It's likely that the next president will face at least one Supreme Court vacancy. Obama should promise Hillary Clinton, now, that if he wins in November, the vacancy will be hers, making her first on a list of one.How could Hillary Clinton possibly be considered an appropriate Supreme Court nominee?
Obama could ... appreciate Clinton's undeniably keen mind. Even Clinton detractors have noted her remarkable mental skills; she would be equal to any legal or intellectual challenge she would face as a justice. The fact that she hasn't served on a bench before would be inconsequential, considering her experience in law and in government.Now, why did WaPo publish this? Miller was a special assistant to Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. and he has a book about the Senate, but he sounds like a complete fool here. His notion that Hillary Clinton belongs on the Supreme Court is just: Everybody seems to think she's pretty smart. And it doesn't even matter that she has no judicial experience and has never done anything to indicate that she is any sort of a legal scholar or has anything like a judicial temperament.
If Obama were to promise Clinton the first court vacancy, her supporters would actually have a stronger incentive to support him for president than they would if she were going to be vice president.No, they wouldn't! They'd think that Obama shouldn't be trusted with the responsibility of appointing federal judges.
Instead of subjecting herself to a long wait and another possible defeat, [Hillary] could don one of those roomy black robes, make a potentially ineradicable impact on the course of the republic -- and never again have to worry about being liked."Roomy black robes" — is he calling her fat?
Senate confirmation would be all but certain, even putting aside the gains that Democrats are likely to make in November.Why not just beg people to vote for McCain? The Senate is going to rubber-stamp whatever unqualified, politicized judicial nominations a President Obama would send its way? Well, then, we must have the opposite party in the White House!
President Obama would engender praise (at least from Democrats) at the prospect of Hillary going toe to toe with Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. Clinton's gumption and determination might make her one of the most powerful forces ever on the court, particularly when it comes to swaying other justices when the court is closely divided.Miller thrills at the prospect of law as a raw political battle. Democrats who respect the rule of law and want rights to be taken seriously should not cheer at that spectacle. And conservatives will once again get strong traction arguing — as McCain did the other day — that their judges are the ones who are faithfully subservient to the law. I know liberals don't believe that, but they must present themselves as wanting judges who bring legitimate interpretative skill and diligence to their task and operate independently from politics. Or all is lost.
Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s Dreams from My Father: “Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”I don't remember seeing that Chicago Tribune story. Malkin's piece — in the National Review — doesn't link to anything, but here's the article. I read "Dreams from My Father" and took it to be a truthful story. Obama makes seeing those pictures in Life magazine a pivotal event in his life:
He is 9 years old, living in Indonesia, where he and his mother moved with her new husband, Lolo Soetoro, a few years earlier. One day while visiting his mother, who was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Obama passed time by looking through several issues of Life magazine. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack."Uh oh. I'm quoting way too much. And there's much, much more really interesting stuff — really humanizing stuff. Much better material than you'll find in "Dreams from My Father." Thanks to Michelle Malkin for prompting me to pull this thing out of the archive! For whatever reasons, Obama wrote a book framing his life story as a story about the search for racial identity. I think it was probably what the publishers wanted from him, and it may have also seemed like a good way to build his career. He's much more lovable in the Chicago Tribune version — even if it does call him out on the Life magazine story.
The article included photos of a black man who had destroyed his skin with powerful chemical lighteners that promised to make him white. Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled.
"I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," Obama wrote of the magazine photos in "Dreams."
Yet no such Life issue exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, "It might have been an Ebony or it might have been ... who knows what it was?" (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)
In fact, it is surprising, based on interviews with more than two dozen people who knew Obama during his nearly four years in Indonesia, that it would take a photograph in a magazine to make him conscious of the fact that some people might treat him differently in part because of the color of his skin.
Obama, who has talked and written so much about struggling to find a sense of belonging due to his mixed race, brushes over this time of his life in "Dreams." He describes making friends easily, becoming fluent in Indonesian in just six months and melding quite easily into the very foreign fabric of Jakarta.
The reality was less tidy....
Former playmates remember Obama as "Barry Soetoro," or simply "Barry," a chubby little boy very different from the gangly Obama people know today. All say he was teased more than any other kid in the neighborhood--primarily because he was bigger and had black features.
He was the only foreign child in the neighborhood. He also was one of the only neighborhood children whose parents enrolled him in a new Catholic school in an area populated almost entirely by Betawis, the old tribal landowning Jakarta natives who were very traditional Muslims. Some of the Betawi children threw rocks at the open Catholic classrooms, remembered Cecilia Sugini Hananto, who taught Obama in 2nd grade.
Teachers, former playmates and friends recall a boy who never fully grasped their language and who was very quiet as a result. But one word Obama learned quickly in his new home was curang, which means "cheater."
When kids teased him, Obama yelled back, "Curang, curang!" When a friend gave him shrimp paste instead of chocolate, he yelled, "Curang, curang!"
Zulfan Adi was one of the neighborhood kids who teased Obama most mercilessly. He remembers one day when young Obama, a hopelessly upbeat boy who seemed oblivious to the fact that the older kids didn't want him tagging along, followed a group of Adi's friends to a nearby swamp.
"They held his hands and feet and said, `One, two, three,' and threw him in the swamp," recalled Adi, who still lives in the same house where he grew up. "Luckily he could swim. They only did it to Barry."
The other kids would scrap with him sometimes, but because Obama was bigger and better-fed than many of them, he was hard to defeat.
"He was built like a bull. So we'd get three kids together to fight him," recalled Yunaldi Askiar, 45, a former neighborhood friend. "But it was only playing."
Obama has claimed on numerous occasions to have become fluent in Indonesian in six months. Yet those who knew him disputed that during recent interviews.
Israella Pareira Darmawan, Obama's 1st-grade teacher, said she attempted to help him learn the Indonesian language by going over pronunciation and vowel sounds. He struggled greatly with the foreign language, she said, and with his studies as a result.
The teacher, who still lives in Obama's old neighborhood, remembers that he always sat in the back corner of her classroom. "His friends called him 'Negro,'" Darmawan said. The term wasn't considered a slur at the time in Indonesia.
Still, all of his teachers at the Catholic school recognized leadership qualities in him. "He would be very helpful with friends. He'd pick them up if they fell down,'' Darmawan recalled. "He would protect the smaller ones."
Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. In an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Obama "wrote he wanted to be president," Sinaga recalled. "He didn't say what country he wanted to be president of. But he wanted to make everybody happy."
When Obama was in 4th grade, the Soetoro family moved. Their new neighborhood was only 3 miles to the west, but a world away. Elite Dutch colonists once lived there; the Japanese moved in during their occupation of Indonesia in World War II. In the early 1970s, diplomats and Indonesian businessmen lived there in fancy gated houses with wide paved roads and sculpted bushes.
Obama never became terribly close with the children of the new school--this time a predominantly Muslim one--where he was enrolled. As he had at the old school, Obama sat in a back corner. He sketched decidedly American cartoon characters during class.
"He liked drawing Spider-Man and Batman," said another friend, Widiyanto Hendro Cahyono, 46. "Barry liked to draw heroes."
“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”In my personal experience, it seems — if I'm remembering properly! — that the way the brain works changes over time.
For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.Isn't the whole point of reading to get to something that makes you stop and think (or write)? I mean, that's the way I read. It really slows me down like mad.
When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.I smell patronizing self-esteem boosting in "they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers." But it's good to know that there are different kinds of minds, different approaches to learning and thinking (and writing), and that we can respect these differences (and not fear them as they loom in the future).
“For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”
In a 2003 study at Harvard, Dr. Carson and other researchers tested students’ ability to tune out irrelevant information when exposed to a barrage of stimuli. The more creative the students were thought to be, determined by a questionnaire on past achievements, the more trouble they had ignoring the unwanted data. A reduced ability to filter and set priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute to original thinking.Oh, the harsh winter killed 3/4 of one my red bud trees — which are nevertheless quite prettily blooming right now as I look out the window and think about my brain and poor Teddy Kennedy's brain — riddled, we now know, with cancer.
The U.S. acknowledges the design hinders blind people but it argued that blind people have adapted. Some relied on store clerks to help them, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish between bills.This might be a good time to get rid of $1 bills and force everyone to use all those $1 coins we've been resisting for years. Wouldn't that save taxpayers a lot of money?
The court ruled 2-1 that such adaptations were insufficient. The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible, the court said.
Courts can't decide how to design the currency, since that's up to the Treasury Department. But the ruling forces the department to address what the court called a discriminatory problem.
[The American Council for the Blind president Mitch] Pomerantz says it could take years to change the look of money and until then, he expects that similar-looking money will continue to get printed and spent. But since blindness becomes more common with age, people in the 30s and 40s should know that, when they get older, "they will be able to identify their $1 bills from their fives, tens and twenties," he said.
While the government has been fighting to overturn the lower court ruling, it has been taking some steps toward modifying U.S. currency for the visually impaired.Oh, that's why we got the purple 5? I was wondering. It's so garish — and ungreen — but I guess that's the point.
The most recent currency redesign of the $5 bill introduced in March features a giant "5" printed in purple on one side of the bill to help those with vision problems distinguish the bill.
Chilled soups were a tough sell for Patrick (as they seem to be for many men).Jac doesn't like the gendered approach to food. Why not eat (and do) what you like and not worry about it?
"Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president," the Obama campaign stated oh-so-carefully in response to this week's California Supreme Court decision striking down the state's ban on gay marriage. "He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage."The state court likened the policy Obama promotes to "separate but equal" racial segregation:
"[Affording] access to [marriage] exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation [domestic partnership], realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples," the court wrote. Those challenging the law "persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state's creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School."Wittes, who supports gay marriage, criticizes the court for accepting the analogy offered by the litigants:
Somehow, we've confused progress on marriage equality with some of the most opprobrious episodes of our legal, cultural, and moral history. For having the guts to move forward while other states were passing nasty constitutional amendments depriving gays of any marital benefits, Californians stand condemned in their own courts for discrimination and in their own newspapers for bigotry.It's very common to say that judges are "confused," but I don't see the confusion. The California Court continued (PDF) in the paragraph Wittes quotes:
Few people, of course, really believe this. When we listen to Obama touting civil unions, we hear the progress that he urges, not some appeal to segregation. But it can't be progress when Obama suggests civil unions, and also progress when a court strikes them down as unconstitutionally discriminatory.
As plaintiffs maintain, [the Texas Law School case demonstrates] that even when the state grants ostensibly equal benefits to a previously excluded class through the creation of a new institution, the intangible symbolic differences that remain often are constitutionally significant.Obviously, the court knows that the state was trying to move toward equality here, and I don't hear it insulting the politicians who want to move only incrementally. It is saying that there is constitutional significance to the symbolism of creating a separate institution. It seems to me that the court was reasoning in a principled, doctrinal fashion and not leavening its decisionmaking with sensitivity toward political realities.
David Cook:This is a complicated problem. I'm putting to the side my actual musical preference for Cook. I'm thinking about which contestant will be better off winning. Now, I think the producers want David Cook to win, because: 1. He's like Chris Daughtrey, who lost in Season 5 but has sold way more music than last season's winner, and 2. They hate Archuleta's very stage-daddy dad. But Daughtrey probably did better by losing, since it's hard enough to seem like a rocker when you've got an association with "American Idol," so Cook benefits by losing. But maybe losing is an even greater benefit for Archuleta. He needs to grow up, mature, get beyond his twerpy teeniboppitude. Nah. Let the little kid win.
David Archuleta:
- He's okay with it if the prize goes to someone else - which makes voters feel less manipulated.
- A sense of neediness - if not outright desperation - is a key draw in contests like this to begin with.
- Plus: From the petrified look on his face at every single elimination round you can tell Archuleta clearly wants it more than Cook. In fact, he wants it more than anyone in "Idol" history.
- Minus: It's scary how much this kid wants it, even scarier if you speculate on what could be the real reason. You get the idea if David A. doesn't get it, that overbearing dad of his will never let him hear the end of it.
[Producer Nigel] Lythgoe also hinted at some kind of duet videos that will air during the finale that may include a top pop star using technology to perform alongside a dead legend.No, what I want te see is a dead legend performing with the contestants. Since the female contestants are all gone, bring in the femininity with reanimated divas! I want to see Janis Joplin sing "Piece of My Heart" with David Cook and, for David Archuleta, Judy Garland and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
The show pulled off a similar stunt last year by superimposing Elvis Presley's face onto an Elvis lookalike who sang along with Celine Dion.
Today's Obama Gaffe to Ignore: No point covering this, Mr. Halperin, sir. Move right along. Obama's our nominee. We're stuck with him. Here he explains his impending loss in Kentucky:Is this too hard on Obama? Maybe so, but he needs to avoid saying things that resonate with his disastrous "bitter Americans" comment."What it says is that I'm not very well known in that part of the country," Obama said. "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle." [E.A.]Cling Alert! ... As emailer "S" notes: 1) "Last time I checked, Illinois was more 'nearby' Kentucky than Arkansas. Heck, they even touch." 2) "[I]sn't there something a tad condescending in his reference to "some of those states in the middle"? ...
Personally, I'd love to have a queer in the Oval Office, but this is about deriding the personality of politicians because they don't fit the mold for heterosexual masculinity, which, besides holding back good policy, also helps relegate homosexuality, non-traditional masculinity, gender non-conformity, femininity, fabulousness, and women to second-class status.
“Women felt this was their time, and this has been stolen from them,” said Marilu Sochor, 48, a real estate agent in Columbus, Ohio, and a Clinton supporter. “Sexism has played a really big role in the race.”I'm with Goodwin on this one. Clinton used the woman thing to manipulate us whenever she could, and her campaign simply failed, as most campaigns fail.
Not everyone agrees. “When people look at the arc of the campaign, it will be seen that being a woman, in the end, was not a detriment and if anything it was a help to her,” the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said in an interview. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is faltering, she added, because of “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman.”
As a former first lady whose political career evolved from her husband’s, Mrs. Clinton was always an imperfect test case for female achievement. “Somebody’s wife,” as Elaine Kamarck, a professor of government at Harvard and a Clinton supporter, described her."Somebody." Indeed.
Mrs. Clinton’s supporters point to a nagging series of slights: the fixation on her clothes, even her cleavage; chronic criticism that her voice is shrill; calls for her to exit the race; and most of all, the male commentators in the news media who, they argue, were consistently tougher on her than on Mr. Obama.It's not that they were tough on her, but that they were easy on him.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, many women say with regret, did not inspire a deep or nuanced conversation between men and women, only familiar gender-war battles consisting of male gibes and her supporters’ angry responses. Mr. Obama, who sought to minimize the role of race in his candidacy, led something of a national dialogue about it, but Mrs. Clinton, who made womanhood an explicit part of her run, seemed unwilling or unable to talk candidly about gender.Interesting, but Obama did not set out to lead that dialogue. He was dragged into it. Face it, Obama has the more agile, able mind. He presented himself as transcending race — something he could see many Americans want to do — and when he had to deal with it — he spoke in broad, inclusive terms. Clinton promoted herself from the start as deserving special support because of her sex, and then when things didn't go her way, she and her surrogates were quick to attribute her problems to sex and to whine and blame about sexism.
"With each passing day, it seems a little less likely that the next president of the United States will wear a skirt..."
My hopes in this regard were dashed once Rudy dropped out.
The article recounts the opinion of the Temps, the French newspaper read by "financiers, manufacturers and the liberal professions":The second post also quotes the French press, this time taking a swipe at the U.S. President:"None among us has forgotten the apostolate of Chancellor Hitler, who, even before becoming the master of Germany, quickened the strength of his country by awakening in the minds of his compatriots the ancient and noble — and also grim — notion of national honor. It seems impossible that this ardent apostle should not admit that a foreign people, even vanquished — especially if vanquished — may also feel itself bound by honor. In point of fact we know that he admits it. Since her defeat France has received his salute both as soldier and as political leader. And we were even told that in order to rebuild a well-balanced Europe France would naturally be called upon for her share of intelligence and effort."
Vanquishment is rough. It makes you say the most godawful stupid things.
"France is not a dominion of the United States."The third post is about an American religious leader attacking Americans.
That's the attitude of the French press today:"As far as Mr. Roosevelt's decisions are concerned one must ask by what right on on the basis of what treaties he is interfering," said the Matin.
"France did not fall in this war in behalf of Roosevelt or Churchill but for France," added L'Oeuvre.
It is not an outside enemy that will destroy America, but our own "materialism, paganism, lust, sin and selfishness."I'm working out the rules for this project. Am I allowed to know the future? I've decided I'm not going to reveal things about the future — I have to be in the assigned year — but I'm going to use what I know to make my comments more interesting or funny or sad.
So says the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. No matter how big our armies and how powerful our weapons, he says, "The enemy will get into the hearts of a wicked and disolute people." We need religion, in his view. "One individual, completely surrendered to God, is of more value than an army.""London is almost reduced to ruins now. But if peace is made now and we go on for the next twenty-five years as we have lived for the last, it will be pulverized to dust by the war of 1960."
I must confess that I cannot understand this Peale character. What have we done in the last quarter century that's all that terrible? Look at what is going on in the world right now. Can't he be clear and say that is wrong and we need to fight? Instead he picks on us for the ordinary human character flaws we might have. Maybe he is saying that we need to be strong so we'll be able to fight. But he just can't help making that into an occasion for insisting that we be more religious. Eh. It's a sermon. What can you expect? I'll tell you what: a little more optimism. I don't need to hear about getting pulverized to dust in some war 19 years from now. You know, there's something to be said for positive thinking.
[M]uch of the nation has no real recycling network for CFLs, despite the ubiquitous PR campaigns, rebates and giveaways encouraging people to adopt the swirly darlings of the energy-conscious movement. Recyclers and others guess that only a small fraction of CFLs sold in the United States are recycled, while the rest are put out with household trash or otherwise discarded....
Compact fluorescent bulbs each contain roughly 5 milligrams of mercury, which health professionals say is tiny in relation to the amount in a glass thermometer. Using that estimate, almost 2 tons of mercury were in the 380 million sold last year....
Kim N. Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati, said the bigger concern is the hazard that would result if the mercury from millions of bulbs escapes into the air and waterways before working up the food chain.
"I'm just amazed that the government is not paying more attention to this," Dietrich said.
States that strongly favor Obama ("strongly" in the context of close states, that is): Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington. That's 43 electoral votes. Add that to the safe blue 157 votes in 11 states and D.C. and Obama is at 200.Much more at the link. I'd like to see a second article by Maslin applying the same analysis with Hillary as the Democratic candidate.
States that slightly favor Obama: Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Another 55 votes. He's now at 255
States that strongly favor McCain: Florida, North Carolina. Their 42 electoral votes are probably going to the Republicans.
States that slightly favor McCain: Colorado, 9 votes; Missouri, 11 votes; and Virginia, 13 votes. Obama's chances are better here.
Pure toss-ups: Nevada, 5 votes; New Hampshire, 4 votes; New Mexico, 5 votes; and Ohio, 20 votes.
Clearly, and I'm being cautious, I think it's going to be a close race. If Obama wins the 255 votes in the states where he's favored, then to get to 270 he needs to choose from the following menu: 1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N's (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N's and either Colorado or Virginia.
“Who would dare to run?” said Karen O’Connor, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. “The media is set up against you, and if you have the money problem to begin with, why would anyone put their families through this, why would anyone put themselves through this?”Oh, good lord, is this really the way it is? I think people were open to the idea of a woman President, but Hillary Clinton did not suit us. We don't want someone else like her. We want someone different. For starters, how about a woman who did not build her political career through her husband?
For this reason, she said, she doesn’t expect a serious contender anytime soon. “I think it’s going to be generations.”
Others say Mrs. Clinton had such an unusual combination of experience and name recognition that she might actually raise the bar for women.
In fact, the biggest point of agreement seemed to be that there is no Hillary waiting in the wings.
Except, of course, Hillary.
At least one study has suggested that obese children might also tend toward lower IQs and be more likely to have brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients.Is that useful?
Sorry, I don't think "Radar Love" on the radio can count as propitious. That's a song about somebody who isn't driving just to drive; he's driving because there is somewhere that he definitely has to be.That's a pretty subtle point about the close interpretation of the lyrics. If it's a song about driving and you're driving and the music feels great for driving, does the stress on reaching the destination make it not a great driving song? Of course, there are some great songs about driving that don't stress the destination. I'm thinking of all the songs that rave about the car itself — like "Little GTO" and "409"— or the songs that are using driving as a metaphor for sex — like "Little Red Corvette" and "Mustang Sally." But stressing the destination creates an urgency about the forward motion that makes the song great for driving even when you are driving just to drive. Don't you love to drive to "Six Days on the Road"?
"I had it over my shorts and stuff," [Derek Jeter] said. "I was 0-for-32 and I hit a homer on the first pitch. That's the only time I've ever worn it."Uncomfortable... because it's a thong or because you know it's gold lamé thong with a "flame-line" (whatever that is)?
Johnny Damon also admitted donning the golden panties "probably three times."...
What is the secret of Giambi's golden thong?
"You're not worrying about your hands or your balance at the plate," Damon said. "You're worried about the uncomfortable feeling you're receiving."
Catcher Jorge Posada [said] that "a lot of players have worn it," but he didn't name names. Asked if the thong got washed between wearings, he gave a cringe-worthy answer. "Ask Jason," said Posada. "Jason is a little strange."If the point is to make you uncomfortable, you shouldn't wash it.
Apple's new touchpadMeanwhile, The West Virginia Rebel, noticing me, takes up the practice of history blogging, looking a whole year and plucking a very juicy year: 1918.
Bill Clinton's new Supreme Court nominee Stephen G. Breyer
If there is one word the picture seems to be aggressively striving to evoke, it would be "relaxed." McCain's studied repose is in direct contrast to the image she projects in campaign photographs in which she is pressed, polished and so stiffly poised that she often looks like a wax replica of a political spouse. There's nothing especially natural or nonchalant about her Vogue portrait. One can almost see the fingerprints of the assistant who adjusted her hands just so and one wonders how long she had to hold her head at what looks to be an uncomfortable angle. But the implied message is unmistakable: I am not a Stepford wife.It's just more Stepfordish — isn't it? — to annihilate traces of Stepfordishness.
[Michelle] Obama's photos seemed crafted specifically to help the viewer imagine her in the role of first lady. She is a study in little black dresses, conservative pearls, preppy hair and restraint. Again, the implied message is unmistakable: I am neither subversive nor threatening. I am not some scary "other." I am Camelot with a tan.Camelot with a tan.
"I consider myself a good friend of every one of my colleagues, both past and present. Some more than others. My best friend on the Court is and has been for many years, Ruth Ginsburg. Her basic approach is not mine, but she’s a lovely person and a good loyal friend."Does he have no good friends off the Court?
Scientists do not quite know what to call them, they are so new. But folks in the damp coastal belt south of Houston have their own names (some of them printable) for the little invaders...Yeah, don't let some exterminator stick his name on these important ants — even if he does have a cool name. Speaking of having a name that's good for an ant, there's Paul Nester of Texas A&M University.
“We call them running ants,” said Diane Yeo, a homeowner...
The species, which bites but does not sting, was first identified here in 2002 by a Pearland exterminator, Tom Rasberry, who quickly lent his name to the find: the crazy rasberry ant.
“They’re the ant of all ants,” said Dr. Nester, who said they had infested five coastal counties, “and are moving about half a mile a year.”Oh, no! There the new killer bees — advancing on us!
Even if Mr. McCain does not wield [the issue] as part of his fall campaign — and his political associates said he almost certainly would not — history suggests that independent conservative advocacy groups would seize on the ruling to try to define Mr. Obama and his party [and Mrs. Clinton!?] as culturally out-of-step....Would McCain do that?
[T]here are differences of nuance in how the Democratic and Republican candidates talk about the issue that could have resonance with socially conservative voters. For example, Mr. Obama’s campaign explicitly said that he “has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions.”
In California, Mr. Brown is leading an effort to force a voter initiative that would overturn the court decision. If Mr. McCain decides to back such an initiative, it could provide a point of contrast that conservatives could use to hurt Mr. Obama.
And an initiative could bring out more conservative voters at a time when Mr. McCain’s advisers see a small hope of putting California in play.That would be big, but I can't picture McCain making that move. As Nagourney points out, that would set him against Governor Schwarzenegger.
I disliked Obama almost instantly. I never believed the central premises of his autobiography or his campaign. He is fueled by precisely the same brand of personal ambition as Bill Clinton.And he's pretty irked by the way white people like Obama:
So much of the educated white people's love for Barack depends on educated white people's complete ignorance of and distance from the rest of us. Barack is the black person they want the rest of us to be — half-white and loving, or "racially transcendent," as the press loves to call him.Well, that rings true, but is it really so terrible? Why doesn't it bother the 90% of black who do support Obama? I'm sure they notice, and I'm guessing they think we're a little pathetic, but decent enough and reasonably tolerable.
People always talk about me as this right-wing writer. And to them I say, "What's my agenda? What is political about I am Charlotte Simmons? What's political about A Man In Full, what's political about The Right Stuff or The Bonfire of the Vanities, or The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test?"Oh, Tom, don't you realize — of course you do — that denying such things are political is itself right wing?
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