You can bear your own faults,
and why not a fault in your wife?
Benjamin Franklin
The Night the Lights Went Out in
I'm sure everyone knows the Ravens withstood a late charge by the 49ers, 34-31. I think the 49ers are like the NFL's NY Yankees: they've had a lot of success in the Super Bowl. Take me, a hapless Vikings fan. (I've explained the story of how I became a Vikings fan in earlier posts. (I got kicked off my Little League team after an 8-year-old teammate started spreading rumors I had a (cooties-bearing) girlfriend....Where is that kid when I need him? It would make my Mom happy.) We have lost all four games; all I'm asking for is one token victory.
Of course I live in the Baltimore area. When I went to Sam's Club this weekend, several cars were flying their Ravens' pennants; I saw an older African-American couple wearing matching Ravens jackets.
Wow, this was a tale of 2 games. The Ravens had dominated play, and when the Ravens returned the second half kickoff for one of the prettiest touchdown returns I've ever seen, I thought the 49ers were done--and then the lights went out. And the 49ers made an unlikely comeback. They almost did it hut the Ravens made a memorable goal line stand. The 49ers just ran out of time. Great game. Nice to see Ray Lewis finish his career on an up note. Congratulations, Ravens!
Joe Klein / Time, "The Ice Is Breaking": Thumbs DOWN!
I don't know many conservatives whom subscribe to Time. To be honest, it was an accidental subscription. My maternal grandfather was a subscriber to US News & World Report. (That magazine publisher really screwed up with my uncle; after my grandfather passed, my uncle (the priest) tried to get them to get them to put the subscription in his name, and they blew him off. Knowing my uncle, he would have likely renewed the subscription for life.) I had read a few issues when I visited Grandfather one Christmas--my Dad was stationed in Germany and the rest of my family was within him. I wouldn't call USNWR conservative, but I found the content more balanced. I had extended my subscription for a few years at a good price; in 2010, US News converted to an all-digital format; I still get access to weekly softcopy issues, but to compensate me for loss of my print subscription, they arranged for a compensatory Time subscription.
Given time constraints (no pun intended), I rarely read Time cover to cover; I occasionally go to the dark side (e.g., the Huffington Post, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, the Gray Lady op-ed pages (I'm not masochistic enough to tune into the MSNBC talking heads), but really all I need is to tune into Sunday morning news talk soup.
The point is that you rarely have truly balanced moderators and panelists; Chris Wallace is an exception. I have seen him grill bewildered conservatives on their talking points. I don't see anything comparable. You rarely hear a liberal moderator, for example, ask a Democrat about the fact of an aging population where pay-go entitlements are unsustainable with the largest generation starting to retire, about the negative economic effects of discriminatory progressive rate tax hikes, of an administration that campaigned on civil liberties when in fact there is increasing unwarranted tracking of your assets, movements, and communications where it seems courts see the Bill of Rights as narrowly defined exceptions against oppressive government--let me put a different spin on a classic line from Love Story:
"Liberty means never having to ask for permission."
Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek links to a Sasha Volokh lecture on economics and law; this addresses the nonsense that economists are right-wing co-conspirators. Early in the talk he claims that 3 out of 4 economists are politically progressive with slight Keynesian leanings (i.e., supportive of government stimuli of the economy). But because there's less groupthink in economics than, say, in the humanities, the profession has been falsely characterized.
I knew that Klein has had his fair share of controversy, particularly this moment from the 2008 campaign:
"I do believe there's something weird a few of our colleagues have [against Clinton]," he said. "They tend to be Roman Catholics, actually. People like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd. They've had it in for Bill and Hillary Clinton since Monica Lewinsky. They feel that the Clintons are trying to put one over on us all the time."I assure you I rejected both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; their Senate voting records were consistent.; many Catholics like myself recognize the unalienable rights of preborn children. Catholic progressive politicians (e.g., Kerry, most Kennedy's, Cuomo, Biden, and Pelosi) and other Catholic progressive intellectuals find it politically expedient to subordinate these matters of conscience. (Clinton thought she was clever by paying lip service to making abortion rare, but it is just as evasive as saying let's make murders of first-graders rare. The devil is in the details. Everyone might agree on goals, but goals aren't policies. Clinton would allow unfettered access to legal abortions for any or no reason.)
But more to the point it was intellectually shallow analysis. Nobody blamed Hillary Clinton for Bill's failure to tell the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth before an Arkansas court. I'm sure all those people would have supported Clinton over McCain or Romney. Whether these people were Catholic is purely coincidental. Why not say 'they tend to be white people taller than 4'6"'? I'm sure if they were in fact critical of Clinton there were other reasons, say, for example, her vote enabling the use of force against the Iraqi regime.
The speech confirmed the November results: that a political party tethered to a white, regional, rural base no longer has the electoral firepower to govern the country.Let us recall the same party retained control of the House of Representatives. Obama (versus 2008) earned millions fewer votes, had a narrower margin of victory, and won 2 fewer states, losing half the states. Obama's strength was regional: the West Coast, the Rust Belt and Northeast. The reelection results merely confirm it's difficult to beat an incumbent, Obama (unlike Romney) did not have to compete for the nomination and was able to devote all resources to the general campaign, the Romney campaign was not up to the task: they allowed the opposition to define their candidate; and the GOP was out-organized (yet again). I would argue that vote analyses cut many ways (Obama's margin can also be attributed to the youth and women's vote), Republicans do well not just with rural voters but suburban voters, and prior GOP nominees favored immigration reforms.
The ice is breaking. The President has demonstrated in recent weeks that he now has a working majority in the House of Representatives for many of his initiatives. Tax rates have been increased with Republican votes, for the first time in 20 years. Hurricane relief for the Northeast was passed with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans. The debt-ceiling gimmick has been postponed, and perhaps shelved, by Republican leaders who see the handwriting on the wall.Absolutely delusional and shockingly incompetent analysis.. First of all, let us recall that Obama caved on the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010 despite having majorities in both chambers of Congress; did Klein write Obama's political obituary then? I doubt it. Klein is deliberately misstating the nature of the tax legislation: it was more about making some Bush tax cuts permanent, not raising tax rates. Unlike Klein, the Gray Lady got the story right: "Senate Passes Legislation to Allow Taxes on Affluent to Rise". The Clinton tax hikes were made permanent by Dem votes, not GOP votes. Also note that a number of both Dems and Republicans opposed the bill in both chambers of Congress. Note also that what passed was not what Obama initially wanted (200-250K); McConnell won a higher threshold for the Bush tax cuts.
Klein is also guilty of distortion in discussing hurricane relief. Republicans did not object to Hurricane Sandy relief: there were attempts to add-on non-Sandy spending, and many Republicans want to reform the financially-deteriorating federal flood insurance program.
The debt-ceiling GIMMICK? Only the Congress is entitled to authorize debt on behalf of the US. The national debt already under Obama has exceeded the natural credit limit, GDP. What about the blatant hypocrisy of Obama and other Dems voting against a debt ceiling increase when the national debt was a far more manageable size? We have seen ZERO leadership from this President on cutting spending' he is only willing to make cuts in defense spending; all other cuts have been statistically insignificant or accounting gimmicks like reducing planned budget increases. I furthermore doubt that a lame duck President will have anything comparable to imminently expiring tax cuts to win GOP concessions. The idea that Obama will have any ability to expand spending or regulation in this Congress is a departure from reality. However, if and when the Fed has to raise rates, debt service costs will explode.
I may continue my critique in tomorrow's post
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Association, "Cherish"
