Tea Bagging the Townhalls--The Near Fringe Emerges as a Force

Conservative activists have been disrupting townhall meetings held by Democratic politicians like Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Carl Levin of Michigan, and others.

At the Austin event Aug. 1 with Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett (pictured
here, see video), the usual suspects showed up shouting "Just Say No" and waving signs that included the usual symbols of communism and fascism worked into statements against "socialized" health care, in addition to an image of Doggett as Satan. The protestors' continued shouting throughout the event was clearly an effort to disrupt it and to prevent any other voices being heard. The same was the case at an Aug. 2 event in Philadelphia with Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (see video). Here, wingnuts with bumber stickers on their heads shouted down speakers to the clear annoyance of others around them trying to listen. One woman held up a copy of the New American Bible and said, "This is the only truth," as though that were somehow an argument against health care reform.

My own initial opinion is that the disruptions will rebound somewhat against conservatives and work to the advantage of President Obama in his efforts to pass health care reform.

However, the full significance of the disruptions goes beyond health care. What's happened is that the "near fringe" of teabaggers, Ayn Randers, libertarians, neo-secessionists, and racists has figured out a way to be a real force in national politics.

Ultimately, that makes the disruptions more important than the townhalls.

No More Mr. Nice Right-Wing

Somebody in LA is putting up posters of Barack Obama in both "white-face" and "black-face with the same kind of red lipstick look as Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

Of course, the picture portrays Obama in terms of blackface minstrelsy. Minstrelsy was an entertainment form in which white performers corked up in blackface to imitate stereotypes of African-Americans as lazy, buffoonish, and deeply appreciative of slavery. In representing Obama this way, the anonymous sources of this poster are saying that Obama and, by extension, all African-Americans, are slaves by nature and that Obama's occupation of the White House is something that goes against a beneficial natural order.

But that's not all.

The picture also reveals the racist intent of the right-wing's constant accusations of Obama being a "socialist." That's because the picture uses the word "socialism" both above and below the red square framing Obama's minstrelsy face. By associating the word "socialism" with this heavily racialized image of Obama, the people behind the poster are revealing that the "socialist" label was always a substitute for the "n-word."

Given that I hadn't really thought of that, I owe these people a favor.

Beyond Repulsive

John Waters has a HuffPost article on the background for his friendship with Leslie Van Houten, one of the women who carried out the Tate/LaBianco murders for Charles Manson.

I liked Cry Baby a lot, but "beyond repulsive" is the best phrase I can imagine for the sense of commonality Waters sees with the Manson gang.

But I imagine I'll read the next installment as well.

Torture Victim Cedric Benson Lands on His Feet

Today's Lexington Herald-Leader has a good article by sportswriter John Clay about Cedric Benson of the Cincinnati Bengals. Originally a high draft pick out of Texas, Benson was still with the Chicago Bears when he was arrested ostensibly for public drunkenness on a Texas lake. Here's the football part of the story. Benson was cut by the Bears out of a job at the beginning of training camp and out of the league most of last year before signing with the Bengals and finishing strong.

So Benson sat. Training camps opened last season and Benson sat. Finally, a Texas grand jury failed to hand up an indictment for the boat incident, clearing Benson's return to the NFL, and Bengals owner and president Mike Brown did what Mike Brown does — he decided to give Benson another chance.

Only this one showed signs of working. Benson signed a one-year, $520,000 contract with the Bengals on Sept. 30. Featured back Chris Perry had been a huge disappointment.

An opening existed. Benson took advantage.

He topped the 100-yard mark in three of 12 games. As the year progressed, Benson resurrected his career and the Cincinnati running game. By week 16, against Cleveland, he rushed for 171 yards in a 14-0 Cincinnati victory.

But Benson's redemption is more profound than Clay let's on. It turns out that the original offence for which Benson was ultimately not indicted was "boating while black." More accurately, it was "being a millionaire black football player with a big boat the cops didn't like." Benson was hosting about 15 of his friends on an large recreational boat he owned when the police came on board to investigate public drunkenness. Evidently, it was the sixth time that police had boarded Benson's boat that summer. Here's Benson's account of the ensuing events as reported by "AFP:"

There was no resistance on my part," Benson said. "Was I drunk? No. . . They gave me a field sobriety test, told me to say my ABCs and told me to count from 1 to 4 up and down. I'm thinking I passed all the tests, did everything right . . . Then the officer told me we needed to go to land to take more tests. I politely asked him why we needed to go to land to take more tests when I took every test. Then he sprayed me with mace . . . I'm not handcuffed. I'm not under arrest. I'm not threatening him. I'm not pushing him. I'm not touching him. And he sprays me right in my eye . . . Nobody saw what he did to me. I started screaming for my mother to come. That's when they put me under arrest. And the officer threw a life jacket over my head.

Once we got to land, the Travis County police grabbed me and kicked my feet from under me. So I landed on my back while I was handcuffed. They held me down and held the water hose over my face. I couldn't breathe. I'm choking. I'm begging the cops, 'Please stop. Please stop.' Then they picked me up and dragged me backward toward their car. And I'm still being polite, asking them, 'Sir could you please allow me to walk like a man to your cop car?' They just kept dragging me on."

In other words, Cedric Benson got the exact treatment that Justin Barrett thought Henry Louis Gates should have gotten. Under the mistaken assumption that he had rights as a citizen, Benson asked a police officer a question and the police officer responded by spraying him with mace. Actually, the Gates analogy is not quite accurate. Barrett thought Gates should have been hit with "pepper spray" rather than mace. Still, given that Benson was not posing any kind of threat, spraying him with mace was still a form of torture.

Once the police got Benson back on land, other police officers added what Dick Vitale would call "a little French pastry" and got into some proper waterboarding torture by holding a hose to a face.

Poor deluded Cedric Benson.

He still wanted to be treated "like a man" even though the whole exercise looks like it was intended to strip him of any sense of manhood and citizenship he might have had.

The whole affair looked like an exercise in police criminality to me when I blogged about it last summer. It still looks like police criminality now.

After the arrest and attendant publicity, the Bears added further injury to Benson by cutting him, thus putting Benson's professional football career in jeopardy as well.

But then, a Texas grand jury failed to indict him and Benson got his chance to refer to the NFL with the Bengals.

Given the reputation of grand juries for being willing to indict a ham sandwich on a prosecutor's recommendation, the Texas grand jury must have thought that Benson's arrest was egregiously lacked justification to not indict.

But at this point, the story changes from the abuse and degradation of Cedric Benson by the police to Benson's redemption as a football player. It took a great deal of character and maturity for Benson to return from that kind of torture trauma at all. However, by all accounts, Benson was actually a better football player for the Bengals than he had originally been for the Chicago Bears.

He deserves a great deal of credit.

Northern Idaho: The Anti-Diversity Paradise?

There's an interesting article on the efforts of people in the Northern Idaho panhandle to get beyond the stigma of the area's association with Richard Butler and his Aryan Nation compound.
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The good news is that Butler is dead (from natural causes in 2004), the Aryan Nation is gone, and the area around Coeur d'Alene is growing as a result of a healthy tourist trade.
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But Coeur d'Alene still seems to be a bigot's paradise:

Right-wing political attitudes are common. It's not unusual to see people sporting Confederate flags, anti-government slogans or even a swastika tattoo.

Many of the newcomers hail from California, including a large cadre of retired law enforcement officers, of whom O.J. Simpson trial figure Mark Fuhrman is the best known.

"LA cops move up here to get away from diversity," said Rachel Dolezal, director of education for the Human Rights Education Institute in downtown Coeur d'Alene.

Given that the racial attitudes of police officers are somewhat in the news as a result of the Henry Louis Gates case, the comment on LA cops is interesting. Several years ago, one of my students who had lived in LA told me that cops tried to recruit him for the police force as soon as they heard he was from Kentucky. That was because the LA cops figured that guys from Kentucky would have the "right" hostility toward minorities.

Can't be too righteous about the Confederate flags though. There's a lot of them around here.

The One and Only Ric Caric?

According to Intelius.com, I'm the only Ric Caric in the United States. That's hard to believe. I have a sister with the very unusual name of Ryl and she was still able to find one other Ryl.

GE More the Culprit on Olbermann/O'Reilly

Matt Yglesias is on point in viewing General Electric as the main party benefitting from the Olbermann/O'Reilly gag order.

John McCain Knows Blue Dogs

Obviously, John McCain's been reading this blog lately lately because he has about the same low opinion of the Blue Dog Democrats as Red State Impressions. Here's a CNN account of McCain's appearance on CNN's State of the Union.

The “Blue Dogs,” a group of moderate to conservative House Democrats who have worked to limit the price tag of health care reform legislation, are taking a hit from a prominent Republican who is suggesting that the group will ultimately prove ineffectual.

“The Blue Dogs, they always bark and they never bite,” Arizona Sen. John McCain said on an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “They almost always – in fact, always, roll over and then play dead.”

And he would know all about moderate impotence because McCain himself was the consummate, barking, moderate media hound before he decided to start pandering to the right-wing base during the 2008 GOP primaries.

Of course, there's still a decent chance that health reform could go down in flames.

But I'm starting to be more optimistic.

Black Anger Should Be Everybody's Anger

In a NY Times column entitled "Anger Has Its Place," Bob Herbert connects the Henry Louis Gates case to the larger police treatment of African-Americans and Hispanics. The Gates case is only a particularly prominent example of the arbitrary police stops, arrests and disproportionate imprisonment that African-Americans face in cities like New York, Boston, and Cambridge, Mass.

Not former bastions of segregation like Montgomery, Alabama, or Jackson, Mississippi, or Breau Bridge, Louisiana--New York and Boston.

New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.

I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.

Herbert emphasizes that the only check on the outrages involved in the police treatment of minorities is the anger of minority groups.

Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.

That's unfortunately true, but black anger should really be everybody's anger.

Nate Silver Sees Slim Margin in House

Nate Silver sees health care legislation as passing by about 10 votes in the House.

Palin's Back

The blog site Conservatives4Palin fronts this picture of Sarah Palin with her back turned to the viewer gazing out over an oil pipeline and some mountains. It's extremely interesting that the conservatives pose Palin's back. This had to be a purposeful strategy because the web designer sacrificed what the right views as Palin's most important asset--her looks. There's a number of ways the Conservative4Palin design can be viewed, but I'm impressed by the austere isolation of the whole representation of Palin. She's alone contemplating snow-covered mountains unspoiled by environmentalists and an oil pipeline stretching out toward more mountains in the distance. There's no Palin family, no Alaskans, no animals and no invitation from the design to either join Palin in her causes or to participate in her strength. One could say that the viewer is invited to admire or support Palin, but only from a distance that's as breathtaking as the mountains.

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The picture has very little to do with Sarah Palin who has five kids and dives enthusiastically into hunting, fishing, and dishing out food at Alaskan gatherings. Very few politicians pose themselves as lonely, isolated, or contemplative figures and Sarah Palin isn't one of them.

In my opinion, Conservatives4Palin should be seen as using Sarah Palin to represent their own sense of isolation and purity as well as their determination to turn their backs on most other Americans.

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But that's a good part of Palin's strength among activist conservatives. She's a tremendous prop for the conservative imagination. Conservatives are able to represent themselves in the most positive light possible through the images they create of Palin.

Reports of a Sarah Palin Divorce

There are reports out this afternoon that Sarah Palin and her husband are getting divorced.

AlaskaReport has learned this morning that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage have confirmed the news. A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other at last Sunday's resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

If this is the case, it's most unfortunate. The Palin's still have four kids living at home and the baby Trigg is disabled. So, a divorce would hardly be good for the family.

A divorce following so closely on her resignation as governor would give Palin a Lindsey-Lohan kind of train wreck aura as well.

My own opinion is that there's no particular need for Sarah Palin to join John Ensign and Mark Sanford in the roster of Republican train wrecks. And I certainly wouldn't want to see anything happen to derail Palin's upcoming career as a gaffe-a-minute conservative icon. So I hope the rumors aren't really true.

But there's certainly a lot of smoke around Palin's personal life.

Update: Sarah Palin's spokesperson came out with a denial.

Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent "story" (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island). Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to "quit making things up." We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it.

The Official Response from Sarah Palin is a no ambiguity, Shermanesque denial that the media is always seeking: "Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I'm not blind!"-- SARAH PALIN

Of course, that's also the kind of denial that Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro made when they were asked about steroids.

I give the Palins marriage another year.

The Unethical Truce Between GE and Fox

Glenn Greenwald has a good run down of the CEO agreement between General Electric and News Corps to end the war between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly:

In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a "summit meeting" for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the "feud" between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. According to the NYT, both CEO's agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other's news organizations and employees.

There are a number of implications of this story. Among other things pointed out by Greenwald, the GE/Fox deal is strong evidence of corporate control by companies like GE over their news divisions. I would also think that the deal also demonstrates the limitations of any effort to bring progressive ideas and personalities into the mainstream media. If corporate headquarters at GE, Disney, or TimeWarner can decide that a huge right-wing target like Fox is off limits, then it's pretty evident that progressives won't be able to get very far with the corporate-owned media.

The GE/Fox deal also looks like an obvious violation of anti-trust laws that discourage this kind of collusion.

Limbaugh Still in NY

It looks like New York City will have to put off its parade. Four months ago, the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh announced that he was leaving the city over the imposition of a millionaire's tax and the City was planning a huge ticker tape parade to celebrate.

Back in March, Rush Limbaugh got a lot of attention when he vowed to sell his New York City apartment and cease broadcasting from Manhattan, in response to a planned tax increase for wealthy New York State residents. "I'm going to get out of there totally, 'cause this is just absurd, and it's ridiculous," he fumed.

New Yorkers were deliriously happy. Gov. David Paterson expressed the convictions of millions of New Yorkers when he said that “If I knew that would be the result . . . I would’ve thought about the taxes earlier." The celebration of Limbaugh's departure was going to be the biggest event in human history. The Thanksgiving-style floats, hundreds of bands, mummers from Philadelphia, and Mardi Gras celebrants from New Orleans and Brazil were going to stretch for at least 10 miles. The City was going to unleash the biggest fireworks in history of mankind and little children as young as age 6 would be allowed to drink all the booze they could get. The "Good-Riddance Rush" celebration was going to be bigger than the victory celebrations after WWII, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, or the last Yankee World Series. It would have put President Kennedy's funeral to shame.

But it looks like the parade has to be called off. Given that Limbaugh has made no effort to sell his condo or move his second studio out of the New York City, it looks like the city has to graciously accept his presence for at least another year.

But the last word hasn't been spoken. Don't be surprised if New York State tries to force Limbaugh's hand by raising the millionaire's tax again.

Then they can have their parade.

Is America The Country They Were Born In?

Glenn Thrush of The Politico is shocked by the fact that 58% of Republicans either don't believe or are not sure that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Shocker poll from Kos/Research2000 today.

A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn't born in the US (28 percent) or aren't sure (30 percent). A mere 42 percent think he was.

That means a majority of Republicans polled either don't know about -- or don't believe the seemingly incontrovertible evidence Obama's camp has presented over and over and over that he was born in Hawaii in '61.

I'm not sure why. Participation in the "birther movement" has become part of the political identity of "near fringe" conservatism best identified with Glenn Beck and the tea parties, the kind of conservatives who are more strident than Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter but haven't moved to the "far fringes" of neo-Nazism, Ann Randism, or the KKK.

The fact that 58% of Republicans have at least some sympathy for the birther movement is a sign of the extent to which the GOP has shifted farther to the right in response to the election of Barack Obama.

Thrush wonders when people are going to "start a serious dialog about the Birther movement being a proxy for racism that is unacceptable to articulate in more direct terms?"

But I wonder if there aren't other fundamentals of conservatism at work here. For example, I wonder how Republicans would respond to a question like this:

"Is America still the country you were born in?"

I think a lot of Republicans would answer "no" or "not sure."

That's a real issue as well.

The Rage of Justin Barrett, Part I

One of the limitations of contemporary political discourse on race is that guys like Justin Barrett don't get more sustained attention. A police officer and National Guard member, Barrett wrote an e-mail to the Boston Globe's Yvonne Abraham that exploded with racial and gender rage, revealed the extent to which police officers think they're laws onto themselves, and formulated a dangerous view of the military as the foundation of American society.

But almost all of this is going to be swept under the rug.

Because Justin Barrett used a racist monkey image in relation to Henry Louis Gates, he will be fired from the Boston Police force and removed from the National Guard. He'll also have a difficult time finding an equivalent job in a tough economy (will the Boston Fire Department want him?). Indeed, Barrett might not be able to find any kind of position that involves working with people who aren't committed racists.

Barrett claims to have black friends. I imagine he'll also lose all of his black friends not named Clarence Thomas.

But Barrett will be forgotten after he either loses or gives up his appeals to keep his job. He'll have his fifteen minutes of infamy and then the incident will be swept under the carpet of American public awareness. That's the way the media works on race. It focuses attention on "racial incidents" primarily as a way to reassure everybody--well, whites anyway-- that America is not a racist country. When that comforting thought is achieved, people like Justin Barrett are then dropped from the collective memory.

Still, it's important to fully illuminate Justin Barrett's views. Barrett is a racist, a misogynist, and an advocate of police tyranny. But he's not just an immoral person. He's also somebody who ties these views together into a violently authoritarian system of political thought. Given the hostility toward democracy that's become more prominent in some circles over the last three years, t's necessary to understand how Barrett's thinking works. It would also be important to figure out whether Barrett's ideas are shared among conservatives, members of police forces, and the various branches of the military. There's not much hope there though. Given the desire to sweep Justin Barrett under the carpet of history, it might be a long time before anyone knows how widely held his views are.

Barrett, the Racial Analogy, and Police Power.

An important kernel of Justin Barrett's world view is the justification of the tyrannical rule of police through the analogy of Henry Louis Gates to a "banana-eating jungle monkey."

Your defense of Gates while he is on the phone being confronted with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and always will be a suspect. His first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (pepper spray) deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.

I won't hide my bias. Given the history of white racism in this country, it's sickening to see a black guy like Gates analogized to a "banana-eating jungle monkey." I'm nauseous even typing it. It's even more disgusting that this analogy is so important to Barrett's view of the power of the police. Barrett starts his presentation by seeking to disabuse Abraham of the view that Prof. Gates should be considered a citizen of the United States. "Your defense of Gates while he is on the phone being confronted with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and always will be a suspect."

Barrett's second sentence here explains the meaning of the first. To Justin Barrett, Prof. Gates is not and can never be a citizen who can claim "rights" according to the Constitution. For Barrett, Gates "is and will always be a suspect" in the sense that Gates is permanently under suspicion for committing crimes and therefore always subject to police action. This is where the circular reasoning connected to the monkey analogy begins to take effect. In the world according to Justin Barrett, any claim by black persons to have rights reveals their racial essence and constitutes proof that they are sub-human and therefore do not deserve rights. By complaining to Officer Crowley, Gates revealed his essence as a "banana-eating jungle monkey" who did not deserve the rights he claimed to have and merited his status as a police suspect.

Because he does not view black people as having any rights, Justin Barrett assumes that police officers have a right to do anything to a black person like Prof. Gates they want. Barrett claims that he would have sprayed Gates in the face with OC or pepper spray for his "belligerent non-compliance" in claiming his rights. This is a startling claim. Gates was not committing a crime and he posed no danger or other impediment to Officer Crowley (who could have arrested him at any time). As a result, Barrett is posing himself as having a right to pepper spray Gates simply because Gates was demanding to know the officer's name and badge number. Therefore, Barrett was presuming a right to consider Gates "non-compliance" to be a crime and to serve as judge, jury, and agent for executing punishment in relation to that crime. It's important to emphasize that Justin Barrett is claiming the right for himself and other police officers to decide themselves on punishment for black guys like Gates. In Barrett's mind, police officers would have been well within their rights to club, tase, beat up, or even shoot Gates for his non-compliance. If Gates has no rights as a citizen, how cops punish them is a matter of whim and Barrett only chooses OC because that's the particular way he enjoys the thought of Gates' suffering.

For Justin Barrett, the supposed racial inferiority of blacks justifies an assertion of total police power over black people.

Next Time--Justin Barrett and the Military as Foundational

Joey Harrington's the Man

Pete Schrager of FoxSports is catching onto something that I wrote about on this blog last year--that journeyman quarterback Joey Harrington of the New Orleans Saints is one of the more sympathetic figures in the NFL.

If you're a fan of redemption stories, you might want to check out what [Joey Harrington's] up to down in New Orleans this August. Harrington, known as "Joey Blue Skies" in Detroit, is currently with the Saints — his fourth team in five NFL seasons . . . Drew Brees is the starter in New Orleans, but there's a shot Harrington outdoes (Mark) Brunell and gets the nod as the Saints No. 2. Taunted by Detroit fans for years, stuck on horrendous Lions, Dolphins and Falcons squads, and owner of a career losing record that would make Jamal Crawford and Archie Manning blush — perhaps it's time to root for Joey Harrington. Older, wiser and on the outer edges of NFL relevancy, a career revival would be one to rally around.

Given the horrible teams he's been on, Harrington also deserves credit for conducting himself in a mature manner and not doing anything to make bad situations worse.

Here's hoping that Joey Harrington is a good enough quarterback that his patience can be rewarded.

Malcolm Gladwell Simpers Over Bear Stearns

Malcolm Gladwell's not my favorite writer--he's Thomas Friedman without the deep reflections on his rides from the airport-- and Gladwell's New Yorker article on the Bear Stearns failure is an exercise in simpering. According to Gladwell, Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne was "over-confident" and Cayne's over-confidence has something to do with the over-confidence of the now-forgotten British generals at Gallipoli.

Bear's failure also had something to do with playing bridge even though the now-forgotten British generals at Gallipoli didn't seem to have played bridge.

Give Gladwell credit.

He showed that he knew a couple of obscure references even if he didn't write anything that helped us understand the failure of Bear Stearns.

The Problem with Brett Favre

The Minnesota Vikings announced today that NFL legend, icon, and retirement specialist Brett Favre will not be returning to play football in 2009.

So why can't Favre stay retired?

There are a lot of theories, but I haven't seen anybody mention just how dull and boring life can be in Kiln, Mississippi. Like a lot of guys who've seen the bright lights and the big cities, Favre can't get used to living in an area that really gets dark at night.

Who can blame him?

What Favre needs to do is move to New York, LA, or Chicago, get involved in some sort of sports related commerce, and go out and enjoy the adulation that goes with being a recently retired football legend.

That would keep him retired.

Michael Vick: The Dick Cheney of Sports

Having followed the Atlanta Falcons fan since their first year of expansion, I used to be a big fan of Michael Vick.

However, those days are over even if Vick does catch on with another team. I know Vick didn't start any wars, torture anybody, carry a gun, or steal anything. But anybody who executes failed fighting dogs has to be a super-asshole. That makes Michael Vick the Dick Cheney of the sports world.

Tom Friedman Must Take Dumb Pills

Today's NY Times op-ed shows once again that Tom Friedman is the Doug Feith of journalism. I owe an apology to the Slate writer I once called "the dumbest guy to ever put his hands on a keyboard."

A Couple of Thoughts on the Police Threat

I haven't gotten it together to write the definitive post on the Skip Gates situation. But one of the things I've noticed in the media is that every one considers encounters with the police to be a threat to their health and safety.


As one of the commenters on RSI pointed out, "many believe if a cop tells you to do jump, you should simply ask, "How high, officer?"


Cops are armed to the teeth and a certain percentage of them are so provocative and belligerent that the only reasonable conclusion is that they're looking for confrontations.

Given that nobody can know which cops are looking for confrontations, it's reasonable for everyone to see cops more as potential threats than anything else.

Actually, I wonder about the extent to which the cops are seen as bigger threats than the criminals.

Break Up the Clippers!!

I was shocked to see that Charlie Rosen didn't have the Los Angeles Clippers on his list of the seven worst teams in the NBA.

But maybe I shouldn't have been.

If the Clips are healthy, their starting lineup is Baron Davis and Eric Gordon at guard, Al Thornton and Blake Griffin at forward and Chris Kaman at center.

That's not bad altogether.

The Clips have a blooming star in Gordon, a likely star in Griffin, and a functional center in Kaman. Ultimately, they'll be dragged out of the playoffs by that fact that Davis isn't a functional point guard and Thornton needs too much time with the ball.

But next year won't be a horror show unless the Clippers get bombed by injuries again.

That's mostly because trades over the last two years a bench that looks good as far as bottom-feeding teams go. Mike Dunleavy got Marcus Camby for nothing from the Denver Nuggets and was able to flip Zac Randolph (who he got for practically nothing) for 20 points a game in Sebastian Telfair and Craig Smith.

The Clips don't get lucky very often and they probably won't be getting lucky here either. But there is the possibility that Telfair and Craig Smith will press the starters for minutes while Marcus Camby covers at power forward and center.

Down the bench guys Fred Jones, Steve Novak, and Mike Taylor are all capable of streaky contributions and Marcy Collins can play some defense.

The Clips are a long way from the '27 Yankees, but Eric Gordon and Blake Griffin are such good building blocks that the Clippers would be players in the 2010 free agent market if they didn't have such crummy ownership and questionable coaching.

Still, I can see them making a triumphant surge toward mediocrity.

Brad Pitt: Another Atheist Role Model

Perhaps the world as we know it really is coming to an end.

Film actor and all-around celebrity Brad Pitt came out of the closet and admitted that he was an atheist for a German magazine.

Well, mostly an atheist.

"Inglorious Basterd" Brad Pitt is going to burn in Hellfire for this one: The demi-god thespian was recently interviewed by German Web site Bild.de, and when the reporter asked if he believed in God, Pitt smiled and replied, "No, no, no!" Uh-oh . . .

"I'm probably 20 per cent atheist and 80 per cent agnostic," says Pitt. "I don't think anyone really knows. You'll either find out or not when you get there, and then there's no point thinking about it."

Wouldn't Pitt have said "nein, nein, nein" instead.

Of course, Brad Pitt and Daniel Radcliffe aren't outing themselves as atheists because they've suddenly developed some religious courage. What's happening is that widespread disgust with the religious right has decreased the prestige of Christianity to such an extent that actors like Radcliffe and Pitt can say what they actually think about religion without worrying about retaliation.

Still, Brad Pitt makes another atheist good role model for my daughters.

The Religious Right: Destroying Christianity One Day at a Time

Obama Had His Wonk On Tonight

Barack Obama decided to show his wonk side during his news conference on health care. Policy alternatives, facts, figures, and budget logic dominated.

Inspiration was in short supply.

I'm probably a little bit more impressed with "Inspiration Obama" than I am with "Wonk Obama." But it would be awesome if Obama could do a better job of bringing both of his political personalities to the table at the same time.

Blue Dogs Still Over-Rated

My suspicion is that the moderate Democratic jihad against health reform is peaking. Moderates on the House Energy and Commerce Committee prevented health reform legislation from being "marked up" the other day. But moderates ultimately don't have much of a bargaining position because they don't have many ideas of their own.

Is Obama Next: Cops Arrest Skip Gates for Breaking Into Own House

Only in America?

Cambridge, Massachusetts police arrested celebrity Harvard professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates for breaking into his own house.

Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there –

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar. Gates had forced his way through the front door because it was jammed, his lawyer said. Colleagues call the arrest last Thursday afternoon a clear case of racial profiling.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

Gates was eventually arrested on a disorderly conduct charge. The arresting cop said that Gates "continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him."

Who can blame Gates if he did yell at people who were investigating him for breaking into his own house?

If I were Gates, I would have thrown in some obscenities as well.

But the attorney for Gates claims that Gates wasn't yelling at all, that he contracted a viral infection while traveling to China and could barely speak.

Ogletree also disputed the claim that Gates, who was wearing slacks and a polo shirt and carrying a cane, was yelling at the officer.

"He has an infection that has impacted his breathing since he came back from China, so he's been in a very delicate physical state," Ogletree said.

Given the propensity of cops for lying when they're worried about having complaints against them (something which I've seen myself), I'll have to side with Gates on this one.

But I have to disagree with the characterization of Gates as "the nation's pre-eminent black scholar." I've seen some of Gates' writing and he's very good. But there are so many great black scholars that it's just as dumb to identify the "pre-eminent black scholar" as it is to call someone the nation's "pre-eminent white scholar." Some examples of "beyond category" black scholars are bell hooks, Patricia Williams, and Annette Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed's work on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings will be shaping our understanding of the founding of the American republic for generations to come.

But there's no gainsaying the prominence of Skip Gates as a Harvard professor and media personality.

If Gates can be arrested while breaking into his own home, one has to wonder how long it's going to be before some enterprising officer arrests Barack Obama for sitting in the Oval Office.

At the SHEAR History Conference: Obama History for a Multicultural Nation

Last weekend, I traveled to Springfield, Illinois for the annual meeting of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). SHEAR's a great conference. It's an important enough conference that a lot of the big names show up, but not so important that anyone need feel swallowed up by the size of the event. This year's conference was relatively small because it was held in the fly-over country of downstate Illinois rather than a metropolitan area like Toronto or Philadelphia. Mrs. RSI and I enjoyed Springfield a lot. It's a good size city of about 125,000. People were friendly and helpful and we had a great dinner at a place called Kaitie's Girls (if I remember correctly).

I've posted a couple of times about the trip.

Let just add one more travel note.

"Bob Evans" restaurants are VERY popular along Interstate 65 in Indiana.

My main goal in attending SHEAR was to promote my book project, but there weren't many publishers there. So that didn't work out.

But I went to a lot of panels and they were almost all very good. SHEAR's much more of a commentator's conference than a researchers conference. A large percentage of the papers are presented by graduate students or relatively unknown scholars. What draws audiences to the panels is the star power of the scholars doing the commentary on the panels. In this way, SHEAR gives prominent academics a chance to define "the state of the field."

What I found interesting about this year's SHEAR panels was the relative weight of Lincoln history vs multi-cultural history. This year is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth; that's why SHEAR was held in Lincoln's adult home of Springfield. There's been an enormous outpouring of worshipful writing about the greatness of Lincoln over the last year or two and much of it is deserved. As he stated in the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln presided over a new birth of freedom in the United States and deserves enormous credit for the perseverance in his conduct of the Civil War and his personal growth over the years in which he engaged with the issue of race. I don't think Lincoln fully understood what he was helping bring into the world, but Abraham Lincoln was certainly one of the presiding geniuses as the idea of racial equality began to take root in American society.

But it looks like the season of Lincoln worship is drawing to a close. Historians of the Early Republic sound just as exasperated by Lincoln as they are by Thomas Jefferson. Because of his self-contradictions and limitations in perspective, Lincoln is somewhat of a boring and even mildly repellent figure as he muddled his way through the 1840's and 1850's. In many ways, historians were far more fascinated by the politics of the Indian tribes in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri than they were by the politics of the white settlers who were pressing them to abandon their traditional lands. Historians were also very interested in the abolition movement and African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass. I pressed one of the paper presenters a little bit on the role of David Walker (of "Walker's Appeal" fame) and the historian just flatly claimed that it was Walker (not Jackson, Jefferson, Lincoln, or any of the white leaders of the early Republic who turned out to be right about slavery, integration, and racial issues).

One of the things I was struck by was the easy correlation between the Obama administration and the multi-racial histories of the Early Republic that are being written. Historians have been emphasizing African-American and Native-American history for decades now and certainly don't see their scholarship as reflecting the multi-cultural ideals that are becoming more prominent during the Obama era. And they're right not to do so. What's happening instead is that American politics is catching up with the work of the historians.

Who knows. Maybe David Walker will one day be seen as one of the "founding fathers" of modern American society. There certainly would be justice in that.

Curse My Corn Allergies

I couldn't see the new Harry Potter movie because of my horrible corn allergies. It's gotten so bad that I can't even walk through a movie theater lobby without starting to react to all the popcorn.

Maybe Mrs. RSI and I will hit the Winchester Drive-In next weekend.

Jeanne Boydston and the Nature of the World

I just learned last week that the women's historian Jeanne Boydston died from lung cancer toward the end of 2008. Jeanne was just a great person and it's a real loss not to have her. She was super-smart, warm, friendly, generous to the nth degree, and had a crackling vitality that made any encounter with her an engaging experience.

Jeanne was certainly more than generous to me. I think I had only met her once at a house party in Philadelphia, but she was more than willing to meet with me over lunch and discuss my work on artisan culture in Philadelphia. Seven years later, without meeting me again, she wrote a very nice letter supporting me for tenure.

Here's an excerpt from the memorium statement.

[Jeanne Boydston] was a brilliant and beloved teacher who won the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award as well as other honors for her teaching and mentorship. No listing of her scholarly work, awards, and publications can effectively measure her impact or convey the warmth with which students recall her generous guidance. In her modest way, she helped students know that their ideas had enormous value, while at the same time suggesting how they might polish the roughest ones into an elegant argument . . . Boydston loved her work, and cherished the life of the mind that scholarship and teaching, at their best, could entail.

What Jeanne Boydston and others like her have taught me is in many ways the nature of the world.

I grew up in an abusive family where my father's primary justification for the way he acted was that he was preparing us for the cruelty of the "world out there." But when I got to the world "out there," I found an enormous amount of warmth and generosity from Jeanne Boydston and the many people like her who I've met in academic life, at the local Walmart, at the BP, and just about every other place I've been. Mrs. RSI and my in-laws kind of glow with human goodness.

That doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of structural inequities, corruption, and assholes in the world. Certainly, I've encountered this slice of reality and I write about these matters all the time in this blog. But thinking about Jeanne Boydston reminds me of the extent to which the world is filled with generous, loving people. I'm glad I knew her a little.

Driving Indiana with Mrs. RSI

The Man of Steel. Mrs. RSI and I drove through Indiana today on the way to a couple of days in bucolic Springfield, Illinois and the annual conference of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic. This is my fourth major drive in less than two weeks, but I took over the wheel for the last two hours like I was driving the half-mile route home from campus. The Man of Steel couldn't have done better.

Curse My Corn Allergies. It was hard for me to fully enjoy the beauty of Indiana. I have godawful corn allergies and Indiana has an unbelievable amount of corn. Curse my corn allergies. When there was no corn in view, we saw a fair amount of God stuff. An ad for one product began "God Loves You." I wish I'd seen it better. I hope it wasn't a strip club.

I Miss George W. We drove behind one car saying "I Miss Bill" as in Bill Clinton. I'm surprised I've never seen an "I Miss George W." sticker. Mrs. RSI and I got big laughs over the idea that someone could make a little money on that. Maybe I should talk with one of my new colleagues.

Is Jenny Sanford Christian Enough. Mark Sanford and Jenny Sanford are off for a little weekend reconciliation time. But really, is anybody self-sacrificingly Christian enough to want to be married to Mark Sanford?

What Did Warner Bros Do to Earn Harry Potter $

In my research on the ante-bellum Workingmen's movement in Philadelphia, I found that workingmen's advocates argued that all wealth was created by labor. Here's Philadelphia shoemaker and labor leader William Heighton advocating that view in 1827.

In order to fully illustrate our present condition and relative situation in society, we must consider our country as containing two classes, viz—The working or productive class, and the non-productive or accumulating class. The former class [produces] every article which comes under the term Wealth; the latter class [produces] nothing valuable, but grow rich by accumulating the productions of the former, thus enjoying all the advantages and benefits of wealth which they never produced. (William Heighton, speech at Universalist Church, 1827)

I thought of the workingmen's views when I saw a short article by Julia Boorstin for her "Media Money with Julia Boorstin" on CNBC.com. According to Boorstin, Warner Bros. Corporation has made one billion dollars in profit on the Harry Potter movie series.

This movie is just huge for Warner Brothers, certainly its most important
franchise for the next couple years. After this film there are another two due
out in 2010 and 2011. With a built-in audience and appeal to what Hollywood
calls "all four quadrants" (men, women, young, old), the box office numbers are
stunning. The first five films generated $1.4 billion at the US box office while
they brought in $4.5 billion globally. . .

David Davis, a banker at boutique media firm Arpeggio Partners tells me that when it comes to licensing fees, Warner Bros. gets a much higher percentage for Harry Potter than pretty much any other brand. Davis says that so far Warner Bros. has generated about a billion dollars in PROFIT from the franchise, and it stands to generate another billion dollars.

But now that the Republicans have put "socialism" back on the table, one wonders what Warner Bros. did to "earn" their billion dollars in profits. It makes sense that J. K. Rowling is a billionaire. She wrote the books that became the basis for the movies. Given that there's no Harry Potter without J. K. Rowling, she deserves the cut she gets from everything in the Harry Potter commercial universe. The same is the case with the screenwriter, directors, producers, actors, and technical people involved in making the films. They all deserve to be benefitting from the fruits of their labor.

But I wonder what Warner Bros. corporation did to deserve its billion dollars in profit. Why should the top management of the company, who probably did very little with the film, benefit so much in the form of salaries, bonuses, stock options, and executive perks. What exactly did they do to make the Harry Potter films?

Is Palin Looking To Destroy GOP?

I've been warning about the collapse of the Republican Party for several months now. But now there is a scenario for GOP collapse that's out in the media.

CNN has a story about Mike Huckabee warning Sarah Palin not to leave the Republican Party for an independent presidential campaign.

"I hope she remains — let me be real clear — a part of the Republican Party," Huckabee told FOX News. "I'm a little concerned when I hear her say that she may
sort of branch out and go third party or go independent. That would be a big mistake because we need to rebuild the Republican Party, not abandon it."

The Republican Party would be fools if they didn't consider Palin a threat to mount an independent candidacy. She's just not that Republican identified. Palin has never been part of the Alaska Republican establishment and her husband Tod was a member of an Alaskan separatist party until Palin ran for governor. Likewise, Palin recently mentioned that her son was not a Republican.

In this context, Palin's reference to campaigning for non-Republicans might be taken as meaning that she'll be willing to help candidates to the right of the Republican Party.

Anyway, if Sarah Palin left the Republican Party for an independent or third-party candidacy, she'd take about 20% of the Republican vote with her, about 9% of the total.

That vote would increase if activist conservatives generally saw her as a more attractive candidate than a Republican nominee like Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee.

And let's not kid ourselves.

There's a real chance that Bill Kristol, Ann Coulter, Limbaugh and other conservatives might do that. They could easily see an independent Palin candidacy as an opportunity to free "the conservative movement" from what they see as the death grip of the Republican Party.

I could live with it too.

With an independent Palin candidacy, the Republican candidate and Palin would be splitting about 40% of the vote. I imagine that one or the other would win eight or nine states between Utah, Idaho, and the core Confederate states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

That wouldn't even be 100 electoral votes and the conservative movement will have succeeded in it's apparent mission of destroying conservativism in the United States.

Marriage is Wonderful!

The lefty internet magazine Salon has an article up on marriage by Aaron Traister. Traister is extremely bothered by recent writing on the crumbling state of heterosexual marriage.

Amid all the bad press marriage has been getting recently --from Sandra Tsing Loh's admission of adultery and refusal to do the "work" necessary to keep her marriage together, to Cristina Nehring's dismissal of boring companionate marriages in favor of rash flings, to the very public ruin of the marriages of every governor ever elected, to Caitlin Flanagan's flaccid defense of marriage as something to hang onto for the sake of the kids -- I'm starting to feel like there is something wrong with me, because I actually enjoy being married.

I'm all with Traister here. I'm on my second marriage and have been either married (22 years) or shacking up (another four) for the vast majority of my adult life. My experience of marriage is that sharing things with another person (and the kids) creates an inner drama that makes it great when it's working and hell when it's not. If people are sharing their married life in any meaningful way at all, I can't see how it's possible to be boring or routine. My second wife and I have an unending stream of new problems to address and new situations to get through. Our daughters are going through puberty, my wife's in grad school, and I've been reassigned to a unit with a bunch of right-wingers. We also have a new puppy. Traister says of marriage: "It's hot. It's sexy." It is hot and sexy and it's cute and engaging. Marriage is always stretching the limits of my capacity for love, physical endurance, tolerance for sleep deprivation, and observational and negotiation skills. It's also warm-hearted, cute, and engaging beyond anything I could have imagined as a child. My first marriage was kind of a Gothic tragedy in which I ended up somewhere between thinking I was dying and wishing I was dying. But my second, sit-com marriage is just as full of meaning and much more pregnant with possibility.

I have some points of disagreement with Traister though. I don't think love is as absolutely central as the author believes.

As hard as marriage can be, it only really sucks if you don't love the person you're married to. If you don't love the person you're married to all the other crap seems insurmountable -- the scary large children, the lack of money, the fantasy sexual partners (who I like to imagine was wearing a particularly low-cut top today in my honor but, in reality, was not), the falling-apart house, the weeks where you just don't click, the ridiculous arguments about nothing, and most important, the fact that you're getting older and still haven't magically achieved your life goal of becoming Randall Cunningham or Patti Smith or whatever.

If you love the person you are married to then all the stuff that's your problem and not actually a problem with the relationship, stays your problem (for the most part), and you can focus on what's great about marriage.

Yes, love is important. But it's not enough. My first wife and I loved each other even after we were divorced, but we had long since stopped "liking" each other and stopped enjoying being around each other. We both needed to get the divorce and move on to better lives. This was something I thought a lot about as my first marriage fell apart. "Liking" and "enjoying" someone is just as important as being "in love."

I also believe that Traister underestimates the importance of self-involvement in American culture. One of the major reasons for the criticism of marriage by writers like Sandra Tsing Loh is that marriage interferes with intense self-involvement so highly valued in American popular culture. Much of the reason that some types of sexual flings, art, music, connoissureship, sports involvement, etc. etc. represent an alternative to marriage is that they speak to the ideal of self-involvement that marriage cannot accommodate. Many strands of American culture view these kinds of intensive self-involvement as the only meaningful dimension of life.

As a result, there is always going to be a strand of dissatisfaction with the necessary mutuality of most marriages.

My own thought is that it would be best if we just lived with the tension and both sides of the "marriage debate" tried to understand the other side better. People who advocate marriage need to recognize the high value placed on self-involvement in American life and how that militates against marriage. Marriage critics would also do well to recognize the value of the mutuality in marriage.

The Republican Dilemna: Being Pat Buchanan Without Appearing to Be

Pat Buchanan has a race-baiting article out on Sonia Sotomayor today. Here's the money quote:

Why did McCain fail to win the white conservative Democrats Hillary Clinton swept in the primaries? He never addressed or cared about their issues.

These are the folks whose jobs have been outsourced to China and Asia, who pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors. These are the folks who want the borders secured and the illegals sent back.

Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled.

Buchanan race-baits Sonia Sotomayor when he says that the children of Hillary Democrats have been "pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors." In criticizing John McCain for not draping "Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama," Buchanan calls for more GOP race-baiting in the future.

Buchanan's premise for his call for a return to the ways of Lee Atwater is that the GOP would gain from a return to race-baiting by increasing its white vote:

In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate's Hispanic vote.

If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent.

And Pat Buchanan believes that could make John McCain president.

I don't think so. The Republicans also lost the majority white college-educated vote and youth vote. A growing percentage of the white population is offended by race-baiting and McCain would have risked losing that part of the white vote if he had gone into race-baiting overdrive.

This is the political judgment that Senate Republicans are making as well. I don't think they're particularly worried about retrieving any minority votes. African-Americans (95%), Hispanics, Asian Americans, and the Jewish population (all at about 67%) look like they're going to be locked in for the Democrats throughout the Obama era. What Senate Republicans worry about is losing even more of the white vote as whites from 18-25 and college educated whites become less and less tolerant of racism.

That's why Senators like Jeff Sessions of Alabama are trying to engage in as refined a version of race-baiting as they can imagine.

You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact, your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge [Jose] Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could've changed that case.

The racism here is real in the sense that Sessions identifies Sotomayor almost exclusively with her ancestry, but it's also concealed by making the racial reference to the extremely conservative jurist Jose Cabranes.

This is also what's involved in the GOP emphasis on the "Wise Latina" comments in Sotomayor's speeches. By accusing Sotomayor of racism, they're trying to mask the racism of their own contempt for Sotomayor's benefitting from affirmative action, involvement in Latino organizations, and her general multi-cultural, "Obama-esque" profile.

By college educated and young whites aren't fooled by the ultra-refined racism of GOP Senators any more than they're attracted to Pat Buchanan.

What's happening with the attacks on Sotomayor is that the Republicans are basically involved in a "cutting" exercise in self-wounding.

Sooner or later, they'll just finish themselves off.

Why Won't Dick Cheney Run for President?

CNN has a story about the possibility of Liz Cheney running for office someday. But why isn't former VP Dick Cheney considering running for president. Dick Cheney is the leading spokesperson for the foreign policy/military agenda of the Republican Party, he's popular with the Republican base, and he's sure-footed with the media. He's really the logical Republican candidate.

Of course, there are counter-arguments against a Cheney candidacy. First, there's his health as someone who's had multiple heart surgeries. But Cheney served eight years as an extremely important and influential Vice-President in good health. The only people whose health anybody has to wonder about are the buddies who go hunting with Cheney.

Cheney could also reassure voters by NOT nominating Sarah Palin as his VP.

Also, one could argue that Cheney is a highly unpopular figure who would be crushed by Obama. But RSI doesn't see why that should deter the Republicans. It isn't like they have a "popular" candidate anyway.

Cheney in 2012. You heard it here.

Back from the Family Reunion

I did the 11 hour drive home today. The sugar overload should keep me hyper for awhile.

Hal Rogers' Embarrassing Record on Health Care

Now that the health care debate's heating up, it's helpful to review where my congressman stands. Here's the recent votes of Kentucky 5th District Congressman Hal Rogers on health care issues.

Voted NO on giving mental health full equity with physical health. (Mar 2008)
Voted NO on Veto override: Extend SCHIP to cover 6M more kids.(Jan 2008)
Voted NO on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility. (Oct 2007)
Voted NO on requiring negotiated Rx prices for Medicare part D. (Jan 2007)

Overall, this is a tremendous embarrassment given that Rogers represents one of the poorest districts in the country. Voting "No" on "requiring negotiated Rx prices for Medicare part D" is especially horrifying. It was basically a vote for pharmaceutical companies in opposition to the national interests and the needs of his constituents.

Mort Kondracke: Surprisingly Astute About Palin

Fox regular Mort Kondrack gets something right about as often as it snows in Miami. But he does nail Sarah Palin's chance to get the Republican presidential nomination:

It used to be easy to predict who the next Republican presidential nominee would be. It was decided by primogeniture: The next oldest guy in line got to be the king. It’s not so easy looking to 2012, with former Vice President Dick Cheney out of the running and a woman, soon-to-be former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in . . .

And I do believe she’s in — damaged in her chances, maybe, but fully intending to make a run and very popular with the shrinking hard core of the GOP . . .

Does she have a chance to get nominated? You betcha. She’s attractive, charismatic, ambitious, tough to the point of ruthlessness and smart, if still woefully ignorant.

Before she announced her resignation, she was tied in a CNN poll with 2008 candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and a Pew poll showed that she had an 85% approval rating among conservatives and white evangelicals, to 52% for Romney.

RSI agrees with Kondracke that Sarah Palin has a real shot at the GOP nomination because she's the candidate who's most popular with the hard core of the Republican Party. The fact that the Republican Party is shrinking down to that hard core gives her an advantage over Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

The main question for Palin is whether she's astute enough to cash in on her advantages. It looks like the answer to that question is "no." But it's not like Romney and Huckabee are geniuses either.

On the Road Tomorrow

The daughters and I are on the road to upstate New York tomorrow. We have a 3 day family reunion coming up on my side of the family.

Can't say I'm really looking forward to it. The more active I've gotten with blogging, the more alienated I've gotten from my largely right-wing family.

But, duty calls and my mother would kill me if I didn't go.

So, we're going.

Maybe I'll do a little blogging while I'm on the road as a way to stay sane.

Early Morning Palin Note

Sarah Palin says "all options are on the table." Does that mean she's going to:

1. Bomb Iran from the family's Piper plane.

2. Sit on her front porch so she can keep an eye on Russia.

3. Learn mandarin Chinese.

4. Hunt down Big Foot--At Last.

5. Patrol the Canadian border to prevent illegal immigration.

6. Keep track of her kids for a change.

7. Shoot the last polar bear.

8. Join the George W. Bush Reading Club.

9. Stop doing all that darn reading so she can feel at home on Fox.

10. Have an affair with Mark Sanford.

That Puppy Was Such a Good Idea

Now we're all up at 3:30am because the puppy Logan attracted a racoon while sleeping outside in the carrier. That got the dog Missie barking and she chased the raccoon. Now we've got to help the puppy not pee in the house. I doubt the poor thing will ever want to go outside again.

Hey, that puppy was a great idea, we should get another one.

Al Gonzales: The Mighty Make Good Adjuncts

It looks like Alberto Gonzales landed an adjunct gig at Texas Tech University.

Gonzales, who was Gov. George W. Bush’s lawyer, Texas secretary of state and then a Texas Supreme Court justice before joining Bush in Washington, will be working as an visiting professor in the political science department, teaching a “special topics” course on contemporary issues in the executive branch, according to Dora Rodriguez, a senior business assistant in the department. The university later said it will be a junior-level course.

Teaching one class--that's adjunct work. But it's not like any university that would hire Bob Knight as a basketball coach has moral standards anyway.

So why shouldn't Gonzalez teach at Texas Tech?

Besides Gonzales is an expert at "Gonzales Standard Lying" as was defined a couple of years ago on this blog:

But Al Gonzales has made his own unique contribution to the history of cronyism in national government--the Gonzales Standard Lie. When challenged about torture during his conformination, Gonzales simply stated that "I share (the president's) resolve that torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration." That's
simple and clean--no effort to define torture, no explanation of why the Bush administration's interrogation techniques don't fit definitions of torture, no messing with principles, rules, or facts at all. The Gonzales Standard Lie is not a hype, not a big bragging lie. It's a simple emphatic statement that puts the burden on the questioner to prove him wrong. This lying technique works particularly well in cases like where the questioner does not have access to relevant information. In relation to the torture controversy, Al Gonzales could state that "torture and abuse will not be tolerated" and rest easy in the knowledge that the facts in relation to torture were classified and that he could not be contradicted.

Given the Bush administration's commitment to lying--Bush's people disliked telling the truth so much that they actively avoided it--the Gonzales Standard Lie was a contribution to executive branch functioning and is worthy of study in any class on the "special topics in the executive branch."

I'd say something about Gonzales being an embarrassment to political science, but the less said there the better. Henry Kissinger was a political scientist. So was Zbigniew Brezinski. I even think that former Pentagon no. 3, Douglas Feith--"The Dumbest Fucking Guy on the Planet"--is teaching political science somewhere. According to Wikipedia, Feith is currently an embarrassment to Georgetown University.

One thing you can say about Alberto Gonzales is that he isn't embarrassing a "prestige university" like Georgetown.

Another Big Day: Here's the Breakdown

HEALTH CARE:

Rahm Emanuel tries for a pre-emptive surrender on the public option for health insurance. Like many "bi-partisanship" Democrats, Emanuel views the left as more of an enemy than the GOP.

But Obama walks him back. This isn't 1994. The public option is still on.

REPUBLICANS:

South Carolina Republicans decide not to ask for Mark Sanford's resignation--something about "earning back the trust" of fellow Republicans by providing the phone numbers of hot Argentinian hookers--'er, I mean, "finding love in unexpected places."

Two Sarah Palin headlines: 1. Michael Steele claims "Palin is off the table for 2012." 2. Campaign contributions take off at "Sarah for President--2012."

Glenn Beck is looking for the connection there.

QUANTUM PANIC OVER QUINNIPIAC

The Quinnipiac polling organization put out a poll with the news that 69% of the American public wanted to have a public option for health insurance. That's good news for Obama and bad news for Rahm Emanuel and the "Pre-Emptive Surrender Caucus" among Senate Democrats. It's also bad news for the health insurance industry, Republicans, and the tea-bag activists who think the Republicans are too liberal.

Quinnipiac goes on to report that only 28% of the public wants to switch their health insurance to the public plan. I'm in that 28% because I want to pay what will probably be lower rates for better health insurance. Fixed on the 50% wins elections idea, Quinnipiac thinks that the public option won't be that popular. But 28% of the national market in just about anything is pretty good. The federal government might be starting out as the "market leader."

OBAMA IN 2012.

Quinnipiac also has numbers showing President Obama as declining in popularity in Ohio and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight agrees that Obama will be in trouble if the economy doesn't turn around.

But I don't think so--mostly because it doesn't look like the Republicans are going to put up a viable alternative. The top tier potential Republican candidates are Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee. Out of those three, the only one who could hope to get over 40% in a general election is Romney. Palin was never going to win a national election and that never has gone to never cubed since last Friday. Neither is Huckabee.

The second tier of potential Republican candidates is occupied mostly by Newt Gingrich. But he'll never get above 15% with Republicans let alone anyone else.

That leaves a third tier of candidates populated by the eminently mentionable Tim Pawlenty and the now "unmentionable" Mark Sanford and John Ensign. Another member of the third tier--Jon Huntsmann--gave up on the GOP and left the country for an ambassadorship in China.

In my opinion, the 2012 election is not going to be very competitive. Early on, I'd have to say Obama by at least 10 over Romney and at least 20 over anyone else.

BOMBING OUR NEW IRANIAN FRIENDS

It appears that conservatives are eager to bomb our new Iranian protester friends now that they appear to have lost their struggle with Ahmadinejad. But that's not quite accurate. They've eager for the ISRAELIS to bomb Iran. Newsmax has a "pity the poor Israelis" article entitled "Israel Faces Bombing Iran Alone" on their site. Unbelievable.

The American right has few talents, but I have to admit that they do have a gift for super-audacious hypocrisy.

RSI Recommends: Call John Yarmuth

This is especially for Kentucky readers.

Firedoglake is mounting a campaign to get blog readers to call local Congress people to push health care reform with a public option for health insurance.

Having a public option is extremely important for health reform. The public option will have substantial lower costs than private health insurance in the U. S. and present health insurance companies with two options. Either they will accept the discipline of lower profits or they will go out of business. Accepting lower profits on their investments means that health insurance companies will have lower stock prices, lower salaries for top executives, smaller bonuses, and fewer perks. Maybe they'll be vacationing in Myrtle Beach rather than Aruba as well.

But it just might be that the health insurance companies will prefer to go out of business rather than compete for health insurance dollars with a public option program that's subject to taxpayer discipline.

If so, nobody will miss them.

Firedoglake urges us to call Congressman John Yarmuth of Louisville, KY and encourage him to maintain his support for the public option in health insurance and other reforms of the American health care system.

Yarmuth is good on these issues, but it's still helpful to call him and let him know that he's doing the right thing and to urge him to stay active in the health reform battle.

Yarmuth's number is 202-225-5401.

I'll be calling Rep. Yarmuth around 9:00am myself.

Hopefully, others will have called before then.

Here's some helpful Firedoglake links: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/publicoption ,

Health Care: Obama Has Three Hammers

Let's say health reform is enacted this year?


How would we know if it works?


One of the first signs would be that lower stock prices of health insurance companies, big pharma, and hospital corporations.


According to one conservative outlet, The Washington Post, the Obama administration is going to announce a deal for hospital corporations to reduce costs by $155 billion over the next ten years.

Most of the savings -- about $100 billion -- would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, said the two industry sources. About $40 billion would be saved by slowly reducing what hospitals get to care for the uninsured, they added. The reductions would probably not begin for several years, after a significant number of people have enrolled in the new insurance programs.

For their part, hospital officials have an understanding that, if the final legislation includes a new government-sponsored insurance program, it will not pay at Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement rates, which the industry has long argued do not cover
the cost of services.

The Obama administration's idea is that these kinds of negotiations work to lower the cost of health reform down from the initial $1 trillion price tag.


It also reduces corporate opposition to public-option health insurance.


So Obama has struck deals with the drug companies as well as hospital corporations. WalMart has also bought in and the AMA quickly withdrew its opposition.


The Obama administration has been able to get these deals because it has three hammers that it can use in relation to medical companies.


There's always the threat of socialized medicine. There's strong support among Democrats for single-payer health insurance and broadly socialized medicine. That's certainly what I'd like to see. Likewise, the Democrats have big majorities in the House and Senate with the Republican meltdown meaning that Obama has a strong prospect for re-election. As a result, the medical sector has strong incentives to cut a deal with the Obama administration now in order to avoid socialized medicine later.


The second hammer is that the federal government already provides what the medical industry views as low levels of reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid. The hospital corporations were genuinely afraid of the possibility of the Obama administration making Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements the core of their cost containment strategy for this round of health reform. So they traded lower costs for a promise on Obama's part not to do that.


But the medical companies still know that Obama could mandate Medicare/Medicaid level reimbursements if he wants.


That's a second big hammer.


Finally, there's the fact that the American public really does not like to pay taxes. If a public sector insurance option is adopted, it's going to inevitably be seen as a tax and that will act as a hammer on the Obama administration to press the medical sector to keep costs down.


But keeping "costs" down for the Medical sector means reducing profits. That makes medical companies less attractive as targets for mergers and takeovers and that medical sectors stocks should be less attractive for investors.

If health reform is adapted and it works, medical stocks should tank.

And I would be happy to see it.

Sarah Palin and Movement Conservatism

I'm getting a head-ache from watching the bouncing Palin ball. What's Palin trying to do? Is she getting out of politics altogether? Setting up her run for the presidency in 2012? 2016? Is Palin trying to get rich on the right-wing lecture circuit? Is she going to have a show on Fox or CNN? Who hates Palin more--feminists, liberals, or the Republican establishment? Is George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, or Barry Goldwater the best analogy for Palin.

And finally what does Palin represent in America?

Palin and Class. Ross Douthat of the New York Times--the most lamely officious "young fogey" since George Will was a young fogey--writes that Palin is subject to so much hostility because she's a working class woman.

You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

I'm not sure what's working class about Palin? Her father was a science teacher--her mother a school secretary. Being from an even smaller town than Wasilla, Alaska myself, I can say with a lot of confidence that Palin middle-class. Palin herself was a high school legend as an athlete, a beauty queen, and a college graduate who worked as a sports reporter. That's all middle class as well. So was being married to Todd Palin who had a management position at BP and was a small businessman (commerical fishing) on the side.

All that says middle-class. Palin describes herself as an "ordinary" person and she does have a pretty humble middle-class background. But Palin was unusually confident and aggressive and that got her on a political fast-track from Wasilla city council and mayor to Governor of Alaska. Palin was somewhat of a conservative version of the fast-rising Barack Obama.

In fact, by 2008, Palin wasn't a middle-class person any more than Obama was a community organizer. She was seen as a potential political star, gaining credibility in the light of the 2006 Republican scandals, and hosting Bill Kristol and other Republican luminaries from the Weekly Standard cruise. By the time McCain nominated her for VP, Palin was already nibbling at the edges of elite status.

Palin was on the gravy train to some sort of elite position in Republican politics.

Palin and the Future of Conservatism. Many of the questions following the Republican reaction to Palin's resignation announcement concern the future of conservatism in national politics. Movement conservatives are not sure how much they want to participate in the efforts of the Republican Party to seek to get candidates elected for president and Republican majorities in the House and Senate. This is where the Palin ball bounces in ways that are confusing to establishment Republicans and activist Democrats. Palin is a "conservatism first, Republican second" politician. Her husband didn't even register as a Republican for a long time and Palin didn't care. Conservatives themselves aren't sure what "conservativism first" means right now, but they are exploring some pretty specific kinds of questions.

Conservatives look at the same information as other observers and can see that the Republicans are losing ground among expanding demographics of minority, urban, and young voters. That means that conservatism is losing ground among these groups as well. But they aren't asking themselves what they can do to appeal to African-Americans, Asians, Jewish voters, and young voters. Rather movement conservatives are asking themselves whether America as a country is irretrievably "lost" and whether they should continue to participate politically or should retreat into their rural towns, home schools, Christian music, and religious colleges. I haven't seen anything that fully articulates this idea, but I believe conservatives are thinking of a Mormon-like exodus out of the larger American society into their own enclaves. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a
post on The Atlantic entitled "What the Right Means When They Say America." In my opinion, the right increasingly thinks of America as a society from which they might want to distance themselves.

I don't think Palin has made her own decisions on this kind of question. Perhaps she hasn't formulated it yet in her mind. But I'm pretty sure that what she's doing with her resignation as governor is positioning herself so she can spend the next two years promoting the "conservative movement." Then, Palin will evaluate the extent to which running as president will be worth her time and energy. I don't think Palin would run for president if she didn't think she would have a good chance of winning. But I also seriously doubt that she would run if she thought she would be facing big Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. How would she promote the conservative movement--how would she represent the America she knows and loves--by working with a Democratic Congress?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight thinks that much of the liberal hostility to Palin originates in her resemblance to George W. Bush.

Palin is the most Bushlike of all the Republicans who have emerged as contenders for the national ticket: the smirkiness, the smugness . . . the malapropisms, the contempt for media . . . the express deference to religious faith, the occasionally undeniably likable moments of joviality and regular guy/gal-ness, the tendency toward self-dealing, the bulldog/barracuda mentality, the comfort in one's own skin . . . the (apparent) preference for isolation in [Wasilla, Crawford], and last but not least, the no-holds-barred, no-apologies conservatism.

But Sarah Palin is more Bush than Bush. She's even less knowledgeable of the world than Bush and is perfectly content with knowing little. Bush studied up quite a bit with Condoleeza Rice and others as he prepared for his presidential run in 2000. Palin didn't try to read more after she was nominated for VP and hasn't done any study in preparation for a 2000 run. This is dumbfounding to Karl Rove, Fred Barnes, and other establishment Republicans. But George W. Bush believed far more in the politics of big gestures than he believed in sound policy and Palin believes in the politics of gestures more than Bush. Conservatives have become increasingly suspicious of climate science, evolutionary theory, and other forms of research whose findings contradict their values. Palin takes that suspicion to its logical conclusion of not particularly needing to know much in order to campaign and govern according to her values.

Personally, I don't think Sarah Palin is going to run in 2012. She'd have a shot at winning the nomination in a shrinking Republican Party but would have so little chance of beating Barack Obama that I don't think she'd see running as worthwhile.

Instead, I believe that Palin will find a platform for promoting movement conservatism and be a factor in drawing movement conservatism a little further from the American mainstream.

That, I have to admit, is a development that makes me rather nervous.

Daniel Radcliffe: Atheist and Role Model for My Daughters

It turns out that Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter movie fame is an atheist.

Radcliffe has been reticent on the subject of religion in the past, but in an interview to promote the latest instalment in the film franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 15, he said: "I'm an atheist, but I'm very relaxed about it. I don't preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch."

No surprise there actually. Isn't Britain in Europe and aren't all Europeans atheists?

Anyway, now I'm going to make my daughters re-read all the Harry Potter books and re-watch all the Harry Potter movies.

Nothing like exposing them to good solid role models.

The Need for Neo-Con Bashing

Matthew Yglesias has an important post about the necessity neo-con bashing up on his web site. I quote it in full.

Greg Djerejian offers up something of a mea culpa and something of a defense against Jeff Weintraub’s charge of “rather tiresome ritual ‘neocon’-bashing which is becoming too much of a reflex in some quarters.”

It’s actually true that neocon bashing is a bit on the tiresome side. That said, I think it really has to be understood as a vital social necessity. Adherents of a deranged and sociopoathic “neocon” conception of America’s role in the world continue to be tremendously influential in our society. They have columns at The Washington Post and dominate the foreign policy coverage on Fox News. They have The Weekly Standard and Commentary and a healthy slice of The New Republic. And most important, as best as anyone can tell their ideas remain utterly dominant in the Republican Party. Their intra-party critics like Colin Powell, rather than winning intra-party arguments seem to be simply drifting out of the GOP coalition.

This is a dangerous situation. In the United States, the opposition party is always one ill-timed recession or political scandal from taking power. So a set of ideas that dominates one such party is something you need to keep a watchful eye on, no matter how marginalized that party may seem at any particular moment.

It's just important to remember that neo-cons like William Kristol and John Bolton are sociopathic and deranged. Likewise, the fact that these men occupy significant positions within the American policy elites makes the United States a constant source of danger to the world.

Yglesias does us all a service by reminding us of these facts.

The Unethical Parent, No. 1--"Zit-Starter" Gum

Mrs. RSI and I used to joke a lot about writing a book entitled The Unethical Parent about the necessarily shady business of raising human children.

We told a lot of fairy tale whoppers when our two daughters were little and had fun speculating on the necessarily unethical dimension of parenting in general.

Eventually, the chatter about The Unethical Parent passed and we moved onto other ways to have fun around the house.

But last night I had an idea.

Miss Teen and I were at the check-out counter at the local Walmart in Morehead, KY when she reached for some gum.

Pretty much like usual.

But I didn't make my usual decision about whether she had been generally cooperative enough that I would pay for the gum.

Instead, I said "ah, I see you're getting the "Zitstarter" brand again.

Well, that threw her for a loop and, after a moment's hesitation, Miss Teen put her down her super-sugar gum and reached for the sugar-free stuff.

I also paid for it.

A minor victory for evil parenting.

But a victory all the same.