Open Thread
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 58 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 58 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue
This post is in: Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue
Don’t know what to make of this one, really, (any of you know how rigorous La Repubblica is in its journalism?), but here’s the Grauniad’s gloss on that paper’s report:
A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.
The pope’s spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.
The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called “Vatileaks” affair.
Last May Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.
According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising “two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red” had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope’s successor upon his election.
The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation”.
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature”. The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.
It quoted a source “very close to those who wrote [the cardinal’s report]” as saying: “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments.” (h/t GOS)
Correlation is not cause, even if La Repubblica really has this story nailed, though I can certainly see how such a report might confirm someone in Benedict’s position in their conviction that it might be time to take a hike.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 159 Comments
This post is in: Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue
I like Barney Frank a lot but I’d rather have Deval Patrick nominate a Democrat who will start campaigning the second they’re nominated and not quit until they beat Scott Brown. Barney’s not that guy, and if you need more proof that the Massachusetts Senate seat is not a gimme, remember that a top-notch candidate, Warren, spent $40+ million to beat Brown in a nasty race, and that a mediocre candidate lost to him. Do any of you Massachusetts residents have a suggestion for someone who can beat Brown?
I also don’t care if Obama nominates Chuck Hagel, Michele Flournoy or a trained circus dog for Secretary of Defense as long as whomever he nominates is on board with major defense cuts, and will advocate for them. But that’s not going to happen so I guess the best we can get is either a Republican who isn’t going to completely genuflect before Israel (Hagel) or a hawk with a D after her name (Flournoy). I sure don’t see the point in Obama or anyone else expending energy to defend or support Hagel. Yeah, it’s maddening that he’s getting mau-maued for treating Israel like something other than our 51st and most important state, but it’s not like the guy is going to be a radical Progressive change agent in the Pentagon.
(BTW, here’s a bit about Flournoy:
Michelle Flournoy, the former under secretary of Defense who is also a leading candidate to replace the soon-to-depart Leon Panetta, is also somewhat haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, by her own account, but in a very different way than Hagel. Though far too young (she turned 52 on Friday) to have served there with the 66-year-old Hagel, Flournoy warned in a speech this week that military planners might still be too “risk-averse” because of the Vietnam experience. She said the military was endangered by a new “Vietnam syndrome” in which planners might seek to avoid the lessons of counterinsurgency and guerrilla warfare simply because the last decade of this kind of conflict has been so costly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
)
by DougJ| 80 Comments
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Good News For Conservatives, Green Balloons, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, We Are All Mayans Now
It’s a great time to be a conservative (via):
.. in 2016, we are likely to see Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) — all of whom have significantly more star power than Romney — make the race.
And:
If you listened to the Republican candidates this year, you heard a conventional set of arguments. But if you go online, you can find a vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation.
[…]Soft Libertarians. Some of the most influential bloggers on the right, like Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Megan McArdle, start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way.
[…]Burkean Revivalists. This group includes young conservatives whose intellectual roots go back to the organic vision of society described best by Edmund Burke but who are still deeply enmeshed in current policy debates.
[…]Since Nov. 6, the G.O.P. has experienced an epidemic of open-mindedness.
Star power, star power, star power over mePost + Comments (80)
This post is in: Flash Mob of Hate, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
That was the question Boston attorney Joseph Welch put to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.
I ask it now, as rhetorically as Welch did then, of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.
Why?
The “revenge” nonsense of course: McRomney’s last-ditch, last moment attack on President Obama for having asked his supporters not to boo Mitt Romney, but to vote, because, as the President said living well voting is the best revenge.
Every sane American knows that joke; Mitt Romney does too. But to Romney the candidate, suddenly, this is a sudden moment of clarity about the President. Obama’s voters seek revenge!
It’s hardly a dog whistle anymore.
Rather, the message comes through loud and clear to anyone who cares to listen. Romney’s crowds know what is being said: there’s an angry black man over there exhorting his angry black voters (and their fellow travelers) to seek revenge on proper Americans.
A digression — but not really. I’ve just started to read Gilbert King’s harrowing new book, The Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America. It tells the story of four young African American men, falsely accused of raping a white woman in 1949, and the terrible events that flowed from that lie. One lesson to draw from that story: the civil war between white Americans ended in 1865. The civil war that pitted American whites — under the cover of law, often prosecuted by uniformed agents of the state — against American blacks did not cease until the early 1960s.*
Mitt Romney was seventeen years old when the Civil Rights act was passed. He was thirty-one when his church finally abolished its race-based restrictions. He was a young man through the great civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He knows — or should — the consequences of racial hatred and division.
Another digression: I don’t have a lot of time for John McCain. He’s responded to his defeat in 2008 with none of the honor, gravity or dedication to country that men like George McGovern or Jimmy Carter displayed in like circumstances– or as George Romney did, for that matter. But I’ll give him this: to a great extent he resisted the pull of race-baiting in the last presidential campaign. His running mate wanted to go there, and so did much of his party, but he didn’t. And that’s something, and not a small matter either. So: compare and contrast.
On the Republican side this year there has been an almost ceaseless background drone: Obama is not quite a “real American;” he apologizes; he doesn’t get what this country is about. The theme, blunt and gross at the Limbaugh end of the GOP noise machine, modulated and disguised just enough when it’s Clint Eastwood talking to a chair, is clear enough to anyone who’s lived in these United States long enough to reach the age when it is possible to buy a drink legally, or vote. And I guess I’ve experienced what happens with any kind of constant white noise: it kind of fades into the background, neither (quite) unheard nor consciously noticed. That’s how it works best — a constant presence that never rises to the level that draws a direct reply.
But this last, this “revenge” idiocy, is one provocation too far, at least for me. Mitt Romney knows what he is doing. He’s telling this country that there is a guy over there, the President, who does not legitimately hold his office, who seeks not the best for America, but the revenge of some Americans on others. It doesn’t matter that the claim is risible on its face, that it clearly morphs beyond recognition the actual meaning of Barack Obama’s words. The trope sends a message that Romney wants to deliver. It’s what you say when you can’t shout Ni-Clang! anymore; it’s how you play on the notion — as Politico would have it — that only white Americans can confer– or enjoy — a true mandate to lead.
Here’s the thing: the easy path is to say that this is just what they do. It’s been the GOP line since 1968, and it will continue to be so until we finally salt the fields of that no-longer-Grand, way-too-Old Party. But I can’t leave it there, however much I understand that the hunger for power trumps all else. Mitt Romney isn’t a party. He isn’t a movement, or an institution, or anything but one man. He owns his acts, his words, his choices. And he has chosen to close out his campaign with a moment in his stump speech that plays on the worst impulses in American history.
Has he no shame?
At this sorry end of a seven year pursuit of the White House, the question answers itself.
*You could argue that it hasn’t ended yet — but I would say that there is a difference between sporadic acts and the sustained and legally protected violence of the pre-1964 era. But even so, the fact that this is still even a discussion is something to fuel both anger and despair.
Image: Alfred Dedreux, Pug Dog in an Armchair, 1857 (Yeah. I do know I’ve used this before. But it works, OK?)
by John Cole| 76 Comments
This post is in: Election 2012, Clown Shoes, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Manic Progressive, Sociopaths
I know that this will get boos and hisses from some of you, but I saw this on facebook and got hysterical:
Oh, and if you were wondering who would be the first progressive concern troll (ala Peter Daou and the Rush Limbaugh saga), guess no longer:
Actually, no, petunia. Romney wasn’t trying to recruit more women. It was pushed upon him, and then he let it drop as soon as he could:
“I went to my staff, and I said, ‘How come all the people for these jobs are all men?” Romney said. “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.”
“I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women,” Romney added.
He said his administration had the highest number of women in top positions of any governor in the country.
That version is under fire by a coalition of women’s groups known as MassGAP, which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus. The group compiled the names of female applicants before Romney came to office and offered them to both Romney and his Democratic opponent Shannon O’Brien.
“It didn’t really have anything to do with Romney asking women to give him names,” said Carolyn Jones, who was secretary of the Massachusetts Womens’ Political Caucus during the time that Romney was governor.
MassGAP, which is non–partisan, issued a statement saying that while the Romney administration started with women comprising 42 percent of newly appointed positions, by 2006, that number had dropped to 25 percent.
“So when the spotlight was on him, sure he paid some lip service. But when no one was looking, those levels plummeted to 25 percent, below where they were in the previous governor’s administration,” said Jesse Mermell, a Democratic selectwoman in Brookline, Mass., who was the executive director of the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus from 2004 to 2008. During that time the organization commissioned a report on women in government positions in the state.
In other words. He lied. Again. He didn’t look for more women candidates. He was presented with a coordinate push by a nonpartisan group in Mass. to have more women in office, and he initially complied, then just let things fall by the wayside.
Not that our manic progressives care. For them, the only thing worse than Republicans are Democrats, and whenever Democrats have a successful line of attack, they collapse in fits of apoplexy and whine about decorum. There’s a special place in the insane asylum for people who think the route to progressive goals involves kneecapping Democrats and fluffing Republicans every step of the way.
This post is in: Ryan Lyin' Weasel, When Everything Changed, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Romney of the Uncanny Valley
I’m going to do something I very rarely wish to inflict on y’all. Usually, I like to invoke at least a schmear of empirical evidence to drive an argument, but just this once I’m going to go all pundity…
….which means, I guess, that I gotta start with a Penetrating Glimpse of the Obvious:
Last night’s debate was a poor showing for President Obama and those of us who see the prospect of a President Romney as a clear and present danger to the Republic and our kids’ future.
Which leads to the equally obvious (but true) pivot:
No campaign is a single event. Counting today there are 32 full days to go before the polls open on Tuesday, November 6. Last night’s farrago will become part of the river of stories that flow towards that day — but it is the sum of those tales, not any single shiny moment, that will determine the outcome.
Already, some folks — partisans for now, to be sure — are trying to draw attention to what Romney actually said, and in doing so, identifying the significant vulnerabilities this debate exposed for the Republican cause. For example, I agree with Mistermix that Romney’s signal mistake was to open himself up for a renewed assault on his Medicare position — and that link to Krugman shows it ain’t just us DFH’s paying attention. I also think Romney’s tripling down on his tax plan will allow a lot of people, and not just wonks, to remind folks of the gap between arithmetic and all the BS Romney and Ryan have thrown out on this one.
As Josh Marshall says in that second link, this is the kind of thing that takes several news cycles to build. But recall: we were all enraged at the brazen embrace of easily refutable lies in the Ryan RNC Convention speech. We didn’t have faith in either the MSM or the Obama campaign (Democrats after all!) to take on the deceit with anything like the attention needed to defuse such weaponized ruminant excrement. But they did, and (with some help from the marathon man himself) Ryan has become at least a bit of punchline ever since.*
So: President Obama missed many opportunities last night, perhaps most significantly in not drawing a sharp enough line between the “you’re on your own” Romney vision and the “we’re all in this together” music Obama has played to such great effect in the past (and I’m sure will again, soon).
But the real test of the Obama campaign will be what it does over the next week with the actual missteps Romney made last night. How will they use his internal contradictions in the ads? What will Obama and his surrogates say to local news folks? How quickly can their operation drive the mainstream media to go to town on stories like this one? (Shorter: it took almost no time at all for a Romney aide to contradict Romney’s core claim about pre-existing conditions and Medicare.) No guarantees exist, but I have to say I’ve been damn impressed with the side of the Obama campaign that pursues such ends. (Note also that Fallows reminds us that (in his view) debating is the best campaign technique for Romney. Obama’s operation has been superior to his rival’s in every other phase so far.)
To repeat the cliché — holy hell, if I’m pretending to be a pundit I’ve got to hammer those too — but campaigns are marathons, not sprints. Romney’s performance last night was like ripping off an 15 second 100 yard dash in mile 18th on the way to the Back Bay.** Yup, he won that stretch of road. Now comes the time to reel him in.
Which leads me to my last thought, the one I hope y’all take home: 32 days, peeps. It’s not just Obama and the grandees of the profession, the Axelrod’s and the Plouffe’s who can’t let themselves get too much sleep between now and then. There’s the rest of us. There’s me.
I have to confess — I’ve been less involved in a boots-on-the-ground kind of way in this election than the last, and by a good margin too. My wife and I have been giving money on a regular basis, but I used to be a phone bank hero, and then got into door-to-door as my preferred mode of participation. Haven’t done that this year; pretty much all I’ve done that requires me to upgrade from a bathrobe in front of a screen in my basement*** is to show up at a couple of Warren events. That’s not enough — if there is one true lesson to be gained from the debate it is that nothing is in the bag, not the Presidency, not the Senate, surely not the House.
I’m not Tim F. I can’t match his gift for catalyzing action. But action is needed, so here’s my pledge. I’m going to do something every week from now through Monday, 5 November. I’ve got the day job and I’ve got the kid and there’s some real life stuff happening in my extended family, so I can’t do what I did when I was a mere pup, and just take off for New Hampshire for the last two weeks of the 1992 election. But I’ll be heading north to canvas this weekend and everyday I can liberate from my daily round between now and the 6th; I’ll be tossing more bucks in the pot today, and no doubt on days to come; I’ll keep looking for useful tasks that I can tackle. I really don’t want to do this — I’m becoming more misanthropic and generally grumpy with each passing year — but that’s what’s required, so I’m just going to kick my ass out the door as much as I possibly can.
You?
Update: Just to show it ain’t just my rose-colored monitor screens making this argument, here’s a dispatch from the inner sanctum of the Village, NBC’s First Read:
*** Who wins the post-debate? If Romney won the instant reactions from last night’s debate, it is more than possible that the Obama camp can win the next 24 hours. Why? Because Romney said several things that could make life difficult for him today or in the next debate. First, Romney declared, “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.” But in addition to supporting the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which are skewed heavily to the wealthy, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center says that Romney’s tax plan would give the Top 0.1% an average tax cut of more than $246,000. Next, he stated that “there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit.” While he has said his plan will be paid for, he’s yet to lay out any SPECIFICS on how he’ll pay for it. Romney also said, “I’m not going to cut education funding. I don’t have any plan to cut education funding.” But the Ryan budget plan, which Romney has said he’d sign into law, leads to long-term spending reductions in education. And Romney also didn’t disagree with the description that his Medicare plan would consist of “vouchers” for future retirees. Winning a “debate” is always a two-part deal — the night itself, and then the aftermath. This is now an opportunity for Team Obama and a challenge for Team Romney.
Update 2: And on cue, here’s an opening shot from Team Obama (via):
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xZniwrAwZGY” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
None of this is to say all is well.
It isn’t.
This election is a month away and it really, truly ain’t in the bag yet. So what I said above: If the idea of waking up on November 7 to the words President-Elect Romney gives you the cold sweats, listen to the man — and don’t just vote, put mind, money and muscle behind the campaign to get your friends and neighbors to follow your lead.
*Via DeLong, a new game: Where’s Waldo Paulie?
**Boston stuff — never mind.
***Not intended to be a factual statement.
Image: Franz Marc, The Yellow Cow, 1911.
Cross posted at Inverse Square