Tuesday Late Morning Reads
Posted: January 22, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Politics 78 Comments
Good Morning Everyone!!
I know it was “just words,” but I still have a good feeling the day after President Obama’s second inauguration. We already discussed to Obama’s surprisingly liberal-sounding speech yesterday. I’ll have more reactions for you today, but first let’s talk about what Michelle Obama wore last night. It was Jason Wu and Jimmy Choo!
By the time the president took the stage at the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball to greet the audience and to introduce the first lady—“I have a date”—the Twitterverse was hyperventilating over which designer she would choose. (According to CNN, the first lady had narrowed it down to two designers from a pool of 15.)
But when she emerged in a beautiful red draped dress by Jason Wu, she still managed to shock. Wu is the designer she catapulted to fame in 2009, when she wore a one-shouldered dress of his design to the first inaugural balls. Immediately after that, Wu, who emigrated from Taiwan at age 9, was on the map. So wouldn’t it have been nice for the first lady to pay it forward—and to select another, lesser-known American designer to wear on the big night?
Even the first lady’s wardrobe is controversial for some people.
But according to David Yermack, professor of finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University and the author of the 2010 Harvard Business Review study on The Michelle Obama Effect, the first lady doesn’t owe it to anyone to change designers. “She has a big impact [on sales],” he says, “but I don’t think anybody’s entitled to it. If she picks the best designer and it’s the same person twice in a row, more power to that person.”
And after Monday night, Wu is that person. Still, the designer says he’s changed since the 2009 inauguration. “I’ve just refined my skills and grown my business,” he told The Daily Beast earlier this month, noting that the Jason Wu woman in the last four years has become “a little sexier, a little more provocative, and a lot more womanly.” That was certainly evident in Obama’s fire-engine red dress.
Now some reactions to the Inaugural Address. Yesterday, James Fallows posted his preliminary reaction, calling Obama’s speech “startling.”
This was the most sustainedly “progressive” statement Barack Obama has made in his decade on the national stage.
I was expecting an anodyne tone-poem about healing national wounds, surmounting partisanship, and so on. As has often been the case, Obama confounded expectations — mine, at least. Four years ago, when people were expecting a barn-burner, the newly inaugurated president Obama gave a deliberately downbeat, sober-toned presentation about the long challenges ahead. Now — well, it’s almost as if he has won re-election and knows he will never have to run again and hears the clock ticking on his last chance to use the power of the presidency on the causes he cares about. If anyone were wondering whether Obama wanted to lower expectations for his second term … no, he apparently does not.
Of course Obama established the second half of the speech, about voting rights and climate change and “not a nation of takers” and “Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall” [!] etc, with careful allusions through the first half of the speech to to our founding faiths — and why doing things “together,” the dominant word of the speech, has always been the American way.
Later last night, Fallows offered a more detailed analysis: The Two Most Powerful Allusions in Obama’s Speech Today. The first allusion that impressed Fallows was “the lash and the sword.” The relevant quotes with Fallows’ comments:
Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of [our founding] words with the realities of our time. [Note: this preceding sentence is the one-sentence summary of the speech as a whole.] For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.
And for more than two hundred years, we have.
Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together….
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Fallows notes that these passages refer to Abraham Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address in 1865 and Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech from the campaign of 1858.
The second allusion that impressed Fallows was the one that strongly affected many Sky Dancers: Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall.
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
Read more analysis from Fallows at the above link. More reads below the fold.
Crack of Dawn Tuesday Open Thread: Did They or Didn’t They?
Posted: January 22, 2013 Filed under: open thread, the GOP, U.S. Politics | Tags: Frank Luntz, Republican obstructionism 16 Comments
Good Morning Early Birds!!
I’ll have a Tuesday Reads post up a little later on, but here’s something to get you started.
Remember when we learned about what some Republican leaders were doing on the night of President Obama’s Inauguration in 2009? They met at a dinner organized by Frank Luntz in which they planned how they would thwart Obama’s agenda by obstructing every single initiative he brought forward. Robert Draper revealed it in his book on the U.S. House of Representatives, Do Not Ask What Good We Do.
On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration, Republican leaders met in a private dining room at an expensive Washington, D.C., steakhouse to plot their comeback. It was a mix of congressmen and senators with three others added to diversify the gathering of white men. Pollster Frank Luntz, right-wing journalist Fred Barnes, and former speaker (and soon-to-be former presidential candidate) Newt Gingrich. Gingrich gave the opening remarks and gave tactical advice throughout, including a suggestion for Republicans to target the tax problems of New York Democrat Charlie Rangel. At the end of the night, Gingrich proclaimed, “You will remember this day. You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown.”
Fortunately, Gingrich was wrong about that. Now Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post reports that Luntz tried to get the old gang together again last night.
Luntz is apparently trying to get some of the band back together, according to the office of Sen. Ronald H. Johnson (R-Wis.). This year’s strategy session will not be held in one of the private salons of the Caucus Room, much to the chagrin of Cristina Cravedi, the restaurant’s special-events coordinator, who said all the attention to the last banquet “was good for business.” Luntz, along with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour (R) and power lawyer Tom Boggs, is an investor in the Caucus Room.
On Sunday, a few minutes after chatting with Obama confidant David Axelrod at Cafe Milano, Luntz declined to confirm or deny this year’s dinner. But he claimed that the depiction of his dinner four years ago was inaccurate. “There was never a conversation about how to make Obama look bad; that was never part of it,” he said…
Texas Rep. Pete Sessions hinted that such a meeting might happen.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), who attended the last dinner (“The first question was, ‘Are you going to accept the fate that falls your way? No!’ ”), said that he again planned to dine with Cantor and Jim Jordan, a conservative Ohio representative who was forced to apologize for lobbying colleagues to oppose House Speaker John A. Boehner’s debt plan. “There will be another one of those and it will be equally expressive,” he said of the dinner. (Asked whether he meant the Luntz dinner, he said, “I’m not going to spill those beans. I’m going to let you call Frank.”)
Others who attended last year’s dinner said they’d be meeting in smaller groups.
“We’ll find some Mexican restaurant somewhere,” said Coburn, who plans to discuss the debt limit with his friends, GOP Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Richard Burr of North Carolina). Others are legally barred from breaking bread (“The crazy ethics rules will keep me from meeting with any members,” said Republican former senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who now heads up the Heritage Foundation. “We’ll just stay away for now.”
Did they or didn’t they? What is their plan this time? What enterprising reporter will get the lowdown on the meeting?
Remember, this is an open thread!
Thursday Reads: Is It Finally Time for Some Hope and Change?
Posted: January 17, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, children, Crime, education, Media, Mental Health, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: baseball, Boston Red Sox, gun safety, Joe Biden, life-defying death-affirming right wingers, Manti Te’o, Newtown school shooting, Notre Dame football, NRA, Rachel Maddow, research on gun violence, Richard Wolffe, Sasha and Malia Obama 39 Comments
Good Morning!!!
Rachel Maddow is such an optimist. After I listened to her show last night, I began to have real hope for change (pun intended) on the gun control front. Rachel talked about President Obama’s announcements yesterday, and how the knee jerk reaction of the DC pundits was basically, “ho hum, it’s nice talk but there’s no chance for real change.” But the American people agree with Obama on gun safety. If he gets out there and fights for his initiatives, he could accomplish a lot.
Another encouraging note–I can’t recall if it was on Rachel or another MSNBC show–Richard Wolffe said that he saw a look in Obama’s eyes that he’s seen before. Wolfe said it was like Obama’s determination on health care, a sign that he really cares of this and will follow through. I think Joe Biden deserves a lot of credit for this too–as he did in pushing Obama to come out in favor of gay marriage last year.
As we saw with the gay marriage issue, when the President focuses on something it becomes big news. Yesterday there was lots of discussion and it was the main topic on Morning Joe this morning too. Interestingly, after a lot of excited pro-gun-safety talk, Scarborough brought on Jim DeMint to talk about the Heritage Foundation reaction, and DeMint punted. He talked in circles and refused to offer any ideas! The right wingers simply weren’t prepared for this fight. They thought the fear of the NRA would carry the day as always.
Anyway, I feel hopeful for now. Maybe Obama can continue to change the political conversation in his second term. To me the most powerful decision the president made was to enable federal support for research on the causes of gun violence. From Inside Higher Ed:
Obama issued an order to the Department of Health and Human Services to have the CDC as well as the National Institutes of Health study issues related to gun violence, and asked Congress to appropriate $10 million for additional work in the area. Obama said in his public remarks that research is part of the solution to gun violence, and he sharply criticized the past limits on studies.
“While year after year, those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it — and Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds,” Obama said in introducing his new policies. “We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.”
He followed that up immediately with a memo to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, telling her to work with the CDC “and other scientific agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services [to] conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it. The Secretary shall begin by identifying the most pressing research questions with the greatest potential public health impact, and by assessing existing public health interventions being implemented across the nation to prevent gun violence.”
The president’s actions are consistent with several requests from violence scholars in the last month, as Vice President Biden led an administration task force to develop the plan released Wednesday. Dozens of scholars of violence this month — organized by the Crime Lab of the University of Chicago — issued a joint letter to draw attention to the impact of federal policies that have effectively banned federal support for their
This is how the anti-science Republicans think: Avoid facts and data, stifle knowledge, close your eyes and ears and scream if anyone tries to break through the denial. But the American people are with Obama on this. Some people are saying that Congress will never appropriate the money for this research. I’m not so sure. If the Republicans continue their pro-gun and anti-people tantrums, they may find themselves in the minority in both houses of Congress in 2014.
Here’s the NYT writeup of Obama’s announcement on gun safety: Obama to ‘Put Everything I’ve Got’ Into Gun Control.
Surrounded by children who wrote him letters seeking curbs on guns, Mr. Obama committed himself to a high-profile and politically volatile campaign behind proposals assembled by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that will test the administration’s strength heading into the next four years. The first big push of Mr. Obama’s second term, then, will come on an issue that was not even on his to-do list on Election Day when voters renewed his lease on the presidency.
“I will put everything I’ve got into this,” Mr. Obama said, “and so will Joe.” [….]
“I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it,” Mr. Obama said. “And, by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of the country. We’re going to need voices in those areas, in those Congressional districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong, to speak up and to say this is important. It can’t just be the usual suspects.”
Meanwhile on the life-dying, death-affirming, ideological side of this fight, the NRA really hurt itself yesterday by going after President Obama’s daughters in an attack ad. From the National Journal: Has the NRA Finally Gone Too Far?
The National Rifle Association has been skirting the lines of decency for years, but the gun-rights group stoops to a new low with a Web ad calling President Obama an “elitist hypocrite.” The ad criticizes Obama for giving his daughters Secret Service protection while expressing skepticism about installing armed guards in schools.
The ad is indisputably misleading, and is arguably a dangerous appeal to the base instincts of gun-rights activists….
The fact is, Obama is not opposed to armed guards in schools. Indeed, many of the nation’s schools already hire security. This is what Obama is skeptical of: the NRA’s position that putting more guns in schools is the only way to prevent mass shootings.
The president wants to ban assault rifles, require background checks, and ban high-capacity ammunition. He does not want to confiscate guns, despite the NRA’s unsubstantiated warnings to the contrary.
There are fair arguments to be had over Obama’s proposals: Redefining the Second Amendment shouldn’t be done without a vigorous debate. But to drag the president’s daughters into the fight, and to question their need for security, suggests that the NRA is slipping further away from the mainstream. Over-the-top tactics discredit the NRA and its cause.
Well it sure looks like we’re going to have that “vigorous debate” now.
Read the rest of this entry »
John Mackey and Whole Foods: Biting The Hands That Feed Them
Posted: January 16, 2013 Filed under: Affordable Care Act (ACA), open thread, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bread and Circus, Erewhon, fascism, John Mackey, Libertarianism, natural foods, organic foods, socialism, Whole Foods 16 Comments
My local Whole Foods Mkt.
When I first moved to Boston in 1967, there was an amazing natural food store on Newbury Street called Erewhon. It was started by Michio Kushi and his wife Aveline and focused on Kushi’s macrobiotic diet. You could get all kinds of interesting foods there like tamari sauce, miso, natural peanut butter made out of just peanuts, and all kinds of strange grains, beans, and vegetables. The store had sawdust on the floor and big barrels with foodstuffs in them. I used to take the T downtown to shop there and then drag my purchases home in great big cloth bags. Eventually Erewhon expanded and opened a store in Cambridge and it got easier to shop there. Erewhon was a pioneer in making organic foods available to the public.
In the late 1970’s another natural foods store opened in Brookline. It was called Bread and Circus, and the company soon expanded into Cambridge, Wellsley, and a few other Boston suburbs. It was a great place to shop and didn’t have the “health food” aura of Erewhon, where you would see lots of sickly-looking macrobiotic mavens. Unfortunately, in the early 1990’s Bread and Circus was bought out by the Texas company, Whole Foods Market. And it’s been pretty much downhill from there. The prices are sky high and the standards for what constitutes “whole foods” have slipped.
Under co-founder and CEO John Mackey, Whole Foods is much more focused on marketing than on health. Mackey is an obsessive libertarian, who in 2009 wrote an obnoxious op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that Obama’s health care initiative was socialistic. Here’s just a taste.
With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.
In 2010, Mackey tried to save the company some money by punishing employees with exercise and garcinia cambogia supplementation for those whom he deemed to be too fat, giving them smaller discounts for their purchases from the stores than thinner employees got. The reaction was swift and negative, and from what I can tell, the initiative was quietly dropped. The company would have been sued over it anyway. Oh, and Mackey hates unions too.
I don’t know who shops at Whole Foods in Texas, but around here it’s mostly the ex-hippies like me along with what we used to call “yuppies” and other politically liberal types. As Mackey found out in 2009 and 2010, his libertarian lecturing doesn’t go over too well with his clientele. After each of these episodes, I became less interested and wasting my “whole paycheck” at Whole Foods. I still go there sometimes, but usually only to buy things I can’t find anywhere else. After today, I’m going to feel even less enthused about shopping in Mackey’s Markets.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now that today Mackey told NPR that Obamacare is worse than socialist–it’s fascism! It’s seems Mackey has a new book out called Conscious Capitalism. He told NPR that his goal is to convince people that corporations aren’t really “primarily selfish and greedy.”
Mackey sat down with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep to discuss his philosophy and the new book he co-authored, Conscious Capitalism. Part 1 airs Wednesday, Part 2 on Thursday….
When Inskeep asks him if he still thinks the health law is a form of socialism, as he’s said before, Mackey responds:
“Technically speaking, it’s more like fascism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it — and that’s what’s happening with our health care programs and these reforms.”
Apparently NPR has been dissing Whole Foods for awhile now. There was funny piece about it at The Atlantic in 2011: NPR Is Slowly Breaking Up with Whole Foods. Mackey would probably be more comfortable appearing on right wing talk shows; but he wouldn’t reach his target demographic that way, so he has to go on NPR. There’s a real mismatch between this CEO and his customers.
Well, around here, lots of the supermarkets carry organic fruits, vegetables, eggs, butter, dairy products and meats now, so there isn’t as much need to go to a specialty store with sky-high prices. My biggest problem is that Whole Foods recently bought out a local food chain that ran the most inexpensive and convenient store in my neighborhood. By next fall, the closest grocery store to me will be a Whole Foods. Can I resist stopping there and drive 15-20 minutes to get to another store when I’m in a rush or tired? It won’t be easy but I’m going do my best.
Anyway, this is an open thread. What’s on your mind tonight?
Wacky Wingnut Open Thread
Posted: January 15, 2013 Filed under: open thread, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: gun control, gun nuts, Texas legislature, wingnuts 32 Comments
Octogenarian wingnut and former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese (who even knew he was still alive?) has weighed in on Tea Party nutball threats to impeach President Obama if he uses executive orders to regulate gun sales. TPM reports:
Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a prominent emeritus official at the Heritage Foundation, became the latest conservative to warn that President Obama could risk impeachment if he takes executive action on reducing gun violence in an interview Monday night.
Speaking with Newsmax, Meese said Congress may have to consider impeaching Obama if he were “to try to override the Second Amendment in any way” with an executive order. He did allow that there are some executive actions related to guns that Obama could take wouldn’t be impeachable.
“It would be up to the Congress to take action, such as looking in to it to see if, in fact, he has really tried to override the Constitution itself,” Meese told Newsmax. “In which case, it would be up to them to determine what action they should take — and perhaps even to the point of impeachment.”
In Texas, state rep. Steve Toth is preparing a bill that would make it a felony for any federal official to attempt to enforce gun restrictions in the Lone Star State.
A Texas lawmaker says he plans to file the Firearms Protection Act, which would make any federal laws that may be passed by Congress or imposed by Presidential order which would ban or restrict ownership of semi-automatic firearms or limit the size of gun magazines illegal in the state, 1200 WOAI news reports.
Republican Rep. Steve Toth says his measure also calls for felony criminal charges to be filed against any federal official who tries to enforce the rule in the state.
“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution,” Toth told 1200 WOAI’s Joe Pags Tuesday. He says his bill would make attempting to enforce a federal gun ban in Texas punishable by a $50,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
Toth “would welcome” legal challenges to the proposed new law.
“At some point there needs to be a showdown between the states and the federal government over the Supremacy Clause,” he said.
The Supremacy Clause is the portion of the Constitution which declares that federal laws and statutes are ‘the supreme law of the land.’
“It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama,” Toth said.
Let me get this straight. The Supremacy Clause, which is part of the U.S. Constitution, should be challenged if any branch of the Federal Government tries to limit Texans’ access to artillery of any kind? WTF?!
What’s your favorite wacky wingnut story of the day? This is an open thread!
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