Month: July 2008

An Australian, Marcus Westbury, sees them everywhere in his own network of friends. There’s a lot of Obama in his definition. And this Rasmussen poll is fascinating:

Libertarian voters make up 4% of the nation’s likely voters and they favor Barack Obama over John McCain by a 53% to 38% margin. Three percent (3%) would vote for some other candidate and 5% are not sure…  Fifteen percent (15%) of all voters are fiscally moderate and socially liberal. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of these voters are women and they are more likely than most voters to have completed college and to have attended graduate school. They favor Obama by an 80% to 13% margin.

"The Republican Party has lost its soul. It’s no longer the party of Goldwater. For years, it was about small government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility. Foreign policy was always about, ‘Look after ourselves first and humanitarian outreach second,’ but it was never about having our own Roman Empire. … I see Obama as the Democratic Ronald Reagan — someone who can really bring us together and heal us as a nation. … In the long term, a catastrophic loss in November could be very good for the party," – lifelong Nebraska Republican David Sayers.

This sentence in the piece also stood out:

There are two main strains to the Obamacan phenomenon: people who are inspired by Obama’s post-partisanship, and those who want a complete blood transfusion for the GOP brand after the days of President Bush, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay.

Both here.

A plea to both the Obama and McCain campaigns. Actually, of course, the culture war has already abated some in this campaign. Neither candidate is about a cultural war. Yes, I know there are forces behind both that would intensify it. And yes, marriage and abortion matter as core convictions. But reducing abortion and respecting the dignity of gay people can be common goals, even as we fight over how best to achieve both.

A reader writes:

I think your reader is confusing deficit with debt. Setting aside whether we could really get to zero if we’re in Iraq for 100 years, the math does add up. By zeroing out deficit spending on the war, you reduce the deficit. In the credit card example, 10k a month is the deficit. Not adding 10k the next month does indeed reduce the deficit for that month, which is the amount of debt you’re adding. You simply don’t do anything to get rid of the debt.

Hilzoy crunches the numbers.

A reader writes:

I don’t know if you have any influence over the ads which appear on your web pages.  Or, at least, a way to pass messages on to those who design and place the ads.  But if you do, you might share this with them.

I have no problem with Obama ads, per se.  However the new ads, with their moving graphics, etc.  Are a major negative.  Like many people (but perhaps unlike a lot of the Obama staff) I do not have the absolute latest and fastest PC.  Which means that the new ads take forever to load and run on my desktop.  And while they do, I can do almost nothing else either — the impact on my hard drive and my CPU is just to great.

 

The result for you and the Atlantic is that I visit your site much less often than I did a month ago. The result for the Obama Campaign is that I grow progressively more irritated. Building name recognition is one thing. But impacting your brand by irritating those who are otherwise well disposed towards you is quite another. Something a lot less fancy would be a really, really good idea.

I don’t control the ads at all. But I’ve forwarded the email to the relevant parties.

Hard to beat:

The difference between Reagan and Helms is the difference between a conservatism of hope and a conservatism of resentment.

There are, I have little doubt, literally millions of Americans who would be conservatives today if not for the snarling visage of Jesse Helms.

Greenwald explains, once again, why telecom immunity matters to him:

They are taking away from the judiciary the power to adjudicate allegations of lawbreaking. They are creating a two-tiered system of justice in which our most powerful corporations can break the law with impunity and government officials remain immune from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners — who continue to be subjected to the harsh punishment for violations of the law and one of the world’s most merciless justice systems — in order to convince them that granting license to our political and corporate elites to break the law is necessary for their own Good and for their Safety.

In the period after 9/11 in question, I do not find these cardinal sins. Venial maybe.

Peter Beinart proposes:

A renewed commitment to collective security—to solving common problems and abiding by common rules—also offers the surest way to restore America’s legitimacy. A recent survey of 15 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org revealed that only two countries (Argentina and the Palestinian Authority) wanted the U.S. to withdraw from world affairs. In fact, when asked who they expect to take the lead in countering global threats, non-Americans still point to the United States (along with the UN). As Steve Kull of the Program on International Policy Attitudes put it recently, “Despite the negative views of U.S. foreign policy, publics around the world do not want the U.S. to disengage from international affairs but rather to participate in a more cooperative and multilateral fashion.” Even commentators such as The New America Foundation’s Parag Khanna, who predict intensifying competition between the United States, Europe, and China, argue that for the U.S. to sustain its power it must revive efforts to solve common problems, which, in turn, can help restore America’s good name.

A useful reality check from the NYT:

Is it normal yet? The three young men did not respond. When will it be normal? “I don’t know how long it will take,” said Muath Abbas, 21, a university student who is studying English, although he is not sure where he will use the language. “It will take time.”

This year? Next year? Abu Mohamed, a 21-year-old taxi driver, shook his head. “It is in the hands of God,” he said.

Ten minutes after the conversation, a bomb exploded less than 100 feet away. It destroyed the building and checkpoint of a Sunni citizen group paid by the Americans to watch the neighborhood. In an illustration of the convoluted world of Iraq, the police said that the citizen group was not the target. Rather, the group itself set the bomb to destroy its building rather than give it back to returning Shiites who had renewed their claim to it, the police said.

If "normal" is our definition of "victory", we will be there for ever.