Month: January 2014

If allowing the Pearl Harbor attacks to happen hasn’t much tarred Franklin Roosevelt’s reputation, it is unclear to me why Hillary Clinton should be subject to so much abuse about the tragic loss of American lives in Benghazi, Libya. After all, the country was relieved of it’s tyrannical and insane leader at little overall cost to the United States. If you want to claim that Libya isn’t much better off for it, well, I predicted that, but it’s a different argument. When you go to war and partially occupy a country, there will be casualties. Some of those casualties will be the result of poor decisions on your part. They aren’t somehow disqualifying for further service to your country. But J-Rube gives the game away in her second paragraph:

First, of course, every politician (ahem, a Northeastern governor) is held responsible for what goes on by underlings. The head of an organization must be held accountable for the people she hires. And, yes, leaders need to take ownership of the “culture” around them.

That’s a reference to Gov. Chris Christie, and she’s insisting without evidence that Christie isn’t directly responsible for the lane-closures on George Washington Bridge.

It is now clear that she has fallen in love with Gov. Christie and has appointed herself as his water-carrier. In a piece she published on Saturday, she attacked the credibility of MSNBC‘s reporting. But the quality of their reporting isn’t going to be determinative of what happens. Here’s why:

The New Jersey mayor who publicly claimed this weekend that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration tried to withhold hurricane relief funds met Sunday in private with the U.S. attorney for the state of New Jersey.

“This afternoon I met with the U.S. Attorney’s office for several hours at their request and provided them with my journal and other documents,” Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said in a statement Sunday. “As they pursue this investigation, I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project.”

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno is expected to deny the allegations Monday morning and will be the first top official in Christie’s administration to address Zimmer’s charges.

Zimmer said Saturday in an interview with MSNBC that she would be willing to sign a sworn statement and testify under oath that she had been threatened by the governor’s staff to approve a development project or risk hurricane relief funding for her town of Hoboken, which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.

The mayor of Hoboken has already met with the U.S. Attorney and provided them with her journal and other documentation. It doesn’t matter how J-Rube spins things or whether she is convincing or unconvincing. All that matters is what the evidence shows and how the federal prosecutors feel about that evidence.

Either Christie gets prosecuted or he doesn’t. J-Rube doesn’t get to sit on the grand jury.

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Israel’s captains of industry fear boycott

(Ynet News) – A hundred of Israel’s leading businessmen and businesswomen will fly to Davos next week, armed with a poignant message for the prime minister: Maintaining a growing and stable economy requires Israel to make peace with Palestinians, the sooner the better.

Leaders and businesspeople ranging from Strauss Group Chairwoman Ofra Strauss to Google Israel CEO Meir Bren and former UN ambassador Dan Gillerman will descend on the Davos Economic Forum to urge Israelis and Palestinians leaders to reach a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An a-political group of Palestinians and Israelis, which includes names such as Palestinian energy mogul Munib Masri, tech mogul Yossi Vardi, Amdocs founder Maurice Kahan, Bezeq CEO Avi Gabai, industrialist Gad Propper, Israeli low-cost supermarket magnate Rami Levy and former ambassador to the US Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, have signed on an initiative called Breaking the Impasse (BTI).

“Israel must reach a diplomatic solution – urgently,” a statement by BTI said. The group, led by Masri and Vardi, believes that a political solution, based on the two-state solution, is vital for the survival of both Israelis and Palestinian.

The economic forum convenes in Davos once a year and invites the biggest names in politics and business from around the world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni will lead the Israeli political delegation. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Arekat will join Masri in leading the Palestinians.

Iran’s Hassan Rouhani Going to Davos Economic Forum

UN agency: Iran stops high end uranium enrichment

(Ynet News) – Iran has halted its most sensitive nuclear activity under a ground-breaking deal with world powers, a confidential UN atomic agency report obtained by Reuters showed, paving the way for the easing of some Western sanctions.

The report by the International Atomic Energy also said Iran had begun diluting its stockpile of uranium enriched to the fissile concentration of 20% – a level that took it closer to the capability of producing fuel for an atom bomb.

The IAEA report to member states said: “The Agency confirms that, as of 20 January 2014, Iran … has ceased enriching uranium above 5% U-235 at the two cascades at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) and four cascades at the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) previously used for this purpose.”

It was referring to Iran’s two enrichment plants, at Natanz and Fordo. Cascades are interlinked networks of centrifuge machines that enrich uranium. Iranian state television earlier said Iran had suspended 20% enrichment at Natanz and that inspectors were heading to Fordo.

Op-Ed: Jewish Democrats’ surrender on Iran

(Ynet News) – A bill, proposed by fellow Democrat Bob Menendez and Republican Mark Kirk to threaten harder sanctions on Iran if no final agreement to dismantle the nuclear enrichment program is reached in the next six months, has the votes to pass in the US Senate with 43 Republicans and 16 Democrats cosponsoring it. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, has blocked the legislation from coming to a vote at the White House`s request. The White house is further threatening to veto the bill if passed.

Ten committee chairmen in the Democratic-led Senate have pushed back against the new legislation. Sadly, but predictably, among committee chairs opposed to advancing the bill now are four leading Jewish senators who supposedly claim to be pro-Israel. They are Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee; Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Environment Committee; and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chairman of the Energy Committee.

It seems that Jewish Democrats will choose President Obama’s agenda every time over Israel’s survival and are even willing in the process to throw Israel under the bus and amplify anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic stereotypes.

On Tuesday, January 14, California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s suggested in a speech she delivered on the Senate floor that the bipartisan Menendez-Kirk bill would “let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war.”

While AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee are fully and actively supporting the bill, Rabbi Jack Moline, the National Jewish Democratic Committee’s executive director, was willing to be used as an attack dog by the White House to smear his fellow Jews, accusing AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee of “strong-arm tactics, essentially threatening people that if they don’t vote a particular way, that somehow that makes them anti-Israel or means the abandonment of the Jewish community.”

Luckily, New York Democratic Senator Schumer has chosen this time to defy Obama and supports the bill.  

UN invites Iran to Syria peace talks

[Update] Iran uninvited after protest from US and Syrian National Council (SNC)
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has withdrawn his invitation to Iran to take part
in this week’s “Geneva 2” peace conference on Syria, his spokesman said.

Things that make me want to sanitize my brain by dunking my head in a bucket of iodine:

As George W. Bush’s public image improves, more former Bush officials are running for office — and are starting to tout their connections to the former president rather than running from them.

Top former Bush advisor Ed Gillespie included photos with his old boss and talked of his work in the White House in the video announcing his Virginia Senate bid on Thursday.

Gillespie isn’t the only Bush alumni looking to be on the ballot this fall. The former Republican National Committee chairman joins a long list already looking to launch their own electoral careers: Alaska Senate candidate Dan Sullivan (R); Elise Stefanik, the current GOP front-runner for retiring Rep. Bill Owens’s (D-N.Y.) seat in upstate New York; North Carolina congressional candidate Taylor Griffin (R) and West Virginia House candidate Charlotte Lane.

Former Bush officials Tom Foley (R) and Asa Hutchinson (R) are also running for governor in Connecticut and Arkansas. Neel Kashkari, who served both the Bush and Obama administration as assistant Treasury secretary running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is mulling a bid to the GOP nominee for governor in California. One of Gillespie’s little-known Republican primary opponents, Howie Lind, served in Bush’s Department of Defense.

I know it is unrealistic to think that the Republican Party could field a nation of candidates without using anyone who served in the Bush administration, but it galls me that it might be anything but a liability.

There was way too little legal accountability for the various crimes of the Bush administration, and the effort to reach out (remember the vote on the Stimulus?) was met with a petulant stiff-arm. The result is that the Bush Era has begun to take on less of the flavor of criminality and more of mere incompetence. In reality, it was a lethal combination of both, and we should have never let America develop amnesia about that fact.

Mom wrote a lot of poems covering a wide range of feelings. Here are four of them.
The first two are polar opposites, and the last two were written within weeks of the births of her grand daughters.

VITAL SIGNS The vacuum that is the day begins with waking from sleep filled with dreams more alive than my living. The silence of the house pushes in until the air is filled with wet cotton and to breathe is to die. My twenty-four hours stretch ahead like a road going nowhere through a sterile void in a barren world. If the phone should ring the vibration would never stop. But I would not hear it, only feel the ripples of sound against my skin. I need a purpose, a voice to speak my name. Then I will know that I am and that I still live. Martha Ferguson 1996

TOUCH OF LOVE You touch my heart. Not the animated muscle that keeps me breathing, and the blood circulating and enables me to think and move. You touch my heart. The inner core of me that gives me pleasure and pain, makes me cry and laugh, see beauty and feel joy. You create love when you touch my heart. Martha Ferguson 2006

WISHES FOR KENZIE Sunshine in daytime, Starshine at night. Cloudless skies Always bright. Joy and love surrounding you. And all your wishes coming true. Grandma March, 2001 Martha Ferguson

WISHES FOR ELLIE A bluebird on your shoulder, Diamond dewdrops on the grass. Butterflies and fireflies Dancing as you pass. Sunshine in daytime, Moonbeams at night, So that your pathway Will always be bright. Happiness and joy All your life through. Gentleness and love Ever surrounding you. Grandma August, 1997 Martha Ferguson

Previous posts in this series of my mom’s writing:

WORLD WAR II, WELDING AND ME!

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Part 1 – The Family & Food

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Part 2 – Working

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Part 3 – Housing

THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Part 4 – Enterprise, Entertainment, & The Larger World

SWEET STUFF

The president is quoted today saying some things I never expected a president to say. Maybe it is a sign of the times or maybe it’s the liberation of not needing to seek reelection or maybe it’s just Obama, but it’s refreshing. Here’s the first:

In an interview published Sunday by the New Yorker, President Obama said pot is no more dangerous than alcohol — and that marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state is an “important” move towards a more just legal system.

“I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama told reporter David Remnick. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” In fact, the president went on to admit pot was actually less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”

Obama also dived into the vastly disproportionate effect marijuana arrests and incarcerations have on non-white Americans. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”

Here’s the second:

President Obama doesn’t have a son, but if he did, he wouldn’t let him play pro football. The president disclosed that fact in the latest issue of the New Yorker, where he also compared playing football to smoking.

“I would not let my son play pro football,” Obama said. It’s important to point out that Obama said pro football, meaning there’s a chance he’d let his son play Pop Warner football.

I love football, too. I used to get up every Sunday morning and go pound up against other guys for a couple hours. I gave it up at thirty when my brother who was then forty finally retired. But it’s dangerous and, despite becoming America’s favorite pastime, the president was honest about.

And he wasn’t a hypocrite about his pot-smoking, either, but a lot of parents who want to discourage marijuana smoking in their kids are not going to thank him for it. The thing is, what he said was correct.

Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, John Sides, attempts to rebut Dan Balz’s fine analysis yesterday that the Republican Party has an uphill battle to win the presidency in 2016. I find his argument unconvincing.

He begins by providing his credentials.

In April 2012, two other political scientists — Seth Hill and Lynn Vavreck — and I did a presidential election forecasting model for The Washington Post. The model had only three factors: The change in gross domestic product in the first two quarters of the election year, the president’s approval rating as of June of that year and whether the incumbent was running. That model forecast that Obama would win in 2012, and — although there is nothing magic about this model — it was ultimately accurate within a percentage point.

He then notes that his model would predict a Republican victory if the election were held today. He follows this with a suspect assertion:

What I’d tell strategists looking at state demographics and Electoral College math is this: In 2016, states will swing — almost in uniform fashion — depending on the underlying political and economic fundamentals. Battleground state demographic trends don’t insulate the Democratic Party from (potentially) a relatively unpopular president and (potentially) an economy that is growing but not very fast. Even analysts who believe these demographic trends portend a long-lasting Democratic majority would agree with that, I think.

It’s true that states behave less idiosyncratically than they used to, but that doesn’t solve the Republicans’ Electoral College math problem. As I highlighted yesterday, no amount of swing over the last six elections has prevented the Democrats from winning at least 251 electoral votes, which is just 19 votes shy of victory. Things may swing one way or another, but when you start out one large state short of victory, you have a large structural advantage. Remember, the argument isn’t that the Republican Party cannot conceivably pull off the narrowest of victories, but that that is the very best they can hope for, and that it would be exceedingly difficult. This is before we even talk about factors unique to the cycle, like the candidates (including their races, genders, and regional bases), state of election law, relative revenues, campaign team quality, the economy, the incumbent president’s popularity, or the relative popularity of the two parties in Congress.

And, since were prognosticating here, there are at least three differences between Barack Obama and the presumptive Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, which have the power to change the shape of the electorate that are probably more important than the metrics (the gross domestic product in the first two quarters of the election year, the president’s approval rating as of June of that year and whether the incumbent was running) used by Prof. Sides.

Obama and Clinton are different races, different genders, and appeal to a different regional/socioeconomic profile. We saw how they divided up support in the 2008 Democratic primaries, and that same split should allow Clinton to retain nearly all of Obama’s base (if not their enthusiasm) while adding race-skeptical whites and (relatedly) more votes from places where Bill Clinton did well (Arkansas, Missouri, Georgia) and Barack Obama did not.

Additionally, Prof. Sides does not dispute that demographic change is making each election cycle incrementally harder for the Republicans than the last. If he sees any sign that the Republicans are addressing their poor showing with the growing Asian and Latino populations, he doesn’t discuss it. Nor does he make an effort to explain which states the Republicans might flip. Instead, he makes one last argument:

Since the passage of the 22nd amendment limiting the president to two terms, only one time (1980-88) has the incumbent party held the White House for more than two consecutive terms. The regularity with which control of the White House changes hands also suggests that the playing field may tip in the GOP’s favor in 2016.

Obviously, here we are dealing with a small sample size. But the Korean War killed Truman and Stevenson’s chances. Without a war hero and in a bad economy, the GOP couldn’t shake the New Deal ascendancy of the country in 1960. The Vietnam War killed LBJ and Humphrey’s chances. Gore technically won, but was hobbled by the Lewinsky scandal. And Bush was a complete disaster. None of those circumstances are likely to be replicated in 2016, so these previous examples of party fatigue are not very helpful.

The fact remains, no rational player would take the GOP’s hand over the Democrats’.

I didn’t like it when people were making great sport of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s clear substance abuse problems, and I’m not going to make fun of Dennis Rodman now that he has finally checked himself into rehab. They both have chronic diseases, and they both need compassion and treatment. They both have the resources to get that treatment, unlike many Americans. Still, rarely have I seen someone reach their “bottom” on a more epic and worldwide stage than Mr. Rodman.

Rodman recently returned to the United States from his latest trip to North Korea.

He later apologized for comments he made in North Korea about a detained American missionary, saying he had been drinking and was under pressure as he organized an exhibition game there. He also sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the start of the friendly game.

Rodman’s last visit to North Korea came amidst rumors (probably not true), that Kim Jong Un had had his favorite uncle stripped naked and fed to 120 hungry dogs. What’s not disputed is that his uncle was executed by the state.

Rarely has it been more clear that someone’s judgment had become clouded by drugs or alcohol than with the spectacle of Dennis Rodman as self-appointed cultural ambassador and peacemaker with North Korea.

I hope he excels at recovery and regains a moral compass.

I have written many, many, many times about the Republicans’ Electoral College problem. The Washington Post‘s Dan Balz does a great breakdown on the issue in today’s paper.

The short version is that you need 270 out of 538 Electoral College votes in order to become the president of the United States, and the Democrats:

1. Haven’t done worse than 251 votes (2004) since 1988.
2. Have averaged 327 votes over the last six elections.
3. Have won eighteen states and the District of Columbia (totaling 242 electoral votes) in each of the last six elections.

While the Republicans:

1. Haven’t done better than 286 votes (2004) since 1988.
2. Have averaged 211 votes over the last six elections.
3. Have won thirteen states (totaling 102 electoral votes, most of them from Texas) in each of the last six elections.

You can look at this as a structural problem for the Republicans, where the floor for their opponents appears to be 251, which is just 19 votes shy of the number required. If Ohio had flipped to Kerry’s column, he would have still have lost the popular vote, but he would have become president anyway.

Of course, Kerry did lose, but it appears that the 2004 election could be a real ceiling for any Republican candidate up against a competent Democrat. Roll the clock forward twelve years, and demographic changes make even a repeat of 2004 a very challenging task.

On the other hand, the situation is reversed in Congress, where districts are drawn in ways that make it difficult for the Democrats. But in a country that is rapidly embracing gay equality and beginning to legalize marijuana, a traditionally conservative party doesn’t seem to have any future in presidential elections. And I think pollsters will discover that the demographic that despises President Obama is significantly more open-minded about Hillary Clinton. If there are states that are going to flip colors in 2016, I’d bet more money on Georgia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas than I would on Michigan or Wisconsin or Iowa.

I think Chris Christie was supposed to upend this map. Now they’ll need a Plan B.

While I won’t miss his presence in the U.S. Senate, I am sorry to hear that Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is suffering with cancer and will retire. I hope he makes a full recovery. He is endorsing Rep. James Lankford to succeed him, and that is just a frightening prospect. I took at a look at Lankford’s Wikipedia page and he is wrong on literally everything. I mean everything. I am going to condense it down for you:

Lankford supports simple budget austerity through lowering taxes and reducing government spending. He took the taxpayer protection pledge promising to support no new taxes. He supports the repeal of the income and estate taxes and supports a sales tax to tax consumption and not savings or earnings. Lankford supports prioritizing spending (if the debt limit is reached) and the Cut-Cap-and-Balance Pledge. He supports a balanced budget amendment. He supports compensatory time-off for overtime workers. Lankford wants to loosen restrictions on interstate gun purchases. He opposes Firearm microstamping, a controversial method of imprinting casings with a unique marking to match it with a specific firearm, and would allow veterans to register unlicensed firearms. He supports extending the Patriot Act and expanding roving wiretaps occurring in the US. Lankford supports the prioritization of security, starting with military bases. He supports expanding exploration of gas and oil both domestically and on the outer continental shelf. He opposes the EPA regulating emission standards as he believes it hinders economic growth. In addition to barring the EPA from regulating emission standards, Lankford believes manure and other fertilizers should not be classified as pollutants or hazardous. Lankford has stated his belief that federally funded healthcare is unconstitutional and has made a statement that he will oppose in and all moves for a federal healthcare system. He supported an initiative to allow Medicare choice and also institute budget cuts. Lankford opposes abortion rights. He supports banning all federally funded abortions and believes Congress should recognize life at the moment of fertilization. He opposes any federally funded healthcare or coverage programs that allow for abortion, as well as Planned Parenthood and other similar groups.

On a personal level, Rep. Lankford is rather impressive. For much of his childhood, he was raised by his mother alone in modest conditions, and got a undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He followed that up with a master’s degree in Divinity at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. From there he became the program director of the largest Christian camp in the United States. And, of course, he was elected to Congress. He’s not quite 46 years old, and he’s been very successful.

He could be with us for a very long time.

I don’t think I could sit through a documentary about Mitt Romney in order to write a movie review. The man told too many lies. Maybe some of you know how many Steve Benen ultimately documented. By late-August 2012, it was up to 533. It was just incredible how frequently and shamelessly Mitt Romney made outright false assertions. And I think forcing nearly half the country to defend that kind of behavior has a crippling effect on the moral character of America. It’s very similar to the way the GOP’s standards were permanently damaged the moment that they had defend Sarah Palin as an acceptable potential president. Suddenly, it was not just acceptable, but virtuous, to be ignorant about foreign affairs. Reading the papers became something only snobs do. It was okay to treat a vice-presidential debate the way you’d treat a beauty pageant.

When Mitt Romney decided to run a campaign built entirely on mendacious statements, he destroyed any vestige of truthfulness in his party. I was so happy to see him lose and was amazed that he’d managed to lie even to himself about his prospects for success. If this movie portrays him as somehow honorable, that is just one more lie. Call it the cherry on top.