Month: October 2009

Karen Tumulty rounds up Republicans whto are supporting or semi-supporting health care reform (Arnold is the latest addition). As Karen notes, none of the Republicans she lists are currently in the house or senate. Ezra Klein has seen this move before:

This is reminiscent of the strategy the Obama campaign employed in the closing weeks of the presidential election. Obama had run as the herald of a new, less polarized type of politics, but he didn't have much support from prominent Republicans. So the campaign began to roll out, or emphasize, retired Republicans: Colin Powell, Jim Leach, and Lincoln Chafee among them. Obama's advisers figured that if the current political situation was too polarized to permit bipartisanship, then they could reach backward, or maybe outward, to find Republicans who weren't subject to its pressures. Then they used the presence of those retired, moderate Republicans to imply that more Republicans would be signing on if not for partisan pressure from the party leadership. Looks like they're readying to run the same play on health care, and they're helped by the fact that it's probably correct on the merits.

Reihan pulls out some choice quotes from a Ron Brownstein article.

Since we're on the subject …

Today on the Dish we saw conservatives in America bemoan equality while conservatives in Britain embraced it. The Christian right ran a disgusting ad against marriage, Hannity made a gross implication, and Cheney's cowardice deepened.  Also, a reader pwned HRC.

In other news, Andrew knocked Obama for his Olympics ploy, Massie gawked at the administration's blind eye towards Iranians, Radley Balko exposed the police crackdown in Pittsburgh, and Suzy Khimm exposed the coming crackdown in Rio.

Friedersdorf critiqued Breitbart for bad journalism, and soon Breitbart returned the favor. Greenwald exposed a WaPo press release, a blogger fact-checked George Will, and Michelle Cottle portrayed McCaughey as Palin.

We addressed the healing power of pot here and here. Andrew talked religion and Oakeshotte here and here, and blew up on atheists here. He also chatted with TNC again, and finally walked back on his statements against Kristol.

— C.B.

Some sanity and good judgment from Fred Kaplan. What I wonder is whether McChrystal ever questioned the unlawful command to torture prisoners of war in Iraq. He sure presided over some of the worst war crimes under Cheney and was never held accountable – just promoted.

I think Obama's trip to Copenhagen was dumb, but I didn't think it was narcissistic. George Will complained that the president used the word "I" too much and thereby deemed him a narcissist. Here's Will:

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

When you read the speech, it doesn't seem narcissistic in the way Will implies. But I guess that's a subjective judgment. There is, however, an objective way of judging this – comparing Obama's remarks with those of his predecessors in identical contexts. We don't have Olympic pitches to compare, so try press conferences. Mark Liberman runs the numbers on Obama, Bush and Clinton and tries to measure narcissism by the same metric Will does. You know what's coming:

I took the transcript of Obama's first press conference (from 2/9/2009), and found that he used 'I' 163 times in 7,775 total words, for a rate of 2.10%. He also used 'me' 8 times and 'my' 35 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 206 in 7,775 words, or a rate of 2.65%.

For comparison, I took George W. Bush's first two solo press conferences as president (from 2/22/2001 and 3/29/2001), and found that W used 'I' 239 times in 6,681 total words, for a rate of 3.58% — a rate 72% higher than Obama's rate. President Bush also used 'me' 26 times, 'my' 31 times, and 'myself' 4 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 300 in 6,681 words, or a rate of 4.49% (59% higher than Obama).

For a third data point, I took William J. Clinton's first two solo press conferences as president (from 1/29/1993 and 3/23/1993), and found that he used 'I' 218 times, 'me' 34 times, 'my' 22 times, and 'myself' once, in 6,935 total words. That's a total of 275 first-person singular pronouns, and a rate of 3.14% for 'I' (51% higher than Obama), and 3.87% for first-person singular pronouns overall (50% higher than Obama).

You should see the contrast between Michelle Obama and Nancy Reagan. Some day soon, George Will will realize the blogosphere exists. And do his homework.

At least that's what True/Slant's Kate Klonick is reporting. Congrats to Mary and Heather. What Cheney's party will say about this latest "assault on the family" I cannot know. I do know that in Virginia, the GOP regards Mary as a threat to civilization and will deny her two kids any legal security with their two moms. But, hey, that's the price you pay for being a gay Republican. And you know full well that her father will not do anything to prevent his own party's war on his own family.

Goldblog explains:

A nuclear Iran is not in the long-term best interests of the United States, of course, but we have short-term interests, as well, and they conflict with what some see as Israel's interest. Second, I've moved to the belief that the Iranian government is not so much a messianic apocalyptic cult, as Netanyahu described it to me, but an oppressive military regime with a superficially Shi'a agenda. Its real agenda, it seems, is self-preservation, and people interested in staying alive, as individuals or as a collective, don't launch nuclear-armed missiles at a nuclear state with a second-strike capability.

The Iranians understand that Israel could obliterate Persian civilization. There are some mystics — Ahmadinejad, for one — who might want to carry out a seemingly-irrational attack on Israel for their own millenarian reasons, but my impression, to date, is that other Iranian leaders would rather stay alive, and these men have a great deal of sway over the nuclear program.

As I've written before, I don't discount the long-term dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. A nuclear program will help Iran achieve hegemony in the Muslim Middle East, and the gravitational pull of a such a powerful Iran will do great harm to the peace process, such as it is. And I obviously think that this is the most serious issue facing Israel, and one of the two or three most serious issues facing the U.S., today. But so far at least, no one has convinced me that an armed attack on Iran's facilities by Israel would a) work, and b) make the world a safer place and c) protect the Jewish people from a second Holocaust. 

A reader writes:

The heads of state of all four nations that were in consideration to host the 2016 Olympics went to Copenhagen: the President of Brazil, the Prime Minister of Japan, the entire Royal Family of Spain, and the President of the United States. The trip may indeed have been a mistake on Obama's part. But do you honestly believe that, if Obama had not gone, the same people who celebrated Chicago's loss and branded Obama with the failure would not instead be bemoaning Chicago's loss and branding Obama with the failure to promote America's interests abroad?