…although it really really seems as though it should be.
Nor is this.
Kerry: the electorate’s too stupid and uninformed to understand…
…and appreciate how wonderful the Democrats are.
And we were, fortunately, just too stupid and uninformed to understand your overwhelming superiority back in 2004.
I like the first comment to the article, which goes like this:
Not all of us are bright enough to be C students at Yale, John. Nor are we smart enough to marry a deceased colleague’s billionaire widow. Please excuse us for being so dumb.
America doesn’t want to eat its vegetables
Lady Bird Johnson was out to beautify America by planting flowers. Nancy Reagan wanted us to Just Say No to drugs. And Michelle Obama would like Americans to eat more healthfully and nutritiously, and to include more fresh vegetables in their diet.
A laudable goal, no doubt. But a long-elusive one, as the above cartoon, from the New Yorker during the 20s, shows.
Now, I happen to love vegetables. I eat quite a few every day, and my favorite cuisine—Middle Eastern—features them in many delicious guises. I’ve even written a tribute to some unaccountably neglected ones.
But then, I’m a little weird, and atypical in that respect. Most people just aren’t all that interested:
This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)
These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.
“It is disappointing,” said Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet, concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t working.
Many people have bad associations with vegetables, especially the canned or overcooked army-green variety. And fresh vegetables are extraordinarily expensive.
As the articles says, Doritos are a lot simpler. And anyway, some people would say they contain a sort-of veggie—or is it a grain?—corn.
If people won’t listen to reason and they won’t listen to pleading, what will they listen to? If this NYC proposal to fine added salt in restaurants is any indication, the nanny state may decide some day to encourage us to eat vegetables by taxing or fining “junk” foods such as Doritos that crowd them out of the diet.
The NY Times article isn’t saying exactly how this might be done. But this quote indicates that something like the anti-salt initiative would not be outside the realm of possibility:
But clear guidance probably isn’t enough. Health officials now concede that convincing a nation that shuns vegetables means making vegetables more affordable and more available.
“We have to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” Dr. Foltz said. And the choices need to become ingrained.
As Nurse Nancy Pelosi said the other day, the projected savings that will finance HCR are expected to come from preventive care and the health benefits it will supposedly create. Since preventive care rests to no small extent on lifestyle changes, and since it’s clear that the “guidance” of education “is not enough,” this could pave the way for other measures. Wonder what they will be?
How the Senate races stack up
Here’s a recent roundup of Senate races and how they stand.
And here’s some other news from Ohio that can’t possibly warm the cockles of Obama’s heart. Remember how close and how important Ohio was in ’04, determining the outcome of the presidential election? And then in 2008, Ohio went to Obama by four percentage points. But Ohio isn’t very happy with him—or the Democrats—now.
Axelrod and Emanuel…
…are apparently leaving for Chicago soon.
Axelrod will be in charge of Obama’s re-election campaign from afar, and Emanuel plans to run for mayor of the city. Robert Gibbs is rumored to be Axelrod’s replacement as Senior Adviser.
Axelrod and Gibbs are about equally loathsome, and probably quite interchangeable. But for all the criticism leveled at Emanuel, he was my favorite in the Obama inner circle. Not just because of his ballet background, but because he seemed to be the only one with a grip on public opinion, and how far Obama could go without alienating the American people.
With Emanuel gone and the completely tone-deaf Gibbs elevated to a higher position than before, it is likely that Obama will become even more disconnected from the reality of voter reaction, if such a thing be possible. That could mean he might swing ever further to the left, which would at least have the benefit of making his bid for re-election even less likely to succeed.
Of course, it might depend on who Obama picks to fill Emanuel’s Chief of Staff position. I haven’t seen too many rumors, but Doug Shoen’s speculation that it will be an insider would appear to ring true, if previous actions of Obama are any guide:
For Obama, the choice comes down to promoting a trusted aide familiar with the rhythms of the White House or, in a bit of a gamble, tapping an outside candidate with the stature and independence to tell the president candidly what’s working and what’s not.
“The candidates that I’ve seen floated are good, decent people, but internal candidates,” said Douglas Schoen, a former pollster for President Clinton, touting the second option. “What the president needs and would benefit most from is someone who has independent credibility and can just walk into the Oval Office and say, ‘No, Mr. President.’ ”
Could the new candidate be Denis McDonough, as rumored here? If so, this certainly doesn’t sound like someone who’ll be saying “no” to the president very often:
The two men are close . “Obama and McDonough seem to idolize each other,” a source told the Chicago Sun Times. “It’s safe to say they are very close. Adoration may be in the mix.”
Ick.
Coates’s testimony on the Black Panther case
Today former Department of Justice voting rights section chief Christopher Coates testified before the Civil Rights Commission about the Black Panther voter intimidation case. This is what Scott at Powerline had to say on the matter:
Coates’s testimony is a bombshell. It exposes a couple of Obama administration scandals at once. One involves the Obama administration’s attempt to cover up the rationale for burying the case against the NBPP. The other involves the Obama administration’s support for the racially based administration of justice.
If this is (or should be) a bombshell, so far it has landed in the MSM not with a bang but a whimper. I just did a search for Coates’s name at the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. Nada, zip, zilch—crickets chirping. We’ll see if this ever gets covered by the non-conservative press at all.
[NOTE: Please read Ace’s lengthier discussion of the case. PJ has posted Coates’s testimony in full, plus this article on the subject.]
To Nancy Pelosi: I do not think that word means…
…what you think it means:
Pelosi’s word, by the way, is “momentum.” I think she’s using it to mean, “nowhere to go but up.” The phrase occurs around 8:10 here:I listened to the whole thing, quite fascinated with Pelosi’s arguments that HCR is wonderful, that it will be paid for by all the savings coming from preventive health care (which she seems to think the HCR bill invented), and that those amputation-hungry doctors will be stopped in their tracks..
Pelosi seems to either have a complete lack of understanding of how insurance works, or she pretends to incomprehension for strategic reasons. Which it is I do not know. But if a person buys the idea that insurance companies set rates capriciously or “frivolously” (another word that may not mean what she thinks it means), then I guess that person might think that Pelosi and Congress have the right and the ability to dictate those companies to ratchet their rates down even while raising and extending coverage—and that said companies will be able to do so without going bankrupt.
Or maybe, for Pelosi, bankruptcy is part of the plan.
I used the word “ratchet” deliberately because Nancy Pelosi has long reminded me of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That impression has not been dispelled by listening to the above interview. Those frivolous exploitative insurance companies had better take their medicine or else—or else they’ll be left out of the exchanges (a word that sounds vaguely Orwellian, or is it Huxleyan?).
Taking the pledge—to America
Here’s the GOP’s Pledge to America.
It seems fine to me, but I’m not sure it matters all that much. People hate Congress right now. They may indeed vote Republicans in this year—but only out of desperation, not trust. The Republicans will have to earn back their trust.
We have the harvest moon
Last night was a rare “super harvest moon” (see also this), and I went outside to gaze at the lovely sight.
And since I’m one of those people with a lot of poetry rattling around in my head, up popped some lines from “Mr. Flood’s Party” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, one of the poems I loved when I first read it back in junior high school.
It’s a sad poem, as are almost all of Arlington’s works. The subject is an elderly drunk in Tilbury Town (the stand-in for Robinson’s hometown of Gardiner, Maine) whose life is almost over, and who has a conversation with himself while in his cups:
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:“Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will.”
There are many more stanzas, but my favorite back then (and now) was/is this one:
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,….
More here, if you care to read it.
Robinson (often confused with another tri-named poet who wrote character sketches based on people he knew in the two Illinois towns in which he was raised, Edgar Lee Masters) had a life full of darkness and tragedy, but utterly dedicated to poetry. Like Frost who came slightly after him, he was a New Englander, and a master of forms. Robinson is by far the lesser poet, but that doesn’t make him a bad one, although he’s considered very old-fashioned nowadays.
You may not remember Robinson’s name, but you’re probably familiar with his most famous poem, “Richard Cory.” But did you know that he was discovered by Teddy Roosevelt, who was almost singlehandedly responsible for his fame?
EJ Dionne…
Woodward on Obama and Afghanistan: hello we must be going
Woodward’s book on Obama’s Afghanistan policy-making process reveals that Obama didn’t speak of victory there:
According to Woodward’s meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.
“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. “Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint.
Is there anyone on earth who is surprised by this? If so, they shouldn’t be.
Nor by this:
Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”
Of course not. Let’s sacrifice the war effort by letting the enemy know when we’re leaving, in order to preserve your political support with your base.
[NOTE: For an explanation of the title of this post see this]:
They’re exhausted of defending him
I’ve got a new piece up at RightNetwork. Please take a look, and comment if you so desire.
And while you’re there, this trailer looks interesting.