Month: January 2012

TNC blasts James Taranto's claim that "Gingrich's standing O was the most compelling dramatization of racial progress so far this century [aside from Obama's election]:"

When a professor of history calls Barack Obama a "Food Stamp President," it isn't a mistake to be remedied through clarification; it is a statement of aggresion. And when a crowd of his admirers cheer him on, they are neither deluded, nor in need of forgiveness, nor absolution, Thnor acting against their interest. Racism is their interest. They are not your misguided friends. They are your fully intelligent adversaries, sporting the broad range of virtue and vice we see in humankind. If you are a praying person, you should pray for their electoral destruction in November. 

A lovely and very British account of Gingrich's moment of pwnage last night:

To understand the full power of Gingrich’s answer, you really have to watch him give it. The former Speaker has three standard expressions: charmed bemusement (“Why are you asking me that, you fool?”), indignant (“Why are you asking me that, you swine?”) and supreme confidence (“That’s not the question I would have asked, you moron”). Each comes with its own number of chins. For his stunning “No, but I will”, Newt employed the full dozen. He looked straight down them, with half moon goblin eyes. “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

By the time his chins unfolded, Gingrich was in total command of the debate.

If missed them, my live-blog here, our debate reax here, and the latest Ad War Update here.

Adam Ozimek joins the debate:

I’m hopeful that once the recovery gets fully underway political cooperation will be easier regardless of who is president. I don’t think most voters actually understand the recession, and without a clear real answer they grapple naturally for whatever answer is most satisfying, and partisan explanations are most satisfying, which naturally leads to polarization. 

He adds that one "possible problem with Romney is that he can’t win under circumstances which he could govern under effectively":

The conventional wisdom is that the economy will be determinative in the election.  To oversimplify the issue: if the economy is weak, Romney will win. If it’s strong, Obama will win. But while I think Romney will have the political freedom to deal effectively with a recovering economy with long-term structural problems,what tools will he have to deal with an ongoing balance sheet recession? 

Drum goes another round on whether President Romney could repeal Obamacare. 

Matt Stopera assures us, "This is not a parody":

Update from an eagle-eyed reader:

Was I the only one juvenile enough to be distracted by the sign between the two actors, which reads "please use the front entrance"? No mere "technical virginity" for these two lovebirds.

Heh.

Fabio Rojas pens a manifesto:

A long time ago, in graduate school, my television was stolen and it changed my life. I now had lots of free time. I never understood on a gut level what I was missing until my tv was gone. There was a whole world beyond my living room low rent studio apartment. Jacob Levy once told me during a party, “Fabio, if you don’t watch tv, you had better be very well read.” Indeed, fair ranger, I am now quite well read.

I learned a second lesson. Most television is garbage. Once you unplug and then start watching later, you are immediately confronted with this truth. Ever since childhood, I was accustomed to watching whatever came on. Sure, I had preferences. Some shows are better than others, but I was letting someone throw rubbish at my face every night for hours at a time. For free! 

Or so claims [pdf] Michael Beckley:

The widespread misperception that China is catching up to the United States stems from a number of analytical flaws, the most common of which is the tendency to draw conclusions about the U.S.-China power balance from data that compare China only to its former self. For example, many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in high technology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.

His conclusion for American policymakers:

The first step toward sound strategy is to recognize that the status quo for the United States is pretty good: it does not face a hegemonic rival, and the trends favor continued U.S. dominance. The overarching goal of American foreign policy should be to preserve this state of affairs. Declinists claim the United States should “adopt a neomercantilist international economic policy” and “disengage from current alliance commitments in East Asia and Europe.” But the fact that the United States rose relative to China while propping up the world economy and maintaining a hegemonic presence abroad casts doubt on the wisdom of such calls for radical policy change.

A reader writes:

I'm going to dissent on one minor point you raised about the traditional book publishing industry. I'm not sure you can lament that Palin's book had no fact-checking, but then also lament that books take too long to publish after the author has finished writing them. I've published three books with a traditional publisher, and a good deal of the lag between completion of the manuscript and publication (4-8 months with my books) allows for a thorough, substantial edit (including the flagging of potential errors), a re-write, a thorough copy-editing and fact-check, proofreading, and so on. If a book is rushed online the moment the author finishes it – "overnight" as you suggest – you lose the chance to catch and correct mistakes. (I'm sure this would not have made a difference with Palin's book, but that's another issue.)

Another reader, responding to our self-published reader who made a deal with Amazon, sticks up for independent bookstores:

As a long-time bookstore employee, I want to mention a possible reason your reader's local indie won't carry his title: it may be non-returnable. I've been out of the inventory side of things since Amazon started publishing their own titles, but the few times we had to deal with them as a "wholesaler" (in quotes because we really were just like a regular customer buying off the website for special orders that were unavailable through normal distribution chains) they have very strict returns policies. For better or for worse (probably for worse), most of the business independent shops do is possible because they can order books and then return them for full credit (minus shipping both ways) if it doesn't sell.

If this isn't the case they may also be wary of the intimidating business practices Amazon has been known to engage in (see: pulling all affiliate status from affiliates in states that attempt to collect sales tax, also pulling all Macmillan books from the site until the publisher agreed to their terms with no compromise). As a small business, entering into a  partnership with a bad-faith vendor can be a big problem and this company has a demonstrated pattern of leveraging their market share to ransom business partners into terrible deals. Supporting Amazon's efforts to become a publishing house (where this leveraging could really hurt small stores that are their direct competitors) is something many book retailers are probably rightly nervous about doing, as well, considering the ruthless history of that company – especially so quick on the heels of that holiday promotion snafu, using retail locations as show rooms for their products.

With all that said, if I were a buyer in his neighborhood shop I would probably still have liked to carry it, and I'm sure some of the decision is just ridiculous knee-jerking. But I would like to ask everyone to cut these stores a little slack. It's been a tough few years, and people who own and work in indie bookstores do it because they love books and spreading that love to their neighbors. I promise we're not all snobby recent grads (in fact, most of us aren't). It can just be easy to feel under siege when all anybody cares about now is price, price, price.

Yesterday the GOP frontrunner shouted down an Occupy protester:

Larison raises an eyebrow:

Romney pretends that he speaks for the whole of the country against those awful few who would “divide” it (i.e., disagree with him), just as the protester imagines that he is speaking on behalf of everyone else except multimillionaires and billionaires. Of course, Romney is playing the demagogue here to imply that his political opponents are insufficiently American, since they must prefer the political and economic models of authoritarian and communist states, which is just the latest version of what he has been doing for most of the last three years.

Sarah Kliff analyzes the symbolic House vote to repeal Obama's signature achievement:

Harold Pollock and Vivek Murthy go in-depth on how the medical community is reacting to the law's implementation.

Jackie Gingrich Cushman and Kathy Gingrich Lubbers counter Marianne Gingrich on behalf of their father's campaign:

This one's for Newt's boundless ego: 

The Gingrich campaign pummels Romney in a flashback to 2008 below (money quote from Huckabee: "If a man's dishonest to obtain a job, he'll be dishonest on the job"): 

Meanwhile, Newt's PAC sticks with fear-mongering over abortion: 

Another from Newt's proxy: 

Here's an excerpt from a translation of a Spanish-language radio spot now airing in Florida:

Newt Gingrich is a candidate who has committed himself to the Hispanic people, a Republican in the style of Ronald Reagan with experience. Unlike Mitt Romney, who goes around using Castro phrases …

Back in South Carolina, Romney returns to the electability argument by pivoting to the general election:

And in Florida: 

Lastly, Santorum's PAC celebrates Gary Bauer's endorsement: