Politics Archives - Page 5 of 10 - Ramblin' with Roger

February Ramblin’

So much going on, and so little time:

COMICS
AdAge has a 3-minute daily video. The topic on February 20: Could Kindle put the KABOOM on Comic Books? (February 26 discusses the Tropicana packaging debacle.)
But not all is bad in comic book land. Marvel, bucking economic trends, actually set a revenue record for 2008.

Comic book blogger Mark Evanier linked to a CBS tribute, which I found oddly moving. I think it’s because when I grew up in Binghamton, NY, there was only one VHF station, WNBF, Channel 12, so it was the Andy Griffiths and Lucille Balls I’d be watching the most.

OBAMA, POLITICS
Too much snark: Even Gov. Bobby Jindal, whom I suppose I should note was the first Indian-American to give the Republican response to a president’s speech, began with an encomium to the first black president. (Wasn’t Bobby great in “Slumdog Millionaire”?). As though I needed more proof that this woman (blonde, initials AC) is an idiot.

But this was a weird story: Poll Results: Obama, Jesus and Martin Luther King Top List of America’s “Heroes”. “When The Harris Poll asked a crosssection of adult Americans to say whom they admire enough to call their heroes, President Barack Obama was mentioned most often, followed by Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King. Others in the top ten, in descending order, were Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, John F. Kennedy, Chesley Sullenberger and Mother Teresa. These heroes were named spontaneously. Those surveyed were not shown or read a list of people to choose from. The Harris Poll was conducted online among a sample of 2,634 U.S. adults (aged 18 and over) by Harris Interactive between January 12 and 19, 2009.” I can’t explain why I find this a bit disturbing.

Another story I find puzzling is Will trade: One black Democrat for one Mormon Republican. “Congress appears to be on the verge of granting D.C. actual voting representation in the House. The Senate is expected to pass legislation Thursday or Friday that would expand the House to 437 members, adding one seat for the District and one seat for Utah, where officials say the 2000 Census would have yielded an extra seat if overseas Mormon missionaries had been counted.” Problematic for a couple reasons: 1) two more members of Congress (plus staffs)? Actually, there is a delegaste from DC, so it’d be really one more, but still. 2) I find myserlf in the strict constructionist camp, but I think fair representation for DC, long overdue, will require a Constitutional amendment.

I find that performers on the left who spout political opinions are often more criticize than those on the right, such as Chuck Norris and Ted Nugent, in my experience.

MARIJUANA
Comparing public support for legalizing marijuana to the approval ratings for Rush Limbaugh and various Republican Party leaders, the conservatives lose.
So does this mean we should start legalizing and taxing pot, as some are trying to do in L.A.?

RACE
That chimp cartoon debacle probably would have bothered me more if it hadn’t been in the New York Post. It is just what I expect from the New York Post. What does unsettle me is not the chimp reference per se as much as the DEAD chimp reference.

Eric Holder: America ‘a Nation of Cowards’ on Racial Matters. Arguably true. But will saying that initiate useful discussion? I have my doubts.

BLAME

Time magazine did a story about 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis, which is well and good; they all seem to have taken advice from Ayn Rand – selfishness over altruism. But Joe Queenan in the February 14 Wall Street Journal wonders about the national obsession “over the missteps of public figures like Alex Rodriguez” and Michael Phelps with “the American people [working] themselves into such a sustained, unmediated level of fury at once-revered public figures.”

“What they did is certainly wrong, but it isn’t in any way unprecedented, or for that matter, unexpected. It’s not off the charts…No public misdeed is too insignificant to earn our limitless fascination. Actor Joaquin Phoenix caused a stir this week following his appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” His principal offenses: chewing gum and maintaining a generally unresponsive demeanor throughout what proved to be a very painful, unproductive interview… And thus ensued a heated debate about whether Mr. Phoenix was acting, on drugs or just spaced out. Meanwhile, in a nearby solar system, the stock market dropped another 400 points…”

“In light of the fact that we are facing one of the worst economic environments since the Great Depression, and are still in the throes of a global war against faceless, stateless terrorists, Michael Phelps can probably be forgiven for thinking that he could get away with taking a hit off that bong. And Jessica Simpson can probably be forgiven for scarfing down a few Twinkies.”

“What accounts for the shock…? For one, we the public think that we know these people because we see them all the time on TV. Because of this, they root us in the here and now in a way run-of-the-mill white-collar villains do not. They have violated an old-fashioned code of morality that we can all understand in a way we cannot understand a $50 billion Ponzi scheme or the fact that Iceland has put out a ‘Closed for Business’ sign.”

“From the therapeutic perspective, this is vastly superior to ranting about the latest depredations of Wall Street. No matter how much we froth and foam, none of us can lay a glove on imperious figures like John Thain or the haughty fat cats who run the auto industry or the inept regulators who let Mr. Madoff run wild in the first place. These folks all look the same, they all talk the same and the man in the street would have trouble picking any of them out of a police lineup. We don’t really know them and we never will.”

“It’s the human scale of their malfeasance that makes them such inviting targets.” (Mentioned in the headline, though not the article, Octomom.) “Ronald Reagan proved a long time ago that while it was impossible to get the public all riled up because the federal government was throwing away billions of dollars on this or that program, you could get them to blow their stacks by recounting a dubious anecdote about some conscienceless welfare queen on the south side of Chicago who was jobbing the public out of a few grand. This was partly because it was possible to put a human face on the welfare cheater, even if the story was vastly exaggerated, whereas the federal bureaucracy would forever remain vague and amorphous. But it was also because a few thousand bucks here and there was a number the average person could wrap his head around. Unlike, say, $700 billion.”

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Frost/Nixon

Because Richard Nixon was the first President for whom I could have voted for – I didn’t – he has long held a special role in my life and my heart. In the day, it was nothing but anger and revulsion; since then, a more nuanced view. At the time, I thought he was destined to be one of the United States’ worst Presidents; in hindsight, merely one that was fatally flawed.

I saw the Oliver Stone-directed movie Nixon (1995), starring Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen, when it came out, with its warts and all. I enjoyed it well enough, but its quirky narrative style sometimes got in the way.

So last weekend, the wife and I did one of those “split date” things, with me going to the movies on Saturday and her on Sunday to see the more “conventional” filmmaker Ron Howard’s take on an event that took place after the Nixon Presidency, but which was necessarily all about it, Frost/Nixon.

I’ve found that a great number of people no longer remember David Frost, the “British satirist, writer, journalist and television presenter” who interviewed Nixon in 1977. There’s no current comparison who fully encapsulates it, but it’d be like Jay Leno or Larry King doing a hard-hitting interview of George W. Bush.

Most people who disliked Nixon wanted the interviews to be the mea culpa that Nixon never gave after the resignation, but felt that Frost was a lightweight who was was not up to the task. So it was that each participant had something to prove. Frost/Nixon turns out to be an intriguing film, not just the one-on-one, but the whole backstory leading up to the main event, including the need to secure the $600,000 for the interview, the slams of “checkbook journalism” and the desire to get the interview right.

Frost/Nixon is another play that was made into a movie. But unlike Doubt, it didn’t feel as stagy. One would not expect a historically-based movie about two guys talking to be so tense and yet so revealing of both men. Frank Langella, who is rightly nominated for best actor, “does” Nixon without being a caricature. In fact, the most revealing scene has Langella saying nothing. But look at his eyes! They spoke volumes about what was going on in Nixon’s mind. But the movie would collapse if Michael Sheen as Frost was not up to the task. Sheen, who played Tony Blair in 2006’s The Queen, ends up being as worthy an acting partner for Langella as Frost was an adversary for Nixon.

Some critics inevitably kvetched about historic inaccuracies here and there, which almost always happens. I wondered if the last scene – which is REALLY funny – actually happened; it matters not. I was entertaned and I learned a few things.

Recommended.

Frost, who has interviewed the last seven U.S. Presidents and six British Prime Ministers (excluding, so far, the current ones) now works for Al Jazeera English.

See part of the Frost/Nixon interviews here (97 minutes) and here (10 minutes).

ROG

Gillibrand and Bruno

Friday was a happening day politically in the Capital District of New York state. On one hand, there was descent. A federal grand jury indicted former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno on felony charges alleging he used his elected position to extract $3.2 million in private consulting fees from clients who sought to use his influence. Joe, who represented an area east of Albany for a number of years has his name on the relatively new minor league ballpark in Troy, among other things. I freely admit to experiencing a bit of schadenfreude over his fall, and it’s based on a connection I’m just not going to get into just now; maybe someday.

The other story was an ascent, one you might have heard about, even out of state or out of country: Gov. David Paterson picked Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Hillary Clinton, who resigned after her confirmation as Secretary of State in the Obama administration. One of the out-of-town headlines read: “Little-known, pro-gun Democrat gets Clinton’s Senate seat.” I thought it was unfairly reductivist, so for the benefit of those of you not the Albany area, a primer.

The Congressional District east and south of Albany, currently the 20th, was gerrymandered to sustain a Republican member of Congress. While the adjoining 20th (where I live) contains the Democratic-leaning cities of Albany, Schenectady and Troy, the vast 20th, largely rural and small towns was a GOP delight. The Congressman there for 20 years was the late Gerald Solomon, who was very conservative. He was succeeded in 1999 by John Sweeney, similarly conservative – he helped George W. Bush in Florida in 2000 – but a bit of a party animal. He was seen as drinking at a college frat house, e.g.

Still, when Kirsten Gillibrand challenged Sweeney in 2006, she was not given much of a chance to defeat him, such was the nature of the district. Then there were allegations of possible spousal abuse in the Sweeney household. This probably sealed the seat for Gillibrand.

The best time to knock off an incumbent is after his or her first term in office. The GOP candidate in 2008 against Kirsten Gillibrand was Sandy Treadwell, who is quite wealthy. I started seeing his ads – it’s the same media market – months before I saw hers. Yet she won the general election with 62% of the vote.

A successful Democrat in a conservative district, who was able to do some meaningful fundraising, became one of the front runners for the Clinton seat. Here’s a dichotomy in the narrative. When Gov. Paterson announced her at the press conference, he said that she was picked because she was best qualified, not because she was a woman or from upstate. Yet Gillibrand’s new Senate colleague, Chuck Schumer of Brooklyn said at that same press conference that it was important that the selection be a woman because there are only 16 women in the Senate. He added that it was also important that the candidate be from upstate, something that hasn’t happened in 38 years, because upstaters can speak better to the needs of upstaters. (I discussed the odd, complicated upstate/downstate tension here.)

Kirsten Gillibrand is no wide-eyed liberal, but she’s no hick. My wife suggested I not write this, but write it I must: she’s no Sarah Palin. She’s descended from political royalty in these parts, She received her first experiences in Albany politics from her grandmother, the legendary “Polly” Noonan. City of Albany politics, because it’s been one party for so long, engenders a certain conservativeness, a complaint about Gillibrand that she attempted to quell.

“I will represent the many diverse views and voices of New York state,” said Gillibrand, adding that she would work with Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island Democrat who has criticized Gillibrand’s A rating from the National Rifle Association. “I will look for ways to find common ground between upstate and downstate.” On December 7, 1993, McCarthy’s husband Dennis and five others were killed, and her son Kevin and 18 others wounded on a Long Island Railroad commuter train by Colin Ferguson.

The New York Immigration Coalition also suggested now-Senator Gillibrand must reconsider her positions on immigration. During her tenure in the House, Representative Gillibrand took positions on immigration that are deeply troubling, to say the least. She sponsored legislation that sought to require local police officers to take on immigration enforcement duties, even though police chiefs have testified it would impair their ability to protect the public. She strongly supported throwing more resources toward ineffective border enforcement, but appeared to oppose any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Simply put, these are positions that put her at odds with the majority of New Yorkers, whose values reflect our state’s history of welcoming immigrants, as well as with President Barack Obama, who supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

I could be wrong, but I think, as a statewide representative, she’ll be more liberal, if only because she’ll have to be to get the nomination. On the very day Gillibrand was named to the Senate seat, Carolyn McCarthy vowed to challenge Gillibrand, directly or indirectly, in the 2010 Democratic primary. The seat will also require candidates in 2012, when Senator Clinton’s term would have been up.

Here’s an interesting perspective in the New York Times about the whole process of naming Hillary Clinton’s successor:
Now that Gov. David Paterson of New York has completed his operatic quest to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat and Roland Burris, chosen by the embattled Illinois governor to succeed Barack Obama, has made it past Capitol Hill security, we can safely conclude that appointing senators might not be such a good idea.

Actually, Americans came to that conclusion in 1913, when the 17th Amendment mandated regular senatorial elections…

The very problems the amendment was meant to address persist. Consider this: Nearly a quarter of the United States senators who have taken office since the 17th Amendment took effect have done so via appointment. Once Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, Mr. Paterson’s choice, joins the Senate, she will be one of more than 180 senators named by governors since 1913.

By contrast, the Constitution mandates special elections for all vacancies in the House — even though representatives are far less powerful than senators.

Yet only a handful of states routinely fill vacated Senate seats by special election. The result is a tyranny of appointments.

Not so incidentally, the race for the Gillibrand House seat will have at least three well-known Republicans, including the wealthy Sandy Treadwell, whose ads netted him 150,000 votes in 2008, but only a couple unknown Democrats. The seat will almost certainly go back to the Republican column. It may be better for Gov. Paterson, who’s up for election in 2010, to have an upstate woman on the ticket running with him than to worry about one House seat. Moreover, New York will lose one, maybe two Congressional seats in 2012, after the 2010 Census, and the map, drawn by the state legislature, currently controlled in both houses by the Democrats, might well gerrymander the district out of existence.

ROG

The Year in Review: Politics, Sports

2008 was only the second time in ten attempts I’ve voted for a successful Presidential candidate – any guesses to the other time?

I also voted for Obama in the New York state primary. My, that was SO long ago, back in early February. Like many people, I suffered from election fatigue. So silliness such as the Barack the Magic Negro song kerfluffle, played on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, doesn’t even register.

But here’s a terrible thought: perhaps the Republicans were (gulp) right in in their winner-take-all primaries. In the same vein, I have also finally figured out what’s so very RIGHT with the Electoral College. People say, correctly, that it’s undemocratic. EXACTLY! It wasn’t designed to be democratic, it was meant to be definitive. Obama won with about a 53-47% vote. BUT he also won with a landslide ELECTORAL vote. The results of the election were not in question. And the system works most of the time. OK, not in 2000. Or 1888. Or 1876. Or 1824. But most of the time.

Imagine a close election, say 1968. Nixon and Humphrey were virtually tied in the popular vote. But Nixon’s Electoral College victory codified the race. Let’s say there were no Electoral College. There would have been canvassing of votes all over the country. Or even 2000, where the canvassing was limited to Florida.

There’s some merit, though, in doing what Maine and Nebraska have done; allocate electoral votes by Congressional district, with two votes going to the winner statewide. This would put more conservative parts of “blue” states and more liberal parts of “red” states in play, and that we in upstate New York would be barraged with the same campaign of ads that the folks in Ohio and Florida get. Wait, I said there was merit to this? Well, for the local media bottom line, for sure.

Caroline Kennedy for Senate? Don’t much care. Whoever is elected would have to run in both 2010 AND 2012. But she’s getting killed in the “vetting” process. There’s also the more parochial issue that upstaters in New York want an upstate Senator, since there hasn’t been one since Charles Goodall finished the term of Bobby Kennedy. An AP story this week suggested that some “caretaker” take the seat now, someone with no desire to run in 2010, like Bill Clinton, or Mario Cuomo, or Eliot Spitzer. OK, not Eliot Spitzer; seeing if you were paying attention. But Governor David Paterson does not want a caretaker candidate; he wants whoever he appoints in 2009 to be on the ballot in 2010, possibly, one could speculate, to enhance his own chances for being elected governor in hios own right.

I’ve been pretty obsessed with the Constitution this year. Do you know which Amendment took 203 years to be passed?

BASEBALL

Congrats to the Phillies and the ~~Devil~~ Rays. What a difference a season, and a name change, makes.

I started reading a Bob Costas book from 2000, which I seemed to have misplaced. Regardless, the points he made helped me realize that interleague play, as it’s currently constructed, is fatally flawed. Where in the NFL, all the teams in a division play common opponents (the NFL East playing the AFC North in 2008, e.g.), Major League Baseball has this romanticized notion of Yankees-Mets, White Sox-Cubs, etc. Nice, but When getting into the playoffs is determined by this, it’s not particularly workable. Let’s say the White Sox had a weak team, and the Yankees a strong one. This is advantageous to the Cubs and problematic for the Mets.

Also, how is it that the AL West has only four teams, while the NL Central has six? This is competitively unfair. Short of expanding MLB to 32 (four 4-team divisions in each league a la the NFL) or contracting two teams to 28 (two 7-team divisions, maybe with two wild cards, in each league), I don’t know how to make the system more equitable.

I’m also distressed that the Yankees can afford to get two front-line pitchers in the offseason (LHP CC Sabathia’s seven-year contract; RHP A.J. Burnett’s five-year contract). They are playing by the rules; it’s the rules that have to be fixed, with a greater amount of profit-sharing than the “luxury tax” has created. (Oh, and why isn’t the Mark Teixeira deal showing up on the MLB transaction list?

Will Francisco Rodriguez (K-Rod) be the end of late-season collapses for the Mets?

FOOTBALL
There’s a bowl game today at noon on ESPN2 that I never even heard of, the International Bowl, played in Toronto, ON CANADA, but I have a rooting interest: the Buffalo Bulks, which had been a terrible team, but won some incredible games down the stretch this season. Not only is it an upstate team, it’s a SUNY school (as is U Albany and SUC New Paltz, my alma maters), the school declined its only other chance to go to a bowl game 50 years ago.

On the pro level – Go, Big Blue! (That’s the defending Super Bowl champs, the New York Giants, to the uninitiated.)

ROG

QUESTION: THE QUESTION of the season

1. Regardless of your political persuasion, who do you think’s going to win the US Presidential election. Will it be:
a. McCain wins the popular vote, but Obama wins the electoral college.
b. Obama wins the popular vote, but McCain wins the electoral college.
c. McCain wins both.
d. Obama wins both.

I’m leaning towards d, but fear b.

2. How will the swing states go? As of yesterday, Electoral Vote attributes MS, SD, WV, and AZ(!) as weak McCain, GA, IN, and MT as barely McCain, FL, MO, and NC as barely Obama, CO, NV, OH and VA as weak Obama, and ND a dead heat. What’s interesting to me is how much bluer the map has gotten in some places and redder in others. AZ was solid McCain and MO barely McCain just last week, but IN moved from barely Obama. I expect Obama to win FL because of the Great Schlep. Traditionally, at least where I grew up, there were lots of blacks and Jews working together on civil rights issues so I’m hoping that translates to votes this year. The state Obama could win that would least shock me is Georgia. Not only is former Congressman Bob Barr running, but the early black vote has been strong, I’ve been told.
Actually, any state that isn’t solid red may be in play for Obama. Maybe I’m crazy, but in the Evanier poll, I picked 364 electoral votes.

3. What will be the “Florida 2000/Ohio 2004” for 2008?

Of course, I fear shenanigans. This story about NM just one example. Here’s a machine problem in WV. Democrats in Virginia are getting notices in the mail that tell them Democrats are to vote on November 5th instead of the 4th. Nevadans with Hispanic names are getting calls that they can vote by phone. In some places, letters are going out saying that when you show your ID, you’ll be checked for outstanding warrants or parking tickets. I was hoping Ohio would be cleaner than before under new management, though indications suggest that its troubled history will be replicated.

And it may not even be intentional. This from a friend of a friend – NOT an apocryphal tale:
Although [the 89-year-old man] voted in the primary election, the Early Voting officials could not find his name or address on file. [The man and his daughter] went the Craven County (NC) Board of Elections office… The officials “tried to re-register him only to find Dad and his address no longer existed. Well guess what, they finally found him in their records only to inform me that he was listed as DECEASED as of 7/24/08 per the State of North Carolina. They were still unable to find his residence. I happened to have his tax papers in my pocket book but of course that didn’t help. I was told that this problem was a mistake made in Raleigh and that it would be after the election before the problem could be fixed. Dad was given a Provisional Ballot and we were assured me that his vote would be counted.

If this happened to someone who voted in the primary, what about those elderly people who haven’t voted recently? Here’s hoping that everyone, who knows elderly persons who are planning to vote, tell them DO NOT WAIT UNTIL ELECTION DAY BECAUSE IT MAY BE TOO LATE. Make sure that they vote early just in case they have been listed as deceased and taken off the roll.”

Still, I’ll pick Missouri as the most likely trouble spot. There’s no early voting, it’s a significant state and it’s in play. It may or may not matter at the end of the day, but there it is.

Other political notes:
Precautions to take. Albany-based, but may be useful to others.

Some see gold in ‘Osama’ ballot goof. Those Rensselaer County (NY) ballots that had Osama for Obama are going for $50 to $100 on Craigslist.

A Poem for The Young Voter.

And this gem from earlier in the month, which I missed:
7th-Grade teacher to students: Obama is a ‘N’-word. Angry parents in the northwest Florida community of Marianna want a middle school teacher fired after he put the “N”-word on the board to describe Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. The Marianna Middle School teacher, Greg Howard, is now serving a 10-day suspension after writing an acronym on the dry-erase board on Sept. 26: “C.H.A.N.G.E. – Come Help A N*gg*r Get Elected.” But many parents want the 17-year teacher fired. The seventh-grade social studies teacher’s class has 17 White students, six Black students and one Asian student. Initially he was suspended for the day without pay, but that was elevated to the 10-day punishment. He must also write a letter of apology to students. “We feel like the punishment is sufficient,” Larry Moore, superintendent of the Jackson County School District, told The Detroit Free Press. “We did not feel he had to be fired.” NAACP officials say they will reserve their actions in the case until their investigation is complete.

ROG