Nate Silver Sees Slim Margin in House

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

Palin's Back

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

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

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

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

Reports of a Sarah Palin Divorce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I give the Palins marriage another year.

The Unethical Truce Between GE and Fox

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

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

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

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

Limbaugh Still in NY

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

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

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

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

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

Then they can have their parade.

Is America The Country They Were Born In?

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

Shocker poll from Kos/Research2000 today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's a real issue as well.

The Rage of Justin Barrett, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barrett, the Racial Analogy, and Police Power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next Time--Justin Barrett and the Military as Foundational

Joey Harrington's the Man

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

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

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

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

Malcolm Gladwell Simpers Over Bear Stearns

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

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

Give Gladwell credit.

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

The Problem with Brett Favre

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

So why can't Favre stay retired?

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

Who can blame him?

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

That would keep him retired.

Michael Vick: The Dick Cheney of Sports

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

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

Tom Friedman Must Take Dumb Pills

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

A Couple of Thoughts on the Police Threat

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


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


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

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

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

Break Up the Clippers!!

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

But maybe I shouldn't have been.

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

That's not bad altogether.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brad Pitt: Another Atheist Role Model

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

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

Well, mostly an atheist.

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

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

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

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

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

The Religious Right: Destroying Christianity One Day at a Time

Obama Had His Wonk On Tonight

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

Inspiration was in short supply.

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

Blue Dogs Still Over-Rated

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

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

Only in America?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let just add one more travel note.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Curse My Corn Allergies

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

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