Is Newt Still a Christian?

So, Newt Gingrich has converted to Catholicism and joins Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, Sam Brownback, and a bunch of other prominent Republican converts to the Catholic faith.

There have even been reports about a possible George W. conversion.

That's fine with me. I'm an atheist who's married to a Catholic woman. My Irish Catholic in-laws are the nicest people in the world and my two daughters count themselves as Catholic.

And I have to admit, they're really nice kids.

So, I'm about as down with Catholicism as someone can be who's horrified by the whole Judeo-Christian thing of a god who ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, angrily destroyed the whole world in a flood, and then sent forth his own son to be killed for mankind's sins.

Living out here in Eastern Kentucky though, it's impossible not to notice that many Protestants who deny that Catholics are Christians and would therefore deny that Newt Gingrich is still a Christian just as much as they would deny that Mitt Romney is a Christian.

And it's kind of a pain to the little Catholic congregation in Morehead, KY.

I've known for years that many of my college students don't view Catholics as Christians. Also, the local "Bible Baptists" have picketed the Catholic Church after Mass seeking their own converts to "Christianity" from "popery."

But it struck home when a social studies teacher announced to my daughter's class that Catholics weren't Christians.

That bothered us enough as parents that we complained and got the teacher to stop.

Gingrich has been traveling in elite circles for a long time. So, he might have forgotten the extent to which the Protestant evangelical tradition denies the Christianity of Catholicism and condemns Catholics to damnation.

But it's something that's out there.

John Calipari--From Specter To Coach

Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty smart in focusing on John Calipari as a UK coaching candidate even before the hapless Billy Gillispie got fired.

It looks like the University of Kentucky is in for a new era of recruiting crime.

The Fate of Billy G. and the Specter of John Calipari

From the hills around Pikeville to the river towns on the Mississippi, all of Kentucky is thinking about one thing--is University of Kentucky basketball coach Billy Gillispie going to be fired today?

The universal assumption is that Gillispie is going to get the ax and the air is thick with the thrill of an upcoming public execution. It's all the teachers talked about at my daughter's high school. It's all the kids talk about. It's all my daughter talks about even though she's never even watched a UK basketball game.

Who knows! Maybe Gillispie will get a reprieve. But he probably should be fired even though he's only been here two years.

Billie Gillispie just refuses to grow.

The University of Kentucky basketball team has won seven national championships, more games than any other college, and is the pride and joy of most of the rural part of the state where I live.

When Gillispie left Texas A&M for UK two years ago, expectations were high that he would return UK to the Final Four. Gillispie had a reputation as a workaholic and rabid recruiter who brought the best out in his players. Unmarried, Gillispie was supposed to be all basketball all the time just like UK's fan base. Texas A&M All-American Acie Law was held up as a shining example of what Gillispie could do with players and Gillispie made a couple of big splashy signings right away in Patrick Patterson of West Virginia and Alex Legion of Michigan.

However, Gillispie turned out to be a bundle of eccentricities.

During his first year, Gillispie developed a reputation as an odd kind of guy. Gillispie seems to be more devoted to practice than any other aspect of the game. It's especially odd that he has hard practices on the days of games. Gillispie also seemed to enjoy playing mind games with players and made a lot of strangely oracular statements about how players were doing. More disturbing, Gillispie quickly developed a reputation as an alcoholic who had no social skills. My students swear that he's been banned from six bars in Lexington for being weird while drunk or that he isn't allowed to drive his own car because of his drinking. I don't know how much stock to put into these stories, but the reputation is definitely there.

However, Gillispie's first team at UK did well despite starting poorly and expectations were pretty high for this year. Holdovers Ramel Bradley and Joe Crawford got the hang of playing for Gillispie, Patrick Patterson was everything he was supposed to be and more, and UK made it to the NCAA. True, Bradley and Crawford graduated, Alex Legion transfered as quickly as a Marilyn Munster date got out the door, and Patterson suffered a late-season stress fracture in his ankle. But it did look like Gillispie did get his teams to play really hard and effectively.

So, people in Kentucky were optimistic.

The optimism was wholly unwarranted. In Gillispie's second year, UK basketball fans got a look at the bottom of the barrel and began to think that Gillispie was going to keep them there for a long time. Once again, UK started slowly and seemed to rebound. They even got into the Top25 rankings after 5 quick victories in the SEC and the emergence of Jodie Meeks as a big-time scorer with 54 at Tennessee. But then they went off the rails. Patternson wasn't nearly as dynamic as he'd been before the stress fracture, Meeks started breaking down, and other teams matched UK's intensity. The Wildcats lost 8 out of their last 11 games in a weak SEC and even lost a final home game to cellar-dweller Georgia.

What made the whole thing even more wretched was that it became obvious that Gillispie wasn't going to change his approach and adjust to the situation--EVER. It emerged that Gillispie is a soulless workaholic who knows only one way to do things and will stick with that no matter how badly it fails. Nobody really likes these kinds of people, but the approach is acceptable when someone is winning. Former 49ers great Jerry Rice was a lot like Gillispie and everybody loved him because he was setting records and scoring touchdowns for Super Bowl teams. But when tireless workaholics start losing, the revulsion begins to show.

And that's been happening to Gillispie.

Making things worse was that it became obvious that Billy Gillispie doesn't give a damn for anybody's opinion but his own. Gillispie had a couple of dust-ups with a harmless ESPN sideline reporter, got into a public disagreement with AD Mitch Barnhart about whether he should embrace the "good-will ambassador" dimension of any coach's role, and insisted that all he had to do was "work hard" at recruiting and coaching. The stupidity of this is monumental. Any coach at a big-time college sports program is a celebrity and ambassador for the school. If nothing else, it's a major recruiting advantage. That's just as true for Roy Williams at North Carolina and Billy Donovan at Florida as it has to be for Billy Gillispie at the University of Kentucky. Given that Gillispie genuinely doesn't seem to grasp that, it started looking like he's too clueless to hold the job.

If Gillispie had been at North Carolina or Kansas, the university might have been able to diddle around about firing him for a couple of years.

But UK can't waffle. If Gillispie isn't going to succeed, they need to fire him before he drags down the program.

That's because basketball success at the University of Kentucky is a fragile thing.

The University of Kentucky actually doesn't have that much going for it as a basketball school. The bottom line is that Kentucky high schools don't produce a lot of great basketball players and needs to recruit most of its stars from out of state. But why would players lead New York, Chicago, or California to come to Lexington and the University of Kentucky? Kentucky is a poor state, the University of Kentucky is not that great of a university, and Lexington is not that great of a city.

Not bad--just not that great.

As Faye Dunaway would say, what's the motivation?

Until it's last bout of NCAA probation in the late 1980's, the University of Kentucky basketball program was able to cover it's structural problems by cheating. Like the University of Alabama and University of Oklahoma football teams, UK basketball was known as a big-time cheating program and had been on probation several times from the forties onward.

But UK made a decision to go in another direction when they hired Rick Pitino to run the basketball program in 1990. With Pitino, UK was able to succeed without cheating because they had an extremely attractive coach who said all the right things, did a tremendous job of recruiting, and melded all of the great recruits into outstanding teams that contended for NCAA titles. Great coaching would make up for great cheating in producing great basketball.

What UK is facing with Billie Gillispie is the specter of slipping to its "natural" level as a middling college team that makes some noise in the NCAA's every once in a while but isn't really a perennial contender like North Carolina.

And that's why Gillispie has to go.

But firing Gillispie doesn't solve the problem. How does UK regain top-level success in college basketball? Is there another Rick Pitino out there willing to carry UK back to the top, the very top.

Maybe.

But John Calipari is down in Memphis and he gets big-time recruits and goes to Final Fours even though he has low graduation rates. So what if Calipari relies on "one and done" guys and isn't that careful about standards or college or all that rot.

Calipari might have an aura of Tarkanian-like sleaze about him, but he definitely gets the job done.

And sleaze might be what UK needs to remain competitive in college basketball.

Michael Steele: Where's Your Friends?

I didn't realize that Michael Steele was in such a bad way in a Richard Nixon petty paranoia style. But it looks like the first thing he wanted to do as RNC chair was to flush out his enemies in the Republican Party.

"I'm very introspective about things. I'm a cause-and-effect kind of guy. So if I do something, there's a reason for it... It may look like a mistake, a gaffe. There is a rationale, there is a logic behind it," he said. "I want to see what the landscape looks like. I want to see who yells the loudest. I want to know who says they're with me but really isn't."

"It helps me understand my position on the chess board. It helps me understand, where, you know, the enemy camp is and where those who are inside the tent are," Steele added. "It's all strategic."

Memo to Michael Steele: What the Republican Party really needs to do is figure out the location of the "friend camp" and how to find the friend camp is it still exists. Almost any Republican has lots of enemies and conservatives whine constantly about how nobody likes them. So the enemy tents are never hard to find.

It's the "friend tents" that Republicans need to look for.

The Guilt Free Life of a Blogger

The thing I like best about being a political blogger is that politics and the media are full of people who are worse than me. I always feel a lot better about myself after going through the political blogs and web sites for a few minutes.

Today's a good example. I couldn't watch Barack Obama's press conference last night because I was in the Morehead State University library. Missing Obama's press conference means that I've failed again as a blogger. How am I going to build my reader base if I keep abstaining from all the events political bloggers need to write about. What a loser I am.

But then I read in HuffPo that House Republican Whip Eric Cantor--the GOP's new conservative genius--skipped out on the press conference to take in a Britney Spears show. Britney Spears??? There's a triple threat if there ever was one. She can't sing, can't dance, and can't act either.

As my daughter would say, "ew, that's gross."

But I feel better about myself.

Yes, the guilt free life of a blogger.

Morning Thought

Maybe Rush Limbaugh could serve the conservative movement best by just going off the air.

Obama's Very Long Leash

Josh Marshall gets at a key point concerning the Obama presidency in his comments on last night's press conference.

One thing that was clear from tonight's press conference was why the White House keeps wanting to get Obama out in front of the cameras and on TV. Obama has a ready and mainly unflappable command of the issues confronting the country, which I think people find reassuring in itself. In a climate of crisis such as this, I don't think most people's focus is ideological. They're looking for competence and command, a sense that someone is sailing the ship, at helm with a clear sense of where they're going.

By "people," Marshall means all the constituencies who are not committed conservative. He's referring here primarily to white moderates and independents but also to progressives, African-Americans, hispanics, and gay people. Depending on how one counts, these constituencies add up to anywhere between 2/3rds and 4/5ths of the whole voting population and Marshall is right that these groups are going to evaluate Obama primarily on whether he appears to be serious, competent, and moving forward--the extent to which he avoids appearing to be a Bush-like caricature of himself representing the worst of American society.

Given that appearing to have "competence and command" is something that Barack Obama is very good at doing (and that's much of the reason he was elected), he's on a very long leash as president. In my opinion, Obama's general approval ratings and level of public support are going to stay high for at least the next five or six years. Even if the most recent bank bailout doesn't work, Obama's going to get the benefit of the doubt for taking a serious approach based on the best advice he could get from "the experts." Marshall is right in noticing that public opinion is not ideological on the bailout. That's partly because public opinion isn't sure about it's own idea of the "right approach." Consequently, the public could be willing to continue supporting Obama even if the "public/private partnership" idea doesn't pan out. As long as Obama is not making a fool of himself in the process, he's okay.

The Republicans and the conservative movement don't understand this yet, but they are a very big part of the public opinion dynamic that gives Obama such a long leash. George Bush's approval ratings were in the 20's and low 30's because his administration and the Republican Party largely perceived as a bunch of buffoons whose incompetence and corruption led the country to disaster. The most common term used for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and the other prominent Republican figures from the Bush years is "idiot." What's happened since Obama's inauguration is that the higher profiles of figures like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Michele Bachmann, and Jim Bunning have reinforced the whole buffoonish aura of the Republican Party that was created by the Bush administration. That's made Obama even more appealing by way of contrast and done a great deal to lock in the idea that Obama as a figure of "seriousness and competence."

Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, and Jim Bunning were all in the news yesterday making themselves and the Republican Party look more absurd than any comedian could make them look. Limbaugh was cartoonishly racist, Bachmann was cartoonishly "radical," and Bunning was doing a great impersonation of a stereotypically bitter, bullying right-winger who nobody in their right mind would vote for. Every time these people are in the news, they make Barack Obama look very good by way of comparison and keep giving the Obama administration a longer lease on popularity and credibility.

Given the public mood and the ridiculousness of the Republican opposition, I'd say that the Obama administration is on a very long leash indeed.

Interest in Oakland Shootings

I have a little bit of a personal interest in the Oakland shootings because I used to live fairly close to the location of the shootings on 74th and MacArthur Boulevard.

Of course that was back in 1978 and 1979 when I was on my coming-of-age adventure with my then girl friend Susan from North Carolina. We lived at the corner of 10th and 23rd in an apartment building where everybody was African-American except for one other tenant. To put this into the context of my life, I had never even seen a group of African-Americans until my first year in graduate school in 1976. That's how white my upbringing was in upstate NY.

Straight too--1976 was the year I met an out gay person for the first time.

Anyway, now we were living in a 99% black neighborhood in what we thought was a major urban ghetto. We thought we should be scared but the neighborhood looked friendly. So we weren't.

Besides! The rent was cheap, we were broke, and we had already survived a rough warehouse district in Portland with nothing but a couple of interesting stories to tell.

Almost everything on the corner of 10th and 23rd was pretty mundane.

The adjoining streets were crowded with cars and guys were out just about every Saturday washing their cars during the summer. We were sort of hippy like and didn't care that much about appearances but we soon started washing our Honda too after getting some "wash me" hints drawn out on the dust.

We did have a prostitute/heroin addict living next door to us and she had a guy with a rainbow colored Afro wig staying with her. He'd play Barry White music all day while I was in our room (and it was a pretty nice room) reading Freud, Hunter Thompson, and Fustel de Coulange. It wasn't that bad, but I eventually decided to do my reading at the UC-Berkeley library about 10-15 miles away.

Gas was cheap in 1978/79.

What about the cops? I imagine we were like a lot of other people in the neighborhood in thinking of the Oakland cops as more of a menace than anything else. A police helicopter flew over our building at the same time every day. It was intimidating. It was annoying. And I'm pretty sure that's what they wanted to accomplish in our neighborhood--intimidate and annoy.

Being prone to fantasy, I used to daydream about getting a machine gun and shooting the helicopter out of the sky one day.

But I fantasized about a lot of other things in those days.

As for last weekend's shooting, killing four people is a horrible thing to do. I don't know how the family of shooter Lovelle Mixon is going to come to grips with the fact that he did this horrific thing. That seems even more difficult than coping with the sudden death of the officers for their families. Of course, it's all a nightmare.

I can say that I'm surprised that more of the police aren't shot in the United States. Given the volatile brew of aggressive police, an armed public, and the constant throbbing of self-righteous rage, one would think that there would be a lot more police shootings than there are. But people tend to hold back from shooting the cops.

And that's a good thing.

Lance Armstrong Catches a Break

I've never been a big Lance Armstrong fan, but I'm not particularly anxious to see Armstrong get humiliated on his comeback. I still remember Sugar Ray Leonard being beaten to a pulp by Terry Norris and I'm not anxious to see Armstrong go through the cycling version of that trauma.

So, I was glad to see Armstrong fracture his collarbone during a race in Spain. He might recover in time for the Tour de France, but I'm betting that the injury knocks him out of the race. Much of Armstrong's edge came from his super-conditioning and I don't think he'd want to give that up. I'd wouldn't be surprised if Armstrong dropped out of the Tour once he realizes he won't be able to prepare like usual.

Better to go out this way than be humiliated before the whole world on L'Alpe du Huez.

Sickening News on the Chris Brown/Rihanna Front

It appears that there's a lot of sympathy for Chris Brown in his beating of his pop-star girlfriend Rihanna. That's especially the case for teen age girls.

And what may be surprising is the level of support for Mr. Brown. While thousands of teenagers have certainly turned on Mr. Brown, many others — regardless of race or gender — defend him, often at Rihanna’s expense.

In a recent survey of 200 teenagers by the Boston Public Health Commission, 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for what happened; 52 percent said both bore responsibility, despite knowing that Rihanna’s injuries required hospital treatment. On a Facebook discussion, one girl wrote, “she probably ran into a door and was too embarrassed so blamed it on chris.”

This reaction has alarmed parents and professionals who work with teenagers, and Oprah Winfrey was prompted to address violence in teenage relationships on her show. Boys who condone Mr. Brown’s behavior disappoint, but don’t shock Marcyliena Morgan, executive director of Harvard’s hip-hop archive. “But it’s
the girls!” she said. “Where have we gone wrong here?”

The sad thing is that so many teen-age girls learn this "she deserved it" crap then have to spend the rest of their lives unlearning it when they become targets of physical violence and rape themselves.

The Wind Blowing from the Left

Who could have guessed that Bob Dylan's "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" would create a new cliche genre.

And who could have guessed that the wind would suddenly stop blowing from the right?

I follow the right fairly closely and I don't know that anybody on the right has had anything significant to say about AIG bonuses, the new version of the Geithner bailout plan, or anything else having to do with the financial sector crisis.

Has Rush Limbaugh been talking about bending over because AIG has a white CEO? What's Ann Coulter's latest joke about Michelle Obama's victory garden? Sean Hannity have anything interesting to say? Controversy from Bill O'Reilly's end?

What about the Republican political leadership?

Can we really say the Republicans have contributed to the debate if nobody listens?

The wind has shifted enough that the conservative/left pole being the Obama administration, TNR, and Slate and the liberal/left pole being occupied by liberal media outlets like HuffPost, TPM, Salon, and the Daily Show, and policy progressives like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Matt Taibbi, and Robert Reich.

The elimination of freak show conservatives from the economic debate does simplify things somewhat, but I'm still pretty much torn between Obama and the left-critique myself.

My bad ideological self like to agree with the liberal/left critique, take over the AIG and the big banks (Citigroup, BoA, Goldman Sachs, etc.), and let AIG's counter-parties and big bank shareholders hang out to dry.

But I would bet that my Kentucky state retirement fund is heavily invested in AIG's counter-parties (hedge funds, private equity funds, Goldman Sachs, and the like) and that retirement funds all over the country will be bankrupted if AIG's counter-parties are forced to eat their very real losses. A lot of my friends who lost tons from 401k plans are waiting for the retirement shoe to drop as well (I didn't have a 401k).

That strikes me as a very big problem with the liberal/left critique.

Not that I'm satisfied with the Geithner plan. As Brad DeLong explains, the government is going to set up the world's largest hedge fund to dispose of the "toxic assets" (i.e., mortgage-backed securities) currently held by financial institutions. Likewise, the government is going to be bringing in hedge fund managers to manage the operation and guaranteeing a certain floor price to the securities.

The big problem here is that the federal government still hasn't done anything to break the business culture of big-bucks entitlement that fueled the speculative investments that burned up everybody's 401k plans and pension funds.

God, this sounds like I'm reciting "This is the House that Jack Built."

Anyway, the point is that the federal government's approach will be restarting the cycle of reckless speculation that would result in another crash pretty quickly. There will be the same players because hardly anybody was fired, the same expectations for profit that originally got everybody into trouble, and hundreds of billions in government cash to leverage.

Where the hedge funds first leveraged my retirement money into a financial black hole, now it looks like Timothy Geithner wants them to leverage my tax money into a black hole as well.

Nevertheless, I view the Geithner approach as workable if the federal government decides to once again start using government regulation as a tool for discouraging speculative financial behavior.

That's the only way I see to thread the current needle.

We All Deserve His Silence

Yesterday George W. Bush said yesterday that current President Obama "deserves my silence." In general, this is not a point of view I support. I don't think that a former president should go from leader of the nation and leader of the Republican Party to complete silence in the two minutes it takes the next president to say his or her oath.

But I'll make an exception in Bush's case. Given that he was one of the worst presidents in American history, it's save to say that we all deserve silence from George W. Bush.

The Apple of My Eye

Today's the 17th anniversary of my marriage to Mrs. RSI. It's hard to believe that we've been married that long. It's even harder to believe I'd ever get it together enough to be married for that long.

But it's a very nice feeling.

She's definitely the Apple of My Eye.

What's Next for Republican Campaign Trackers--Sexual Assault?

Republicans in Congress just don't get it. More than 2/3rds of the American public just doesn't want "more of the same" from them. The public doesn't want the Republicans to stay mired in right-wing ideological rigidity, doesn't want the Republicans to be maintain an attitude of relentless aggression, and doesn't want the Republicans pulling one cheap stunt after another against the Obama administration and the Democrats.

Today's manifestation of GOP obtuseness is the practice of using Congressional staff members as "campaign trackers" to track Democratic members of Congress and try to provoke them into saying something that can be used against them in negative ads.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is sending out video "trackers" to ask provocative questions of Democratic members of Congress. The trackers, who are congressional committee staffers, were earlier reported by Congress Daily, a specialty publication distributed largely on Capitol Hill.

NRCC spokesman Paul Lindsay told McClatchy that Democratic complaints were "whining," adding that "The modern-day world of campaign politics demands that we track our opponents' steps and missteps. We have nothing to hide when it comes to asking tough questions, but it appears that Democrats do when it comes to answering them."

One target of this form of stalking is conservative Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Carney:

Rep. Chris Carney was walking down a Capitol Hill street when suddenly — bam —
an anonymous Republican with a video camera who'd been following him asked him a question that was intended to embarrass the Pennsylvania Democrat.

The interviewer asked first about a single provision in the massive economic stimulus bill, then asked if Carney was going to be "ready to vote tomorrow."

An irritated Carney answered: "Like I told you before, if I see the damn package, I'll have an answer."

The whole idea is to get Democrats to embarrass themselves under stress and hopefully cost them re-election the same way George Allen ruined his career by referring to a Democratic videographer as a "macaca."

Given that they're now stalking people, one wonders how far Congressional Republicans are willing to go. Are they going to start shouting provocative insults to see how Democrats respond? Perhaps they'll go ahead and just start assaulting Democrats to see if they're "tough enough" to defend themselves or whether they're "committed enough to gun rights" to carry a pistol on them?

Maybe the Congressional Republicans will really "push the envelope" and start sexual assaulting Democrats on the streets in order to tape the response.

They could call it "Porn Politics."

Learning from Those Big AIG Bonuses

Ok! I get it. I get it. The Obama administration is trying to preserve the American financial system by NOT fully nationalizing AIG, Citigroup, and other zombie institutions.

The problem from the Obama point of view is that most financial institutions were invested in the mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps of companies like AIG. Why not? They were all under pressure to produce big profits and all this stuff looked like easy money. So, they all got in. Now, Goldman Sachs and I would think all kinds of hedge funds, pension funds, and mutual funds would go down the bankruptcy toilet if the government nationalized AIG and Citigroup and then sold their financial assets.

And that would wreak even more havoc on the whole global economic system.

Like I said I get it.

But there's been a big price to pay.

The $165 million, $450 million, or $1.2 billion that AIG is paying out mostly to people in the Financial Products Division that lost perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars illustrates one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Obama approach.

It leaves the toxic business culture of American financial institutions in place.

The 10, 50, and 100 million dollar bonuses available to financial services executives are a significant factor in the current crisis. With huge bonuses out there for the taking, executives at companies like Bear Stearns had a juicy incentive to make the kinds of speculative, high yield investments that could lock in the big profits for the company and get a nice bonus slice for the account executive. As the housing bubble inflated, the men and women who got in and got in big got all the bonuses and all the promotions while the guys who were cautious got fired.

The Darwinism of Speculation--I imagine that's how people like Alan Schwartz of Bear Stearns and John Thain of Merrill Lynch and million dollar redecorations got to the top.

What the big AIG bonuses show is that these kinds of people are still dominating office culture at AIG and are probably still dominant at other companies as well.

If the Obama administration had fully nationalized, most of the people and most of the business culture of the financial industry would have been flushed down the toilet in the wave of bankruptcies.

The collateral damage to the economy might have been too much, but caution and prudence would have ruled the day.

Now that it looks like many of the financial industry people and a lot of the speculative business culture are going to survive, it seems likely that the pressure toward big-time speculation is going to start re-building as executives look for ways to start earning big piles of bonus cash again.

The best thing the Obama administration can do now is double down on financial industry regulation as the most effective way to impose caution and prudence.

Obama can start by writing legislation to outlaw the kinds of mandated bonuses that are written into AIG contracts. If AIG contracts require millions of dollars in bonuses for certain levels of sales, they are encouraging toxic levels of speculation and putting the whole economy at risk for crashing.

Those kinds of contracts should be banned.

The pervasive abuses of the federal government bailout by the financial industry are certainly outrageous and the AIG bonuses should be cancelled.

But the abuses should also be seen as a learning opportunity for the Obama administration as it figures out the best way to regulate the financial industry in the future.

One place to start would be executive bonuses.

Glenn Beck Plays Footsie with the Mass Murder Line

I wouldn't pretend to have opened any windows into the soul of Glenn Beck. Still, it appears that he's experimenting with justifications for violent, terrorist-type acts against American society during the Age of Obama.

A few weeks ago, I put up a couple of brief posts on Becks enthusiastic references to militias, depression, and revolution as example of "freak show" Republicans in action.

But now Beck's gone farther in the direction of domestic terrorism in response to the shootings in Alabama. Nobody knows why Michael McLendon shot up his mother, grandmother, and a bunch of people sitting on their porches in Samson, Alabama. McLendon tried to join the Marines but failed. He tried to become a policeman but failed. Likewise, McLendon had a list of people who had "wronged" him and appeared to be involved in some sort of family dispute. But right now, there's no public information on what kind of guy he was, how exactly he felt wronged, or what triggered his murderous rampage.

And there might not ever be any good information. McLendon killed a number of the people who knew him best.

But that didn't stop Glenn Beck from speculating.

According to Beck, McClendon's problem might have been that he was one of the people who's been "disenfranchised" by the recent liberal turn in American politics and social attitudes.

But as I’m listening to him. I’m thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody’s hearing their voice. The government isn’t hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don’t listen to you on both sides. If you’re a conservative, you’re called a racist. You want to starve children . . . Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

Beck's theory here is that people on the right are being "silenced" and that mass murders like the one perpetrated by McLendon could be a "natural" reaction to the sense of exclusion. One example of what Beck's talking about is the attack on a Unitarian Universalist Church outside Knoxville, TN where Jim D. Adkisson tried to kill as "many liberals as possible" and did manage to murder a couple of people before he was stopped. Beck's logic here would be that Adkisson was so fed up with the shaming he felt from the media about racism, homophobia, and the other ways that liberals shame, silence, and disenfranchise conservatives that he lashed out.

The question is whether Glenn Beck is justifying mass murder as a legitimate expression of right-wing grievance against a liberal society. My impression is that Beck is experimenting with that possibility but has not quite made up his mind and is taking care about risking his cushy gig on Fox. Even Fox might have a hard time defending Beck if he began to openly justify domestic terrorism.

Still, Barack Obama has only been in office for two months and Glenn Beck is already toying around with the idea of justifying domestic terrorism.

It makes you wonder how far the fringes of the right are willing to go.

Josh Marshall Way Off Base on Chinese Paper Tiger

Josh Marshall of TPM is following the standard foreign policy cliches about China:

If you remember, not long after President Bush became president, we had that incident with the US spy plane hugging Chinese airspace, which was bumped by a Chinese jet intercepter and forced to make an emergency landing on Chinese territory. Then just days ago we had a strangely similar incident at sea. Again, just a few months into the tenure of a new president.

Now we have Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao publicly worrying about the safety of the almost $1 trillion of US Treasuries China owns. That they'd have some concern isn't surprising. But having the head of government sound the warning bell is hardly the best approach to preserving confidence in US debt.

This strikes me as all of a piece, pretty unsubtle signaling of a shifting balance of power.

The media and the foreign policy establishment have invested a lot of credibility in building up China as a real American rival, but the Chinese are almost all paper and no tiger. China is a fragile society whose main hold on stability is economic growth at a time when the prospects for global economic growth are poor. China isn't on the same kind of precipice as Pakistan yet but the Chinese government has to constantly and furiously work the levers of power to avoid that kind of instability. The balance of power isn't shifting toward China. It's shifting more toward the American side as other countries develop even more severe problems than the United States.

The Chinese would like global elites to believe that they're a rising power that will eventually become competitive with the United States. But the current balance of power is so much in favor of America that we can maintain a heavy-duty naval patrol just off their coast. If the Chinese had much power, they would be able to make the U. S. back off.

But they don't have the power to make us back off. If they did, the Chinese wouldn't have to pull off "North Korea-type" stunts with our ships and publicly muse about the stability of our economy.

The Ultimate Meaning of Stewart/Cramer

It's very easy to get to the bottom line of the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer war and that's the fact that neither Rick Santelli nor anyone else on CNBC is going to do any more big rants against President Obama.

CNBC is a right-wing, anti-Obama network--a version of Rush Limbaugh directed specifically at investors. As Salon observed, practically all of the pundits on CNBC blame the recession on Obama. Santelli pushed extremely hard against Obama on behalf of CNBC's audience.

But NBC, CNBC, Santelli, Cramer, and their whole target audience found out that the left-wing media represented by Jon Stewart could push back . . . and push back hard.

And they found out quickly.

Santelli himself stood down on his comments within days.

Jim Cramer also gave up after an initial effort to defend himself. After Stewart hammered Cramer for appearances on The Today Show and Morning Joe, he hammered Cramer again for that day's appearance on convicted felon Martha Stewart's program. Finally, Cramer just gave up and pulled out the white flag almost as soon as Stewart started to question him.

Not that it helped him much. He was still "eviscerated" by Jon Stewart. But surrendering probably does mean that Jim Cramer and CNBC are out of the daily news cycle, off the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and off the radar of the left-wing media in general.

Given that CNBC will want out of the cross-hairs of the left media, it is highly likely that none of their personalities will be trying to rally opinion against Barack Obama again.

It's unfortunate that the bottom line is the fact that the left-wing media is now more powerful and influential than CNBC.

Because Jon Stewart had some interesting things to say. He was especially effective at juxtaposing the naive confidence of middle and upper-middle class people in the integrity of the markets with the greedy cynicism of market insiders like Cramer. The 401k plans and pensions of the middle class lost heavily as Wall Stret insiders played games with enormous amounts of money and Stewart accused the whole financial world of gratuitously destroying the hard-earned wealth of the American middle-class.

It’s very easy to get on this after the fact. The measure of the network, and the measure of mess. CNBC could act as—No one is asking them to be a regulatory agency, but can’t—but whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day for short term. These guys companies were on a Sherman’s March through their companies financed by our 401ks and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the f---ing house down with our money and walked away rich as hell and you guys knew that that was going on.

It was helpful information and great entertainment and Jim Cramer had no answer.

Is Ross Douthat News?

I don't particularly like living in a world where a New York Times announcement concerning the hiring of a right-wing columnist is news. Too bad there isn't more discussion of how the credibility of the New York Times was undermined by the Iraq War.

Michael Steele's Clock Running Out

It looks like Michael Steele's moment in the political sun as chair of the Republican National Committee might be coming to an end. There's a story from GQ that Steele views abortion as a "personal choice."

L: How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your catholic faith, but by the fact that you were adopted?
M: Oh, a lot.
Absolutely. I see the power of life in that. I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it, uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.
L: Explain that.
M: The choice issue cuts two ways.
You can choose life or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.
L: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
M: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.
L: You do?
M: Yeah. Absolutely.

Given that the preferred term for abortion among conservatives is "mass murder," I wouldn't be surprised if the religious right sought to have Steele removed.

It was fun while it lasted.

Stewart/Cramer: A Really Big Deal

The Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer feud is a huge deal as an example of the left media expanding its offensive against the various little pockets of conservative commentary. It used to be claimed that liberals have "no sense of humor," but that's one cliche that has faded into the night as liberal humorists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert became more prominent. Sarah Palin was taken down almost single handed by Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live.

Since the election of Barack Obama, the liberal media has begun to focus on ridiculing Obama's conservative critics ranging from Michael Steele to Rush Limbaugh to the absurd "Going Galt" movement among right-wing bloggers. Following in the wake of CNBC's Rick Santelli's rant against Barack Obama the other week, Jon Stewart's attack on CNBC and Jim Cramer takes the liberal media offensive up another notch. Like the military sector, business reporting has been a fortress of conservative views for decades and Jim Cramer is a business media star at CNBC ("In Cramer We Trust"). In ridiculing Cramer's crummy advice during the Wall Street collapse, Jon Stewart is opening the whole can of worms associated with the business media--the craven CEO worship, the focus on short-term profits, pumping for leveraged buy-outs, cram downs of pension cuts on employees, and anti-union perspectives.

In other words, liberal ridicule is probably the best thing that ever happened to the business media.

The Alabama Mess

The mass killing in South Alabama is starting to sound like a lot of other mass killings--the combination of rage, guns, and the countless examples of mass murder always seems ready to go off.

A couple of my Morehead friends grew up in that area.

Hopefully, nobody they knew was involved.

Conservatives Start Using the "S" Word

You know it had to happen. Some conservative had to start using the "S" word for secession and Chuck Norris (of martial arts fame) did it. He talked about the possibility of Texas seceding from the United States in an appearance with Glenn Beck.

On Glenn Beck's radio show last week, I quipped, in response to our wayward federal government, "I may run for president of Texas." That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not I, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star State, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state. From the East Coast to the "Left Coast," America seems to be moving farther and farther from its Founders' vision and government.

The right has been edging toward secession talk ever since Obama was elected. The problem for conservatives--and Norris gets at it here--is that Obama isn't a fluke. A big majority of Americans wanted government to act boldly in response to the recession, address environmental issues, enact health care reform, and get out of Iraq. Obama only won 53% of the popular vote but more than 2/3rds of the public approves of the way he's handled himself in office and more than 90% either approved or somewhat approved of the big budget speech in which Obama layed out his big reform agenda.

Those are extremely bad numbers for conservatives.

For a wingnut like Norris, "Americas seem to be moving farther and farther from its Founders' vision and government." Conservatives have been thinking about Texas for some time in relation to the question of secession. I remember listening to Walter Williams talk up the idea of making Texas into a "free market, laissez-faire" nation once while he was subbing for Limbaugh. Given that Texas was once an independent country, conservatives reason that it could "choose" to forswear its connection to the United States and become independent again.

Of course, the right better move quickly. Texas may already be slipping. McCain only won Texas by 55-44 and a significant chunk 0f that 55% had to be country club Republicans who don't have the loathing of the United States needed to contemplate secession.

That's what it gets down to for conservatives--loathing America. Glenn Beck talks about civil war and chaos as though he were anxious to bring it on. Loathing America is also an underlying current in the "going Galt" idea of "high achieving" conservatives going on a "performance strike" and depriving the country of their talents. Likewise, it's part of the reason why Rush Limbaugh's statements about wanting Obama to fail continue to strike a nerve. There's a sense that Limbaugh wants America as a whole to fail if we choose Obama's approach and most of the country would like to see Limbaugh and conservatives back down.

But I think it will be awhile before conservatives begin to back down. By the end of the George W. administration, the right had become highly committed to extremely aggressive, in-your-face, bullying personal styles. Therefore, it's unlikely that the first couple waves of failure will have much impact on reconciling them to their minority status in American life.

But it's pretty likely that conservatives are facing an extended education in political failure and talking about "Going Galt" or secession doesn't help them. Maybe they'll eventually see the light.

The Lost Magic of the "L" Word

I've been looking for opportunities to use my research on the Workingmen's movement of the 1820's and 1830's to reflect on contemporary politics and it looks like I've found something.

The issue is political names.

The Philadelphia Mechanics Free Press reprinted an 1830 article from the New York Workingmen's Advocate on the contest of names between political parties.

There is no mode, perhaps, in which the people are more imposed upon, than in the adroit use which demagogues and intriguing politicians make of party names. A number of aspiring men are seeking for influence, for office, and for power. They cannot all obtain their ends; they therefore become divided, and separately combined. Now commences the contest of hard names, between the two cabals. If one can dub the other with an odious name, and by any means so manage it, as to cause the name to take (emphasis in text) with the people, an important advantage is gained; there is a prospect then of deterring the people from supporting those who have been decried, and rendered suspicious "by the magic of a name."

In contemporary terms, the application of "odious names" to an opponent is an element of wedge politics designed to deter "the people who have been decried, and rendered suspicious "by the magic of a name."

One of the extremely interesting developments in contemporary politics is that the right can no longer employ the term "liberal" as a magically odious term for the Democrats. Limbaugh and some of the talk radio types still use the "L" word and it still gets a rise out of his loyal listeners. But referring to the Democrats as liberals no longer serves as a tool for "deterring the people from supporting" the Democratic Party or the Obama administration. In fact, Republican politicians seem to have refrained from using the L word as a criticism of Obama or his policies. The Republicans talked about the stimulus package as a "spending program" and "generational theft." Likewise, they analogized the stimulus package to Jesus and criticized the lack of debate in passing the legislation.

But the GOP either didn't try very hard to deride the stimulus package as a liberal program or avoided the name altogether.

But why?

Of course, Republican use of the "L" word was itself a complex phenomenon. So, the lost magic of the L word is also complex. From the late 70's onward, the Republican Party was able to project a strongly unified message through its officeholders, political operatives, the conservative media apparatus, and sympathetic figures in the mainstream media. But the Republicans have lost that unified capacity to promote "hard names" in the post-Bush era (more attention needs to be paid to the difficulties for the GOP that have been posed by the end of George Bush's second term).

There's also the matter of audience. The Republicans were able to attach the "L word" to the Democrats partly because of the residue of resentment over civil rights, the anti-war activism, feminism, gay rights, and other causes from the 1960's and 1970's. The "L word" was short-hand for the Democratic Party's association with "them" and it hurt the Democrats.

But the groups that used to be "them" have become "us" as well as them. That's especially the case with the election of the first African-American president, the tenacious campaign of Hillary Clinton as the first "feminist" candidate for the highest office, and the growing acceptance of gay rights among all segments of the American population but especially the young.

In this context, conservative use of the "L-word" became vaguely associated with "bigotry" and the magic of the word started working against the right rather than the left.

Moreover, the rise of liberal media outlets like DailyKos, HuffPost, the Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert enabled the left to rebrand themselves as "progressives" and they've been able to make it stick.

Now, it's the liberal/left that has a unified message and has been able to create some magic for names like "incompetent," "bigot," "idiot," and "delusional" that we like to apply to the right. I'd like to see "freak show" applied to the conservative movement, but haven't had any luck in getting it accepted.

It's a sign of how far the Republicans and the right have fallen that they can't even name themselves let alone the Democrats.

Terrel Owens: Not Quite Unemployable

Geez, it only took Terrell Owens 48 hours to find a new job with the Buffalo Bills that pays $6.5 million a year.

Being a "cancer" must be tough.

Ghoul Conservatism and the Upcoming "Limbaugh for President" Campaign?

A long time ago, my car irresponsibly broke it's radio antenna and I don't get much radio reception. As a result, I missed Rush Limbaugh announcing that "Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes" and that "before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."

Just like there's "zombie banks" that are still stumbling around the terrain even though they're really dead, there's now "ghoul conservatives" like Limbaugh who are costing Republicans votes through the crass little deathwatches they start for figures Ted Kennedy. Here in Kentucky, Jim Bunning's already heard his re-election efforts with his "ghoul-like" comments about Rush Bader Ginsburg's cancer. Likewise, now that progressive media outlets are reporting on Limbaugh almost everyday, it's hard not too imagine his over-the-top statements being a continual drain on Republican votes as moderate and independent voters harden in their disdain for the GOP.

What's the outcome of all this mainstreaming of Rush Limbaugh which is ratings gold for Limbaugh even as it does harm to the Republican Party?

It might be that Rush Limbaugh launches a "front porch" campaign for the presidency from his radio studio. That way, Limbaugh could heighten his political prominence while maximizing the (short-term) ratings benefits and adding a lot of money to his own pocket.

Of course, that assumes that Limbaugh's not "Going Galt" and refusing to make more than $250,000 a year. But that's a safe assumption.

Limbaugh could run for the Republican nomination or mount an independent campaign.

Or do both. It doesn't really matter. The key is that running for President is now part of the business logic of Rush Limbaugh's radio program. He would be the first major presidential candidate whose candidacy would be a (not insignicant) money-making operation.

And a Limbaugh campaign would have certain advantages. By campaigning for president for three hours every day in his radio station, Limbaugh could run a "pure" campaign without campaign contributions, disdain the "crass showmanship" of campaigning, and still get into the national media almost every day.

Another advantage is that it would probably kill the Republican Party and force conservatives to find another vehicle for their political aspirations.

Guess Who's Going to Have Karl Rove for Dinner

According to Karl Rove, "some Democrats would love to have me barbecued" when Rove gives testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

Maybe, but it's more likely that the Democrats are thinking in terms of nibbling around Rove's carcass until he commits perjury.

Then, they'll let a federal prosecutor eat him.

The Michael Steele "Don't Vote for Us" Tour

Today's Michael Steele pronouncement is that "I'm in the business of ticking people off." But that's pretty much a given. "Ticking people off" is what the Republicans are all about these days. Outraging liberals is Job #1 for Limbaugh, Hannity, Ann Coulter, and the whole talk radio freak show? Why shouldn't Michael Steele join in the fun.

Worry warts might object that the rest of America interprets "I'm in the business of ticking people off" as "don't vote for us."

But the Republicans don't seem to care. Why should we?

Limbaugh Debating Obama

If Rush Limbaugh wants to debate President Obama, he should run for president in 2012. If Rush was fortunate enough to win the nomination, he'd get to have two or three debates with the President.

That would be fun.

Limbaugh Notes: The Man in Black

I spent last night and this morning absorbing Rush Limbaugh's CPAC speech last week. Unlike most people on the left, I believe that Limbaugh should be viewed as a sympathetic figure. By "sympathetic," I don't mean an "I feel sorrry for you" kind of sympathy. Instead, Limbaugh should be seen as a powerful and skilful opponent whose abilities we respect and whose success we need to understand.

The Man in Black. Rush Limbaugh doesn't do a lot of public speaking and doesn't seem to leave his South Florida estate (from which he does his radio program) much more often than Sarah Palin gets out of Wasilla, Alaska. His speech to CPAC was thus a huge event for him both because because he had traveled to make it and because it was broadcast nationally by Fox, CNN, and C-Span. Limbaugh kept going back to the speech as his "first national address" in a way that made me think that he considered it a kind of "presidential moment." He tried to be ironical and witty about it, but Limbaugh was still deeply impressed with himself.

For the big CPAC speech, Limbaugh wore an all-black ensemble meant to evoke Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, or Clint Eastwood in Hang 'em High--the kind of figures who project a kind of "power aloofness" that disdains speech. But Limbaugh himself completely undermines that kind of effect. At the age of 58, Limbaugh still looks like he's 60 or 70 pounds overweight and still has a "fat boy" air about him when he breaks into that little bucked-tooth smile of his. Limbaugh projects about as much machismo as Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneris, or any other performer who's looking to ingratiate themselves with an audience.

This isn't meant to be belittling. It's not like I'm chiseled out of granite either. But Limbaugh makes himself look absurd by posing himself through a hyper-macho image that's almost the polar opposite of what he actually is. This is pretty much a pattern on Limbaugh's part. Even though "The Man in Black" image is all over Limbaugh's web site, he undermines the whole image by being his awkward, ingratiating, uncoordinated self. Limbaugh studiously constructs an image with himself on top, but can't help constantly deconstruct that image to manifest the weenie within.

Bobby Lied But Nobody Died Except Maybe Jindal

It appears that Bobby Jindal made up his key anecdote about how he and the New Orleans sheriff stood up to rigid federal bureaucrats during Katrina.

For those who don't have photographic memories, here's the anecdote.

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: "Well, I'm the sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!" I asked him: "Sheriff, what's got you so mad?" He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go -- when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, "Sheriff, that's ridiculous." And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: "Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!" Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

After Jindal's altogether disastrous speech, Daily Kos and TPM--God bless the left-wing media--started questioning whether this key story. Specifically, they started questioning whether Jindal could have been at the Sheriff's "make-shift office" at that particular time because "no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue."

And it turned out that Bobby Jindal wasn't there at all. Now Jindal's office is claiming that he overheard Sheriff Lee tell this story over the phone "days later."

I wouldn't be surprised if that line didn't pan out either.

Unlike the case of Bush and Cheney, Bobby Jindal's lying didn't result in more than 100,000 deaths. But it's hard to imagine him as the candidate of a national political party anytime soon.

Maybe Jindal should run on the Ayn Rand ticket instead.

Talking About Life with Miss Teen RSI

Someday, I'll be smart enough to realize that spending so much time carting around my daughters is the best thing about being a father.

That's because we get a chance to talk about life.

Today's topics while I was driving my older daughter--Miss Teen RSI-- back to school were piano, getting old, and race. It's a twenty minutes drove to the county school in rural Kentucky. During these kinds of time, I tell her what I think and observe and she measures my "wisdom" against her own experiences and observations.

Today, the bottom line was race and I learned as much from the conversation as Miss Teen. As we stopped in the BP convenience store for some gum (for her) and candy (for me), I realized that African-Americans had a particular interpretation problem--how to deal with white people who are as nice as they can be but also extremely racist. The issue came up when I was telling Miss Teen RSI about a retired colleague and neighbor who is extremely gracious and friendly but also a determined racist and misogynist. I emphasized to Miss Teen RSI that this guy's general friendliness made it necessary for me to keep reminding myself of his poisonous bigotry.

That's when I stopped to think that this must be a big problem for African-Americans for whom determined racists pose much more severe difficulties than they create for a white guy like me. How do black guys and women deal with white people who are overtly very friendly but also might be racial bigots. What about figuring out how genuine friendliness, unthinking racial stereotypes, and determined racism might be mixed together in the white people they meet?

I certainly don't know the answers to these questions and it's not like I'm going to come up with good answers in a 98% white town like Morehead, KY. But this is the general thread of what I want to import--an interest in the conundrums that people face in life and what they choose to think and do about them.

Now if I can only get her to be nicer to her sister.

Rick Santelli Stands Down

It looks like Rick Santelli has decided that he didn't like the heat that came with his 15 minutes of fame. After ranting up a storm at the Chicago Board of Trade and accusing Robert Gibbs of "threatening" him, Santelli slowly but completely surrendered to Matt Lauer on today's Today Show.

It was funny to see. First, Santelli retreated from the idea that Gibbs threatened him but only retreated to an idea that his wife felt threatened. But that didn't work. Who hides behinds their wife's skirts in our hyper-macho era anyway.

Certainly Matt Lauer didn't take it seriously and kept attacking on the point that Santelli didn't really feel threatened at all.

So, Rick Santelli tried another tack. Instead of saying that Gibbs threatened him, the CNBC broadcaster tried to argue that Gibbs was going off the reservation because he referred to Santelli by name than "the media" in general.

Well, listen, I’m not saying threatening. And just to be pinpointed specifically, I find very unusual, and I think that it’s more of a decision for you as the press or all the people on the lawn that giggled at the joke about caffeine — and it was funny — but how would they like to be pinpointed specifically? I think that’s the issue at hand. I don’t want to make more out of this. You know, here I am, and I want to continue to do what I’ve always done, and that is, question motivation, whether it’s the Fed chairman, and we know–

Unfortunately for Santelli, Lauer wasn't any more impressed with Santelli saying he was persecuted than he was with Santelli saying he was threated. At this point, Santelli just gave up trying to advance his position and decided to try "patriotic lying" as a way to worm his way out of the situation.

Everybody that’s talking right now, we want all of this to succeed. We just want to make sure that as we spend the money we don’t have, we’re getting a return and people have a chance to look at it and understand where it’s going

Talk about total nonsense. Santelli doesn't want Obama to succeed any more than Limbaugh wants Obama to succeed.

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, he gets this interview wrong. Limbaugh's idea is that the Obama administration "got to Matt Lauer" and made Lauer adopt the Today version of an Elliot Ness personality while interviewing Santelli.

"Matt Lauer sounds like Robert Gibbs' 'butt boy,'" Robert Gibbs and Barack Obama's butt boy. Matt, you do. In the sound bite you sounded like a butt boy. You sounded like somebody carrying out orders. You sounded like somebody defending the realm against one of your own colleagues, against one of your own colleagues who's out there simply asking a question about, what the hell are we doing having to pay for people who aren't going to pay their mortgages? It strikes me as much more likely that Matt Lauer and other media heavyweights have decided that the Obama administration represents "the moderate consensus" that the media views as the political ideal. If guys like Santelli are going to take right-wing positions, they're going to have to work extremely hard to justify their "extremism" against the media consensus.

That's not much of a surprise. Matt Lauer and the people at the Today Show can read the polls and their audience response as well as anyone. But it's very bad news for the right-wing. It means they've completely lost the "benefit of the doubt" in relation to the Obama administration and that they're going to have to swim against a very strong media current for a forseeable future that could last more than a decade.

That's no problem for Rush Limbaugh. Bucking the Obama tide probably increases his ratings and puts money in his pocket.

But Rick Santelli had a vision of his career going down the toilet. So he decided to just surrender.

The Treasury Department Isn't Alone

Paul Volcker is worried about the understaffing of the Treasury Department in a time of crisis.

"The Secretary of the Treasury is sitting there without a deputy, without any undersecretaries, without any, as far as I know, assistant secretaries responsible in substantive areas at a time of very severe crisis. He shouldn't be sitting there alone."

Volcker is a former Federal Reserve chair under Carter and Reagan who is now working in the Obama administration as chair of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. So, he would have a special interest in the Treasury Department.

But there's little doubt that the Treasury Department is not the only department that was significantly weakened during the Bush years.

The Republicans and "Freak Show" Racism

One dimension of Republican politics that needs to be canvassed is "freak show racism." It's important to emphasize that racism is far from freakish in many ways. For a not insignificant percentage of white people, racism is still the norm. Blacks are viewed through the prism of racial stereotypes, white people occupy a fair amount of their time exchanging racial jokes, and e-mails, and acknowledgement of the worth of black political figures like Martin Luther King or Barack Obama is either non-existent or grudging in the extreme. In these kinds of environments, it's any kind of overt opposition to racism that is stigmatized as snobbish, unusual, weird, obnoxiously self-righteous, or "politically correct" in the pejorative sense of the word.

Just to give a couple of examples of "racist normality," George Packer reported in The New Yorker before the Democratic primary last year that racism was pretty much the norm in rural Martin County in Kentucky. In my town of Morehead, KY there's a strong undertow of "normal" racism. Blacks refer to Morehead as one of the worst places for African-Americans to drive. Somebody burst into a convenience store and announced that "we've elected a monkey for president" the night Obama won. Just today, there was a group of Confederate re-enactors with Rebel flags waving at my university. To be fair, there aren't as many Confederate flags (Confederate flaggers are all racists!) as there used to be, but the battle flags are still all over the place.

One of the things that's happening now is that the "normal" white racism of figures like Rush Limbaugh or places like Martin County, KY is being brought into the mainstream media as part of an on-going conservative "freak show."

What I mean by "freak show" is that the manifestations of racism are being brought into the mainstream media as examples of the "bizarreness" and "strangeness" of the Republican Party in general and conservatives in particular. Unlike the Glenn Beck and Alan Keyes dimensions of "freak show" politics that emerge from the conservative movement itself, "freak show racism" is pulled into the public arena by African-American political figures, African-American bloggers and the progressive media for a variety of reasons. Whether it's protesting racism, scoring points against the Republicans, or entertaining liberal audiences with bizarre examples of racism, reports on the "freak show racism" of Republicans and conservatives are becoming a standard element in the repertoire of the progressive and mainstream medias.

This is certainly the case with the "watermelon" card sent out by the Republican mayor of Los Alamitos, CA to an audience that included an African-American businesswoman. For the mayor, Dean Grose, this kind of card is evidently part of his "normal" run of racist comments and jokes and he doesn't see anything wrong with it.

Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.

He said he and Price are friends and serve together on a community youth board.
"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did," Grose told the AP. "I'm sorry. It wasn't sent to offend her personally - or anyone - from the standpoint of the African-American race."

Yeah, right. I bet Grose wasn't aware of the relevant racial stereotypes. But seriously, the key thing here is Grose saying that "we laugh at things" which I take to mean that he and his buddies laugh at this kind of racial humor all the time.

But times have changed and what's funny to Republican mayors like Dean Grose and his buddies is morally objectionable, strange, and bizarre to the rest of the country. Somebody reported Grose's e-mail to the Orange County Register, the report was picked up by Huffington Post, and now it's all over the African-American blogosphere (here and here), the liberal blogosphere, Yahoo, and CBS as Dean Grose becomes yet another exhibit in the on-going freak show that's become the Republican Party.

Bobby Jindal and Freak-Show Politics

The Jindal Problematic. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP needs to expand its appeal beyond hard-core conservatives and the South. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. What the Republicans need to do is stop their spiraling decline into freak-show status. They really need to get Republican politicians back in charge of the Republican message and draw public attention off Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Alan Keyes, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and other hard-right media freaks. All of these figures attract attention by being "strange" and "bizarre," and the fact that they become the best known spokespeople for the Republican Party makes the Republicans into the party of outlandish spectacles--in other words, a "freak show." If the Republicans don't watch it, they'll sink into Ross Perot, American Independent Party, or Dixiecrat numbers as they go the way of the Whigs.

The conventional wisdom was also wrong about Bobby Jindal. Both the Republicans and the mainstream media have represented Jindal as the Republican "competition" to Barack Obama. But the Republicans really need to become credible as a serious political party once more before they can become genuinely competitive with the Democrats.

This is seemingly what Jindal seemingly promised, a re-assertion of GOP credibility. Being a Fulbright Scholar and a policy-wonk, Jindal was supposed to be an ideas guy, a guy who could present conservative views in a sophisticated way, somebody who could be taken seriously. This is the kind of thing that Republicans need to get out of the rut of over-reliance on conservative spectacle, appeals to racism, misogyny, and homophobia, and the rejection of science, education, and culture.

The Jindal Failure. This is why the grotesquely entertaining failure of Jindal's response was highly significant. Chris Matthews sniffed out a plantation atmospheric in Jindal's self-presentation even before Jindal began speaking and Jindal goofed up right away by referring to Barack Obama right off the bat as "our first African-American president" and thus racializing Obama. Obviously, Jindal is just as tone-deaf on race as other Republicans and seems to think that Obama won because of "white guilt" (bias alert: I supported Hillary during the primaries).
In fact, Jindal was tone deaf on everything. The sing-song unctuousness in his voice, his rejection of a government role in Katrina, the demagoguing of high-speed rail and volcano research--it was all terrible. David Bro0ks hit the nail on the head when he referred to Jindal's speech as a form of "nihilism" in which Jindal seemed to reject any effort to deal with the financial crisis. But Brooks forgot to mention that there's a nihilism in everything the Republicans are doing these days. In the final analysis, that nihilism is the core value of the Republican freak show, a reveling in the prospect of failure and disaster.

Conclusion. Both Barack Obama and Bobby Jindal achieved something like bi-partisan consensus last night. Obama's speech was viewed positively or somewhat positively by 92% of the audience while Jindal's response was panned by all sides of the political spectrum. It's been a long time since public opinion has been that unanimous on anything.

Interestingly enough, the only significant voice defending Jindal was uber-freakmeister Rush Limbaugh himself.

But that comes as no surprise.

How Bad Was Bobby Jindal?

Bring back Rush, Sean, Alan Keyes, and freak show Republicans like my Senator Jim Bunning.

Bobby Jindal is unbelievably awful. What were the Republicans thinking when they assigned him the response?

I can't believe that Jindal is using Katrina as a salutory lesson for dealing with the current fiscal crisis. How dumb can you get?

Jindal sounds like he's talking down to people and reads the teleprompter in a very mechanical manner. Jindal also has this flat accent like he's trying to avoid sounding like he has an accent.

It's very disconcerting.

Overall, Jindal sounds just as bad as John McCain did in his "green background" speech when Obama clinched the Democratic nomination.

Finally, Jindal ends with a version of the Galaxy Quest anthem--Never Give Up/ Never Surrender.

What a flop.

Something tells me that Obama's not going to lose any sleep over the prospect of running against Jindal in 2012.

Maybe the Republicans should nominate Sarah Palin.

Live-blogging the Obama Speech

Ok, Obama's going to come on soon.

Let's see if I can make this fun as well as insightful.

CNN is showing some Republicans. I caught Susan Collins first. She was a year ahead of me at St. Lawrence in the frozen tundra of northern New York. She probably moved to Maine for the weather.

There's turncoat squared Judd Gregg-- betrayed the Republicans, then betrayed Obama to rejoin the Republicans.

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are on. They look like Oscar presenters. Politics isn't "Hollywood for Ugly People" like Jay Leno says. It's more like Hollywood for "Not Unbelievably Pretty People."

There's nothing quite as boring as the pomp and circumstance for presidential speeches to Congress. The Sergeant at Arms introduces the diplomatic corps, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet. Eric Holder stayed behind. It's all a tremendous bore.

One interesting point is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg shook the hand of my tactless Senator Jim Bunning. Bunning's a mega-embarrassment.

But yeah! The nation really wants to see Rahm Emmanuel shake hands with the rest of the political class.

Whoa, Hilda Solis is tiny--Solid handshake though.

So what's Obama going to say? I think they've released the text of the speech but I didn't get a chance to read it.

But first, he's got to come in and show off his handshake.

Madame Speaker, The President of the United States!

Yep, there's President Obama enjoying a moment of s0lidarity with the political class--shaking hands, asking people how they're doing, hugging guys. He seems pretty at ease. Everybody wants to touch.

The speech is for us, but it's also important to understand that Obama is the political establishment's official representative to the nation.

Obama finally gets to the podium. The majesty of the moment is interrupted by an argument between my daughters. After losing Obama's opening lines in the hubbub, I had to help the family get back on track.

Obama starts off by reassuring the country--we've still got the mojo but we need to confront the crisis and be responsible.

Now, all the sins we've committed and challenges we haven't met--the focus on short-term gain, energy, health care, and debt.

Addresses jobs first-lauds stimulus package.

Teachers and police officers able to keep jobs because of stimulus package. If teachers and police lose jobs on a mass basis, we're really sunk.

My daughter says John McCain looks high. I think he's high on life.

Now Obama's talking about accountability in spending the stimulus money.

Onto the credit crisis.

Somebody's nodding off--that makes me feel better about people nodding off during my lectures as a college professor.

Speaking of college professors, Obama sounds like one now.

Creating new "lending fund" for consumer loans

Part II of Obama's speech to Congress
Now Obama is on to banking--sounds like a pretty comprehensive approach to the credit crunch.

Wants to hold banks accountable for increasing their lending--finally. Emphasizes the end of CEO abuses--Take that John Thain.

Pres. Obama holds up the prospect of a decade of economic sputtering if nothing is done.

He gets it on the unpopularity of banks, but emphasizes need to solve the problem, and govern "with a sense of responsibility."

"It's not about helping banks; it's about heloping people." Hey, Pat Leahy is happy about that line. I wonder what Bristol Palin is thinking.

Obama lays out the line to returning confidence and recovery.

Then Obama moves on to calling for regulatory overhaul and long-term investments on alternative energy, health care, oil, and public debt.

Obama's budget is going to be a vision. That's great but everybody in education is suspicious of "vision" these days. But Obama's not listening to me. He wants bold visions and big ideas.

Actually, I think the GI Bill was a good idea.

Obama wants to catalyze private enterprise through investments in energy, health care, and education.

Time for American to lead again on energy technology--Standing "O" for that one.
More power lines? Maybe they'll be "green power lines."

Nancy Pelosi stood very quickly at the end of that line.

Now for the big downer--the auto industry and health care.

Obama's committed to a re-tooled and re-invented automobile industry but he doesn't say how he's going to do that.

I sure as hell hope Obama can get health care reform. I'm okay with curing cancer, advancing technology, and preventive medicine.

But I want to hear about legislating universal health insurance.

Health care reform can not wait, must not wait, and will not wait another year.

This speech is pretty easy on the ears even though it's 45 minutes long.

Onto education.

Cradle to college diploma education? I like cradle to grave better.

Schools need more resources and more reform--investing in improved teacher performance, and charter schools.

This is interesting. He wants everybody to commit to one year of education beyond high school as a form of patriotism.

Obama wants the U. S. to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

Gives a little tribute to Orrin Hatch, Teddy Kennedy, and responsible parenting. How many politicians actually put their children first . . . or second . . . or third.

As soon as Obama starts saving money, he talks about agribusiness and defense--the two big sources of waste in federal government spending.

Now Obama addresses taxes. He's going to let taxes increase on two of my younger brothers who earn more than $250,000. But my taxes are going down even though my family's income is over $100,000.

Sorry little brothers.

Ooh. Obama is going to put war on the budget. The Bush administration seemed to be committed to "maximum possible dishonesty." Change for the better isn't too difficult on this issue.

I can't remember Obama shouting out to any special guests. Pelosi did though.

I have to admit that Obama has more endurance as a speaker than I have as a blogger. I'll keep slogging though.

The military. There's expanded health care for veterans, closing Guantanamo Bay, and foregoing the temptation to torture. But will he admit that the Bush administration tortured?
Obama also wants a foreign policy that engages the world instead of giving everyone else the finger.

Ok. Obama is now shouting out to a Miami banker who distributed cash to employees and former employees of his bank--a guy who didn't feel right keeping his profits himself.

Not a popular guy among bankers right now though.

Now Obama's telling a story about a student from an extremely poor school in South Carolina who wrote to him for help. "We are not quitters," the student said.

That's great politics because it shows up South Carolina's "neo-nullification" governor Mark Sanford.

Nice speech.

Nothing really momentous though. Obama's just going to carry through on the vast majority of his campaign promises. That's what he needs to do.

Freak Show Republicans

That was my impression as I watched a Glenn Beck segment on the "coming civil war."

How I Became An Alpha Cat

It's true, I'm the alpha cat of our Kentucky home. God knows, I never wanted to be an "alpha cat." But here I am. "Big B" has looked toward me for meals ever since he changed from "outdoor" to "indoor" status last year. Now, he's also greeting me in the morning and laying at my feet while I'm reading on the couch. Isn't laying at the owner's feet a dog thing. I wouldn't say "Big B" is giving me love. It's more like he's giving me respect and looking to me for leadership . . . especially in the area of feeding him.

So what have I done to induce "Big B" to treat me as the Alpha Cat in our household. Personally, I think it's my gibberish that he respects. From "Big B's" perspective, I have the magical capacity to induce other people to feed him. The basic scenario is that "Big B" will approach me, he'll hear me talk some sort of human gibberish, and then somebody--usually one of my daughters--will feed him. It's like I have the magic capacity of turning gibberish into action.

If only the other humans I know had so much respect for gibberish.

Kate Winslet Wins!

I was glad to see Kate Winslet win an Oscar. She's certainly deserving. I was just as glad not to see any of the nasty fashion commentary from the likes of the disgusting Kay Giantis.

Mark Sanford's Fringe

The problems for the Republican Party and the conservative movement keep getting deeper as more people come to view "mainstream Republicans" as "wackos."

That problem was on display yesterday as Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Washington characterized opposition to the stimulus among Republican governors as a "fringe" phenomena.

"All of us are committed to working with President Obama to pull our nation's economy out of the ditch that George W. Bush ran it into," O'Malley said. "If some of the fringe governors don't want to do that, they need to step aside and not stand in the way of the nation's interests."

This is where it's interesting. The governors most critical of the stimulus package--Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina--are three of the most prominent Republican governors not named Schwarzennegger. So, it's not like the governors are fringe people.

But their wholesale rejection of the stimulus does put the governors in the same league as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, ("depression and revolution") Glenn Beck, ("civil war") Alan Keyes, and other fringe figures. It's not just liberals who are dismissing them, Arnold Schwarzennegger himself mocks the "neo-nullification" governors by telling them to send money to California.

Sanford recognizes the imputation and makes a fringe kind of comment in response:

"I think in this instance I would humbly suggest that the real fringe are those that are supporting the stimulus," Sanford said. "It is not at all in keeping with the principles that made this country great, not at all in keeping with economic reality, not in keeping with a stable dollar, and not in keeping with the sentiments of most of this country."

In fact, Sanford's delusional. The stimulus package represents the kind of Keynesian counter-cyclical economic thinking that's been government orthodoxy in both Republican and Democratic administrations since the New Deal. Likewise, more than 50% of the public supports the stimulus package.

Of course, people on the fringe right don't have a lot of contact with the rest of the country.

That's part of life on the fringe.

Could Bunning Get a Job as a WalMart Greeter?

Here's Jim Bunning making some classy comments about Ruth Bader Ginsberg's cancer at a dinner in Elizabethtown:

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg ... has cancer."

"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody
would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

In the "comments" section on the Louisville Courier-Journal story, kywildcatfan71 raised the question about whether Bunning would have the personal skills to land a job as a Walmart greeter if he wasn't in the Senate.

That's a very good question.

Broder and Ifill: Cliches "Stacked Like Cordwood"

I hope Gwen Ifill's book on Obama is better than David Broder's praise of her in today's Washington Post.

But I doubt it.

Like Broder, Ifill stacks up her cliches "like cordwood" anytime she's in front of a camera.

Glenn Beck Denies

that he's organizing a militia even though he's forecasting "depression and revolution."