So Bill Clinton's vacations showed his authentic phoniness--he just vacationed where he thought the people wanted him to; Bush's showed his phony authenticity--he pretended not to care what eastern elites thought about his vacation spot, but all the time was really calculating to show his base that he didn't care what the eastern elite thought; Obama's show his authentic authenticity because the only calculation which would make him vacation in Hawaii is demonstrating his authenticity, which obviously makes him authentically authentic. Got it?Bill Clinton, notoriously, polled his vacation spots. George Bush's Crawford ranch is part of his carefully manicured image as a Westerner. But it's hard to think of a good political reason to vacation in Hawaii, a blue state that most mainlanders only grudgingly regard as part of the United States, and whose singular, multicultural society, which formed the president-elect, is little known or discussed. (A notable exception: that amazing David Maraniss profile of Obama.)
There is, nonetheless, a political logic to vacationing in Hawaii. Part of Obama's success was always his authenticity. Aside from some wince-inducing bowling and sipping of beer, he rarely attempted to be somebody he wasn't. He didn't hoist a shotgun or pretend to be a hunter; on the other end of the spectrum, he never pretended to have other politicians' gift for feeling individuals' pain, or cry at town halls. Vacationing in Hawaii, for no reason except the obvious ones, is good politics because that authenticity is, these days, perhaps the most valuable political commodity. It will be interesting to see if Hawaii remains the "Western White House" after he takes office.
The benefits of discarding the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification would be huge for both employers and job applicants. Certifications would tell employers far more about their applicants’ qualifications than a B.A. does, and hundreds of thousands of young people would be able to get what they want from post-secondary education without having to twist themselves into knots to comply with the rituals of getting a bachelor’s degree.
...
Discrediting the bachelor’s degree is within reach because so many employers already sense that it has become education’s Wizard of Oz. All we need is someone willing to yank the curtain aside. Barack Obama is ideally positioned to do it. He just needs to say it over and over: “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”
Cuba being politically primitive, Fidel Castro yielded power to his brother. Caroline Kennedy, because she is a president's daughter, sought the gift of the Senate seat from New York that Hillary Clinton got because she married a president, but Andrew Cuomo, son of a New York governor, might get it, because this is a democracy.
says John O'Sullivan:
Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Mrs. Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones (Cuban official figure: 638). In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular -- namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is "no Margaret Thatcher."
Very few express this view in a calm or considered manner. Some employ profanity. Most claim to be conservative admirers of Mrs. Thatcher. Others admit they had always disliked the former British prime minister until someone compared her to "Sarracuda" -- at which point they suddenly realized Mrs. Thatcher must have been absolutely brilliant (at least by comparison).
Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen's famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): "Newsflash! Governor, You're No Maggie Thatcher," sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, "now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher -- and no Dan Quayle either!"
Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.
[C]onsider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:
WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself?
CHENEY: I did.
WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment?
CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.
As in many other areas, the biggest education debates are happening within the Democratic Party. On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
During the presidential race, Barack Obama straddled the two camps. One campaign adviser, John Schnur, represented the reform view in the internal discussions. Another, Linda Darling-Hammond, was more likely to represent the establishment view.The candidates before Obama apparently include: Joel Klein, the highly successful New York chancellor who has, nonetheless, been blackballed by the unions; Arne Duncan, the reforming Chicago head who is less controversial; Darling-Hammond herself; and some former governor to be named later, with Darling-Hammond as the deputy secretary.....
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA I'm going to be making announcement tomorrow about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki, who was a commander and has fought in Vietnam, Bosnia, is somebody who has achieved the highest level of military service. He has agreed that he is willing to be part of this administration because both he and I share a reverence for those who serve. I grew up in Hawaii, as he did. My grandfather is in the Punch Bowl National Cemetery. When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and, I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling even more than those who have not served — higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate — it breaks my heart, and I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home.
BROKAW: He's the man who lost his job in the Bush Administration because he said we will need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld thought we would need at that time.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: He was right.
November 25, 2008 9:26 AM
The Campaign Finance Institute issued a "Reality Check" report that demolishes the myth that President-elect Obama was largely funded by small donors.The objection I make is therefore twofold. First, the election of Obama is the effect not the cause of the changes. (One of my questioners appeared to think that our president-elect had been responsible for the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.) Second, a Republican victory would have had absolutely no effect on the legal or political standing of black Americans, which is a matter of our law and our Constitution and cannot be undone by any ephemeral vote or plebiscite.
....
The recognition of these obvious points should also alert us to a related danger, which is the cousinhood of euphoria and hysteria. Those who think that they have just voted to legalize Utopia (and I hardly exaggerate when I say this; have you been reading the moist and trusting comments of our commentariat?) are preparing for a disillusionment that I very much doubt they will blame on themselves. The national Treasury is an echoing, empty vault; our Russian and Iranian enemies are acting even more wolfishly even as they sense a repudiation of Bush-Cheney; the lines of jobless and evicted are going to lengthen, and I don't think a diet of hope is going to cover it. Nor even a diet of audacity, though can you picture anything less audacious than the gray, safety-first figures who have so far been chosen by Obama to be on his team?
There is an element of the "wannabe" about all this—something that suggests that, if the clock were to be rolled back, every living white person would now automatically stand with John Brown at Harper's Ferry and with John Lewis at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. All the evidence we have is to the contrary: Abraham Lincoln ringingly denounced John Brown, and John F. Kennedy (he of the last young and pretty family to occupy the Executive Mansion) was embarrassed and annoyed by the March on Washington. In other words, there is something pain-free and self-congratulatory about the Obama surge.
Obama's student poetry was even lauded — and compared to the work of Langston Hughes — by the most discerning of critics, Harold Bloom.Obama's poetry, recorded here, was shown to Bloom by the New Yorker, who recommends Obama not quit his day job:
Harold Bloom, who in fifty-three years of teaching literature at Yale University has had many undergraduate poems pressed hopefully upon him said, when reached by telephone in New Haven last week, that he was not familiar with Obama’s oeuvre. But after studying the poems he said that he was not unimpressed with the young man’s efforts—at least, by the standards established by other would-be bards within the political sphere. “At eighteen, as an undergraduate, he was already a much better poet than our former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who keeps publishing terrible poetry,” Bloom said. (Cohen has published two collections of verse: “Of Sons and Seasons,” in 1978, and “A Baker’s Nickel,” in 1986.) “And then there is Jimmy Carter, who is in my judgment literally the worst poet in the United States.” (Carter’s first volume of poetry, “Always a Reckoning and Other Poems,” which was published in 1994, included a work called “Why We Get Cheaper Tires from Liberia”: “No churches can be built / no privy holes or even graves / dug in the rolling hills / for those milking Firestone’s trees, who die / from mamba and mosquito bites.”) Of the two Obama poems, Bloom said, “Pop” was “not bad—a good enough folk poem with some pathos and humor and affection.” He went on, “It is not wholly unlike Langston Hughes, who tended to imitate Carl Sandburg.” Bloom was fascinated by Obama’s use of an unusual verb, “shink” (“He . . . Stands, shouts, and asks / For a hug, as I shink, my / Arms barely reaching around / His thick, oily neck”), a word that does not appear in any of the dictionaries that Bloom consulted but which is defined in an online slang dictionary as “an evasive sinking maneuver.”
“It undoubtedly was a word that was in common usage, having to do with feeling very strong emotion, in this case a very strong need for comfort,” Bloom said. He takes the subtext of the poem to be Obama’s reckoning with his absent father, for whom his grandfather is, inevitably, an inadequate substitute. “This is, in effect, his own father,” Bloom said. “That’s very touching, and it also shows a kind of humane and sad wit. There’s a mind there.” “Underground,” Bloom said, is the better poem of the two. “It gave me the oddest feeling that he might have been reading the poems of D. H. Lawrence—it reminded me of the poem ‘Snake,’ ” Bloom went on. “I think it is about some sense of chthonic forces, just as Lawrence frequently is—some sense, not wholly articulated, of something below, trying to break through.”Poetry aside, Bloom has formed a good impression of Obama—“Though if Mayor Bloomberg runs, I am voting for him,” he added. In any case, he said, Obama has chosen the right career, at least if it comes to a tossup between politico and poet. “If I had been shown these poems by one of my undergraduates and asked, Shall I go on with it?, I would have rubbed my forehead and said, On the whole, my dear, probably not. Your future is not as a person of letters,” Bloom pronounced. “But they would by no means have seemed to me unworthy of my attention.”
It's no secret that plenty of satirical outlets — Saturday Night Live, the Onion, late-night talk shows — have had trouble finding good Obama jokes. But we're not forecasting their doom. The Daily Show is unique, though, in its audience and in its comedic approach, and we're very worried that an Obama presidency might send Jon Stewart's show speedily on the road to obsolescence.
Why? First of all, in one eventful day, the prototypical Daily Show viewer has been transformed: Once disaffected and angry at Washington's power structure, he's now delighted and hopeful about the new president and all that he symbolizes. And if you're an Obama fan — eager to give Barack the benefit of the doubt, and proud and excited about the change you've helped bring the nation — do you really want Jon Stewart sitting on the sidelines, taking potshots at your hero?
Beyond the problem of audiences souring on Obama jokes is the question of whether Jon Stewart even wants to make Obama jokes. Of course, The Daily Show has found ways to goof on the Obama campaign, but it's no secret that Stewart and his writing staff lean leftward. And The Daily Show differs from nearly all other popular political satire in that the show's strength is in its writers' outrage and anger at the powers that be. Stewart memorably described the show's writing process to Michiko Kakutani as a bunch of "curmudgeons" writing about the things that upset them the most. If President Obama's administration is the love-in that progressives hope it will be, we think it's awfully unlikely Stewart's heart will be in Obama-bashing. The guy teared up at eleven on Election Night! Not that we didn't, but still.
So let's say that Stewart's half-hearted Obama gags just keep on flopping on The Daily Show. ("Your William Ayers joke bombed," a sage Chris Wallace observed on last night's episode.) With Bush and Cheney heading off into the sunset, and Sarah Palin hopping a charter back to Wasilla, who's left to skewer?
Personally, the opportunity to vote for someone like Barack Obama will be one of the greatest things I will have done in my life. The Republicans aren't kidding when they say he's the "most liberal" senator in the Senate. When have we ever had the chance to vote for the "most liberal" of anything? [snip]
As for the things Obama has said that I don't agree with — like expanding the war in Afghanistan and creating a health care system that is not single-payer — well, on these points I'm hoping he's a politician. Politicians never keep all their promises. So those are two I'm hoping he'll break!
Michelle Obama on Barack Obama, 2004. Video here.
Blasting back at McCain’s criticism of his tax plan, Obama ridiculed his opponent’s assertion. “He's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next,” Obama said at a rally at the Halifax mall here. “By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
but if mccain wanted to paint obama as a marxist, wouldn't they have more up to date material?
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father."
"The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists."Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."
update: more here
The other was a hot summer afternoon in Iowa. Obama was flipping burgers at a backyard barbecue, in what the campaign hoped would be an exquisite photo opportunity. A fly began circling his head. Then more flies. Pretty soon flies were swarming him, the burgers -- everything. It was awful to watch. But in rhythmic fashion he began waving them off with his hand. He scooped up the burgers and headed back to the picnic table, as if nothing had gone wrong. That small episode told me something about Obama's temperament. I would have wanted to fling the grill over the fence in frustration.
When federal judges in San Francisco ruled in 2002 that reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional because it included the phrase "under God," Sarah Palin was not amused. Palin, who at the time was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, quickly drafted a terse letter to the editor of a San Francisco newspaper. “Dear Editor,” Palin wrote in 2002. “San Francisco judges forbidding our Pledge of Allegiance? They will take the phrase ‘under God’ away from me when my cold, dead lips can no longer utter those words,” Palin wrote. “God Bless America,” she concluded.Hundreds of notes and lettersPalin’s letter to the editor is one of hundreds of personal notes and letters written by the former Mayor, and obtained this week to NBC News and others. The documents shed light on the management style--and personality--of the small town mayor turned vice presidential candidate.
There are few headline grabbers in the lot. Even Palin’s Pledge-of-Allegiance rant was a commonly held view at the time. (The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the ruling on technical grounds. But not before Palin pushed through a city resolution stating that the Wasilla City Council “shall continue to recite America’s Pledge of Allegiance, in its entirety, including and especially the words, ‘…one nation, under God…”)While hardly earth shattering, Palin’s personal missives can be revealing.Consider the letter to Mike Doogan, then a columnist for the Anchorage Daily News.Doogan had written in the paper on March 5, 2002, that lawmakers were considering moving the state legislature to Wasilla. “Now, I disrespect Wasilla as much as the next guy, but this seems a little extreme,” Doogan quipped. “Isn't being a blight on the landscape enough shame for Wasillians?”Palin couldn’t resist. Two days later, she wrote a personal letter that simply said:“Dear Mr. Doogan: Why do you do what you do to Wasilla?”She signed it, “Respectfully, Sarah.”
Differences between Orthodox and non-Orthodox are pronounced in the support given the presidential candidates.
Thus, Obama has the support of 13 percent of Orthodox Jews, as against 59 percent of Conservative Jews, 62 percent of Reform Jews, and 61 percent of the “Just Jewish.”Conversely, McCain draws 78 percent of Orthodox Jews, as against 26 percent of Conservative Jews, 27 percent of Reform Jews, and 26 percent of the “Just Jewish.”
Jewish women (60 percent) are more likely than Jewish men (54 percent) to support Obama. Conversely, Jewish men (35 percent) are more likely than Jewish women (25 percent) to support McCain.also:
On the question of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, 42 percent of American Jews support the U.S. taking military action against Iran, while 47 percent are opposed.
Regarding the Arab-Israeli peace process, 56 percent of American Jews do not think “there will come a time when Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to settle their differences and live in peace;” 38 percent think such a time will come.
This next letter is from a very thoughtful Detroiter who has long been a liberal Democrat — and who has been turning, turning (like some other people we know):
Well, although I do have qualms about her present fitness to be president, Jay, I like her. And her nomination and the reaction to it is significant for me personally — it marks my final break with liberalism, even of the more center-left variety.
It’s one thing to criticize her political qualifications, and there are legitimate questions about that. The Left’s and the media’s reaction to her has been disgraceful and disgusting. Equally vile are those people who are perfectly capable of opposing her politically while speaking up for her right to be treated fairly — but who fail to do so.
If nothing else, this should put paid to the notion that the Democratic party supports and cares about average Americans. If I hadn’t already decided to vote for McCain on national-security grounds, I would do so simply because people like this should not have the power to deal with the lives of ordinary people.
I thought Jonah Goldberg somewhat overstated the case in his book about the fascist roots of much liberal thought and conduct; I’m no longer so sure.
Peter Robinson is right about the power of humor – and come to think of it, doesn’t the funnier candidate always win? (Kennedy funnier than Nixon, Reagan funnier than Carter, Clinton funnier than George H.W. Bush).
I think Jonah gets it right on that Brooks column. I would be an elitist if we had an elite that was able to govern. We don’t. Not even close. And what our cultural and political elites tend to lack most of all is prudence. Edmund Burke, the original conservative elitist, argued (in his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs) that the lives led by the elites of his day taught them good judgment and prudence, and that was why they should rule. But the process by which people qualify for and retain elite standing in our own society tends to rob people of prudence; not in every case but in the great majority. Certainly being a senator for a long time is not good training in prudence—a fact that reflects on John McCain as well as on Joe Biden. That doesn’t make me a populist—I don’t think that lacking elite educational or cultural credentials or Washington experience is a positive qualification for governing. But I also don’t think having such credentials (given what they are and what they stand for in our time and place) is in itself much of a positive qualification for governing. I think we have to examine a person in finer detail, to get a sense of individual judgment and instinct. Sarah Palin comes off pretty well in such an examination—she has been a successful governor, for instance, and has run a city and a business too, and seems to have the right instincts on some key issues and the right attitude. All of that is important. It doesn’t make her the perfect vice presidential candidate (though it’s hard to see who among McCain’s plausible options would have been better and why) but I do think it makes her a good one, and a better choice for VP than Joe Biden.
I talked to a Wal-Mart mom, Betty Necas, 39, wearing sweatpants and tattoos on her wrists. She said she’s never voted, and was a teenage mom “like Bristol.”
She likes Sarah because she’s “down home” but said Obama “gives me the creeps. Nothing to do with the fact that he’s black. He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly.”
Ten Obama supporters in Wasilla braved taunts and drizzle to stand on a corner between McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. They complained that Sarah runs government like a vengeful fiefdom and held up signs. A guy with a bullhorn yelled out of a passing red car: “Go back to the city, you liberal Communists!”
Like most members in good standing of the Washington media elite, I have naturally and inevitably grown to hate Sarah Palin. But that's okay, because the feeling is evidently mutual. At last week's convention, Palin went on about how "experts in Washington" were counting out McCain with their "usual certitude" and the "Washington elite" weren't taking her seriously because she isn't part of the club. Palin, you see, is a typical American -- a hockey mom who has "had the privilege of living most of [her] life in a small town," as part of a family that has "the same ups and downs as any other." "I also drive myself to work," she added, just in case we didn't get the point.
The aw-shucks act serves two purposes. First, claiming to be The Average is a useful mallet for beating down criticism as hopelessly snobbish -- as when Bill Kristol writes in this week's Weekly Standard that "the liberal elites" will appeal to their "anti-small town" prejudices when they try, presumably with their usual certitude, to keep Palin 3400 miles away from Washington. (I have no idea what "anti-small town" prejudices look like, but I guess I better get some.)
Second, and more importantly, Palin's everyday qualities are supposed to be an actual electoral and governmental asset -- as when Kristol writes (this time in the Times) that by picking a real-live "Wal-Mart Mom," John McCain might have a decisive number of voters saying, "It's about time." Reverse snobbery is the new snobbery: the way to win an election and govern a country is by seeming as ordinary as the limits of credulity allow.
Let me take the bait and make a plea for good old-fashioned elitism: It's not "about time" for an average American to occupy the White House (or the Naval Observatory), and the notion that some ossified and preening elite lords over Washington is silly.
Everyone is an elitist. We want elite doctors to treat our cuts and cancers. We want elite lawyers and accountants to smooth over our divorces and taxes. And we (some of us, anyway) want our elite soldiers to invade foreign countries. And we don't apologize for these preferences. In most contexts, "elite" is just another word for "merit."
So why don't many of us want elite politicians? The reverse snobs usually argue that Everywoman politicians are better at understanding everyone's problems. But even if this claim is true (and I'm pretty sure it isn't) it remains suspiciously unextended to all other aspects of social life. We don't think the lawyers who have been dragged through a messy divorce are more capable of handling a client's. Why?
And anyway, anti-elitism strikes me a strange pose for a through-and-through conservative. The helpful oversimplification is that conservatives are supposed to favor equality of opportunity ("everyone competes on equal footing, outcomes be damned") and liberals supposed to favor equality of outcome ("everyone deserves something, competition be damned"). Equality of opportunity is supposed to dictate that race, gender, geography, and nepotism count for nothing - they're all features that have nothing to do with merit. This principle is why the same Bill Kristol could write (about a different unqualified applicant, Harriet Miers) that there was "a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it." That she was a Bush loyalist and a woman said nothing about her merits. Palin's interest in hockey and commuting says equally little.
"Merit" might be tough to define and harder to locate -- as a member of the liberal elite, I certainly have some problems with it -- but as a theory, it hangs together coherently. Conservatives used to like it. But I guess all that flew out the window somewhere between Wasilla and Anchorage, maybe while Sarah Palin was driving herself to work.
Her perspective is different from that of other national politicians. For Barack Obama, Wal-Mart is a symbol of worker exploitation. For Hillary Clinton, it’s a former source of corporate-director fees. For Sarah Palin, it’s a place where you buy stuff.
Obama's Rabbi Relative
September 14, 2008 11:57 AM
So nu?
How has this escaped mention by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in his swings through Southern Florida?
The Jewish Daily Forward reports that one of Michelle Obama's cousins is the most prominent African-American rabbi in the U.S., Rabbi Capers Funnye, chief rabbi of Chicago's Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation.
A shul with soul -- check it out.
Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., was the brother of Funnye's mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson).
"Although Funnye’s congregation describes itself as Ethiopian Hebrew," the Forward reports, "it is not connected to the Ethiopian Jews, commonly called Beta Israel, who have immigrated to Israel en masse in recent decades. It is also separate from the Black Hebrews in Dimona, Israel, and the Hebrew Israelite black supremacist group whose incendiary street harangues have become familiar spectacles in a number of American cities. Funnye converted to Judaism and was ordained as a rabbi under the supervision of black Israelite rabbis, then went through another conversion supervised by Orthodox and Conservative rabbis. He serves on the Chicago Board of Rabbis."
In other Obama-and-the-Jews Democratic fardeiget, a group of Jewish liberals are working on devising a plan to help Obama win older Jews in Florida.
It's called The Great Schlep, and I have no idea how much of this will actually come to fruition, but the plan is to hit these older Jews where they live by having their grandchildren head down to Florida over Columbus Day Weekend to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama.
"If there is anyone a Jewish grandparent will listen to it's their (brilliant, gorgeous) grandchild," writes the organizer. "TheGreatSchlep.com website will target, engage and activate Jews 18-24 years old - the Facebook generation. A viral internet campaign will allow the Jewish young people, a.k.a. Schleppers, to communicate with and meet other Schleppers. Then, on Columbus Day weekend (October 10-13), Jewish kids from all over the United States will schlep to Florida to spend the weekend with their grandparents, a.k.a. Bubbie and Zadie. Organized dinners at Chinese restaurants, pool parties, rec room discussion groups, etc. will faciliate (sic) intergenerational pro-Obama discussions. The kids will arrive in Florida with the facts about Obama-- facts that will counteract the false rumors many of their grandparents have heard."
Perhaps Rabbi Funnye can be brought on board.
-- jpt
September 14, 2008 in 2008: Democrats, Obama, Barack | Permalink | User Comments (205) | TrackBack (0)
Obama on Letterman: If That's What I'd Meant, Palin Would Be the Lipstick, ‘McCain's Failed Policies’ the Pig
September 10, 2008 5:56 PM
In an interview on the "Late Show with David Letterman" to air later tonight, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., answers some questions on the lipstick controversy.
Letterman asks Obama if he still thinks the Republicans are overreacting to his comments last night.
"Look this is ... sort of silly season in politics –- not that there’s a non-silly season in politics," Obama says. "But it gets sillier, and it’s a common expression, at least in Illinois, I don’t know about New York City, I don’t know where you guys put lipstick on here."
To audience laughter, Obama says, "In Illinois, the expression connotes the idea that if you have a bad idea -- in this case, I was talking about John McCain’s economic plans -- that just calling them change, calling it something different doesn’t make it better. Hence, lipstick on a pig is still a pig."
"What I like about this scenario is because they -– the Republicans -- demanded an apology," Letterman says, "so that means there had been a meeting at some point somewhere along the line (of) they got together and said, 'You know what? He called our vice presidential candidate a pig.' Well, that seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?"
"It does," agrees Obama. "Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way –- she would be the lipstick!"
The audience laughs, but Letterman is confused.
"You are way ahead of me," says the late night host.
"The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig," Obama says. "I mean, just following the logic of this illogical situation."
At another point, Letterman asks Obama, "Have you ever actually put lipstick on a pig?"
"The answer would be no," Obama responds. "But I think it might be fun to try."
We might as well not bother to talk about policy issues in this campaign; we're now in all out culture war, with the coasts and the heartland fighting for control of Ohio.
--Megan McArdle
The address by Ms. Palin, 44, who stunned the political world last week as Mr. McCain’s pick for a running mate, took place before a convention transformed from an orderly coronation into a messy, days-long drama since the McCain campaign’s disclosure on Monday that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant. Since then there have been a host of other distractions, including Hurricane Gustav, questions about how thoroughly Mr. McCain vetted what people close to his campaign have called the last-minute pick of Ms. Palin, and charges from Mr. McCain’s top aides that the news media have launched a sexist smear campaign against his running mate.
Why Experience Matters, Cont'd
Republicans are still making the argument that Sarah Palin has the necessary experience to serve as vice president she has spent less than two years as governor of Alaska--er, sorry, I mean Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard. After careful consideration, I've decided not to rebut this argument, lest I lend it even a shred of credibilty.
Instead, I'd like to dwell on why experience matters in a vice presidential candidate, perhaps even more than it matters in a presidential candidate. Nate Silver made one important argument here. When a president cannot serve out his or her term, whether because of incapacity, scandal, or death, it is, almost by definition, a crisis. As Nate notes, frequently "a president takes the Oath of Office under relatively calm waters, allowing them something of a learning curve." A crisis can stil present itself quickly--and, lord knows, presidents of both parties have made rookie mistakes for which the country paid dearly. But the margin for error would seem even slimmer when a vice president assumes power.
The other reason is the timing of modern campagins. Today, voters usually have more than a year to scrutinize the presidential candidates--to figure out what they believe and how they operate--before pulling the lever in November. But they don't get the same chance to see the vice persidential candidate in action. So it's particularly important vice presidents be known quantities--somebody whose record on the issues is clear and whose ability to lead is well-established.
Joe Biden fits this definition perfectly. He's got six terms in the Senate, including service as chairman of two high-profile committees, plus two runs at the presidency by which to judge him.
Bristol is named after Bristol Bay. That's where I grew up, that's where we commercial fish.
Is Barack Obama a socialist? Well, let's see. His campaign platform makes no mention of proletarian revolution or nationalization of industry, and he trumpets his belief that "America's free market has been the engine of America's great progress. It's created a prosperity that is the envy of the world." Not quite Leninesque. On the other hand, Tom DeLay has made a logically rigorous counter-argument sure to convince second-graders everywhere: "I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist." No word on whether DeLay proceeded to put his fingers in his ears and hum loudly.
A few years ago, I lived at the
beach in Santa Monica. It
was a two-storey, rectangular
beach house, and in the afternoons
I would sit on my balcony, smoke a
cigar, sip a bourbon, and watch the sun set
over the Pacific.
One day, though, I was disturbed by a
lot of alarming noise—ambulance-siren
noise, small-gathering-crowd noise,
squawking-police-radio noise—from
the next street over. And then, fluttering
above, there appeared several news helicopters.
I leaned over the balcony to get a
better look—far enough to crane my neck,
not far enough to spill my drink—and I
suddenly noticed, right below my balcony,
a news van pulling up in front of my
house, directly in front of my driveway
(conveniently marked by a “Do NOT Park
Here” sign), and several purposeful people
getting out and starting to unload video
equipment.
“You can’t park there,” I called down. A
well-dressed lady—the reporter, I figured—
looked up from her small mirror.
“We’re media,” she said, as if that settled
that, and went back to her powdering
and primping.
“Yeah, but you’re blocking my driveway.
You can’t park there.”
She looked up at me, squinted, took a
small, barely perceptible glance at my
drink—Ah, I could hear her thinking, the
local drunk—and repeated, just in case I
didn’t get it the first time: “It’s okay. We’re
media.”
And the gang started bustling around
again, slamming doors and hoisting equipment.
She tossed her mirror into her bag.
“I don’t care who you are. You can’t
park in front of my garage. I will have you
towed.”
“We’re a news organization, sir. We’re
press. We can park where we want.” (This
from the short, high-strung young man
with the clipboard and the major cell
phone.)
“Let me be clear,” I said, in my best
cranky-local-drunk voice, “I will have you
towed. You cannot block my garage. I
need to be able to pull my car out of my
driveway. There’s a chance”—and here I
dropped my voice just a bit, and held my
drink aloft—“there’s a chance I may need
to step out for some ice.”
On the other hand, Reverend Jackson, that might have
improved the Clinton administration.
says time. pajamas media on edwards:
I want to start by bragging to you about how discreet Pajamas Media is. Over six months ago, we had wind of the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter love affair and love child and did not run with it. Most of this information was hearsay from people here in Hollywood, people who know Rielle. She was a long time hanger on in Hollywood circles before heading East to do political promo videos… and, yes, I had met her myself on a couple of occasions at parties. She was not particularly notable, of the tedious sort that bore you to death about their yoga instructor.
But now that the cat is out the bag, I will say what I wanted to say then. John Edwards–he of constructing a 28,000 square foot home while preaching about the two Americas and remonstrating about the environment–is one of the most reprehensible schmucks to appear on the American political scene in some time. And that’s saying something. That he played this game while his wife had cancer makes it contemptible beyond words. Now we know why he was always primping in the mirror. It is narcissism unbounded.
But there is a moral to this story - and I think we all know it. I hate the use of caps, but I think in this instance I will use them. DO NOT BELIEVE THE HIGH FLOWN RHETORIC OF POLITICIANS - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS HOLIER THAN THOU. THEY ARE LIKELY TO BE MASKING SOMETHING.
Oh, one last thing, for those of you who say it’s The National Enquirer, how do we know it’s true? I suggest you Google the “National Enquirer and OJ Simpson.” They broke most of the important stories on that case. In general, these days they’re vastly more reliable than The New York Times.
Where Iraq is concerned, McCain is suddenly in the odd position of playing Winston Churchill in 1945, or George H.W. Bush in 1992 - a leader whose successes in crafting wartime policy don't translate into electoral victory - without having ever been elected President in the first place. --Ross Douthat
Break out a thousand violins - Barack bemoans his loss of privacy:
BUTTE, MONT. -- He hasn't had a vacation for months. He sees his family little more than once a week. And now as the presumed Democratic nominee for president, he can't go anywhere without being trailed by a full crew of journalists.
Reaching his limit, Barack Obama wriggled free of the campaign's fetters on July 4. Caught in Montana on his daughter Malia's 10th birthday, he improvised a party.
At the Holiday Inn Express in Butte, a city known for its copper mines and bordellos of old, Obama and family ordered a cake. They loaded an iPod with Malia's favorite songs and danced and sang. Obama later came close to tears, recalling that Malia told him "it was the best birthday she'd ever had."
"I know it sounds corny, but last night was actually one of those times where being in a Holiday Inn in Butte without a lot of fanfare. . . . I don't know whether she was just telling us what we wanted to hear, but I can tell you from my perspective it was one of the best times I've had in a long time," Obama told reporters aboard his campaign plane. Then he quickly turned and went back to his seat.
Run for President, win your party's nomination, lose privacy - gee, this whole cause-effect thing must be an eye-opener. But I especially love this:
"I don't know whether she was just telling us what we wanted to hear, but I can tell you from my perspective it was one of the best times I've had in a long time..."
Oh my goodness - a parent who can't read whether his ten year old is having fun at a party wants to trot off to meet with America's foreign enemies without any preconditions (but lots of preparation!). Well, maybe he can do a better job reading foreign adults. A guess - he will come away convinced that they loathed Bush, admire him, and look forward to peace in our time. Bold call, huh?
Betsy is not merciful.
Rev. Wright epitomizes the thoughts and actions that have prevented and continue to prevent black America from moving ahead and achieving their potential as a people. He suggests that this United States of America made up of sons and daughters of immigrants (I'm talking of the millions of 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation immigrants in this country) of every race, creed, color and religion, each and everyone of them who had nothing to do with slavery, somehow owe something to a group of people who have never been slaves? It's amazing. It seems everyone is to blame for the shambles black society is in with its violence, drugs, high school drop out rates, misogyny, and a host of other real and virulent problems, except for the very people who engage in such behavior.
Enough. As a society, culture or people, they should look within themselves and fix their problems. When did this man become the spokesman for the black church? And of course his church is different, but that doesn't mean his message and philosophy is acceptable, or productive or non-offensive or not-racist or indicative or our greater cultural behaviors, values and norms as Americans. And yes, the link between this man and Obama really does matter. At a very minimum, it provides insight into the political and philosophical strain that Obama adheres to. - Bill Cosby, April 28, 2008
Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership – the people who murdered 3000 Americans – have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That’s the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism," - Barack Obama, yesterday.
The cover of “Goodnight Bush” looks almost exactly like “Goodnight Moon — green and orange, with an image of a window and fireplace — and uses a similar rhyme scheme. But there the thematic similarities end.The authors, Erich Origen and Gan Golan, set their story in “a situation room.” There is no bunny snuggling into bed, but rather George W. Bush, grinning and wearing a “Mission Accomplished” flight suit. Instead of three little bears sitting on chairs, there are “war profiteers giving three cheers.” Subsequent pages tell of “A grand old party to war in a rush/And a quiet Dick Cheney whispering hush.” The vice president is illustrated seated in a rocking chair — with a shotgun in his lap and bunny slippers on his feet.
Barack Obama and his supporters deny that they have anything to worry about when it comes to Jewish voters. Still, evidence is mounting that some Jews, even traditional Democratic supporters and activists, can’t bring themselves to support Obama.The pundits pooh-pooh the notion that Jewish Democrats would ever support McCain. But some are not just voting for him but working for his campaign.I interviewed by phone today Rabbi Cheryl Jacobs, who was listed by Citizens for McCain as one of the prominent Democrats and Independents now supporting McCain. Rabbi Jacobs is an unlikely McCain supporter. She described her years of work on pro-choice issues and her longtime support for Hillary Clinton going back to her work as First Lady, through her Senate campaign and during her tenure as Senator. Rabbi Jacobs and her husband were likewise very active in John Kerry’s campaign. She says that when she heard the final returns in 2004, “I sat in my car and cried. I thought ‘What will become of us?’”I asked how she made the transition from Clinton to McCain. She said “I’ve always been confident of Hillary’s support for Israel.” She says she recalls the Lebanon war when Israel was receiving criticism and McCain said “Look, if someone came into your house, into the U.S. and started shooting what would you do?” Rabbi Jacobs continued that she lived in an apartment overlooking the Hudson River and on September 11th saw a low-flying plane go past her window as she was tending to a colicky baby and heard the resulting “boom.” She says “I live through it. I saw what can happen. I lost friends in bombings in Israel. My priorities have changed. I’m a mother. I’m concerned about security and the security of Israel.”
What would she say to other Democrats who have never voted Republican and have policy differences with McCain? Rabbi Jacobs responded, “The hardest thing is to prioritize.” She listed the numerous issues–from the economy to education–and acknowledged that voters are “worried about all these different things.” She continued, “But Israel is a no-brainer. The safety and existence of Israel is uppermost.” She explains, “My husband and I sat done and thoroughly reviewed the issues.” She continued, “This is the fight of my life.” She bluntly states, “Someone with no experience, no background, and someone with no test of his ability–and he is in charge of the red phone? It terrifies me.”She acknowledges that McCain is not a perfect candidate from her perspective. She says, “Is any candidate going to be #1 on every issue? No.” But at bottom she has decided that “Israel should be what is important, and the safety of our country.” And as for McCain personally she says that he is an “honorable human being.”Not every Jewish Democrat will make the same choice and many Democrats insist that Obama’s speech to AIPAC demonstrates his commitment to Israel. Nevertheless, if Rabbi Jacobs is representative of at least some American Jews, Obama may still have a lot of work to do.
Which raised the question. Does David Brooks really believe what he writes, or does he pretend to believe certain things for the benefit of the audience he is writing for. Call me skeptic, but I don't think that question is so hard to answer.
"ICYMI: Okla. Dem Calls Obama Liberal, Declines To Endorse"--McCain campaign press release touting Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren's decision not to endorse Barack Obama, June 10"At least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Sen. John McCain for president, and more than a dozen others declined to answer whether they back the Arizona senator.... Republican members who have not endorsed or publicly backed McCain include Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Reps. Jones, Peterson, John Doolittle (Calif.), Randy Forbes (Va.), Wayne Gilchrest (Md.), Virgil Goode (Va.), Tim Murphy (Pa.), Ron Paul (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Todd Tiahrt (Kan.), Dave Weldon (Fla.) and Frank Wolf (Va.)." -- The Hill, June 12--Christopher OrrDid it ever occur to our author that Republicans are not endorsing McCain because he is too moderate, something Obama would probably not look to highlight?
Here are the Obama rules in detail: He can't be called a "liberal" ("the same names and labels they pin on everyone," as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can't be questioned ("attempts to play on our fears"); his extreme positions on social issues can't be exposed ("the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives" and "turn us against each other"); and his Chicago background too is off-limits ("pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy"). Besides that, it should be a freewheeling and spirited campaign.Democrats always want cultural issues not to matter because they are on the least-popular side of many of them, and want patriotic symbols like the Pledge of Allegiance and flag pins to be irrelevant when they can't manage to nominate presidential candidates who wholeheartedly embrace them (which shouldn't be that difficult). As for "fear" and "division," they are vaporous pejoratives that can be applied to any warning of negative consequences of a given policy or any political position that doesn't command 100 percent assent. In his North Carolina speech, Obama said the Iraq War "has not made us safer," and that McCain's ideas are "out of touch" with "American values." How fearfully divisive.We could take Obama's rules in good faith if he never calls John McCain a "conservative" or labels him in any other way. If he never criticizes him for his association with George Bush. If he doesn't jump on his gaffes (like McCain's 100-years-in-Iraq comment that Obama distorted and harped on for weeks). And if he never says anything that would tend to make Americans fearful about the future or divide them (i.e., say things that some people agree with and others don't).
| ישיבת הגר"ז שוב עוברת למודיעין עילית |  |
| ישיבת "רמת שלמה" שבראשותו של הגאון רבי זבולון שוב, עוברת למשכנה החדש בעיר מודיעין עילית. המעבר אמנם זמני ובעתיד תעבור הישיבה לגבעת זאב. |  |
| ירוםח שמואלביץ | כ"ד בניסן התשס"ח 15:53 |
ישיבת "רמת שלמה" שבראשותו של הגאון רבי זבולון שוב, עוברת למשכנה החדש בעיר מודיעין עילית. אמנם מדובר במעבר זמני, שכן מתחילה הייתה אמורה הישיבה להיות בגבעת זאב, אלא שהקפאת הבנייה במקום הביאה לכך שגם בניית הישיבה הוקפאה, אך כעת עם הפשרת הבנייה בגבעת זאב מקווים שהבנייה תואץ והישיבה תוכל לעבור למשכנה החדש בהקדם. כאמור באופן זמני תעבור הישיבה למודיעין עילית ברחוב 'נודע ביהודה', והדבר יתבצע כבר עם תחילת זמן הקיץ שייפתח בר"ח אייר. בימים האחרונים ביקר הגר"ז שוב בביתם של מרנן ורבנן שליט"א ובראשם בביתו של נשיא הישיבה מרן הגרמ"י ליפקוביץ שליט"א וקיבל את ברכתו. בתמונה: הגר"ז שוב בביתו של מרן הגרמ"י ליפקוביץ שליט"א | |
He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people.
In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.
But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.
“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”
His subtext was obvious: Why can’t I just be president? Why do I have to keep eating these gooey waffles and answering these gotcha questions and debating this gonzo woman?
where close means less than one percent of the popular vote, and less than 15 electoral votes.
But before Michelle Obama starts measuring the White House for new drapes, let's take a look at historical precedent.
The first Republican to win a presidential election was Abraham Lincoln. Since that initial success, the GOP has won 23 presidential elections compared to just 14 for the Democrats.
Since the Civil War only four Democrats -- Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and Samuel Tilden -- have won a majority of the popular vote. (Tilden in 1876, lost the Electoral College vote and never became president.)
It has been 32 years since a Democrat won a majority of the popular vote. The last to do so was Carter, who won a whopping 50.1 percent of the votes in 1976. He defeated Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, the man who pardoned Richard Nixon and carried the burden of Watergate and the Vietnam War into the election.
Obviously, 1976 was not a good year to be a Republican. Nixon's disgraceful resignation and reputation for deceit and corruption fatally wounded the Republican presidential ticket. But even with such enormous advantages on his side, Carter barely eked out a majority. Carter's once sizeable lead in the polls dwindled as election day drew near, so much so that some observers believe that had the election taken place a couple of weeks later, Ford might have prevailed.
Like the 1976 contest, all conditions point toward an easy Democratic victory this November. George W. Bush, the Republican incumbent, suffers from abysmal approval ratings -- below 30 percent in some polls. The economy is weak and appears to be entering a recession. And the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, while certainly something of a maverick, is quite close to the president on the one issue causing him the most damage -- the war in Iraq.
Yet right now in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, McCain and Obama appear to be in a dead heat. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows Obama leading by 3 points; the latest Rasmussen tracking poll shows McCain up by 3. A McCain-Clinton match-up is also too close to call at this point. If this is a Democratic year, one wonders what a Republican year would look like.
"You know, I hear what you are all saying, but doesn't elite mean good?"
Poll: Preacher Calms Dem Fears of Obama's Faith by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · 25 Comments(2008-03-19) —
The latest presidential poll shows that public exposure to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racially-charged, anti-American preaching has allayed Democrat voter fears about Sen. Barack Obama’s evangelical Christianity.Sen. Obama’s long-time pastor and mentor has called on God to ‘damn America’, and he blames rich, white people for everything from the crucifixion of Jesus to the epidemic of HIV in the black community.“Until mainstream Democrats heard Rev. Wright’s remarks,” said an unnamed pollster, “many were troubled by Sen. Obama’s profession of faith in Jesus Christ and his regular church attendance, which are generally-accepted indicators of mental weakness and deep-seated bigotry.”However, the source said, now that Democrat voters know that Sen. Obama’s pastor essentially preaches mainstream progressive talking points, they seem more willing to tolerate the Democrat candidate’s Christianity.As one survey respondent said, “At least he’s not some kind of religious nut, like George Bush, trying to force his god delusions and twisted morality down our throats.”
As such, Neusner’s friendly dialogue with Jesus amounts to what Matthew Scully, in a 1993 review of the book in National Review, called a “polite hedge.” Faced with a man who insists he is the equivalent of the Lord, one cannot disagree “with respect and reverence,” one cannot challenge the man’s claim while remaining “moved” by his greatness. “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher,” C.S. Lewis famously wrote. “He would either be a lunatic—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. . . . But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
But you can't really blame the guy, if god is his disciple.The Reverend Wright believes that AIDs was created by the government of the United States — and not as a cure for the common cold that went tragically awry and had to be covered up by Karl Rove, but for the explicit purpose of killing millions of its own citizens. The government has never come clean about this, but the Reverend Wright knows the truth. “The government lied,” he told his flock, “about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”Does he really believe this? If so, he’s crazy, and no sane person would sit through his gibberish, certainly not for 20 years. Or is he just saying it? In which case, he’s profoundly wicked. If you understand that AIDs is spread by sexual promiscuity and drug use, you’ll know that it’s within your power to protect yourself from the disease. If you’re told that it’s just whitey’s latest cunning plot to stick it to you, well, hey, it’s out of your hands, nothing to do with you or your behavior.
In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would
say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely
"explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so
doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us
a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated
the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used
to be in America.He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes
and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his
minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional
angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of
color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look
on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye
color.In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this
all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of
racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
The minister’s controversial history has been written about countless times
throughout the campaign. Wright has ties to the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the black
supremacist leader of the Nation of Islam — a fact that has been noted in more
than 100 news stories just in the past few months, according to the Nexis
database of news coverage. Opponents of Obama have constantly pushed reporters
to write about the minister, which these critics considered a ticking time bomb
for his campaign. On Feb. 20, after a fiery guest sermon by Wright in Little
Rock, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran an article that said: “On Tuesday,
Wright criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and likened the insurgents to the
Israelites under Babylonian rule.” At 9:20 that morning, Obama opponents were
already trying to get Politico to link to the story. That’s why many news
outlets — including Politico — did not initially pile on with rehashes after
Ross’s story on “Good Morning America.”
As this campaign progresses, this man grows and grows. The same cannot be said for his two remaining opponents.
As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they're tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain's message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton's decision to continue her campaign. It's actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he's unelectable. It's not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.
--Jonathan Chait
| Sheriff: Woman Sat on Toilet for 2 Years | |
Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.
"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."
Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.
"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."
He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.
"And her reply would be, `Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."
The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.
Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.
"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave," he said.
She was taken to a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.
Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.
Police have declined to release the couple's names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.
The case has been the buzz Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.
"I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it," he said.
Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.
He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.
"It really doesn't surprise me," Ellis said of the bathroom incident. "What surprises me is somebody wasn't called in a bit earlier."
(Authorities might not know if she was mentally disabled, but I think I might hazard a guess.)
