Oh, not any time in the next few months, but it appears that the future is not in sand.
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Doug Saunders says the world is not experiencing financial crisis, but rather, merely a change in equlibrium. And, in the final analysis, it’s mostly to to the good.
I do agree that most of the developments in the less developed world are good, and bode well for the future. I also think we’re in a period where it’s going to be a growing problem that there really aren’t jobs for most people simply because people aren’t needed for them. And that will make for interesting times indeed.
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Ed Clower has an interesting proposal.
Although politically it’s probably not-achievable, they aren’t all bad ideas. And they do look like something proponents of having the government “protect the sanctity of marriage” really ought to favor.
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The RealClearPolitics poll aggregator shows Gingrich support waning in Florida. It’s not clear who people are switching to, but it appears that some are moving toward Romney while others are moving toward Santorum. At the moment. And we should never forget the 150,000+ ballots already cast, which most observers believe will largely be Romney votes.
Should be interesting to watch on Tuesday nonetheless.
In the meantime, Gallup has a poll comparing and contrasting partisan views of the President: Obama and George W. Bush are neck-and-neck for most polarizing Presidents since polling on these things began. I find this unsurprising but suspect it’s less a statement about either man than about the country as a whole.
It is normal for rational people to disagree for rational reasons. I’m quite sure Republicans who disapprove of Obama believe they have rational reasons. I’m sure many Democrats who had an absolute loathing for George W. Bush felt their reasons were perfectly rational. But there’s always people who disagree with each other for rational reasons. On the whole, this hatred seems more widespread and visceral.
I detest the easy “I remember things were better when I was a kid” mentality, because it is so often untrue. A whole lot of things sucked when you were younger and you just don’t remember because you were too young. Nevertheless, I remember some of this when I was young enough to have a coherent opinion. Certainly, partisan bitterness was always around. Yes it seemed to increase in intensity at some times and lower in others.
BUT, one thing I do remember: until the Clinton years, it was fairly normal to find Democrats who liked a Republican for President, and vice-versa. A Democrat who endorsed George Herbert Walker Bush would not be considered a traitor in the ranks. A Republican who supported James Earl Carter would not be considered a slimeball.
It was also not particularly controversial for a politician in either party to proudly say that their desire was to “capture the center” as if that was a good thing. Yes, I remember Democrats who utterly loathed Reagan for example, but there were plenty who thought Ronnie was all right and had no trouble supporting him. And while I remember conservative discontent with Jimmy Carter, it was not unusual for them to also say nice things about him.
This seemed to begin to change with the Clinton years, and at the time I was prone to blame it on Bill Clinton. Opinions were polarized, so he was polarizing, right? Well I thought so, but then we got George W. Bush and it seemed up until 9/11 Democrats were set on nothing but “getting even” until 9/11, then a brief lull, then a roar of hatred on all sides either against him or against his haters.
I thought then that Bush-hatred was just Iraq and the still-unresolved issues stemming from 9/11 and all that that drove it. For a while there I just thought liberals had gone batsh** crazy and would return to normal at some point. But then we got the even-tempered moderate Obama and things are as bad as ever on the “we hate him and we hate you” department. Obama can’t even get credit when he does things Republicans used to say they wanted, just like Bush couldn’t when he did things Democrats once said they wanted.
It begins to appear that the problem is not the man in the White House, the problem is the people themselves. I mean, one President looks like a fluke, and two could be a coincidence. Three starts to look like a pattern.
What I can’t decide is if this is normal or not. We had a period in this country wherein it was fairly normal to have Republicans who liked and even endorsed Democrats, and vice-versa. They might get sniped at but no one considered it beyond the pale. Being a swing voter or an undecided voter also did not get you slammed as “stupid” or “without principles,” although it does today.
So my question is, was that earlier period I remember the strange period? Is this era of highly polarized partisanship more like the normal state of affairs? Or is this really an unusually polarized time in our politics?
We’re coming up on 20 solid years now wherein every occupant of the White House is outright hated by not just 10 or 20%, but something like a third to half of the country. Is that odd, or is it normal?
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Speaking of the old days here on Dean’s World, some may remember I used to be extremely critical of Michael Moore in a rather intemperate fashion. Well I’m still critical of the guy, but I’ve gotten to where things don’t make me angry much anymore. A friend of mine on Facebook recently tagged me with a Michael Moore video bashing Newt Gingrich and the Republicans from back in the ’90s, and I thought, “you know, rather than get mad, which is pointless, why don’t I try to share with him?” I did a little searching and lo and behold, I found this gem of a film from 2004 is now free from Hulu:
I found upon re-watching this film that it’s even better than I remembered. I’ll never be quite sure about filmmaker Mike Wilson’s choice of title, and I’m not sure he was either. It’s such a sweet, decent film, it’s hard to stay mad at people like Michael Moore (or his right-wing ideologue counterparts) after watching it. At least for me. Sure it bites at Michael Moore pretty effectively, and should help people who think things like “Oh I know Moore stretches things sometimes but he’s just overzealous and a little sloppy.” If you think that you’re underestimating him and fooling yourself. He deceives in a way that can only be explained by deliberate intent or outright derangement. I don’t think any honest liberal or leftist should ever use this guy as a source for anything. But I think the same of any number of right-wing voices who give me the willies, and this film seems to make that point pretty well, and is a good exercise in understanding that no matter how smart you think you are, you can still be fooled.
There is an argument made near the end of “Michael Moore Hates America” which defends the view that the extreme whackjobs (like Moore) actually are just part of the game and should be accepted as such, like the people who go to football games with their skin painted and big wigs and stuff like that. Maybe. But in this context it bugs me. When I was in my 20s and early 30s I thought politics was fun and games, but to me, over the last ten years especially, I don’t feel that way anymore. It’s too serious, the issues too big, and deceiving people is a terrible thing to do. Letting yourself be deceived, and letting your friends be deceived, simply because you like what you’re hearing or reading may be worst of all. Yet when people don’t want to hear that you think they’re being deceived, what do you do? I guess you have to put what you can out there and hope they’ll listen and otherwise leave it in God’s hands.
Anyway, what a great little film, and I’m so glad it’s free now. Watch it if you get a chance, no matter what your stance on Moore.
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Back in 2002–an unbelievable 10 years ago–many early bloggers advocated going to Iraq and taking out Saddam Hussein by force. Then, rather than simply killing him and leaving, we should attempt to help the people there form a democratic form of government to represent them instead of a fascist tyrant. We did so for myriad reasons. Not for the crass lie that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, which no one ever claimed. 9/11 was, on the other hand, part of the argument because we believed that turning a blind eye to tryants in the Middle East helped set up conditions that fostered terrorism and gave terrorists funding and places to hide–and that without shaking the entire region up and making it clear that there was a cost to that, we’d just see more of it. That was one component of many of our arguments, although it was far from our only argument.
Indeed, I remember ruefully how whenever we would advance another argument, we would be accused of “changing stories,” rather than what we were actually doing: noting that there were multiple good reasons for action.
In any case, almost all the specific arguments we made wound up coming out of the President’s mouth, and almost all of them wound up in the Authorization for Use of Military Force that was debated and passed by overwhelming bipartisan majority by Congress.
So far as I’m concerned every one of the reasons listed in that authorization was valid at the time it was signed, and almost all of them remained valid throughout. It’s still worth reading as an important historical document for anyone who wants to know what those reasons were, or has somehow forgotten them. Or who, in anti-war outrage, never bothered to read or listen to them.
We were known as the “warbloggers.” Some of us actually were in the military and served over there. Some even blogged right from the battle lines. Some of us stayed on the home front and tried our best to support it here. Those first few years were our time in the sun, though that faded long ago, especially once it became obvious that Barack Obama was not going to do some damn fool thing and just yank us out of there, and as it became obvious that “the Surge”–which the naysayers endlessly said would fail and make things worse–had succeeded spectacularly.
We watched as it was endlessly predicted that we’d never have enough troops, never be able to recruit enough replacements, that people contemplating service would refuse because they knew they’d be sent off to a losing effort. Those who said this were wrong; the military was stressed, but we always had enough people to get a tough job done, and we got it done.
We also watched as some who came home from Iraq and expressed regrets and doubts were played up in the media, while those who came back and said they never regretted it didn’t seem to get so much attention.
Over the years, some of us in retrospect changed our minds ourselves and thought the whole thing was a mistake. But I think most of us never did. Democrat, Republican, independent, we didn’t care: we believed this was a noble cause that had to be fought, and if some of us changed our minds, well, a lot of us didn’t. Whichever side you came down on in the end, I’m glad for that time of camaraderie we shared, and the good things we did together to try to help the troops.
I am still proud to have supported the effort. If I could have signed up to serve, I would have. Being stuck at home, I did everything I could here, both as a volunteer to help charity efforts (including co-founding one) and to do my best to support and defend the effort politically so we would not do something foolish and leave before we had done what we needed to do. In fact, I did so much to defend it, it contributed to some major health and personal problems I went through–not that it’s anything like actually serving, it was hard on me and my family. Yet I don’t regret it, for it was important work. At least one of my “on the home front” comrades died, almost certainly in part due to the stress of the charity work we did together to support the effort. (Plunge, you are missed.)
In remembrance of something we used to do semi-regularly here on Dean’s World, and to underscore the fact that I have no regrets, I will note what our losses look like, in final summation:
President Obama, in his latest State of the Union address, said that over 1,000,000 Americans served in the conflict in Iraq. A conflict that is now officially over. I am prepared to accept that number at face value and to express my gratitude to every single person who served, in any capacity.
For a long time we argued on this blog that war creates casualties and that is never good but it is a necessary consequence to a noble cause–and this was a noble cause. Often, I and others would note in the face of endless stories and anti-war arguments about “mounting casualties” and comparisons to Viet Nam that no, casualties were quite often not mounting at all. Indeed, casualties were often amazingly small and could only be described as “mounting” by playing funny with the numbers to make it look like we were failing. If you simply count every casualty as a “mount” then in every war casualties always mount no matter how good or bad things are going, because people do get killed; the honest question is whether the number getting killed is high or low, diminishing or increasing, sustainable or unsustainable. That may be messy, it may seem cold, but it is reality. And if you think war is always bad or never justified and therefore every loss is unjustified, well, we just don’t have much to discuss: we disagree, and I advise you never to volunteer for military service. But so far as I am concerned, lives given in a noble cause are never wasted.
In any case, according to icasualties.org, a total of 4,484 of those who served in Iraq died there. That figure including not just combat casualties but people who died of things like heart attacks, traffic accidents, diseases, etc. Still, if we accept that all those fatalities were as a result of the war, that means that if you served in Iraq, you had a 0.45% chance of dying there.
Less than 1/2 of 1%, in other words.
One thing history will note about this conflict is just how minimal the cost in American lives was. Those who predicted “another Vietnam” for years consistently claimed “casualties are mounting” and predicted an ever-escalating count of American bodies. Many of us said it would not happen, and while it may be crass to say “I told you so,” we were correct all along. It was never even close to that. Casualties were always low, going from a bit high in the beginning, to very low, to rising a bit as some things got out of hand (as they often do in a war), to a little lower, to somewhat higher again as we used a surge of troops (a surge that worked, by the way) to try to restore order, to slowly diminishing again until finally they petered out and we left–mission, this time, truly accomplished.
In war, soldiers die. Today that doesn’t happen to anyone who didn’t volunteer knowing full well that it might happen to them. They are adults, and they signed up knowing all that. They still sign up knowing that today. They have every right to be proud, and those who fell must be remembered, respected, and honored. But whatever else you might say, one thing that is stark: the loss of those lives was minimal compared to what was predicted by the doomsayers. And the result was removal of one of the worst fascist mass-murdering tyrants in the world. Those who took part in it should be proud. Now it is over and, while Iraq’s still got problems, it is demonstrably a better place than it was the day the first boots hit the ground. It is up to the Iraqi people to chart their own destiny from here. God’s blessings upon them.
And with that, I think, I will declare my “warblogging” career finished as well, and will cease to use the blogging category of “the war.” While there will be other wars in the future, and they’ll be blogged about, we’ll use another category for that, and leave the warblog entries distinct for posterity and whatever tiny slice of history they represent.
Thanks to all who served, or who helped, whatever your final stance. I will always believe you helped take out a monster and made the world a better place, setting the stage for reform in the entire region known as the Middle East. I salute you.
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Is Liam Neeson really converting to Islam? Probably not – but the evidence mounts about Jack Sparrow!
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In the wake of poll results released this morning showing Gingrich pulling ahead of Romney among likely Republican voters in Florida, the mail-in ballots Romney staff have been working for months to help people mail in are looking less like a firewall than a rope to cling to. Now in response to unrelenting demands that he release his tax returns, Mitt Romney finally has done so and it isn’t pretty. Despite making more money than his major opponents, including the President, he’s been paying a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans, the Washington Post reports.
There will be those who attempt to defend this and call criticisms of it “class warfare” and “envy.” But even fairly well-to-do upper-middle-class lifelong Republicans are going to look at that and say it looks bad. The whole country’s suffering, Wall Street’s riddled with crooks, and middle-class taxpayers can look and see for themselves that they’re paying a higher tax rate than this guy who’s paying less than 16% on money he mostly made on Wall Street while businesses were closing, homes were being foreclosed on, and jobs were a scarce commodity.
It doesn’t look good, and even rock-ribbed Republicans will know it.
I now find myself wondering if we won’t see Romney essentially tie or even lose in Florida, do the same in Michigan and the other upcoming states, and winds up going into Super Tuesday hoping he’s just got enough money to blizzard his competition away with ads.
Oh my God. We may be seriously be talking about Newt Gingrich as the favorite to win the nomination. It’s not that I hate Gingrich, it’s just flat-out astonishing.
(This item cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.)
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This will be hard for many Americans to understand, but the much-loved Jon Stewart comes off as a smug elitist with no common sense at all quite a lot of the time. Take, for example, the following video:
I can see how a Jon Stewart fan (or Jon Stewart himself, should he even notice the speck on the political landscape that is Dean’s World) would say, “Smug elitist? Really?” Um, yes. And if you would like to know why, here’s my best shot at explaining it. Most especially, this is an attempt to explain to liberals who are interested in winning future elections, or winning on political issues that matter to them. If all you want is to laugh at the stupid hicks, by all means disregard the following. But if you’re interested in learning something potentially useful, try to understand how Stewart is displaying a cultural blindness here that you may share, and how that might be a problem.
Please bear in mind that when I say any of this I am not advocating for Gingrich; my current plan is to vote for Obama in November. That is not the point. In the case of many so-called “cultural conservatives,” especially in certain parts of the country (like the South, which was solid-blue Democrat only a generation ago) it is understood that people are going to be sinners and that almost no one is a paragon of virtue; therefore the important thing is not that you sinned, the important thing is that you own up to it and ask forgiveness. Then, unless you’ve done certain very extreme things (like rape a child) it’s considered poor form NOT to forgive you.
It is further considered poor form to bring it up again, unless you’ve done it again recently.
This attitude goes beyond simple etiquette or “being nice”; it is an attitude so deep in the cultural bones of some people they don’t even think about it. To them it’s just common sense, practically a reflex. It’s just what is intuitively “right.”
The cultural attitude among these voters is going to be this: “Bill Clinton got impeached cuz he lied about it to a judge and lied about it on national TV. Newt admitted he had affairs, said he was sorry, moved on, and now y’all are dragging his angry ex- in to throw a bunch of sh** at him from ten, fifteen years ago. That ain’t right.” That would not be the “conservative” or “republican” line, that would be the ingrained cultural understanding of maybe a quarter to a third of America. It wouldn’t matter whether Gingrich was a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian or even a Communist. No matter.
They don’t see this in an ideological way either; in fact those who make an ideology out of it probably seem a touch odd, like making an ideology out of wearing socks on both of your feet.
These folks would also have noticed immediately that Gingrich didn’t say bringing up his past marriage and throwing his ex-wife into the mix was despicable. Gingrich said it was close to despicable. That subtlety may have flown by Jon Stewart and his fans, as well as the hapless debate moderator. Heck, that may even seem weaselly to you. But believe it or not rednecks are not stupid people and it didn’t fly past them; if Gingrich had said it was despicable, a good chunk of that audience would have turned on him and not the moderator or the press. Gingrich’s remark–likely carefully prepared and rehearsed–was crafted in the exact way required to get the response it did from this group of voters. If someone from New York or Los Angeles doesn’t understand that, well, maybe they need to try.
Indeed, while the reasonable and sane Rich Lowry may think that debate moment was a long-term liability for Newt Gingrich, he may want to rethink. Lowry’s a conservative but that does not mean he shares this cultural trait. If Gingrich’s remark was really an intemperate outburst then maybe Lowry’s right, but if it was a carefully crafted and rehearsed line that Newt had ready (and I think it was), then Newt’s smarter than Lowry thinks he is and makes sure he knows his audience before he speaks.
If the goal of progressives–or even northeastern Republicans–is to win elections, they have to learn to understand and persuade–not mock, persuade–people who don’t share their cultural outlook. Jon Stewart likely has no idea that he comes off like a snotty East Coast jerk here, but he does. Even if he is funny, he looks to a lot of people like he’s being a funny and slightly clueless jerk. Since I share some (but not all) of the cultural roots I describe here, I can tell you: I laughed but I thought, “what a shallow jerk.”
I often laugh when Jon Stewart wants me to laugh, but I also often think he’s a jerk, utterly clueless about his own cultural assumptions and sensitivities. I think the reason he and his most ardent fans are often bewildered by voter behavior is because they think people like this are stupid when in reality these people think differently. Their own blindness to this way of thinking, their own assumption that it is some sort of gullible stupidity, makes them look condescending, arrogant, and/or cruel.
Put yourself in their shoes: how likely are you to vote for someone if you view them, or their supporters, as looking down their nose at you and being condescending and cruel? Maybe you would, especially if you’re from some of the rougher parts of cities like New York or Chicago, but otherwise, probably not. Especially if you’re an undecided voter (and in an election, undecided voters often matter most).
The cultural attitudes I describe are not found only in the south, they’re also common in all sorts of other parts of America, especially in the Midwest. But they are probably most prevalent in the South, which was once completely dominated by the Democratic Party. Southerners in general probably comprise about a quarter of the US electorate–no small thing when you only need half of it to win. Many of these people have come to see “liberal” as a bad word because they see liberals as smug condescending elitists who have no common sense–and everything I just described is common sense to them. It may not be common sense to you, but it’s common sense to them.
Jon Stewart is a funny man, but I think he has no idea just how often he comes off as smug elitist with no common sense to these generally not-stupid people. So no matter what your political stance, understanding this is crucial to understanding how to avoid losing votes you might otherwise win.
As a man who is often seen as lacking common sense and being snotty, I sympathize. I spend a lot of my life trying to figure out how to avoid being misunderstood. I have gotten better at it as I’ve gotten older, but it’s slow and hard progress, and I backslide easily. It is often awkward but if you’re trying to persuade someone, it’s usually a good idea to try to avoid coming off the wrong way. I sometimes envy people who can do it instinctively.
Communication is key to understanding, and understanding is key to successful relationships–and to successful politics. To put it in shorthand: did you want to be right, or did you want to win an election?
For the record, I’m pretty sure both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama know all this. It would probably help their supporters to understand it as well.
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I know this is a pet topic of Dean’s, so I thought I would put this story up.
Pretty amazing where the technology sits today.
A couple points to add:
I have some buddies who work in the “evil” defense/industrial complex who claim this ain’t nothin for them. Supposedly, the F-22 is loaded with similar technology. Throw in a network linking multiple vehicles together, and you’ve got something even more powerful. Just imagine if every car on the street was talking to all of its neighbors, and they are sharing pertinent sensor data.
And as usual, the biggest roadblocks to implementation will most likely not be technical, but legal. It’s amazing how much of an anchor lawyers and lawmakers can be to progress.
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Florida will be the next state to vote. That will be on January 31st. Watching it will probably be mildly interesting but, barring something unusual, Mitt Romney will likely win it handily. The most important reason is probably that Florida allows early mail-in ballots, and before the surprise in South Carolina, some some 150,000 people had already voted in that primary. Since Romney has been campaigning heavily there for many months, and poured millions into that market, and had workers chasing down voters and getting absentee ballots into their hands for some time now, we can probably safely assume that the lion’s share of those already went to Romney, with Ron Paul picking up a sizable contingent of whatever disaffected absentee ballots there were, with the others more or less evenly distributed between all the other candidates (including candidates who already dropped out). Romney likely goes into election day there already having a hundred thousand or so votes.
Furthermore, Florida’s primary is closed; Democrats and Independents cannot vote for or against Romney. They just don’t count. As Chris Stirewalt notes, South Carolina saw a surge in new primary voters last week; a huge swath of angry independents, disaffected Democrats, and normally-uninterested voters, of the “I’m mad as hell and I want change now!” variety, showed up to vote, and they did not go there to vote for Mitt Romney. Turnout was 35% higher than anything previously recorded in South Carolina, and those new voters seem to have mostly gone for whoever seemed most anti-establishment to them, and that happened to be Newt Gingrich. (Ron Paul supporters likely wail that he’s the true anti-establishment guy but everyone sane recognizes he really can’t win period.)
But something like that can’t happen in Florida. It’s a closed primary. If you are not already a registered Republican, you can’t vote in that primary no matter how energized or angry you are. If you aren’t already a registered Republican, you don’t get a say.
Florida Primary voters will therefore largely be people who already vote regularly in primaries, and mostly older voters who–angry or not–are “establishment” oriented. Most will have already been voting Republican for quite some time now, already know all these players thank you very much, and will tend to be more stodgy and less impulsive.
Between the closed primary, the extensive machine Romney’s already got in place, and the huge number of votes already cast, it appears that Florida’s in the bag. The only likely question is how much he’ll win by, not whether he will. The best any of his competitors can reasonably hope for is to show a strong second. Although a Romney loss there would likely cripple his campaign, it’s not likely to happen. The main question will be who comes in second place.
So what next? In February, there will be primaries and caucuses in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada. These are small states, and caucuses tend to be grueling affairs that only fairly committed and regular voters are likely to sit through. Whoever has the best ground game usually wins them. Missouri will be holding a primary, but, its results will be advisory-only, the real delegates won’t be chosen til a caucus in March. The biggest day to watch will be February 28, when both Arizona and Michigan hold primaries where anyone can request a Republican ballot, so newly-energized and independent-minded voters can easily crash the gates like they did in South Carolina. Of the them all, Michigan is by far the biggest prize, but Michigan and Arizona are both the most likely to set the stage for a Romney upset.
And there are reasons for Romney to suspect that despite being born in Michigan, he might not win there. (See discussion here.)
My prediction, for what it’s worth: Santorum comes in fourth in Florida and drops out. Gingrich comes in second, with Ron Paul in third. And the two remaining major candidates (Gingrich and Romney) start slugging it out hard in Michigan while getting ready for Super Tuesday on March 6.
(This item cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.)
*Update*: A look at polling data this morning (January 25) suggests I may be wrong about Florida being a lock for Romney. It may be that it’s a closed primary, and it may be that Romney has an edge with all those mail-in ballots already cast, but Gingrich is slightly ahead there at the moment. I believe a strong second place showing is all Gingrich needs to remain a serious challenge, but a win there would be a truly startling upset and would almost certainly propel a massive infusion of new cash and volunteers into Gingrich’s camp and add real teeth to the charge that Romney is not “most electable.” The question will be asked: If he can’t win in Florida, where can he win at all outside of New England?
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Once the darling of many on the Right, Governor Christie has over the last year upset some of them, and I don’t suppose this interview is going to do much to make him more popular.
It will be interesting to see if they try to portray Christie as “part of the party establishment” given what a complete turnaround that would be to how many were talking about him just a year or so ago.
As a fan of Newt’s, I must say I have a hard time seeing much flaw in Governor Christie’s arguments, which do not seem personal and do seem substantive. They are questions every Republican primary voter (including myself) will have to consider.
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A handy chart.
Looks like my own state of Michigan will probably figure prominently after Florida, and despite the fact that Romney’s father was once Governor here, Gingrich looks ready to give Romney quite a fight here.
Michigan is something of a swing state, with an awful lot of beleaguered and battered blue collar workers who are somewhat socially traditional but not particularly socially conservative, along with a large rural white population that is largely government-dependent: Michigan’s largest population of welfare- and disability-dependent are not urban blacks, they’re rural whites. The state tends to swing wildly from Democratic to Republican to back again in the legislature and the Governor’s mansion, and in any case neither Democrats nor Republicans here tend to be very ideological. Since the primary is open, Democrats and independents can vote in that primary if they want to. So it should be interesting to see what happens.
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Polls closed in South Carolina about 25 minutes ago and early exit polls are indicating that Newt Gingrich has won. Fox News and NBC have both already called it for Gingrich, but we’ll see in the next few hours whether that’s premature or not.
Either way, Gingrich will continue his campaign you can be sure, as will Ron Paul. The only question now is whether Rick Santorum calls it quits as all eyes turn toward Florida.
*Update*: Virtually all sources are now calling the state for Gingrich. The Washington Post has a good analysis.
Santorum is pledging to stay in the race, but I would think that calls on Santorum to quit after his third-place (possibly fourth-place) showing will be intense. It’s a defensible position to refuse to drop given that it turns out that he won Iowa and arguably did fairly well here, although I think most observers would agree that staying in the race through Florida likely only helps Romney, who is still expected to win there.
*Update 2*: In the wee hours of the morning, it’s looking like the South Carolina results were Gingrich took 40% of the vote, Romney 28%, Rick Santorum 17% and Ron Paul 13%.
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There was a period there, nigh on 10 years ago or so, when the blogosphere was a sparkling and amazing place. Yes there was much dreck, but it was filled with treasures: great, intelligent writers filled with great information and perspectives and humor and insight. And it was all real from real people and not carefully filtered by corporate and government controllers. Almost any direction you looked, you could find brilliant writing in an open freewheeling and endless discussion unlike anything you could find anywhere else.
That has sadly changed as corporate and marketing voices and a sea of not-particularly-original bloggers have flooded the landscape. All the great stuff is still out there, but it’s so much harder to find it’s sad.
Still, in those wild early days, one of the greatest of them all was Satirewire by Andy Marlatt. And it appears that when I wasn’t looking, after an 8 year hiatus Marlatt returned.
This is one of my favorites from his early blogging. And this shows that he’s just as good as ever.
If anyone could ever compete with The Onion in a one-man show, it would be Andy Marlatt. I’m so happy he’s back. I just wish I’d noticed sooner!
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Newt is now possibly leading Romney in South Carolina.
My, my. This is getting interesting.
*Update*: On the other hand, The Weekly Standard notes why, regardless of what happens in South Carolina, Romney has every reason to believe he will win Florida (short reason: they do early mail-in votes there and Romney has already likely won most of those, and unlike South Carolina, Romney has been campaigning heavily there for months. And Florida is a much more centrist state.)
My gut still says Romney has most of the advantage here. Even if he wins South Carolina Gingrich has an uphill climb throughout the remaining 47 states. It may be the bottom of the ninth with two outs, but there are men on base and it isn’t over. A convincing win for Romney in South Carolina would pretty much be the end of it. Anything less and the game continues and probably past Florida.
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Whoah. So much for some of my earlier speculations: Rick Perry has dropped out of the Presidential race and endorsed Newt Gingrich. This is fairly big news, and I’m not even sure what to make of the endorsement of Gingrich.
Let me be clear before I make the following analysis: I believe it is now more than 90% likely Romney will win the nomination. But we are in a clutch situation where things could change. To use a baseball metaphor, we’re at the bottom of the ninth inning and Team Romney’s got a 3 point lead. Team Anti-Romney has two outs but men on base. So here’s what seens unlikely but not-impossible: Gingrich pulls an upset and wins both South Carolina and Florida, or at least does so well there that the game is not over.
Here’s why that is unlikely but possible: People who don’t like Gingrich tend to forget that he is a very compelling speaker and has a strange ability, even when you don’t like him, to suddenly make you think differently about things. His ability to connect with an audience when he’s in the right frame of mind is almost as good as Bill Clinton’s was. He is also a southerner and speaks the language of folks down there very well, and the next two primary states are South Carolina and Florida. With Perry gone it is possible–possible–for Newt to pull an upset in those two states, and if that happens the fight for the nomination may go on a good bit longer. If Gingrich forces can somehow convince Santorum to leave the race, that’s even more plausible.
I once again note that I do not find this likely. Odds are that by the time Florida’s done the race will effectively be over. But, grand slam home runs at the bottom of the 9th do happen. The fat lady may be warming up her voice but she hasn’t begun to sing. This could get interesting.
On the other hand, it’s also Romney’s chance to clinch the nomination and begin concentrating 100% of his efforts on Obama.
*Update*: John Dickerson at Slate would probably disagree and put Newt’s odds higher than I do here. He lays out a pretty picture for Gingrich, showing him surging strong in South Carolina, and that before Perry’s announcement. I have a hard time imagining him making a good President, but I have always maintained it’s a *huge* mistake for anyone to forget that Gingrich really can be a remarkably engaging speaker and, unlike most politicians, spends a *lot* of time talking about ideas. That’s both good and bad for him, because he tends to be temperamental. When he shoots from the hip the shots can go pretty wild. But that does *not* mean he can’t win. If Santorum were to drop out before Saturday, he might actually win. But I have a hard time seeing him win the Presidency. Four years of Newt in the White House would certainly be a hell of a ride, but I’m having a hard time seeing the general electorate going for him. I just don’t think he has a disciplined-enough mouth to make it all the way to November without something coming out if it that freaks people out, and by that I don’t just mean liberals who already hate him (they don’t even count).
This line in particular amused me: “Given Newt Gingrich’s penchant for hyperbole and his regard for his debate performances, he may very well declare it the most significant event in history since the Big Bang.” I had to laugh. That’s Newt all right.
*Update 2*: And here we see again why Gingrich seems likely to alienate many voters. Yes, all these allegations are well-known among Republicans, but it’s the sort of stuff that could send many middle-of-the-road and wavering voters running.
*Update 3*: The lovable Peggy Noonan is sad. Oh cheer up Peggy. Any Republican nominee has a reasonable shot at the Presidency, and whether your party wins or loses America will survive for Pete’s sake.
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I have of late been entranced by Australian artist who goes by “Pogo” (real name Nick Bertke) who takes an extraordinary number of samples from a single film and weaves them into music and video. His tagline: “I remix stuff.” I love what he does. He’s gained his greatest fame doing remixes of Disney films. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Apparently he does mix in some synthesizer and drum beats from modern equipment, although it’s not clear how much; you can pull an awful lot of sound samples for drum beats and bass lines out of a 90 minute movie.
As a side note, that second video reminds me how easy it is to forget that Dick Van Dyke was a really fabulous dancer (and apparently still was until very recently.)
An interesting part of the Pogo story is that, even though his work is completely independent, he has faced fairly little static from Disney. This is highly uncharacteristic of Disney, which for some time has been famous for being outright brutal in its protection of its intellectual property. Their reputation is for threatening legal action at the speed of light against anyone and anything that even looks like it might somehow be related to one of their properties. They’re outright hated in many circles for it, as they’re known to bully people in circumstances most would call “fair use” or “parody” simply because they had the money and legal muscle to do it. In the case of Pogo’s remixes, Disney appears to have done something of an about-face, and while he’s faced some static from them they’ve mostly left him alone and even (through their Pixar subsidiary) commissioned some work from him. Some of my Facebook friends posit that this more relaxed attitude on Disney’s part may be related to Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, because not only has Disney mostly kept to its promise to let Pixar be Pixar, but key Pixar people are now in place at Disney who may have a more thoughtful take on things like this. Certainly a lot of people with a more modern outlook would look at these videos and say “that’s not just fair use, that’s brilliant promotion of older material!”
I mean, I kind of want to go back and see some of those films again now, especially Mary Poppins. A cheesy and maudlin old movie it may be, but it had some terrific dancing and singing didn’t it?
Pogo doesn’t just do Disney material by the way. Here’s a neat one he did using “Terminator 2″ which he claims is nothing at all but sounds from the movie:
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The President has pulled the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline “on advice of the State Department” (read that Environmentalists and Saudi Arabia), kissing off roughly 200,000 jobs and a source of oil not purchased from despots and tyrants.
This alone would be enough for me to move from “I may vote for Romney” to “I WILL vote against President Obama.”
It surprises me I’m so angry about this because I knew without a doubt this was what he would choose to do.
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As a frequent contributor to Wikipedia (I have thousands of edits on that thing made over the last 10 years or so) I have ambivalent feelings about where it’s at these days and its inability to police itself (concentrated interests with resources can drown out dissent, which they don’t do enough about) but it remains one of the most important tools on the internet. So I was pleased to see that if you go to the English page of Wikipedia today, Wikipedia has gone black in protest. I support the protest in this case, and wrote my members of Congress, and I hope others do as well.
*Update*: Other players are getting into the act, and while some are for some reason trumpeting that it’s failing the whole thing appears to be getting a lot of people to notice, which was the intended purpose. Who expected everyone to participate? I’m not participating either, except to note that it’s happening, and noting that it’s happening is the whole point.
*Update 2*: The Oatmeal has gone black in a particularly humorous way today, if you get a chance to check it out before tomorrow (otherwise you’ll get a still-funny cartoon).
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