It’s not the place that would come to mind first. Or even second or third.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day…
…to all!
I’m not sure why St. Patrick’s Day got so popular, but my best guess is that it has just a wee bit (that’s Scots, isn’t it?) to do with (a) drinking; and (b) the green theme. So, despite my non-Irishness, I celebrate with you and these three guys:
Oops, I meant these three guys, who actually know the words to the song:
Newt the spoiler: Part II
For those who wonder what would happen to Gingrich’s voters if he pulled out of the race, Gallup says they’d most likely be evenly divided between Santorum and Romney. This would benefit Romney.
Of course, it’s pretty moot, because I don’t see that Newt has any intention of withdrawing his candidacy. He’s happy for the chance to stymie Romney, and he’s thoroughly enjoying the unaccustomed limelight. At the end of the day, he’d like to extract a few promises from the eventual nominee before he throws his delegates to him. And I bet that, in his heart of hearts, he thinks he still has a chance to win it himself.
Those wild and crazy Republicans/conservatives
Funny how the word “crazy” comes up quite a bit today, in modifying the words “Republicans” and “conservatives.”
First we have the Daily Beast’s John Avlon with, “The Case for Crazy: What the GOP Would Learn by Picking Rick Santorum.” Then there’s Rick Perlstein in Rolling Stone, whose “Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years” is the usual hit job listing (and often exaggerating and/or misunderstanding) the most extreme excesses involving a minority on the right (which Perlstein attributes to the majority on the right), as well as ignoring the similar variety of wackos on the left.
We can dismiss Perlstein as a partisan guy engaged in writing polemics. Avlon’s article is different, and bears some looking into—not because it’s good (it’s not) but because it raises some interesting points about Santorum’s candidacy. Avlon seems to believe that if Santorum were to be nominated and lose the general, conservatives would finally get it that “ideological purity and electability are [not] one and the same,” and then would come back to their senses and towards the center.
I’m not so sure. I think there are plenty of other ways for Santorum-supporters to explain his defeat that would not lead them towards a more moderate candidate next time.
For example, one argument might be that Santorum wasn’t conservative enough; after all, he’s hardly the small government champion conservatives are looking for, at least not in his voting record. Others might say that he lacked executive experience, or economics experience, or gravitas, or was Catholic rather than Protestant, or was just too weird a person, or wore too many sweater vests, or—you get the picture. A Santorum defeat would not necessarily lead Santorum-supporters to abandon their devotion to finding a candidate who could best express their conservative principles; why would it? It might be more likely to cause them to double down on those principles with a renewed dedication to finding a candidate who better expressed those principles, or who carried them in a more electorally-pleasing personal package.
What’s more, there’s a wing of the far right that I call the apocalypse-seekers. By using that phrase I don’t actually mean anything religious, but instead am referring to those who believe that if the electorate doesn’t see the conservative light and pull a hard reverse of our recent trend towards a larger welfare state and the demise of traditional social morality, then we deserve what we get, which will be some sort of societal/governmental breakdown and/or conflagration. They reluctantly welcome that because they see it as the only chance to rebuild. People who believe such a scenario aren’t going to be deterred by a little thing like Santorum’s losing.
Are Santorum-supporters crazy? I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think he’s a very poor candidate who would get creamed by Obama in the general, but I see no reason to call those who would vote for him crazy. If you’re a social conservative, it’s hardly crazy to support the guy who most closely mirrors your views. It’s not crazy to vote for a man who spent a lot of years in the Senate as a conservative representing a large somewhat-purplish-but-mostly-blue northeastern state. It’s especially not crazy to do so if you think his opponents in the primaries are either losers or non-conservatives, or both.
Gas prices and presidents
The opposing party often blames rising gas prices on the president. For example, we don’t have to look back too far to find Democrats blaming Bush:
And now, of course, Obama’s to blame. But in reality, neither Bush nor Obama was or is the main driver of high gas prices, although each party will try to blame the other, to its own advantage. One difference, though (at least as best as I can remember) is that the MSM jumped on the Blame Bush bandwagon, whereas there’s a lot of patient explaining that Obama’s not really to blame.
Charles Krauthammer correctly point out that Obama really doesn’t have much control over oil prices, but that the American public rightly perceives that he’s antipathetic to oil as a fuel, and that he’s taking some credit for the policies of others:
Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But the American people know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The “fuel of the past,” he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn’t commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present ”” and of the foreseeable future…
But the event that drove home the extent of Obama’s antipathy to nearby, abundant, available oil was his veto of the Keystone pipeline, after the most extensive environmental vetting of any pipeline in U.S. history. It gave the game away because the case for Keystone is so obvious and overwhelming. Vetoing it gratuitously prolongs our dependence on outside powers, kills thousands of shovel-ready jobs, forfeits a major strategic resource to China, damages relations with our closest ally, and sends billions of oil dollars to Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and already obscenely wealthy sheiks.
Obama boasts that, on his watch, production is up and imports down. True, but truly deceptive. These increases have occurred in spite of his restrictive policies. They are the result of Clinton- and Bush-era permitting. This has been accompanied by a gold rush of natural gas production resulting from new fracking technology that has nothing at all to do with Obama.
Spambot of the day
This one may actually be Spambot of the month:
But a smiling visitant here to share the love.
Mesmerizing music
Every now and then I become mesmerized by a certain musician. Luckily, the force of each palls after a while, or I would be sliding inexorably into obsession territory, like the woman in Richard Thompson’s “From Galway to Graceland,” whose life was upended by her devotion to Elvis:
Now, I never was especially into Elvis. Don’t get me wrong; I certainly didn’t hate him, and I rather liked some of his music—accent on the “rather.” I understood that he was a huge phenom, but I just had no particular interest at all.
But Richard Thompson, yes! Leonard Cohen, ditto! And now Mark Knopfler, sigh!
What do these guys have in common?
Well, to start with, they’re guys. Although I like some female vocalists (Nina Simone, for example; although come to think of it she sometimes sounds a tiny bit like a guy), I seem to prefer male singers. I’m not sure why (except for the obvious), but it’s something that hasn’t escaped my notice.
Next, two of them are Brits (Thompson, Knopfler) and one Canadian (Cohen). Hmmm. And the Brits both have some Scots ancestry or influence. Double hmmm; perhaps that means something? Two went bald early (Thompson and Knopfler again). Two are great guitarists (same two).
None are what you’d call handsome, but they look great to me. All are now over 60 (ah, but I’m no spring chicken myself).
And none of them have beautiful voices. But they have distinctive voices, which is even better to me, voices that immediately got my full attention the first time I ever heard them. Voices that resemble each other a bit in that they have a certain gruffness and lack of polish, but which they use as well (or nearly as well) as they use the instruments they play (or in the case of Cohen, that others play) to accompany them—bending and shading and wobbling in just the right places, sometimes whispering for effect or when overcome with emotion.
Because I’ve decided that all three have another thing in common: the ability to convey feelings through amazing lyrics, and through a voice and demeanor that seems quiet and restrained but is really a repository for barely-leashed emotions of great depth and intensity. All three are poets—Cohen a “real” poet before he ever became a singer/songwriter, and the other two are poets masquerading as lyricists.
Note I wrote “singer/songwriter” for Cohen. I could say the same for Thompson and Knopfler, because they write virtually all their own material, and of course in the case of Thompson and Knopfler they play it, too. I cannot even imagine how hard it is to do all three at such a high level, but they manage it quite nicely. And that’s a huge part of the appeal, as well.
But in the final analysis the appeal is mysterious and mesmerizing. With Knopfler, almost literally so; I’ve had to tear myself away from YouTube, lest I go the way of Thompson’s Elvis-obsessed lady in pink from Galway (“they dragged her away, it was handcuffs this time…”).
You probably haven’t heard the end of me and Knopfler. But for now I’ll content myself with offering this video of “Tunnel of Love” (lyrics here, in case you’re having trouble hearing them). It was recorded in 1983, when Knopfler was in his early 30s and still had some hair; you’ll have to ignore (or enjoy) the 80s ambiance and fashion. It’s long, because I can’t bear to cut a note of it. But if you want to go forward and see less, the heart of the song begins around minute 4:00, the mostly instrumental part begins about 7:25, and Mark really gets going around 9:45. Note, at the end, the smile of the exhausted drummer, and then Mark’s funny little finger-fluttering wave:
[NOTE: Interestingly enough, Thompson has written a song that reminds me somewhat of “Tunnel of Love,” called “Wall of Death.” It also uses an amusement park and its rides as a metaphor for…for…well, see for yourself:
Here’s an explanation of the Wall of Death, in case you’re not familiar with it.]
[ADDENDUM: Here we go:
Two out of three ain’t bad.]
It’s that time again—last time for now
[NOTE: Bumped up once more, for the last time this cycle.]
Yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves.
But yes, it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.
Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. Comments are a very big part of what makes this blog work.
I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. But I’ll be discreet about it. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.
Marilyn Hagerty, the Olive Garden, and me
By now you’ve probably encountered the tale of 85-year-old Marilyn Hagerty’s polite column on the Olive Garden in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the middle-America restaurant review that went viral.
Initially, cynical bloggers and twitterers made fun of Ms. Hagerty’s respect for the pseudo-Italian restaurant chain. But then many others rallied to defend her, including her son, a journalist at the WSJ.
Ms. Hagerty sounds like a wonderful gal of a sort that’s becoming all too rare these days: feisty and gentle at the same time, without pretension or guile.
But I’m not here to defend Hagerty; she’s got enough people doing that. I’m here to defend the Olive Garden.
Now, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I like food, and many of my food preferences are somewhat gourmet and/or exotic, although not excessively so. But I’ve been known to frequent the more pedestrian Olive Garden, and I rather enjoy it.
That’s not to say that I’m drawn to many of their offerings; I’m not. But I do like their prices (reasonable), their hours (pretty late), and some of their dishes. For example, the minestrone soup at the Olive Garden (and now I’m starting to sound like Hagerty) is quite serviceable. What’s more, it’s good for you, inexpensive, and you can get as much as you want. It comes with any of the entrees, although you have other choices as accompaniments, such as the salad (iceberg lettuce; ugh!).
But Sausage and Peppers Rustica is my very favorite entree there. It disappeared for a while, alas, but I’m happy to say it’s returned. Unlike the minestrone, I wouldn’t exactly call this a health food, but those peppers have got to be worth something, right? And only $12.25, folks, for the whole shebang:
Newt the spoiler
I’m in agreement with Sean Trende about Newt Gingrich’s goal at this point. Even Gingrich probably doesn’t really think he’s got a chance to win. He just wants to try to keep Romney from getting enough votes to go to the convention with the nomination in the bag.
Whether he will succeed in this endeavor (Newt, that is) is hard to say. If you read Trende’s article, he does an analysis of the trends (can’t resist the puns; sorry) and answers “maybe.”
If so, this would lead to the much-ballyhooed “brokered convention.” I haven’t a clue why anyone would want this—except Newt Gingrich, whom I assume would have the personal satisfaction of both screwing Mitt Romney up and perhaps extracting some promise or other from him in exchange for some delegates. Santorum and Paul might want it to happen for the latter reason, as well. But a brokered convention would (a) throw the decision back into the hands of that hated group, the “Republican elites” (b) further weaken the party in the eyes of voters; and (c) probably end up with Romney as nominee anyway. Which alternative “new” person do you think those “elites” would choose? Sarah Palin? Marc Rubio? Don’t think so.
Ah, you say, but Gingrich and Santorum would form an alliance and one of them would be the choice. That presupposes that their total would be enough to reach the nominating threshold, and right now that doesn’t seem any more likely (and is possibly less likely?) than Romney having it sewn up going in. Which brings us to Ron Paul, who’s not likely to drop out of the race, and whose delegates might just be enough to put Romney over the top. Paul appears eager to deny the nomination to Santorum, whom he perceives as especially un-libertarian.
If you go to RealClearPolitics elections, and look on the upper right, you’ll find the current GOP delegate count. Romney’s number right now (496) is greater than the total of the other three candidates combined (Santorum 236, Gingrich 141, Paul 67, which totals 444). Whether or not that continues, Romney will almost undoubtedly remain the leader in delegates, even if he doesn’t win it outright.
Does anyone really think it would help Republican chances if Santorum or Gingrich, the less popular candidates, were to somehow combine forces and one of them became the Republican nominee? I certainly don’t, for a host of reasons, perhaps the most important boiling down to the fact that I don’t think either has a chance of beating Obama, and I think Romney has just that—a chance of beating Obama.
Post-primary: Alabama and Mississippi
Let’s take a look at the results from yesterday’s primaries in the South:
Mississippi:
Santorum: 32.8%
Gingrich: 31.2%
Romney: 30.6%
Alabama:
Santorum: 34.5%
Gingrich: 29.3%
Romney: 29.0%
Ron Paul got between 4% and 5% in both states.
For three-way races, those are incredibly close, especially the Mississippi results.
If these were winner-take-all states, Santorum would be flying high. But they’re not (although, understandably, he’s feeling pretty good). Therefore the strongest message I take from yesterday’s primary results is how little has changed as a result of them (the Hawaii caucuses, which Romney won 45% to Santorum’s 25.3%, Paul’s 18.3% and Gingrich’s 11%, have hardly been mentioned). Because the Alabama and Mississippi delegates are awarded proportionately, and because both states were roughly split 3-ways among Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney, these primaries end up acting more or less as placeholders in terms of delegate counts.
That’s odd, isn’t it? But no odder than this entire primary season has been.
Here are the counts at present:
The partial allocation of delegates from Tuesday’s voting states left Mr. Romney with 495 in an Associated Press count, out of the 1,144 needed to win the nomination. Mr. Santorum had 252, Mr. Gingrich 131 and Ron Paul 48.
What’s more, there are only 4 winner-take-all states left: “Washington, D.C., on April 3; Delaware on April 24; New Jersey on June 5; and Utah on June 26.” Santorum isn’t on the ballot in DC, and we all know who will win Utah. New Jersey would seem to be Romney country, and perhaps Delaware also (can’t find a poll on that right now). If you look at the other states with future primaries that are proportional, you’ll see that the larger states with the most delegates (New York, Texas, California) show Romney in the lead as well (at least so far), with Santorum leading in Pennsylvania (his home state) and some of the remaining southern states as well as Wisconsin.
In Mississippi and Alabama last night, almost anything that could be said about one candidate’s failure to seal the deal could also be said about the failure of the other two to do the same. It is clear that—despite Santorum’s post-primary ebullience—no single candidate has caught on, and that each represents a separate and distinct faction of the Republican Party. It does no good to speculate how the results would have differed if one of the candidates had dropped out, either, because (a) that didn’t happen (b) it seems unlikely to happen during the next few primaries; and (c) even if it did, that person’s votes might be split fairly evenly between the two remaining candidates.
But a Gingrich dropout is clearly Santorum’s hope, and he evidently believes that if that were to happen he would be the clear beneficiary. I’m not so certain, but it certainly could happen, although I don’t see Gingrich going that route in time to save Santorum. And if Romney somehow fails to gather the requisite number of votes for a nomination by the time the convention rolls around, the wheeling and dealing can go any of several ways; Santorum can’t count on Gingrich’s delegates to be ceded to him because of his supposedly superior conservatism.
As for specific things I could note about each candidate as a result of yesterday’s vote, I observe that if the South is supposed to be Gingrich’s strength, then he was the biggest loser. Santorum is from Pennsylvania, but his positions—and especially his social con tendencies—make him a natural in the South, and these results show it. I think he will continue to be strong there, unless he does something really foolish. But even so, although Santorum did better than the polls predicted and won both states, he didn’t do all that well; his margins were small. Neither, of course, did Romney. But the fact that he did almost as well as the other two indicates that he’s not anathema in the deep South, either.
Let’s tackle the elephant in the room: the preponderance of evangelicals in this part of the country. Large numbers of voters in both states identify themselves that way (for example, 80% in Mississippi), among the largest percentages of any states:
In both states, the vast majority of voters identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, and about three-quarters said it mattered at least somewhat that a candidate share their religious beliefs. In both Alabama and Mississippi, Santorum held near-20 point advantages among those evangelicals who said shared beliefs mattered “a great deal” to their choice. Romney and Gingrich were more competitive among evangelical voters less focused on common religious beliefs.
There is very little question that Romney’s Mormonism hurt him with these voters. The bigger question is whether that would matter in a matchup with Obama. I tend to doubt they would prefer Obama in numbers large enough to turn these red states blue.
Both primaries were open ones. It’s hard to say whether that affected the results, or how, because we don’t know how many “real” Democrats voted, and whether they voted to gum up the works, and if so who they voted for.
What we do know is that this thing seems poised to go on without clarity or resolution for quite some time. And that’s a disappointment, because (as I indicated yesterday) the longer it goes on the more the Republicans tear each other up, and the less time there is to focus like a laser on the real opponent, Obama.
The good life, the long life
In yesterday’s thread about eating beef, commenter “SteveH” asks:
Where does this obsession with quanity of life come from? I could understand it if we lost years on the average lifespan over the past 100 years. But we’ve gained tremendously.
Surely this must be some sort of artifact of a people with a declining faith in what will happen to them when they die.
I think he’s onto something. But there’s another factor at work, as well: the phenomenon is a paradoxical result of the gains in lifespan.
Long ago—actually, not so very long ago—child mortality was great. Visit any old cemetery and you’ll see the evidence in the tiny headstones for the dead babies, and the short lifespans of so many women dead in childbirth. Then there is the evidence of epidemics, which could sweep through a family and kill all the members (or nearly all) in a couple of days or weeks, leaving family plots whose headstones have death dates that cluster around each other.
The possibilities were nearly endless: infectious diseases of all types, both endemic and epidemic, familiar and strange; accidents that would not be fatal nowadays but which back then caused rampant infection and death; and even the diseases that still plague us such as cancer and heart disease, but always incurable then and almost invariably fatal.
Doctors made house calls. But their most common function was to diagnose and predict the course of an illness: this one is likely to die, that one will reach a crisis in a few days but will probably live if he/she can get past that. They dispensed nostrums and potions, but everybody pretty much knew they were more for show than anything else.
People didn’t need any special memento mori; the intimate knowledge of death was with them all the time. In the fourteenth century, during and after the plague known as the Black Death, which killed a third of Europe’s population, art became laden with the image of the Danse Macabre, a skeleton cavorting in glee as it leads people of all ages and ranks to their demise:
The omnipresent possibility of sudden and painful death increased the religious desire for penitence, but it also evoked a hysterical desire for amusement while still possible; a last dance as cold comfort. The danse macabre combines both desires: in many ways similar to the mediaeval mystery plays, the dance-with-death allegory was originally a didactic dialogue poem to remind people of the inevitability of death and to advise them strongly to be prepared at all times for death.
So it could go either (or both) ways: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die; and get your moral and spiritual house in order, for the same reason.
We have conquered neither disease nor death, nor is it at all likely we ever will. But we have pushed back their borders. Death still comes to infants and to women in childbirth, but it’s a rarity, at least in the developed world and even to a certain extent beyond. Infectious disease certainly exists, but actual plagues have been replaced by fear of plagues (bird flu, etc.) that haven’t quite materialized, although they always could. Now most of our diseases are either those that kill us in old age or are chronic and cause discomfort and inconvenience but with which we live for long periods and whose effects medicine can usually at least help us control.
But death still comes to all. And even if it comes in very old age, most of are fortunate enough to have lived healthy and pleasant enough lives to want to extend them still further—at least, when we contemplate the prospect from the perspective of youth or middle age or even early old age. Our relative lack of familiarity with death makes us less accepting of it, I think, not more. Almost all death—except, perhaps, for the deaths of the centenarians among us—has begun to seem premature and unusual.
And as science and medicine have progressed, our faith in their abilities, and our expectations of those abilities, have grown. If science can conquer smallpox, why not heart disease and cancer? Well, there are lots of reasons why, including the fact that many infectious diseases tend to have a more simple cause and therefore usually have been more easily preventable. But that doesn’t stop us from demanding and wanting to have control over what heretofore seemed chaotic, random, and devastating, and to ask medicine to do even more to discover the secrets that the ancient alchemists pursued: the elixir of eternal (or as close to eternal as possible) life and youth.