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David Harsanyi is enjoying democracy these days.
There is still a slim chance that this summer’s debt ceiling debate won’t end with demagoguery’s winning the day. That’s an unusual development, yes, and something to be thankful for, however fleeting the interruption.
After all, whenever politicians moan and groan about how Washington isn’t “working,” or, as the president likes to say, whenever his agenda crashes against democracy, that the system is “broken,” well, it’s probably not. …
… Recently, Obama joked with a La Raza crowd, “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform.” He was joking, but when many of the crowd cheered heartily and chanted “Yes, you can,” we learned a little about expectations on the left. No doubt, Obama would like things to go a lot more smoothly. But without two houses of Congress jumping off the ideological deep end with him, Washington is working a lot better than it used to. That’s bad news for Obama.
Jennifer Rubin spots a White House attempt to look relevant.
Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, looks at the 2012 race.
…For some time, the conventional wisdom has been that 2012 will be a close presidential contest, with a best-case scenario for Republicans of winning the race with a map similar to George W. Bush’s 2004 victory over Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
But if the president can’t turn things around, that logic could prove badly outdated. If Obama is struggling in the Democratic-friendly confines of Michigan and Pennsylvania (as recent polls have indicated), it’s hard to see him over-performing again in more-traditional battlegrounds such as Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia.
Unless the environment changes significantly, all the money in the president’s reelection coffers won’t be able to expand the map; it can only defend territory that’s being lost. And just as House Democrats played defense to protect the growing number of vulnerable members in last year’s midterms, Obama is looking like he’ll be scrambling to hold onto a lot of the states that he thought would be part of an emerging Democratic majority.
Jonah Goldberg describes the leadership we have.
… Imagine you’re in a burning office building. Obama’s plan for getting out alive: “Okay, you guys break up into different groups and come up with a series of proposals about how we get out of the building. I will then negotiate with each of you separately and then together, and then separately. Then I’ll get on Skype and tell the world what I think of your respective plans and criticize you for their lack of seriousness. I will insist that we have balanced approach of applying both water to the fire and opening the windows, which some say will only provide more oxygen for the flames. But my base says window-opening is essential. Oh and I will blame all of the gasoline I threw around on the lower floors of this building on the guy who moved out two years ago. And I will veto any plan that requires we have a new plan should we get stuck on another floor. And, did I mention this mess was created by the former tenant and….ahhh what’s that smell?
Political reporters from around the country get a primer on Rick Perry from a columnist at Texas Monthly.
Here we go again. As you know, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, is contemplating a presidential run, which means that any day now, your boss will be sending you down here to take the measure of the man. Though he managed to avoid the 2012 spotlight longer than any other candidate, Perry, the nation’s longest-serving governor, has lately become, in the words of a recent NPR report, “the eight-hundred-pound gorilla on the sidelines of this race.” The trickle of stories about him has become a stream, and the minute Perry declares his candidacy, that stream will become a flood, a flood that will carry you straight to Austin. I am writing you this note in the hope that it will help you avoid the political and sociological clichés that Texas is subjected to every time one of our politicians seeks the national stage.
It’s an experience we’re all too familiar with. A Texan has occupied the White House in 17 of the past 48 years—just over a third of the time. Texas has become an incubator for presidents, as Virginia and Ohio were in America’s distant past. I’ll grant you that the presidents we have sent to Washington, from LBJ to ?George W. Bush, have not always served as the best advertisements for Texas. Nevertheless, we have endured a disproportionate amount of bad writing about our state from journalists who don’t know very much about the place, and I for one can’t bear to suffer through another campaign of it.
So please, heed this advice. Rick Perry, as you have no doubt already discovered, is not the easiest man to write about. He is secretive and leery of the media (sometimes to the point of hostility), and he has a strategically valuable knack for being underestimated by his critics. I have been writing about him since the eighties, when he began his career in the Texas Legislature. Along the way I have learned a few things, which I have arranged in this handy list of Eight Points to Keep in Mind When Writing About Rick Perry. …
The administration can save us from the latest job killer from the EPA. WSJ with the details.
President Obama won praise from businesses in January when he promised to bring “reason and balance” to a “21st-century regulatory system.” Yet now, fewer than six months later, his administration is preparing to issue the single most expensive environmental regulation in U.S. history, a job-killing rule it is under no obligation to impose on the struggling economy.
There’s nothing reasonable or balanced about the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to tighten national air-quality standards for ozone emissions at this time. For one thing, it’s premature, coming a full two years before the EPA is scheduled to complete its own scientific study of ozone emissions in 2013. …
The New Editor with hypocrisy alert.
The Economist’s Democracy in America blog draws a simile between Indulgences sold by the medieval Church and the tax “indulgences” sold by the criminal class in Washington.
MICHAEL MUNGER, a professor of political science at Duke University, insightfully compares “tax expenditures” to the Catholic church’s practice of selling indulgences, which fomented the Reformation by sending Martin Luther into fit of righteous pique. Mr Munger reminds us that
‘ Indulgences were “get out of purgatory free!” cards. Of course, it was the church that had created the idea of purgatory in the first place. Then the church granted itself the power to release souls from purgatory (for a significant fee, of course).
As Luther put it, in his Thesis No. 27, “as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out.” ‘
If high tax rates are a sort of purgatory (and who doubts it?), then tax credits are indeed akin to indulgences. Mr Munger writes: …
Politico says the Navy has rescinded the Silver Star awarded to the man who vouched for John Kerry’s bravery. So when are they going to go get his Purple Hearts?
Here’s a welcome change of pace. The NY Times reports the bizarre story of a jilted lover who framed his ex. Definitely a plot for Law and Order – Criminal Intent.
Soon after Seemona Sumasar started dating Jerry Ramrattan, she had an inkling that something might be wrong.
He said he was a police detective, but never seemed to go to work. He seemed obsessed with “C.S.I.,” “Law & Order” and other television police dramas.
About a year after he moved into her house in Queens, their relationship soured. One day, he cornered her, taped her mouth and raped her, she said. Mr. Ramrattan was arrested.
But he soon took his revenge, the authorities said. Drawing on his knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from his time as an informer for law enforcement, he accomplished what prosecutors in New York called one of the most elaborate framing plots that they had ever seen. ..