“Wake Up” — Little Susie [link repaired] September 29, 2012March 27, 2017 But first . . . DAVID BROOKS ON CONSERVATISM Agree with him or not, David Brooks is a thoughtful conservative. He would not sit well with Joe the Plumber. An elitist, an intellectual — all that bad stuff. He concludes his latest column: . . . Some people blame bad campaign managers for Romney’s underperforming campaign, but the problem is deeper. Conservatism has lost the balance between economic and traditional conservatism. The Republican Party has abandoned half of its intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens. HERE’S WHAT OBAMA AND ROMNEY WOULD PAY UNDER THEIR TAX PLANS. AND WHAT YOU WOULD. Interested? Ezra Klein does the math. Under Romney’s plan, Romney would pay millions less, the typical family would pay a thousand less (and even so, somehow, with everyone paying less, we are supposed to believe the deficit would shrink). Under Obama’s plan, Romney would pay millions more, the typical family would see no change (and the deficit really would shrink). WELCOME TO 1936 In this 60-second clip, FDR speaks of the opposition party’s “smooth evasion.” Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. (Don’t hate me for knowing six phrases in French.) “WAKE UP” — LITTLE SUSIE And finally, for your weekend’s entertainment, a tale. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it begins (to the cadence, roughly, of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”) . . . In the silvery moonlight that bathes every town, the people lie dreaming — so safe and so sound. They’re warm in their beds, snuggled up in their sheets. But four years before, they were out in the streets. Now, it’s as if they don’t know what’s at stake. All except one girl, wide-eyed and awake. This, in three-and-a-half minutes, is the story of that one wide-eyed little girl . . .
“Wake Up” — Little Susie September 28, 2012September 29, 2012 But first . . . DAVID BROOKS ON CONSERVATISM Agree with him or not, David Brooks is a thoughtful conservative. He would not sit well with Joe the Plumber. An elitist, an intellectual — all that bad stuff. He concludes his latest column: . . . Some people blame bad campaign managers for Romney’s underperforming campaign, but the problem is deeper. Conservatism has lost the balance between economic and traditional conservatism. The Republican Party has abandoned half of its intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens. HERE’S WHAT OBAMA AND ROMNEY WOULD PAY UNDER THEIR TAX PLANS. AND WHAT YOU WOULD. Interested? Ezra Klein does the math. Under Romney’s plan, Romney would pay millions less, the typical family would pay a thousand less (and even so, somehow, with everyone paying less, we are supposed to believe the deficit would shrink). Under Obama’s plan, Romney would pay millions more, the typical family would see no change (and the deficit really would shrink). WELCOME TO 1936 In this 60-second clip, FDR speaks of the opposition party’s “smooth evasion.” Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. (Don’t hate me for knowing six phrases in French.) “WAKE UP” — LITTLE SUSIE And finally, for your weekend’s entertainment, a tale. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it begins (to the cadence, roughly, of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”) . . . In the silvery moonlight that bathes every town, the people lie dreaming — so safe and so sound. They’re warm in their beds, snuggled up in their sheets. But four years before, they were out in the streets. Now, it’s as if they don’t know what’s at stake. All except one girl, wide-eyed and awake. This, in three-and-a-half minutes, is the story of that one wide-eyed little girl . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4CsCuMcSPs
Mitt’s Pre-Existing Condition September 27, 2012September 27, 2012 MITT’S HEALTH CARE DECEPTION He says he’d keep the popular parts of Obamacare, like covering people with pre-existing conditions, but in fact he would not. Read it here. VIRGINIA Chuck McLean: “I have responded to almost all of your requests to send more money to Obama, based on my fragile returns from stocks that you have recommended over the years. Now it is time for payback. . . . I live in a battleground state, Virginia, and for your readers who don’t, you can’t imagine the deluge of political ads that we have had. I am watching the Orioles game right now, and two of the three ads between innings were from Romney. We must keep Virginia firmly in the purple column (blue is asking for way too much). . . . First of all, I want your readers to send money to Wayne Powell. He is running against Eric Cantor. Do I think he can actually win? It is an uphill battle – but, he has been upbeat, he is clearly more qualified in every single way to represent his district in Virginia, and I can promise you that he is not phoning it in. C-Span will be carrying his debate against Cantor live at 7 PM next Monday, October 1. Do you believe in miracles? I try to. I can’t send Wayne anymore money, and it is killing me. I hope your readers can step up. . . . Second, we cannot allow the R’s to take the senate. The contest in Virginia between Tim Kaine and George Allen is very, very close. This is a D seat, being vacated by Jim Webb, and we simply cannot allow Allen to take it. Step up, folks.” FLORIDA Juan: “BeReadyToVote.org lets Florida voters check their voter registration information as well as request an absentee ballot. Expect very long lines for voting in Florida (vote absentee!) since the legislature has placed 11 very complicated constitutional amendments that will make the ballots very long. (Vote NO on all the amendments, vote YES on retaining all the Supreme Court Justices; Vote Democrat from Obama down the line).”
Inner Turmoil and Outer Space September 26, 2012September 25, 2012 ANTHONY GRIFFITH’S STORY I was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson twice, in 1978. The first time I did well but should have unbuttoned my jacket. The second time my jacket was unbuttoned but so, too, was my brain. Stories for another time. Stand-up comic Anthony Griffith was on the Tonight Show three times, in 1990. He “killed” each time. His Tonight Show story was rather different from mine and not what you’d expect. If you have 9 minutes for something not even a little bit funny — watch this. And let me know, by the way, whether you think we should roll back the expansion of health insurance to more kids. ONE ASTRONAUT’S TAKE Tom Stolze: “For this alone I would vote Obama:” Obama’s Space Vision by Rusty Schweickart [Schweickart, the Apollo 9 lunar module pilot, is the former chairman of the California Energy Commission and an aerospace executive.] The U.S. space industry, spawned by NASA’s 0.5 percent of the federal budget, has been a critical part of our economy for more than 50 years with aerospace being the largest positive contributor to our nation’s trade balance. But the future of space industry and the local economies that support it are in jeopardy. For the United States to maintain its world leadership in aerospace technology, we must continue a robust and challenging program of space exploration and we must invest in the people and communities who create this engine of growth. Future U.S. leadership in space requires a foundation of sustained technology advances. Under President Barack Obama’s leadership, America has begun a new and exciting phase of human space exploration. President Obama has tasked NASA with an ambitious vision for human spaceflight that will take American astronauts where we have never been before; sending our explorers safely into deep space for the first time — with the ultimate goal being a human mission to Mars. . . . As President Obama visits the Space Coast today, we are witnessing how his policies are bringing jobs to the area and new hope to the space community. Florida’s Space Coast has become not just the launching pad for commercial rockets to the station and America’s launch pad for the largest heavy-lift rocket that NASA has ever built, but is now also a launching pad for new businesses and jobs of the future.In light of this leadership, Mitt Romney’s candidacy presents a stark choice. . . . When it comes to NASA and space exploration, it is clear Romney is completely wrong on the issue and out of touch with the space industry. While Romney hasn’t presented a space plan, he has been unwavering in his support of a budget plan that slashes domestic investments and could require deep cuts in America’s space program. . . . This is exactly why it is so essential we continue the new course President Obama has laid out, revitalizing NASA and its mission —not just with dollars, but also with clear goals and a larger purpose.
This Better Be Some Succulent Chicken September 25, 2012 EASY SAVINGS So I went to buy these really comfortable shoes on-line for a horrifying $90 a pair (Charles would have been horrified at the thought of such cheap shoes) . . . with free shipping because I was buying two . . . but just before I completed my purchase, seeing the APPLY PROMO CODE field on the checkout page, I Googled FLORSCHEIM PROMO CODE, clicked the first entry that appeared, cut and pasted the code into the field, and completed the purchase for 25% off, saving $45. Elapsed time for the Google detour-cut-and-paste? Maybe 30 seconds. If I could make $45 every 30 seconds for a year, I’d have an extra $47 million. Moral: any time you’re about to make a significant on-line purchase, take a few seconds to check for a promo code. CHRIS HAYES ON $50,000-A-PLATE DINNERS So you have to watch this video essay on the corrosive effect of political fundraisers. Really. You have to. One distinction I would make between that Chris Hayes does not: at ours, the donors want their taxes raised (and campaign contribution limits lowered); at theirs, the donors want their taxes lowered (and campaign contribution limits infinite). Also, our top ask is a bargain — only $40,000 a plate. So their dinners and our dinners are really not the same. But still. Watch this powerful piece.
Two Clips and a Snip September 24, 2012September 24, 2012 THIS JUDGE WILL GET REELECTED Here is a brand new, self-contained, four minute West Wing episode. I do miss that show. SARAH SILVERMAN GETS RAUNCHY So don’t watch this video if you had a proper upbringing. I cringe imagining my parents watching it (may they rest in peace), although they may not have been QUITE as proper as I was brought up to believe — when I went to clear out some stuff from his medicine chest after my Dad died, I slid the mirror across the cabinet to reveal what you’d assume was the other half of the medicine chest. It had been a long time since this had actually been my boyhood bathroom, and I had forgotten there was no other half to the cabinet — the other side was just the blank wall. Only, when I slid the mirror across anyway, having forgotten there’d be nothing there, there was something there: a poster-size photo of my parents, completely naked, startled and horrified at having been caught in the nude. (My dad had apparently posed them that way with a time-delay camera, then had the shot blown up and mounted on poster board he pasted behind the mirror.) What makes the video all the funnier is that Sarah’s grandmother is sitting there attentively as she says all these f—–g terrible things. Sarah, as you may recall, is the one who encouraged Jewish kids of her generation to take The Great Schlepp down to Florida in 2008 to get their grandparents to the polls. And as you can see, she’s still working to turn out the vote. WHAT LABOR DAY MEANS TO REPUBLICANS I know — I’m a little late. I keep meaning to run Eric Cantor’s Labor Day tweet. When I read Paul Krugman’s column over the weekend, I decided to let him tell you: . . . Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses. Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips. This was in strong contrast to President Obama’s convention speech a week later, which put a lot of emphasis on workers — especially, of course, but not only, workers who benefited from the auto bailout. And when Mr. Romney waxed rhapsodic about the opportunities America offered to immigrants, he declared that they came in pursuit of “freedom to build a business.” What about those who came here not to found businesses, but simply to make an honest living? Not worth mentioning. . . .
Best Thrift Shop Rap Video Ever . . . And The Redistribution Of Wealth September 21, 2012 So there are rich and poor and it’s always been that way and always will, at least in relative terms. Fortunately, the definition of “poor” creeps up with time and, while it is still a condition aggressively to be avoided, at least it now generally includes, in the U.S., access to aspirin, refrigeration, electric light, and, television — treasures largely or entirely undreamt of by any Roman emperor or Russian czar. But hunger? Homelessness? People freezing? In Twenty-First Century America? Yesterday, I linked to Bill Maher’s riff on the role of luck in the fortunes of the best off. Today, this x-rated rap ode to the thrift shop, which reminds us that, yes, a $3,500 bespoke suit is a lovely thing to have but my $156 Zara suit actually fits just as well and my friend Victor has an indispensable blue blazer for which he paid $3 at a thrift shop. In other words, if you’re smart and careful, you don’t have to be rich to live well. Talk of poverty is a natural cousin of talk about personal responsibility and — oh, hi, Mitt! — talk about the distribution of wealth. How much should the king have? How much, the peasants? The robber baron? The robber baron’s 75-year-old shoeshine boy? And before I say another word, please put me firmly in the camp of my fellow Harvard Business School graduates who believe in the hugely positive wealth-creating power of the free market. But I think free-market capitalism works best with enlightened regulation and, yes, wealth redistribution. Reasonable people can argue — and should, and will, endlessly — over just how much and what kind of regulation and redistribution are needed and work best at any given time. Unreasonable people — often angry, loud, polarized, ill- or misinformed and closed-minded, on the right and on the left — will also argue over this. And, as the merits are being weighed, some will have $10 million thumbs to place on the scale. So as rational decision-making processes go, it’s a mess; but we need to do the best we can. I don’t think anyone along the continuum from communism to pure libertarianism would disagree that a successful society requires some regulation and some redistribution of wealth. On regulation, even most on the right think there should be some real estate zoning laws, some limits on who can drive and how fast and how drunk, someone inspecting the meat being shipped to market, some controls on what a factory can spew into the water we drink or the air we breathe. And on and on. And right or left, all agree that stupid regulations are stupid and that excessive regulation is excessive. (See Philip K. Howard’s The Death of Common Sense.) The question is: what’s stupid? What’s excessive? And how do we field a corps of regulators who are at once talented and vigorous, yet sensible and fair? Just because these questions have no perfect answers doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continually strive to come up with good ones. To lambaste all regulation as excessive is as detrimental to the common good as to say taxes must only be lowered, never raised. On redistribution, similarly, even most on the right think there should be some form of progressive income tax (even a flat tax is progressive if the first tens of thousands of dollars earned are exempt), and that children should be offered a decent education even if their parents can’t afford to pay for it (which means someone richer has to). And on and on. And done right, redistribution of wealth makes for a stronger economy, which ultimately helps those with the wealth. Yet here is Mitt Romney calling out President Obama for daring, in 1998, to say he believed a certain amount of redistribution is a good thing. As Michael O’Brien of NBC News reports: Mitt Romney’s campaign this week has pounced on a 14-year-old clip of Obama speaking about “redistribution” in October 1998 at a conference in Chicago, in which the future president seems to extol the virtues of redistributing wealth. Yet NBC News has obtained the entirety of the relevant remarks, which includes additional comments by Obama that weren’t included in the video circulated by Republicans. That omission features additional words of praise for “competition” and the “marketplace” by the then-state senator. The truth is, just like President Clinton, President Obama is a champion of free market capitalism. And that just like President Bush, a President Romney would redistribute wealth — to those at the top. PROGRAMMING NOTE If you like Bill Clinton, but want to save the $20,000 contribution to attend in person, watch the Clinton Global Initiative live — or at least the parts that interest you. It’s three days starting Sunday.
Playing Hooky – But watch Bill Maher September 20, 2012September 20, 2012 “To some, the glass is half full. To others, the glass is half empty. To an engineer, it’s twice the size it needs to be.” — unattributed I’m taking the day off to fill the glass. But here’s a Bill Maher clip you may have missed that shows the boyhood homes of Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Paul Ryan. Being Bill Maher, some of it is too raunchy for my taste. (I’m old! I’m prudish!) But as ever, he’s spot on.
Empathy vs. Contempt September 19, 2012 +YOU+ BALANCE THE BUDGET Mark Klein: “It wasn’t so hard after all. Took about five minutes and I’m running a surplus after 2014. (Of course, I had to reduce military spending). As soon as I’m elected emperor and don’t have to get buy-in from everyone else I will be happy to fix this little problem.” Mike Hanlon: “Nice link Friday to the Budget Control site. To answer your question about the Daily Bible Guide ad at the top: The site’s developers have essentially sold that space to a company called LifeStreet Media, which in turn rotates various companies’ ads into that space. If you press the F5 key on your Windows keyboard (to reload the page) a few times, you’ll see some of the other ads. If a visitor to the Budget Control site clicks on one of the ads, the advertiser pays LifeStreet Media for the click and LifeStreet shares the fee with the owner of the Budget Control site. This is a pretty common online business model: Google is the leader with its AdSense program. It chooses the ads that appear on a site you visit by cross-referencing recent Google searches you’ve done in an attempt to make them more relevant. The results can be helpful, funny or a little creepy. Like this.” HAIKU Reader Gary Diehl sent three Mitt Romney limericks which didn’t strike me as suitable (even though Mr. Romney did just grab $7 million from Nantucket). Actually, they were quite tame, which as any adolescent boy can tell you is exactly what limericks are not meant to be. For example (emphasis added for those who don’t know how to read a limerick): Party FAITHfuls will always believe him that’s of COURSE very easy to tell. But the WEBS that he weaves are most TANGled indeed and his rhetoric’s starting to SMELL. I mean . . . really? Where is the prurience? It barely scrapes the sophomoric. Still, not to be rude, I responded, “LOL — what’s next, haiku?” To which he responded — rather magnificently, I think — with these 17 syllables: Excitement builds up The candidate takes the stage Click factcheck.org BIG DIFFERENCE Candidate Barack Obama was recorded at a 2008 fundraiser with the now famous “they cling to guns or religion” line, but before you let anyone write off Mr. Romney’s recent remarks as no different, notice two differences. The first, for the record, is that Senator Obama immediately apologized. But the really big difference is that, as you’ll see if you read the few paragraphs into which this phrase fell, his remarks were filled with empathy for the plight of some folks who’d had a particularly rough go of it. He was talking about how to try to persuade them that he really would get them health care (which he has), that he really would lower their taxes (which he has), that he really would ask those at the top to pay a little more (which he is asking). He feels their pain and seeks to rekindle their hope. Contrast that with Mr. Romney, who writes off 47% of the electorate as, basically, contemptible. Empathy versus contempt. Big difference.
Whew! September 18, 2012September 17, 2012 ARE WE BETTER OFF THAN WE WERE 4 YEARS AGO? A compelling one-minute answer. Share it with one friend. WHEW! For a minute I was afraid I had been asking you to give too much – hey, it now looks as though we’re going to win – but then I realized: 1. We might not. InTrade today puts Mr. Romney’s chances at 33%. If you were about to play Russian Roulette with only two of the six chambers were loaded, would you be unconcerned? Help us narrow the odds. They have a huge money advantage; they are unconstrained by the truth; the electorate cannot always discern the truth (as when Bush assured them that “by far the vast majority” of his tax cuts would go to benefit people “at the bottom of the economic ladder”); and they are working overtime to make it hard for people like Jim Cramer’s 92-year-old dad to vote. 2. There’s more at stake than the White House. Even if we turn out more voters than we need to re-elect the President, that extra margin would help us take back the House and hold the Senate. And to win state and local races. And send the message that voters reject the Republican obstructionism of the last four years. Do we really want to entrust the House committee that oversees climate change to a climate-change denier? It is simply not possible to win this thing by too much – if we win it at all. Now is the time to RAMP UP, not relax. Did you know that Florida’s Republicans have arranged for this year’s ballot to be 10 pages long? That alone might double the time it takes to vote . . . leading to endlessly long lines outside (what if it’s raining?) and causing people to give up in disgust; or because they simply lack the physical stamina; or the support system to care for their kids; or can’t show up so late to work. In 2000 we clearly had the better candidate. And our opponent’s arithmetic clearly did not add up. But in hindsight it’s equally clear that our failure to pull out ALL the stops had tragic consequences. So – whew! – don’t worry that you’ve helped too much. As amazingly generous as so many of you have been, you haven’t wasted a dime. And if you have any dimes left . . . . if MasterCard retains even the slightest faith in your creditworthiness . . . help make the morning of November 7 the best we ever had. As always, I’ll see your help the minute it comes thru to say thanks. Feel free to forward this to YOUR list.