Bikini Politics

Simple Answers

Reading Maureen Dowd this morning it seemed like she was in the throes of a deep love-hate fest with Sarah Palin.  Palin had Dowd so tied up in knots, she turned poor Dowd into a parody of herself. 

Meanwhile everyone looks for the deeper story-- is she pregnant? When will the shoe drop? What big scandal or dark evil genius plan for 2012 lurks?

This all seems a bit overwrought.  As Adam Nagourney points out, there may be no big scandal or evil genius plan.  Just mounting bills and an opportunity to pay them, while perhaps protecting her family from what the French would call "le media shitstorm" that follows them. 

Well played, Mr. Nagourney.  Read the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/41DZJ

2009-05-18T19:14:24Z

Good Manners.

My mother always said, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.  She also said, dance with the one who brung ya.

Therefore thinking of my mother today as Senator Specter switches parties, I say the only nice thing I can think: Senator Specter.  A man who can count to 60...

Above: Sen. Specter, Counting to 60 using Both Hands and his Eyeglasses.

Right-Wing Guerrillas-- in Cambridge??

Right-Wing Guerrillas-- in Cambridge??

Go Sox!

Creeping Socialism Watch: Red Alert

Pun absolutely intended.

Senator Claire McCaskill has called Wall Street CEOs "idiots," and following the leadership of President Obama when he admonished Wall Street for paying performance bonuses, proposed capping Wall Street total compensation at $400,000. The amount is the same as the President's salary.

Senator McCaskill originally lobbied in the Senate for raising the minimum wage.  Curious that she's now taking a deeply inconsistent position.  Although I applaud Senator McCaskill for pledging not to use earmarks, that's about the only thing I can find to agree with her about right now. 

This level of regulatory intervention in corporate affairs is more than a little sinister, and deeply inappropriate.  Even if Senator McCaskill think wall street tycoons are "idiots" does she really think that replacing their judgment with the judgment of the House and Senate will lead to greater financial probity?  If anyone is a poor manager of funds-- it's Congress. See, for example: the national debt, pork barrel spending, and the failure to understand that one cannot keep paying social security to more and more recipients with fewer and fewer people paying into the system.

Anyone else still think that the bloated bailout is not the first dangerous step down the slippery socialist slope?  And can anyone say slippery socialist slope six times fast?

1981, Meet 2009

I'm sure I'm not the only one who heard echoes of Reagan's first inaugural address in President Obama's speech today.  Describing America as a "beacon," referring back to Washington, listing the hallowed battlegrounds where American blood was spilled.  As one who promises us a sea change takes his seat, it is fitting and wise to look back at the words of one who delivered on that promise.  Read all of Reagan's words here, but pay particular attention to this part:

"This administration's objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. ...With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

... 

It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.

...

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."

Wise words indeed.  As the federal regulatory structure is poised to take a seat on the governing boards of nearly our entire financial industry, and is poised to buffer failing sectors of our economy while failing to create a competitive posture for the future, perhaps our representatives in Congress can have the confidence to understand when helping out doesn't mean bailing out.

Godspeed, and Thank you.

I'm still glad President Bush won twice.  Christopher Hitchens puts it quite nicely:

"We are never invited to ask ourselves what would have happened if the Democrats had been in power that fall. But it might be worth speculating for a second. ... Given that precedent and multiplying it for the sake of proportion, I think we can be pretty sure that wiretapping and water-boarding would have become household words, perhaps even more quickly than they did, and that we might even have heard a few more liberal defenses of the practice. ... There would have been a nasty prison somewhere or a lot of prisoners un-taken on the battlefield, you can depend on that. ...We might have avoided the Iraq war, even though both Bill Clinton and Al Gore had repeatedly and publicly said that another and conclusive round with Saddam Hussein was, given his flagrant defiance of all the relevant U.N. resolutions, unavoidably in our future. And the inconvenient downside to avoiding the Iraq intervention is that a choke point of the world economy would still be controlled by a psychopathic crime family that kept a staff of WMD experts on hand and that paid for jihadist suicide bombers around the region. ... I think it's a certainty that historians will not conclude that the removal of Saddam Hussein was something that the international community ought to have postponed any further. (Indeed, if there is a disgrace, it is that previous administrations left the responsibility undischarged.) ... It's just that there's an element of hubris in all this current hope-mongering and that I am beginning to be a little bit afraid to think of what Wednesday morning will feel like."

Read the whole thing here.

The Sexy

Today's New York Times coverage of the report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force is disturbing on several levels.

The article, by Brad Stone, reports that the study found that online bullying between teens is a much more serious threat than sexual predation by adults.  This finding does not mean that the threat to teens from sexual predators is not real, and it does not mean it's not serious-- it means its not the most serious threat to children's safety.

Upon identification of this serious threat to child safety, how did state attorneys general respond?  Puzzlingly, to say the least-- Mr. Blumenthal of Connecticut resorted to suggesting a divide between "statistical" facts and "reality"... which is certainly a funny joke. If he were joking.

Blumenthal and others in the article went on to affirm their commitment to fighting solicitation of children online.  That's right-- they recommitted themselves to solving the less-pervasive problem.  The article did not include any position by those quoted on the problem of bullying.  This story, and the attorneys general quoted therein, focused on the "sexy" problem-- the problem of child sexual exploitation-- rather than the pervasive problem.  This is like setting a broken leg and failing to treat cancer.

Children bullying one another, like child sexual solicitation, can lead to tragic violence and life-altering harm.  We need to solve the pervasive problems in our society-- not just the ones featured on "to catch a predator."