Month: November 2012

I’ll be live-blogging the results tomorrow night, with the help of the Dish team, from 8 pm on. From 11.30 pm onwards, I will be live-blogging on live television on the Colbert Report (yes, they’re broadcasting live on election night). On Friday, I’m back on Real Time with Bill Maher for post-election fall-out. Should be fun. Balko gets the idea:

On election night, you can watch me via live webcam as I live Tweet @sullydish‘s live blogging on live TV. twitter.com/sullydish/stat…

— radleybalko (@radleybalko) November 5, 2012

Colorado and/or Washington state could legalize marijuana tomorrow. A recent Spanish-language study by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) found that an American state legalizing marijuana would deal a major blow to Mexico's drug cartels. An Economist blogger in Mexico City summarizes:

[The study] estimates that Mexico’s traffickers would lose about $1.4 billion of their $2 billion revenues from marijuana. The effect on some groups would be severe: the Sinaloa "cartel" would lose up to half its total income, IMCO reckons. Exports of other drugs, from cocaine to methamphetamine, would become less competitive, as the traffickers’ fixed costs (from torturing rivals to bribing American and Mexican border officials) would remain unchanged, even as marijuana revenues fell.

Legalisation could, in short, deal a blow to Mexico’s traffickers of a magnitude that no current policy has got close to achieving. The stoned and sober alike should bear that in mind when they cast their votes on Tuesday.

A reader writes:

I agree with your reader who believes that much of the criticism of the marathon was misplaced. But I believe there's one more critical element: Marathons are symbols. Part of the reason that those of us who run marathons get such a rush from them is that we know they mean more than thousands of individual athletic acts.  But symbols are abstract, and can come to represent in ways we do not intend. ;The NYC Marathon came to represent frivolity in the face of suffering, even if the rationale for that view is, for all the reasons your reader cites, not properly informed.  For that reason alone, and even for the sake of the athletes themselves, this event needed to be cancelled.

Another writes:

You should write an update about what happened yesterday. When they cancelled the marathon, runners quickly self-organized on social media.  They formed a couple of groups.  One collected supplies, put them in backpacks, got on the ferry and then ran the supplies house to house in Staten Island.  That was about 500-1000 runners, and by all accounts, they were amazing.

A second, larger group gathered in Central Park, set up donation stations and also collected supplies and money.  They then went ahead and ran 26.2 miles on the original marathon course, four loops around the park.  I was part of that second group, and it was awe-inspiring.  Thousands of runners from around the world, all carrying their own supplies and cleaning up after themselves, in a do-it-yourself marathon, fulfilling their commitments to charities, families, friends, themselves.  And New Yorkers came out to cheer and hand out water.  I was moved to tears several times, and stopped often to walk and take pictures.  Meanwhile, I followed on Facebook several other groups of runners in other places-Boston, for example-who couldn't make it had deferred their entries, and also ran 26.2 just to show solidarity with New York.  It was a day in which the American spirit rose up like I haven't seen it since right after 9/11, and isn't it fitting that once again that spirit found its animating force in New York City. 

(Photo: Runner Joselyn Fine, 34, who would have run the ING New York City Marathon, spends the afternoon volunteering by unloading and organizing emergency supplies near Midland Beach on November 4, 2012. By Mehdi Taamallah/AFP/Getty Images)

Andrew Sprung encounters an anti-Obama conspiracy theory that makes the birth certificate hunters look sane.

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley makes a last-minute pitch for Ballot Measure 6:

The race in Maryland remains tight. Chris Johnson reports on the latest robo-call blitz from the National Organization for Marriage:

Brian Brown, NOM’s president, touted the campaign as "the largest national mobilization of traditional marriage voters in history" and said it would reach 10 million voters across the nation… NOM says it has allocated $500,000 for the campaign, which involves robocalls to homes in Maine, Maryland, Washington State — where marriage will be on the ballot — as well as Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are considered swing states in the presidential election. 

NOM just sunk $1.65 million into the amendment battle in Minnesota, where the race continues to be too close to call. E.J. Graff is pessimistic:

The polling looks bad. The percentage who say they will vote "no" hasn't topped 46 percent in a while. As I’ve noted repeatedly, all undecideds vote against us. If someone hasn’t thought about why same-sex couples might want to marry, their instinct is to vote for the status quo…. I don’t know anyone in the LGBT advocacy community—except maybe inside Minnesota, where they have to have hope to continue the fight—who expects the amendment to lose.

There’s a quirk in this initiative: It has to pass with 50 percent of all votes cast¸not just a plurality. That means that anyone who leaves that spot on the ballot blank is voting against the amendment. Some folks have hung their hopes on that. I don’t. 

But polls are looking better in the Washington fight. In Maine, marriage equality is ahead 52 – 45 on the last poll. In these skirmishes, getting above 50 percent is critical, since, as EJ notes above, most undecideds break against equality. Im guardedly optimistic about Maine, Maryland and Washington. Especially Washington. We may get the first actual initiatives for marriage equality passed in the two northernmost states on both coasts.

Ezra Klein examines his ideological flexibility:

At this point, neither voters nor Romney have sufficient data to know how he would govern. With a Republican Congress, he would govern from the right. With a Democratic Congress, he would move to the center. If he faces a divided Congress, he will look for compromise to get "the best possible thing done." Without knowing the composition of Congress, we can’t know the kind of president Romney would be. We know he can manage, but we don’t know which company he will be managing.

Along the same lines, because he expects a Democratic Senate and GOP House, Justin Green endorses Romney:

The Affordable Care Act will need trimming and reform. Without a legislative majority in the Senate, the ACA will live. It's as simple as that. There will be no reconciliation to destroy it. In fact, I'd suggest that Harry Reid might be interested in cleaning it up if improving the law helps protect his vulnerable members in 2014. GOP governors also lose their straw man if a Republican is president, and this would have substantial impact on seeing the ACA to fruition. Having a real opportunity to get the statewide exchanges fully implemented, working on ways to ease the pain of what look to be substantial cuts to Medicaid in red states, and continuing to push for broader market reforms to improve the ACA are important goals — and they stand a better chance under Romney than Obama.

That's close to David Frum's argument. It's full of so many hypotheticals, it is at this point, it seems to me, premature. But there is an implicit danger in this line of thinking. It rewards pure partisan obstructionism in the past – the GOP's refusal to work on reforming the ACA because it was signed by Obama – and uses that as a reason to vote for … the currently dissembling Republican. So the basis for backing a liar is the greater cynicism and fanaticism of the GOP. I guess you could make a utilitarian case for this. But the long-term consequences for basic accountability, honesty and civil politics are dire.

"Is an American president 'pro-Israel' if he neglects to mention to the Israeli leadership his worries about Israel's future as a Jewish-majority democracy, in which freedom of speech is sacred and the rights of minorities are protected? Is it 'pro-Israel' to not point out the various demographic, moral and security challenges presented to Israel by the continued expansion of settlements on the West Bank?" – Jeffrey Goldberg.

Ian Martin makes the case. Massie counters:

Say what you will about Mitt Romney but he is at least a conservative. Michael Bloomberg is not and never has been. Asking that the Republican party be a bit more like Mike is akin to asking it to be a liberal party. You might think it a good idea but it’s hard to see why many American conservatives should feel like agreeing with you.

He adds:

Perhaps it would be better if the GOP were more like the Tory party. I sometimes think so myself. But it isn’t and the only political tradition in which Bloomberg really fits is that of the plutocratic opportunist. He may well be more capable than Mitt Romney but Romney at least pretends to be a conservative. If Bloomberg couldn’t be troubled to fake it that’s probably an indication that he’s not – and never was – a conservative.

Scott McConnell could see Bloomberg joining the Obama administration:

Bloomberg will be available after next year for a major cabinet position. He is a pretty extraordinary public servant, respected by virtually everyone in New York, if not beloved the way some of his predecessors were. He is sometimes courageous, as when he stood up to the “ground zero mosque” BS, as every other elected official headed for the hills. And he’s brilliant. I know there isn’t such thing as “Secretary of the Climate”–but if Obama is looking to appoint a “czar” to really explore what is possible and what is doable, domestically and internationally, to mitigate man-induced global warming and climate change, I doubt there is a better person available.

Walter Russell Mead is not a fan of Bloomberg's tenure as mayor:

Non-New Yorkers don’t follow these things closely, but Mayor Bloomberg’s standing in the city has never recovered from his ill-starred decision to run for a third term. The mayor’s signature accomplishment had been the imposition of term limits on the self serving, often corrupt career pols who entrenched themselves and their patronage networks at the public trough. New Yorkers were thrilled at this blow to their dysfunctional political class and widely celebrated the courage and determination of a reforming mayor who took on and beat the city bosses.

Alas, that Michael Bloomberg didn’t last. The Mayor decided to run for a third term, but he was caught by his own term limits. The hacks on the City Council made clear that they wouldn’t give him an exemption from term limits unless the limits were lifted for everybody else. Disgracefully, Bloomberg took the deal and helped the corrupt political class destroy his greatest achievement.

(Photo: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg views damage in the Breezy Point area of Queens in New York on October 30, 2012 after fire destroyed about 80 homes as a result of Hurricane Sandy. By Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

"If we lose this election there is only one explanation — demographics. … If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts. We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough," – Senator Lindsey Graham.