For a political attack to really work it was to be truer about your opponent than it is about yourself. That's why the following makes me laugh:
Republicans are seeking to portray President Obama as the divider-in-chief, arguing the presidential candidate who trumpeted hope and change four years ago is now running an increasingly negative campaign.
Their chief argument is that Obama's attacks on the wealthy are meant to incite class warfare and a heightened us-versus-them mentality never seen before in present day politics.
But Republicans also point to Democrats’ “war on women” and the contraception mandate in Obama’s healthcare law, which they argue is an attack on religious freedom.
Even the lead-up to the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden over the last week was used by a sharp-elbowed Obama to divide the nation, Republicans say.
Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee, seized on the theme in recent days.
Let's think about this. Attacking access to contraception is a direct attack on women. Passing laws to make getting an abortion as humiliating as possible is a direct attack on women. Any suggestion that the president doesn't deserve credit for getting Usama bin-Laden is so ludicrous that it's only purpose is to divide the nation. Mitt Romney's harsh anti-Latino positions divide America. Throwing a national security adviser under the bus because he's openly gay divides America.
The president, on the other hand, is merely asking rich people to put some more money in the treasury so we don't have to go deeper in debt or put ALL of the hardship of budget cuts on the people who utilize government programs and assistance. And that's pretty much everyone when you consider education and research and development and transportation spending. Rich people got a giant decade-long gift of low tax rates and now the Republicans want everyone but rich people to pay for the resulting debt. How does that not divide the nation?
David Ignatius seems somewhat concerned about the legal footing of drone attacks, but he's much more concerned about the implications of the administration publicly admitting that they are occurring. The headline of his piece (Politicizing the drone debate) may not have been his own choice, but he does say this:
[White House counterterrorism chief John] Brennan made some laudable points in his speech but also some puzzling ones, as I’ll discuss later. But what troubles me about the speech is that it further politicizes this realm of national-security policy — making it easier for President Obama’s team, and the president himself, to talk publicly about the drone war in the coming campaign.
Since the program is no longer secret, Obama’s surrogates can now brag about it all they want. Not only did Obama authorize the raid that killed bin Laden, his campaign advisers can say. Thanks to Obama’s aggressive drone attacks, “the core al-Qaeda leadership is a shadow of its former self,” to quote Brennan’s words.
I agree with all of the questions Ignatius poses about the legal standards of the drone attacks, but if he wants those issues clarified, I want something different cleared up.
How can the administration explain and defend their performance against al-Qaeda without politicizing the issue? If they gave us a list of drone attacks and said that these three terrorists were killed in this one, and these four terrorists were killed in that one, and this al-Qaeda leader died in this other one, and so on, would that be politicizing the issue? If they provided us with a family tree of al-Qaeda leadership and showed us that only a few members remain alive, would that be bragging or merely explaining the reason for the drone program.
Personally, I have long wanted the administration to provide some evidence that their drone attacks are decimating al-Qaeda, as they claim. It's the absence of this kind of evidence that makes it impossible to defend an assassination program.
It is admittedly a difficult kind of thing to prove without disclosing information that might be properly classified, but I don't think it is politicizing the issue to explain its effectiveness is some detail.
And, in fairness, I don't think it would be politicizing the issue for Congress or Republicans in Congress to call the administration's claims into question and demand facts to back up their assertions.
I haven't noticed the Republicans questioning the legality or wisdom of the drone attacks, so I don't see how defending them is a purely political act.
If all the administration is doing is saying that they've done a good job of destroying the al-Qaeda network and that the drone program has been instrumental in that effort, that does not seem to me to be politicizing national security. If the Republicans chose to dispute those facts, I don't think that would be politicizing national security either. But they're not doing that. It would be healthier if they would.
Beautiful tune performed by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in 1962, to a small pictire-video of mine.
According to Ellington, the song was born in Durham, North Carolina.
"We had played a big dance in a tobacco warehouse, and afterwards a friend of mine, an executive in the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, threw a party for us. I was playing piano when another one of our friends had some trouble with two chicks. To pacify them, I composed this there and then, with one chick standing on each side of the piano."
Ellington composed the piece in 1935 and recorded it with his orchestra the same year. Lyrics were later written for the tune by Irving Mills and Manny Kurtz.
The song uses a technique called contrapuntal or chromatic embellishment of static harmony. A "line cliché".
This is the best-known version of the song, and is featured on "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane" and "Coltrane for Lovers".
If you still watch CNN, you are now basically alone. April was their worst month during the daytime in a decade. And their primetime lineup is all but dead. For once, I actually agree with Cenk Uygur. CNN should change everything. They can start by realizing that no one likes Wolf Blitzer. Then they can go out and find some onscreen talent that doesn't remind people of the Clinton administration. Get rid of Carville and Begala and Brazille. I never watch CNN because I truly dislike almost everyone that they have on regularly. If I did watch CNN, I'd probably have a much longer list of people they should fire. Dana Loesch, for example, but I only know her from her incredibly stupid tweets.
If you look at MSNBC, you see that they've cultivated new talent. They brought Rachel Maddow along slowly until she emerged as a star. They're grooming Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry on the weekends and as substitutes in primetime. They brought Ed Shultz over from radio. What MSNBC should do is replace the insufferable Lawrence O'Donnell and the way-past-his-selling-date Chris Matthews with Hayes and Harris-Perry. And, while I like Al Sharpton and I think he's improving with experience, he's had about 3 million more minutes of microphone-time in the span of his life than any mere mortal should enjoy. Give someone else a chance.
In addition to firing literally everyone who works there, CNN should play to its strengths. Cenk's right that they should be aggressive fact-checkers, but they also should be using their resources better to bring people stories that MSNBC doesn't have the resources to do. I mean, can the ridiculous Piers Morgan and bring us something closer to Frontline or 60 Minutes, or at least Nightline. Put some really smart people on television instead of paid political consultants and hacks. Try educating people about something. I think CNN does this from time to time with specials, and that's fine, but people don't form habits from watching specials. They need to know that a program is going to be on at a certain time.
Pretty much everything is wrong with CNN. It isn't just their refusal to report the truth if it conflicts with Republican talking points. It's unlikable no-talent talent that doesn't appeal to partisans or non-partisans. It's news that is both bland and noncommittal. And it's a near 100% focus on theatrics and process, with very very little attention or value placed on policy.
The whole place should be razed to the ground and rebuilt from scratch.
Never mind the faux outrage, the excerpts of David Maraniss' book are fascinating. Obama's girlfriends from the 1980's seem like really intelligent and interesting people. The journal entries are of a much higher caliber than anything I would ever do. The psychological insights into the president are more clear than you might expect. The whole thing is so weird to me.
It's the setting, Manhattan in the 1980s. That's a setting I know so well. I know how things looked, how they smelled. I know what was in the news. That's when I learned what a city was. That old dirty crime-ridden New York? So many of us flitted in and out of that scene, doing this and that, drinking underage, going to clubs, scoring dime bags in Washington Square Park, working lousy dead-end corporate-starter jobs. My uncle was teaching at Columbia then. He's still teaching there. My Dad worked there.
Meanwhile, back home in Princeton, Michelle Robinson was walking past me on Prospect Avenue, hanging at the Third World Center. Her brother was starring on Petey Carill's awesome basketball team. She's just a shadow in these journals. She's the strong black woman at the beginning and end of his relationship with Genevieve Cook:
Early in Barack’s relationship with Genevieve, he had told her about “his adolescent image of the perfect ideal woman” and how he had searched for her “at the expense of hooking up with available girls.” Who was this ideal woman? Genevieve conjured her in her mind, and it was someone other than herself. She wrote, “I can’t help thinking that what he would really want, be powerfully drawn to, was a woman, very strong, very upright, a fighter, a laugher, well-experienced—a black woman I keep seeing her as.”
Thursday, May 23, 1985
Barack leaving my life—at least as far as being lovers goes. In the same way that the relationship was founded on calculated boundaries and carefully, rationally considered developments, it seems to be ending along coolly considered lines. I read back over the past year in my journals, and see and feel several themes in it all … how from the beginning what I have been most concerned with has been my sense of Barack’s withholding the kind of emotional involvement I was seeking. I guess I hoped time would change things and he’d let go and “fall in love” with me. Now, at this point, I’m left wondering if Barack’s reserve, etc. is not just the time in his life, but, after all, emotional scarring that will make it difficult for him to get involved even after he’s sorted his life through with age and experience.
Hard to say, as obviously I was not the person that brought infatuation. (That lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere!)
Genevieve turned out to be right. Very, very right.
The threads of the Obamas' lives swirl around mine like this, which is probably why I was drawn to him in the first place. Princeton, Columbia, New York in the 1980's, community organizing, Project Vote…
So many people say that they don't know who Obama is; that he's exotic or rootless. I don't feel that way at all. I grew up with kids from Iran and Ethiopia and Nigeria and the Philippines and all kinds of other places. People I knew traveled all the time, to Europe, to Japan, to China, to Cambodia, to Africa. I even knew the pretentious Ivy League college party scene, and the pretentious living room faculty cocktail party scene, and the Upper West Side post-modernist obsessed drinking party scene. What did Obama think of T.S. Eliot?
I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?
Unfortunately, I am familiar with that kind of talk even when people aren't trying to impress a girl. It's called being competitively intelligent in a world of sickeningly intelligent people. That's what I grew up with and nothing could seem more American to me until I stepped out of that milieu and into our more normal communities. I quickly learned that my experience wasn't typical at all. It was as American as apple pie, but it wasn't typical.
Yet, of all the people I've known and seen come out of that elite culture, no one has seemed to me better-suited to be president than Barack Obama.
It's hard to say what kind of senator Richard Carmona would be. But I think he has a good chance to beat Rep. Jeff Flake and become the junior senator from Arizona. Mr. Carmona served as Surgeon General under George W. Bush, and he was recruited by Republicans to run against both Gov. Janet Napolitano and Rep. Gabby Giffords. Obviously, the Republicans saw a lot of things to admire in Carmona, but he rewarded them by being highly critical of the Bush administration's anti-scientific attitude in testimony before Congress. And then he says stuff like this:
“You know, having walked in those shoes of being hungry and being homeless — the indignities of not getting health care, or waiting in the public hospital, hoping somebody will care for you; going to sleep with a toothache because you can’t go to the dentist,” he said. “I think it was, in retrospect, almost a gift of experience to me that sensitized me to the complexity of the world that we inherit today.”
I want a senator who understands people's struggles first-hand. And Carmona certainly meets that criteria.
We have a better idea about how Bob Kerrey would perform in the Senate because he's been there before, serving Nebraska from 1989 to 2001. He's a totally unorthodox guy. He's stood up to the NRA, voted against DOMA, voted against welfare reform, and led the successful fight against the flag-burning amendment. That's not what you would expect from a Nebraska politician. But he also voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act and was weak on the environment. In private life, he's clashed with unions during a disastrous run as president of The New School in Manhattan, and served on the pathetic 9/11 Commission, where he mainly spent his time blasting the Clinton administration for not getting bin-Laden in the 1990's. On foreign policy, he's always been a major hawk. He also flirted with becoming a major lobbyist, almost becoming the head of the Motion Picture Association of America before Sen. Chris Dodd took the job. Most people consider him a major underdog in his race for the senate this year, but Kerrey has always been a creative and combative campaigner. He will be loaded with cash and he won't back down from any fight. I would never bet against him. The one thing I can say about him is that he's pretty fearless. It might be a result of leaving one of his lower legs in Vietnam.
In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp is running to replace the retiring chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad. Heitkamp was once a lawyer for the EPA. She has served as State Tax Commissioner and Attorney General in her home state, and since 2003 she has been the director of Dakota Gas.
The plant uses lignite coal to produce synthetic natural gas utilizing the coal gasification process. The plant processes 16 thousand tons of coal daily. The synthetic natural gas is piped to the Northern Border Pipeline which supplies homes and businesses in the eastern part of the United States. The Dakota Gasification Company is a subsidiary of the Basin Electric Power Cooperative which is located in Bismarck, North Dakota.
As you might know, North Dakota is rapidly becoming the Saudi Arabia of the United States. Energy jobs are abundant and the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country (3.0%). On Heitkamp's website, she is notably silent on any of the social issues that divide the country. She mainly talks about her record as Attorney General and her advocacy for the energy industry. Maybe that's helping her, because she's been leading in the polls since she announced she was running.
How would these three politicians change the U.S. Senate? It's hard to say. Carmona would be considerably to the left of the retiring Republican Jon Kyl, as well as the libertarian Mormon Jeff Flake. But I have no idea how he would vote on a wide range of issues. Bob Kerrey would be more outspoken and hawkish than Ben Nelson. He'd probably be about the same on financial and agricultural issues. But he'd be much more liberal on social issues. Depending on what's most important to you, he be better or worse than Nelson, but substantially better than his likely opponent, Jon Bruning. As for Heidi Heitkamp? I don't even know if she's pro-choice. She would probably resemble Sen. Mary Landrieu or Sen. Joe Manchin, but I don't really know. She could fit in a with a more liberal group of Northern women from the Midwest, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, (hopefully) Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. The one thing I'm kind of sure about is that she won't be a big help on climate change.
I'll look at other senate candidates in the days ahead.
Republicans go around saying that the president has mismanaged the war in Afghanistan but if he defends himself, he's just politicizing our successes. It's a version of 'heads I win, tails you lose,' and it's pretty annoying. Rather than the constant bitching, the GOP should be asking important questions, like Joe Gandleman:
President Barack Obama’s lightning trip to Afghanistan to address the nation about ending a war that has lasted longer than Veitnam, sign a long-term partnership pact with the Afghanistan government, and mark the the anniversary of Al Qaeda terrorism chief Osama bin Laden’s death with American troops could re-ignite Afghanistan as an issue on several fronts. The trip and news that the U.S. will formally have a long term relationship with Afghanistan that will involve keeping troops there is getting a mixed response. A way to keep Afghanistan from returning to its old role as an Al Qaeda base? Another Vietnam? Smart strategical policy? Or the U.S. (again) getting enmeshed in a quagmire?
If you were expecting Republicans to ask these questions, you haven't been paying attention to how they go about their business. Joe Scarborough explains:
Be more concerned with the president’s declaration that U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan until 2024. That reality means Americans who were not even born on Sept. 11, 2001, will be occupying Afghanistan 20 years after those attacks. Never mind that the epicenter of Al Qaeda’s operation has moved to Yemen or that U.S. taxpayers are doling out $2 billion a week on a war whose main purpose is propping up one of the most corrupt regimes on the face of the Earth.
Making matters worse is the fact that Mr. Obama’s opponents in the GOP want to stay longer.
I'm kind of inclined to Scarborough's view, but I have to note that the president was fairly clear in his remarks that the goal is to end the "occupation" of Afghanistan in 2014.
Third, we are building an enduring partnership. The agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the Afghan people: as you stand up, you will not stand alone. It establishes the basis of our cooperation over the next decade, including shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions. It supports Afghan efforts to advance development and dignity for their people. And it includes Afghan commitments to transparency and accountability, and to protect the human rights of all Afghans – men and women, boys and girls.
Within this framework, we will work with the Afghans to determine what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions beyond 2014: counter-terrorism and continued training. But we will not build permanent bases in this country, nor will we be patrolling its cities and mountains. That will be the job of the Afghan people.
In the best scenario, we'll get our combat soldiers out of the country, the government will not collapse, and we'll be able to convince Congress to give the Afghans aid for up to a decade. We will, along with our NATO partners, still have some military presence in Afghanistan, but it will be more like our military presence in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. That's the plan, anyway.
I'd be more enthusiastic about it if I didn't know that Karzai is a hopeless leader.
The homophobia on the right is so bad that it has even appalled Jennifer Rubin. Richard Grenell was recently hired by the Romney campaign to be a spokesman on foreign policy issues. But, because Mr. Grenell is openly gay, this did not sit well with a lot of conservative Republicans. The backlash was so strong, in fact, that the Romney campaign simply didn't use Grenell. He was kept under wraps when controversy arose around the president's Usama bin-Laden advertisement, and he was never used on conference calls with the press. The Romney campaign didn't even defend him publicly. So, Grenell just quit the campaign.
Even if you might want to give Romney credit for hiring him in the first place (after all, the idiot used to work for John Bolton), the lack of support and the attempt to hide him are pretty damning examples of cowardice.
If Jackson Diehl is a thoughtless warmonger, Richard Cohen is an indescribably stupid man. Everything I said about Diehl's advocacy of war with Syria can be said six-fold about Cohen's argument. I'm not even going to take it apart piece by piece because that would involve rewriting my article on Diehl. I'm just going to focus on one thing. Cohen wants Obama to do something about the civil war in Syria right now. Like Diehl, he wants the president to exercise more leadership and stop the growing civil war.
Time is not on the side of moderation or accommodation. The longer the killing goes on, the more radical and extreme the anti-Assad forces become. The intelligentsia that initially supported the movement will be marginalized by Islamic extremists — volunteers from nearby Arab countries who can’t abide Assad and his secularism.
Does Richard Cohen know how "radical and extreme" the anti-Assad forces are right now? Does he think they share Assad's secularism?
The composition of the Syrian opposition is largely unknown (to quote Butch Cassidy: “Who are those guys?”).
If I didn't know better, I'd think Cohen was urging us to help put down the insurgency. After all, if the problem is that there is a civil war and the opposition is filled with radicals and religious extremists, isn't the best solution to help Assad crush them into submission?
That Cohen can make the argument he is making with no apparent cognitive dissonance is astounding.
Also, remember when Diehl said that the Turks could easily invade and occupy a big slice of Syria because they once mobilized their troops on the Syrian border? That's pretty bad logic. But Cohen outdoes him by papering over all the difficulties of getting intimately involved in Syria's civil war.
Still, none of this is insurmountable. Israel was able to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 apparently without losing a single airplane — and whatever Israel can do, the United States can do as well. What’s missing at the moment is not the wherewithal to deal militarily with the Assad regime but the will to do so — and to do so expeditiously. This is a matter of leadership and, so far, Barack Obama has provided precious little.
This comes after Cohen recommend that we "bomb Syrian military installations and impose a no-fly zone." Apparently, unlike Diehl, he doesn't think we need to create a "humanitarian corridor." We can settle this thing from the air.
Not every military action is a quagmire — and, anyway, quagmires can be avoided by using air power. The military interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya did not require boots on the ground. They ended when they were finished — a brilliant exit strategy.
Cohen lived through the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars and still he tells us that quagmires can be avoided by using airpower. We can stop all the killing in Syria simply by bombing stuff. Hey, it worked in Kosovo and (kind of, not really) in Libya, so why not Syria?
The only thing I can say in Cohen's favor is that he, unlike Diehl, at least had the good taste to make his case as a pitch to save lives. But advocating war when you don't even know who the opposition is or why they're fighting or what would make them stop fighting or what they'd do if they won? Lazily advocating for American involvement in a conflict you don't understand in the least?
I guess that is just what the Washington Post is for these days.
We have records of the popular vote in our presidential elections going back to 1824. In all that time, there have been only 11 presidents who were elected to a second (consecutive) term. With the exception of the first, Andrew Jackson, every president who has been reelected has received a higher percentage of the popular vote the second time around. Here's the list, with their percentage improvement:
Andrew Jackson: -1.2%
Abraham Lincoln: +15.5%
Ulysses Grant: +2.9%
William McKinley: +0.5%
Woodrow Wilson: +7.4%
Franklin Roosevelt: +3.4% (-6.1%, -1.4%)
Dwight Eisenhower: +2.2%
Richard Nixon: +17.4%
Ronald Reagan: +8.0%
Bill Clinton: +7.4%
George W. Bush: +2.8%
Grover Cleveland also won a second term, but it was non-consecutive and does not concern us here. We can look at the individual circumstances of each of these elections and find reasons why the popular vote percentage increased. Reagan and Clinton faced fairly strong third-party challengers in their first election, for example, which kept their numbers down. Lincoln's reelection took place during the Civil War. But the point remains that presidents tend to have two fates: they are rejected, or they win reelection by a larger margin. We have to go back to the election of 1832 to find a counterexample. So, why do so many people assume that Obama will win reelection, but by a narrower margin?
No doubt, people are relying on some data. Polling numbers, mainly. But polls this far out are fairly meaningless, and Obama has a comfortable lead in almost all of them. I've been reading articles about the Indiana Senate race between Richard Lugar and Richard Mourdock, and I consistently see it predicted that Obama will not win in Indiana this time around. I sometimes hear the same thing said about North Carolina and Virginia. But, here's my guess, based on history. If Obama loses in Indiana or North Carolina or Virginia, it means he has lost the election. But, if he wins reelection, he will win all three of those states and some new states that he lost four years ago. What states might those be? Arizona and Missouri are possibilities. Georgia and Montana and the Dakotas are not out of the question. It might surprise you, but even South Carolina isn't out of the question.
For all the Republicans' efforts, President Obama is nowhere near as polarizing as George W. Bush or Bill Clinton (post-Lewinsky) turned out to be. And the GOP has completely left the mainstream of American politics. I think that Dick Lugar is going to lose his primary next Tuesday. Do you know what that means?
“If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”
Last time around, the GOP lost the support of Chuck Hagel and Colin Powell. Now, perhaps it will be Dick Lugar, John Danforth, and Olympia Snowe. Maybe even Lisa Murkowski. After all, she was booed this weekend at the Alaska GOP Convention, and the Paulistas took over control of the state party:
FAIRBANKS — Ron Paul might have finished a distant third in Alaska’s Republican presidential primary race, but the Texas congressman and his supporters won big at the Republican state convention this weekend.
In a tense and at times openly confrontational convention, Paul’s supporters came out in force to express their distaste with what they call “establishment Republicans” and successfully took control of much of the party.
The biggest victory the Paul supporters took home this weekend was the chairmanship of the Alaska GOP. Russ Millette, a Paul supporter, was elected to replace retiring party Chairman Randy Ruedrich at the state GOP convention in Anchorage.
These are the types of events that cause people to switch long-standing allegiances. For some, it happened when they impeached Clinton, or when they stole the 2000 election or when they invaded Iraq or after Abu Ghraib or when they sent John Bolton to the United Nations or when they intervened in the Terri Schiavo case or when they let New Orleans drown. I know people who switched in each and every one of those cases. I'm sure there are some who finally made the jump after the debt ceiling fiasco. There are limits for almost everyone. The truth is that the GOP isn't just ceding the center-right to the Democrats. They're force-feeding the center-right to us. And the election results should reflect that.
it appears that most of my time today is going to be dedicated to wiping Finn's runny nose. It's like a faucet. I did discover, however, that the British committee charged with investigating (pdf) Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has determined that Murdoch "is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company." I can't pretend to understand the UK's regulatory scheme, but it seems like this particular use of language might be important:
More than 6,000 possible victims [of illegal spying] have been identified and the police have so far made a number of arrests in connection with an investigation reopened in January 2011 - although no charges have yet been brought.
Media regulator Ofcom is currently looking into that issue, and reacting to the report, a spokesman said: "Ofcom has a duty under the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996 to be satisfied that any person holding a broadcasting licence is, and remains, fit and proper to do so.
David Cameron's official spokesman said the government would consider the report's findings.
Asked whether the prime minister regarded Rupert Murdoch as a fit person to run a media company, he said: "That is a matter for the regulatory authorities, not for the government."
So, it appears that the committee's finding is not binding on the regulatory agency but it might inform their opinion. The committee's ruling on Murdoch and his son was split, with all the Tories claiming it was partisan.
Labour MPs and the sole Liberal Democrat on the committee, Adrian Sanders, voted together in a bloc of six against the five Conservatives to insert the criticisms of Rupert Murdoch and toughen up the remarks about his son James. But the MPs were united in their criticism of other former News International employees.
I'd love to see a similar ruling from our own Congress. Wouldn't you?
It is probably little-remembered that Bob Dole ran as Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976 and that he had a debate with vice-presidential candidate Walter Mondale. During that debate, Bob Dole created some controversy when he said that World War One and Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were all "Democratic wars." By that he meant that our involvement in all those wars began under Democratic presidents. It was a true statement, but the way he said it made it sound like these were all wars of choice irresponsibly launched by Democrats. I'd argue strenuously against the irresponsibility of fighting in World War Two, but the other three are certainly open for debate. My point here is that it wasn't that long ago that the Democrats had the reputation for having a "muscular foreign policy." To be sure, that reputation had begun to erode in a major way in the decade before 1976. That's part of what made Dole's comments seem so bizarre. But we fought and won the World Wars under Democratic presidents and we started the Korean and Vietnam Wars under Democratic presidents, only to see both of them sloppily resolved by Republicans.
While the GOP talked a lot of anti-communist smack, they hadn't actually put any of our boys in harm's way between 1941 and 1976. Sure, Nixon extended the Vietnam War, but he also ended it. The Republicans didn't become the actual war party until Carter had some bad luck in his attempt the rescue the Iranian hostages and Reagan became president.
I mention this because I take a position midway between Josh Marshall and digby. I think Josh's view of machismo in politics is oversimplified and somewhat insulting to the voters' intelligence. I think digby is wringing her hands a bit too much.
Marshall sees the attack on Romney for not having the guts or wisdom to go get bin-Laden as a way of emasculating him. He's thinks this is a legitimate strategy and he thinks it's effective because swing voters respond to these manly/unmanly cues. Digby doesn't necessarily dispute Josh's analysis; she just bemoans it.
I'm not quite as ecstatic that we have an awesome manly man who can out macho the opposition with tough orders to kill our evil enemies. I tend to think it reinforces some unfortunate characteristics of our politics, which Marshall defines above. Not to mention that I don't know anyone who really believes that Democrats can possibly be masculine enough to win this in the long term. The Party of gays, women and kids is never going to out-macho the Republicans. (They might be able to do it if they commit to totally abandoning those constituencies, so I suppose there's still hope ...) I have no doubt that Barack Obama will be remembered as a very manly president because of his national security policies. But if you're on Team Blue, enjoy it. It's a one-time thing. I doubt very seriously that will mean a thing to any other Democrat running for office now or in the future.
Why is digby wrong? Well, for starters, she just defined the Democratic Party as the party of gays, women, and kids. That's pretty self-limiting, don't you think? Was FDR's Democratic Party limited to gays, women, and kids? Was JFK's or LBJ's Democratic Party limited in that way? I'm not attacking her here, but I think she left out the part about the blacks and the Latinos and Asians and the Native Americans. But she also just ceded the white male adult vote, and I see no reason to do that.
The main point is that liberals can govern this country with toughness and brains, and we should expect to lay our enemies low when we go about things in an intelligent manner. There's nothing to apologize for. The Republicans started a war with a country that didn't attack us and ran that war terribly. There is no reason in the world why we shouldn't take full credit for focusing on our true enemies and defeating them. Contra Marshall, this is no mere schoolyard taunting. This is an actual record of success.
Rich Lowry is seeing starbursts again. This time they aren't coming from Sarah Palin's winking eyes, but from seeing torturer-in-chief Jose Rodriguez make a "persuasive" case for torture on 60 Minutes. Not kidding. Also, fail. But they recently fired someone for being too racist, so it's all good.
With Republicans grumbling that Newt Gingrich shouldn't be allowed to speak at the Republican National Convention and with (so far) no official Romney endorsements from Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, and no concession from Ron Paul, there aren't a whole lot of candidates to fill the primetime speaking slots. In 2008, the Democrats were able to create four nights of excitement and buzz at their convention. Let's look back at each night and try to figure out who would be the equivalents for the GOP.
1st Night's Principal Speakers
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, author, attorney, and former First Daughter
Edward M. Kennedy, United States Senator from Massachusetts
Michelle Obama, attorney, public servant, and executive; wife of Barack Obama
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, congresswoman, Convention Chair
Who is the Republican equivalent of Caroline Kennedy? This would be a beloved (unelected) member of a well-respected Republican political family. How many Republican families still command respect? The Bush family is tarnished, although not beyond redemption. The Dole family wouldn't fit the bill. Perhaps the Cheney family would do, because Michael Reagan isn't getting near the podium and Ronnie's other kids are Democrats. That leaves us a choice between Liz and Mary Cheney. Since Mary is openly lesbian, I kind of doubt she'd open the primetime ceremonies. I'm going with the charming Liz Cheney here.
Now, who is the Republican equivalent of Teddy Kennedy? This would be a very long-serving senator from a respected family who is tremendously popular with the base and a whipping boy for the other side. There simply isn't anyone who fits that bill. The elder statesmen of the GOP caucus in the Senate are all hated by the base: Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar, John McCain. I think the best they can do is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. A more exciting option would be Marco Rubio, provided he isn't on the ticket. Or, maybe, Scott Brown could use the boost for his campaign against Elizabeth Warren (a nod to the middle and a boost for Massachusetts-style conservatism). I'll go with Rubio. So, here's the first night lineup:
Liz Cheney
Marco Rubio
Ann Romney
John Boehner
2nd Night's Principal Speakers
Hillary Rodham Clinton, United States Senator from New York, former Congressional and Carter administration lawyer, and former First Lady of the United States; runner-up for the 2008 Democratic nomination
Mark Warner, keynote speaker, former Virginia governor and candidate for United States Senate
The most obvious equivalent to Hillary Clinton would be Rick Santorum, if only because they both finished in second place. But Santorum hardly stacks up against Hillary. Laura Bush would make more sense, but they still have to figure out if her husband will be allowed within 300 miles of the convention. There's no good answer here, and it's hard to envision a Santorum speech that would be helpful, but I'll give Santorum the slot by default.
The second slot should be filled by someone who is an up-and-comer. In 2004, it was Barack Obama. In 2008, it was Mark Warner. What's the equivalent this time around? It could be a candidate for the U.S. Senate like Jeff Flake of Arizona or Heather Wilson of New Mexico or Josh Mandel of Ohio. I'll go with Mr. Mandel.
So, here's the second night lineup:
Rick Santorum
Josh Mandel
Can you feel the excitement?
3rd Night's Principal Speakers
Joe Biden, United States Senator from Delaware and 2008 Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States
Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States
Now we get to the heavy hitters. We open with the vice-presidential nominee, who I will assume to be Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Certainly, Romney could go for someone more exciting like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or Marco Rubio of Florida. For now, I'll go with the safe choice.
And who can compete with the Big Dog? Not George W. Bush. Not George H.W. Bush. Perhaps this is the slot for Jeb. Or, why not reach out to women and minorities in a token and insulting way? Let's bet on Condoleeza Rice.
Here's our awesome third night lineup:
Sen. Rob Portman
Condoleeza Rice
4th Night's Principal Speakers
Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States
Barack Obama, United States then-Senator from Illinois
And here we face limited choices. Will it be John McCain or Dick Cheney? I think McCain retains slightly more good will and we already had a Cheney speak on the first night.
So, here's the lineup for the final night:
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Let's do one more thing here. Let's compare the likely lineups of the Republican vs. the Democratic speakers this year.
1st Night's Principal Speakers Liz Cheney
Marco Rubio
Ann Romney
John Boehner
Chelsea Clinton
John Kerry
Michelle Obama
Nancy Pelosi
2nd Night's Principal Speakers
Rick Santorum
Josh Mandel
Hillary Clinton
Elizabeth Warren
3rd Night's Principal Speakers
Sen. Rob Portman
Condoleeza Rice
Joe Biden
Bill Clinton
4th Night's Principal Speakers
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Al Gore
Barack Obama
Which set of speakers seems better suited to excite the base and win over the middle? Which set of speakers indicates a healthy party and which set demonstrates a party in fatal decline?
