Jaded Liberal

Peggy Noonan: Republican Hoper

2011-06-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

In her Wall Street Journal column of June 25, 2011, Peggy Noonan again expresses hope for the Republican Party in the presidential race of 2012. She is still dying to find a good reason.

In her April 14 column, entitled “Obama Is Likely to Lose,” Peggy cited polls showing the effect of the economy on Obama’s numbers. All the GOP has to do is nominate someone who is not “strange, extreme, or barely qualified.” She was sure Republicans would eventually come to this position, as they have always done so in the past. That week, the Republican frontrunner was Donald Trump.

In her May 13 column, Peggy chose to highlight three potential candidates, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, and Newt Gingrich. She pushed Christie, nudged Daniels, and relegated Newt to future cabinet status, where he will clearly be useful given all of his genius ideas. Christie and Daniels have since refused to run, and while Newt is still in, it is only for the cheap advertising to sell his books and DVDs.

On June 11, in her column entitled “Someone Had a Good Week,” Peggy reluctantly resigned herself to Romney’s eventual victory in the primaries. She predicted he would overcome his health care past by boring the electorate with detailed analysis, and assured us that his religion would not be a problem. Since that time, a Gallup Poll showed that 18% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats say they will never vote for a Mormon.

The following week, Peggy saw hope in own her sigh of relief after the New Hampshire debate. In her column “Republicans Return to Reality,” she said she was pleasantly surprised that the candidates did not embarrass her. She was especially relieved about Michele Bachmann, who did not come across as obviously “strange, extreme, and barely qualified.” And when T-Paw did not measure up, Mitt held on to his image as the middle-of-the-road frontrunner.

This week, Peggy is hopeful because a Gallup Poll shows that 50% of Republicans are strategic voters, i.e., they favor a candidate who has the best chance of beating Obama, while only 44% favor a candidate who matches their views on the issues. Why this poll gives Peggy comfort is a bit mystifying. Here is Gallup’s “Bottom Line.”

Americans' reluctance to support a Mormon for president has held close to the 20% level since Gallup first measured this in 1967, and long after historical biases against voting for blacks, Catholics, Jews, and women have dwindled.

Currently, 18% of Republicans say they would not vote for their party's nominee if that person happened to be Mormon. This may be less troubling for Romney in the GOP primaries, where the vote could be highly fractured anyway, than in the general election, where -- should he win the Republican nomination -- he would need nearly complete support from Republicans to be competitive with President Obama….

Does anyone seriously believe Romney will get “nearly complete support from Republicans” after adding in his record on health care, abortion, and gay marriage? While it is true that he has held the “correct” positions for a while now, can he convince almost all Republicans that he is true Red? Will the 44%, who prefer a candidate who is unlikely to beat Obama, vote for the candidate who is most likely to beat Obama, because he is most like Obama?

If we slice this poll another way, only 27% of the “strategic voters” think that Romney is the one most likely to beat Obama. Sixteen percent think that Sarah Palin has the best chance, 9% think Cain is the man, 6% favor Santorum, and 4% each for Newt and Bachmann. In other words, according to that poll, about 40% of the Republicans think that a “strange, extreme, or barely qualified” candidate is better strategically than Romney.

I would like to remind Peggy of the town hall meetings which were infected by Tea Baggers in 2009. The “debates” were very close to physical fights. Were any of those people fighting for Romney Care? Under what scenario do these people become Romney supporters in the general election?

Michele Bachmann gave the Tea Party response to Obama’s State of the Union address, because she thinks the author of the Ryan Plan is too moderate. If Romney is the Republican nominee, I see a tea party candidate.

He who forgets history is doomed to rewrite it.

2011-06-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

So I was talking to my retired English professor friend at the YMCA, and he commented that MSNBC is the same as Fox News, just opposites politically.

I replied, "Fox News lies. MSNBC does not. The liberals really believe what they say."

He said, “What about Rachel Maddow. She is the same as Hannity.

I said, “ Maddow believes what she says. Hannity lies.

He said, “Oh she does the same thing.”

I said, “ Give me one example.”

He said, “What, I’m being cross-examined?”

I am a lawyer. I said, “I can give you an example of Hannity lying as he facilitated Palin’s lying, and very slickly at that. Almost as if it had been scripted.”

And I described this interview:

Palin: Todd's isn't a registered Republican..
Hannity: He's part of that group that wanted to secede from the Union. (doing quote sign to mock the suggestion.)
Palin: (Laughing) Oh, yeah. Supposedly. Right. But, um...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOg5cOKQd1I&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Professor replied, “Just because he belonged to the AIP does not mean he believed in everything they said, nor does it mean that the AIP advocates the same thing now, that it advocated when it started.

Confident that he was wrong, since AIP stands for Alaska Independence Party, I picked up my iPad and demonstrably looked for the AIP Wikipedia article, and I found:

"Since its founding, the AIP has radically changed with respect to the issue of secession. At present, it does not support secession, though, at its founding, it did. "

I said, “I guess I was wrong. Maybe Hannity didn’t lie.”

Being proven wrong puts a knot in my stomach, and as the day wore on, I kept thinking about the phrasing of that quote. It just seemed odd that a reliable article would say a group had “radically changed.” And the sentence structure seemed odd. So I went to the AIP site, and I found its “Basic Questions” page. It began:

Q: What is the Alaskan Independence Party?

A: An Alaskan political party whose members advocate a range of solutions to the conflicts between federal and local authority; from advocacy for state's rights, through a return to territorial status, all the way to complete independence and nationhood status for Alaska.

It continued:

Q: If Alaska were independent, what would happen to my social security check, federal pension, or military retirement?

A: People receive these checks around the world, regardless of their place of residence. In most cases eligibility for such checks would not be affected by Alaskan independence.

In other words, you shouldn’t worry about not getting money from the Feds. The only difference is you won’t have to pay in.

Then this:

Q: Didn't we vote for statehood already?

A: The vote for statehood was invalid because the people were not presented with the range of options available to them. Further, the federal government has since breached the contract for statehood on numerous occasions in over a dozen serious and substantial instances.

***

Q: Would I lose my U.S. citizenship?

A: Depending on the form of independence, several forms of citizenship would be possible, including the retention of U.S. citizenship or dual citizenship. However, considering the moral, educational, and economic decay of the U.S., Alaskans' who hold themselves to a higher standard might very well decide to at least maintain an arm's length distance from a country in decline.

In other words, there has been no radical change; the AIP still advocates secession.

Then, I read in Wikipedia that the founder, Joe Vogler

disappeared under suspicious circumstances in May 1993, just weeks before he was scheduled to give a speech to the United Nations on Alaskan independence, sponsored by the government of Iran.

Bizarre as that image may be, it is the date of his death that is the point. Todd Palin joined the AIP in 1995. In other words, even if AIP has “radically changed,” how likely is it that it had done so within 2 years of its founder’s death?

Besides, the Palin/Hannity lie wasn’t just that Todd Palin was not a secessionist. Palin/Hannity claimed that Todd’s chosen political party was never secessionist. And their underlying lie was that the Lamestream Media was lying about Todd and the AIP.

Returning to the Wikipedia quote:

Since its founding, the AIP has radically changed with respect to the issue of secession. At present, it does not support secession, though, at its founding, it did.

It appears that a Palin advocate has altered the history of AIP on Wikipedia, just as they tried in the Paul Revere incident. The next question is, how much more history have the Palinistas rewritten?

Schoolmarm, Madam Back Mitt for Sheriff

2011-06-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

It is official. The search for a new sheriff is over. Despite the stagecoach rumors, Christie and Daniels never even showed up. Huckabee is making too much money preachin’ in that big church at the edge of town, and let’s face it, he could never handle a six shooter. Michelle Bachmann don’t know how to saddle a horse. Gingrich shot himself in both feet, so his wife took his gun away. Pawlenty's too skinny. Some say Santorum rides side-saddle. Sarah Palin is in a wild west travelin show, doin’ ridin’ tricks, shootin in the air and ringin’ bells. Herman Cain? C’mon. He talks good, unless you really listen, but he has never even ridden a horse. Besides, he can’t command the respect of the deputies. He just don’t look right, if you catch my drift. We all like Ol' Ron Paul, but you can’t scare Obama and his men by ridin' that old nag and carryin' that big lance.

Now, word is that crazy rancher, Rick Perry, has been spotted on the rise outside town, sitting tall in the saddle, just watching. Can’t tell from here, but he might be headed this way. He looks good from a distance, but people say he and his drunken hands have been making trouble in other towns.

Some say we have to act before Perry gets here. So schoolmarm, Peggy Noonan, and local saloon madam, Ann Coulter, have joined forces and resigned themselves to the city slicker, Mitt Romney, as the best hope for bringing back law and order in 2012.

Miss Noonan began her resignation speech by asserting that Romney just had his first good week. This may not be a good sign, as he's been running since 2005, but Miss Noonan’s excitement is unrestrained. “He had a reasonable announcement speech followed by a lot of national interviews.” And although Sarah Palin upstaged him by making a stop a few miles up the road just to suck attention from this announcement, this only served to display the contrast between “Crazytown [and] the man of sober mien.”

Madam Coulter, on the other hand, loves Crazytown. But she doesn’t want her to run, because she knows Crazytown can’t outdraw Obama. How do you get a “fabulous” potential candidate not to run? Tell her, “You won’t be happy as president. Even Senator is much more fun. Stick with the wild west show. Trust me.” We all know Miss Palin is too proud to handle the truth.

But there are rumblings on the right about Coulter’s endorsement of Romney. She has been doing interviews to hawk her new pamphlet, Demonic. (This one attacks the Left and touts the moral superiority of the Right.) When she visited right wing radio stations on her tour, historically favorable territory, she was attacked for supporting Romney in 2008. She responded by comparing their attacks against Romney to birtherism. At the 2011 CPAC, Coulter changed her tune, announcing, “I’ll put it in a nutshell. If we don’t run Christie, Romney will be the nominee, and we will lose.” (Coulter loves Christie’s theory for belt-tightening--make the fat cats fatter.) But she has since changed again, and even claims to be confident that Romney will win, because, as she puts it, anybody can beat Obama with this economy.

I don’t mean to imply that Coulter is head over heels for Romney, particularly given his Achilles heel of Romneycare. As she put it, “Romney isn’t a disaster.” But Coulter sometimes makes statements casting doubt on her commitment, as she recently distinguished the personal attacks inflicted by liberals on Palin from the substantive attacks conservatives make, by stating, “We don’t like Obama because of Obamacare.” Is this not a case of cognitive dissonance, or does she really believe Romney “tricked liberals into voting for him?”

The question is whether the real GOP will support Romney in the general election. There are the additional problems of Romney backing abortion rights, adoption by gay couples, and science showing man-made global warming. But, as Miss Noonan recognizes, the most important problem may be that he is a Mormon.

Miss Noonan is upset that Piers Morgan interrogated Romney on his religious beliefs. “It's not something we do in America. Because we still have a little class.” Noonan is dishonest in her suggestion that religion is not important to Republican voters. It is the most important thing to many. But she is correct in the sense that most American reporters probably think it is inappropriate to question the religion of a politician. But Morgan is British. Most Brits are agnostics. They believe in evolution. The mainstream media in Great Britain assume most intelligent people are nonbelievers. Thus, Tony Blair was roundly attacked by the British press for using his religious beliefs as guidance in governance, especially on Iraq. In preparation for this interview, Morgan undoubtedly learned a little more about the Mormon religion, and while an atheist will find all religious beliefs incredible, he will likely find the Mormon beliefs even more incredible. In other parts of the world, fundamental beliefs, especially when they are aberrant, are fair ground in an interview.

Miss Noonan says Catholics like her don’t have a problem with Mormons. She begs the evangelicals to take the same position, since “...[I]t is absurd and ignorant not to support a political figure only because” he is, in the words of Ann Coulter, a member of a “wacky religion.” Miss Coulter agrees. But Miss Noonan and Miss Coulter seem to ignore a couple thing about evangelicals. First, they are absurd and ignorant. Second, the Book of Mormon contradicts the Bible, and evangelicals don’t like that.

The most successful play on Broadway today is The Book of Mormon, which is described by its creators as “an atheist's love letter to religion." I assume it will be made into a movie. While not overly offensive to the Mormon elders so far, the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, also make a cartoon called South Park, which had a slightly harsher episode portraying the beginning of the Mormon religion. The refrain through the episode was, “Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb,” as in, Mormonism was created by a con-man from New York in 1830, and his claim to divine inspiration can fairly be described as so ludicrous that it could fool only those who are, well, very dumb. This episode is probably the primary source of information on Mormonism for those under 30. If Romney becomes the Republican nominee, this South Park episode could go viral among evangelicals. Cats and dogs, living together.

But the schoolmarm and the saloon madam have, for the time being, agreed. We can have peace in town. All we have to do is get the church ladies and the cow hands together on Saturday night. And to do that, we just have to agree on the place, the food, the drink, and the entertainment. Should be no problem.

Peggy Noonan: Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton.

2011-06-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

Obama cannot hide his contempt for far right politicians. They know he does not like them in a very personal way. The problem is partly experiential. Obama's upbringing wasn't provincial enough. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, grew up among Southern racists, and understood them, even liked some of them. Peggy says this enabled Clinton to fake it, and therefore able to create personal relationships with the likes of Newt Gingrich, and get things done.

It seems like only yesterday when Newt and Bill worked together, hand in hand, to prevent the government shutdown, end the Whitewater investigation, not to mention the attempted impeachment.

But it isn’t just experience that distinguishes Obama from Clinton. Obama’s nature is the problem in the current debt-ceiling fight. He cannot get Republicans to compromise, because he can’t get warm and fuzzy with them and cajole them, because he is

...different, not a political practitioner, really, but something else, and not a warm-blooded animal, but a cool, chill character, a fish who sits deep in the tank and stares stilly, at other fish.

So how can Obama overcome his predaceous, cold-blooded, pre-reptilian essence? By giving in to the Republicans by slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If you can’t con them, join them, she says.

Here is the problem, according to the Catholic scold. We cannot default, so the debt limit has to be raised. But we have to look responsible by reducing the deficit when we do it. There are two ways to reduce a deficit--cut spending and increase revenues. Therefore, we cannot raise the debt limit without making cuts of $2.4 trillion. Why? Where? Peggy never really says. But if Obama does what the Republicans want, a crisis will be averted. In fact, if Obama capitulates, he will go down in history as The Crisis Averter, who can claim to be a centrist, and work in good faith with the Republicans.

What about reducing the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy? Scarlette Noonan replies, “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.” (Ok, she really said, “...fight that out later.”)

Maybe I'm a liberal, but I have to ask, why cut spending today, and talk about taxes tomorrow? Because, Peggy says, “the polls are all over the place.” Really? Some recent polls show public support for ending Medicare in order to keep the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy? Peggy Noonan has trouble getting through a column without some prevarication, but this is such an obvious whopper, one wonders if she has an editor. Of course, there is no citation to any such study.

Let me be clear. All recent polls show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy rather than cutting the social safety net. So, Peggy really wants Obama to give in to the Republicans in Congress even though they are on the wrong side politically, so that he will be on the wrong side, too.

Now I understand the metaphor. Obama the fish sat there staring, motionless. The warm-blooded, Republican fish stared back. Finally, the Republicans, being warm-blooded, couldn’t stand it anymore, and they started moving, slowly and individually at first, then schooling, faster and faster, up and around, then suddenly up, out of the water, with the Ryan Plan. They got netted in New York 26. This caused people to talk, and the more people talk about killing Medicare, the more people hate it. Cutting the safety net landed the GOP in the fish net.This could end the GOP as we know it. Someone needs to save it.

If only a mammalian politician, like Bill Clinton, was President. He could trick the Republicans back into reality. He could save them by getting them to compromise. But since Obama is incapable of human emotion, and therefore, unable to really connect with Mike Pence, the only way to save the GOP is to give Mike Pence everything he wants.

If he doesn't, Peggy says, Obama will go down in history as the president who inherited a Republican-created mess, and “made things worse” by not continuing their policies.

Really. That’s what she said.

2011-05-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

I was having post-golf dinner with a buddy, who is fairly intelligent for a Christian conservative, and he mentioned the John Edwards indictment. I responded that John Ensign will probably be indicted, too. He asked who Ensign was.

“He just resigned in a sex scandal involving Tom Coburn,” I responded.

Blank look.

I said, “You are aware of the special election in New York yesterday?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know why there is a special election?”

“No.”

“Craigslist? Shirtless picture? Tranny sex? Any of this ring a bell?”

Blank look.

Maybe I'm a liberal, but in my opinion, a lawyer, with 19 years of education, who considers himself well-informed, should know when a United States Senator resigns in disgrace, for any reason, but especially if it's for Tranny sex. When we go on our annual golf trip, this friend always puts Fox News on, so I suspected there might be a connection. So I went to Foxnews.com and ran a search for John Ensign. The search produces a selection of videos on top, with text stories listed below. The text stories were fairly appropriate, listing the referral to DOJ and possible Sharron Angle run to replace him, as well as other articles on the scandal.

But the four video thumbnails in the search results were of Ensign on tax cuts, John Edwards’ sex scandal, tornado damage to Joplin, MO, and the sex charges against the former head of the IMF.

There is a link above these thumbnails for “more videos of John Ensign,” so I clicked. Through the first three pages of 10 videos each on “John Ensign,” Fox News had no videos of John Ensign except the first one showing his interview on tax cuts, and another dealing with the “tax compromise.” It wasn’t until the fourth page of videos that the sex scandal was mentioned, and even then it was a clip from 2009 followed immediately by three favorable videos of Ensign interviews on tax and budget issues.

I figure this must be a problem with the algorithm, finding “John” instead of “John Ensign,” so I did a search only for “Ensign.” This time, the first page of video results has the video from 2009, but the rest are Ensign interviews repeating various Republican talking points. I click on the next page, and 4 more videos are presented. That is all there is. There were no videos of the Ensign scandal, his resignation, his successor’s appointment--nothing, except a side mention in a segment on Governor Sanford hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Maybe there is a problem with the Fox News search engine, I thought, so I ran a search for Fox News video on Youtube, Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Each produced numerous videos on Ensign’s sex scandal. Almost all of them were from other networks. But I could see in the thumbnails that a couple of the videos were from Fox. I clicked. They were local Fox affiliate reports. No actual FoxNews videos to be found.

How about former Congressman Chris Lee? The results were eerily similar. Headlines on FoxNews search results show coverage of the sex scandal in text, but when it comes to video, it is almost a total blackout. There is a mention of Lee in one video, but it is a piece on the election to replace him.

I decided to be more specific in my FoxNews.com search, so I ran “congressman chris lee scandal.” No videos come up on that topic. Instead, I got videos on medicare and “Efforts to Stem the Hiring of Illegal Immigrants,” “Herman Cain Talks Campaign Strategy,” and “Deadly Twister Rocks Arkansas Town.”

I type "Chris Lee" in Google, and the first suggestion for completion is "Shirtless." I put "Chris Lee" in Bing, Youtube, and Yahoo--nothing but sex and consequences.

My conclusion from this study is that the public is interested in sexual misconduct by Republicans, and Fox News fails to satisfy this interest. Either those who watch Fox News are sexually and/or politically aberrant, and Fox News has chosen to appeal to an aberrant group, or Fox News has chosen to conceal such news, in spite of its viewers' normal desires.

Or perhaps Fox News has decided, on principle, to avoid titillation in favor of hard news.

Naah.

Fox News and Republican Sex Scandals

2011-05-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

“He just resigned in a sex scandal involving Tom Coburn,” I responded.

Blank look.

I said, “You are aware of the special election in New York yesterday?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know why there is a special election?”

“No.”

“Craigslist? Shirtless picture? Tranny sex? Any of this ring a bell?”

Blank look.

Maybe I'm a liberal, but in my opinion, a lawyer, with 19 years of education, who considers himself well-informed, should know when a United States Congressman resigns in disgrace, for any reason, but especially if it's for Tranny sex. When we go on our annual golf trip, this friend always puts Fox News on, so I suspected there might be a connection. So I went to Foxnews.com and ran a search for John Ensign. The search produces a selection of videos on top, with text stories listed below. The text stories were fairly appropriate, listing the referral to DOJ and possible Sharron Angle run to replace him, as well as other articles on the scandal.

But the four video thumbnails in the search results were of Ensign on tax cuts, John Edwards’ sex scandal, tornado damage to Joplin, MO, and the sex charges against the former head of the IMF.

I type "Chris Lee" in Google, and the first suggestion for completion is "Shirtless." I put "Chris Lee" in Bing, Youtube, and Yahoo--nothing but sex and consequences.

Or perhaps Fox News has decided, on principle, to avoid titillation in favor of hard news.

Naah.

Make Him a Saint?

2011-04-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

In her recent column, "Make Him a Saint," Peggy Noonan illustrates her sense of morality by demanding that Pope John Paul II be made a saint, right away, primarily because, she believes he defeated communism by making a trip to Poland in 1979. I thought Reagan ended communism by running up the deficit with excessive military spending. Actually, I thought communism ended communism, but I thought the orthodoxy dictated that Noonan’s old boss get the credit.

But you cannot make a saint out of modern history’s primary facilitator of child rape without some pretty important counterpoints. So Noonan claims John Paul ended communism by making a trip to Poland, and that the trip more than makes up for all those kiddie rapes, which Noonan characterizes as the “mistakes and sins in his papacy.”

But why does Peggy use the term “in his papacy,” rather than directly saying they were John Paul’s mistakes and sins? Does she mean to exculpate him? Does she mean to say that it was not the rot at the top, but that the Pope was out of touch?

Whatever his involvement, Noonan says you cannot expect perfection, and besides, all saints were “flawed, full of contradictions, and marked by stark failures.” This may be true, but running an organization of child molesters seems like more than a flaw or contradiction. “I am personally opposed to child rape, although I’ll help those who like to partake,” doesn’t seem very saintly to me. And a “stark failure” would imply that John Paul tried to stop the child rapes, but forces beyond his control prevented his valiant efforts. Is there any evidence of this? No. John Paul enabled the rapists before they were caught, and he protected them afterward. And he did this with the help of his friend and successor, Benedict, who is no Arnold.

So what else does Noonan claim John Paul did to outweigh his complicity in the child rapes? She says he travelled a lot. Not even counting that trip in ‘79 that ended communism, he flew over a million miles. And don’t forget he got shot and later forgave the shooter. (While John Paul claimed to believe that the virgin Mary saved him by redirecting the bullet enough to tear up his guts, but not kill him, he came to rely on the “Popemobile” rather than Mary for subsequent crowd forays.) Finally, Noonan points out that he didn’t retire when he got sick. For years he hobbled and mumbled in public on the holidays. Noonan characterizes this as a sharing of his illness, but if I am not mistaken, popes do not retire. They leave the popehood only by death. So, on this, he had no choice.

Noonan insists that this is no time for doubts and questions. “Santo Subito.” Sainthood now. On this, she and Benedict agree. For one thing, John Paul’s only “verified” miracle is the cure of a nun who allegedly suffered from Parkinson’s disease. One problem with this verification is that thousands, if not millions, of sick Catholics have prayed to John Paul's corpse to ease their pain or delay their deaths. If one out of a million gets better, does that mean the corpse cured her? And if he only cures one out of a million...? Furthermore, some say the nun has become noticeably wobbly of late, and if we don’t get the ceremony over with soon, well, you can see the problem. And she insists on attending.

Besides, the longer we wait, the more victims, like cockroaches, keep coming out of woodwork.

In conclusion, while I disagree with her opinion of John Paul, I want to commend Peggy Noonan for debunking the claim that Ronald Reagan defeated communism.

Peggy Noonan says nothing again

2011-04-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, my title is an exaggeration, just like her title, "Obama is Likely to Lose." Here is what she really said: if the Republicans nominate an intelligent moderate, Obama is beatable.

Meanwhile, the Republican frontrunner is Donald Trump.

And why is Obama so beatable? Obama is down in the polls. That's it. She does make some other claims, like Paul Ryan "outclassed" Obama with his "seriousness and substance," followed by her citation to polls showing Obama is down. Of course, the logical polls to illustrate a comparison between the proposals presented by Ryan and Obama are the polls showing public response to the ideas in those proposals. But those polls show most Americans agree with Obama's, so they are omitted.

But Noonan cannot even fairly cite her irrelevant polls. She claims Obama has suffered a devastating loss of white support. Rather than comparing the percentage of whites who voted for Obama to the percentage who now support him, she compares the percent who claimed to support him on inauguration day with the latest favorability. This gives a decline of 20%, from 60 to 40. But only 43% of whites voted for Obama, so the real decline is within the margin of error.

From here she goes to the Fox talking points, to wit, Obama concentrated on health care rather than the economic crash, jobs, and spending. And now, he has finally come around to talking about spending.

This, again, is simply dishonest. Health care reform was necessary to control the cost of health care, and to make our products competitive with other countries. Why do we import automotive parts from Canada? Because their health care adds less to the cost of their parts.

And why did Obama spend so much money during his first two years? Because it was necessary to run short term deficits to recover from the economic crash facilitated, if not created, by the Republicans. And even then, the first year's deficit, for which she blames Obama, was created and signed by Bush.

So it is disingenuous to say that, because Obama used stimulus spending during his first two years, he is not concerned about long run deficits. They are different issues.

Next, Noonan accuses Obama of being "disrespectful" to Paul Ryan, who is honestly alarmed by the deficit. Who is this Paul Ryan who deserves so much respect for his serious proposal to solve the deficit problem? He is the same guy who voted for spending on, but not paying for, Afghanistan, Iraq, Medicare D, and the Bush tax cuts.

And what could be more dishonest than Noonan’s accusation that Obama is making entitlement spending political. It was Obama who tried the adult conversation on health care. It was the Republicans who effectively ended town hall meetings in Democratic districts with right wing screamers about death panels and government takeover of Medicare.

Noonan concludes with a plea for the adults in the GOP to nominate someone who is not "strange, extreme or barely qualified." This is what they have done traditionally, she says. All they have to do to beat Obama is follow their established tradition.

How about the 2008 VP nominee? Isn’t that the traditional choice?

Peggy Noonan and Internet speeches

2011-02-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

Peggy Noonan’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Internet Helps Us Get Serious,” takes a ramble through Fantasyland to conclude that speeches by conservative politicians on the internet are what caused the Republican resurgence in the last election.

Here is the progression: the Left, who want big government, are happy about massive debt 1) because it causes other governments to influence US policy with the IOUs they hold, and 2) because the debt crisis will force reduction in gun spending in order to maintain butter spending. The aim of the Left is to weaken America. But what about the rest of us? Why have we allowed all this debt?

First, regular politicians cannot recognize a real crisis because they have been laboring under false claims of crisis as far as they can remember. Secondly, legislators are suffering from Rich Boy Syndrome. They inherited a strong, vibrant economy, and since they never had to really work for a living, they never learned to respect the system that created the wealth. Third, it is human to avoid dealing with unpleasantness.

Why this linkage between the Left and Rich Boy Syndrome? Is it an honest linkage, I asked myself. So I decided to investigate.

Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. Excessive, peace time, deficit spending started on her watch. Reagan cut taxes with the intent to increase the deficit, claiming tax breaks for the wealthy would tinkle down to the middle class. The percentage of wealth at the top has increased ever since. Does she apologize?

But even Reagan raised taxes when the deficit got too big from his perspective. And Clinton left office with a budget surplus. Who came in and blew the budget wide open? The guy born into wealth, the guy whose dad got him out of Vietnam, the guy whose dad got him jobs in the business world, the guy whose dad got him his entre into politics. Whose draft-dodging vice-president said “deficits don’t matter”?

George W. Bush led us into two wars without asking America to pay. He cut taxes on the wealthy, again citing the tinkle-down theory, which was disproven by Reagan, refudiated by it creator, David Stockman, and has now been disproven again. He added prescription benefits without providing a way to pay for those benefits. Then, the failure of his administration to supervise the Rich Boys on Wall Street caused the economy to collapse. It was combination of these four things that caused today’s huge deficits.

What is Noonan’s theory on how to get out of this fix? We should not go back to the pre-Rich Boy tax rates. We should not raise current taxes to fight the current wars. We should not get out of the wars. We should not raise taxes to pay for the drugs. We should not cut the prescription drugs.

No, the solution is the new conservative politicians who got elected to cut spending on other things. And how did we get so many of these new politicians elected in 2010? Not by Fox News propaganda. Not by corporate propaganda thanks to Citizens United. Not by propaganda blaming the poor, black kid for not solving the problems created by the Rich Boy—quick enough. They got elected, Noonan says, due to the dissemination on the internet of full speeches by these conservative politicians containing “serious, fleshed-out ideas.”

In support of her internet theory, Noonan give three examples. The first two are speeches by Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie at CPAC, three months AFTER the election. The third is the Lincoln Day Dinner speech by Ron Johnson, which became so viral, she claims, that it brought down liberal Russ Feingold.

I never heard of this speech. Since I do not live in Wisconsin, I assumed that was the reason. So I went to the internet to find the revolutionary speech. I was anxious to see it, since I had read he had no serious, fleshed out ideas on how to solve the budget crisis.

I started with Youtube, and searched for Ron Johnson listed by number of views. The first relevant, with 16,563 views, hit I get is entitled “Ron Johnson at the GB Press Gazette reveals that he has no job plan,” where he was caught flatfooted by the Green Bay editorial board. The next hit, with 9,586 views, is entitled, “Ron Johnson Testifies Against child Abuse Victims, Opposed Child Victims Act in wisconsin,” where he sought to protect the Catholic Church from lawsuits by child rape victims.

So I ran “Ron Johnson Lincoln Day speech” on Bing. I got no videos on the first two pages. I tried Google with same search terms. Still no video link. In fact, on the first page, I get two links to Peggy Noonan’s article on her speech theory citing the Ron Johnson speech. She has no link to his speech, either. I gave up trying to find this revolutionary speech.

As a conservative who claims to write speeches with “serious, fleshed-out ideas,”I am sure Peggy would like to think such speeches have effects on elections. But where is the evidence? I am sure the Ron Johnson speech may have made the Tea Bagger rounds through email, but neither Youtube, Google, nor Bing provide evidence of influence outside the right-wing true believers.

I guess we have to go back to right-wing, corporate propaganda as an explanation. Occam's razor.

So this is my take on how she wrote this column. She read that Ron Johnson thanked a conservative talk show host for promoting this speech as the reason he decided to run. Tea Baggers liked what Johnson said, and they started sending it around to their fellow Baggers. Since the speech was 20 minutes long, it must have been filled with facts and stuff. Ron Johnson won. Ergo, post hoc proctor hoc. The full speech was the cause of Johnson's election. Since she wrote long speeches for a living, she believes that they are important. She wanted the Tea Baggers to win. Therefore, long speeches are the reason.

Now one speech does not show a pattern so she needed at least 2 more. "I know," she thought, "CPAC had some speeches a couple weeks ago. In fact, the speakers were just like those smart people on TED that people are always watching. Hey, TED is another example. And then I'll pick Christie and Daniels for my additional political examples. Coulter is a little too creepy. Sure, those speeches were after the election, but no one notices stuff like that."

Since it was being published in the WSJ, she decided to throw in an irrelevant, dishonest attack on the Left. But comparing CPAC to TED was the funniest.

Did Seinfeld rip off Andy Warhol?

2011-02-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows Seinfeld's show within the show about Nothing. Supposedly George's idea, but George was channeling Larry David, so it is really Larry's idea for the entire series. So when I ask whether Seinfeld ripped off Warhol, I really mean to ask whether Larry David did.
Here is what I found in Warhol's wikipedia bio:

Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call The Nothing Special, a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, Andy Warhol's TV in 1982 and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986.

Maybe rip off is too strong. Maybe Larry and Jerry brought Warhol's vision to fruition. In either case, they did a much better job than Warhol could have dreamed.

I love Jews

2011-02-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

And we are spending huge money, as are they, to keep possession of that small piece of desert. We have this huge housing surplus, and we are getting killed in technology. What better solution than pay the Israelis to move here, and bring their businesses. If some want to stay because they think what happened 2000 years ago is more important than what is happening now, they can stay. They just don't get anymore money from us. Then the Muslims can go prove how valuable that land is, without the Jews. Good luck.

So I was reading David Broder's column in the Cincinnati Enquirer

2010-11-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

and I was shocked at the triviality of the topic and analysis in "Congressional Democrats aren't showing they can make hard choices." The current story involved the Democrats creating a leadership post so that Hoyer and Clyburn could both have titles of leadership. Ok, so they did it. Prevented some needless hard feelings. So what? Why is this important? I decided to write about the issue, because of the example Broder gave at the end of his column. I go online to get the language to cut and paste. Here is the factual basis for the accusation in the last three paragraphs of the online column.

Normally, this would not matter much. But we are about to start a Congress in which everything depends on the willingness of the leadership in both parties to face up to hard choices - on the budget, Afghanistan and a dozen other issues.

Too often in the past, Democrats have avoided making hard choices by throwing more money in the pot or taking similar self-indulgent steps. When it came to the stimulus legislation and health-care reform, for example, Democrats spent to buy votes rather than make tough choices.

The Democrats' unwillingness to face the hard choice in this internal fight sends exactly the wrong signal.

Wait a minute! This is an entirely different historical accusation from what I recalled. So I went back to the physical newspaper. Here is the original middle paragraph:

Too often in the past, Democrats have avoided making hard choices. Way back in Lyndon Johnson's time, a well-conceived and carefully targeted Model Cities program was disgraced when the chairman of an appropriations subcommittee saw to it that Smithville, Tenn., his hometown, become one of the recipients. Some Laboratory for urban policy.

I see one likely explanation for this change. David Broder has lost it. I mean, really. Smithville getting a little Model Cities money more than 40 years ago is the best he can do? So he sent out this column, and then someone in the adult supervision dept. read it, and observed, "This story about a Model Cities program under Lyndon Johnson, which you somehow link to this Hoyer-Clyburn leadership contest is a bit, trivial, remote, disconnected, and, well, nonsensical.

So it was changed to a more recent, facially relevant, example. Of course, the new example is a lie. The Democrats did not avoid tough choices in health care. They got what they could get given the Republican obstruction. The problem with the stimulus was not that Democrats threw money at it. They didn't throw enough money, again because of the Republican obstruction.

If he wanted to talk about making tough choices, Broder could have written about the Republicans, who are, at this very moment, demanding a tax break for the rich, and at the same time, a reduction in the deficit, with full knowledge that doing both is impossible. Therefore, Republicans are scrambling all over each other to avoid assignments to the appropriations committee for fear that they will be blamed for reality-based, aka, hard choices that must come.

Whatever happened behind the scenes, it is clear that David Broder is transparently and fundamentally dishonest.