Here’s a great exchange about Obama, found in the comments section at RealClearPolitics:
From DCD+in+Indiana:
He’s impossible to find because he is an empty suit. We are, in a word, leaderless.
Reply from Dusty:
“empty suit”
Hmmm. And all this time I thought the Emperor had no clothes. I see quite the metaphysical dilemma.
[NOTE: When I was choosing the categories with which to tag this post, I considered adding “fashion” to the list, but decided against it.]
RFK’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan is up for parole today. It’s the 14th time this has occurred, and the hearing is likely to go the way of all the rest and end in denial.
When I heard the news, my first thought was, “Why is this man still alive?” After all, he assassinated a presidential candidate in full view of a crowd of people.
The answer is that, although he was sentenced to death in his trial, the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, before his execution had taken place. The way that sort of thing works is that, even though he was sentenced when executions were allowed, the ruling was retroactive. And even though executions were re-instituted in California in the late 70s, his re-sentencing to life in prison (with possibility of parole) during that small window of opportunity stands.
It is a common misconception that, because Sirhan was a Palestinian angry at RFK because of what he considered his pro-Israel stance, the assassin must have been a Muslim. He was not; he was a Palestinian Christian whose parents had left the area and brought him to this country when he was twelve.
Another thing I wondered when I researched this post is why Sirhan was tried under the state criminal system in California. I knew the crime was committed there, but I thought surely this would have been a federal crime as well (one of its results, by the way, is that presidential candidates are now afforded Secret Service protection). It turns out that it was not a federal crime at the time, and another result of Sirhan’s act is that the killing of a presidential candidate is now a federal crime, due to a law Congress passed after RFK’s death in 1971. This sadly extended an earlier law passed by Congress in 1965, in reaction to the shooting of his brother JFK:
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, it was not a federal crime to kill a U.S. president. Had alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald been tried, the trial would have taken place in a Texas state court. In 1965, Congress passed a law, 18 U.S.C. 1751, making it a federal crime to kill, kidnap, or assault the President or the Vice President.
That’s one extension of the power of the federal government with which I have no quarrel.
[NOTE: What do George Plimpton, Rosey Grier, and Pete Hamill have in common? They, among others, wrestled Sirhan to the ground after the assassination.
Another fact I had completely forgotten—if I ever even knew it in the first place—is that five other people were injured in the shooting, although they all lived. They were “Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger, one of Kennedy’s campaign aides; and a teenager, Irwin Stroll, a Kennedy volunteer.”]
If you look at today’s memeorandum page, the top stories are all about the Times/CBS poll showing that most Americans strongly favor collective bargaining rights for public employees.
Then there are critiques of those polls and their sampling methods, by Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit, who point out that the sampling favored Democrats and union members too strongly, plus possible biases introduced by the way the questions were worded.
I noticed a couple more things when I actually looked at the poll itself rather than the hype around it. The poll’s results highlight what I think is at work in this and so many other issues of our day: ignorance.
And by “ignorance” I don’t mean “too many people disagree with me!” I mean actual ignorance, as in “barely following the story.”
Take a look at Question 2, for example, about whether the respondent has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions. 19% were undecided, 20% hadn’t heard enough to know, and 2% who cooperated with the poll enough to answer other questions refused to answer that particular one. That’s a pretty large total percentage of either fence-sitters and/or the uninformed, leaving a unrepresentatively high percentage of the highly partisan among the other responders.
Then there’s question 6, about how much the respondents have heard on the subject of the budget fights in several states proposing to cut public employees’ benefits. Only 33% answered “a lot,” 26% “some,” and the rest seemed to know virtually nothing about it. This question didn’t just involve Wisconsin, it involved the entire issue, and the answers point out just how low this topic is on most people’s radar screens. My guess is that as things heat up in more states, this will change.
Even more importantly, the questions involved collective bargaining rights for public workers in general, which in most people’s minds includes firefighters and police officers. These groups are not affected in the Wisconsin battle and are not on the list of those who will lose collective bargaining rights there if Walker prevails.
Polls are almost always designed in some partisan way, especially polls by media outlets, and this one is certainly no exception. The polls are then used to gain momentum for a particular point of view, and to intimidate opponents into losing heart and capitulating.
This particular fight is seen by the left as vital, and they are correct. So they will pull out all the stops to win it. Republicans’ task is to educate the public. Governor Christie of NJ is eminently suited to this task, and Governor Walker of WI is not bad, either. But they need to be relentless in getting the word out, and they need to not rely on the MSM to help them, because it will be seeking to hinder them instead.
[ADDENDUM: William Jacobson critiques the sampling in a Wisconsin poll.]
One of the Hollywood icons of my youth, Jane Russell, has died at 89.
Russell was by all reports that rarity in the movie world: down-to-earth, level-headed, Republican, and religious. I was taken with her when I was a child because she was a brunette (always identified with brunettes) with a hairdo like my mother’s, a sarcastic wit, and a relaxed naturalness that came across as spunky in the movies that I saw on TV in black-and-white, such as “Son of Paleface.” Take a look at how easy she makes it all seem (and how tall and statuesque she was):
Note, also, her outfit. It was the era of the Western, and we spent a lot of time in our cowgirl outfits, like Jane. Exhibit A—young neo-neocon, cowgirl extraordinaire, although with not quite as impressive a form:
Bot whose intentions are good:
Do you have a facebook page? I’d like to like it.
Rep. Rush Holt, Democrat from New Jersey, beats Watson the supercomputer, at “Jeopardy.” Watson previously was unbeaten, even by former mega-champs Ken Jennings and Rutter.
Color me impressed. Holt is himself a five-time winner on the show, and a nuclear physicist. Hmm. What’s a guy like him doing in a place like Congress?
Then there’s Newt Gingrich’s not at all unexpected hint that he’ll be announcing his presidential candidacy soon. Color me unimpressed. He is a very stale commodity with very high negatives.
Governor Walker of Wisconsin tells the absent state senate Democrats (and the rest of Wisconsin and the nation) what will happen if they don’t return within 24 hours:
Now they have one day to return to work before the state loses out on the chance to refinance debt, saving taxpayers $165 million this fiscal year,” Walker’s spokesman Cullen Werwie said in a statement.
“Failure to return to work and cast their votes will lead to more painful and aggressive spending cuts in the very near future,” the statement said.
I like this guy’s resolve. So far he has not blinked. We’ll see whether they do.
Those of you who are not interested in the topic, please avert your gaze.
Here’s a slideshow of Oscar fashions, for those inclined to gaze. My summary: lots of feathers (a la “Black Swan?”), some of them very unfortunate.
Lots of sparkles, lots of missing necklaces with strapless gowns. Lots of false eyelashes. Lots of changes of costume for the lovely Anne Hathaway, who tried valiantly to be enthusiastic but was dragged down repeatedly by co-host James Franco, whom I’ve never heard of before (I’m just that un-with it).
All in all, it went exactly as I thought it would. “The King’s Speech” is just the sort of vaguely cultural vaguely foreign vaguely highbrow entertainment the Oscars love to reward. Natalie Portman was a foregone conclusion for Best Actress. The only surprise was Melissa Leo’s unclassy but heartfelt f-bomb, and that television is still prissy enough to consider it worth bleeping rather than celebrating.
This predictability is part of the fun, sort of like stopping at a McDonald’s once in a while. And a lot less fattening.
I went to Walgreen’s last night, and while prowling the aisles I came across an entire aisle of Easter candy.
Easter. It is still February. Easter this year is April 24.
Yet here they are: the myriad chocolate bunnies (which alas, I am not allowed to eat—not even a nibble of ear, the tastiest part). The bland and squishy Peeps, which now come in over a half-dozen unappetizing day-glo colors. The creme de la creme, the Cadbury egg, along with five thousand other varieties of ovoid chocolates, filled and unfilled.
And the jelly bean. Regular readers of this blog may recall that I am extraordinarily partial to the Russell Stover pectin variety, a brand that approaches perfection in the genre. You may also recall that I am inclined to eat whatever quantity I buy, and that these fabulous jelly beans come in 12-ounce bags.
That’s a lot of jelly beans. I have been known to force myself to refrain from eating them all at a single sitting by dumping the last half of the bag’s contents down the disposal. Not an attractive solution, but sometimes the only one.
But last night I discovered a wonderful thing. Walgreen’s now sells individual serving bags of the stuff, 1.5 ounces each and fifty-nine cents. They offer just the right amount to satisfy and yet not overdo. These small bags have the added feature of a see-through window whereby the buyer can estimate the ratio of much-desired reds, oranges, whites, and pinks to the hated and despised greens.
Progress is not an illusion after all.
Lee Smith says he did.
Smith will then write a column arguing just the opposite next week. Should be interesting.
I wrote at some length the other day about Qaddifi’s formerly good-guy-reformer son Saif. Here he is, still on the dark side (the Amanpour interview also features his much-less-political brother Al-Saadi):
Amanpour points out that although she’s in Libya, she’s seen no evidence of the strafing and bombing of Libyans by the Gaddafi government, although she’s seen gunshot victims in the hospitals. That’s interesting; knowing Amanpour, she’s be eager to confirm the bombing if she could.
When Saif says, “we didn’t use force,” it does seem rather ludicrous, however. But when he says, “For myself, I believe I am doing the right thing,” one can only imagine that he thinks it’s true, and that he sees no other way out for himself. Clearly, from the interview, he is continuing to try to position himself as the most logical successor to his father, a reformer who will implement what the people actually want.
Although I do not trust this man at all, I also do not trust the media. So I think that we actually have very little idea of what is really happening right now in Libya.
As for Al-Saadi, of all the Qaddafi male offspring, he’s kept himself most apart from power struggles and politics in general. His interview here is fairly non-political, too. He describes the movements as an earthquake that cannot be stopped. When Al-Saadi says “I want to live normal,” I tend to believe him, although I’m sure he’d like to “live normal” with a more-than-normal amount of money.
Yes, the title is sarcastic. You can miss em if you want tonight, and you probably won’t be missing a thing except a few hours of boredom watching a bunch of self-satisfied, beautiful, but anorexic people congratulate themselves on their super-duper wonderfulness.
I, on the other hand, will turn it on, as usual—although as usual I’ll be doing other things as I “watch.” What draws me is the fashions. I’m just that shallow.
This year I’ll be heavily rooting against any Oscars for “Black Swan.” I probably will be thwarted in that wish, however, since the pregnant Portman is almost a pointe shoe-in for Best Actress.
