image ripped from Jalopnik

Like many Americans, I watched the Superbowl and commercials with equal enthusiasm and enjoyed both. I thought the Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad at halftime was excellent. It never occurred to me that this was an overtly political ad, or endorsing Obama’s re-election, or supportive of corporate bail-outs. Who knew? Apparently I am not sufficiently politicized to recognize the offensive polarizing nature of the ad.

I naively saw the ad as simply a straight-line continuation of the theme and style of Chrysler’s excellent “Imported from Detroit” Eminem ad last year. [My Donk permissions do not permit me to embed the videos, but the 2011 Eminem ad is linked here and the 2012 Eastwood ad is linked here.]

Themes common to both ads include: Strength and resolve overcoming adversity; A focus on pride of place – (Detroit for Eminem – generalized to America with Eastwood); Dramatic uplifting music; A popular, way cool, instantly recognizable celebrity hinted at throughout the ad, emerging at the end, then dramatically delivering the money quote directly to the camera.

They are practically the same ad.

The purpose of advertising is to sell a product. The purpose of this ad is to sell Chrysler cars. Advertising sells cars by creating an image and cachet that buyers find attractive and associate with the car. This ad succeeds in this endeavor without ever showing the car.

Chrysler had\has an image problem. Along with GM, Chrysler suffered a serious black eye with the American public. Cerberus – the private equity firm that bought Chrysler from Daimler Benz cut its losses by means of of a government bailout and a managed bankruptcy with heavy handed terms dictated by the Obama administration. At the end of the day, Chrysler was purchased by Italian car manufacturer Fiat, mostly because no one else would buy it.

All of this was considered rather unseemly and distasteful to American car buyers at the time, but that was all in the past way back two years ago. Now we have a resurgent automobile industry with Chrysler cars “Imported form Detroit” creating jobs in America and competing with foreign manufacturers. Right? Well… not quite:

These ads are great because they succeed in wrapping Chrysler and their cars in the image of a resurgent Detroit and project a message of resilient Americans fighting out of an economic downturn – all delivered by respected and well-liked celebrity personalities.

If there is a political message to found here, it has nothing to do with the advertisement itself. The ad is doing exactly what any good ad should do. In fact, it does more - Memeorandum is tracking reactions, people are writing columns about it, it is being posted on blogs and social networks. Chrysler is getting more than their money’s worth from this spot.

The political problem is with the underlying company. The problem is with the moral hazard unleashed when they were bailed out with taxpayer money. The problem is with the subsequent heavy handed politically motivated machinations orchestrated by the Obama administration in the bankruptcy proceedings. I would not want to buy a car from that company.

I’d rather buy a car from that other company. That Halftime in America, Clint Eminem, Imported from Ohio Illinois Canada Mexico Detroit company. You know the one I mean… Fiat.

UPDATE:
You had to know this was coming. The Parody is linked here.

^{x-posted from “The Dividist Papers“}

^{Democrats and Republicans see eye to eye on debt ceiling and deficit reduction.}

In the dark days before the debt ceiling compromise vote, with the doomsday “debtapocalyspe” countdown dominating the media, several polls struck a common theme: The public demands bipartisan compromise. Taegon Goddard’s Wire summarized the gestalt of the moment:

“A new Pew Research poll finds 68% of Americans say that lawmakers should compromise on the debt ceiling debate, even it means striking a deal they disagree with. Just 23% say lawmakers who share their views should stand by their principles, even if that leads to default.”

So it follows that when our representatives and leaders in Washington D.C finally got together and crafted a truly bipartisan deal, the country cheered wildly. Or not:

“A majority of Americans disapprove of the deal struck Sunday by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders that will raise the country’s legal borrowing limit, and three out of four believe elected officials have acted like “spoiled children.”

Since that legislation was signed, nothing but cries, lamentations and the rending of garments has been heard across the land. The animus from the right, left and center for the debt ceiling compromise is quite extraordinary. Q&O had a good survey of the early reaction and little in the popular assessment has changed in the weeks since.

Congressional and presidential approval levels plunged to new lows. When describing the debt ceiling compromise and the process to get there, the media pejorative of choice: Our government is… DYSFUNCTIONAL! And it must be true. I mean ~750,000 Google search hits on “debt ceiling dysfunctional” can’t be wrong. Who am I to argue with that? But maybe, just maybe – Our government is working exactly as it was designed to work, and our representatives are doing exactly what we, the voters, sent them to Washington to do.

For all of the lip service paid to the virtues of bipartisan compromise from pundits and bloggers across the political spectrum, there appears to be very little support for a picture perfect example of a bipartisan centrist compromise when Congress does enact one.

There is simply no way to characterize this vote except as an overwhelming bipartisan compromise victory. Moreover, to the extent that “Centrist” actually means anything in concrete policy terms, this was a purely Centrist piece of legislation. The extremes of both parties voted against it. It required a bipartisan coalition of more moderate, centrist, practical Democrats and Republicans to pass this legislation. Liberal votes were not needed. Tea Party votes were not needed. It passed overwhelmingly. It is exactly this model that future deficit reduction legislation will follow.

Don’t get me wrong – to call it thin gruel is to give this legislative stew more flavor than it deserves. It does not solve the deficit problem. Not even close. However it did accomplish several difficult objectives. It started turning our ship of state toward a course that will solve the problem. It started the process of making difficult cuts. It put a mechanism in place that can and will take more meaningful steps toward solving the problem. It erected an artificial deadline for a solution to be enacted by Congress, which is a necessary if not sufficient condition for our Congressional leaders to make the hard deficit decisions. In short, it offers real hope for the first meaningful steps toward fiscal sanity in decades.

Navigating the Titanic at full speed through an iceberg field is a tricky proposition at best. The steps taken in the debt ceiling compromise were considered significant enough that two of the three rating agencies immediately reaffirmed our AAA status. S&P is the odd man out (I’ll have more to say about S&P in a future post). Fitch has since reaffirmed our AAA status with no expectation of a downgrade. Moody’s does not appear inclined to follow S&P. So with our “dysfunctional” Congress at the helm, our ship of state managed to dodge two icebergs and glanced off a third. We are still floating, we’ve throttled back and we are on a course that may steer us clear of any more icebergs.

A course correction to the predominantly One Party Rule excesses of the last 10 years by a divided government that has been in place less than 10 months will be neccessarily incremental. It cannot be otherwise. No one could or should expect otherwise.

The fact that neither you or I or the rest of the passengers on this ship particularly liked the compromise nor the embarrassing partisan performance by the captain and crew does not change what it is – and it is a picture perfect example of a bipartisan centrist compromise. If you don’t like it, you may just not like bipartisan centrist compromises as much as you think you do. And you probably will not like the bipartisan centrist compromise that will almost certainly be delivered from the Deficit Reduction Committee at the end of this year.

Conventional Wisdom in both main stream and non-traditional media have passed judgement on the debt ceiling legislation and the bipartisan deficit reduction super committee it begat. Conventional Wisdom informs us that we have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Conventional Wisdom tells us the bipartisan Super Committee will fail. It will fail just like the plan formulated by the Simpson-Bowles committee, just like the bipartisan plan floated by the Gang of Six Senators, and just like the bipartisan “Grand Bargain” negotiation between President Obama and Speaker of the House Boehner. There is no point in holding out hope, the judgement of Conventional Wisdom has been rendered. This is an exercise in futility.

^{Nick Anderson – Houston Chronicle}

Problem being – Conventional Wisdom is wrong. The Simpson-Bowles committee recommendations are alive and well. They were the starting point for the Paul Ryan proposal. They were the basis for the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Six” proposal. They were the basis for the Obama/Boehner “Grand Bargain” which came within a relatively trivial $400B revenue gap of being enacted. With each iteration it gets closer to passing.

To put in in the parlance of Vice President Biden, this is a BFD. An important, extraordinarily difficult compromise between two wildly different views of the role of government is in the offing. It is perfectly understandable and desirable for our leadership to take the time and go through the pain, partisan histrionics, and debate to be sure we solve the problem and get it right, or at least as close as we can get in our divided country.

Conventional wisdom also informs us that Tea Party intransigence on taxes and Liberal intransigence on cutting entitlements will doom the Committee. The membership of the committee is too partisan and too ideological to leave room for compromise.

^{x-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall}

In the interest in serving up a heaping helping of current event meat on the Donklephant table, here is what memorandum informs us is the story of the day. There are many posts and stories to choose from, but we’ll go with the Weigel description:

“The video sting artiste publishes the latest work from his shop — a covertly taped interview with then-NPR Foundation senior VP for development Ron Schiller and current senior director of institutional giving Betsy Liley. Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar posed as members of a wealthy Muslim education foundation “founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood,” and taped the NPR representatives — largely Schiller — answering them with exactly what they wanted to hear… Schiller is a professional fundraiser, not a journalist. His pandering to the group is actually sort of masterful.”

I can’t get too worked up about this latest episode of Jackass Journalism* – The art of pranking political opposition in the hope of getting stupid and embarrassing quotes on tape (with extra credit for reinforcing your teams worst stereotypes of the other team).

I put this particular clip in the same category as the prank call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. What did we learn from these “expose’s”? We learn that politicians and professional fundraisers are willing to pander and pretend to agree with whatever comes out of the mouth of potential contributors with big checkbooks. I’m shocked… shocked. Oh – we also learned that Ron Schiller and Scott Walker are dicks.

The only potential policy issue here is the federal funding of NPR. Frankly I don’t see how or why this should have any impact on that debate. It is interesting that Schiller says NPR does not really need the funding, but he also said he was speaking only for himself and not NPR. Personally, I don’t think there is any particularly good reason for taxpayers to fund this organization. But in terms of the actual level of funding, it is meaningless and a distraction from the very real budget crisis we are facing. I would far prefer to see our legislators working to solve the real problem – entitlements, rather than debating the merits of funding NPR.

We’ll get to the real issues eventually. One way or the other.

^{*BTW – I believe I am the first to use the term “Jackass Journalism” in this context, and am afraid I must insist on attribution whenever and wherever it is used from now until forever. Yes you can google some random earlier uses, but this is the right name for the O’keefe style.}

Cross-post at Divided We Stand United We Fall

As previously noted, Taiwanese animations are the future of all mainstream news. Here the folks at NextMedia have distilled US TV news, newspaper commentary, blogs, and twitter feeds on the Wisconsin standoff into an easily digestible two minute animation. I actually think four posts in a row on the same subject is probably two too many, but as this story is winding down anyway, I’ll give NMA the last word.

[I think Jacob said he would put the weekly Open Thread out today, but if not - feel free to use or abuse this one.]

This is what a cheesehead protest looks like in Taiwan:

I wonder why I waste time watching the news. It is easier to just wait for NMA to distill every story down to its essence.

They did miss all the giddy excitement on the left about the embarrassing prank call to Governor Walker from a fake David Koch. Walker did not say anything in the call that is going to change the dynamic in Wisconsin. The problem is not anything he said. The problem is that he took the call. The only likely effect will be to Walker’s presidential ambitions and potential re-election. He’ll be running against that audio recording for the rest of his political life. So it goes. He took the call, now he’ll live with it. I’m good with that.

Taking that call fanned the flames of left wing paranoia about David Koch which is beginning to take on the epic proportions of right wing paranoia about George Soros. But as far as the legislative standoff is concerned, this is a foregone conclusion. Walker will win.

Wisconsin Democrats run for the exits.

Polls do not support the AWOL Wisconsin Senators. The Wisconsin State Assembly passed the Walker Budget Repair Bill after beating back a filibuster and the Senators will have to return sometime or be recalled. The protesters in Madison will have to go back to work or be fired. The Republicans have the votes and Walker has the will. Done deal.

It is all Kabuki Theater in Wisconsin from this point. To quote another blogger who occasionally posts at this site and is currently basking on a Mexico beach “Moving on.”

X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

Usually I try to avoid stuff like this, but the following video was just too crazy. I mean…how does this guy have listeners? How is he so powerful? More importantly, why can’t GOPers distance themselves from or criticize him without having to apologize a couple days later?

Answer: morons.

Listen, most of you know I don’t usually get into name calling on this blog, but if you know somebody who likes or respects Rush Limbaugh after this…it’s safe to say that they’re a moron, right? If not…what’s wrong with them? Or what’s “right” with them?

Let me know…

This election cycle precipitated a conversation about the virtues and vices of a divided federal government in both new and traditional media. In the last few days before the vote, the amplitude spiked. Much of the most recent attention is in the form of an attack from the left on the foundation of the divided government voting rationale. Recent entries include Ezra Klein (again and again), Matt Yglesias, New York Times, John Sides (and again), Paul Pierson at American Prospect and Anne Lowrey at Slate.

It almost looks coordinated. No matter. The reason is not hard to understand. The biggest erosion of Democratic support from ’08 to ’10 is from the independent, moderate, centrist, libertarianish vote. For the most part, these voters are not choosing to vote Republican in 2010 because they like the Republican candidates or because they suddenly have embraced GOP values. They are voting Republican to divide the government in the hope of reining in the Democratic agenda and restoring some semblance of fiscal rationality (either that or it is because the voters are stupid and gullible and Republicans tell better lies). The only surprise is that it has taken this long for Democrats to understand that their core problem is not apathy in the base. Their core problem is they have lost the center.

I don’t think this flurry is going to help short term, and in the longer term will be problematical for these scribblers. In two years they will all be making the argument for divided government. It won’t look good.

As a consistent advocate for a divided government voting heuristic, I am of the view that all publicity on this topic is good publicity. Over the four+ years I have been blogging about divided government, this election is the first time I have seen it discussed as if it is a conscious decision, rather than some inchoate, subconscious voter preference that mysteriously shows up periodically in the electoral results.

In any case these posts have kept me busy on my blog offering rebuttals to some of their arguments (for any interested, you can find my responses here, here and here).

Here at the Donk we’ll feature just one attack from liberal darling Paul Krugman. This – an awe inspiring, world class hysterical hissy fit from the lofty platform afforded him by the New York Times:

Divided We Fail – Paul Krugman

Whoa. Somebody get that man a Prozac.

The Economist responds:

Krugman’s Prophecy of Doom – The Economist

The money quote:

“It’s a little sad, isn’t it, when even our most eminent public intellectuals waste so much of their time, and ours, on baseless partisan freakouts?”

I think that pretty much sums it up. Except for what Nike Gardiner at the Telegraph had to say:

Paul Krugman and the last gasp of America’s liberal elites – Nike Gardiner

That first sentence above being the other money quote. That really says it all. Well, except for…
Krugman: The Only Think We Have is Fear Itself - Ed Driscoll

Paul Krugman says “This is going to be terrible” – Ann Althouse

When Paul Krugman says the 2010 election means disaster, you can bet on the opposite happening – Mark Hemingway

To be fair, all the comments quoted in response to Krugman’s column are from right-of-center columnists and bloggers. OTOH, Google could not find anyone of note from the left trumpeting or even defending Krugman’s column.

Methinks even his liberal brethren are embarrassed about this particular Olbermannesque screed.

X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

On the Left:

The most important part of our jobs as United States Senators is to create jobs in our states. That is especially true in times like these, when so many are reeling from so much economic pain – Harry Reid

and on the Right:

in my view it’s an insult to the millions of Americans who want us to focus on jobs – Mitch McConnell

They’re having a big ol’ soundbite fight!

They’ve chosen their words carefully and positioned themselves firmly on the correct side of the aisle. Now they can skip off with their corporate campaign finances and continue the show.

A responsible legislature would let this bill come up and have the JOBS discussion over a potential piece of legislation. A functional media would report without bias upon the proceedings and possible effects of the legislation. A thoughtful, engaged populace would pay attention and decide for whom to vote.

Instead, Republicans and Democrats feint toward legislating with bipartisan political burlesque (now playing in “We the People’s Theater”); the media fans the partisan flames and drools psychotically over the polls; and a distracted populace remains ignorant and fiercely protective of their partisan views.

It’s easier for our elected officials to smack-talk in the substance-free campaign world than it is to govern responsibly. It pays better too.

I refuse to call it the Ground Zero mosque because, well, it’s not at Ground Zero. It’s close, but it’s not at the site…which I think most people who opposed it think it is.

But here’s the thing…looks like it’s moving to another part of the city.

From Haaretz:

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero – the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York – it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.

The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a hostile television campaign.

Every hack politician who has actively pushed this should be ashamed of themselves. This is a completely worthless debate, driven, might I add, by the same folks who cry every single day about their constitutional rights being violated.

And lest they forget another important point about why a mosque would be appropriate near Ground Zero…a reminder from the Village Voice…

Muslims were victims of 9/11, too. Sorry, but it’s true. And one was an NYPD cadet.

Heads up Republicans…politicizing this might drive some of the base to the polls this year, but it’ll drive nobody else. And as you continue to ostracize groups that are expanding, instead of having an open tent, you’re marginalizing your party in the long run. Because for every voter you keep with nonsense issue like this (and revising the 14th amendment), you lose 2 new voters in the future. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

UPDATED:
Looks like the report was false. The mosque is going forward.

The official Twitter account of Park51, the developer constructing the center, has now stepped in to deny the story. “Reports by Haaretz are completely false,” tweeted @Park51. “We are committed to plans of building Park 51 to serve the community of Lower Manhattan.

Score one for American media. And cross Haaretz off your list of sources for news on this story.

Good.

UPDATED UPDATE:
However, David Patterson is trying to get the mosque to move…

New York Gov. David Paterson (D) will meet with the imam and developer of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero “later this week” to discuss the possibility of removing the mosque to an “alternate location”, according to Rep. Peter King.

King, an outspoken opponent of placing the mosque and Islamic cultural center so close to where terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, received a call from Paterson this morning.

“We are working with the developers on a staff level but there have not been any formal discussions between the Governor and Imam or developer,” said Morgan Hook, a spokesman for Paterson. “However, we expect to have a meeting scheduled in the near future.”

Something tells me this will keep on going and going and going…

We here at Donklephant want to make sure you know that we’re laughing at you, not with you…

23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

If I were picking worst blogs, guess which ones would be on that list…

UPDATE:
Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse concurs.

I wont be nearly the first person to be writing about California’s Proposition 14. I’m coming late into the game, having only listened to the vague positive talking points of the California Independent Voter Network (CAIVN), and their allies, who have talked this proposition up. But I began to see some dissent, and took at a look at it myself. To be blunt, if this passes, partly because of support from CAIVN and their allies, I will genuinely be embarrassed to affiliate myself with these organizations that I hold in very high regard for their work fighting for the rights of independents.

Like so many other laws that make it through corrupt, and usually quite partisan, legislatures or ballot initiatives, this law violates the first rule that an ethical lawmaker or political organization ought to look at when drafting a bill or proposition; ‘first do no harm’.

Independents are doing two things that are inexcusable by supporting this proposition. They are supporting a change in the electoral system, only allowing the top two vote getters to make it through to the general election, that has flatly been shown to not accomplish the stated goals of lessening partisanship in the other states and areas that have, or have had, such rules in place.

I am personally quite familiar with these kinds of rules. In my home state of Nebraska, I considered running for state senate, as an independent, myself. This rule was not the only reason I decided not to do so, but looking at a short primary season where I would have had to overcome a huge money, organizational and manpower deficit… it certainly was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back. Had I had the entire campaign season to catch up, my decision could have been different.

In other words… we’re hurting our own chances, in trade for a rule that has no history of lowering partisanship, and actually has a track record of lowering the rate of incumbent turnover.

The second mistake is even more insidious, and the reason why I dub this bill the ‘First DO Harm’ Act. The first could be explained away as being duped, misinformed or (at best) perhaps blindly grasping for straws on a gamble. No… this is wholly deliberate. This is taking a page from the two party duopoly playbook. Its inexcusable and so hypocritical I cringe to think about how it might effect the future of independent movement types should this pass in California.

Independents have been the whipping boy of the political process for the dozen or so years that I’ve been really paying attention to politics. Its terribly hard to have an effect on primary elections, the hurdles to running for office as an independent are disturbingly high in most places and candidates from the two major parties pay attention to us only when races get close.

If there is any group of people that we have some common cause with on electoral reform, its third party organizations. Now, I think that both major parties are far too partisan, and I recognize that organizations like the Green Party and Libertarian Party are even more ideologically extreme in most cases. But my ideological differences with them don’t go so far as to impinge upon my higher conscientious support for basic democratic ideals, and fundamental fairness.

Richard Winger, over at Ballot Access News, hits the nail on the head in his op-ed in the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

“…since minor party candidates almost never place first or second in the June primary, minor party members would never be able to run for statewide office in November. And, the catch is that only the November vote counts for meeting the 2 percent vote test.

and…

“The real irony is that the big newspapers of California know about this problem with Prop. 14 but refuse to mention it. That’s ironic because back in 1981, when Democrats in the Legislature wanted to toughen the ballot-access requirements, the big newspapers of California denounced that bill with full fury. Forty of California’s biggest newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations editorialized against that measure.

lastly…

“Prop. 14 is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the for-profit health insurance companies, the for-profit hospitals, and various multimillionaires, and the Yes on 14 campaign has a huge war chest. Why won’t the L.A. Times even mention this flaw in the measure? Who are the big dailies afraid of offending?”

And who are these independent organizations afraid of offending… or perhaps who are they pandering to?

This proposition flat out screws the minor parties. This glaring selfishness is made embarrassingly worse by the fact that several independent supporters I have communicated with, or read explanations of their reasoning for support, of the proposition have actually touted this as a way of further marginalizing these minor parties. This rings of a bully at school taking his anger out on even smaller kids because his bigger brothers have been beating on him for years. In fact, this is precisely what this is.

I’m not going to split hairs on this issue. Independents that support this bill should be ashamed of themselves.

For some people, the development of the new Coffee Party USA organization seemed like a godsend in response to the more extreme elements in the Tea Party movement. At first I thought that this could be the grassroots movement I’d been waiting for – one that actually included moderates independents, and actively worked across ideological divides to look for common ground, rather than partisan gain. In short, I was wrong.

After spending a few months helping organize the Nebraska chapter, helping upgrade sections of the national website and working on a few ad hoc subcommittees trying to build some structure in the organization… it became clear to me that the public reputation of the Coffee Party as a liberal answer to the Tea Party was actually quite true.

Some rumors about the organization showed no evidence of being true however.

The rumors about this being funded by some wealthy liberal entity showed no sign of being true from the inside, or the outside if you’re someone who knows what money looks like in an organization. At every turn, the leadership asked how we could accomplish our goals using free to nearly free options, and a number of things were turned down as options that cost merely a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars.

However, there really isn’t any transparency in the organization, so I have no way to verify whether any of these claims are true or not. I did overhear some upper level people talking about low five digits having been raised, on a conference call, but have no idea where, or if, any of it is being spent, and while there has been talk of there being a board… I have no idea who these people are. For an organization claiming to be bottom up, both of these things are inexcusable, easy to fix, and were ignored when brought up by volunteers internally.

Problems like this… fundamental organizational issues, easy to fix and ignored by the leadership… are endemic internally at Coffee Party USA. If I had to pick one reason, other than the ideological bent, that I left, this would be it.

I also saw no evidence of Coffee Party USA having any direct coordination with Democratic party groups. They did seem intent on being sure to remain independent actors, not pawns of larger forces. This being the case, they had no problem hawking liberal talking points, from liberal icons and sources like President Obama, Paul Krugman, several Huffington Post articles and even Daily Kos.

I saw no evidence of Coffee Party USA being “astroturfed” either. Much to the contrary, they’re easily the most disorganized group of any size I’ve ever been a part of that had been around for more than a few months. The leadership of the organization claimed that they did not have time to do the work necessary to put the foundation of the organization on solid ground, but they of course had plenty of time to put together panel discussions, make promotional videos, pontificate and go on TV shows, among other things.

I took a few weeks off after expressing some of my concerns (along with other people) to see if the leadership would actually do anything about them, and left recently because I saw no efforts towards that. The main selling points for me, were the nonpartisan & non-confrontational tack they took, and how they appeared to look for common ground, rather than further raising the political temperature.

Early communications built an image of a somewhat left leaning organization who’s core was nonpartisan. But over time, as the conversations turned into action, it became clear that this wasn’t the case, and were neither nonpartisan, non-confrontational nor committed to working across traditional partisan divides.

While I was there, there was no active effort to bring people in from the center or right, while the liberal messaging, unwillingness to make it plain that we weren’t in fact a liberal response to the Tea Party (this was brought up several times internally, but rebuffed because they didn’t want to discourage liberal activist members), and with the media predictably painting the Coffee Party as such allowed the organization to be defined as what it in fact is… a liberal grassroots-ish organization.

A quick look at CPUSA’s Facebook page, the website, emails they’ve sent out, message boards and especially the internal conversations, among other things… show a fairly standard liberal grassroots organization. To be plain, this organization wishes to be seen as a nonpartisan group only so it can have a glean of high minded nonpartisanship and gain members in the center so they can better justify their liberal positions.

It didn’t help that the leadership flip flopped on early promises to only support the use of non-confrontational tactics by local chapters. They also flip flopped on a promise to make decisions on what issues the organization would take stances on through open votes among the general membership… among a number of other issues that were brought up internally.

Again, the leadership claimed to not have enough time to do the foundational work that an organization needs to do to be effective. If they have the time to be on panel discussions, make videos, develop new campaign after new campaign, podcasts, blogs, etc etc etc… they have plenty of time to focus on developing the organization. They just choose not to, showing where their priorities were. The most preposterous side of this whole mess was that they actually used the organization as a vehicle for self promotion, promoting the two founders’ documentary through official organization channels. This is clearly unethical.

When people spoke up about some of these issues, the leadership ignored those threads, and usually the conversations would die off after a day or two, with no response or action taken. The issues kept coming up every week or so, and I began to see that they were in no way interested in actually addressing these issues when I received two calls from Billy Wimsatt, one of the top level people, that offered a position higher up in the organization… but only if I would stop bringing up issues I had.

This was unacceptable to me, and should be to most. Independents and moderates beware. Unless you want to be token non-liberals that will be used to reach liberal ends, this is not the organization we’ve been waiting for.

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning…

The Tea Party’s choice in the Florida Republican primary, Marco Rubio, began his address to a crowd of conservative conventioneers by taking a shot at President Obama for reading from a teleprompter. He did it while standing in front of two easily visible teleprompters.

It was unclear whether the devices were placed there for him or for other speakers at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference, or CPAC, at which he was a keynote speaker. A HuffPost reporter, however, watched his speech from the front row and Rubio could clearly be seen looking intently and repeatedly at the teleprompters. He also had a stack of papers with him at the lectern and flipped through them as the speech progressed, perhaps unwilling to take any chance he would flub the swipe at Obama.

Nonetheless, he supposedly killed.

Here are some choice cuts of Rubio’s speech…

Personally, I think Rubio offers a really intellectually dishonest speech there. Democrats don’t want to abandon the free enterprise system. And what does he mean by “changing” American as opposed to “fixing” America? The great thing about democracies is their ability to change when things are broken. And folks, if you don’t think things were broken, well, I’ve got some beachfront property I’d like to sell you in Kansas.

But I suppose this gets back to my core problems with conservatism. It really doesn’t seem to have evolved since Goldwater and Buckley. If anything, they’re becoming more entrenched and out of touch with what really drives our economic engine. Say what you will about Dems, but if you ask nearly any liberal politician what they think of our place in the world as a superpower or a global economic force, nobody is looking to lose and many are just as concerned about the deficit as your average Tea Partier. But what I’m hearing from Republicans and Libertarians and Tea Partiers is that they just want to return to unchecked Friedmanism. Well, it didn’t work and even Greenspan admitted that.

Regardless, keep your eye on Rubio as he could probably be the bridge between the Tea Party and the GOP that Republican politicos desperately want…and need.

Last week’s White House Blog post by Dan Pfeiffer was notable for the brutal unvarnished honesty of its title:

The Same Old Washington Blame Game
Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on December 30, 2009 at 03:34 PM EST

We are unaccustomed to this kind of refreshing candor coming from a Communication Director of any administration in recent memory. After all, the job of a Communication Director is “spin” – to frame everything in the most positive light for the President and the administration. But there it is… Pfeiffer delivers on the promise of the title “The Same Old Washington Blame Game” with much more of the same old Washington blame game in the selfsame post.

In the first paragraph, Pfeiffer writes “too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay…”. In the rest of the post he points fingers and makes political hay:

Kudos to Dan Pfeiffer. No telling where this kind of honesty might lead. If Congress followed his example and gave honest titles to its legislative efforts, the stimulus bill might have been named: “Bring Home the Bacon to Democratic Districts Porkfest“; the Cash for Clunkers program would be entitled “We Will Borrow Money From China To Be Repaid by Your Children And Give It To You So You Can Buy a Car Now Act“; and the health care reform bill that recently passed the Senate would be known as “A Giant Hairball That No One Understands Except the Big Pharma and Health Care Insurance Lobbyists that Wrote This Bill“, or just “Frankenbill“.

I can only hope this trend will continue. Perhaps other political bloggers will be inspired to be more candid about their blog posts. We, the Donklephant bloggers, could follow Dan’s example. I’ll start. Please mentally substitute this post title: “A Smarmy, Cynical, Sarcastic And Unfunny Take On The White House Blog”.

^{Hat Tip – Kate at Small Dead Animals}

X-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall

Whilst walking the dog this rainy evening, I happened upon an illuminated, inflatable lawn ornament of the Halloween variety.

These decorations are an easy, relatively inexpensive way to acknowledge the holiday. They require little or no thought beyond which one to buy and where to buy it. The set-up is easy, so is the clean up and off-season storage.

Easy is good.

The unfortunate trade-off is that most inflatables are hollow caricatures of tradition and a lousy representation of the individuals upon whose lawn they are displayed.

I took three classes in college with a professor who made every class read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The essay warrants contemplation. The criticisms he makes of modern writing can be made of most modern pursuits. Holiday decorating for example.

He writes:

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. [...] If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.

When you use ready-made decorations, you don’t have to untangle lights, build scarecrows or hang bats from trees. Just “gum together” a ghost and pumpkin that’s “already set in order by someone else” and you’re good to go. The result is cute, maybe. Mostly it’s uninspired and unremarkable.

The trouble with such thoughtlessness, Orwell writes, is that it feeds on itself:

[...] an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

It is rather the same thing that is happening to all arenas of our life. The more we choose to rely on the convenience of prefabricated expressions (of thought, holidays or anything else), the less effort we put into all aspects of our lives, and the more we become generic caricatures of ourselves.

Look at what passes for political discourse these days. The majority of people are vehemently arguing about which inflatable lawn ornament is better for the country – your goofy-grinned liberal scarecrow or my fat conservative, Disney witch.

The good news is that the condition is reversible – without taking a BB gun to the neighbors yard:

One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase [...] into the dustbin, where it belongs.

I suppose that means I’ll go outside and make a scarecrow.

Something has been bugging me all weekend.

I’ve never been to Chicago. From what friends and family have told me, The Windy City is indeed a great place. There is lots to see and do.

But you wouldn’t be told that if you asked any number of right-wing-talking-heads. To these folks, Chicago is a cesspool of corruption, filth and slime.

Michelle Malkin:

Goodbye, “Yes We Can.” Hello, “No, You Can’t.” Like Icarus, President Obama’s giddy ego flight has ended with melted wax and fallen wings.

Laura Ingraham:

R-I-O! May this be the first of many defeats for Chicago-style politics!

Jon Henke (whom I normally associate with being a reasonable conservative) tweeted:

Rush Limbaugh:

The worst day of Obama’s presidency, folks. The ego has landed. The world has rejected Obama.

Erick Erickson:

So Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him.

So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.

… and he also tweeted:

Wow. We get it everyone, you don’t like Barack Obama. That is painfully clear now. But rooting for Chicago to lose its bid to host the Olympics? Really?

Maybe you guys don’t like Chicago. Maybe you visited Chicago as a youngster and the strong winds blew your balloon out of your hands. Maybe in your young adult years, you visited Second City and were made to cry instead of laugh. Maybe you loathed The Blues Brothers. Whatever the reason you don’t like Chicago, surely it has to be more than ‘well, that’s where Barack Obama is from’, right?

You see, this notion that because Barack Obama is from Chicago his political opponents must actively root for that city to lose its Olympic bid is nothing short of asinine. Why? So that you can say something negative about the President?

It’s no secret that I was no fan of George W. Bush. I didn’t like 95% of his presidency and even more of his policies. However, if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was considering Crawford, Texas as a potential site for the Summer Games, I would be all for it. I would support that consideration not because I liked the former President, but because that city is on American soil. It’s called patriotism.

In my view, the largest fallacy of the anti-Chicago-hosting-the-Olympics movement is the financial issue. The vast majority of the Chicago naysayers are free-market, pro-capitalism conservatives. That in itself is a contradictory stance. To be anti-Olympics-coming-to-a-city (any city, not just Chicago) is essentially the same as denying that city thousands of new jobs and millions (billions?) of dollars in revenue generated by tourism. What city wouldn’t want those things?

Lastly, let me say this; I am not saying that these people are unAmerican. They have every right to speak their mind on any issue they choose. To claim that a dissenting opinion is unAmerican or unpatriotic is dangerous and irresponsible — and I won’t do that.

However, what I will say is that this posturing makes absolutely no sense to me. I cannot understand why someone wouldn’t want the United States to host an Olympic games. If the criticism was directed at President Obama for traveling to Copenhagen to make his ‘sales pitch’, then I would understand. But that is definitely not the case (see: Erickson’s tweet). These critics wanted Chicago to fail — and fail it did.

Now it is Rio de Janeiro that will get the jobs and potential economic growth.

I write one, Jason writes one, I write another, and Jason writes another.

And so I write this…

I don’t accept the premise that because the conversation isn’t less strident in the extreme left blogosphere that it creates a “disincentive” for Republicans to back health care reform. In fact, there are many more reasons for Republicans to support the Baucus legislation than to not…so let’s get in to those now…

Most hardcore liberals, especially the blogosphere variety, are completely against the Baucus bill. What this means is that the legislation will probably appeal to most independents, moderate Dems and moderate Repubs. Who decides elections? Every pollster alive will tell you it’s the swing voters. What do swing voters look for? Politicians who compromise. It’s not a difficult electoral calculation.

So, actually, the left railing against the bipartisan legislation as not pure enough should be an incentive for Republicans to support it so they can show independents that they’re learning from their historic defeat last fall.

Here’s another incentive for the Rs…their ideas get into the most important health care reform legislation in the past 50 years. Listen, they had the opportunity FOR DECADES to do something about health care and yet they sat on their hands and let millions go without health insurance, go bankrupt as a result of skyrocketing costs or simply were refused insurance because of pre-existing condition clauses. Well, now Repubs are seriously outnumbered and they’re in danger of not having a say if they don’t back the Baucus bill…which absolutely gives them a serious seat at the table. And, by the way, Dems don’t have to do that. And yet they are.

Want another incentive? How about containing health care costs? Baucus’ bill makes significant cuts in Medicare and CHIP and replaces it with private insurance. It doesn’t have an employer mandate. And the CBO actually said it’ll reduce the budget deficit after a decade. So they could actually make a very strong case to their base that this bill represents fiscal conservatism in action since Medicare is KILLING us and driving up the budget deficits.

So there are some of the incentives to sign on. I’m sure there could be some more, but those are all the high level, apparent ones.

Now then…what about the incentives not to?

First, it’ll piss off their base. But at this point do they really think the base won’t show up if they’re extreme enough to question whether or not Obama is a citizen? Again, let’s reference the swing voter logic. Any support they lose from their base will be offset by independent support due to their bipartisan nature. I think we all agree that the politicians that fall more in the middle are those who have more electoral success. Still…they could piss off their base.

Second, it’s a smart political move to oppose this because they can demagogue health care in 2010/2012. This is the only real reason I can think that makes any sense why they’d be against it, especially after they signed EVERYTHING Bush put in front of them (including that drug prescription bill). So all of sudden they’re finding fiscal conservative religion after Obama gets elected? Consider me unconvinced that this sudden turnaround is prompted by a bunch of left wing bloggers.

(At this point you’ll have to read Jason’s post to gain greater context for the next part, but he calls me naive. I take this with a grain of salt because I know Jason, I consider him a friend and I know he’s prone to hyperbole. Nonetheless…)

As far as naive, well, I’ll take the bait.

Who’s more naive…

• The guy who’s telling Republicans they better wise up, play fair and sign on to a bill (that liberals are professing they hate) so they can have some say in the legislation and possibly win independents in 2010?

OR


• The guy who’s basing the entire premise of his argument on the idea that leftist bloggers who demand ideological purity are somehow shaping the debate and moderate Dem bloggers have to answer them to such a degree that we reshape the debate or Republicans will not have incentive enough to play bipartisan ball?

Also, and let’s just get this out of the way now…hyper partisanship was started by the right wing shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh back in the 80s, was picked up by Newt Gingrich and Richard Mellon Scaife in the 90s and only until blogging started did Dems fight back in any demonstrable way. That certainly doesn’t excuse the truly moon-battiest of them all, but Republicans authored this playbook and have been using it for decades to flood the media with misinfo to shape the debate and win elections. Long story short, if hyperpartisanship is really creating the mood for Repubs to oppose health care, well, isn’t that a convenient whipping boy.

One last point and then I’m ready to bury this topic and move on since it’s pretty obvious that Jason and simply aren’t going to agree…Moderate Dems like myself do not own the tone and tenor of the debate on the left, nor are we responsible for monitoring it and calling people out. I, and my reasonable blogging friends, started this mid-o-sphere as a place where real debate can happen. That’s our contribution. It’s not sexy and it takes a lot of work, but I think we do a decent job at it. Sure, on occasion I’ll call somebody out on here, as I did with Pelosi earlier this summer, but when I’m arguing policy and intentions (as I’m doing in this health care debate) I don’t think I need to take into account the effect that some bloggers on the left are having on the mindset and motivations of Republican politicians. There will ALWAYS be people yelling on both sides, and, as I mentioned above, that should be incentive for politicians to move towards the middle, not further left or right.

As always, thanks for reading and I welcome your thoughts.

This is a difficult post to write. But some issues, no matter how distasteful, must be faced squarely. Sadly, the numbers speak for themselves. Racism is on the rise in this country.

Why the dramatic rise in racism now? I cannot answer that. Perhaps the problem was here all along and we simply chose not to see it. It was easy to ignore in the months following the election when Obama’s favorability rating was over 70%. In the euphoria of his election, many of us became too complacent about racism. With a 70% favorability rating for the President elect, we were all too willing to overlook the 30% of racist Americans who remained. It was an easy mistake to make, the racists were outnumbered by more than two to one.

Few now remember that November 2008 to January 2009 was the golden age of the new post-racial post-partisan America, ushered in by the election of our new President. Our pundits in the mainstream media helped us to understand and appreciate the deep import of the election, and the possibility of finally turning the page on our racist history.

Maureen Dowd – Nov. 9, 2008:

Joe Klein in Time – Nov 5.2008:

Keith Olbermann – Nov 5, 2008:

Jimmy Carter on Jim Lehrer – August 25, 2008

“But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s a spirit and a bright, new hope for America within this country and around the world. And if Obama is elected, which I think he is going to be, then I think that will be the transforming race for the end of racism, and prejudice, and hatred between races in this country.”

As always, Jimmy Carter was far ahead of the curve, predicting the golden age of a post-racial America months before it came into being.

That was then. This is now. What happened? Perhaps it was just too easy to pretend the problem was not there.

Here are the facts. Racism has been rising steadily over the last few months. In recent polls, President Obama’s approval number has dropped from 70% to 50%. This means the percentage of racists in this country has risen from 30% to 50% – a 67% increase in only eight months! Even more alarming, close to one out of two Americans are now racist. We have reached a tipping point. If this trend continues, the racists will soon be in a majority. Now, more than ever, we need the pundits and sages of the mainstream media to speak out. Racism is so insidious, so deep rooted, that we may not even know whether we are racists, unless or until bloggers and pundits make that determination through psychoanalysis.

Some of those same strong media voices who were sweeping the racism problem under the rug in January, are finally sounding the alarm now that the full scope of the problem has been recognized.

Dowd – Sep 13. 2009:
Representative Wilson shouting from the floor? = Racism

Bravo. How brave, this extraordinary willingness to make specific accusations of racism on the basis of nothing more than the imaginary voices in her head. Of course, it would be even braver if Maureen lived in a country, where, unlike here, she and her paper could be sued for slander. Sadly, some do not appreciate her principled stand against imagined racism. What are we to make of those such as blogger Clifton, who shamelessly asserts: “There is enough real racism in the world as it is; you are not helping anyone by making sh*t up!” Clearly Clifton is a racism denier.

KLEIN on Scarborough – Sep 11. 2009:
Protests in opposition to Obamacare? = Racism

Joe, keep speaking out. The administration is in denial over the real reason for the opposition to their policies. Your clear dispassionate analysis may yet snap them out of their dangerous delusions. What could they be thinking? Could anyone really believe that – a President who signs an earmark stuffed budget that quadruples the deficit, pushes through an almost $1T pork laden stimulus package that does not stimulate, takes over car companies, bails out investment bankers, institutionalizes the Bush/Cheney unitary executive, is pushing massive new energy taxes and wants an additional $1T in new health care entitlements – would raise strong opposition? Nonsense. Who could be opposed to such enlightened policies? The opposition is obviously racist. That is the only rational explanation.

OLBERMANN – Sep 8, 2009 “[video]:
Forced resignation of Van Jones? = Racism

I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to Keith Olbermann for stepping up yet again. The attack on Van Jones was so clearly rooted in racism that one must assume anyone who would suggest otherwise is also a de-facto racist. In this context, it was particularly shocking to me that Willie Brown, Democrat, former Mayor of San Francisco, frequent MSNBC contributor, and a man who worked directly with Van Jones would sadly be revealed to be a racist. From his column Sunday:

Willie Brown – a racist. Who knew?

Jimmy Carter – September 16, 2009
Joe Wilson outburst, Protests, Obamacare opposition? = Racism

NYT – “The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.” He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”

Only Jimmy Carter could speaks with sufficient moral authority to attribute Joe Wilson’s outburst, tea party protesters and health care opposition all to racism. We need that clarity now more than ever. But the more these thought leaders speak out, the more racism deniers come out of the woodwork. As if they would know better than Jimmy Carter what real racism looks like. And again, the administration refuses to face reality.

With the ex-president adding his voice to the media voices speaking out loudly and clearly, perhaps we can beat back the scourge of racism once again. While we may never again return to the golden age of November 2008 to January 2009 when only 30% of the country were racists, perhaps we can at least reverse the trend and insure that the racists remain a minority of the voters in this country. Before it is too late – like – before the next election.

^{Notes on this post: As is often the case with my posts, the idea for this piece emerged from a recent comment thread here at the Donk. A version of this post was cross-posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall where it garnered some interesting comments, and was subsequently linked at The Crossed Pond generating an even longer and more interesting comment thread.}

As I said before, I’m completely and absolutely bewildered at how this even turned into a story.

And, by the way, shame on all of you who needlessly fueled this fire. If you really want to set a good example for your children, how about teaching them to not jump to conclusions. Think that might be a worthwhile lesson for the future?

Here’s the speech in its entirety…
===============

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama

Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia

September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
===============

By the way, Reagan and the elder Bush gave similar speeches. Just in case you didn’t know.

My head is starting to spin. Luckily for me, Conor Clarke can make some sense of it all:

What’s the logical conclusion here? Do we boycott and counter-boycott, until we’ve whittled ourselves down to country of red and blue companies as well as red and blue states? There’s nothing to stop us. Fox is well within its rights to retain the hosting services of Glenn Beck, and Wal-Mart is within its rights to take its advertising dollars elsewhere, and the readership of RedState.org is within its rights to take its paychecks elsewhere, too. And I suppose I can take my eyeballs to some other corner of the Internet. Three cheers for liberalism!

And yet I cannot help but think there is a crucial difference between GEICO’s decision to drop Glenn Beck and RedState’s decision to drop GEICO. The difference is this: Wal-Mart has a good reason to boycott Beck, because Beck actually did something idiotic and indefensible. It simply is not true that Obama is a racist. And what’s this business about “the white culture,” anyway? Tell us a bit more about that, Glenn.

RedState does not have a similarly reasonable claim — or a substantive argument at all — unless they are seriously interested in defending what Beck said on the merits. (Are they? Is anyone? Let’s have that argument, pretty please.) The argument for boycotting the boycotters should be more than “free speech is awesome,” since the right to free speech doesn’t guarantee you the right to massive corporate underwriting.

Links added.

What I know is this: Beck cannot stand on his original statement. This is not a conspiracy of leftists, this is a result of people who are fed up with the inflammatory rhetoric (‘flamoric’?) and partisan hackery from someone who is simply trying to be shocking for shock’s (and rating’s) sake. Advertisers are going to continue to bail until Glenn Beck a) apologizes or b) loses his show (my guess is that it will be the former rather than the latter).

Either way, it’s going to likely be an entertaining ride. Now where did I put my popcorn?

[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

We do requests:

“BTW, is there a reason Donklephant hasn’t covered the violence at various health care forums? Given that fistfights and shouting people down are the ultimate forms of discourse this site seeks to eliminate I thought we’d have a thread by now. For the record my group has been involved in Dingell’s forum. It was pretty clear the anti-Obama folk were there to make sure the forum was ruined, and maybe provoke a fight. Check out the Youtube videos…” – Nick

I’ll try to provide a selection of views from across the political spectrum, but will broaden the topic to a more general primer on the care and feeding of astroturf. First – I am not sure this is the clip Nick was referencing, but expect it is representative:

UPDATE: Nick provided a link in the comments to the specific clip he was referencing. Added:

From the left:
This Kos diarist attended the Dingell Town Hall as a supporter with a “cut to the front of the line” pass, regrets being outnumbered by opponents and concludes they are all insane.

Matt Yglesias explains that the reason irrational opponents outnumber rational supporters at these meetings, is that the rational supporters are waiting to learn what is actually in the bill. Matt is certain that the supporters will outnumber opponents once the bill is out, even though he does not know what will be in the bill.

Boo Man at Booman Tribune thinks it is perfectly fine for protesters to exercise their first amendment rights, unless, of course, they don’t understand what they are protesting. So I guess protesters need to be given a competence test first… or something.

From the administration:
The administration and Democratic leadership weigh in to explain exactly what the opposition is all about.

Robert Gibbs disses the “Brooks Brother Brigade” and calls the opposition “manufactured anger” all paid for by the official administration designated demon of the day (cue scary music) The Insurance Companies.

Barbara Boxer picks up on the sartorial theme, explaining that you can tell the protesters are fake, because – well- they are too well dressed.

Harry Reid waves a piece of astroturf as a prop to dismiss opposition “as phony as this grass.”

Nancy Pelosi agrees that it is all phony astroturf and throws in a few nazi references to boot.

Finally, the DNC runs an ad to make sure everyone knows that the opposition to the President’s healthcare plan are just an ugly angry mob that storms out on to the streets at the beck and call of the RNC- or something.

Not from the left:
Now, I think this kind of partisan political posturing (like astroturfing) is par for the course, pretty much the same old tried and true game of demonizing opposition to rally your team and get your bill passed. Not exactly “hope and change”, more like “same ol’ stuff”, but it doesn’t bother me. It can create problems though – if you don’t finesse it just right.

One problem is when Democrats start believing their own BS. Then you get situations like this – where a Democratic Representative at a town hall meeting calls out one of the “manufactured”, “astroturf”, “hijacker”, “mob” participants that is disrupting the meeting…

Another possible problem is when union members and other Obama supporters (not astroturf – genuine grassroots) spontaneously begin showing up in numbers at Town Hall meetings and take White House rhetoric from political strategists David Axelrod and Jim Messina to “punch back twice as hard” a little too literally.

Not all Democrats are buying into the Axelrod strategy. Claire McCaskill was quick to distance herself from the White House with this tweet:

“I disagree that the people showing concern over some healthcare proposals are “manufactured” Real folks, strong opinions.”

Not sure what she is thinking. Why wouldn’t she want to get on board insulting and belittling her constituents?

The Audacity of Axelrod
This is where it gets almost surreal. We have the administration and leading Democrats throwing the “astroturf” pejorative at Republicans and (cue scary music)The Insurance Companies and yet – the guy who practically invented the term “astroturfing” …The guy who is known as “The Astroturf King”… is none other than Obama’s right hand man and political adviser – David Axelrod.

Recall that prior to the campaign Axelrod was a founding partner in two firms co-located in the same office. One, the political consulting firm hired by the Obama campaign, and the other ASK Public Strategies – the gold standard in astroturf consulting firms (Axelrod is the A in ASK).

The MSM mostly gave him a pass during the campaign as he claimed he was on leave from ASK (while working in the same office for the co-located political consulting firm) and said he had no intention of being part of the administration. I highlighted this relationship during the campaign, when I though it a little too cozy that ATT was a big client of ASK, and Senator Obama conveniently flip-flopped on Telecom Immunity. But nobody really cared about that, so let’s move on.

How about an update now that the Astroturf King is Obama’s right hand man in the White House and his bio has disappeared from ASK’s website?

Per the Sun-Times, when he accepted the position with the administration in January, he “sold” his stake for $3M to be paid out out over 5 years. It was also disclosed that he received a partnership check of $151,914 from ASK in 2008. That was in 2008, when he was on “leave” from ASK. I guess it was a paid leave. So in 2008, ATT money went to ASK and ASK money went to Axelrod. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Let’s walk through this buyout again. ASK Public strategies is a going concern, and will continue to have funds flow from their corporate “astroturf” clients into their coffers. Then money from the ASK coffers will flow into “Astroturf King” David Axelrod’s pockets to compensate him for the buyout over the next five years, -coincidentally- exactly enough time to get past Obama’s first term and election campaign. Of course, by then, he may get tired of politics, and ASK may want sell his share of the partnership right back to him. Who knows? It could happen.

Audacious.

UPDATED 08/10/09: Added video, fixed typos and links
Cross-posted at “Divided We Stand United We Fall“