["Here Are Some Thoughts I Had For America!" is a column that grinds up only the very finest American punditry and pontificating of the past week through a complicated process of recombination in order to create a fulsome catechism of bourgeois thought.]
But I understand. The average person doesn't see the world from my perspective. See, the people I meet on the streets and abroad are of great interest to me. Not because the nitty-gritty details of their lives are of any particular meaning -- I am not so small-minded. But there's something about ordinary people that fires my imagination. I find that it's the way the light in their eyes captures my reflection. I see myself in that radiant halo and understand that I am connected, my place in that moment in time verified. If you ever have the occasion to watch a clown make balloon animals for a group of children, you'll notice how their laughter drives the clown's performance by affirming it. In this way, I am like a clown, who makes balloon animals out of journalism.
This is something I noticed a long time ago, and it got me thinking about the world in a new way. Now, when a taxi driver asks me, "Where to?" I understand that he's not really asking for my destination on some street map. He's asking me where I think we -- this world, our people, this great experience -- is headed. When a hotel clerk welcomes my reservation, I know that she's not really merely welcoming my custom. She's welcoming my culture, my nation. The other day, while driving to the covered bazaar in the exotic western Indian town of Jodhpur, my Indian guide paused to point out the only stoplight in town. I immediately fell into a reverie.
My other Indian companion said, "Hey, pay attention, goreh, he's pointing out the one intersection you'll maybe be able to get across without dying," but by then I was lost in thought. As you might expect, the subject was leadership. Who is deciding? What decisions are they making? What sort of hotel suite have they booked in Doha?
And I know, it's been pointed out to me that it's actually widely available on the Internet, and that it actually dovetails precisely with my own policy prescriptions. But these criticisms miss the point. When I ask, "Does he have one?" I mean, "Does he Have One." Does he walk into the Grand Bargaining Chamber with merely a plan on paper? Or does he walk into the room with command of the Great Tides of History and a sense of how interconnected the world really is? This is the difference between wondering if the taxi driver merely wants to take you to the Upper West Side, and knowing that what he's really asking for...is direction.
If President Obama came to these meetings -- like a leader, so armed -- the knobby recalcitrance of his political opponents would not even be an issue. He would see himself reflected in their eyes, the way I see myself in the eyes of the man who fixes the elevator in my building, and know that the time was ripe. He'd know that the House Republicans would simply be swept up in the meaning of that moment in time, recognize its grandeur for what it is, and simply say, "I'm ready to cross that street in Jodhpur with you. I'm ready to duck. I'm ready to dive. I'm ready to say I'm glad to be alive. I'm ready. I'm ready for the push." (It's no coincidence that Great Men in these moments often sound as if they are reciting U2 lyrics. Let's recall that U2 created one of the most dynamic private equity firms in the history of the world.)
If we fail in these tests, we fall short. And I see this every day. Take, for instance, this Jerry Sandusky scandal. I see this matter being pressed each day by members of the press -- the sporting press -- who have a relentless focus on statistics and replaying that last false start penalty, as if that's the moment to literally stop time and reflect upon in slow motion is simply not geared to the overall understanding of the calling of this moment. If you've been watching this coverage, you would think for all the world that this is a story about some one-off child predator who was sheltered by his colleagues out of expedience.
But again, where's that connection to the sweep of things? What this moment calls for is for someone to say, "You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here." We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don't have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it's wrong, but they've been raised in a morality that says, 'If it feels all right for you, it's probably okay.'"
Everyone is saying that this Bob Costas fellow did an excellent job in his interrogation of Sandusky, that he put Sandusky on the spot, made him look guilty, and potentially contributed to some infinitesimal portion of something that men who lack ambition might call "justice." But what if Costas had had the presence of mind to look into Sandusky's eyes and ask, "Consider Country Joe and the Fish's set on the final day of Woodstock in August of 1969. It was right about the time you returned to Penn State from Boston University. What does that tell you?" Surely this would have told us so much more.
Oh, hey, you can let me off right at the corner here. And you're welcome!
Have you read Paul Krugman's latest New York Times column? It is a delight.
Titled "Failure Is Good," Krugman sounds off on the super committee and its general awfulness, offering a thoroughly reality-based take on why it is (spoiler alert!) doomed to fail:
So the supercommittee brought together legislators who disagree completely both about how the world works and about the proper role of government. Why did anyone think this would work?
Don't know! Seems to me that if a legislator wants to cut a program or reduce a benefit or levy a tax, he or she can jolly well write the "This Is The Spending Cut/Entitlement Reduction/Tax Increase I Want Act Of 2011," round up some cosponsors and put it to a series of votes. Of course, we live in a world where these legislators are far too scared of losing their precious seats in Congress to do the jobs they all declaim mightily they actually want to do. So they outsource the responsibility to increasingly obscure star chambers in the hopes that if the axe of outrage falls, it falls on "the system" in general rather than on them.
But that's not the best part of Krugman's latest column. The best part is this:
Oh, and let me give a special shout-out to “centrist” pundits who won’t admit that President Obama has already given them what they want. The dialogue seems to go like this. Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?” Mr. Obama: “I support a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes.” Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?”
You see, admitting that one side is willing to make concessions, while the other isn’t, would tarnish one’s centrist credentials. And the result is that the G.O.P. pays no price for refusing to give an inch.
Guys. Guys! I don't want to alarm anybody, but it would seem that depending on what channel you get your news, you might encounter two entirely different takes on the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement. I know, this is going to sound shocking -- but you especially notice the divergence between MSNBC and Fox News. Seriously!
MSNBC, for example, is largely predisposed to the movement, though I'll note that each day, there comes a moment of delicious irony when Andrea Mitchell, wife of Randian sycophant Alan Greenspan, has to report on the subject. I treat these daily occurrences as a special moment that God made, just for me to delight in! Later in the day, you come to Al Sharpton's show, where the host -- who is apparently under the impression that he is in some sort of wind tunnel and not a state-of-the-art, well-miked studio -- starts yelling at me about how much he loves Occupy Wall Street, and the happy feelings are lost.
MSNBC, it should be noted, stops short of actually using their own name to co-brand with #OWS, as the Fox News Channel did with the Tea Party. Speaking of! Salon's Alex Pareene recently spent two days watching Fox's coverage of the Occupy Wall Street and found that they mostly wanted to cover how "gross" they thought everybody was, or how scary they were potentially, except for Shepard Smith, who alone seemed capable of "treat[ing] the story with a bit of nuance and objectivity," as is his wont. As you'll see in this new mashup video from Ben Craw, our experience has been much the same.
Definitely stick around to the end, to see who's done the stupidest coverage of Occupy Wall Street. The answer may surprise you! (Probably not, though.)
I'll spare you the suspense -- it's Michele Flournoy, the current Undersecretary of Defense for Policy of the United States who gets profiled in the Washington Post's Style section, in a piece that leads off by telling you that Flournoy is "the highest-ranking woman in Pentagon history," but then waits six paragraphs to tell readers what her official title is, in order to let readers know that she "went to Beverly Hills High School with 1970s teen idol Shaun Cassidy and did her homework on the set of television's 'The Odd Couple,'" which are some important details, I'm sure, to understanding how her approach to Pentagon policy is informed.
Why is a woman subcabinet official getting profiled in the Post's Style section, anyway? Is it really not possible to grapple with this woman's ideas because she's wearing pearls? Really? When you start from the premise that Flournoy's going to run the Pentagon someday, shouldn't that incline you to explore whether that's, like, a good idea? I don't give a fuck what her workout regimen is. Because that tells me nothing about how she'll run the fucking Pentagon. Have you written your piece about how many crunches Leon Panetta does in the morning? I'll just wait here until you do.
Ackerman is reacting to this paragraph in the piece:
She's tall and slender with a regal manner. She often wears pearls. Soft-spoken and understated, she is described by her co-workers as brainy rather than blustery. She talks slowly, frequently stopping to think. Her careful speaking style differs wildly from that of Douglas J. Feith, who held her job during the George W. Bush administration and came under fire for his role in building the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq.
Interestingly enough, this paragraph isn't found toward the top of the piece, where you might expect a writer to dispense with setting up the soft focus before moving in to the meat of their subject -- it's the twelfth paragraph. What precedes it is what seems to be an epic attempt to divine the deep mystery of how this woman came to be an important figure in defense policy circles.
"On the surface, her personal trajectory is somewhat incongruous," writes Emily Wax, who then goes on to describe the incredibly true story of how Michele Flournoy grew up in one place, got interested in a subject, studied that subject, and then joined a field to which her education could be best put to use, headquartered in an entirely different location from the one where she grew up. THIS IS SO INCONGRUOUS.
From there, you briefly learn that she co-founded the Center for a New American Security, but after four ensuing paragraphs that lightly touch on her worldview and policy perspective, we're back to learning about her "modest style" and her tendency to eschew cocktail parties and, yes, her workout regimen, which is stuffed into a section that's subtitled "Leading by example" (that includes mention of a "Starbucks addiction," because when I think of how best to characterize how someone "leads by example," my thoughts naturally turn to their daily latte intake).
So, what's Bank of America to do? Well, it could make a company-wide commitment to offering better customer service and undertake a systemic reform of its business practices. But instead, the bank hired Malcolm Gladwell as a shill and put him in front of small-business owners to get 'em all riled up.
According to a press release, Bank of America delivered "quality education and actionable advice to small business owners in various markets throughout the country." At these meet-ups, which "attracted close to 200 small business owners in Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington, D.C.," Gladwell was the closing act for a moderated "panel discussion on relationship capital." All of which sounds like a furtive stab of pre-crash nostalgia. In fact, the notion of having Malcolm Gladwell provide happy talk for the banking industry channels the year 2006 so hard that it's amazing this guy wasn't invited back to reprise his U2 karaoke act:
But concerns that Gladwell's teachings don't exactly pair well with the current state of the banking industry and what we've learned about the practices that nearly brought the economy to a crashing halt in 2008 don't end there. As Chris Lehmann wrote in his book Rich People Things:
Regardless of whether Gladwell is describing the way we actually behave and absorb new ideas and social trends, he is clearly offering a very appealing picture of how his readership wishes the world works. The chief hero in his work is the intuitive manager -- a new millenial upgrade of the plucky upward-striving protagonists in the Gilded Age fiction of Horatio Alger. But where Alger stressed the character-building individualist virtues of thrift, hard work, and self-sacrifice -- themselves already endangered traits in the new industrial order of the robber baron age -- Gladwell is preaching an entirely consumption-driven model of the gospel of success. The idea in his market fables is not to light out for new economic territory with grit and invention; it is, rather, to establish a mystical bond with market forces and to surmise how the market most wants you to behave.
Yeah, you know, given the fact that U.S. taxpayers donated several trillion dollars to failed banks under the (apparently fraudulent) premise that they would "light out for new economic territory" and begin lending money to the productive side of the economy again, thereby stirring the economy from its recession-induced torpor, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence to hear that Bank of America is pimping out an author who'll only reaffirm its faith-based belief in the infallibility of the quantitative models it believed provided a risk-free environment in which to sell synthetic crap-derivatives to everybody.
In short, if heaven is a place where horned demons are laying the foundation for a "Gymnasium of the Damned" for Jerry Sandusky in bottomless pools of red-hot magma, then Gladwell and Bank of America are a match made in it.
On Tuesday, Congress decided that pizza is a vegetable. I have to imagine that this news instilled confusion in many Americans, as many Americans are (a) familiar with pizza, (b) familiar with vegetables and (c) sane.
But, to provide specifics that will in no way dispel your lingering thoughts that we are governed by morons but at least allow you some anthropological insight into how a group of morons who have been given permission to sit in a fancy room in Washington, D.C., and grunt at each other actually think, here is their thinking: Pizza is a vegetable for the purposes of determining what goes into public school lunches by virtue of the fact that pizza traditionally includes a schmear of tomato paste. (Botanically speaking, tomatoes are actually fruit, but we're going to have to just let that slide.)
At any rate, you may still be wondering how it came to pass that Congress arrived at the conclusion that pizza could count as a serving of vegetables. Wonder no more! Congress was guided along this path by lobbyists. And lobbyists can do all sorts of things, by magic! (Except provide nutritious lunches for children.)
The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.
The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.
Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administration's much-ridiculed attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.
"School meals that are subsidized by the federal government must include a certain amount of vegetables," the AP reports, "and USDA's proposal could have pushed pizza-makers and potato growers out of the school lunch business." It would have pushed vegetable growers into the business, but their lobbyists aren't as powerful, it seems.
In addition to this, the move to classify pizza as a vegetable gained traction because of popular, reality-transforming political philosophies on the role of government.
Piling on to the companies' opposition, some conservatives argue that the federal government shouldn't tell children what to eat. In a summary of the bill, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would "prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and ... provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals."
This sort of makes it sound like local school districts would be serving heirloom tomatoes and quinoa if the federal government just got out of the way. At any rate, I'd recommend that you remember this the next time you hear someone say that the government should get out of the business of "picking winners and losers." (Winner: salt! Loser: fighting obesity!)
Here's a fun fact! If a child incorrectly identifies "pizza" as a "vegetable" on a standardized test, there's an entirely different group of lobbyists who will argue that public school teachers have failed America's children.
On Monday night, Karl Rove got into a wee bit of awkwardness. During his planned remarks at the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium at Johns Hopkins University, members of the local Occupy Baltimore demonstration interrupted him by calling for a "mic check." Here's Zaid Jelani, at ThinkProgress, describing the encounter:
"Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!" yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. As they repeated their slogan, "We are the 99 percent!" Rove petulantly responded, "No you're not!" He snidely added, "You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you're the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think are!"
Here's the video, which makes it seem like Rove might have just bored everyone to death had Occupy Baltimore not intervened to enliven the proceedings.
The interruption didn't go over well with the rest of the members of the audience, who applauded when Rove chastised them to wait until the question-and-answer session to ask about his role in shaping the unsuccessful, debt-driving foreign entanglements that helped mortgage everyone's future. Still, it's sort of strange to see the normally self-possessed Rove basically flip his wig like that, isn't it? I guess knowing you have to spend the next year of your life raising money to sell Mitt Romney to conservatives will do things to your temperament.
Would it be too much to ask for someone -- perhaps one of his New York Times colleagues -- to give famously airheaded columnist Thomas Friedman a bit of an explanation of what is actually going on in the world of politics? Or just provide him with some sort of real world mooring point to which his precious barnacles of thought could cling? I ask because of this part of his most recent column:
Here we are in America again on the eve of a major budgetary decision by yet another bipartisan "supercommittee," and does anyone know what President Obama's preferred outcome is? Exactly which taxes does he want raised, and which spending does he want cut? The president's politics on this issue seems to be a bowl of poll-tested mush.
Here we are in America on the eve of a major budgetary decision that Friedman wants to write about, and he's somehow unaware of the fact that the President's preferred outcome is publicly available, and a mere Google search away. But Matt Yglesias, who steps up today to serve as Friedman's intern on the matter, has made it very easy. Here is Obama's preferred outcome in depth and here it is in brief.
Here is the telephone number for the Office of Management and Budget's "media inquiries" department: 202-395-7254. Thomas, you should "unlock" your iPhone, press the "phone" icon, then press "keypad," then type in those numbers in order, and finally press "call." (Oh, and put your ear to the phone! You will hear some noises, but try not to panic: eventually they will sound like a recognizable language.)
Now, the hilarious thing about all of this is that when Friedman actually reads these widely available documents, he's going to feel a little chagrined. Greg Sargent explains why:
The amusing thing is that Friedman himself has said in column after column that the deficit must be balanced through the approach Obama has offered -- a blend of spending cuts, including entitlements cuts, and tax increases.
How does Friedman deal with the fact that he and Obama roughly share the same vision? There's the above approach -- pretend Obama hasn't been clear about what he wants. Friedman has adopted other dodges, too. He has claimed that Obama's version of the Grand Bargain doesn't go far enough, because a Grand Bargain absolutely must contain entitlements cuts. Again, Obama and Dems have signaled a willingness to cut entitlements, dismaying many on the left. And even when Friedman admits that Republicans are more to blame for the lack of compromise, he makes up for it by somehow simultaneously claiming that "history" will hold Obama more accountable for failure to reach a deal.
Oh, lord, I almost forgot about Friedman's whole "Grand Bargain" fetish. Someone should also take it upon themselves to alert Friedman to the precise terms of the "Grand Bargain" that Obama actually offered. Let's take the wayback machine back to July of this year:
Obama had proposed to Republicans a "grand bargain" that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It's no small irony that the party's dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted.
Republicans are now banking on a smaller deficit reduction deal that would still make major cuts, somewhere in the range of $2 trillion.
So, let's review: that offer combines "spending cuts, including entitlements cuts, and tax increases." Furthermore, what the President offered was rejected by House Republicans, who instead wanted a "smaller deficit reduction deal." So it's illogical to complain that the administration's position "doesn't go far enough" when the opposition's position goes even less far. Finally, the key sentence there that might help Friedman finally untangle the Great Mystery Of Why There Hasn't Been A Grand Bargain is this one: "It's no small irony that the party's dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted."
Sargent writes that Friedman seems incapable of "admit[ting] the obvious." The Obama administration and the Democrats are essentially standing in the "ideological middle" -- to their tremendous detriment, as lefty activists tend to critique this as the "sell out" position -- and Friedman "agrees with them on the broad strokes of what need to be done." He just doesn't seem to understand it!
I haven't the foggiest idea why Friedman hasn't yet grasped how annoying he's being by constantly arguing that the people who share his point of view and actually have to pay the cost of acting on it aren't really doing the things that they're doing. My guess is that these facts simply inconvenience his desire to spin alternate histories or remark upon the Kevin Costner movie he just watched. But if you're in the position to lend Friedman a hand, print thesethingsout and give them to him, please. Better yet, print them out, kick down the door and tell him, "Suck on this!"
If you're a Democrat, you're probably looking over last night's election results with an optimistic eye. When the polls had closed, there were a handful of achievements to celebrate -- Russell Pearce recalled in Arizona, the "personhood" measure in Mississippi defeated, an anti-union measure repealed in Ohio. And the effort to roll back some of the extremist measures unleashed by GOP lawmakers at the state level continues on, with Wisconsinites looking ahead to an effort to recall Governor Scott Walker. (For a comprehensive take on how that effort is faring, see Abe Sauer's recent piece in The Awl.)
For the activist left, these victories demonstrate the value of exploiting these democratic processes. But if you glance over at the results in Michigan, you can find an example where winning a recall battle may leave the recall's proponents worse off instead of better.
Last night, by a narrow margin, Michigan residents voted to recall State Representative Paul Scott (R-Grand Blanc). Scott, the first state lawmaker to be recalled in Michigan in 28 years, had run afoul of an organization called Citizens Against Government Overreach and the Michigan Education Association because as chair of Michigan's House Education Committee, he shepherded House Bill 4466 to passage. MEA describes their objections like so:
Under the bill, if one or more public school employees strike, their union would be kicked out for five years. A school superintendent or parent could report any strike activity – and, if enacted, a union could be decertified even if no actual strike occurred.
The bill would make it illegal for a union or union representative to “solicit or encourage” any public employee to strike or to “conspire” to cause a strike, even if they didn’t actually engage in a work stoppage.
Last night, Scott's recall was greeted with elation by those who had supported it. Eclectablog celebrated "the little GOP recall that could." The MEA's director of public affairs, Doug Pratt, told reporters, "This isn't just a victory for the 51st District...(This is for) everyone in the state of Michigan who felt Republicans have attacked our schools."
But at the same time, there was a suggestion that Michigan Republicans were "poised to strike back" at those who'd forced Scott's ouster:
Tuesday's recall of Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, could mean Republicans are out for blood against the Michigan Education Association and others who worked to oust Scott from office, said Bill Ballenger, editor of the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter.
"I thought all along this was a war they could not win," Ballenger said following Scott's concession late Tuesday. "I think ultimately they're going to pay a price for this. It's conceivable this could have been the worse result for the MEA and the recallers than if Scott beat the recall."
In a formal statement released this morning, the MEA's Pratt knit up their recall victory with others around the nation, and suggested that voters had sent Republican lawmakers a strong message:
“While it was a close, hard-fought race, voters have clearly spoken – they’re fed up with Republican politicians in Lansing attacking public education and the middle class.
“Voters didn’t send Paul Scott to Lansing to pave the way for a power grab by corporate special interests – cutting schools, taxing pensions and providing tax handouts to businesses with no promise of creating jobs. Last night’s results prove that voters will hold lawmakers accountable for assaults on the middle class.
“This is more than just a victory for voters in the 51st District who feel Paul Scott hasn’t been representing their interests – it’s a victory for every Michigan voter who feels misled by Republicans and their agenda this year in Lansing.
“Voter anger and a turning of the tide is not just happening here. In Ohio, voters overturned Gov. John Kasich’s anti-union bill, Senate Bill 5. Voters there – and here – are tired of Republican politicians spending more time vilifying unions than creating jobs and preserving our middle class.
“Our sincere hope is that Republican politicians see this for what it is – a statement from voters that Lansing is on the wrong path. We stand ready, as always, to work with leaders from both parties to ensure strong public schools are there for our children and our economy.
“But, if they choose not to change course, we stand ready – along with the rest of the 99% -- to elect new leaders in 2012 who will stand up for kids and the middle class, not of corporate CEOs and the elite 1%.”
As former GOP Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop tweeted, "The MEA spent $150k dollars only to get their nemesis, Representative Tom McMillin, appointed as the chairman of the education committee."
This is, in part, a lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences. But the larger lesson here is that even if your effort to support the middle class by recalling some of its enemies succeeds, there's nothing that compels those lawmakers left in power to respect the wishes of the winners.
If you've been reading the Drudge Report lately, you've probably heard about some new plan that Obama administration had just now to finally destroy Christmas once and for all. I am referring to a recent swelling from the brain of intellectual titan and torture-enthusiast David Addington, who is pimping a misleading item about a "Christmas Tree tax" over at the Heritage Foundation's Foundry blog:
President Obama's Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees -- the Christmas Tree Tax -- to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.
In the Federal Register of Nov. 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a "program of promotion, research, evaluation and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry's position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry" (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of "information" is to include efforts to "enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States" (7 CFR 1214.10).
"And, by the way," said Addington, "the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn't need any help from the government." Here's the thing: many of the actual people who grow American Christmas trees don't agree with that assessment!
Following an extended debate that pit one region against another, the Agriculture Department on Tuesday gave the green light to a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program.
By taxing themselves, growers will raise $2 million a year for ads promoting the merits of real, live trees. Or, at least, trees that once were living, as opposed to the artificial kind that have seized an increasing share of the holiday market.
"As demographics and buying habits have changed we have watched the market for real trees shrink drastically, requiring us to spend much more time and money on promotion," said Don Cameron, past president of the California Christmas Tree Association.
Cameron and his wife, Carolyn, owners of a tree farm in Simi Valley, Calif., were among the 500-plus people to weigh in over the past year as the Agriculture Department considered the proposed Christmas Tree Promotion, Research and Information Order.
Akin to similar programs that promote milk, beef and cotton, the new Christmas tree program will impose on U.S. domestic producers and importers an initial fee of 15 cents per tree.
Examples of other agricultural commodity Checkoffs include the egg, beef, pork, mushroom, milk, and honey, etc. industries. We're all familiar with the dairy industry's ad campaigns; "Milk Does a Body Good" and "Got Milk." "Pork: the Other White Meat," "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" and "The Incredible Edible Egg" are recognizable slogans developed and funded by Checkoff programs. These four "big guns" collect between $45 and $91.2 million in assessments annually.
According to Doyle's report, growers in Texas and Vermont dissented, and naturally, corporate interests that support the sale of artificial trees were also opposed to this measure. But "[g]rower organizations in North Carolina and 18 other states and regions" were supportive of this program -- which makes sense, considering the fact that the intention here is to revive a declining industry and preserve jobs.
White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told ABC News that despite some media coverage, "I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What's being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the 'Got Milk?' campaign."
Nonetheless, the criticisms have apparently had an impact as the program is now being delayed.
So, no help for Christmas tree growers this year, it seems, because the Obama administration lacks the stomach to fend off even the most inane criticisms.
UPDATE: 3:33pm: An email tipster sends word of a further irony in this matter. The National Christmas Tree Association is supported in their efforts to revive their industry by a PR firm -- Smith And Harroff -- who "for decades had specialized in Republican political campaigns." On the Smith And Harroff website, you'll find pictures of the aforementioned Smith and Harroff posing with former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, former Illinois Senator and GOP Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, and Jane Hull, the first Republican woman to serve as the Governor of Arizona, among others.
If you're trying to keep up with the themes that underpin the GOP attacks on Elizabeth Warren, well, good luck to you. Way back when, her affiliation with Harvard got her branded an elitist. More recently, her support for the Occupy Wall Street movement branded her a dyed-in-the-wool socialist and middle-class rabblerouser. But now, her opponents are back pursuing the elitist angle, trying to drive a wedge between her and the Occupying 99 percent by pointing out that she's too good at capitalism to represent the poor. Some of these people yammered this critique to Politico, and their words were scribbled down like so:
Elizabeth Warren may have embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement and the "99 percent" crowd, but public records reveal the liberal firebrand belongs to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
Her financial well-being will likely hand conservatives a new line of attack against the consumer advocate and Democratic Senate hopeful in Massachusetts who has fired up the left and was labeled by one columnist as "the first candidate of the Occupy Wall Street movement."
"I don't begrudge her own personal wealth. I begrudge her hypocrisy of trying to play the demagogue against those who have achieved and who have created wealth," said Rick Manning of the conservative group Americans for Limited Government.
Lots of people -- like Steve Benen, Greg Sargent, and Paul Krugman (who is also very well-off, and yet no one perceives him as a latter day robber baron) -- have pointed out that this is not what hypocrisy means. Warren would be a hypocrite if she pandered to the 99 percent while advocating policies that harmed their economic interests. But she doesn't do that. The policies she advocates involve creating a fairer environment for consumers who participate in the capitalist system. Her bread-and-butter issues involve things like making mortgage agreements more transparent, ridding credit card contracts of their "tricks and traps," and responding more forcefully to the fraud and abuse that's found throughout the banking industry. (Ordinary people would likely be all the more successful at accruing and maintaining wealth if Warren had her way, actually.)
It's not hypocritical for a rich person to seek to end income inequality. What I think Rick Manning is trying to say is that Warren is, in his estimation, a traitor to the moneyed class, and he'd rather that she shut up and went away.
This is actually a pretty stupid political attack, when you think about it! Is the idea here to continually point out Warren's wealth so that the working and middle class voters in Massachusetts flock instead to the camp of Scott Brown, who is also wealthy and more reliably votes in the interests of the wealthy? It sort of doesn't make sense. The short version of this criticism is: "We who oppose Elizabeth Warren want to point out that she's a lot like us, except she seems to want working people to do well!" If you're a voter, you're left waiting for a punchline that never comes.
But one should recognize this line of attack for what it is. It's not targeted at voters. It's targeted at political reporters and their tendency to kick up a newscycle blathergasm without quite thinking things through. (Things like the definition of the word "hypocrisy.")
Good morning everyone and happy move-the-clocks-back-an-hour-so-I-can-sleep day! My name is Jason, and this will be your quickly typed liveblog of the political chat shows I have on TiVo. You know it was just a few hours after the Sunday shows ended last week that the entire political world went absolutely crazy with speculation and rumination and very-deep-thought-having over Herman Cain and the ladies who had accused him of sexual harassment, which helped everyone in the race because suddenly no one wanted to talk to them about their problems, but even Rick Perry making love with his hands to a bottle of syrup. Over in our weekly round-up, we came up with a graph that basically explains the entire week:
So, I am actually looking forward, a teensy bit, to today, because maybe someone will find something else to talk about. (Probably not, though.)
Anyway! You should as always feel free to chat it up with one another in the comments, or drop me a line, if you like. You can also follow me on Twitter if you like random microblogged thoughts. If not, don't do it! Real easy.
The liveblog takes time to write. If there is a delay, why not read Conor Friedersdorf's piece, "Stop Forcing Journalists to Conceal Their Views From the Public," which is part three in the story about that Occupy Wall Street sign that got a lady fired for having independent thought processes. Or, since someone has to have something smart to say about Herman Cain this week, here's Good's Cord Jefferson's piece about why people should stop propagating this one "hot new meme making its way around the internet": namely, calling Cain an "Uncle Tom."
And, as a reminder, there will be no liveblog next week, which is too bad because I'm sure next week is going to be the week that these Sunday shows become actually enjoyable to watch!
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Ron Paul is here, and we can all agree that the kindly old libertarian wizard from Middle Earth probably never sexually harassed anyone, so it's nice to see him today. Later, Representatives Heath "Incomplete" Shuler and Mike "Simpson" Simpson will be here to talk about how they want to sexually harass the budget. Then a panel will sexually harass one another, for our enjoyment/terror.
Ron Paul is Mr. 12%. He was on a hot streak of getting 12% in just about every poll I saw. It was uncanny! He's got 12% in both the polls Chris Wallace cites today! It's nuts. (Plus he apparently won the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday, which is different from the Iowa Straw Poll they had in August. Iowa, I guess, has a straw poll every few months. "Clem? Should I haul that old radiator to the dump?" "Don't reckon I know, Enid! Best gather up the family for another straw poll!" And that's how the manufacture of methamphetamine began. True story!
But how will Paul expand his support? Paul says he just needs to stick to his message, which he says grows more pertinent every day, with debts and government spending. He wants a trillion dollars cut from the government in his first year as President. Which you can see Congress doing, right?
Oh, okay, Chris Wallace clarifies, it was the Illinois Straw Poll that Paul won, not the Iowa one. I stand by my story of how meth was invented, though!
Wallace points out that the "bridge too far" between conservatives and Pail is his "perceived isolationism." Paul says that he understands that, but it's a false charge: he sees "isolationism" as a term that refers to trade -- and what Paul wants to do is end the militarism and shut down garrisons around the world, all of which contribute to our indebtedness. Paul is also against drone strikes. "It makes things worse...if you have one bad guy and you go after him...sometimes you miss, sometimes there's collateral damage, and every time we do that...this is why the people of Pakistan can't stand our guts." He goes on to say that every innocent person killed in this fashion probably "creates ten new people who hate our guts." Ron Paul has been worried about how our guts are perceived!
Ron Paul could give a crap about Herman Cain's sexual peccadilloes. "His allegations about supporting the federal reserve...those are legitimate." Paul says, "I don't like those distractions...there must have been a hundred stories about that."
But don't Cain's problems help Paul? Paul says that a lot of the ways in which the GOP race has remained in flux is helpful to him. "I think when people get to know what Herman stands for, that he's not for any cuts, and he's for adding this national sales tax -- yes, that helps me a lot."
Paul wants to cut one trillion dollars from the budget, balance it in three years, and restrict spending to 15.5% of GDP. The AEI says that will send the country back into a recession, but Paul disputes that. "Maybe we can create an environment where people can be investing again and building automobiles again." Automobiles? Sweetie, you need to dream a little bigger.
Hey, Ron Paul would cut 23% of the NIH budget and 38% of the CDC's budget, because he hasn't seen the movie CONTAGION, which I hear makes audiences want to spend tax money like crazy on sexxy epidemiologists.
Paul says that we need to be weaned off of the NIH and CDC because they are not "properly authorized functions" of the government. The R&D money, he says, is too often spent for political reasons than market-driven reasons. (I think that he doesn't realize that the government does a lot of the unsexy research and development that markets won't do, and that the grot work done by government scientists allows market-driven research and development to have a significant leg up on end product development, which is where all the sexy money is.
Would Ron Paul do anything to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? Paul says that his foreign policy would be to treat the country differently, and stop panicking at every bit of news that comes out of the region. He would not put sanctions on Iran, and "maybe offering friendship" would help. Paul says that Iran's threat has been "blown out of proportion," and that people just want to go to war with Iran, which he thinks would undermine our security and Israel's.
Will Paul run as a third party candidate? Paul says that he won't guarantee that he'll support the GOP nominee if that nominee won't stop the expansion of war, curb the Federal Reserve, deregulate business, and make substantial cuts to the budget. "It would defy everything I believe in" to support just anybody, he says, and a violation of the trust he's stoked among his ardent supporters. But he has no plan to run as a third party candidate, saying it makes no sense to do that. Wallace asks why. Paul says, "Because I don't want to do it."
Wallace: "I like that! I just don't want to do it!"
Ha! Okay. No one should say that Ron Paul is leaving a door open to run as an independent candidate!
Now here we have Heath Shuler and Mike Simpson to talk about their magical bipartisan ideas they had to cut spending and solve a problem that no one in America particularly wants them to solve, at least not until they've done something about the massive unemployment crisis happening in America.
But this is where we're at! There's a Super Committee, you see, and there's a Group of 100 that wants the Super Committee to "GO BIG" and become a Super Duper Committee. Why doesn't the Group of 100 just corner the Super Committee in the hallway and whale on them until they agree to "GO BIG?" For the same reason that no one on the Group of 100 doesn't just write up a budget cutting bill and sign their own damn name to it -- they are wusses. And it figures they'd be led by wuss quarterback Heath Shuler. So let's get into this exercise I like to call, "Somebody Else Has To Do Something About The Budget, Not Me Though, I Like Being Re-Elected!"
The Group of 100 sent the Super Committee a letter. And in that letter, they used the word "revenues," and that word is, among Republicans, like saying the word "tittyfart" in the middle of Mass. So is Mike Simpson serious? About the revenues? NOT REALLY -- he wants to lower tax rates and eliminate loopholes, it's just that he wouldn't make the loophole elimination revenue neutral. And I'll admit, that's good to hear. Like I've said before, revenue neutral tax reform is maybe the dumbest thing in the whole world. It is, as I've said before, like "cake-neutral baking." Hearing people talk, approvingly, of revenue-neutral baking, is like literally hearing the sound of humanity getting more stupid. You start wondering when you're going to start seeing the people in your neighborhood become quadrupeds, because, GAH, ANY DAY NOW, RIGHT?
What about the Dread Pirate Grover Norquist, who hates revenues, and his Orange Marmelade Ensmeared Sidekick John Boehner, who can't get votes for "revenues?" Simpson says that he signed the Norquist pledge, but he didn't think at the time that it was a "marriage agreement." OH BUT IT WAS. Grover Norquist expects you to remain gay married to hating taxes forever, or else you get a finger cut off like that smoking cessation program in that Steven King movie Cat's Eye.
Would Heath Shuler support a 3 to 1 spending cuts to revenues deal. Duh, of course. He, in particular, believes that ordinary Americans fetishize such a thing, because in his imagination, ordinary America is "the Washington Post editorial board."
Does everyone hate President Obama talking about restoring millionaire's tax rates to Clinton era levels? Shuler says that everyone should have more faith in the way the Group of 100 is interacting with the Super Committee. He'd rather, in fact, have the President oppose the Super Committee, because if he supports it, the GOP will freak out and go against it. (Shuler sees this as Obama's problem, and not some general sign of sociopathy among his fellows in the "91% of America Can't Hates You Like Feline AIDS" body of government.
Simpson says that it's not good enough for the Super Committee to simply perform its mandate and cut what it's tasked with cutting. They need to cut four times as much! If they don't, it's a failure. They've kicked the can down the road! But, no, there won't be a "Mike Simpson Cuts Four Trillion From The Budget Because He Hates Kicking The Can Down The Road Act of 2011," probably, because that would take political courage.
"The whole world is watching us," says Simpson. Yeah, in "disbelief" maybe! Remember, we were the country that almost destroyed the global economy because some nimrods wanted to make some sort of political psychodrama out of the debt ceiling!
"I know this sounds ridiculous," he says, "but we need to set aside our elections." It does sound ridiculous, Mike. Because you'd have to be daft to imagine you're actually risking your seat, here!
How many Republicans does Simpson think will go along with a plan to raise revenue? Simpson won't give a number. I have to imagine that in the end, he won't go along with it either. There will always be some dealbreaker.
Shuler says that the reason for the letter was to send a message to the Super Committee that says, "We have your back." "We can't wait to tell our unhappy constituents that our hands were tied by arcane procedures when we did away with the programs they like," is how that translates.
Panel time! Time to rescue this show from not having much discussion of Herman Cain's sexy lady problems. And who better to talk about our SEXX LAWWS than Paul Gigot, Bill Kristol, Juan Williams and Evan Bayh. (Well, Bayh, at the very least, can lend some perspective, considering he knows how it feels to be a whore.)
Gigot looks like he's desperately trying to keep from sharting himself.
So, what's up with the continued love for Herman Cain? Gigot says that the average GOP base voter doesn't like the media and just assumes that this is a big false witch hunt. That said, he doesn't understand why Cain didn't prepare for this eventuality. (HERE'S A HINT, PAUL: Herman Cain never intended himself to be a serious Presidential candidate, so of course he didn't care about making these disclosures.)
Bayh: "If I were a Republican strategist..." Ha! You kind of were/are! Anyway, Bayh makes the astoundingly prescient point that Republicans don't seem to like Romney, you know, NEWSFLASH.
Bill Kristol doesn't think that Cain's travails are much like Clarence Thomas' and that Cain is not and never was going to be the nominee. "The air was slowly going to go out of the Herman Cain bubble, regardless of these sexual harassment charges."
Williams decries those who have slandered Herman Cain for being a Tea Party token, which is admirable and a good criticism to levy. That's why I cited Cord Jefferson's piece above! But Williams goes on to say that "what worries me is that now, this is a way to drag him down." Huh? Okay, look, what happens as a result of these sexual harassment allegations has nothing to do with Cain being derided as a Tea Party token. These things happened in 1999, long before the man ran for President. And what's really dragging Cain down is the strange way he's responded to the disclosure. But this is something that happened a long time ago that Cain knew was part of his past. It represents a sunk cost that he'd have needed to surmount anyway -- not some new high-tech way of "getting" him.
Wallace says that he's observed the GOP base showing a willingness to cut Cain a lot of slack. Gigot says Cain is the guy for everyone who has "a repository of stuff they don't like about politics." That said, he doesn't think Cain's done a good job preparing to run for President.
Is Israel really considering a pre-emptive attack on Iran? Kristol says that he initially discounted it, but is now taking it seriously because Shimon Peres is saying they're thinking about it and he's not a warmonger. Kristol, of course, believes that it's the United States' responsibility to act, and not Israel's. Williams thinks that Israel should do it, and the U.S. will back them up. Gigot figures that all the chit-chat is intended to suss out whether or we'd seriously join Israel in a fight with Iran.
Then he goes on to criticize the response to that zany terror plot on the Saudi diplomat that involved some Iranian dude and Mexican cartels. "The administration says there would be consequences, and what were the consequences? We pulled entirely out of Iraq, which helps Iran." Someone please staple the Status Of Forces Agreement to Paul Gigot's face! We were bound by that agreement, Paul! The actions taken under that agreement live in an entirely different world than the one in which the conversation you are having is being held.
That is some high-grade pundit misleading for you!
Bayh says that it's important to determine whether or not Iran is a normal, but belligerent nation-state or a "suicidal theocracy," and that determination should guide our policy. Wallace though, asks, Bayh if he could weigh in as a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Bayh says that he favors the notion that Iran is NOT a "suicidal theocracy," but can Israel take that risk?! What happened to assessments shaping our foreign policy decisions? Is the Bayh Doctrine, "Those Dudes Probably Won't Kill Everyone, But EFF IT, If You Need To Wipe Them Off The Planet I Guess That's What We're Gonna Do, High-Ho Silver!" No, it's "Uhh, Maybe We Should Use a Little Force." Have a teensy little war.
In Afghanistan, Kristol says that if we can keep 68,000 troops there through the end of 2013, everything will be perfect from now on!
Kristol also says that Ryan Crocker deserves a "lavish retirement package" for all the work he's done in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is weird, because both operations look like big gaping cock-ups to me! (Like I said weeks ago, go read Peter Van Buren's We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People!)
THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW
Everyone should probably tune in to coverage of the NYC Marathon right now. I am instead going to watch Jim Cramer, Kathleen Parker, Gloria Borger and our own Howard Fineman talk about Mitt Romney and Herman Cain with a Chris Matthews that sounds like he's getting strep throat or something.
Matthews, citing the recent Nate Silver analysis, notes that Obama's re-election hopes, if he draws Romney as an opponent (SPOILER ALERT: He will) hang mainly on the performance of the economy. Normally I say, well, duh, but this is a good faith effort to advance some very important structural fundamentals into the political discussion, so I'll go with it. Silver reckons that if there's no GDP growth in 2012, Obama has a 17% chance of beating Romney. If there's 4% GDP growth in 2012, Obama has a 60% chance of winning against Romney. Anyone out there think we'll have 4% GDP growth next year? If so: how?
Jim Cramer says that he thinks growth has plateaued already, which makes me slightly more optimistic, because he's so often wrong. Parker says that all "Obama can do to get his base motivated again is declare war on the privileged." "But it has to be delicate!" says Borger. VERY DELICATE CLASS WARFARE. It can't be "full-frontal class warfare," she says. Obama should definitely not get "OCCUPY WALL STREET" tattooed on his wang, and make that his opening statement in next fall's Presidential debates. "I'd like to welcome y'all to the debate tonight by whipping this out and declaring FULL FRONTAL CLASS WARFARE! See that Mitt? Wanna heft that for weight?"
Fineman says that Obama is going to have to run as an Obama the voters don't know. Gone is the Obama with "the big stimulus packages." OKAY, I CAN'T BE THE ONLY PERSON PICKING UP ON THESE DICK JOKES. (And I'm not: Jim Cramer is making his, "I am thinking about penises" face.) On substance, Howard points out that Steve Beshear is winning his race in Kentucky by supporting business and directing the populist rage at the GOP. There's a connection to be made there -- Obama's been awfully good to business, at least in every material way possible. They are, after all, enjoying record profits! But what Obama has done that Beshear has not is that he's occasionally said mildly unkind things about Wall Street and what not, and remember, CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE...very hypersensitive people who can't take criticism and have all sorts of feelings about it, apparently.
Also, I bet Obama would love to draw the GOP 2012 equivalent of Beshear's opponent, who seems to be just terrible.
Does the average person admire Mitt Romney for his Bain Capital daze? Cramer says that attitudes have shifted and the answer these days is no and then he has some sort of spasm and all I can make out are the words "Occupy Wall Street" and "high-fives." He does say that Romney needs to stop using the term "rationalize the workforce" as a stand in for "firing a bunch of people."
Parker says, "Romney, fundamentally is a technocrat." And also possibly a robot that wants to impress Isaac Asimov and take him to prom on Jupiter.
Matthews: "But it's not credible or authentic for Obama to say he doesn't like successful people."
Borger: "He can't say that! He cannot say that!"
That basically means that he is allowed to criticize Wall Street though! Let's remember that the financial industry is primarily composed of insolvent banks that destroyed the economy and needed to leach the lifeblood out of ordinary American citizens to survive. No success stories there! Just titanic, embarrassing failures!
Chris Matthews' friends believe that the "turnaround CEO" beats the "populist" in 2012. But it sounds to me that what Borger, who agrees with this, just believes that economic fundamentals dictate voter behavior. Which is correct! But it doesn't mean that people are going to be thinking of Romney as a "turnaround CEO" and Obama as a "populist." It means, simply, that everyone's doing a lot worse in 2012, and there's so few ways to register your anger, and voting is one, and it sucks to be the incumbent President, baby, but that's life.
Fineman says that Obama can be pragmatically populist and run as a no-nonsense job creator and not attack successful people -- instead, he attacks the political system. (Again: if you punch someone from Citibank in the face today, it cannot be argued that you punched a "successful person." I'll remind you that it's still illegal to punch stultifying failures in the face, however.)
Cramer says that he doesn't think America wants a "big rich guy running this country." That's too bad, because Romney is a big rich guy who wants to run the country by taking the job away from Barack Obama who is the big rich guy who currently runs the country.
Parker thinks that voters will flock to the candidate who is the most optimistic and positive. (There won't be one.) Borger says -- and this is a real thing she said, on the teevee -- "I think it's going to be Republicans...[pausing to think]...will be voting...[pausing to think]...against Barack Obama." OH, YOU THINK? Jesus, Gloria! Be careful on that dizzyingly high limb you've climbed out on!
Howard says, "I think Nate Silver is brilliant..." and I'm just going to assume he finished that sentence by saying, "But for my money, you really can't beat the Huffington Post's own Mark Blumenthal!"
Now we've hit the part of the show where Chris Matthews rolls his favorite old clips from Saturday Night Live.
"Darrell Hammond..." says Matthews, kicking to commercial. Here's a more current clip to enjoy:
The field of not-Romneys has withered, says Matthews. Howard notes that the harshness of the camera has done most of the dirty work, chasing Romney's opponents from the field, and the debates have been a big part of the invisible primary. I'd add that Romney has been smart to stay out of the glare of the spotlight. Those instincts have proven to be very smart. I'd also point out that television has become a double-edged sword this year. Michele Bachmann needs to go on teevee regularly to get her message out in a cost-effective manner. It saves her money. But it also highlights her every flaw. Perry was probably at the cusp of a good decision to get out of those debates and just spend his money on retail politics. But peer pressure won out, and now he's going to back on that stage, undermining his efforts. It's a brutal cycle!
Fineman: "It's without the texting, like on Dancing With The Stars, but sort of the same concept." Actually, there's probably a lot of texting. But there's no paso dobles!
Can Newt win, asks Matthews? Borger says he's done well at the debates. Fineman just says no. He also points out that there will be, like, a kabillion debates between now and January 3rd.
Things that Chris Matthews does not know include: we're going to be the largest exporter of energy in the world in four or five years (Cramer), in the next several weeks it will be "interesting to watch what people like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee do" (Parker...if you say so!), Newt Gingrich will have a boomlet because of Cain's problems (Borger...along with every pundit everywhere, I mean, COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE SOMETHING MATTHEWS DIDN'T KNOW?), and university presidents are very worried about teaching hospitals, because the absence of a Super Committee deal could cause the decimation of that kind of research and training (Fineman).
Chris Matthews wants to know if the attitude that America is just one of many great countries instead of the Greatest In The Whole World "pessimism or realism?" Cramer says that China has money, and people admire money. (Uhm...people who admire China's money should try living in China, because I bet that totally resets what you admire in life.) Parker says it's pessimism and realism. She stole the hack answer! Gloria Borger says it's pessimism AND China! Whoa-ho! And Fineman notes that the youngs in America are capable of using the internet to learn about the world, and also TRAVEL to other parts of the world, and they return with a more realistic idea of what's going on.
OKAY! Let's watch Meet the Press!
MEET THE PRESS
Okay, now we're finally going to get into Herman Cain's violations of our Sexx Lawws.
And then we'll get to talking about the economy and how it affects...President Obama! MEET THE PRESS is America's leading news source for all the scuttlebutt about how a massive economic downturn only affected this one dude. Oh, and they booked Bill Richardson to talk about it? Awesome. Trenchant. Current. Cutting edge. As in: "I would like something with a cutting edge and electric current to dig an awesome trench in my brain, so I don't have to watch that!"
Plus Jon Huntsman is here! It's the sum of all relevancies!
And a panel discussion on Herman Cain's sexxy sexx problems with the sexxiest panel in seXXXland: Chris Matthews, Maggie Haberman, Kim Strassel, and Alex Castellanos.
Cain's favorable rating have fallen NINE -- that is, I repeat, NINE...NINE -- points in the week since everyone found out about some stuff that he was alleged to have done in the '90's. So Cain wants to get back on message. So much so that he's now telling reporters that HE IS GOING BACK ON MESSAGE. Which is not something that you are supposed to do! You don't say what you are going to do, Herman, you just do it. (Though maybe that's what got you in all this trouble in the first place, huh?)
Haley Barbour and Bill Richardson will explain all of this to us! How does Cain get back on message? Barbour says it's hard when everyone wants to talk about it. "When it's bad news, get it out fast...bad news isn't like fine wine, it doesn't get better with age." Good point: I was thinking about how Herman Cain's sex problems are like Beaujolais Nouveau.
He does not think it's "fatal," but people need to "know what the facts are." The sexxy, sexxy facts.
Does Richardson think it's fatal? "I don't have all the facts in this case," he says. The sexxy facts. But the extreme right wing of the Republican party has gone crazy on women, criminalizing things like IVF and birth control, so "what we're seeing is a huge assault on women's rights in the Republican party" and this "makes it hard for GOP nominees to be a centrist."
Barbour says that his discomfort with some of those laws stemmed from the fact that ectopic pregnancies happen and the life of the mother is at risk in those situations, but he still believes that life begins at conception and is comfortable with the root "ideas" of the laws if not the wording.
Barbour says that "there is a smell of Clarence Thomas" in the persecutions of Cain, though, as Gregory points out, there are key distinctions: one, the sexual harassment allegations are settled matters and two, it's not the accusers driving the issue out into the open.
Gregory changes the subject to Cain's minor China gaffe. I'm going to predict that Dave Gregory isn't smart enough to have read of be aware of Daniel Bice's scoop on the shady way Cain's campaign has been funded, and as a result, the most substantive news story about Cain won't get any airtime on this show, where people "meet" the "press." We'll see, though!
Instead, we're going to talk about that time Gregory totally nailed Cain for saying things about an electrified border fence, which he said he was joking about. Richardson takes a long pause, and then says it's "totally irresponsible" position to joke about immigration, and maybe voters in the West will punish the GOP. He also says that Obama was more foreign policy successes than the rest of the GOP field, and that it's crazy that Herman Cain doesn't know that China has nukes. This would all be relevant if Cain was going to end up the nominee, but he probably won't.
Well, Gregory would love to continue this mostly aimless conversation between two partisan hacks lobbing partisan hack loogies at the teevee, but now he must call a halt to it, because he has a very important interview with Jon Huntsman, who has CONSISTENTLY earned between zero and one percent in the polls. So he's kind of a big deal.
"I have to ask you about Herman Cain," says Gregory. Ha! No you don't! That's the amazing thing about being the host of a journalism show! You can decide for yourself what is important to ask! You don't have to come in with preconceived ideas about what is necessary or not necessary. You can make a judgment that there are things that people NEED to know, that trump the things you THINK people WANT to know. So you don't actually have to ask Jon Huntsman about Herman Cain. In fact, he probably would prefer you ask him about ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. Butter tarts! V8 engines! The new Maroon 5 album.
Anyway, I don't have to liveblog Huntsman's answer to this question! Though I already sort of did. I also will not liveblog the TWO FOLLOWUP QUESTION ON THIS SUBJECT THAT GREGORY ASKED HUNTSMAN.
Now David Gregory is asking Huntsman a FOURTH question on Herman Cain, but it's at least about the whole China thing. Huntsman says there needs to be a "baseline of foreign policy knowledge" and in terms of the economy and global security, "we have to figure out a way to make a relationship" between the U.S. and China "work...and it would be nice to have a President who has a headstart on that."
Now Gregory will ask Huntsman about Mitt Romney. Huntsman says that "there is an issue on the flip-flops with regard to trust" and it's a problem whether you are "running for the White House or the Waffle House." Actually, I want my Waffle House managers to be gifted in the art of flipping and flopping, along with scattering, smothering, and covering! That's okay with me.
I'd love to hear Huntsman argue in favor of Huntsman, but so far Gregory's questions are all about other Presidential candidates, so Huntsman has to argue against other people.
Now Gregory is going to ask about Mormonism. I guess Gregory came into this knowing that Jon Huntsman was a 1) Mormon who had 2) been to China and who is 3) a totally different person than Herman Cain.
The question: "Do you think there will be a Mormon President, and when?" Pro-tip for David Gregory: when you can predict the answer a subject will give to a question, DO NOT ASK IT. What does he think Huntsman is going to say? "No, it's not going to happen. I don't know why I'm deluding myself!"
Huntsman, predictably says that of course there will be a Mormon president and it may happen soon and it's a "nonsense issue" to bring up when everyone is out of work. And yep, that's how that goes. I suppose it would have been very newsy if Huntsman had responded to that question by answering, "Hmmm. Now that you bring it up David, I want everyone to know that I am officially now a worshipper of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs. I will offer him my body this weekend at the Temple at Xochicalco. My daughters will be live-tweeting that, so tune in!"
Huntsman doesn't think the GOP should "run away from mainstream science." So, you know, more new ground broken in the Huntsman campaign! He goes on to say that everyone on the debate stage with him was in favor of default in the debt ceiling debate. First, I don't think that's true, I believe Rick Santorum said that was nuts. Second, Huntsman VERY MUCH DID stand on that stage and raised his hand in objection to a debt ceiling deal that featured $10 in cuts to every $1 raised in revenue because -- like an extremist! -- he was against even that much revenue.
All David Gregory wants Huntsman to do is say that Mitt Romney would not beat Obama. Though he would support him! So, these are some important facts we've learned about Huntsman.
Now David Gregory wants to ask Huntsman about Sarah Palin! Who isn't a figure in the 2012 election at all! But Huntsman introduced her at the Republican Convention in 2008. Huntsman said he was asked to do so because he was one of the few people that "actually knew her." But this is all beside the point! WHY IS THERE A NEWS SHOW ASKING JON HUNTSMAN ABOUT SARAH PALIN IN 2008?
Now Gregory is relating some jokes THE ONION wrote about Huntsman's campaign to Huntsman. Here's the question: "Sometimes satire has a ring of truth to it...are you a moderate?" You know, it would be just nuts to examine Huntsman's career and his voting record and make your own conclusions. Better to ask him yourself, based upon the "ring of truth" suggested by a fake newspaper blurb.
Huntsman says that as governor he explored the issue of mandates in health care reform, but ultimately went with another program that didn't feature mandates, and again, this is something that's long been known about Huntsman, certainly by the people who watch this show.
I don't think David Gregory understands some of the things he's saying. Here he is, trying to get Huntsman to answer a question, "If you had been the deciding vote, would you have voted against TARP?"
JON HUNTSMAN: You can't go back and relive those days. You can say that we've learned a lot of lessons --
DAVID GREGORY: No, but you can --
HUNTSMAN: -- from those days.
DAVID GREGORY: Governor, this is important, and I've asked other candidates this. It's easy now to look back and say, "Oh, I wouldn't have supported that." If you were the deciding vote under those circumstances, when you have major figures saying, "We could risk the entire U.S. economy if we don't bail out the banks," you would have said, "Wrong thing to do, I'm going to vote against it"?
That's the thing! IT IS EASY for someone to say, "I would have done things differently if I'd been in charge way back then." If you BELIEVE THAT, David, then why are posing just such a question?
Huntsman says that "life begins at fertilization" goes too far, and he still supports abortion rights in the case of rape and incest. That's basically as "moderate" as you get from Huntsman, and by the way, it's NOT A MODERATE POSITION. It's just that the Overton Window has moved considerably into bonkersauce territory as of late.
Huntsman still thinks he can win New Hampshire, which is adorable. He does acknowledge that if he doesn't win New Hampshire, "that's it."
Now David Gregory is showing Jon Huntsman his daughters' video, spoofing the Mark Block smoking video. This is all very of-the-moment.
Okay, panel time! What about all this Herman Cain stuff? It's crazy, right? Look at the dumb, non-serious candidate stumble! Maggie Haberman says that the Cain campaign is mailing the code of journalistic ethics to people at Politico, which is hilarious. He's also mulling suing Politico, and really, that's so smart -- sue a bunch of people with unlimited newsgathering and news publishing bandwidth, in a way that ensures every sordid detail of your life gets disclosed. Cain is a genius.
Strassel: "Cain seems to be prolonging this, and making it worse." Yes. It's been like news-cycle Cialis.
GREGORY: "I mean, I think there's like an alternative universe thing that they're doing here, which is to say, "Hey, not only are we not going to talk about the substance of this, not only are my answers going to be all over the place in the course of a week, but what this is really about is the press. What it's really about is official Washington. I'm an outsider."
Ha, yes. That is real "alternate universe stuff," provided you just joined out universe today.
Castellanos thinks that the anti-media campaign is smart and could immunize Cain and allow him to win the Iowa caucus and maybe go on to become the President. Which is the last thing Herman Cain actually wants to happen!
Chris Matthews: "I think doubled-down is the right phrase." Actually, talk to a blackjack player, Chris, because it's almost NEVER the right phrase when any of you guys use it in a political context.
The chyron on the screen reads, "The Herman Cain Controversy." I hope that sepia filters are still around when Ken Burns does his twelve part documentary on this.
Maggie Haberman is pretty sure that Mitt Romney is doing a better job not talking about Herman Cain's sexual harassment allegations than Cain is doing talking about them.
CASTELLANOS: "Mitt Romney's about to get two months of brutal television. You know, some of Mitt Romney's flexibility and uncertainty's built into his stock price, but America's never seen $20 million worth of flip-flop ads. If he collapses, any of these Republican candidates could end up as the nominee because then you're going to be picking from a basket of fruit in which none of them are really ripe."
Brutal television and fruitbaskets. Yep, that sounds like what every week of my life, studying political coverage, is like.
Now we've reached the part of the show in which the massive unemployment crisis in America leads David Gregory to ruminate on the book Chris Matthews just wrote about Jack Kennedy. YES. THAT IS LITERALLY WHERE THE DISCUSSION IS GOING.
"Who is Barack Obama's Bobby Kennedy?" Matthews asks. Right. I mean, why hasn't the Council of Economic Advisers figured this out yet?
"Look at the new Bill Clinton book," Gregory advises. I'm not sure if he's saying, "Oh, hello my fellow Beltway toffs, have you read the new Bill Clinton book?" or, "Attention desperately poor people, this new Clinton book holds the answer to you being able to feed yourself as everything goes to shit," but I have my guesses.
Finally we get to the part of this show where David Gregory remembers some things he did a few minutes ago, and today he remembers that a few minutes ago, he was interviewing Jon Huntsman about Mitt Romney. Strassel observes that Mitt Romney is often tagged as a flip-flopper. This is all amazing analysis. A lot of risk-taking. No one's just out there saying plainly obvious things, no no!
OK, that's another week in the life of someone who watches these shows and writes a blog post about them. I'll be back November 20th. I hope all of you have a lovely fortnight!
Jack Abramoff is best known as a disgraced former lobbyist who was convicted in 2006 on charges related to a massive public corruption probe that resulted in the convictions of White House officials, a U.S. representative, and a motley crew of DC lobbyists and Congressional aides. Dan Snyder is best known as the vexatious litigant who currently runs the Washington Redskins ... into the ground on a near-weekly basis. As it happens, the two men happened to know one another. Abramoff had a luxe suite at Washington's FedEx Field, and, as his book -- "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist" -- describes, this provided the occasion for the two men to correspond.
Over at TPM, Ryan J. Reilly excerpts the portion concerning the relationship between Snyder and Abramoff. By the end of it, you will hold one of the two in slightly higher regard!
I was one of his larger customers, but I had a number of frustrations with the amenities of the facility. Since my primary purpose was to entertain clients and the powerful people who could impact their lives, and since I was spending a fortune, I didn’t hold back on my critique. One of my main suggestions was that he convert the choice location the press commanded close to the field to prime suites and catapult the media to the upper reaches of the stadium. The final item on my long list of suggestions was that he should try to change the offensive name of the team.
Although the Choctaws had long ago assured me that a team named the Redskins didn’t bother them, I figured I would take a shot a trying to undo this insult. In my letter to Snyder, I asked him how we would feel if the New York team were called the Jew Boys, or worse. Moreover, I knew that all Native Americans resented the use of the feathered headdress in the team band’s uniform. I asked how he would feel if the New York Jew Boys band had a uniform of black hats and prayer shawls. I further argued that, were he to make this change now, he would immediately establish himself as a moral leader in our nation’s capital, and garner the respect of those who were likely to look askance on him.
Abramoff says that Snyder was happy to address his concerns:
He was kind a gracious, not the imperious brat the media had portrayed him to be. He said that he sympathized with my points about the team’s name, but he had been a Redskins fan since he was a kid, and he couldn’t bring himself to change it.
Abramoff writes, "A few seasons later, I was given first choice of the new suites in the former press section and our expenditures at Fed Ex Field grew exponentially," so, it's not like anyone in this story is a paragon of standing on principle. Nevertheless, it just goes to show that pretty much anyone can be held in comparatively higher esteem to Dan Snyder.
Hey, y'all, I know that we've just about covered all the bases in terms of who has launched this terrible smear campaign against Herman Cain in which facts that have been affirmed by the Cain campaign itself diabolically ended up on the internet. If I run down the list of suspects I have Politico, "unnamed sources," the White House, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and "is sexual harassment even a real thing?" But has anyone thought that Rahm Emanuel might be behind it? I thought he was behind everything!
According to a source who is friends with the Cain campaign, not only is the Rick Perry campaign involved but also the Mayor of Chicago and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is likely involved with the sexual harassment accuser attacks. A friend of the Cain campaign believes a National Restaurant Association (NRA) employee out of the Chicago office leaked the story to the Perry campaign via information and influence from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office.
I mean, did anyone consider that maybe this "Get Herman" campaign is actually the product of an awesome team-up between the Rick Perry campaign and Rahm Emanuel? The conspiracy goes all the way to the side.
Also, "a source who is friends with the Cain campaign?" Love this, Washington Times. All I feel is love for you. I just adore the way this source is just friends, generically, with the entire Cain campaign.
"Not only is the suggestion baseless and completely false, it is totally absurd," said Chris Mather, Emanuel's communications director, in a statement shared with POLITICO.
I don't know, this random anonymous person who is BFF with the entire campaign must be somewhat credible. How else would have this story have ended up being "hyped heavily by the Drudge Report," I ask you?
Huffington Post | Jason Linkins | November 18, 2011 6:35 PM ET