industry where car wash managers often send them home without pay on slow days.

How socialist, to expect a day's wages for being available to work but not needed.

Employers could consider this a reservation fee: workers forgo other opportunities to accept employment with a firm. That firm can, as indicated above, simply refuse to let workers work, thus saving the money without appropriately compensating the workers for merely beign available to work.

Union now, union forever.

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) So...let me hear from you: Did Barack Obama hit a grand slam or merely knock a three run homer into the upper deck?

 

2) In my own opinion, it was a masterful State of the Union address and really, that's all he had to do: lay out the case to the nation for why he needs to be re-elected. He already had Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and then last night, Joe Biden and John Kerry make the passionate pleas. President Obama was being presidential, matter-of-fact, and exhibited calm leadership when a lesser politician would have tried to raise the roof. The roof was already off, and now was the time to roll up sleeves and chat about the future.

 

3) The moronic would want it different, however. 

 

4) The world of diplomacy is holding what amounts to a wrestling card in Vladivostok this weekend. About the only good news to come out of this so far is overtures made between China and Japan that might open formal talks. Eventually. One day. Keep in mind there's a long distance between the two ancient rivals.

 

5) This day in Idiots.

 

6) So, is Charlie Crist going to run for Florida governor in 2014 as a Democrat, a Republican, or both? He could primary Rick "Batboy" Scott, and still get listed on the Democratic line.

 

7) Based on Obama's muted speech, I think we can guess what this number will turn out to be: not so great.

 

8) I've hated Larry with all my Mets' fan heart, but I'm sad to see him go.

 

9) Homeland Security doubles down on the zombie apocalypse.

 

10) Finally, we've been through this, but Republicans want to reopen the debate: education is vital to the national security of the United States. No less than Dwight Eisenhower, one of the greatest generals this nation has ever produced, thought so. So fund public education and get the fuck out of the way.

Would You Please Go Galt, Already?

 

It seems that some libertarians are taking Ayn Rand a wee bit too seriously:

Investors can begin construction in six months on three privately run cities in Honduras that will have their own police, laws, government and tax systems now that the government has signed a memorandum of agreement approving the project.

An international group of investors and government representatives signed the memorandum Tuesday for the project that some say will bring badly needed economic growth to this small Central American country and that at least one detractor describes as "a catastrophe."

The project's aim is to strengthen Honduras' weak government and failing infrastructure, overwhelmed by corruption, drug-related crime and lingering political instability after a 2009 coup.

The project "has the potential to turn Honduras into an engine of wealth," said Carlos Pineda, president of the Commission for the Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships. It can be "a development instrument typical of first world countries."

"Desperate." That certainly describes it. Rather than bringing prosperity to a nation bereft by poverty and corruption, it will likely create an "us vs. 'you people' " dynamic that we've seen played out in medieval Europe.

Serfdom. Peasantry. Landed gentry and nobility versus the "just up from the muck" indigenous people.

We can assume that this city-nation will keep its taxes as low as possible while plundering the surrounding villages and countryside for the resources it needs, just like the castled nobles of mid-second milennium England. And the advertisement to rich folk in the States will be simple: "Your money doesn't live there. Why should you?"

And it's true: in a day and age when money can fly around the world faster than a spaceship, nationality is meaningless. Transnational wealthy can live where they choose, and that they choose America is a dint more of opportunity to socialize than anything else. Now, they can avoid even that.

Which is fine, because my suspicion is Hondurans will be even less tolerant of them than we are.

 

Game Over

The Big Dog, the Greatest. President. Ever., has spoken:

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

Who's right? Well, since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million.

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.

Clinton was too modest to admit that he was in office when 23 million of those jobs were created-- nearly matching the entire Republican army of Presidents-- and as such is overseer of the single biggest economic engine since World War II. And if you exclude jobs created due to World War II, he is by far the president who oversaw the creation of the most jobs in American history.

 

Period. Eight years of relative peace and undeniable prosperity for all. And he did it by raising taxes on the wealthy.

 

Ronald Reagan was called the Great Communicator, but never once did he ever have to seriously defend his abysmal economic record for the middle class. Indeed, very quietly in his second term, Reagan instituted the greatest tax hike on the American people since the income tax was instituted, and still barely created jobs. Unemployment under Reagan's tax schemes still averaged 7.5%, not much lower than Barack Obama's rate, and Reagan almost single-handedly created the homeless population of America. This, despite sending American troops overseas nearly continuously.

 

Epic. Fail.

 

Back to Clinton's speech: it had nearly everything you'd wish Barack Obama could say, and indeed may have been written with an eye towards the freedom an ex-President-- one who has established his bona fides as someone who has disagreements with the current Oval Office-- has to comment on the "loyal" opposition. This paragraph in particular stands out:

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats.

Coming from a man who was disgraced by the same party that now terrorizes the American people, forced to defend his personal life time and time again from the idiocracy inherent on the right wing, to say that even he can empathize and love his enemies is a powerful statement that will resonate with the American people.

 

After all, it was only 15 years ago. We ain't that dumb. It was a noble and gracious sentiment and yet still stabbed at the heart of the Teabaggers in ways no other Democrat could.

 

Clinton dismantled the economic "policy" that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have both signed onto, and countered that cronies were more important to Romney and Republicans than jobs.

 

But this, this I think was Clinton's strongest argument of the night:

No president— not me or any of my predecessors could have repaired all the damage in just four years. But conditions are improving and if you'll renew the President's contract you will feel it.

President Obama inherited an economy teetering on the precipice of another Great Depression. We, as a people, won't credit him with saving it from disaster because the only way we could is if the disaster actually happened, the tape rewound, and the President steps in to save us in re-runs.

 

But Clinton laid out the case magnificently, using arithmetic and logic, and laid it out in language that the average person watching in his living room could understand.

 

It's a talent he has. It's a talent I can only aspire to as I write these pitiful little blogposts to you, my readers.

 

And now for a couple of side notes:

 

1) Tonight, President Obama will accept the party nomination for President. Last night, the last Democratic President was trotted out for a barnburner of a speech, but where was his wife?

 

She was in East Timor. Under the guise of "the Secretary of State should not attend political conventions," because, you know, politics stop at our shores. Right?

 

It would not surprise me, however, if Madam Secretary has an August surprise up her sleeve to bring home tonight, just ahead of the evening news cycle.

2) I would be remiss if I didn't not mention the speech given by Elizabeth Warren, Senate candidate from Massachussetts. Between her and the Big Dog, it was a wonky night, but a wonky night that was easily digestible by anyone who sat in front of a television and paid attention. She's a gifted explainer and I am sure that Massachussetts recognizes "smaht" when they see it.

 

3) Michelle Obama Tuesday night. Bill Clinton Wednesday night. They have stirred the convention, the national media and the electorate into a rhetorical frenzy. Either this convention has been one of the best choreographed conventions to re-introduce a President to his people, and Barack Obama has the greatest speech of his life in him (not an easy task, given how many great ones he has given), or the convention fizzles tonight. Either way, it will make for great television.

 

The people in the hall in Tampa stood and cheered. For the Dems, the people at home have stood and cheered right along with the delegates.

 

Game over.

 

 

Obama 2016

 

Dare I say it? Michelle/Hillary 2016?

(CNN) -- If Barack Obama is re-elected on November 6, he will owe more to his first lady than any president ever to win a second term.

On Tuesday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, Michelle Obama gave one of the finest speeches ever delivered at a national political convention. More important, it could have more impact on the immediate future of the country than her husband's celebrated 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Why?

Her speech tied the Obamas' personal stories directly to the lives of millions of voters struggling not to be the first generation of Americans unable to offer hope of greater opportunities to their children than they had, thus drawing a contrast with Mitt Romney as an unnamed but unmistakable caricature of privilege without shading her talk with negativity or animosity.

Rumour has it she wrote most of the speech herself and given how viscerally she responded to the words she was saying, it seems to be true. On the brink of tears herself, Michelle Obama pulled off the rhetorically difficult task of bringing her audience to both tear and their feet.

We fell in  love with Barack Obama all over again, thanks to Michelle. This is what a First Lady looks like!

The knock on Obama from the left is that he forgot where he came from, and who elected him. We liberals are fickle in that way, and while we grudgingly would have gone to the polls to re-elect him, now we can feel good about it.

And we have good reason to be frustrated with him. We've seen over the past four years a concerted effort to dismantle and destroy Hope and Change by the party out of power, and now out of favor, and a President determined, pig-headedly, to compromise and work with them.

This was the audacity we wanted? The change we wanted to be? Barack Obama tried to be Bill Clinton, when in point of fact, he needed to be Harry Truman. Clinton was a master at co-opting his opposition, and yes, Obama nearly pulled off that debt ceiling deal with Weaker Boener until it turned out Weaker Boener couldn't deliver a pizza, much less his party's votes.

Sure, Obama ran on the platform of trying to change the toxicity of government, but when it was revealed that the opponent was going to be openly hostile and a party of no to anything he proposed, he should have counterpunched: start closing military bases, start withholding highway funds, find executive orders that punished those who got out of line, and rewarded those who were willing to put in an effort.

For instance, take Michele Bachmann. The instant she won re-election in 2010, Obama could have yanked all Federal funds out of her district, discretely asking for all agencies to "review" the projects and programs. This is how you bring people to the table who want to be petulant children.

Perhaps Sasha and Malia are that well-behaved that Obama doesn't have to resort to tactics like this, but I'm betting Joe Biden could tell him all about it.

Last night, Michelle Obama reminded us that the President and First Family are like you and me: they struggled, they had hard times, and they couldn't ask Daddy for a loan to open a business (great line, by the way, from Julian Castro: "Gee! Why didn't I think of that? Some people are lucky enough to borrow money from their parents, but that shouldn't determine whether you can pursue your dreams.")

Ann Romney was tasked with humanizing a figure who has been rightly characterized as automatonic, robotic, and pre-programmed...with last decade's software.

Michelle Obama merely had to add grace notes to the figure of a man who was sculpted in an image long forgotten by the nation. And she did a bang up job.

 

Happy Labor Day, And Remember....

Nobody Asked Me, But...

 

1) Well, at least now we know why Hereafter was such a crappy movie.

 

2) Since everyone is talking about Clint's speech and not Romney's acceptance, perhaps Eastwood instinctively knows he's really a liberal and took the opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin of Mitt Romney's candidacy. *draws finger across throat*

 

3) Y'know, we almost made it through an entire week without a gun-toting yahoo taking out a mass of people.

 

4) Why Obama could still take the white vote, too. Short answer: Paul Ryan was the wrong VP pick. Republicans used to be long on talent. I wonder what happened? It's almost like there was a party purge or something.

 

5) While you were watching Tampa, the White House was watching Vienna.

 

6) And the world was watcing Syria.

 

7) Um. Oops? Status update, please?

 

8) But really. There's no global warming! Ignore the desert virus spreading across the Southwest!

 

9) Oddly, there's some truth to this, altho I don't think it's what the study's authors intended. Americans eat so many empty carbohydrates that even just backing down to a normal level will assist in weight loss. When I examined my eating patterns and realized, from a breakfast muffin to the bread on my sandwich to the roll with dinner, just how many empty calories I was eating, I stopped. It was the equivalent of a cup of sugar and a dollop of salt, neither of which do my body any good.

 

10) Ladies, hide your stash!

Obama's Republican Convention Bounce

A startling column was released this morning by Nate Silver:

Polls that are published during the party conventions can be anticlimactic, representing old news since they won’t fully reflect the effects of the convention bounce. And none of the surveys that came out on Wednesday were that newsworthy to begin with – although there was one, in Ohio, that had encouraging news for Barack Obama, and another, in Nevada, that was slightly favorable for Mitt Romney.

The Ohio survey was conducted by the automated-polling firm Gravis Marketing, which had Mr. Obama ahead of Mr. Romney by less than 1 full percentage point.

A one-point lead isn’t much, and Mr. Obama has gotten some better numbers than that in Ohio. So why does this qualify as good news for him? Because this firm has had Republican-leaning results in the other states that it has polled, putting Mr. Romney up by 2 points in Florida, 1 point in Colorado and 17 points in Missouri, making it several points more Republican-leaning than the consensus of surveys in those states. Once the model adjusts for the firm’s “house effect,” it treats Mr. Obama’s nominal 1-point lead as being the equivalent of a 4- or 5-point lead instead. Thus, Mr. Obama’s chances of winning Ohio rose somewhat based on the survey.

Now, his first point, about polling during conventions, is an interesting one, and one I'd dispute. The Romney camp has played up the convention heading into Tampa and if anything, should have received a pre-bounce from the naming of Paul Ryan as Veep candidate and the twin stump speeches the two have delivered practically in unison.

That Ohio has shown itself inured to the bullshit says a lot about this poll.

Here's why:

By two-to-one (44% to 22%), the public says that raising taxes on incomes above $250,00o would help the economy rather than hurt it, while 24% say this would not make a difference. Moreover, an identical percentage (44%) says a tax increase on higher incomes would make the tax system more fair, while just 21% say it would make the system less fair.

Interestingly, the country is about split between the two men with respect to who would do a better job of handling the economy in the next four years-- Romney 48%, Obama 44% (MoE 3.9%)

So that's the box Romney has painted himself into. He can bash the President over the economy, but that flies in the face of public perception. He already has a monumental task in front of him with regards to firming up his own image, so to try to juggle both of these balls is near impossible.

This is why he's been hesitant to really go after President Obama on the issue of jobs and the economy, which would normally be a strong point for the challenger in a lackluster nation. People get that Obama was handed a heaping plate of crap, one that's only been piled higher and deeper by Republican mayors and governors across the nation who have gone out of their way to destroy jobs in the public sector.

Add to that an openly hostile Republican House, and few people can seriously blame Obama for the jobs problem. He's tried. He's been, if anything, too cooperative with the Republicans...remember the debt ceiling agreement that Weaker Boener hammered out with the President? Turned out, Tanned Man couldn't even deliver a pizza.

It's safe to say, I think, that the Romney candidacy, quixotic from the outset, is floundering on the reefs of common sense

In one respect, we should probably be grateful to Mitt Romney's ego in running in 2012, because it saves us the trouble of ever having a Romney presidency, with all its concomittant screw ups. He won't run in 2016, and we can go out and destroy Chris Christie's political career in that election.

 

 

One Thing Is For Certain

 

God is neither a Mormon nor a Republican:

(CBS/AP) NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Isaac knocked out power, flooded Gulf-front roads and pushed water over the top of an 18-mile section of a rural Louisiana levee before dawn Wednesday as it began a slow, wet slog across the state with a newly fortified New Orleans in its path.

Wind gusts and sheets of rain pelted the nearly empty streets of New Orleans, where people watched the incoming Isaac from behind levees that were strengthened after the much stronger Hurricane Katrina hit seven years ago to the day.

Water pushed by the large and powerful storm flooded over an 18-mile stretch of one levee in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans, flooding some homes in a thinly populated area. No injuries were reported.

"When this is over, I think we need to check the wind speeds because I lost a good portion of my roof, my fence is down, and water is blowing through the sockets in my house from the back wall," Parish President Billy Nungesser said in a phone call to CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL. "That only happened in Katrina."

If ever there was a divine warning to hubris and calumny, it is this: that Isaac devastated the same coastline and regions that Katrina did, just seven years ago.

I don't need to tell you, the reader, of the exposure to the Bush management style that created: bungling patricianism, arms-length leadership, and a blatant disregard for the suffering of working class Americans (oh, happy birthday, Senator McCain!).

This is happening at the precipice of a change in Republican party politics. That party is at a crossroads: will they capitulate to the haranguing Teabaggers or begin to pull away from them? If I was asked that a month ago, I'd say they're all in, but in the past week, there have been many pieces, some from unusual sources, saying "Basta!"

Perhaps they aren't clarion calls for a party purge-- which would make for great television, since that's what the Teabaggers want, too-- but they are an acknowledgement that things have gone south..literally...for the party born of rebellion against the Whigs.

Naturally, the interjection of Isaac will dampen down the proceedings, and distract the viewing audience from the message the RNC has crafted. Imagine flooding on the scale of Katrina, juxtaposed with all those bright, shining faces in Tampa. The memories of 2005 loom large. The RNC would not want to be seen as smiling through a tragedy.

 

Too, Mitt's message on the economy, which he will have to craft carefully-- devoted family man who's destroyed millions of American families to add another dollar to his Cayman bank account will somehow find jobs for twenty million Americans-- is a difficult enough message for most Americans when they don't have the tragic spectacle of people surviving on rooftops to switch over to the instant he loses their attention.

 

And, of course, President Obama will have no choice but to fly down to the Gulf coast to inspect the damage and look all Presidential in doing so.

 

For his part, Obama has played this summer nearly perfectly but in fairness, he's had to do practically nothing: an agreement with Israel there, buying up surplus agricultural products from drought-ravaged farmers here, and just generally keep the focus on Mitt's myriad faux pas.

 

When your adversary is drowning, don't throw him a life preserver. Good political advice.

 

Mark Halperin, who usually talks out of his ass (and in this instance, mostly did) posted one piece of cogent advice in Time Magazine this week:

With Mitt Romney locked in a tough fight for the White House, Republican strategists inside and outside his campaign are mentally composing a long to-do list for the former Massachusetts governor to bolster his chances on Election Day ...

Foremost on that list: Make an impression. Romney must introduce himself to the wider electorate during the convention in Tampa with a killer acceptance speech that keeps voters and the press talking all the way through his rival's oration in Charlotte, N.C.

As noted, that's going to be next to impossible with Isaac churning up the levees of New Orleans and environs. Even if Romney was capable of a "killer acceptance speech," with teleprompter, no doubt, it will get lost in translation.

One more thing: Romney may have gotten lucky with the storm in one respect. The introduction speech by Ann Romney contained this gem.

He will take us to a better place, just as he took me home safely from that dance.

Talking about when she and Mitt met. So her raison d'etre for a Romney Presidency is, she didn't get date-raped? Wow. Simply wow.

 

 

An Actual Interview

 

There is a thing. It's called "reporting". This is a thing that so very rarely happens in America these days.

 

There is a thing. It is called "transcribing." This is a thing that happens far too often in America these days, even at places where known journalism is said to occur.

 

This is an example of "reporting": (bonus video at link)

Christie said in a recent speech that “you can’t lead by being a mystery, you can’t lead by being an enigma,’’ but denied that he was referring to Romney’s unwillingness to disclose more of his personal financial information.

“I don’t think he’s been a mystery and an enigma in terms of what he stands for and what he believes,’’ Christie said. “I think you can always look back in retrospect and maybe say ‘I would’ve done this or that differently,' but in the end do I think any American voter is going to say, ‘I’m not voting for him?’ No. I think they’re much more concerned about mounting debt and deficit and the other issues we’re talking about, (like) joblessness, and those are things that are going to decide this election.’’

In less than five minutes, Matt Lauer made Governor Short Round squirm to any number of comments he's made in the past, and made Gov. Sammiches (Chris Christie, R-KrispyKreme) sound like a blithering idiot.

Not that Christie is a font of intellectual wisdom, but he can put two sentences together, even off the cuff.

As an example, here's Christie's defense of Mitt Romney's recent birther "joke".

“I think if he had to do it over again, he wouldn’t make the joke,’’ Christie told Matt Lauer on TODAY Tuesday. “But you know what, when you’re on camera 12, 14 hours a day, and you’re at a big rallies and you’re just going off the cuff, there are going to be times you’re going to say stuff you wish you could take back. If you get a chance to talk to Governor Romney, I think he’d tell you that he wishes he could take that one back.’’

Er, shades of the 3 AM phone call. Gov. Christie has just admitted that Mitt Romney is not up to the physical challenges of running for president, much less the 24 hours a day torture of actually being President.

When a President commits a gaffe, he's usually, generally, not making fun of another person. If a President pointedly makes a personal joke about someone-- like Donald Trump-- he means it, even if it's made in jest. Indeed, one reason kings kept court jesters was that court jesters could be brutally honest with a king, something no one else could be, simply because they were amusing.

Now, I suppose we can give some berth for the fact that Romney was on the campaign trail and needed to energize his lackluster base. That's fine. That's why a smart politician hires a warm-up act, either his Vice Presidential nominee (Sarah Palin was a fine example) or another surrogate who can speak for the candidate without the responsibility of answering for him.

Bill Clinton, when Hillary was running in 2008, is a pretty good example of this. Clinton could raise the race issue-- pretty authoritatively, too-- while allowing Hillary the option to step away from his comments.

If Mitt really wanted to play the birther card, he has a myriad of folks lined up who would do just that on his behalf, some of whom haven't thoroughly disgusted the American people by now. If Mitt really did just, out of exhaustion, illness or plain mean-spiritedness, blurt it out, then he needs to take care.

After all, Obama has pretty effectively refuted that base canard, and while there is still a small but not insignificant minority (not insignificant in terms of a voting coalition) of people who cling desperately to the image of Obama as some kind of carpetbagger, a fascist Commie Muslim atheist-- go ahead, I'll wait...dum de dum dum dum, de dum, de dum...OK, get it?-- the vast majority of Americans have, either willingly or grudgingly, accepted that he's a natural born American and legitimately our President.

Conventional wisdom accepts that the convention (er, pardon the clumsy pun) is where the candidate gets to define himself. Romney, despite Christie's protests, is an enigma, and for the last month or so, has defined himself badly.

Indeed, this may have been the quietest I've ever seen an incumbent in recent memory. The Romney jokes have just written themselves from New Hampshire to England and back again. President Obama has literally be able to talk about the crabgrass and still seen his poll numbers improve.

Romney gets a bump, particularly tonight when Ann Romney speaks, humanizing her husband to "you people." Chris Christie will jab and poke President Obama and I'll be interested to read (I'm not watching. I have paint drying. More exciting.) how many blatant lies he tells.

Christie strikes me as a master politician, so I suspect he'll be long on interpretation and short on out-and-out misstatement of facts. But still, there's a lot of anger on the right and he may fall prey to his own vanity and go off the cuff.

 

 

Question

 

Who humanizes Ann?

 

Oh stop! You people know what I'm talking about...

A Record-Breaking Drop

 

I bet every musician in the world is jealous.

The Ryan Bump

It turned into little more than a pimple:

Mr. Romney was given a 28.0 percent chance of winning the Electoral College on Aug. 10, the day before he officially announced Mr. Ryan as his pick. The forecast then moved somewhat toward Mr. Romney after a series of improved polling in swing states for the newly minted Republican ticket, achieving a peak of 33.3 percent on Wednesday. It has since receded slightly to 30.6 percent, however, as Mr. Obama held leads in a number of swing state polls late last week.

These shifts could be consistent with a small vice-presidential “bounce” for Mr. Romney which has since faded — perhaps as less favorable stories for Republicans, like the comments on abortion and rape made by Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, have come to dominate the news cycle.

But these are only very minor differences — the model estimates that Mr. Romney gained a net of perhaps one percentage point in the popular vote after his selection of Mr. Ryan, and has lost perhaps half a percentage point since then. Changes of that magnitude could potentially be caused by statistical noise, as well as by real shifts of opinion.

This, coupled with another interesting Veep story in the news today, tell you really all you need to know about Mitt Romney's chances this November.

He stands none. When a choice as intriguing and polarizing as Paul Ryan practically loses you votes (I claim margin of error in that pronouncement), there's something seriously wrong with your ticket, and it ain't your vice presidential choice.

Romney suffers from some of the same problems that John Kerry did in 2004: he's a likable enough guy but it's because he's worked so hard at being likable that's got him in deep trouble.

I mean, really, when your position on global climate change flip-flops inside of six months because polling says it should, you've doubled down on confusion. I think voters, even Republicans, can respect a man who stands on at least one principle that disagrees with them. He had such a magnificent financing advantage that he could have suffered on an issue that even FOX has backpedalled from.

Add to that image the whole Bain background, and Romney now comes across as a snake-oil salesman, a man who wants to build a monorail for no other reason than "Shelbyville is going to get one."

Still, it's sad that even before a single word has been uttered in Tampa to frighten away the sane folks of America, Romney has already seen his chances of winning the Presidency dwindle to next to nothing, or slightly higher than the NY Mets winning this year's World Series.

 

This country is due for a good talk about the future and issues, and it would be nice to hear some Republican input, rather than a "Don't Blame Me! I Voted For Kolob" chant.

 

 

The Beast Of Exmoor Is On The Move

 

Cryptozoologists have long heard rumours of a big cat that haunts the moors and fields of England.

 

Well, it seems someone might have actually gotten a photo of it, but over in Essex.

Real "Wrath Of God" Stuff

 

I think the Lord is trying to show Chris Christie how it's done.

The Phrase...

..."Oh no! Not again!" seems to ring true here, and it's almost precisely seven years on.

 

Will W circle the damage in his plane?