The report is that he’ll be announcing his departure from the race at a news conference starting at 6 PM.
This makes me sad, because I actually think Walker would have made a good president. It also would have surprised me very much to have been told six months ago that he’d be dropping out so early in the game.
But I probably won’t mourn too much, because he failed to “bring it” to the campaign. I don’t know why that was so; I think it’s more a temperament thing, where his fighting spirit just didn’t come across on a national level. In a different year, with just a few candidates, he might have shone. But he might not have shone even then; his positive attributes just didn’t translate to a broad national appeal, and that would probably have hurt him in the general, too.
His departure will free up his supporters to get behind other candidates. His leavetaking also points out that raising money is a huge, huge factor in today’s presidential races. I don’t see that as a good thing. However, Walker would have amassed more money by this time had he been attracting more voters. People like to latch onto a winner.
I believe that Walker is a very good man. His rise was meteoric, and so was his fall. But it was only a fall from the 2016 campaign; it need not be a fall in any other sense.
I didn’t watch Walker’s speech live, but Ace reports:
He said that “it was his calling” to “clear the field” in the race. I imagine he probably meant “so that people can gather behind a non-Trump candidate,” but he didn’t say that. Actually, he does say that. Now that I see the video, he specifically calls upon other candidates to drop out so that voters can focus on a “limited number of candidates” who can offer a “positive message” in opposition to the “current front runner.”…
AllahPundit noted that Scott Walker did something very unusual — he called on other (unspecified) candidates to drop out, too.
Here’s the video, which I just watched:
I absolutely agree with him about the importance of some candidates dropping out. I wish one of the earliest ones hadn’t been Walker, though.
Trump says it wasn’t Swedes who blew up the World Trade Center.
That’s for sure, although it actually might have been—in the sense that Sweden has its own problems with a radicalized Muslim population within its borders. I’m pretty sure that, had a Muslim immigrant to Sweden been involved in terrorism, the MSM would refer to him/her as “a Swedish man/woman.”
The Trump quote also reminded me of an incident from my own life. During the 1960s my family had a wonderful cook/housekeeper, an elderly woman who was Norwegian through and through. She’d been born on a farm there, the youngest of 16 children, and emigrated to this country as a young woman. She’d always worked for mega-wealthy people on large estates as a sort of Mrs. Bridges, American-style. And although in her later years she was retired, she just couldn’t stand not to work, and came out of retirement for the relatively unchallenging job of working for us. Her pastry was out of this world, and although I have her recipes and have followed them assiduously, mine don’t compare.
When JFK was assassinated I remember she was particularly upset. Why? Her extra reason for angst was that Oswald was of Norwegian extraction, and she was afraid people would blame the Norwegians. I remember my mother assuring her that this was highly unlikely to happen; in fact no one (except our housekeeper, perhaps) was even thinking of his name or connecting it to Norway.
I watch so little TV that I’ve never heard of 99% of the stars at the 2015 Emmys.
But of course I have to take a look at the women’s dresses. As Tolstoi said, all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Apparently something similar is true for dresses.
And so we have (drum roll please):
Someone named Joanna Newson. This must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but to me it seems schizoid:
Then there’s someone named Gina Rodriguez who stopped by on the way to her wedding ceremony:
Speaking of schizoid, here’s model Heidi Klum (I’ve actually heard of her before) in what I can only describe as a half-and-half dress, or maybe it’s a four quarters dress. Or maybe it’s not a dress at all, it’s just a bad dream. You know, the one where you’re walking down the street partially unclothed:
Whereas Tatiana Mosley [correction: Maslany] unfortunately was in such a hurry she forgot her shirt. But she soldiered on bravely nonetheless:
Then there’s someone named Gwendoline Christie. I will now reproduce the commentary about her dress from the website:
Who said pale people can’t wear light colors? Gwendoline Christie’s really light dress surprisingly didn’t drown her out despite the old adage that says it should.
Shhh, don’t tell, but I think that old adage just may have been correct.
And now we have perhaps the most mysterious dress of all. Worn by January Jones (another actress I’ve heard of), it’s missing something. Or rather, she’s missing something. Can you spot what it might be?
Photoshop is not always your friend.
Now we have a dress I happen to like, worn by none other than—yes, believe it—Lady Gaga:
White House tech advisor Jake Brewer, 34, the husband of conservative pundit Mary Katherine Ham, has been killed in a bicycle accident during a charity bike ride and fundraiser to raise money for fighting cancer.
The couple has a young child and another on the way.
I didn’t know Brewer, but Mary Katherine Ham is well-known, well-loved, and well-respected in the conservative community. I met her at a PJ function quite a few years ago and was impressed with her graceful, friendly nature and sharp intelligence. She has published this statement and tribute to her husband’s life and her love for him.
RIP.
If you’re the praying sort please pray for the entire family.
…Chrissie Hynde has waded into another contentious area ”“ the overly sexualised nature of modern pop music.
In an obvious reference to scantily-clad stars such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, the former Pretenders lead singer branded them ”˜sex workers’ for selling music by ”˜bumping and grinding’ in their underwear. The 64-year-old also accused them of doing ”˜a great deal of damage’ to women with their risque performances…
Miss Hynde added: ”˜I don’t think sexual assault is a gender issue as such, I think it’s very much it’s all around us now.
”˜It’s provoked by this pornography culture, it’s provoked by pop stars who call themselves feminists. Maybe they’re feminists on behalf of prostitutes ”“ but they are no feminists on behalf of music, if they are selling their music by bumping and grinding and wearing their underwear in videos.
”˜That’s a kind of feminism ”“ but, you know, you’re a sex worker is what you are.’
There are two messages here. One is that today’s female pop stars go so far in their sexual come-ons, and their scanty dress, that they effectively are porn stars of the soft-core variety. The second is that this behavior creates an atmosphere that provokes and increases sexual assault.
I pretty much agree with the first. I’m not at all sure about the second, and it’s a subject so vast (what encourages sexual assaults and what decreases them, and also how broadly one should define the term “sexual assault) that I’m going to shelve it for now and concentrate instead on the first.
Over the years I’ve watched pop music degrade to the point that it’s so sexually explicit as to be virtually indistinguishable from what was considered to be soft-porn entertainment in my youth. That sort of thing is now mainstream, accepted, and even considered by many feminists to be empowering. Who was the entertainer who made it that way—Madonna (whom I’ve always found coldly repellent—but then again, I’m neither a heterosexual male nor a lesbian woman, nor even a gay guy)? Whoever it was, it’s in full flower now, and even pre-pubescents get to watch, right in the comfort of their own homes.
When I read what Hynde had said, I immediately thought of Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind (not necessarily an obvious segue, I know). The book has long been one of my favorites, and I’ve written about it and recommended it many times, usually in the context of a discussion of education (especially colleges) and PC thought, and the takeover of the university by special interest groups.
Bloom’s book was focused on the university and its effect on our society. In fact, it’s subtitle was “How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students.” You can see the emphasis on colleges, but what is sometimes lost is the second half of the subtitle, the part about impoverishing the souls. In the service of that idea, Bloom mounted an attack on rock and roll music, a critique I thought odd at the time I first read it, and which I haven’t discussed much on this blog when I’ve written about him because it hasn’t been relevant. Now I look back on it and I think I understand better what he was getting at:
Civilization…is the taming or domestication of the soul’s raw passions—not suppressing or excising them, which would deprive the soul of its energy—but forming and informing them as art…Music, or poetry…always involves a delicate balance between passion and reason, and even in its highest and most developed forms—religious, warlike, and erotic—that balance is always tipped, if ever so slightly, towards the passionate. Music, as everyone experiences, provides an unquestionable justification and a fulfilling pleasure for the activities it accompanies: the soldier who hears the marching band is enthralled and reassured; the religious man is exalted in his prayer by the sound of the organ in the church; and the lover is carried away and his conscience stilled by the romantic guiter. Armed with music, man can damn rational doubt. Out of the music emerge the gods that suit it, and they educate men by their example and their commandments….
[Rock music] has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music, and in an atmosphere in which there is no intellectual resistance to attempts to tap the rawest passions…[R]ock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire—not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored. It acknowledges the first emanations of children’s emerging sexuality and addresses them seriously, eliciting them and legitimizing them, not as little sprouts that must be carefully tended in order to grow into gorgeous flowers, but as the real thing. Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later…
…[A]n enormous industry cultivates the taste for the orgiastic state of feeling connected with sex, providing a constant flow of fresh material for voracious appetites…
I could go on and on and on quoting Bloom, but I’ll stop there and just say you should read the book, or reread it (Bloom has a whole chapter entitled “Music,” from which I got those quotes). He further ties the sexuality fostered by rock music, and the rebellion against parents and authority that it both reflects and engenders, as generalizing to a more blanket condemnation of parents, authority, tradition, and society, and also to the embrace of leftism: “From love comes hate, masquerading as social reform…In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.”
Bloom’s book was published in 1987, and it was based on his lectures and notes that in some cases were even older. The rock music of that time was chaste compared to that of today (and much of the music was better, too, IMHO). Going back even further, the rock music of my 50s/60s youth was, comparatively speaking, a celebration of puppy love (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”). And yet it contained the seeds of the blatant and loveless sexuality we see today.
I like quite a bit of pop music, especially the music of my youth. However, I find today’s explicit and coarse sexuality in music, that Hynde deplores and blames—and that Bloom already seemed to foresee, although I wonder whether even he would have been stunned by how far it’s come so fast—deplorable. But I’m not the demographic it’s appealing to, and that demographic celebrates and is affected, influenced, and shaped by it.
[NOTE: And yes, the left intends these developments, which suit their purposes admirably.]
ADDENDUM: Here’s one of my favorite rock songs and rock performances. And yes, it’s very orgasmic, but in a different way from what Hynde is describing (and there are no women, except in the audience). I love Mark Knopfler and I love Dire Straits, and this performance occurred in the summer of 1983, a bit before the years in which Bloom wrote his book but roughly during the same era.
Here the sexuality is inherent in the music itself, although there are also some suggestive moves by the performers (not so much Knopfler, who has a cooler quality, but mostly the other guitarists). The “orgasm” part I’m talking about starts at around 7:26 and goes till the end:
In fact, according to a new paper by Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko, subprime loans accounted for only a bare majority of defaults at the beginning of the housing crisis. Between the third quarter of 2006 and the third quarter of 2012, twice as many prime borrowers lost their homes as subprime borrowers.
This is not a phenomenon that can be simply explained by liar loans, predatory lenders, or any other narrative that neatly loads all the blame onto a few greedy and heedless lenders, or a somewhat larger number of hubristic and speculative borrowers…
Once upon a time, there was a country with a housing market that started to rise. As the market started to rise, housing defaults started to fall. They fell not because people had gotten wiser about borrowing, or better at managing their money, but because borrowers in a rising housing market virtually never need to default; they can always simply sell the house, walking away with whatever equity is left over after paying off the mortgage.
Lenders loved this. “Splendid! If default has become less likely,” the lenders said, “we do not need to worry so much about things like down payments or credit histories. Who cares if they can’t pay the mortgage each month; if they get into trouble, they’ll just sell the house and pay us.”.
McCardle goes on to explain that requiring bigger down payments could have eased the crisis somewhat when house prices started to fall (or at least stopped rising), as they inevitably would. Why did the pundits and prognosticators and people making the loans not see that they inevitably would fall some day? Well, there was money to be made in the meantime, and lots of it, so the push was on. But McArdle lists another reason:
When prices had been in a long, gentle rise for decades, high down payments looked like expensive and unnecessary insurance against something that rarely happened. They looked like a barrier keeping historically disadvantaged groups, like minorities and immigrants, from accumulating wealth the way that prosperous native white families had. They looked like something that regulators and bankers had needed to require before they got so darn smart about managing credit risks, and credit markets.
Everyone, from buyers to regulators, had reams of data telling them this. Who are you going to believe: years and years of statistics, or some crabby dude muttering about the Great Depression? The Great Depression was so long ago that men wore hats and the Beatles were not even gleams in their fathers’ eyes.
It just so happens that I had grown up hearing—not “some crabby dude muttering about the Great Depression”—but my very own mother muttering about the Great Depression. The Depression was going full bore when she was in college. For her entire life thereafter, she remained a political liberal (FDR was the greatest, in her opinion), but you’d have to look long and hard to find someone more fiscally conservative than my mother was.
Her family had had somewhat of a financial cushion, and that helped them weather the storm of the Depression without extreme hardship. My mother got a job in Manhattan as a secretary when she graduated from college, and she lived at home with her grandparents and parents all in one house. But the fiance to whom she’d gotten engaged broke up with her when he graduated from law school and could not find a job anywhere (he ended up as a career Army guy). Other people she knew had to drop out of school—sometimes high school—in order to help support their parents and siblings.
Since my mother lived most of her life in the same community in which she’d grown up and I was raised there, I knew these people, too. They were pointed out regularly to me and their tales of woe told me by my mother, who was a colorful storyteller. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d be likely to forget, and so I didn’t.
I have deep respect for Thomas Sowell and his work, and this column of his is no different:
It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters. But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions?…
Elections…have far more lasting, and far more serious ”” or even grim ”” consequences than emotional venting. The actual track record of crowd-pleasers, whether Juan Peron in Argentina, Obama in America or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing…
Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation. The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including President of the United States. Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands.
An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on election day is stay home. Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.
Sowell is correct. But—
But elections will always turn partly on emotion. There are intangibles that determine our reactions to even the most experienced of leaders. The ideal candidate—my ideal candidate, anyway—has knowledge and executive experience, including experience in government, which makes a governor or former governor ideal. That candidate also, however, has a certain forceful and yet engaging personality that engenders trust (not blind trust, but trust) in the wisdom of his/her decisions for the future. It helps, too, if that person is eloquent, articulate, and yet sincere, as well as able to convey complex thoughts with a graceful economy of expression. And of course the thoughts that he/she expresses would have to agree with my policy leanings—not 100%, but a substantial amount.
It’s an order so tall few can completely fill it. I think Reagan came closest in my lifetime. And yet back when he was running, I was immune to his appeal because my politics at the time didn’t agree with his.
This election cycle, when I looked at the governors running for president on the Republican side I used to think “Walker’s the best.” After all, he had the admirable track record. He also seemed to have youth and energy, and what I’d seen of his speeches was, if not eloquent, then certainly eloquent enough.
But over time I’ve noticed that something is missing with Walker, and that “something” seems important. What is it? Is it something emotional, what I’ve referred to before as his “blandness”? Should that even matter, or does it represent a larger problem, one that would be a stumbling block in some way, or to winning election as president in the first place? It is disconcerting that a man known for his stubborn fighting nature seems so mild-mannered, so unlike someone who has done what he has in fact done. So the seeming contradiction (which may or may not be meaningful) in Walker confuses me, and that confusion causes me to back away somewhat from him and to look at the others.
What works for a governor at the state level is not necessarily the exact same thing we look for in a president. For one thing, states are relatively local and the country is not. For another, there’s foreign policy. We want a grander vision for a president, and I don’t know that that is merely an emotional need in us. I think it might be something that matters in a president.
What of the other governors? I thought Perry had promise, but that he was handicapped not only by his 2012 performance but by the fact that he conjured up too much resemblance to George W. Bush (even more than Bush’s own brother, Jeb). At any rate, it’s moot now. Kasich is deficient in that he’s too liberal for me, as is Pataki. Gilmore hardly registers at all and neither does Huckabee. Jeb Bush has the same deficits as Kasich, plus he comes across as weak. Jindal and Christie are conundrums, but in different ways. Jindal is obviously bright and quite conservative, but he just doesn’t project strength and I doubt he will ever gain traction in this election. As for Christie, I happen to like him (I’m from New York City, after all, and he speaks to me of home), think he’s smart, and believe he’s more conservative than people give him credit for. But I’m well aware that the base detests him and I don’t think he has much more chance of the nomination than Jindal does, although his numbers are somewhat higher.
A track record of proven executive experience isn’t enough. Agreement on political stances isn’t enough. Emotion and charisma isn’t—or at least shouldn’t be—enough. Knowledge and eloquence? Still not enough. What is enough? Some combination of all those things, plus depth of character, a ramrod spine, and an ability to project the quality of leadership. If a candidate has those things, I don’t care about a few flaws.
Of course, they’re only in the House, so they wouldn’t be giving up anything.
Multiple House Republicans want Senate leaders to “go nuclear” over the Obama administration’s deal with Iran now that Democrats have stymied efforts to derail the accord by conventional means.
A small but growing number of GOP lawmakers say that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should invoke the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules and prevent a filibuster on a resolution to kill the deal.
Their angst is intensified by their belief that Democrats will likely be able to block legislation withholding federal funds from Planned Parenthood, a standoff that increases the chances of a government shutdown.
Less than two years after Republicans railed against Democrats for changing the rules to prevent filibusters on most presidential nominees, McConnell has ruled out using the nuclear strategy.
But the call puts more pressure on the majority leader and illustrates Republicans’ growing frustration with their inability to score significant victories in Congress, even while controlling both chambers.
I say with regret that I believe these House Republicans are correct—“with regret,” because I believe that the cloture/filibuster rules once served a purpose, back when the parties weren’t so far apart and could actually get some workable compromises going. Those days are long gone. My reluctance also comes from the fact that even going to such an extreme as the House Republicans are suggesting would not result in anything but a series of Obama vetoes that will not be overridden. And yet, I believe it must be done. The issues are too huge, and the Democrats will not hesitate to do it themselves next time they get the opportunity and see an advantage to it.
Who are these Republicans in the House? The names of a few—Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Steven Palazzo (R-Miss), Lamar Smith (R-
Texas)—are listed, but there are certainly more than that. Some of them want the rule ended entirely, but “others are calling for a more modest step to get rid of the procedural holdup only in specific cases, such as with the Iran deal.”
McConnell is said to be completely against it. I strongly doubt that he would listen to these House Republicans or care what they have to say. But what really matters is how many Republican senators agree with them, and what those senators are prepared to do about it. Till then, it’s just talk.
President Barack Obama praised Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler for teamwork, courage and quick-thinking actions…
The three sat attentively on an Oval Office couch and chair as Obama praised them as “the very best of America.”…
“It’s these kinds of young people who make me extraordinarily optimistic about the future,” Obama said…
That’s one of the reasons this story is heartening and satisfying, and offers encouragment about the generation coming of age in America today. These guys are in the mold of classic American heroes, and that includes their humility.
Also as expected, McConnell has so far refused to exercise the nuclear option, which would merely get the bill on Obama’s desk but could not serve to override his inevitable veto.
And that’s where we stand.
I decided to start on a new post on this in order to call your attention to a relevant discussion in the comments section on an old thread that most of you may not be following any more. It’s really the whole thread, but the newer part I’m talking about starts around here.
I especially call your attention to my comment here, but I really think the whole thread is worth reading.
