Fred Kaplan asks a question that really does need more attention: “Are there any Republican grown-ups out there, and, if there are, will they ever start coming to the aid of their party?”
Category: Politics Page 8 of 73
I always thought that the teleprompter thing was a little silly – politics is often performance, and prompts are always part of performance. But, like so much else from the right, I ignored it. Now? Seriously, I don’t ever want to hear another joke about Obama needing a teleprompter.
Because if things like this are any indication, the answer appears to be yes:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5A2ahIn05M[/youtube]
Josh Marshall calls out Sen. Richard Shelby for what he is:
Worse than a squeegee man and not much better than a bank robber, Shelby is shutting down the president’s ability to appoint anyone to anything until he gets his way.
Will this be the impetus for the Senate finally admitting it’s been rendered almost completely ineffective by its own rules and outdated traditions? I’m not optimistic, but I’m still hoping . . .
in American electoral politics. Just different spending priorities:
Last week, McDonnell signed a letter asking for $350 million from the federal government to support charter schools.
While this was made last October, I just saw it for the first time at Wednesday’s World’s Fair Use Day confab. An excellent illustration of the power of using popular culture as a political critique. Check it out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oGPbbUT26c[/youtube]
Matt Tabbai’s occasionally overwrought channeling of Hunter S. Thompson can sometimes obscure the quality of his reporting, but mostly, he’s just dead on:
For what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.
Nicely said, no? Next paragraph gets better:
That is a terrible story and it is also sort of a taboo story, since we don’t really have a system of media now that is willing or even able to digest that dark and complicated truth. Instead, our media — which has always been at best an inadvertent accomplice to these messes — is basically set up to take every revelation about the underlying truth and split it down the middle, feeding half to one side of the political spectrum and one half to the other, where the actual point is then burned up in the useless smoke of a blame game.
I’d just step back and admire that last sentence if, you know, it weren’t so painfully true.
Calling Obama on his promise push Congress to be transparent:
The C-SPAN television network is calling on congressional leaders to open health care talks to cameras — something President Barack Obama promised as a candidate.
Instead the most critical negotiations on Obama’s health plan have taken place behind closed doors, as Republicans repeatedly point out. In a Dec. 30 letter to House and Senate leaders released Tuesday, C-SPAN chief executive Brian Lamb asked for negotiations on a compromise bill to be opened up for public viewing, as Democrats work to reconcile differences between legislation passed by the two chambers.
It is going to happen? No. Should it? Absolutely. I’d rather see the ugly truths – that really aren’t going anywhere – in the open. I’m probably in the minority, though.
Frank Luntz has an obvious talent, but it’s so often been used to such appalling ends (“death tax”, “government run healthcare”, etc.) that I don’t often look twice when I see his name.  However, he’s a gun-for-hire at heart, and he has occasionally crossed into unfamiliar territory to produce something interesting. Looks like he’s recently done that, on the subject of guns:
Mr. Luntz queried 832 gun owners, including 401 card-carrying N.R.A. members, in a survey commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the alliance of hundreds of executives seeking stronger gun laws. In flat rebuttal of N.R.A. propaganda, the findings showed that 69 percent of N.R.A. members supported closing the notorious gun-show loophole that invites laissez-faire arms dealing outside registration requirements.
Even more members, 82 percent, favored banning gun purchases to suspects on terrorist watch lists who are now free to arm. And 69 percent disagreed with Congressionally imposed rules against sharing federal gun-trace information with state and local police agencies.
I don’t think that’s dispositive of anything, but it sure is interesting. I think the continuing public conversation over gun ownership and what it means would be well served by less insane NRA fearmongering and more intelligent engagement of the issue.
Received this from an Open Government list I’m on, and think that it’s well worth sharing. Try it here, after you read the original accompanying email:
In preparation for Redistricting 2011, the company I work for, Avencia, started building a web-based redistricting tool for collaborative/ community-based redistricting projects: http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/search.aspx and
http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/draw.aspxType your address –> get a shape of your legislative district(s) and get a compactness score (less compact is **sometimes** a sign of gerrymandering — some exceptions apply for geographic irregularities.
For instance:
shoreline, mountain range, rivers, etc.) + (first phase of) draw your own district.Our hope is that a tool like this could be developed into a more complete toolkit used by political advocacy organizations to let citizens or groups of people fully participate in the redistricting
process by enabling the sharing, publishing, and voting of sample redistricting plans through
the Internet/ Twitter or other outlets. Ultimately, these plans might be used to influence final decisions. Screen shots of  a full blown redistricting toolkit: http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/services.aspxWe know there are some pretty important players in the redistricting world (especially software wise). There are also some great free initiatives like Dave’s Redistricting App:
http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.htmlSo I’d love to hear your feedback not only about our idea, but also about what features an ideal community-based “redistricting tool” might provide users (i.e., if you had a dream app what would it be?)
This is going to be consuming a lot of state legislature time soon – best start getting prepared for it.