JustOneMinute

When Pundits Just Don't Get It, Part Forever

The ever-earnest Nick Kristof delivers "When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5" and calls for a national racial reconciliation board (following the South African model) to address the racial gulf in this country.

Back in reality (although only inches away in my Dead Tree edition), Ross Douthat explains that fostering racial antagonism will remain a key part of our political life:

Ultimately, being optimistic about race requires being optimistic about the ability of our political coalitions to offer colorblind visions of the American dream — the left’s vision stressing economics more heavily, the right leaning more on family and community, but both promising gains and goods and benefits that can be shared by Americans of every racial background.

In the Obama era, though, neither coalition has done a very good job selling such a vision, because neither knows how to deliver on it. (The left doesn’t know how to get wages rising again; the right doesn’t know how to shore up the two-parent family, etc.) Which has left both parties increasingly dependent on identity-politics appeals, with the left mobilizing along lines of race, ethnicity and gender and the right mobilizing around white-Christian-heartland cultural anxieties.

For a while the media has assumed that this kind of identity-based politics inevitably favors the left, because 21st-century America is getting less white every day.

But that’s too simplistic, in part because the definitions of “white” and “minority” are historically elastic. If a “white party” seems sufficiently clueless and reactionary, it will lose ground to a multicultural coalition. But as African-Americans know from bitter experience, “whiteness” has sustained itself by the inclusion of immigrants as well as by the exclusion and oppression of blacks. That history suggests that a “multicultural party” may always be at risk of being redefined as a grievance-based “party of minorities” that many minorities would prefer to leave behind.

At the state and local level plenty of politicos from both sides of the aisle will ensure their fundraising success and continued power by promoting division rather than reconciliation. At the Presidential level only one of the strategies can succeed, but if the losing side is competitive and can envision success in the next cycle, the politics of division can continue for quite a while.

A Classic Moment In Punditry

Street savvy Ezra Klein thinks police officer Darren Wilson's account of his scuffle with Mike Brown strains credulity:

Officer Darren Wilson's story is unbelievable. Literally.

As a brilliant example of Ezra's insight into street brawls, let's flash forward to this:

What happens next is the most unbelievable moment in the narrative. And so it's probably best that I just quote Wilson's account at length on it.

I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.

So Brown is punching inside the car. Wilson is scrambling to deflect the blows, to protect his face, to regain control of the situation. And then Brown stops, turns to his left, says to his friend, "Here, hold these," and hands him the cigarillos stolen from Ferguson Market. Then he turns back to Wilson and, with his left hand now freed from holding the contraband goods, throws a haymaker at Wilson.

Every bullshit detector in me went off when I read that passage. Which doesn't mean that it didn't happen exactly the way Wilson describes. But it is, again, hard to imagine. Brown, an 18-year-old kid holding stolen goods, decides to attack a cop and, while attacking him, stops, hands his stolen goods to his friend, and then returns to the beatdown. It reads less like something a human would do and more like a moment meant to connect Brown to the robbery.

Except - oh, dear - Mike Brown's friend Dorian Johnson described the same cigarillo hand-off, as Ezra eventually realized:

The idea that Brown stopped punching Wilson just long enough to hand his contraband to his friend struck me, on first read, as beyond belief. But Johnson backs at least part of that account:

While the officer is grabbing ahold of Big Mike, he kind loses grip around his neck, that's how I knew he had a good grip. He never fully let Big Mike go, now he has a good grasp on his shirt. So now Big Mike's able to turn different angles while he is trying to pull away. And at a point he turned, now we are face-to-face, and he put his hands like, grab these, Bro. And in shock, I'm so not unconsciously, my hands open to where he could put the rillos in my hand.

 So Johnson and Wilson agree: there is a moment when Brown turns to Johnson and hands over the stolen cigarillos. But Wilson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to more effectively pummel Wilson, and Johnson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to better escape Wilson.

Ezra would do well to read up on confirmation bias and recalibrate his bullshit detector. In fact, maybe he could edify his readership with a piece on how people need to guard against the tendency to see what they want or expect to see. I just know such a piece would be chock full of insight and amusing anecdotes, drawn no doubt from Ezra's experience.

As to whether Ezra's BS Detector has ever even tingled when Obama or other prominent progressives hold forth, let's not ask.

Symbols And Reality

An astute observer at Slate has a good comment about the Ferguson debacle. A snippet:

We are here today because from almost the moment this incident occurred it was made into a symbol of some large, painful, problems that we face as a society. This happened before anyone, including you, knew if what actually happened that day was symbolic of these problems or not. With so much invested in the symbolism this incident now carries, it is very hard to see it in any other way. When a symbol becomes so closely intertwined with a problem - as if the truth or validity of one rises or sinks with the other - it become crucial to prove the symbol, whether the weight of proof is there or not. Get out of that mindset. 

Everything does not have to be an injustice for it to be true that injustices exist.

Rich Lowry makes a similar point. Obama's embrace of the symbolism is criticized here. Andrew Sullivan has a helpful round-up of back-and-forth about whether the grand jury system is useful in cases like this. Maybe the governor should have appointed a Special Persecutor to deliver an indictment and then present a weak, embarrassing case ending in acquital - that was the playbook in Florida with Trayvon Martin.

Hagel's Out, And Now For The Bad News

The NY Times headliners deliver a slap in the face to anyone who hoped for change on the national security front:

Hagel’s Departure Tightens White House Hold on National Security Policy

Yeah, there are plenty more clowns in that clown car. The Times gives the last word to a bit of a critic:

“Not only does the Hagel ouster not address the internal problems in the White House, but it’s also essentially a denial that the problem goes deeper,” said David Rothkopf, an expert on the National Security Council who just published a book, “National Insecurity.”

Well, Obama wasn't going to resign and Biden might not be an upgrade anyway.

Bracing For The Ferguson News

Any minute now. The leaks seem to point to no indictment, but I have no clue as to the local politcal forces. Maybe the leaks have been meant to push back against inexorable pressure for an indictment? 

Fortunatley, Eric Holder is also involved so we know the Federal investigation won't be politicized. What, Al Sharpton wasn't available?

ANCIENT HISTORY: Back in 2008 prosecutor Bob McCulloch was operating in Missouri as a member of the Obama Truth Squad:

The Missouri Truth Squad, an Obama campaign press release stated last week, would “respond quickly, forcefully, and aggressively when John McCain or his allies launch inaccurate claims or character attacks about Barack Obama, or when they distort Barack Obama’s record or plans.”

So what’s the problem?

Many of the Obama Missouri Truth Squad members have law enforcement powers, such as St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, and Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer.

That was then.

Transitioning From Retreat To... We'll See

A couple of seemignly-connected stories have emerged. From Saturday, the end is a bit less nigh in Afghanistan:

In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat

By: Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt

WASHINGTON — President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against theTaliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

And for the nominal architect of our "strategies" in Afghanistan and Iraq it's post-election de-fenestration. Very Rumsfeldian:

Hagel Said to Be Stepping Down as Defense Chief Under Pressure

By: Helene Cooper

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down under pressure, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and the struggles of his national security team amid an onslaught of global crises.

The president, who is expected to announce Mr. Hagel’s resignation in a Rose Garden appearance on Monday, made the decision to ask his defense secretary — the sole Republican on his national security team — to step down last Friday after a series of meetings over the past two weeks, senior administration officials said.

The officials described Mr. Obama’s decision to remove Mr. Hagel, 68, as a recognition that the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ. A Republican with military experience who was skeptical about the Iraq war, Mr. Hagel came in to manage the Afghanistan combat withdrawal and the shrinking Pentagon budget in the era of budget sequestration.

But now “the next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus,” one administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. 

Yes, the focus will shift to seeing whther Obama's legacy can be something other than retreat and disaster in both of the wars he inherited.

Regrettably for Obama, Iraq was the strategically important war even though Bush thought so and Afghanistan, even if it was the "good war", was fought on strategically dreadful and politically marginal terrain.

Back To Benghazi

Not everyone is endorsing the House Intelligence Committee report that more or less gave the Administration a pass for the Benghazi debacle.

Obama's Immigration Move Bad for Democrats?

The NY Times runs a conta-narrative piece arguing that maybe Democrats don't want to fully abandon white voters:

SAN DIEGO — PRESIDENT OBAMA’S executive order eliminating the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants is good policy. It is the right thing to do. But it is a dangerous move for theDemocratic Party.

Yes, immigration is an important issue for most Latinos and Asian-Americans. And yes, 63 percent of Latinos and 66 percent of Asian- Americans voted for Democratic candidates for Congress in the midterms. The executive order could solidify and expand that support for years to come.

But Latinos and Asian-Americans made up only 11 percent of the electorate. Even if immigration were the only issue driving their vote — and it most certainly was not — it could have shifted the national partisan balance of power by only a few percentage points.

Whites, meanwhile, accounted for 75 percent of the electorate. Far more than any other group, whites will decide the fate of the parties in the years to come. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, the data suggest that immigration very much matters for whites.

Yes but throw in women, gays, and the college-educated guilt stricken and maybe they can get to fifty percent.

Immigrants are moving to almost every corner of the nation. They usually look different from the white majority. And, irrespective of the facts, the dominant narrative maintains that immigrants rely heavily on public services like welfare, education and health care, that immigrants take jobs from native-born workers and lower their wages, and that immigration is leading to cultural decline.

I'll score that as two out of three. The evidence on wages convinced even Paul Krugman that waving in unskilled workers from aborad does not exactly boost the wages of the native unskilled. That's why on even numbered days the Dems fret about immigration and on odd-numbered days they fret about stagnant working class and middle class wages - please synchronize your calendars.

And speaking of the Earnsest Prof, we know without looking he supports Obama's latest immigration move, so let's cut to his current rationalization:

That’s why I enthusiastically support President Obama’s new immigration initiative. It’s a simple matter of human decency.

That’s not to say that I, or most progressives, support open borders. You can see one important reason right there in the Baldizzi apartment: the photo of F.D.R. on the wall. The New Deal made America a vastly better place, yet it probably wouldn’t have been possible without the immigration restrictions that went into effect after World War I. For one thing, absent those restrictions, there would have been many claims, justified or not, about people flocking to America to take advantage of welfare programs.

Most progressives support greater border security? Uh huh. That is why they line up to vote for expanded Unicorn Patrols. Real attempts at security, on the other hand, are routinely derided as a waste of effort. My fave from that genre is Gov. Bill Richardson's classic "if you’re going to build a 12-foot wall, you know what’s going to happen? A lot of 13-foot ladders. This is a terrible symbol of America."

OK, back to the original theme. I'll accept at face value the hope that our undocumented friends from the South are not net consumers of government services (And don't vex me with data! I'm trying to feel the love here.) However, the third claim - immigration is leading to cultural decline - when rephrased, seems irrefutable. Is immigration leading to cultural change? Hands up if you say no... I don't see any hands.

Now, change doesn't have to be a bad thing. To pick a trivial example, I think salsa has it all over ketchup. But, just making connections at random here, if upwardly mobile white girls feel threatened and harassed on the mean streets of the Big Apple, wait until those streets look more like any Central or South American metropolis. 

Well, this Times contributor notwithstanding, sticking it to the oppressive white patriarchy has been the Democratic Party project for years, with Obama as their crowning achievement.

 

Saving Tinkerbell Obama

As we brace for tonight's diktat we cannot shake the feeling that Allison Williams and the Peter Pan spectacular are airing a few days early. Obama hopes to rally his base and re-establish his relevance by picking a huge, divisive fight with the Republicans. Couldn't we be spared this drama if people would simply gather around their televisions tonight and clap if they believe in Obama?

It always worked when I was a kid. For Tinkerbell, anyway.

ERRATA: Recent problematic metaphors include Sen. McConnell announcing that Obama's executive action on immigration will be "like waving a red flag in front of a bull". Umm, matadors do that because bulls are stupid and predictable, and the red flag is a useful distraction prior to going in for the kill.

McConnell has a good feel for his caucus so this metaphor may be apt. Or maybe McConnell is bullish on America.

 

Now What?!?

The Times continues to surprise:

Why Voter ID Laws Don’t Swing Many Elections

Many people have understandably blamed low turnout for the Democratic Party’s misfortune on Nov. 4, but some have gone a step further.

They argue that turnout was so low because of voter suppression, particularly laws requiring voters to present photo identification. They assert that these laws disenfranchised enough voters to decide several elections, even a Kansas governor’s contest where a Republican won by four percentage points.

Voter ID laws might well be a cynical, anti-democratic attempt to disenfranchise voters to help Republicans, as Democrats claim. But that doesn’t mean that voter ID laws are an effective way to steal elections. They just don’t make a difference in anything but the closest contests, when anything and everything matters.

Weird. At a time when their readership has been buffetted by a brutal election one might expect the Times to be offering some comfort food.

Oh, well. Maybe the editors plan to let their reporters drop by for a quick visit in Realityville now that the last election is past. There is plenty of time to get us Ready For Hillarity!

The Sound Of One Hand Thinking

Josh Marshall contemplates one possible outcome of Obama's heralded executive action on immigration and concludes it helps the Democrats:

If there are 5 million people who are affected by this order, the number of people who either have family ties to these individuals or affective relationships with them is much larger. I don't know if it's 15 million or 20 million or 40 million. But it's a lot more than 5 million people who will feel acutely the fate of these people hanging in the balance with the 2016 election. And advocates on both sides of the immigration divide, deporters and pro-immigrant activists will press the issue throughout the 2016 cycle. The 5 million affected can't vote and won't be able to for years. But many family members, friends, community members and employers can.

Yes, these people have been waiting for years to be able to come out of the shadows. But it's one thing to wait and another to come out of the shadows and then be forced to retreat into the darkness, with a perhaps heightened risk of deportation and family separation.

It all adds up to an intense and likely toxic campaign fracas in which a lot of people will have a unique and intense motivation to vote. That will apply to people on both sides of course. But the anti-immigration voters vote consistently almost every cycle. And as intense as your animus is toward undocumented immigrants, it's hard for it to compare to the motivation of voters who directly know someone who will be affected. And that latter group has far more 'drop-off' or occasional voters.

Sure, whatever. But a much greater potential impact will occur if, implausible as it might seem to some, the hateful nativists are right and de facto amnesties don't take place in a vacuum.

Maybe, just maybe, the news that Democrats are done with deporting anyone will reach Central America, sort of the way similar news reached that area last spring. If in 2015 and 2016 the Texas and California borders look like they did in 2014 with people eager to get into the US and collect their 'permiso' then it is likely that the Democrats will have electoral problems come November 2016.

Of course, if the Democrats are right and we can grant a huge unconditional amnesty without attracting a new surge of illegals, well, good for all of us.

Obama Versus Obama

Forget the Gruber tapes! Now the Times is replaying Obama comments on unilateral immigration reform from the early years when he was hiding behind Congressional inaction:

For Obama, Executive Order on Immigration Would Be a Turnabout

WASHINGTON — President Obama is poised to ignore stark warnings that executive action on immigration would amount to “violating our laws” and would be “very difficult to defend legally.”

Those warnings came not from Republican lawmakers but from Mr. Obama himself.

For years, he has waved aside the demands of Latino activists and Democratic allies who begged him to act on his own, and he insisted publicly that a decision to shield millions of immigrants from deportation without an act of Congress would amount to nothing less than the dictates of a king, not a president.

They run a number of telling quotes biut not this one - "If you like your Constitution, you can keep it".

Fun With Numbers At The Times

Dave Leonhardt of the Times is unconnected from reality, but he gets a column out of it:

How the G.O.P. Can Court the Working Class

I know what you are thinking (unless you work for the Times) - the Democrats have a serious problem with the bitter-clingers of the white working class, so where is Leonhardt going with this?

A defining feature of Republican economic policy for decades has been its benefits for the well off. The stated goals of that policy have been to shrink government and lift economic growth, but the main method has been cutting taxes much more for high-income families than others. At the same time, the party has opposed an expansion of health insurance for low- and middle-income families, increases in the minimum wage and college financial aid and extensions of jobless benefits.

The country’s voting patterns largely reflect these stances, despite all the talk about the conservative white working class or affluent liberal elites. Democrats handily won voters with family incomes below $50,000 in this year’s midterm elections, and Republicans handily won those with incomes above $100,000. The same has been true in nearly every national election for the last two decades.

Oh, please. Blacks and our friends from south of the border are disproportionately found in the lower income groups. What Leonhardt is viewing as an economic bloc may actually be a racial bloc.

Here is some exit poll data from 2012, with Obama on the ticket:

Democrats strategists viewed those numbers as deeply problematic, and they didn't improve in 2014, if college/non-college is accepted as a marker for working class:

White non-college grads were 36% of the electorate, just as in 2012, but this time they went for Republicans by 64-34, up from 61-36. And this is the group the Republicans need to woo?

So maybe Leonhardt is going to talk up ways for Republicans to boost their appeal to blacks, Hispanics or Asiana? Hardly:

A new Republican economic approach could still revolve around cutting taxes, but the cuts would no longer be focused on the affluent. “I would expect to see a marriage of sorts between shrinking government and helping the middle class,” said Michael R. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute. Specifically, several conservatives, including Conn Carroll ofTownhall.com and Timothy P. Carney of The Washington Examiner, have called for a cut in the payroll tax, which helps pay for Medicare and Social Security. Though it receives less attention, 63 percent of taxpayers pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes.

Policies aside, there is no question that the Republican candidates in 2016 will claim to be allies of the middle class. Mark Hemingway, of The Weekly Standard, wrote last week on Twitter that he worried about nominating Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney, because neither would easily be able “to run *hard* against Hillary the elitist.” Republicans with more of a middle-class image include Mr. Rubio and three Midwestern governors: John Kasich of Ohio, Mike Pence of Indiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Weird. One wonders whether the Times ought to pay up a bit and get their reporters access to the exit poll crosstabs, which would definitively answer whether there is a black/white divide among the voters earning less than $50,000 per year. Using the college/high school marker, there seems to be a race-based division, a problem Dems have struggled with for years.

Not The Headline Team Obama Was Looking For

The NY Times responds to this week's Bad News Friday News Dump from the administration:

Cost of Coverage Under Affordable Care Act to Increase in 2015

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year — in some cases as much as 20 percent — unless they switch plans.

The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015.

An analysis of the data by The New York Times suggests that although consumers will often be able to find new health plans with prices comparable to those they now pay, the situation varies greatly from state to state and even among counties in the same state.

And the administration had a suggestion for those who find their Thanksgivings are not fully occupied with family, shopping and football:

“Consumers should shop around,” said Marilyn B. Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal insurance exchange serving three dozen states. “With new options available this year, they’re likely to find a better deal.” She asserted that the data showed that “the Affordable Care Act is working.”

That can be a new, fun family holiday tradition - comparing doctors, networks, deductibles and coverage options!

The new data means that many of the seven million people who have bought insurance through federal and state exchanges will have to change to different health plans if they want to avoid paying more — an inconvenience for consumers just becoming accustomed to their coverage.

A new Gallup Poll suggests that seven in 10 Americans with insurance bought through the exchanges rate the coverage and the care as excellent or good, and most were planning to keep it.

In employer-sponsored health plans, employees tend to stay with the same insurer from year to year. But for consumers in the public insurance exchanges, that will often be a mistake, experts said.

If you like your health plan you can reminisce about it.

More On Big Money In Politics

Although it seems utterly contrary to their customary agenda the NY Times has a story on Big Money in Politics - Immigration Division:

The Big Money Behind the Push for an Immigration Overhaul

The calls started shortly after President Obama’s news conference on the day after the midterm elections. He had said he would go ahead with action on immigration before year’s end, in spite of warnings from Republicans that he could wreck relations with the new Congress they will control. White House officials were calling immigrant advocates to talk strategy and shore up their support.

The officials wanted to reassure them, several activists said, that the president, after delaying twice this year, was ready to take the kind of broad measures they had demanded to shield immigrants here illegally from deportation.

The White House calls — and the president’s decision itself — reflected the clout the immigrant movement has built up in recent years, as it grew from a cluster of scattered Washington lobbying groups into a national force.

A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the last decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

And lest you wonder, yes, they hope to buy (or at least rent) our democracy:

“The good news was that the funders really got the idea of building up a movement that could press for change at all levels,” Mr. Sharry said. “We were really talking about a movement that could win the grand prize, legislation that puts 11 million people on a path to citizenship.”

Critics are, well, critical:

Some opponents accuse the foundations of blatant partisanship.

“The whole apparatus has become the handmaiden of the Democratic Party,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which opposes legalization for undocumented immigrants. “These foundations fund activist organizations designed to create ethnic identity enclaves and politically control them for partisan purposes.”

Left unmentioned - there is lot of Silicon Valley money pushing for an expanded H-1B visa program. It's trickier to accomplish that by Executive action alone. And the legislative path is difficult because the Democrats want to hold the tech visas hostage to broader reform; oveer to Slate:

Separately, there is now broad bipartisan support for high-skilled visas, including a new class of visa for startup founders. For years, Democrats have held back high-skilled-only reform because they believe the country will only get one shot at immigration.

An obvious strategy for Boehner and McConnell would be to pass an expanded H-1B program and see whether Obama vetoes it.

Root, Root Root For The Home Team

The NY Times notes that Obama might have a political motivation for his new carbon deal with China. However, they include a comic bit of wishful thinking in the lead:

In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut greenhouse gas pollution is a bet by the president and Democrats that on the issue of climate change, American voters are far ahead of Washington’s warring factions and that the environment will be a winning cause in the 2016 presidential campaign.

A variety of polls show that a majority of American voters now believe that climate change is occurring, are worried about it, and support candidates who back policies to stop it. In particular, polls show that majorities of Hispanics, young people and unmarried women — the voters who were central to Mr. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 — support candidates who back climate change policy.

...

A 2014 poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, meanwhile, found that majorities of women, minorities and young people support candidates who strongly endorse climate action. That poll found that 65 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 53 percent of unmarried women support candidates who back climate change action.

The Hispanic panic now extends to climate change? Please. This has been pushed for years and remains on a par with the news that Red Sox Nation cheered Johnny Damon when he was a useful idiot and stopped cheering when he donned the hated pinstripes. Let's cut to the LA Times from 2010:

Latinos, Asians more worried about environment than whites, poll finds

...

California's Latino and Asian voters are significantly more concerned about core environmental issues, including global warming, air pollution and contamination of soil and water, than white voters, according to the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll.

...

"Latinos and Asians are far more likely to be registered as Democrats than whites, and Democrats hold these views more closely," said Peyton Craighill, who supervised the poll.

Pretty complicated analysis. As to the depth of that commitment, this National Resources Defense Council advocacy poll from Jan 2014 was revealing. The flavor of the early questions was that Something Must Be Done (by someone else)! For example, (Q. 15), 78% agreed we needed "strong government action" to limit climate change (Support for "weak government action" and "wishy-washy government action" was untested. I guess people favor the strong horse). But the tone changed when the questions hit closer to home:

75% want to hold their cost to $10/month or less, which amount to $120 per year. And since the typical electric bill is per household rather than per person, we can make a comparison to this CBO working paper from Nov 2012 titled "Offsetting a Carbon Tax’s Costs on Low-Income Households":

For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that a policy that set a price of $28 per metric ton on CO2 emissions (roughly $103 per ton of carbon) would impose a cost of $425 dollars per year on the average household in the lowest income quintile and a cost of $1,380 per year on the average household in the highest income quintile (see Figure 1; note that those annual costs were measured based on the size of the economy in 2010). 

Hmm. $425 is well above the $120 price tag acceptable to 75% of the respondents. So basically, limiting climate change is very important to these respondents as long as someone else pays for it. And Democrats are certainly working on ways to make that happen by way of yet another Federal subsidy program. Good to know.

The Times is leading with the observation that partisan Democrats root, root root for the home team, especially as long as it doesn't cost them anything. Yeah, that will give Republicans pause.

EFRRATA: This seems like a good opportunity to introduce my new diet plan. YOU will cut out sugar, sweets, treats, carbs, and beer and limit your alcohol to one drink per day or less. I won't change a thing. But together, and on average, I believe we will lose a lot of weight - let's go!

I Believe It Is Cooling For Our Time

John Kerry on the China-US climate agreement. I probably ought to read it eventually, but I am busy now and can wait a bit to learn how Kerry (and Obama!) afre geniuses who have been right about everything.

And Not Loretta Lynn Either

Breitbart reporter Joel Pollak got over-excited when he searched the NY Times archives and dioscovered that a Loretta Lynch had worked on the Clinton campaign back in 1992. That is obviously the name of Obama's new nominee for Attorney General, and it was off to the races. Oops.

Hindsifht being twenty-twenty, let me pile on with a pro tip - Google can be your friend. Or for you Microsoft buffs, Bing it on!

A Google search on "Loretta Lynch" Clinton 1992 -Obama -Breitbart currently kicks back this bio of "Loretta Lynch" as the second result. A similar search on Bing gets that page as the first hit. And the first Google hit includes a news story and photo of her smiling (and non-black) face.

Both sources mention she worked on the 1992 Clinton campaign and is a Yale law school alum, which would certainly foster another Clinton connection. That doesn't mean there weren't two Loretta Lynchs working on the 1992 Clinton effort, but it might have given one pause. Or not. Darn. I hate these own-goals. Still, it could have been worse.

Kings Of Comedy

We don't normally look for laughs at a Sino-Japanese summit, but this picture and headline are hilarious:

Frosty Meeting at APEC Could Be Start of Thaw Between China and Japan

And when they say "Frosty" they aren't talking about a Beer Summit:

 

"Sorry to hear about your dog dying."

"Thanks, I hear your cat is circling the drain, too."

Well, Obama is at the APEC meeting too, so that should turn the frowns into smiles. Or chuckles, anyway.

As We Wait For The Fever To Break...

Obama delivers the old standby for his parties mid-term failures - it is the messaging, not the policies. Here he goes:

"...we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn’t just legislation. That it’s a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand. And I think that we haven’t always been successful at that”.

Ooops, my bad - that was Sooo 2010. Here he goes again, with his quadrennial whinging to 60 Minutes:

WASHINGTON — Just days after his party was routed in the midterm elections, President Obama said that he and his White House team had not succeeded in effectively selling the benefits of his policies to the American people, calling it a “failure of politics” that he must change in the final two years of his presidency.

“It’s not enough just to build a better mousetrap,” Mr. Obama said in an interview that was taped Friday at the White House and broadcast Sunday on the 60th anniversary of CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “People don’t automatically come beating to your door. We’ve got to sell it. We’ve got to reach out to the other side and, where possible, persuade.”

Just offhand, I don't think Obama's opposition to the Keystone pipeline can be scored as a better mousetrap misunderstood by an ignorant public. On the other hand, I suppose winning "Lie of the Year" for 2013 with 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it' could be offered as an example of poor messaging. Or outright lying about an unpopular feature of an Obama policy.

Well. Problems in ObamaWorld are always the fault of the bitter-clingers in flyover country who simply fail to grasp Obama's genius. Sometimes they are diseased, other times they aren't paying attention, but some day (he hopes) they will see his light. 

Maybe Just Friend Him On Facebook Next Time...

From the BBC:

President Obama sent 'secret letter' to leader of Iran

I guess its not a secret anymore.

US President Barack Obama is said to have written a secret letter to Iran's supreme leader describing a shared interest in fighting Islamic State.

The letter, reported by the Wall Street Journal, also urges Ayatollah Ali Khamenei toward a nuclear agreement.

The US president stresses any co-operation on fighting IS is contingent on Iran reaching such an agreement by a 24 November diplomatic deadline.

Cooperation on fighting ISIS? Let's see - one country is scrambling to find any allies at all that will make a contribution and [Spoiler Alert!] is struggling to get its NATO ally Turkey on board.

Another country is allied with Syrian leader Assad, who has welcomed ISIS as a distraction for the West and successfully positioned himself as the lesser of two evils.

As the Times recently noted ISIS only rolls to victory in Sunni territory, so Shi'ite Iran has no worries either for itself or the for the Shi'ite portion of its Iraqi client.

Assuming, perhaps with undue optimism, that Obama is aware of any of this, it might have dawned on him that we need Iran's help against ISIS a lot more than they need ours. Iran has all sorts of boots they can put on the ground. We shouldn't want their boots there, but we shouldn't volunteer to be the Iranian Air Force either.

Yikes. No more letters to the Ayatollah.

Kennedyesque

Reuters has more of the post-election Friday bad news dump:

Obama to send more troops to Iraq as campaign expands

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more U.S. troops for Iraq, roughly doubling the number already there to advise and retrain Iraqi forces battling Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said on Friday.

The United States has about 1,400 troops in Iraq, slightly below a previous limit of 1,600.

So John Kennedy. Well, Hillarity! can fix this in her turn.

Peking Lame Duck

Politico reports on Obama's crafty next move - flee!

Lame duck swims to Asia

Let's hope he has enough energy left to pivot after the swim.

If President Barack Obama expects to escape the spate of brutal post-election news by traveling 6,000 miles and 12 time zones to Asia, he’s in for a surprise.

Regional players are taking stock of whether the U.S. president once seen as a global rock star will now have diminished heft on the world stage, and some are delivering their verdict well ahead of his arrival Monday for an eight-day trip to China, Burma and Australia.

Global Times, an English-language newspaper published by China’s state-run People’s Daily, has carried two withering editorials in recent days.

“The lame-duck president will be further crippled” in the wake of a GOP victory, the newspaper warned in one before the voting was complete. “He has done an insipid job, offering nearly nothing to his supporters. US society has grown tired of his banality.”

Whoa. If the ranks of the right-wing bloggers ever thin in this country we have a deep bench in Beijing.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

News you can't use:

AC/DC Drummer Charged With Attempting to Procure Murder in New Zealand

Attempted this and that notwithstanding, if you are stuck for Christmas ideas (I know, right?):

AC/DC is due to release their first album in five years on December 2.

In Which I Effortlessly Square A Circle

Ezra Klein delivers nine takeaways from the election results, briefly suggesting that, unlike Obama, he is educable. But my confidence in that conclusion is shaken by Point 2:

2)  The night had few bright spots for Democrats.

But there were some for liberals. The personhood ballot initiatives lost in Colorado and North Dakota. Marijuana was legalized in D.C. and Oregon (and we're still waiting on Alaska). The minimum wage was raised in Arkansas, Illinois and Nebraska (though the Illinois initiative will still require ratification from the legislature). Washington state expanded background checks on guns. "So voters want a higher minimum wage, legal pot, abortion access and GOP representation," tweeted FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman. "Ok then."

Oh, bon mot! If an (uncontrolled) gun were pressed to my head I would offer the notion that maybe voters prefer our Federalist system, and are happy to pass at the state level laws while preserving a bit of humility and resisting a "One Size Fits All" approach at the national level.

Just a guess.

The Obama Presser

I am watching Obama's press conference and, Whew. I was afraid Obama would be angry and frustrated with We, the People, but instead, he is telling us that the message from this election is that the voters want Washington to work harder and better. Just why that means we voted for Republicans but not Democrats remains a mystery to Obama if no one else.

The Q&A on immigration and his impending executive order finally broke my spirit. As I heard it, Obama explained that if Congress would only pass a bill, that would supercede any executive action he might take. Huh??? I think that means that Obama considers himself to be bound by future legislation but not, apparently, past legislation. I haven't seen that copy of the Constitution, but then again, I am not the Smartest President in the History of Forever.

Maybe the transcript will clear that up.

[Here we go:

He cast his executive actions as an inducement for Republicans to pass their own immigration bill.

"The best way, if folks are serious about getting immigration reform done, is going ahead and passing a bill and getting it to my desk. And then the executive actions that I take go away," he said.]

A BAD TIME TO LOSE THAT PESKY REMOTE CONTROL... OK, instead of flipping over to Sports Center I let Obama run and now he is reminding us that he is still in charge of negotiating and approving a nuclear deal with Iran. Oh, no, and now he is talking about ISIS and delivers the insight that "It is too soon to say we are winning". Yeah, but is it too soon to say the Syrian moderate rebels are losing, which was the thrust of the question?

Doesn't anyone have a question he can answer? Maybe ask him about Kobe...

Covering The Wrong Posterior

Carl Hulse of the Times reports on an intersting point made by Republicans:

Did Senator Harry Reid’s strategy of protecting Democratic senators up for re-election from having to take politically risky Senate votes backfire?

With the Senate on the verge of slipping away from Democrats, some Republicans think it did.

The two parties have been locked in a running battle over Republican efforts to force floor votes on sensitive issues such as repeal of the health care law, gun rights and approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Mr. Reid, the majority leader, has thwarted many of the efforts by limiting amendments. In response, Republicans have filibustered numerous pieces of legislation.

Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Republican leadership, said he thought the approach boomeranged since Democrats on the ballot in Republican-leaning states such as Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana have come under fire for voting too often with President Obama.

“Basically the only votes they have are the votes they had to take to move the Obama agenda forward and they had nothing else going for them,” said Mr. Blunt. He suggested some Democrats would have been better served by being able to point to votes where they broke with the president and Democratic orthodoxy.

Democrats say that Republicans were going to hammer their candidates no matter what amendments were voted on.

That is not much of a response. Of course, something honest, like "Our big progressive donors would have freaked out if Reid allowed ther Senate to pass Keystone bill" might not be helpful either.

Our Petulant President

Peter Baker of the Times delivers shock and awe in assessing the Democrat debacle last night:

President Obama Left Fighting for His Own Relevance

WASHINGTON — Two things were clear long before the votes were counted on Tuesday night: President Obama would face a Congress with more Republicans for his final two years in office, and the results would be seen as a repudiation of his leadership.

But that was not the way Mr. Obama saw it. The electoral map was stacked against him, he argued, making Democrats underdogs from the start. And his own party kept him off the trail, meaning he never really got the chance to make his case. “You’re in the Final Four,” as one aide put it, “and you’re on the bench with a walking boot and you don’t get to play.

The Republican capture of the Senate culminated a season of discontent for the president — and may yet open a period of even deeper frustration. Sagging in the polls and unwelcome in most competitive races across the country, Mr. Obama bristled as the last campaign that would influence his presidency played out while he sat largely on the sidelines. He privately complained that it should not be a judgment on him. “He doesn’t feel repudiated,” the aide said Tuesday night.

We get more details about the non-repudiated Obama's state of mind a bit later, introduced by grim news about his fading star:

Just two years after Mr. Obama’s re-election, the midterm results underscored just how far he has fallen in the public mind. Nearly six out of 10 voters on Tuesday expressed negative feelings about his administration, according to exit polls. For every two voters who said they had cast ballots to support Mr. Obama, three said they were voting to express their opposition to him.

Joe Biden was looking forward:

“We have to be more direct and clear about exactly what it is we’re looking to do,” Mr. Biden said.

But Barack was studying the rear-view mirror:

But Mr. Obama was focused on the odds against him. His staff researched it and told him that no president in more than a half-century had as many Senate seats open in states lost by the president. “This is probably the worst possible group of states for Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower,” Mr. Obama told WNPR radio in Connecticut on Tuesday.

The President couldn't even find a surrogate to push that factoid? What's next, drunk-dialing old donors?

This next passage stunned me, and apparently the Times editors as well; it appears in my Dead Tree edition and elsewhere on line but has been dropped from the current Times version:

Obama is not the first second-term president to lose seats in his last midterm election, nor is he the first to find plenty of explanations for why that was not a judgment on his tenure. There is something about this point in a presidency that brings trouble - the last four two-term presidents all faced arguably the greatest crisis of their own creation about this time.

Richard Nixon resigned just three months before his second midterm. Ronald Reagan became caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, which was revealed in the days after his. Bill Clinton was impeached barely six weeks later. And George W. Bush faced a war that he was on the verge of losing. And yet Reagan, Clinton and Bush also rose to the occasion during the remainder of their terms, surpassing their problems to score important achievements in their final years.

Bush's late-term accomplishments?!? I'll be happy to credit him with the surge in Iraq, although I am surprised that the Times does. But what about the failure of immigration reform and the near-collapse of the financial system? Surely the Times is not scoring those as Wins for the Good Guys (I have it 1-1 on my scorecard).

Maybe I am forgetting something, althugh it appears the Times would rather forget that Mr. Baker wrote this. Let's chalk his moment of madness up to Obama Disillusionment Syndrome.

One Damn Wave After Another

Fun's fun but 2016 may undo the Republican wave of 2010:

Up for re-election in 2016 in states Obama won are first-term GOP Sens. Marco Rubio (Florida), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Mark Kirk (Illinois), Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania). These senators all won in the GOP wave of 2010. Hanging on — especially in Pennsylvania , Wisconsin and Illinois — in a presidential year is a very heavy lift. New Hampshire and Florida won’t be easy, either.

Given how thoroughly Republicans ran the map in 2010, finding new states to pick up seats is very hard.

If a Democrat wins the Presidency in 2016 she (or he?) will be very likely to swoop in with a new Democratic Senate Majority Leader and a lot of chatter about Presidential coattails. And even if a Republican wins a close race he (or she?) will probably face an opposition Senate.

Well. We can leap off that bridge when we come to it.

But don't let me harsh your mellow.

Election Night

Go Big Red.

Catcalling And Reflexive Libs

The NY Times takes up the catcalling controversy in their Room For Debate feature. They start with a question - "Do We Need a Law Against Catcalling?" and they managed to find an utterly conventional feminist prepared to put her name next to "Yes".

Let's buckle up the Hyperbole Restraints and dig in:

Street Harassment Law Would Restrict Intimidating Behavior

...

I'd propose a law that would prohibit street harassment and would also be consistent with our First Amendment jurisprudence about other kinds of hate speech (cross-burning in Virginia vs. Black) that intimidates, harasses and perpetuates inequality. 

Really? From the video, a lot of the "harassment" was along the lines of "good morning". So now "good morning" needs to be put on an equal footing with burning a cross? Good grief.

And since you ask, Clarence Thomas emphasized that the historical associations of cross burning with white-on-black violence put it in a special category. It's only my humble guess but I don't think the Supremes will view "good morning" as having a comparably ghastly history.

The law would prohibit “uninvited harassing speech or actions targeted toward individuals in public spaces on the basis of sex or sexual orientation when done with the intent to intimidate.”

And enforcement will be done by the Amazing Kreskin, deploying his mind-reading skills. Sure, a guy may claim he was just hoping that this was the one-in-a-million girl who responds favorably to "Hey, good-looking", but the ticketing officer will know better.

Almost done:

Even if rarely enforced, the symbolism of a law weighing in on the side of equality would have powerful effects.

Oh, my - I think there is widespread agreement that an easily mocked, sure-to-be-ignored feel-good law that can't be enforced will have powerful effects. But 'powerful' is hardly synonymous with 'beneficial'.

And if Mayor DeBlasio wanted the police to lock up under-employed young ethnic males he shouldn't have ended Stop and Frisk.

My goodness. If someone suggested to this earnest professor that she should only go out in public wearing a burka and escorted by a male spoude, relative or (in exceptional circumstances where acquantance rape is not a concern) friend, well, she would take the vapors and sue whoever made the suggestion for harassment.

But apparently she expects a police escort when she takes to the mean streets, or hopes to see a police-person on every street corner. Or maybe surveillance drones with video and sound recording capability could be deployed over Manhattan. Good luck!

FWIW, even the mostly liberal Times commenters are having a hard time digesting her view.

Announce Good News On Monday! (If The Election Is Tuesday)

The NY Times is scraping under the bottom of the barrel with this bit of pre-election cheer:

Iraqis Prepare ISIS Offensive, With U.S. Help

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT  NOV. 2, 2014

We're not drifting in Iraq - Obama is the Man With a Plan! I can already see those black flags turning to white all over Iraq.

So what is the plan?

WASHINGTON — Iraqi security forces, backed by American-led air power and hundreds of advisers, are planning to mount a major spring offensive against Islamic State fighters who have poured into the country from Syria, a campaign that is likely to face an array of logistical and political challenges.

A spring offensive?!? After we train and recruit new troops for the Iraqi army and involve the Sinni tribes with a national guard structure that at this point merely lacks legislative authority and willing Sunni leaders?

"Euphoria" does not describe my reaction. But on the bright side, at least they aren't telling us that after a hectic (but fruitful!) weekend Barry and Michelle have developed an Ebola vaccine which only awaits animal and human testing.

A Times "Analysis" Of Expert Opinon Versus The Great Unwashed

Richard Perez-Pena of the Times is given space to explore the public mistrust of experts. As is so often the case with the Times, I am left marveling at the mental acuity of liberals.

Alarmed by Ebola, Public Isn’t Calmed by ‘Experts Say’

When public health leaders and government officials make the case against isolating more people returning from the Ebola hot zones in West Africa, or against imposing more travel restrictions from that region, time and again they cite science and experts. It isn’t working very well.

So far, so good. However...

Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor quarantine in cases like that of Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was held against her will in a Newark hospital on the orders of one governor and has fended off the efforts of another governor to sharply restrict her movements. Some prominent conservative commentators dismiss the assurances of scientists, Obama administration officials and the news media as unreliable, elitist blather.

So we immediately jump to a left-right divide, even though if an "overwhelming majority" of Americans favor quarantines the phrase "bipartisan support" springs to mind.

The prize bit of analysis is this pretense of providing some background:

This comes on top of a broader mistrust of elites. “Skepticism about science and expertise and authority has a pretty big constituency out there,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. It is not enough for policy makers to be right on the science, he said; they must also find a way to reassure “people who are all too ready to interpret expert opinion as elitist and condescending.”

That sort of view runs across the political spectrum, he said, on issues like the safety of vaccinations, prescription drugs or fluoridated water, and studies have shown that attempts to correct misinformation often end up reinforcing it, instead. But in recent years, that mistrust has been most visible on the right, where many people dismiss scientific consensus on global warming and evolution.

Evolution? Clarence Darrow called and he wants his monkey back. And I'll see "global warming" and raise him one fracking and one GMOs. Oh, wait - the science is not yet settled on those last two, and never will be until libs get the answer they want. Let's see, this is from last week on fracking:

Gov. Cuomo is promising to release the longest-awaited study of his administration — an analysis of the health impacts of fracking — but only after the election.

This is from last year:

Still Undecided on Fracking, Cuomo Won’t Press for Health Study’s Release

...

Almost 15 months after his administration began a study to evaluate the health risks of the hydraulic fracturing process of drilling for natural gas, Mr. Cuomo said he did not have a timeline for the report’s release. In May, he anticipated that it would be done “in the next several weeks,” and last month he said he expected it to be done before the 2014 general election, when he will be running for a second term.

And on GMOs I would say there is little trust for the CDC or the rest of Washington, known as they are to be tools of Big Food.

And utterly missing from this "background" are examples of Big Government fails where mistrust would have been warranted. Leaded gasoline and the War On Dietary Fat come to mind, and I welcome other examples.

Let me note this last bit of clowning around by Mr. Perez-Pena:

On Ebola, Republican politicians have found new lines of attack against the Obama administration, stoking fears of the disease. But even if, as Democrats claim, those attacks are politically motivated, the Republicans making them have often made the case in the more appealing way.

Gov. Paul R. LePage of Maine, a Republican, said of his attempts to isolate Ms. Hickox, “I’m just asking her to be reasonable,” and it seems that many in Maine agree with him.

When Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, challenged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, to “bring out his scientists who are advising him,” he did not take the bait, depicting his quarantine policy as common-sense prudence.

In fact, some Democratic governors, and most of the public, have taken stances similar to Mr. Christie’s and Mr. LePage’s. But some commentary in support of the administration’s position has cast things in partisan — and, yes, condescending — terms.

Maybe Mr. Perez-Pena has a respect for his readers that I do not fully share, but left unmentioned is New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who kinda sorta backed a quarantine and then got waffley:

Under Pressure, Cuomo Says Ebola Quarantines Can Be Spent at Home

...

It was the second striking shift in Mr. Cuomo’s public posture on the Ebola crisis in 72 hours; after urging calm on Thursday night, then joining Mr. Christie to highlight the risks of lax policy on Friday, Mr. Cuomo on Sunday night appeared to try to dial back his rhetoric and stake out a middle ground.

...

For Mr. Cuomo, though, embracing the policy proved somewhat complicated. Earlier this month, he cast decisions on screening procedures as “a federal issue.” In a news conference on Thursday announcing that Dr. Spencer had tested positive for Ebola, Mr. Cuomo appeared beside Mr. de Blasio and health officials to urge calm. (The city said Sunday that Dr. Spencer “looks better than he looked yesterday.” He remained in serious but stable condition.)

By Friday, appearing with Mr. Christie, the tone had changed starkly.

“In a region like this,” Mr. Cuomo said, “you go out one, two or three times, you ride the subway, you ride a bus, you could affect hundreds and hundreds of people.”

Extraordinary that we don't trust that kind of leader. As to the notion that Obama, too, is careening between pandering to his base (i.e., citizens of the world), listening to experts, ands listening to pollsters describing the concerns of the Great Unwashed, well, don't ask.

Saturday Afternoon

Away we go.