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.

David Broder Writes From "The Broder Zone"

RSI would like to congratulate David Broder on the publication of his 5,000th column on the "Need for Bi-Partisan Compromise." According to Broder:

"Scholars will also make the point that when such complex legislation is being shaped, the substance is likely to be improved when both sides of the aisle contribute ideas. And they will argue that public acceptance of the mandated changes in such programs will be greater if the law comes with the imprimatur of both parties."

Such an accomplishment. That's truly an important milestone and puts David Broder back ahead of Charles Krauthammer's "Israel Should Never Give An Inch" columns on the all-important, all-time list for "op-eds making the same point."

Nobody knows the story of the sacrifices David Broder has made to keep telling the bi-partisan story.

But here at Red State Impressions, we've learned from a real anonymous source that Broder has entered an alternative universe that was named especially for him--The Broder Zone.

In the Broder Zone, there's a special kind of bi-partisanship where moderate Democrats and conservative Republicans come to mutually beneficial compromises. Democratic presidents are more than willing to compromise with their conservative Republican colleagues and Republican presidents are always open to the ideas of Democratic moderates. The Broder Zone is such a wonderful place of compromise because both Democratic moderates and Republican conservatives recognize that liberals must be stopped at all costs.

All of that liberal talk about peace, health care, the environment, and corruption makes everybody who counts feel like they're immoral people or something like that. Liberals are bad, bad, bad. Liberals have cooties and bi-partisanship means that liberals will no longer be able to infect American politics.

Such is life in the Broder Zone.

Needless to say, the real world is not nearly as "nice" or "special" a place as the Broder Zone. That's why nobody as sane and sober as David Broder could write 5,000 columns about the Need for Bi-Partisan Compromise" if they lived in the real world.

In the real world, conservative Republicans lost all interest in "bi-partisan" compromise in 1999 when Tom DeLay became House majority leader. That's when conservative Republicans decided that Democratic liberals were not the only liberals. Follow this closely because the real world is much weirder than the Broder Zone. Republican conservatives decided that liberals were really Europeans, socialists, or even "fascists" if you've seen the cover of that Jonah Goldberg book nobody's read. Conservative Republicans then decided that Democratic moderates were the same as liberals, that Republican moderates were the same as Democratic moderates who were the same as liberals, and that many old-fashioned conservatives were the same as Republican moderates who were the same as Democratic moderates who were the same as liberals.

If you've read "The House that Jack Built," you'll understand how Republican conservatives were thinking.

So Republican conservatives refused to compromise with anybody because they refused to negotiate with liberals even if those liberals thought they were conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, or conservative Republicans. Conservatives wouldn't talk with anyone like Diane Feinstein (moderate Democrat), Susan Collins (moderate Republican), or Bob Dole (conservative Republican) because that would be the same as negotiating with liberals and liberals were fascists who had cooties.

David Broder heroically responded to the principled aloofness of conservative Republicans by trying to convince everyone else to become more conservative so that sensitive conservatives wouldn't feel so offended by the taint of liberalism.

But that didn't work either. Conservative Republicans wanted no taxes, big wars, and a picture of Jesus on every dollar saying "I say unto you, kill your enemies," and they weren't willing to compromise their principles.

Then conservative Republicans found out that they really had to negotiate with moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats in order to get legislation passed.

So conservative Republicans lost interest in passing legislation.

In some ways, that wasn't so bad.

At first, conservative Republicans enjoyed themselves immensely by having affairs with their staffers, looking up their favorite DC hookers, hitting on Congressional pages, and dipping into their huge money piles for golf trips to Scotland, jobs for their relatives, and really nice wardrobes.

But then the media ruined all that.

So conservative Republicans started quitting their elective offices. Trent Lott quit the Senate to become a lobbyist, Billy Tauzin quit the House to become a lobbyist, and all sorts of Republicans decided not to run for re-election again.

Now Sarah Palin is quitting.

The bottom line for David Broder is that you can't have "bi-partisan compromise" in the real world because there are so few conservative Republicans left in office and they still don't want to compromise with anybody.

Even worse, there's a lot more liberals around these days and David Broder is still convinced that liberals have cooties.

So, David Broder made the ultimate sacrifice.

In 1005, Broder left the real world and entered the Broder Zone where conservatives wanted compromise, moderates weren't liberals, and everybody still thought liberals had cooties.

And he's been writing three columns a week on the "Need for Bi-Partisan Compromise" ever since.

God Bless Him!

Return to the Estrogen Palace

I'm back from a five-week research trip to Philadelphia, back to the home I share with my wife Mrs. RSI and our daughters Miss Teen (almost 15) and Miss Tween (12).

A little world that has now become an estrogen palace.

Of course, the estrogen foundation was already in place. Miss Tween hit puberty and there's been a lot more talk about periods, pads, hormones, washing out panties, mood swings, and the details of menstruation. Videos, music, cell phones, and boys became more important; bikes and Scooby Doo less. There's also been an exponential increase in the bra population.

Mrs. RSI makes comments about the girls being "hormonal" when they're in bad moods. I'm not sure about this. I was "testosteronal" every minute of every day as a teen-ager and had a lot of sulky moods, bullying moments, and general over the topness. I'm not sure I'm all that tremendously different now either.

So, it seems that being human in any full sense of the term means being hormonal all the time.

And I generally think that's a good thing.

But I'm not so sure about the aesthetics of it all now Mrs. RSI and the girls have been painting the house in their own particular estrogen colors.

I'm highly allergic to paint. So there's always paint projects when I'm gone. But this time, I heard something new when the girls talked about painting various rooms. Miss Teen picked out an "egg shell yellow" for the kitchen and told me that it was "r-e-a-l-l-y p-r-e-t-t-y" in this sing-song voice I'd never heard from her before.

When I heard that, I thought it literally sounded like Miss Teen was drunk, but I also had a feeling that she was on a high from remaking the world to reflect her hormones.

She was painting an estrogen palace.

The next project was going to be painting the living room "rose-pink." Mrs. RSI vetoed that as too "girlie," but she then chose a luminescent green that's probably even more girlie. Now that I'm home, what's interesting about "the green room" is that it's so sensitive in light. The walls seem to "glow" in different ways as the light changes.

It has a very 60's kind of effect. Groovy, man.

But still girlie to the max.

Then there's the new baby, 'er puppy. Or as I heard over the phone-- p-u-u-p-p-y with a sigh at the end.

Our little family already included a dog and two cats. We also support a large avian population with all our bird feeders. But Mrs. RSI and the girls went shopping and Mrs. RSI fell in love with the look on Miss Tween's face when they were at the Pet Smart (entirely by accident I'm sure) and Miss Tween held up a puppy blue heeler mix and hugged it.

Love was in the air and I wasn't at home. So now the family has a new blue heeler puppy to swoon over.

Well, everyone except me.

I have to admit that I do swoon a little bit to see the girls growing up. Miss Teen has already started insisting on driving the car up and down the driveway in preparation for her 16th birthday in 2010. Dad's in Eastern Kentucky traditionally buy cars for their daughters and I'm thinking about adapting that practice if Miss Teen turns out to be a safe driver.

We're also starting to talk colleges and I'm going to take the girls to tour Cornell University next week when we attend a family reunion in my ancestral homeland of Upstate New York.

Why not think big?

But I'm not swooning over the puppy and not swooning over the luminescent green. Likewise, the teen-age boy in me is starting to question all the "cutesiness" around the house even as I make a conscious adjustment to living in an estrogen palace.

But there's nothing that says an estrogen palace can't have a "man hut" and I'll probably start building mine soon.

If only in my head.

Sarah Palin Skeet-Shooting with an Eagle

Here's a nice picture of Sarah Palin releasing an eagle before shooting it just like she was skeet shooting.

What a good sport.

At least she didn't kill the bird while it was in the box.

A Satisfying Fourth of July

As a result of the rain, the Fourth of July fireworks were cancelled in Morehead. However Mrs. RSI and I spent a satisfying 90 minutes of so re-watching the Army of the Potomac repulse Pickett's Charge in the movie Gettysburg.

I see where John McCain gave a desultory speech about American greatness in terms of being "leader of the free world" and bombing the crap out of Iran. But social justice is the most important measure of national greatness and the Battle of Gettysburg was a first crucial step in America's fumbling efforts to cash in on the promises of our iconic documents. Thomas Jefferson had written that all men were created equal and Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but it wasn't until Gettysburg that the United States began to decisively turn the tide on the evil of slavery. It was only with the defeat of the Confederate Rebellion that America could start to envision itself as fulfilling the promise of revolutionary democracy and Gettysburg was the turning point that made American victory almost inevitable.

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said that "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." I don't believe that this or any nation has ever lived under a divinity, but I do think that the Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive event in the "new birth of freedom" that began with the Emancipation Proclamation. That new birth of freedom prepared the way for another birth of freedom in the Civil Rights Movement and the other new births of freedom associated with feminism, gay rights, and the growth of immigrant cultures.

The United States is a great nation because it has become a diverse nation that has leveraged the struggle against racial segregation into a general movement toward social freedom. I'm well into middle age, but I still hope that the expansion of freedom in my lifetime will develop into a movement for the social justice of equal economic opportunity as well.

That would make us a much greater nation still.

It should be mentioned that the Union Army at Gettysburg was in some ways a multi-national army. The Eleventh Corps that was so involved in the fighting on the first and second day was largely a German unit. Likewise, an Irish regiment played a decisive role in turning back Longstreet's attack on the Union left during the second day.

The Union victory at Gettysburg was also a victory for ordinary soldiers and low level officers. As had been the case for almost two years, the Union Army was plagued by poor generalship at Gettysburg. Union generals like Daniel Sickles were simply outclassed by Confederates rivals like James Longstreet. But Union regiments kept saving the Union position by making heroic charges or standing their own ground against Confederate advances. The bravery of units like the 20th Maine, 1st Minnesota, and 40th New York made up for the poor performance of the generals on the second day of the battle. The flanking fire of the 8th Ohio was an important factor in turning back the left flank of the final Confederate charge on the third day.

The romance of the Confederacy that developed after the Civil War still dominates popular presentations of the Battle of Gettysburg. That's why the final action of the battle is still thought of more in terms of the tragedies of Lee's hubris, Longstreet's agonizing, and Pickett's fatal charge than the importance of the Union defense for the future of this country.

But the Battle of Gettysburg was a tremendous turning point in the history of a country whose future is still bright now that the tide of modern conservatism has been turned back as well.

Watching Gettysburg was a fitting way to spend the Fourth of July.

RSI: No TV, No Billy Mays

Actually, I don't mean I miss Billy Mays in that I feel a sense of loss over his death. I mean I "missed" Billy Mays in that I had no idea that he was a TV celebrity. Not having had television for 14 years now, I never saw one of the Billy Mays ads, never realised that Billy Mays was a big deal, and didn't even know he existed until I read about his death.

I missed the whole Billy Mays phenomenon.

It's odd to say, but I'm kind of proud of that.

Four Paths for Sarah Palin

So what exactly is the big deal about Sarah Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska?

That's actually pretty difficult to define.

But I'm going to take a shot at defining Palin first, then defining the significance of her resignation.

Sarah Palin is the first major national political personality to emerge from the religious right since the emergence of the anti-abortion movement in the 70's. Where Ronald Reagan and George W. merely "appealed" to the religious right, Sarah Palin fully embodies the combination of brassy NRA aggression, evangelical sentimentality, and supreme disdain for urban, liberal, and minority culture that defines rural conservatism.

In other words, Sarah Palin is the Barack Obama of rural whiteness.

The significance of Palin's resignation is that it gets her back to the business of defining herself.

As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin hasn't been in any kind of position to either defend herself from criticism or promote her world view. Not having her own media platform, Palin has been on the sidelines for debates over Obama's stimulus package, stem cell research, and the Sotomayor nomination. She hasn't been able to either represent or promote "her" values, keep her name in front of her constituencies, or promote the "Sarah" brand that started to develop during the McCain campaign

Palin has also been a sitting duck for her enemies in the Alaska GOP establishment, former McCain staffers, and the liberal wing of the mainstream media. People were filing the ethics complaints, Steve Schmidt was talking to any journalist who would listen, and magazines like Vanity Fair were making money running hit pieces.

Even Levi Johnston was taking shots at her.

In other words, the only people benefitting from the "Sarah" brand were her enemies. Being Governor of Alaska wasn't helping Sarah Palin seize the opportunities created for her by the 2008 presidential campaign. So she wants out.

With her resignation speech, there are four paths that Sarah Palin is likely to follow:

1. Run for President. If Sarah Palin runs for president, she'll be a top tier candidate for the Republican nomination along with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Given that Palin is more popular among evangelicals than Huckabee, it would have to be said that she would start out in a stronger position than Huckabee and could conceivably knock Huckabee out after the South Carolina primary. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which Palin knocked out Huckabee herself and counted on second tier candidates like Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich to hold down the Mitt Romney vote and give her a real shot at winning the nomination.

2. Become a Conservative Media Presence. There are a couple of media paths Palin could take. First, she could become a big bucks conservative motivational speaker, Republican Party fund-raiser, and evangelical/NRA personality. That would put a lot of money in Palin's pocket, place her in front of the friendly audiences that make her comfortable, and promote the "Sarah" brand with her core constituencies. It's also easy to imagine this as an extremely lucrative path leading to a presidential campaign. I can see the bumper stickers with "Run, Sarah, Run" on them now.

There's also the possibility of seeking a permanent position as a talk radio host or television personality, or commentator. There's big bucks in conservative commentary these days. These options seek less likely to me though because most of these kinds of permanent gigs require the detailed kind of policy knowledge that Palin avoids. People like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly all have a gift for formulating their conservative values, right-wing policy positions, and disdain for the opposition into a seemless package. It's tough to do and there are no comparable media figures on the left. Palin has a gift for expressing her values but isn't very good with either policy or engaging the opposition. So, it's hard for me to view her as the female version of Rush Limbaugh.

3. The Permanent Meltdown. There's also a chance that Sarah Palin could go into a more or less permanent state of meltdown. Depending on how one interprets "melting down," it could be said that Michael Jackson went through a 15 or 25 year state of permanent crisis. How long has Courtney Love been melting down? What about Amy Winehouse? Given the possibility of gigolo eruptions for her, bimbo eruptions for Tod Palin, and all kinds of other eruptions from her children, in-laws, and friends, it's easy to see the Sarah Palin soap opera as going on for a long time and not really ending while she's alive. It seems that popular culture in the United States needs a certain number of celebrities in a state of permanent meltdown. Maybe Sarah Palin could satisfy that need.

Finally, there's one more path Sarah Palin could follow.

4. The No Resignation Resignation. Given that Palin's not resigning until the end of July, there's a decent chance that the whole resignation gambit is a charade, that Palin is not going to resign as governor at all and is counting on an "outpouring of popular support" to persuade her to stay in office.

If I were Palin, I would start down the "conservative speaker" path and then make a run for the presidency.

But that sounds too reasonable for Sarah Palin's universe.

So, I would be surprised if Palin resigned at all.

However, the prospect of a permanent meltdown looms on Palin's horizon whichever path she starts on. My suspicion is that Palin is just not plastic enough for the constant re-invention that goes into being a national level politician or mega-celebrity.

Ultimately, it's easy to see being nominated as John McCain's vice-presidential candidate as the beginning of a long and ugly process of personal destruction for Sarah Palin.

The Iconic Michael Jackson as the Joker Picture

This looks like it's going to be the iconic "end of days" picture for Michael Jackson. It's a sad thing because he reminds me a lot of Jack Nicholson's Joker.

Will the Right Ever Invest in the Economy

The unemployment rate moved up to 9.5% yesterday. Listening to callers on C-Span this morning, I can't help but wonder if conservatives aren't so disenchanted with Obama that they'll never reinvest in the economy. If that's also true of liberals during Republican administrations, I wonder if the U. S. is not too divided of a country to be very prosperous.

Heading Home to Kentucky!!

I'm on the road in lovely Chambersburg, PA. Tomorrow, I'll be back in Morehead.

The Al Franken Senate Sixty Celebration

The News: Al Franken won the court case, Norm Coleman conceded, and now Al Franken is going to be Senator.

The Question: Should we react like Clarence Thomas did when his nomination to the Supreme Court was finally approved--

Whoop-de-damn-do?

The Answer: Hell No! Why spend our whole lives being cynical and defeated before anything bad actually happens? That's for people like Clarence Thomas.

It's un-fucking-believable.

I feel like the Jeremy Piven character in Grosse Pointe Blank--SIXTY VOTES! SIXTY VOTES MAN! SIXTY! S-I-X-T-Y! SIXTY!

Ok. Back to my sober, serious, analytical self. Ric, you have a Ph.D. in political science. Pull yourself together. There are moderate Democrats out there who might be offended.

Oh, screw it. SIXTY VOTES MAN!!!

Get rid of the filibuster!

Confirmation for Dawn Johnsen!

The Public Option for health insurance!

More regulation for Wall Street!

More Green Energy!

A War Crimes Investigation for Dick Cheney.

Come on President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. Let's get stuff done!

What's even better is that the Democrats have a decent shot at actually increasing their Senate majority to 63 or 64 in 2010.

Yeah, progressives.

God's Plan for Mark Sanford

Being an atheist, I don't normally discuss God's plans. Given that there is no God, there can't be a God's plan.

It's something about the laws of physics.

But Mark Sanford is so enthusiastic about God's plans that it's hard to talk about Mark Sanford without talking about God.

So, I'm going to pretend there is a god so I can discuss God's plans for Mark Sanford and why they might be different from Mark Sanford's idea of God's plan.

And why my idea of God's plan for Mark Sanford is closer to the spirit of Jesus than Sanford's own idea.

Mark Sanford's idea is that his on-going disgrace over his affair with Maria Chapur will allow him to "walk in the spirit of humility" while serving as South Carolina governor and in fact make him a more successful governor.

Their belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life.

Sanford had attempted to refuse money from the Obama economic recovery package, but had been defeated in his efforts by both the Republican-dominated South Carolina legislature and the courts. Sanford's friends--and he completely agrees with them--suggested to him that Sanford lost the stimulus battle because of the same "sin of pride" that had led to the affair.

A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly [by resigning]. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes - but that if my spirit wasn't right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

In other words, Sanford thinks he didn't lost the stimulus battle because refusing the money would have harmed South Carolina's educational system. He lost because he wasn't in the "right spirit" to be convincing to his political allies and that God was somehow ensuring that Sanford failed until he got into the right spirit. Now that Sanford has been "humbled" by his affair, he'll be walking in the right spirit and will be in a position to be more successful.

Sanford doesn't quite say this, but he seems to be thinking that God's plan was to humble Mark Sanford so he could be bigger and more successful. The affair was God's plan. Getting caught was God's plan. Looking like an idiot was God's plan.

And it would all make Mark Sanford more successful now or in the future.

In other word, Sanford thinks God is heavily invested in the success of Mark Sanford and is managing Sanford's affairs beautifully so that Sanford can be successful "the right way."

God! The ultimate career counselor.

But God doesn't work that way, at least according to the New Testament. Here's the money quote from the Luke version of the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed be ye poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. But woe unto you that are rich! For ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! For ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! For ye shall mourn and wep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets. (Luke 6: 20-24, King James version)

Passages like this are part of the reason I'm an atheist. I believe that those who are depressed, unhappy, grieving, or impoverished should be seen as a blessed part of a community of people who are trying to ease their suffering. But I'm a million miles from thinking that those who "laugh now" or are "well liked" are on the fast track to hell. The pronunciation of damnation on those who laugh now is one of the best reasons I can think of to reject Jesus and Christianity.

But Mark Sanford is a Christian. So, I assume he doesn't have this problem. Sanford's problem is that he's a wealthy, important, guy who men have spoken quite well of until now and God's plan for those kind of guys is to send them directly to hell without letting them pass go or look back like Lott's wife.

At least according to Luke. Or Matthew!

So, what is God's plan for Mark Sanford. Well, it looks like Sanford's going to try to hang onto his job as Governor despite calls for him to resign. I hope he succeeds because I can see the Jesus version of God as having a very important use for Mark Sanford if he remains as Governor.

In other words, God's plan might be to use Mark Sanford to pass health care reform.

There are 45 million uninsured people in the United States.

They need God's help.

If Mark Sanford's religious friends do talk him into remaining as Governor, Sanford's presence will make the Republican Party even less credible than they are now, weaken their resistance to the health care reform package taking shape in Congress, and make it more likely that health care reform will pass this year.

That would help poor people, people suffering from difficult illnesses, people who are afraid of not being able to pay medical bills, people who are struggling with the illnesses of their friends and loved ones, and people who are in grief over recent deaths.

In other words, health care reform will be a blessing for many of the people that the New Testament views as "blessed."

According to the God of the New Testament, Mark Sanford is doomed to rot for eternity.

But if benefitting millions of people through health care reform is part of the plan, who am I to object?

Worse Than Adultery?

Mark Sanford lists his sons' names as "Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake."

Don't tell me he named one of his kids after John Bolton.

Sanford/Edwards Mistress Throwdown Continues

Buried in the South Carolina's The State's lengthy report on the l'affaire Mark Sanford is a little nugget on the potential for Sanford to have multiple mistresses.

In their morning meeting, State editors decided to immediately inform the governor and his inner circle about the e-mails.

A reporter called a Sanford staffer, saying the paper had e-mails that outlined an affair between the governor and Maria. Unless Sanford would address the issue privately, The State would have no choice but to ask him — with TV crews filming — if he knew Maria at his press conference that afternoon.

The names of two other women tumbled into the newsroom.

Stanford denies having three mistresses, but who in their right mind would believe Mark Stanford at this point.

Certainly, it will be interesting to see if women emerge now that Door No. 2 and Door No. 3 have appeared.

Maybe Sanford has something to say about their tan lines as well.

For those keeping up with their biblical dimension of Mark Sanford's affairs, it appears that Sanford will have to give up his King David analogy and go all the way back to Abraham and Isaac for examples of Biblical leaders who kept up little harems.

What's good for the original Hebrews is good for America!

In terms of the Mark Sanford/John Edwards mistress throwdown, I'd have to say that the possibility of three mistresses plus a much needed bible lesson tops one piddly sex tape.

This round goes to Mark Sanford.

The Depths of John Edwards' Dumbness

One of the unintended consequences of the Mark Sanford affair is that a fair amount of "after-crap" is hitting the fan for John Edwards as well.

Former staffer Andrew Young is divulging that Edwards definitey fathered Rielle Hunter's baby.

Young says that his belief in Edwards ran so deep that he agreed to take the fall for the candidate, inviting the pregnant Hunter to live with him, his wife, Cheri, and their three children. Later, after Hunter delivered the baby, Young and his family moved to a different home in California. As if anyone ever doubted that.

Young also drops that he came into possession of an Edwards/Hunter sex tape.

While he was unpacking, Young discovered a videocassette, according to the book pitch. Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.

The purported sex tape confirmed to Hunter that Edwards was even more reckless than he thought.

It's hard to tell which is more stupid--making the tape or leaving the damn thing laying around. But Edwards has to take the grand prize for plumbing the depths of dumness

Even over Mark Sanford.

Dark Article About Michael Jackson

Ian Halperin has an extremely dark article about Michael Jackson in the Daily Mail--extremely sad.

That is . . . if it's true.

Limbaugh Gives Hope To Us All

Did you ever hope the American right would just give up and go back to their caves. Did you ever hope Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would decide that conservativism has lost and that they would just move to the Keys, stoke up their blenders, and lose themselves in their personal margueritavilles.

Did you ever imagine an America in which we could address public policy issues without having to be distracted by the hatred of liberals, African-Americans, gays, and Hispanics spewing forth from the conservative media?

Did you ever think there would be a time when war isn't the first, second, and third option of American foreign policy?

Well, Rush Limbaugh is beginning to imagine that time.

In his own particular way

In response to Mark Sanford's news conference last Wednesday, Limbaugh speculated that Sanford wasn't so much in love but that he was just giving up the fight for the conservative cause.

And Limbaugh warned that "there are a lot of people," a lot of conservative people, who are looking at the political landscape and becoming so dispirited that they're thinking of just giving up and "enjoying life."

There are a lot of people whose spirit is just. They’re fed up . . . say the hell with it. I don’t even want to fight this anymore. I want to get away from it. Rush, are you kidding, this theory of yours about Sanford?" No, I'm not. My first thought was he said: "To hell with this. The Democrats are destroying the country. We can't do anything to stop it. I gave everything I had to stop it here in South Carolina. My wife's left me, the hell with it. I'm going to enjoy life what little time I've got left." Folks, there are a lot of people that are looking at life, they're saying screw it. They're saying screw it. Before Obama takes away all their money, before Obama takes away their house or the economy takes away their house, there are people who are simply saying the hell with this. They've tuned out. The hell with it. I'm just going to try to enjoy it as much as I can. . .

Jason Links of HuffPost thinks that Limbaugh is just blaming Obama for Sanford's affair. But it sounds to me like Limbaugh thinks a lot of conservatives are ready to run up the white flag.

And that's reason to hope . . . and maybe celebrate.

Keep fighting team.

Same Old Plots Against Khameini

There's been a lot of chatter about more moderate Iranian ayatollahs like Hashemi Rafsanjani making a move against election-rigging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. This morning's HuffPost headline is "Hard-liners and moderates plotting against Khamenei."

The power struggle inside Iran appears to be moving from the streets into the heart of the regime itself this weekend amid reports that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani is plotting to undermine the power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But where's the evidence of the plotting, let alone that the plotting is making any progress?

It's all starting to sound like wishful thinking to me.