Image via Wikipedia
It hurts to come late to a cult. The natural impulse is to take out one's frustration on the object that's being venerated. But with Flight of the Conchords, there's no chance. This show is wonderful.For those who don't know, which I'm fondly hoping means most people over 30, the Flight of the Conchords come from New Zealand and they're a band, and I can't help it if that sentence looks ungrammatical. Seems like all the good plural band-names were taken. Anyway, Flight aren't that plural, as there are only two of them. One, the taller and broader and clumsier of the two, is called Jemaine, and he's played by Jemaine Clement. The more compact of the two, marginally more competent especially at dealing with girl-friends, is Bret, played by Bret McKenzie. (The way he pronounces it, it sounds like Brit, and that's not just me, because some non-New Zealanders on the show hear it that way too, and get confused.) So, yes, the actors have the same names as their characters. They explain this at some length in the show's trailer, which is in heavy rotation on the Comedy Network, and is unique among that station's ads in that it actually makes you want to watch the product it's plugging. (Most make you run screaming from the very idea.) Jemaine and Bret hawk their wares with exactly the kind of casual downbeat solemnity that they project in the show itself. Jemaine grins. Bret smirks. They're self-deprecating even when self-promoting.
MORE:
-TORRENT: Flight of the Conchords, BBC Radio Show
-AUDIO: Flight of the Conchords: Hilariously Deadpan (David Dye, 8/31/07, NPR: World Cafe)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=a30b4488-56b0-4351-8ce8-7af3b60d3c5a)
McCain wins easily among Americans in Israel (Jewish Telegraph, 10/30/2008)
American voters in Israel supported John McCain over Barack Obama by a margin of more than 3 to 1.According to a poll by the nonpartisan Votefromisrael.org, 76.3 percent said they had voted for McCain for U.S. president, while 23.7 percent chose Obama.
That survey, compiled from the monthly averages of Gallup’s daily tracking polls, including interviews with more than 500 Jewish registered voters each month, found that while 74% of Jews aged 55 and over were supporting Obama, only 67% of those under 35 said they’d vote for the Democratic nominee.“It’s counter intuitive,” said Lydia Saad, Gallup’s senior editor.
But this finding does fit into other data showing that younger Jews are trending conservative politically. A study of the 2004 Jewish vote by the Solomon Project, an effort to record Jews’ civic involvement, found younger voters were slightly more likely than older Jews to support Republican George W. Bush over Democrat John Kerry. That analysis found 23% of voters under 30 voted for Bush, compared to 20% of those ages 45 to 60 and 17% among the 60-plus crowd.
This finding doesn’t come as much of a surprise to voters like Zach Hanover, a 19-year-old sophomore at The George Washington University who plans to vote for McCain when he casts his first ballot. Hanover, an Orthodox Jew reared in Memphis, where his father, a Democrat, would drag him to rallies with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, said his decision to be a Republican was an easy one.
“I just made a bullet list — abortion, taxes, spending, size of government — almost word for word it was the Republican platform,” said Hanover, adding that the traditional values he shares as an Orthodox Jew fit well with the values embraced by the GOP. “If you look at the biblical liturgy, the Judaic religion is about life.”
Don’t trust anyone who’s over 30 Rock (Kat Angus and Jen McDonnell, 10/29/08, Canwest News Service)
After weeks of watching Tina Fey conquer the world with her Sarah Palin impersonation, we finally get a fresh episode of her NBC sitcom, 30 Rock tonight. In celebration of the third season premiere, we're counting down the Top 10 moments from this consistently hilarious, woefully low-rated show.
Tracy Jordan: Dr. Spacemen, when they check my DNA, will it tell me what diseases I might get, or help me to remember my ATM PIN code?
Dr. Leo Spaceman: Absolutely. Science is whatever we want it to be.
The GOP's Road Back (Peter Wehner, October 27, 2008, Washington Post)
[B]arack Obama is, in important ways, a testimony to the conservative disposition of the country. He resists the label "liberal" as if it were lethal (which it is in presidential politics) and has praised President Ronald Reagan for "delivering the right message at the right time" regarding the size of government and regulations.Obama has tacked right since winning the Democratic nomination. He repeats often that he favors tax cuts for almost everyone. He stresses that he is against a government-run health-care system and supports charter schools and merit pay. He has professed a newfound attachment to the Second Amendment, terrorist surveillance, offshore drilling and applying the death penalty for rape of a child. He speaks about lowering the number of abortions rather than highlighting his plans to eliminate restrictions on them. Obama trumpets his willingness to engage in cross-border strikes in Pakistan and has toughened his views on meeting with dictators such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
An Obama victory, then, would be a partisan, rather than an ideological, win.
But saying that conservatism is in better shape than the GOP is not to say it doesn't face challenges. It would be silly and self-defeating for Republicans to repudiate conservatism's core principles of a strong national defense, limited government, constitutionalism and protection for unborn children. Yet it would be shortsighted to believe that the issues that worked more than a quarter-century ago will carry the day.
People forget that Reagan was a creative intellectual figure; facing "stagflation," he introduced supply-side economics. In the aftermath of Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he argued that rollback rather than containment was the way to win the Cold War. A deeply principled conservative, he crafted innovative policies to meet the demands of his time.
Conservatives are in a similar position today. Issues such as welfare and crime, which helped conservatism achieve dominance, are not as potent as they were. And while taxes and spending remain important, stagnant wages and middle-class anxieties, the housing and credit crisis, health care, immigration, energy, and the environment also command domestic attention. Conservatives need to convince the public that they have a compelling agenda to address these issues.
As much as Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush have accomplished over the last sixteen years, a good bit remains to be done and that unfinished business provides the roadmap for Republican resurrection.
In essence, what the Third Way (as we define it anyway) does is to recognize that the First Wayers are correct that wealth is created most effectively where freer markets obtain, but also to recognize that the uncertainties associated with such freedom lead to unacceptable insecurity for many people and that, therefore, government must guarantee a sufficient safety net (the Second Way). In fact, all of human history really just boils down to the competing impulses towards freedom (male) and security (female) and that governing philosophy that best satisfies both is most likely to be successful politically. Happily, it appears that real world success follows that political success.
So here are a set of proposals that the Republican Party can converge around. Each requires that conservatives accept that the underlying policy is going to endure irrespective of their ideological opposition to it but affords them an opportunity to achieve the policy in a manner that vindicates their own core principles:
(1) Personal Social Security Accounts:
The fight against government guaranteed retirement funding ended when Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole saved the Second Way version of SS. The remaining question is how best to pay for the program. The basic Third Way insight is that, given the fact that most people pay into the program for forty or fifty years, and that over that long a period of time a stock market fund has a higher return than the interest the federal government can collect on the money, it makes sense to allow people to buy stocks with the money they're paying in.
George W. Bush was obviously unsuccessful in convincing Senate Democrats of the wisdom of this reform in 1995, but he won two elections running on it and there remains sufficient hysteria over the pending collapse of SS that it is a viable issue to run on.
It will be argued that Democrats will simply squash it again. But it ought to be possible to build in enough incentives to win over the votes for passage. These would include: maintaining the current SS guarantee for anyone whose account is underfunded on retirement; means-testing, with a forfeit of the account payout for those above a certain measure of wealth; federal funding of the accounts for the unemployed, disabled, etc. As the generation that survived the Depression and ushered in the New Deal dies off and is replaced by older folks who have had mutual funds, IRAs and 401ks for decades, resistance to this sort of reform from within the Democratic Party will diminish.
It will be objected that the credit crunch and wild market swings make this a sub-optimal time to propose putting the nation's entire retirement egg into the market basket. But reports on the minimal withdrawals from current private programs are tracking with our earlier experiences after the '87 crash, the S&L crisis, and the post-911 drop. The hoi polloi seem to be a lot harder to panic out of the markets than the best and the brightest. Republicans ought not underestimate people's capacity to see beyond today's tribulation to tomorrow's payoff.
(2) Paul O'Neill Child Accounts:
The former Treasury Secretary's specific proposal called for a federal deposit of $2,000 at birth and then $2,000 per year until age 18 that would be put in a rather conservative stock index to be drawn upon starting at age 65. When he proposed it three years ago and anticipated an annual return of 6% such an account was estimated to grow to $1,013,326 over such a timeframe.
(3) Universal Health Savings Accounts:
The key insight here is twofold: (1) people like the idea that every citizen will have medical coverage; but, (2) it's mostly stupid for them to have comprehensive coverage throughout their lifetimes since we're generally healthy when young but then consume a massive amount of healthcare when old.
HSAs provide a way--like the O'Neill accounts--to sock away and make money during those healthy years so that you have a lot of it for the dying time. Universality in this instance need not require a federal contribution from birth to retirement. Employee/employee contributions could be required.
(4) Personal Unemployment Accounts:
Chile has already experimented with such a system, but basically you and your employer would pay into an account that you'd then be able to draw on if you were fired or quit your job.
Taken together, this set of accounts provides the social security net that the Second Way demands, but does so in a way that utilizes First Way principles, investment in free markets and a transfer of power away from the State and bureaucrats to the individual.
(5) Tax Reform:
There are as many plans for tax reform as there are tax payers (lower mine, lower yours, raise his) but there are two broad conservative principles can guide a broader reform plan: first, shift away from taxing income to taxing consumption generally; and, concurrently, tax eternalities specifically via Pigovian taxes.
The ideas here, that the tax code should encourage savings rather than consumption and should force people to bear the costs of their behavior upon society are well-suited to a Puritan Nation and the latter forms the basis for an:
(6) Energy Policy:
As part of the wider tax reform the GOP would propose vastly increasing the tax on gasoline. Not only would this tend to drive down consumption and liberate us from dependence on oil produced by enemyregimes, it would make gas expensive enough that alternative energy sources were made viable and would foster innovation. At the same time, it would not have government picking and choosing which innovative ideas to fund.
(7) Free Trade Reform:
The chief obstacle to obtaining the next round of free trade agreements is not, as the Right would have it, labor or environmentalists, or Europeans, or Democrats or whoever, but the agriculture subsidies that farm state Republicans have been only too happy to defend and maintain over the years.
Developing nations quite correctly point to this assistance that our federal government provides to our farmers and asks why they should be expected to ask their people to compete against us on a playing field that we've slanted in our favor. Phasing out ag subsidies would allow us to come to the trade table with cleaner hands and, at this point in the nation's history, is pretty much just Welfare Reform for the wealthy. Farmer Brown is long gone.
(8) Immigration Reform:
This is the most bitter point of contention that the GOP needs to get past in house, or it is not going to be a successful party at the national level. Polls consistently show that Americans are not anti-immigrant so much as they are anti-illegality. They are reasonably unbothered by the presence within our borders of twelve million illegal aliens, but quite bothered that they came illegally.
The solution is easy enough, though it will be unacceptable to those who are genuinely anti-immigrant (which would only provide clarity anyway): the current immigration system needs to be reformed in such a manner that it allows nearly all of those who seek to come to America to do so by going through a few legal channels. (Those barred could include criminals, political undesirables, etc.) Obviously some program would have to be implemented to legally document those who are already here. Providing a few visible though pointless hoops for them to jump through would quell some of the anger on the Right, but none of the steps should be too onerous or arduous.
(9) Campaign Finance Reform:
We need only look at the current campaign, between two candidates who we were assured would run an exemplary race, to see that the system leaves a lot to be desired. Republicans are quite properly repelled by the notion of public financing and object to current limitations on free speech, but have been largely silent about how they'd improve a system that, let's be honest, makes us all feel contempt for the processes of our own democracy. There is a clear conservative interest in cleaning up a system that is widely seen as corrupting and that fosters disregard for the Republic itself.
This seems to be an area where attempts to regulate the system have made matters worse, because all they've done is force donors and candidates to disguise what they're about without removing any money or the apparent influence of money from the equation. A set of reforms that restricted all political contributions to individuals only, that removed limits on contributions, that required immediate public reporting of all contributions and that required broadcasters to provide set airtime to candidates would not necessarily solve a lot of problems, but it might streamline the system a bit and make it more aboveboard.
(10) Line Item Veto Constitutional Amendment
The ability of the Executive to remove the discrete tax and spending provisions that campaign contributors and lobbyists currently spend money to get inserted in bills is another way to clean up the system. The Court having held it unconstitutional after the GOP passed it last time, it must now be revived via amendment to the Constitution.
There are certainly other items that the GOP can reorganize itself around, but those would appear to address many of people's main concerns right now. And the important thing is that it is more a reorganizing effort than a rethinking effort. These ideas have been percolating and really just await the sort of concerted enunciation and repetition that Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush brought to prior successful Republican campaigns. The party isn't out of ideas, just out of breath. A legislator, like John McCain or Bob Dole, isn't generally who you look to for an agenda and for a sweeping vision of governance. They're who you have hammer out the details and make the compromises to put the plans into effect. They need to be on board, but not necessarily steering the ship. The next GOP agenda will be better carried by a strong executive voice at the RNC, by talk radio hosts and columnists, and by whichever one of the excellent group of governors we nominate next time.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=0e7c6975-22e4-4869-b5ea-dc6ba07a458e)
US election watch: The case for McCain: As Americans everywhere prepare to go to the polls, Swedish politician Mathias Sundin - who spent a month this summer working as a volunteer for John McCain - explains why he’s rooting for the Republican candidate. (Mathias Sundin, 10/30/08, The Local)
For me as a Swede, the issues which affect Sweden and the rest of the world mean the most to me: free trade, foreign policy, and economic policy. And of course who the candidates are as people is also important.Free trade has made it possible for hundreds of millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty, and has also benefited western economies like Sweden and the United States. Obviously, it involves increased competition which can result in some people losing their jobs. But if you have a dynamic economy, like America has had for many years, people eventually get new jobs.
Sweden is a small, export dependent country. The world’s largest economies need to continue to support free trade, both for Sweden’s sake and for the sake of the world’s poor. McCain has long been a diehard supporter of free trade, while Barack Obama’s rhetoric, unfortunately, has been strongly against free trade.
McCain also has an idea he calls the “League of Democracies”. It would be a forum for cooperation among the world’s democracies. It could, for example, take action on occasions when the UN isn’t working or can’t fulfill its mission of halting genocides.
The UN’s agenda is often hindered by dictators. The world’s democracies are by no means all saints either, but they do have public opinion to consider and in general democracies act morally more often than dictators.
As a Swede, I think that it’s important that the US not leave Iraq too soon. This is a unique opportunity to build the world’s first democratic Arab country. Withdrawing troops to quickly would put this endeavor at risk. I understand that Americans are tired of the war, but both the United States and the world at large would benefit from a democratic Iraq.
Viswanathan Anand retains world chess title (Reuters, Oct 30, 2008)
Indian chess Grand Master Viswanathan Anand successfully defended his world title on Wednesday by defeating Russian Vladimir Kramnik in a match-play series in Bonn, Germany.The 38-year-old former world number one won by 6.5-4.5 after a draw in the penultimate round to take an unassailable lead in the 12-match contest, the World Chess Federation website (www.fide.com) said.
Anand, currently world number five, regained the world title he won in Mexico last year where he edged out defending champion Kramnik by one point.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=cf0b18a7-6dcb-4e26-ba38-c860da7d2d0a)
Erica Jong Tells Italians Obama Loss 'Will Spark the Second American Civil War. Blood Will Run in the Streets' (Jason Horowitz, October 30, 2008, NY Observer)
Here's a translation of Jong's more spirited quotes to the Milan-based Corriere, as selected by [Christian] Rocca [..."My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."
"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."
"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"
"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."
"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=29ac1a7f-f992-4d7b-b32b-2862be351d17)
President Obama: We Still Don’t Know Who He Really Is (Mort Kondracke, 10/30/08, Real Clear Politics)
After 22 months that he’s been campaigning, after thousands of speeches, dozens of debates and reams of position papers, it’s still not clear if he is a pragmatic post-partisan unifier or a populist liberal ideologue.Some conservatives think he’s further out than that — a dangerous radical who really is a pal of unrepentant former Weatherman Bill Ayers and a disciple of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — but the evidence for that from his campaign behavior is next to nonexistent.
But as Obama delivered his “closing argument” this week, beginning Monday in Canton, Ohio, it remained impossible to tell how far left Obama will tilt on economics or how energetically he will reach out to Republicans.
Obama’s appeal to independents (like me) has always been in lines like this one from Canton: “Understand, if we want to get through this [economic] crisis, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between left and right.
“We don’t need bigger government or smaller government. We need a better government — a more competent government, a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans.”
It’s pretty clear that, under Obama, the size of government will grow.
The next new chant: 'No we can't' (Todd Domke, October 30, 2008, Boston Globe)
My crystal ball channels future TV shows, like this one from Jan. 20, 2009. . . [...]Obama: "I promised hope. I hope you'll let me change my promises."
Audience: "Yes, you can!"
Obama: "Since we're broke, I don't think we can afford an expedition to Mars. Do you?"
Audience: "No, we can't!"
Obama: "Congress just voted for another $300 billion of stimulus, so we can't afford most of my new spending programs."
Audience: "No, we can't!"
Obama: "We can't afford to cut taxes for 95, or even 5, percent of Americans."
Audience: "No, we can't!"
Obama: "We can't afford to hire you folks for government jobs."
(Dead silence)
Obama: "Just kidding."
Audience: "Yay!"
Brokaw: "Chris, it seems like he's inaugurating a new era of humor and humility. Obama might enjoy a longer honeymoon than any president since George Washington."
Matthews: "Yes. And shouldn't we end the two-term limit for presidents? I don't think we can get enough of this guy in just eight years."
Obama: "Not since Franklin Roosevelt, who needed four terms, has a president faced such a challenge. But with hope and a change in promises, we cannot fail."
Audience: "No, we can't!"
Andrea: "I'm turning around to interview Joe Biden. Mr. Vice President, I see that David Axelrod has taken the duct tape off your mouth. What do you think of the inaugural address?"
Joe Biden: "Mark my words, when our enemies test the mettle of this young, inexperienced president in a totally gratuitous crisis, they will be surprised. He is no longer a politician. He's a magician."
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=b4b18e13-31c0-4f37-9170-9d6ef46eb57c)
FOX News Poll: Obama's Edge Over McCain Narrows (Dana Blanton, 10/30/08, FOXNews.com)
As the candidates make their closing arguments before the election, the race has tightened with Barack Obama now leading John McCain by 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, according to a FOX News poll released Thursday. Last week Obama led by 49-40 percent among likely voters.
BTW: has anyone, besides The Wife, noticed that if you look at it quickly Obama Biden looks like Osama Bin Laden.
First NH snowfall officially recorded (Union Leader, 10/30/08)
New Hampshire has officially started its snowfall tally for the 2008-09 season with 1.8 inches of snow recorded overnight in Jefferson, according to the National Weather Service.
At Rallies of Faithful, Contrasts in Red and Blue (MARK LEIBOVICH, 10/30/08, NY Times)
Supporters of Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. often look like Benetton-colored billboards, decked out for their candidates in Obama-Biden hats, T-shirts and buttons. Supporters of Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin like logo merchandise, too, but tend more toward pompoms (yes, pompoms), homemade signs (“Pitbulls 4 Freedom”), flag pins and chest paint.There is more dancing at Democratic rallies, more shouting out at Republican ones. They chant “Yes, we can” (or “Sí, se puede”) at Obama and Biden rallies, “U.S.A.” and “Drill, baby, drill” at McCain and Palin rallies; the D’s bounce to blaring folk-rock and Motown (Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder) and the R’s counter with country-pop (including Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”) and arena rock ( AC/DC).
Democratic rallygoers seem more worried about Ms. Palin than about Mr. McCain.
In audience volume, age and enthusiasm, Ms. Palin’s rallies have more in common with Mr. Obama’s than with Mr. McCain’s. Fans often crush toward Mr. Obama and Ms. Palin after they are finished speaking, clicking cellphone cameras over their heads. [...]
There is an edge at Obama rallies, but it is less of frustration, more of fear.
Stocks open sharply higher after GDP report (Martin Zimmerman, October 30, 2008, LA Times)
Stocks jumped on Wall Street today as a government report showed the U.S. economy contracted less than expected in the third quarter and overseas markets rallied on hopes that coordinated efforts are beginning to stem the global credit crisis. [...]Investors appeared to shrug off the government's report that the U.S. economy shrank by a less-than-expected 0.3% in the third quarter. Economists had expected the nation's gross domestic product to contract by 0.5% as consumers reined in spending.
A week after his last money plea, Obama asks everyone for another $5 (Andrew Malcolm, 10/30/08, LA Times: Top of the Ticket)
It seems like only a week ago that The Ticket was whining about Barack Obama whining that after raising $605 million through September to buy the presidency, he was asking all of us one last time for just $10 more for some reason.And we figured out that, October money aside, he'd have to spend $12.5 million a day just to unload September's haul by Nov. 4.
The Democrat is already outspending the Republican by three Political button for bitter gun ownerand four-to-one, which if it was the other way around would surely be unconscionable.
Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote: They were wrong in 2000 and 2004 (KARL ROVE, 10/30/08, Wall Street Journal)
I recall, too, the media's screwup in 2004, when exit-polling data leaked in the afternoon. It showed President Bush losing Pennsylvania by 17 points, New Hampshire by 18, behind among white males in Florida, and projected South Carolina and Colorado too close to call. It looked like the GOP would be wiped out.Bob Shrum famously became the first to congratulate Sen. John Kerry by addressing him as "President Kerry." Commentators let the exit polls color their coverage for hours until their certainty was undone by actual vote tallies.
Polls have proliferated this year in part because it is much easier for journalists to devote the limited space in their papers or on TV to the horse-race aspect of the election rather than its substance. And I admit, I've aided and abetted this process.
In the campaign's final week, though, the candidates can offer little new substance, so attention turns to the political landscape, and there's no question Mr. McCain is in a difficult place.
The last national poll that showed Mr. McCain ahead came out Sept. 25 and the 232 polls since then have all shown Mr. Obama leading. Only one time in the past 14 presidential elections has a candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College after trailing in the Gallup Poll the week before the election: Ronald Reagan in 1980.
But the question that matters is the margin. If Mr. McCain is down by 3%, his task is doable, if difficult. If he's down by 9%, his task is essentially impossible. In truth, however, no one knows for sure what kind of polling deficit is insurmountable or even which poll is correct. All of us should act with the proper understanding that nothing is yet decided.
Democrats Vie to Shape an Obama Legislative Agenda: Advisers, House Caucuses Jockey for Input Should Senator Win the Presidency; Tensions Over How Fast to Move on Big Issues (JONATHAN WEISMAN, 10/30/08, Wall Street Journal)
Sen. Obama's economic brain trust dialed in two weeks ago to a conference call with the candidate to discuss how the Wall Street bailout was working when a split emerged over how hard the government should lean on the banks. Some advisers said it would be politically and economically disastrous if the billions of taxpayer dollars injected into ailing financial institutions just sat in vaults. Robert Rubin, who served as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary between stints on Wall Street, pushed back. Leaving the money in the banks would help stabilize them and prevent further turmoil in the credit markets, even if the money wasn't loaned out, the Citigroup Inc. executive said.On Capitol Hill, three main factions are emerging with very different advice.
The first group, led by "old bull" liberals, wants to move fast on big-ticket issues such as universal health care and weaning the nation off Middle Eastern oil and on regulatory and labor issues, such as allowing unions to organize by getting would-be members to sign cards backing collective bargaining instead of submitting to secret ballots. [...]
A second faction of more-conservative Democrats is focusing on fiscal discipline. With this fiscal year's deficit potentially approaching $1 trillion, these Democrats say the money for Sen. Obama's ambitious agenda simply isn't there. One of the first acts of the next Congress should be approving a bipartisan commission to tackle the deficit and the growth of entitlements, such as Medicare and Medicaid, argue the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who say they will have the numbers to make the demands. [...]
The third group of Democrats could be labeled the middle-ground pragmatists. They embrace the activist agenda but are wary about going too far too fast. This camp, which includes the party's top congressional leadership, argues that Sen. Obama should move quickly on a few items with proven bipartisan support -- an economic-stimulus package, an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program funded with a tobacco-tax increase, and funding for federal stem-cell research. They would then regroup and build bipartisan support for the new president's bigger-ticket items -- health care, energy, education and regulatory changes.
The biggest problem Democrats would face is that their nominee has, quite wisely, run on nothing, so the different chambers of Congress and the various factions within the Party would be unconstrained by any mandate or agenda. Consider the contrast to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who both came to office with discrete sets of action items that left Congress with no question about what it was expected to deliver.
Of course, John McCain has run like a legislator too -- with a couple of areas in which he'd like to pass new laws, but no concise and coherent outline of his minimal conditions for such bills -- so no matter who wins on Tuesday power is going to shift from the White House to the Hill and the American people aren't exactly big fans of the legislative process these days. Nor does the modern press do even an adequate, nevermind competent, job covering law-making. If nothing else, Congress is ill-suited to the 24-hour news cycle. For 24 of the last 28 years we've had bigger than life figures running Washington -- both because of their own personalities and because of the way their opponents demonize them -- but the next four years are, almost inevitably, going to be like George H. W. Bush's term, where the presidency itself seemed to shrink.
MORE:
Dems get ready to rule (Michael Sandler, 10/28/08, The Hill)
[D]emocrats could quickly push forward with legislation allowing labor unions to organize without secret-ballot elections and a bill expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).Other possibilities include the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a Supreme Court decision restricting equal pay lawsuits; a measure that would narrow the role of a “supervisor” for collective bargaining purposes; and a mandate for paid sick leave for companies with 15 or more employees who work at least 30 hours a week — all left over from the last Congress.
“I think they want to strike while the iron’s hot and grab everything they can,” said Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [...]
Having the numbers to move legislation on a partisan basis carries risk. Democrats and Obama, if elected, would shoulder the blame for anything that passes. That reality could prompt leadership to postpone visceral debates on issues with greater political consequences, such as dealing with illegal immigrants.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=54f344a6-b1a5-40e7-83a2-d85558b95120)
McCain tilts towards Taiwan, Obama may favor China (Ralph Jennings, Oct 30, 2008, Reuters)
Republican presidential candidate John McCain would seek to defend Taiwan and play hard ball with China if he comes to office, but Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama would further sideline Taipei as he courts Beijing.Analysts say neither candidate would radically change today's status quo, but the former World War Two commander McCain is seen favoring Taiwan, which Americans of his generation called "Free China" but which now struggles for an international voice.
Hidin' Biden: Reining In a Voluble No. 2 (Karen Tumulty, 10/29/08, TIME)
Anyone who has watched Joe Biden over 35 years in the Senate might have a little bit of trouble recognizing the guy who is running to be Barack Obama's Vice President. Oh, yes, he looks like the same fellow. But traveling with Biden during this campaign has sometimes been like reporting on a politician packaged in shrink-wrap. While his windy, off-point pontification was the stuff of legend among his Senate colleagues, Biden is now leashed to a teleprompter even when he is talking in a high school gym that is three-quarters empty. The exposure hound who in recent years appeared more often than any other guest on the Sunday talk shows is a virtual stranger to the small band of reporters on his plane — less accessible than even Sarah Palin is to her traveling pack of bloodhounds. And Biden keeps to a schedule that provides a minimum of off-the-cuff encounters with voters, except across a rope line. See Joe Biden's defining moments here.The campaign's caution is understandable.
Pennsylvania Hope for McCain (Mason Dixon/NBC, October 30th, 2008)
Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9
Syrian haven for killers, then and now (Rafael Medoff, 10/29/08, THE JERUSALEM POST)
During the 1948 War of Independence, there were so many Nazi fugitives in the Syrian army, including a number of commanding officers, that when the Hagana (soon to become the IDF) defeated the Arab forces in Haifa, its terms for a truce included a provision that "European Nazis will be delivered to [the British] military [authorities]." [...]IN THE aftermath of the US war against Saddam Hussein's regime, there were media reports that some Iraqi war criminals had found shelter in Syria. More recently, evidence has emerged of al-Qaida forces finding haven in Syria. US officials have estimated that 90 percent of foreign terrorists entering Iraq are arriving via the "uncontrolled gateway" of the Iraq-Syria border.
Yet the American response to Syria's shelter-the-killers policy, then and now, has reflected a certain ambivalence.
After World War II, the US declined to use economic or diplomatic pressure to secure Syria's surrender of Nazi war criminals for prosecution. Improving American relations with the Arab world was considered a higher priority than bringing Alois Brunner and company to justice.
In our own time, although US troops have in some isolated instances crossed into Syrian territory while chasing terrorists, there had never been a large-scale raid comparable to this week's, nor one involving aircraft.
And while the Bush administration has designated Syria a sponsor of terrorism and imposed the requisite sanctions, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her aides recently met with Syrian officials to seek a "thaw" in relations.
Does this week's US air raid demonstrate a rejection of the "thaw" approach or does it simply reflect the latest bump in an ongoing tug of war within the administration over how to deal with Syria?
Obama and the Politics of Crowds: The masses greeting the candidate on the trail are a sign of great unease (FOUAD AJAMI, 10/30/08, Wall Street Journal)
My boyhood, and the Arab political culture I have been chronicling for well over three decades, are anchored in the Arab world. And the tragedy of Arab political culture has been the unending expectation of the crowd -- the street, we call it -- in the redeemer who will put an end to the decline, who will restore faded splendor and greatness. When I came into my own, in the late 1950s and '60s, those hopes were invested in the Egyptian Gamal Abdul Nasser. He faltered, and broke the hearts of generations of Arabs. But the faith in the Awaited One lives on, and it would forever circle the Arab world looking for the next redeemer.America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.
From Elias Canetti again: "But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. . . . Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it from creeping back under their private burdens."
The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=aee365dc-271f-4487-958f-99b7fc3e965b)
McCain's Best Argument (Quin Hillyer, 10.30.08, American Spectator)
[H]ere is why John McCain should be the next president of the United States:There is something special about this country. The United States is exceptional. We are blessed by the good Lord, and in turn we have done more, far more, than any other people to spread freedom across the globe, and prosperity across the globe, and human rights across this great good Earth. We are a particularly good people -- and John McCain understands all this and believes it with every fiber of his being, down to his very marrow, in a way that is deeply spiritual in nature. There is nothing fake about McCain's belief in American Exceptionalism. His belief in this is as genuine, and as deeply felt, as is a son's love for his father. He will defend this country, fight for this country, with every last breath in his body.
And McCain has a record of making the right calls, again and again, when it comes to securing the American national interest around the world. He was right to back Ronald Reagan to the hilt in the greatest foreign challenge of the past 60 years, namely the victorious effort to win the Cold War despite the strenuous and at times vicious opposition of the American Left. But he was right to oppose Reagan when Reagan, with all good intentions, decided to station Marines in Lebanon. McCain broke with his entire party, and warned that the Marines would be sitting ducks, and voted against the deployment. Tragically, McCain was right: More than 200 Americans died in Lebanon in a suicide truck bombing about a month after McCain's warning.
McCain was right -- and Joe Biden wrong -- to support the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein in 1991. McCain was right to support intervention in Kosovo later that decade: It worked. He was right to support a stronger military and greater numbers of personnel when Bill Clinton was cutting it. He was right to fight against wasteful weapons systems, and against corruption in military contracting. He was right to right a specific boondoggle involving an Air Force tanker; he brought corruption to light (the perpetrators both in the Air Force and at the contractor went to jail) and saved the public $6 billion.
McCain was right to say that Saddam Hussein could be overthrown fairly quickly, with little loss of American life. He was right to say that Hussein was a terrible threat. But he was right, very early on, well before anybody else in the Senate, to say that it would take more troops and a different strategy to secure the peace after we had won the war. He broke with President Bush to say so, way back in 2003, and he was right.
John McCain has suffered for his country in a way only a tiny slice of the population ever has. The story is well known -- not just that he suffered in Vietcong captivity, but that he turned down early release in a profound expression of solidarity with his fellow prisoners. Yet McCain had the grace, when the time was right, to hold out an olive branch to the Vietnamese a couple of decades later when they showed a movement toward greater economic freedom.
John McCain is committed to reaching beyond party labels. Whether always right or wrong to do so, he really cares about doing what he thinks is right no matter whose political ox is gored. Barack Obama may talk a bipartisan game, but he never has actually played on that field. The reality, meanwhile, is that sometimes it helps conservative ends to work with people from the other party. Ronald Reagan knew this.
Bite the bullet on fast trains: Californians should approve a ballot measure for a bullet train – despite financial storms. (The Monitor's Editorial Board, October 30, 2008, CS Monitor)
Americans who have ridden bullet trains in Europe or Asia return home scratching their heads. If only the US had such trains. In many ways, they beat flying and driving, and use much less energy. By approving a ballot measure Nov. 4, Californians can lead the nation to its first world-class fast train – if critics don't derail them.In July, a Field Poll found that 56 percent of likely voters in the state supported a $10 billion bond measure to help pay for a bullet train that could whisk passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 2-1/2 hours (a driving distance of about 400 miles).
ALMOST-FAMOUS PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE (ELIZABETH PUDWILL, 10/30/08, Houston Chronicle)
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted (divided use)
2 1/2 cups graham-cracker crumbs
2 3/4 cups sugar (divided use)
1 teaspoon plus a pinch salt (divided use)
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup sour cream
1 (15-ounce) can pure pumpkin
6 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups sweetened whipped cream or whipped topping
1/3 cup toasted pecans, roughly chopped
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees.
Brush a 10-inch springform pan with some of the butter. Stir remaining butter into crumbs with 1/4 cup sugar and pinch salt. Press mixture into bottom and up sides of pan, packing it tightly and evenly. Bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.
Cool on a rack, then wrap outside of springform pan with foil and place in a roasting pan.
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, beat cream cheese with a mixer until smooth. Add remaining 2 1/2 cups sugar and beat until just light, scraping down sides of bowl and beaters as needed. Beat in the sour cream, then add pumpkin, eggs, vanilla, 1 teaspoon salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves and beat until just combined. Pour into cooled crust.
Without pulling rack out, gently place roasting pan in oven and pour boiling water into roasting pan until it comes about halfway up side of springform pan. Bake until outside of cheesecake sets but center is still loose, about 1 hour 45 minutes. Turn off oven and open door briefly to let out some heat. Leave cheesecake in oven for 1 more hour, then carefully remove from roasting pan and cool on a rack. Run a knife around edges of springform pan, cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight.
Bring cheesecake to room temperature 30 minutes before serving. Unlock and remove springform ring. To finish, place a dollop of whipped cream on each slice and sprinkle with toasted pecans.