It’s not a surprise at all, but Mitt Romney has won in Illinois. With 61% of precincts reporting, he’s got about 48% of the vote to Santorum’s 34%, Paul’s 9%, and Gingrich’s unimpressive 8%.
For some reason (maybe because Romney has led consistently in the polls by a substantial margin?) the Illinois race hasn’t drawn all that much interest compared to a lot of others. But you can talk about it here, if you care to—or anything else you want.
Women, pay attention.
And men, listen up.
It’s all pretty tongue-in-cheek, but there are a few kernels of wisdom there. And we all need all the help we can get.
This made me laugh (and it’s certainly not describing me; oh no, couldn’t possibly be!):
If you ask a woman a question, don’t interrupt her response by saying, as you impatiently tap your fingertips on the nearest table, “Get to the point.” The point you don’t get is that our intricate narratives ”” interlaced as they are with our multi-layered interpretations, embroidered with the richness of our subtle observations, and enhanced by our exquisite cascades of details that might well have entirely escaped your notice, and without which your understanding of life would be the poorer ”” are what an answer is to us. As Walter Cronkite used to say, “And that’s the way it is.”
…and almost creepy.
But still, some people’s bodies can do the weirdest things. As the lyric says, “Maybe I”m a different breed.” I don’t think there’s any “maybe” about it; somebody like this has to work very hard to develop his skills, but his connective tissue and joints tend to start out with more flexibility than the rest of us posses:
[NOTE: More here.]
…”in 1994 Romney ran to the left of Kennedy.”
This sort of statement has been made by commenter after commenter in all manner of blogs and MSM articles lately. I’ve never seen a single scrap of evidence offered to back it up, just the bold statement as though it’s a self-evident truth.
But it’s nonsensical. If the posters said instead that in 1994 Romney ran to the left of where he’s at today, or to the left of where they’d like him to be, then I’d have no quarrel with them on that score. But to the left of Ted Kennedy? An absurdity.
If Romney had run to the left of Kennedy, why (just to take one teeny example) did Romney say, in his speech to the 1994 state Republican convention, that he’d attack the “failed big brother liberalism” of the 32 years Kennedy had been in office (from the book The Real Romney)?
Please show me those clips from Romney’s debate with Kennedy that show him running “to the left” of Kennedy. I can show you tons of them where he’s running to the right of him.
Like this one, which I’ve offered before.
Another stupid thing I keep reading is that the GOP field is especially weak this year. Now, I’m not happy with the field either, and I’ve said so before. I think all the candidates are deeply flawed. But I’ve never said that this year is so much weaker than most years. I happen to think that most politicians are deeply flawed, and that it’s the rare year when we have some really really fine choices (and I believed that when I was a Democrat, too, so at least I’m an equal-opportunity cynic).
But I vote, always. And not for a third-party candidate, either; I consider that throwing away my vote, and besides, I’ve never been too keen on those guys, either. Ross Perot, anyone?
I can back up my statement that this year’s candidates are not especially weak by reiterating what I wrote in this post of about a month ago, in which I listed the main Republican presidential contenders in each primary year going back a bit:
2008: McCain, Romney, Huckabee
2004: Bush was the incumbent
2000: Bush, McCain, Alan Keyes (originally running but early dropouts were the likes of Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, John Kasich, and Dan Quayle).
1996: Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes
1992: incumbent George H.W. Bush was primaried by Pat Buchanan
1988: VP George H.W. Bush (one of the few VPs running in recent years), Bob Dole, Pat Robertson
1984: no challenge to incumbent Reagan
1980: Reagan, George H.W. Bush, John Anderson (an interesting primary in which Reagan was hugely popular and his nomination a foregone conclusion, based on his showing in 1976 when he primaried incumbent Gerald Ford and did well).
Except for the years when there was an incumbent, or when Reagan was running, not an especially strong or inspiring bunch of choices, were they? And it’s easy to forget how many people ridiculed Reagan at first, too.
Coupled with this “especially weak field” business is the idea that someone else would have been a much stronger candidate this year. I happen to share that perception; I think Ryan or Rubio or Christie or a couple of others would have been preferable. But you know what? That may just be a case of grass being greener on the other side, or the road not taken.
I can just hear the attacks now if they’d entered the fray (and this is only what we know about so far; no doubt there would have been a mad scramble to dig up dirt on all of them, and/or to use truncated quotes to make it seem as though they were saying something they weren’t): Ryan and Rubio? Too young. Ryan too geeky and uncharismatic, and a House member to boot. No executive experience. Rubio’s a newbie. Just who does he think he is? He’s hardly gotten his feet wet on the national level, and here he’s running for president?
And don’t get me started on Christie. RINO extraordinaire. Too fat; wouldn’t there be health issues? Another inexperienced newbie. Too hotheaded.
No, perhaps there’s a reason these guys aren’t running this year: they have good judgment, and they know they’re not seasoned enough yet. So let’s all just deal with what we’ve got, and stop complaining so much.
[NOTE: I’ve also had the thought lately that at least a few of the most vocal Romney-haters on some comment boards may be liberal trolls, sent to rile up the Republican masses and depress turnout (see many commenters here, for example).]
Well, this season’s pledge drive is over at neo-neocon (although donations are accepted at any time!), and I want to give a huge and heartfelt thank-you to everyone who donated. You really can’t imagine how grateful and touched I am by your generosity, which helps keep this blog going.
Adam J. White does a good job of explaining why the Obamacare individual mandate at the federal level is really and literally “unprecedented.” It’s a long article, but well worth reading if you want to understand the legal issues facing the Supreme Court when it hears National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius.
They’re large; really, really large. At issue isn’t just Obamacare, either—it’s the slow and insidious expansion of the federal government’s power under the Commerce Clause which has been going on for much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries:
Neither the federal government nor the numerous lower courts, the states conclude, “have identified a single other federal law throughout our Nation’s entire history that simply compels individuals to enter into commerce.” That dearth of precedents is all the more instructive, they argue, because “Congress surely has not lacked incentives to exercise such a ”˜highly attractive power.’”‰” In two centuries, Congress never lacked the creativity to fashion indirect ways to achieve its preferred ends”‹”””‹think of the perennial threat to withhold highway funds as a way to cajole the states into forcing drivers to wear seatbelts”‹”””‹but it never claimed for itself the power to achieve its economic aims through direct commands to the citizenry at large.
But the Commerce Clause, as important as it is, is only the beginning. There’s also this:
And even if the individual mandate does not fit squarely within the Commerce Clause, the government further argues, that mandate fits within the powers granted by the Necessary and Proper Clause”‹”””‹that is, the Constitution’s ancillary provision authorizing Congress to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” Congress’s other enumerated powers…
The states challenging Obamacare respond with several arguments that the mandate is neither “necessary” nor “proper.” Ultimately the most powerful of these is the slippery slope: The government’s argument offers no legal limits to prevent the imposition of similar mandates in other markets displaying similar characteristics. Lacking any “limiting principle,” the government’s theory of the power to mandate the purchase of health insurance “obliterates any meaningful boundaries on Congress’ limited and enumerated powers,” a theory that “cannot be squared with the Constitution.”
Then there’s the tax question:
If the Supreme Court finds that the individual mandate is justified under neither the Commerce Clause nor the Necessary and Proper Clause, then the government has one remaining defense: its constitutional power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises.”
White goes on to explain several reasons why it’s not a tax—and the reason isn’t just because Obama and the Democrats said it wasn’t one when they passed it, and are now claiming for the sake of the lawsuit that it is.
But even if the Court decides in favor of the plaintiffs and strikes the mandate down, there’s the question of remedy:
Should only the individual mandate be struck down, or should the Court strike down Obama-care in its entirety? To borrow the technical term, is the individual mandate “severable” from the rest of Obama-care?
The lower courts that ruled variously on these issues were hampered by the fact that the case truly was “unprecedented.” Now the Supreme Court, which can set precedent for the rest, will need to do so. This not only has the potential to be one of the biggest cases in recent memory; it also points out one of the reasons this coming election is so important: whoever becomes the next president will probably get to appoint a number of new Supreme Court Justices, who will serve for life.
[NOTE: Note, also, the emphasis on the federal nature of the individual mandate in the case of Obamacare. It is this federal nature that makes the challenge powerful. There are no such prohibitions on states, although you may indeed find an individual mandate at the state level to be undesirable, and would like to see it struck down. But, as I’ve said many times before, the individual mandate at the state level used to be considered a conservatively-approved approach to health care insurance, and a way to keep insurance both affordable and in the hands of private insurers as an alternative to a public option. Obamacare has caused many conservatives who previously supported and recommended state mandates to reconsider them and view them more negatively, post-Obamacare. But legally there is a huge difference, which can be seen in the NFIB v. Sebelius case pending.]
The time has come to debunk once and for all the myth that Marilyn Monroe was fat, or even somewhat heavy. I’m not the first one to have tried (see this, for example). And yet the notion persists that she was fairly hefty for most of her film career. She was not.
I think there’s a rather simple reason why this idea has spread. But first, here’s exhibit A, a clip of Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953). Let me know if you think the woman pictured here is anything but fairly slender. Curvy, yes indeed. Well-endowed, most assuredly. But heavy? Not a bit:
Now, flash forward to “Some Like It Hot,” probably Monroe’s most well- known film, seen by the greatest number of people. It was made in 1958, five years after “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and released in 1959. Here we strike pay dirt; Monroe really was a bit heavy in that film. Here’s the scoop on why Monroe carried some extra poundage in that movie when she played the role of Sugar:
Marilyn Monroe was pregnant during the filming, as a result she looked considerably heavier. She had no known children and several miscarriages in her life. Due to her pregnancy, most of the publicity still photos were posed for by both Sandra Warner (who had an uncredited role as one of the band members) and Monroe’s frequent stand-in Evelyn Moriarty with Monroe’s head superimposed later.
I’ve read elsewhere (can’t find the link right now) that Monroe was at least four months pregnant when filming “Some Like it Hot.” From personal experience I can tell you that for most women there’s significant weight gain by that time. But although Monroe’s weight fluctuated somewhat at other times (perhaps also due to pregnancies followed by miscarriages?), if you look at almost all of her other films or stills, you will see a slim-but-curvy woman who would not be the least bit out of place among the stars of today, although she never veers into the too-skinny near-anorexia of some of them.
Although Monroe was voluptuous, anyone who says Monroe wore a size 16 is just plain wrong, or using a completely different sort of sizing than exists in the US today. Monroe had a 22-inch waist. ‘Nuff said.
[NOTE: If you’re interested (and I bet more than one or two of you are) you can click on this photo gallery of Marilyn, published to celebrate what would have been Monroe’s 85th birthday last June. Yes, you read that right: if Monroe were alive today she’d be 85 years old.]
[ADDENDUM: I see that the first video here has been removed from YouTube. There’s another there, but it can’t be embedded, so here is the link to it.]
It’s not the place that would come to mind first. Or even second or third.
…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:
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.
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.
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.