Most of the stories I cover involving my home stomping grounds of New York are uniformly negative, I’m sorry to say. (And yes, that includes the New York Jets.) But the state is what it is. What’s a guy to do? This fact makes it all the more pleasant for me, though, when I come across something positive to report, and it seemed as if I’d found just such a story this weekend. Next week the Empire State will finish rolling out a program called Secure Communities.
A program that gives federal immigration officials access to the fingerprints of undocumented immigrants booked into local jails will start Tuesday across New York state despite staunch opposition from advocates and lawmakers, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
A law-enforcement official familiar with the program, called Secure Communities, confirmed that New York City and 30 other jurisdictions would join the 31 communities that already have the program in place. Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties, among others, have participated in Secure Communities for more than a year.
Right off the bat, this one should ring up significant support – or so you might think – because it’s actually nothing new. We’re not talking about some program where cops are cruising the parking lot at Home Depot asking people for “their papers” every morning. This is simply taking the fingerprints of illegal immigrants who are already in jail and charged with a crime and getting them into the right database. The prints were already being sent to the FBI, so shipping them over to ICE shouldn’t be much of a leap.
A representative of the immigration enforcement agency is quoted as saying that the program has already delivered results, and “has helped ICE remove more than 135,000 convicted criminal aliens, including more than 49,000 convicted of major violent offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children.” So what could possibly go wrong?
Asked about the program at a Friday news conference, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said “we prefer that they not do that here.”
…
Speaking on the radio Friday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said there will be a rally on City Hall’s steps on Monday to urge the federal government to refrain from forcing the city’s hand.
She also said the police were being put in a “terrible position.”
“It’s just so counter to what New York is about as an immigrant city,” she added. “And I’m real proud of our mayor and our governor, who have all spoken out…. The police can’t disregard the law at the end of the day, but it’s a terrible thing to put them in when they should be focusing on real crime.”
New York – particularly the Big Apple – does have a great tradition of welcoming immigrants. Legal immigrants. They built the city and the harbor and made New York a focal point of the economic development of an emerging nation. Unfortunately, its vast size and compressed population also eventually made it a haven for gang activity and illegal trade, including illegal immigration. Contrary to what Ms. Quinn may feel, a program such as Secure Communities is not contrary to “what New York is about.” It’s precisely what New York was and should always have been about. A safe haven and open door for those who follow the legal process we have in place and wish to join America as citizens.
But now we have everyone from the Governor and the Chief of Police carping about it along with every advocacy group in the state. So I suppose there’s no such thing as a good story in New York without at least one worm in the apple.
You’ve come a long way, baby. The old advertising motto that targeted women who thought of themselves as liberated in the 1970s came with no small measure of irony, since the point of the ad was to get women hooked on Virginia Slims cigarettes. Jessica Gavora sees a similar kind of irony in the Barack Obama campaign’s rollout of “Julia,” their composite woman who lives her 67-year life under the beneficence of the Obama presidency. Gavora argues that Obama wants to create not just a nanny state but a Hubby State, in which women marry the federal government — a far from liberating existence:
“The Life of Julia,” the Obama campaign’s new interactive Web ad, follows a cartoon everywoman, Julia, through the milestones of a middle-class American life: education, work, motherhood, retirement. One milestone is pointedly missing: marriage.
But, then again, why should Julia get married? She doesn’t need to. Like a growing number of single women with children, Julia is married to the state.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in this rather creepy slide from the Life of Julia presentation:
Note that there is no mention of a husband, or even a father, biological or involved. In the entire slide series, Julia never gets married, and indeed except for one single reference to having sex, is never shown as being with a man at all. Her son shows up in just one slide, and is never mentioned again after the slide shows Julia handing Zachary off to the Nanny State:
Zachary then disappears from Julia’s life. Meanwhile, Julia continues her lifelong reliance on the Hubby State, through to her 67th year, at which the Life of Julia comes to an abrupt end.
Gavora warns that women are selling themselves into bondage, and this time on the cheap:
Julia is just the latest makeover. She is the Democrats’ answer to Romney’s family Christmas card. A nation of women on their own, after all, doesn’t relate very well to fecund portraits of smiling white moms and dads with kids and golden retrievers underfoot. With her spare, faceless affect, Julia is meant to evoke a more modern, independent sensibility — with the exception of her life of endless government dependency, that is.
Julia is Mary Tyler Moore on the government’s dime. You’re gonna make it after all, Julia! Just remember who’s responsible on Election Day.
The problem is, like so much of our political rhetoric, Julia is not a composite; she’s a myth. Some of the nation’s single moms may be successful Web designers, but many are poor — fully half have incomes of less than $30,000 a year, compared with just 15 percent of married women. It’s not Pell grants and SBA loans these women rely on but Medicaid and food stamps. And it’s not comfortable retirements in community gardens they contemplate but bleak old age.
Whereas government benefits were once the state’s compassionate response to women who had lost their husbands, in Julia’s world they are the unquestionable entitlement of women who never married. The decline of marriage and Democratic political opportunism have combined to transform what used to be a situation to be avoided — single motherhood — into a new and proud American demographic, citizens of Obama’s Hubby State.
Gone is any acknowledgment that remaining single is a less than ideal situation for women — or for men, for that matter — or that raising children outside of marriage is anything less than these women’s inalienable personal choice.
The bleak, lonely existence of Julia is a warning to voters. This is the Brave New World that Obama envisions for all of us — dependent on government instead of real families, children who all but become wards of the state and are nothing more than optional accessories that are easily discarded when appropriate. This could be the bleakest political vision ever deliberately constructed as an argument to vote for someone.
Is justice blind? Sometimes. And so is New Jersey resident Stephen Hopler, a gun collector and enthusiast from the Garden State. (Hat tip to Warner Todd Huston.) Or at least he was until the local authorities decided that a blind guy shouldn’t have weapons. Then things began to look ugly, at least for those who could see.A blind gun collector can keep his gun permit and will have the weapons previously seized from his house by police returned to him, following a judge’s order handed down Friday in Superior Court in Morristown.
Steven Hopler, 49, of Rockaway Township won the latest battle in an ongoing war over his Second Amendment rights. The Morris County Prosecutor’s office had asked Judge Thomas Manahan to revoke Hopler’s firearms ID card and seize all guns in his possession, arguing Hopler abused alcohol and posed a danger to others by being a gun owner.
Hopler’s attorney, Gregg Trautmann, said, “First it was, ‘He can’t own guns because he’s blind.’ Now they tried, ‘you’re a habitual drunkard and we think it’s improper because you’re a habitual drunkard.’” .
You’d think for the police and the courts to step and and stomp on Mr. Hopler’s second amendment rights that he’d have had to done something terrible, like… shoot somebody. Well, in a way you’d be right.
The most recent legal scuffle began in 2008 when Hopler, who became legally blind as a result of diabetes in 1991, shot himself in the shin while cleaning one of his guns.
This is a tawdry story all around. But it looks as if the judge has looked over the evidence and found that the man has never done anything to harm others or indicate that his second amendment rights should be abridged. His permit will be restored and he can go back to collecting as he chooses. It’s certainly a long time overdue, but this looks like at least one story of a happy outcome in New Jersey.
I love a curmudgeonly rant, and so this interview of National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is right up my alley. This excerpt of a longer interview with the Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas focuses on Jonah’s issues with the “youth culture,” the obsession with the worldview of the least experienced of our citizenry. Goldberg notes that “we’re all born idiots,” and that some people are a lot closer to that point in time than most of the rest of us:
“It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity more than youth,” the National Review Online editor said in an interview. “We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.”
So why all the focus on the youth vote and “millennials” in politics? Goldberg says young people having so much influence in a society is unhealthy.
“My view is, they’re going to run the country some day, so we should really explain why they’re so frickin’ stupid about so many things,” he said.
Goldberg says in the interview that he would prefer a much higher voting age than 18, and while I agree that these voters tend to be the least sophisticated and informed voters in any election, I still disagree with Goldberg on this point. The law treats 18-year-olds as fully responsible for their actions. The purpose of elections is to form a representative government that binds all citizens and holds them accountable. That includes 18-year-old citizens, which means that they should have the right to participate in the formation of legislatures and executive branches that create and enforce those laws.
That doesn’t mean that politicians should pander to them, or at least at the expense of both older voters and common sense. They may be running the country someday, it is true, but it is equally true that they may be performing brain surgery someday too. That doesn’t mean I want them practicing on my head when they’re 18 and haven’t learned anything about it yet.
In fact, I’d say that a sure sign of political desperation is when a politician has to focus on the least-sophisticated and least-experienced voters to gain any traction. That’s a giveaway that their policies are probably too simplistic and unrealistic to sell elsewhere. One case in point: ObamaCare. Obama got a great deal of support from young voters on this policy — and now they will be forced to needlessly buy comprehensive health insurance at great expense when a simple catastrophic policy would suit their needs much more economically, in order to subsidize the health-care costs of middle-aged and senior voters. Suckers!
Perhaps that experience will have taught the youth culture an important lesson. If so, Jonah will try not to bark at them when their radios are too loud or order them off his darned lawn. Jonah also has a new book out, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas — be sure to check it out.
Former President George W. Bush’s pollster for his 2004 re-election, Jan van Lohuizen, has put out a memo to Republican operatives suggesting a shift in the way the GOP discusses same-sex marriage… “Recommendation: A statement reflecting recent developments on this issue along the following lines:
“‘People who believe in equality under the law as a fundamental principle, as I do, will agree that this principle extends to gay and lesbian couples; gay and lesbian couples should not face discrimination and their relationship should be protected under the law. People who disagree on the fundamental nature of marriage can agree, at the same time, that gays and lesbians should receive essential rights and protections such as hospital visitation, adoption rights, and health and death benefits.’”
***
“You can make a case that this is a perfect example of this president as the most liberal president in history and he is systematically changing what America is about,” Brabender said. “What we are betting the ranch on is the October labor statistics, and that is a high risk. … We are playing a dangerous game by raising the stakes too high on something we have too little control of and is often in great flux, and we are bailing on talking about who we are as a country. I think that is a mistake.”…
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said Obama handed Romney and the Republican Party a gift — and both will be negligent if they don’t take advantage of it.
“The president yesterday interjected an element into this election cycle that, while some may be uncomfortable dealing with on the Republican side, could very well be a deciding factor for the election if they respond to the president’s challenge to marriage,” Perkins said. “It’s no secret the Republican leadership has not wanted to be out front waving the banner.”
***
So to figure out whether gay marriage will hurt Obama in the fall, you have to figure whether gay marriage alone is likely to block any of these five paths—that is, whether Obama is likely to receive fewer votes from these specific constituencies in these specific states than Kerry received in 2004. For that to occur, Obama would have to suffer a 32-point net loss in Latino support in Nevada; a 27-point net loss in Latino support in New Mexico; a 27-point net loss in Latino support in Florida; a 9-point net loss in black support in Virginia; a 19-point net loss in black support in North Carolina; a 12-point net loss in working-class support in Iowa; and a 5-point net loss in working-class support in Ohio.
In other words, it’s unlikely. Right now, 43 percent of Latinos—a group made up largely of the kind of younger men and women who are driving population growth in key states—approve of same-sex marriage. Among independents that number is up to 52 percent. And opposition among African-Americans has fallen 20 points since 2008. It’s hard to imagine that Obama’s personal opinion about same-sex marriage—remember, he’s not pushing any kind of federal legislation—will be such a turn-off for key demographic groups in key states that their support for the president will plummet to sub-Kerry levels come November.
***
Black voters and especially black churches have long opposed gay marriage. But the 40-year-old barber and other African-Americans interviewed in politically key states say their support for Obama remains unshaken…
Mel Brown, a 65-year-old project manager in Philadelphia, says same-sex marriage “is between them and their God. The God I serve does not agree with that.”
Does Obama’s announcement change Brown’s support for the president? “Absolutely not. Because Scripture says we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”…
Many black pastors have been reluctant to address same-sex marriage from the pulpit; the topic remains taboo in much of their community. Now, “with the president taking such a clear stand on the issue, and his being such a beloved figure and historic symbol for African-Americans, I think it will advance the conversation,” said the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
***
It’s true, says Carmen Fowler LaBerge: You can be a Christian and support same-sex marriage, but, she says, “nobody can say gay marriage is biblical. That’s just foolishness.”
LaBerge resigned her post as minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) after the denomination voted last year to ordain noncelibate gay clergy. She says the Bible is clear.
“From the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament, the only sexual relationships that are affirmed in scripture are those in the context of marriage between one man and one woman,” she says…
Not so fast, says the Rev. Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif. She takes her cues from Jesus.
“Jesus never said a single word about anything even remotely connected to homosexuality,” she says.
***
This new bipartisan politics of religion is a good thing — both for religion and for politics. For several decades, the right has held a monopoly over what it means to be religious in the United States, not to mention Christian or evangelical. The result has been devastating for the image of Christianity. When the Barna Group polled Americans ages 16 to 29 on what words best describe Christianity, the top response was “anti-homosexual.” The other common associations were “judgmental,” “hypocritical” and “too involved in politics.”
It has not helped that for years, conservative politicians have explained their opposition to gay rights by simply stating, “I’m a Christian,” as if that automatically requires one to abhor the idea of same-sex marriage. Recent debates about the protection of religious freedom have assumed that the only religious motives that count are conservative ones. That’s the concept at the core of arguments about the contraception mandate, as well as a number of religious freedom bills moving through state legislatures. Enthusiasm for those efforts might well flag if religious progressives were to demand protection for their beliefs as well…
After years of pretending that the culture wars were a matter of religious views lined up against secular beliefs, politicians are recognizing what average Americans knew all along. A majority of Americans now believe that there is more than one way to get to heaven, pollsters report. Our political discussions finally reflect that there’s also more than one answer to the question: “What would Jesus do?”
***
Romney did remain consistent on one point: He said he does not intend to use President Obama’s flip-flop of same-sex marriage against him in the campaign. Obama, who opposed gay marriage when he ran for president in 2008, said this week he now supports it. Romney said, “I think the issue of marriage and gay marriage is a very tender and sensitive topic. People come out in different places on this. The president has changed course in regards to this topic. I think that’s his right to do that. I have a different view than he does. I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, but I just don’t think that this becomes a hot political issue dividing our nation.”
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“The father of the modern conservative movement, former US Senator Barry Goldwater, once said of Jerry Falwell that he needed a kick in the ass. With his speech at Falwell’s Liberty University, it is clear that Governor Romney’s message to Goldwater conservatives is: drop dead…
“We have said since our founding in 2009, that we are committed to defeating Barack Obama. We remain committed to Obama’s defeat. However, if Governor Romney expects to be the candidate who can beat Obama in November then he needs to embrace a strategy that makes victory possible – falling into the culture war trap laid by Obama is a guaranteed electoral loser.
“It is not too late. If Governor Romney wants to unite conservatives and motivate Tea Party voters then he needs to embrace bolder positions on taxes, entitlement reform, healthcare and spending, not pander to big government theocrats.”
Barack Obama insists that corporations and lobbyists will have nothing to do with funding the Democratic National Convention, a requirement that has put convention organizers into an $20-million hole. They recently tried to get unions to fill the gap, but apparently didn’t get much response from their sales pitch. On Thursday, the co-chair of the convention told Politico that he’s certain the unions will write the big check … eventually: “My belief is they will support us,” Rogers told POLITICO on Thursday. “I think the issue is not whether. I think the question is how much. And I hope that they step up and give us the same level of support which they did in the Denver convention.”
Democrats are about $20 million short of their $36.6 million fundraising goal for the convention in large part because of labor groups sitting on the sidelines, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Unions gave about $8 million to support the 2008 DNC, but they’ve largely balked over Charlotte because North Carolina is a right-to-work state.
But Rogers, the CEO of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, said labor groups would be hurting themselves if they remained on the sidelines.
“For them to take a powder on the convention because it’s a right-to-work state is kind of sending a message that we’re really not interested in the unionization of people in right-to-work states,” he said. “And if that’s a signal they’d want to send, I don’t think that’s in their best interest because more and more states are moving to be right-to-work states.”
Actually, what it says is that unions don’t want to drop millions of dollars supporting cities and states with right-to-work laws. If unions want to try organizing in Charlotte, they can do that directly and not put money into the hands of non-union shops. That’s only one of the curious points of the DNC’s decision to stage the convention in North Carolina, a move that’s starting to look like a huge mistake, especially after over 20% of North Carolina Democrats refused to vote for Obama in the primary despite having no opponent in the race. Almost 200,000 specifically chose “no preference” over Obama.
Rogers might still believe that unions will contribute, but he also apparently has a back-up plan. Politico reports this morning that the publisher of the “official” convention magazine has hit up the American League of Lobbyists to buy some advertising, despite the supposed ban on their participation in the event:
A publisher promoting an “official” national convention magazine for Democratic National Committee, which rejects political contributions from registered lobbyists, has asked theAmerican League of Lobbyists in an email and phone call to purchase an advertisement in its national convention magazine, the League confirms to PI. The ad ( http://bit.ly/K2r8Tk) for the “2012 Democratic National Convention Official Magazine,” being produced by the Connecticut-based H.O. Zimman Inc. publishing house, would cost between $15,000 and $25,000 depending on size. …
A representative from H.O. Zimman could not be reached for comment Friday. But in an email (http://bit.ly/K7cf6s) this week to the league, a company representative writes that the league “may be interested in visibility to this powerful audience … the publication will have very limited advertising.”
So far, the response to this sales pitch more or less matches the response from the unions … pound sand. Howard Marlowe tells Politico that the league doesn’t have the money for that kind of advertising, but if it did, he’d buy one that tells Obama to “stop bashing lobbyists.” Or at the very least, stop bashing lobbyists while issuing a snowstorm of waivers to hire them and finding backdoor ways to beg for money from them.
Meanwhile, the pledge against corporate money looks expired as well:
Democrats have trumpeted their ban on corporate donations to their national convention this summer, saying that it shows they are free from the influence of special interests.
But through a special fund, convention planners are accepting millions of dollars in corporate contributions to help pay for many of the activities outside the convention hall—as well as some expenses directly related to the event. Donors include Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp.and Duke Energy Corp., all significant employers in Charlotte, N.C., where the convention will be held in early September.
The fund, called New American City Inc., plans to raise more than $10 million to cover convention expenses, including salaries for convention workers, promotional materials and overhead. Costs also include entertainment for delegates and others, such as a welcoming party for the media that will feature celebrity performers and as many as 10,000 guests.
The new “evolution” from the DNC is that none of this money will go toward the formal nominating process, which consists of spending an hour or so polling the state delegations, or for Obama’s speech at, er, Bank of America Stadium on the last day of the convention.
It’s all the rage today, sweeping the nation from coast to coast. As we reported back in March, municipalities across the country are saving the world, one shopping trip at a time, by banning the use of plastic grocery bags. And now, despite some spectacular failures by others who paved the way, Los Angeles is poised to leap into the fray. But the industry is fighting back this time. With Los Angeles on the verge of becoming the nation’s largest city to ban single-use bags at supermarkets and convenience stores, the plastics industry is beginning to fight back.
With a series of radio and television commercials along with a website (www.bagtheban.com) the American Progressive Bag Alliance also is lobbying city lawmakers to try to head off the plans to outlaw use of the bags.
“We are engaging in the process of dialogue on lots of different fronts,” said Donna Dempsey, spokeswoman for the alliance. “Each city is different, each municipality is unique and we are trying to design our message for Los Angeles.”
They tried it in DC and wound up losing more than 100 jobs and realized a net drop in disposable income. They passed the same ban in San Francisco in 2007 to cut down on their plastic waste. The net result was that the city’s percentage of plastic waste went from .6 percent to .64 percent.
Los Angeles doesn’t just use plastic bags. They also make them and recycle them. The workers in that industry come forward in the following video to talk about what the ban will mean to them and their families. Give it a look.
As Ed already reported this week, the Obama administration has taken belated notice of the fact that coal still provides a lot of the nation’s energy, (and jobs!) and is attempting to recalculate their political playbook accordingly. Not everyone seems to have gotten the memo, though, including one Jay Rockefeller. There is currently an amendment to the transportation bill on the table, put forward by David McKinley, which would stop the EPA from regulating coal ash as a “hazardous substance.” But even though the senator comes from coal country himself, he can’t seem to get on board.
“I’m going to keep working on coal ash reuse, but I’m not going to pretend to West Virginians that it’s ready or right for the highway bill,” Rockefeller noted. “We need roads and bridges and the jobs that go with them in our state, not political games. House Republicans want to cut transportation funding more deeply than ever before, and they should stop trying to distract West Virginians from the harm of their real agenda.”
On April 18, the House voted to extend federal transportation funding through September. The measure passed on to the Senate included McKinley’s coal ash amendment, as well as another provision permitting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The White House has threatened to veto the bill if it passes the Senate.
If Rockefeller were basing his opposition solely on the position that we wind up with extraneous amendments to bills all the time which gum up the process, I could almost get behind him here. But the idea that the EPA amendment is cluttering up the legislation with unrelated nonsense simply doesn’t hold water. Coal ash is one of many additives which are used in paving applications and it helps hold down the cost of road construction work. (The industry manages an amazing program of recycling everything from old asphalt pavement to ground up tires.) Arguing that this is not applicable to the transportation bill is unfounded.
So where is Rockefeller getting these peculiar ideas? Perhaps from an unlikely source.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller is being called on by the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club in its fight to kill another West Virginia representative’s coal ash provision of the transportation bill…
Rockefeller, a Democratic member of the conference committee appointed to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the transportation bill, said he would not support the amendment.
“Separately, I want to make it clear that I cannot support the environmental provisions that have been attached to the surface bill by the House,” Rockefeller said in a statement issued last week. “These riders would jeopardize the tremendous bipartisan support this bill has had so far in the Senate.”
For somebody who has been knocking around W. Virginia politics for so long, choosing to go against coal and in favor of the Sierra Club is an odd choice to say the least. And given the area’s unemployment rate and dependence on the industry in question, you’d think this would have been a no brainer for the Senator. Live and learn, I suppose.
In 1776, a witch cursed Barnabas Collins for rejecting her in favor of another woman, transforming him into a vampire, and caused him to be buried for almost 200 years. Freed when construction expands around the Maine hamlet of Collinsport — a town founded by his family in better days — Barnabas awakens to a much different world than the one he knew two centuries ago. Can Barnabas restore his family’s fortune and honor, or will the same witch that cursed him destroy his family and Barnabas once and for all?
Based on the old soap opera, Dark Shadows takes a decidedly campy turn as a film. Tim Burton once again finds an excuse for white facepaint, but unlike Edward Scissorhands, this isn’t a subversive swipe at the suburbs. It does poke a little fun at small-town America, but not as egregiously as, say, Doc Hollywood did. The film mostly contents itself in the first half with skewering the early 1970s, at least until the grudge match between Barnabas and the nearly-immortal Angelique begins again in earnest. (To say that she still carries a torch for her vampire is a rather large understatement.) Barnabas has to dispatch construction workers, hippies, and other assorted bit players, but he has trouble getting rid of his rival, and she has just as much problem getting rid of Barnabas … if that’s what she really wants to do.
Dark Shadows is an entertaining bit of fluff, but I suspect it may play to a limited audience. Fans of the old soap opera are probably not going to appreciate the comedic treatment given to their stories, while those who don’t know the show may not be terribly interested in a vampire comedy. However, even without knowing the old show, Dark Shadows is an entertaining, fast-paced film with plenty of laughs and not just a little suspense. It’s as original as a movie based on an old TV series can be, and the climax really does pull out the kitchen sink in characterization, special effects, and plot twists.
Johnny Depp delivers his normal mannered performance as Barnabas, keeping the vampiric elements light. Eva Green (Casino Royale) has a ball playing the evil Angelique, easily the most alive character on the screen. Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter mainly get wasted in their roles, but Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen) plays a bumbling caretaker/henchman with some style. Bonham Carter’s character feels like make-work; her character seems extraneous to the conflict and certainly to its resolution, and while her performance is good (as is Pfeiffer’s), there isn’t any reason for her to be there. Bella Heathcote is mainly eerie but beautiful in a dual role.
Overall, if you’re looking for some laughs and escapism, Dark Shadows is a pretty good choice. It won’t be on anyone’s top 10 list at the end of the year, but it’s fun and never gets boring. Dark Shadows is rated PG-13 for some drug references, sexual content (a hilarious, if nonsensical, scene that doesn’t include nudity), and — quelle horreur indeed — smoking. We went with friends who brought their 17-year-old daughter, and there wasn’t anything that embarrassed us. However, the after-movie poll had the two men approving and the three women saying, “Meh,” and as a result, the next time we all go out, we have to see a chick flick. Factor that into your calculations.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer who was Romney’s high school pal at the elite Cranbrook School in Michigan, told ABC News. “It was a hack job … clumps of hair taken off.”… “For Mitt to be a bully just shocks me,” [Maxwell's brother, Peter,] said. “He was the kind of a guy who would bend over backwards to do something for you and would go out of his way to help people, and for him to be characterized as a bully would be the farthest thing from the truth.”… Democrats have been delighted by the way the story has played out, circulating news clippings to reporters and highlighting the most damning quotes aimed at Romney, such as Maxwell calling the bullying “vicious.”
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Romney was not disciplined at the time. If such an attack happened in the public schools of 2012, it would probably lead to suspension and might also be referred for expulsion, a number of local public school leaders said following a Washington Post report of the incident involving Romney.
A call to police would probably also be in order because it would be considered an assault, said Alan Goodwin, principal of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda.
“It would be taken very seriously,” Goodwin said. “Even using the scissors would be considered using a weapon. It would not be an acceptable prank.”
***
It might seem incredible that an episode of bullying that was remembered by so many other people in the room has been forgotten by the Republican candidate for president. In fairness, a lot has happened to Romney since his senior year at Cranbrook — he married, served on Mormon missions, ran a private-equity firm, ran the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the governor of Massachusetts, ran for Senate, and ran for president — twice.
But the science of memory retention suggests that Romney would remember parading his classmates into a room with Lauber to clip his hair, if the experience were significant enough for Romney himself.
“One would think that such an action, if it did occur, would be laden with strong emotions, making it less likely that he would not remember it,” said Steven Lynn, a psychology professor at Binghamton University whose area of expertise is human memory.
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One can draw a straight line from the young man who pinned down a terrified teenager and walked a blind man into a closed door, to the adult who put the family dog in a kennel and strapped it to the roof of the car, to the businessman who laid off hundreds of people, cancelled their health benefits, and paid himself millions while their company went bankrupt. And the line continues: the governor who slashed education and raised fees on the middle class, and the possible president who would use his power to cut taxes on his fellow millionaires while pushing for the gradual demise of traditional Medicare.
Then there is the aura of someone who acts as if the rules don’t apply to him. The Post reported that the abused boy was ultimately expelled from Cranbrook—for smoking a cigarette. Really. The victim got expelled for smoking a cigarette, but Mitt faced no sanctions for maliciously victimizing a vulnerable student and a teacher. It’s good to be a prince. Maybe that’s why Romney felt entitled to take a $10 million bailout for Bain, but opposed President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry. He thinks there’s one set of rules for the privileged, and another for the rest of us.
***
A story that casts a young Romney as intolerant and without basic empathy for someone who may have been gay is unfortunate the day after Barack Obama made the most empathetic statement in support of gay rights ever made by a sitting president. Right now Romney is the bully who gangs up on another student in an unfair fight. He is Biff, and as parents we teach our kids to root for McFly.
But Romney could take back his origins. A transformative moment in a person’s life or personal history can clean one’s slate and let one emerge as a different person. And Romney may have one. A year later, at 19, Romney was a missionary in France. He was involved in a searing car crash that by his own admission deepened his faith and changed his outlook on life. A near-death experience and a coma will do that to you. It would explain why there is no analog for the behavior described in the Post story. Romney and his team might consider having him tell that story again soon.
***
In 1995, a Mormon family, the Nixons, had recently moved to the Boston area and got devastating news when two of their sons were rendered quadriplegics by a terrible car accident — a tragedy that was compounded by the financial strain. Having heard their story, Romney called the parents to see if they’d be around on Christmas Eve. Romney, even though he didn’t know the Nixons very well, showed up with Ann and his sons. They brought the injured sons a new stereo system and other gifts. According to the book, the Nixons “were floored” that Romney had not only taken an interest in them, but that he and Ann had taken time out of their busy schedule to deliver the gifts themselves and turn it into a family event to set an example. Romney also offered to pay for their sons’ college educations and participated in multiple fundraisers for them over the years. “It wasn’t a one time thing,” the father told the authors.
One time, Romney found out that a church member had broken his foot by falling off a ladder trying to remover a hornet’s nest. Romney showed up and devised a way of removing it from the inside of the house. “Everyone who has known Romney in the church community seems to have a story like this, about him and his family pitching in ways big and small,” Kranish and Helman write. “They took chicken and asparagus soup to sick parishioners. They invited unsettled Mormon transplants to their home for lasagna.” Another time, a fire broke out near where Romney lived and he “organized the gathered neighbors, and they began dashing into the house to rescue what they could: a desk, couches, books” until the fire fighters made them stop. He also helped build a playground to honor a neighbor’s child who had died of cystic fibrosis. “There he was, with a hammer in his belt, the Mitt nobody sees,” the neighbor, Joseph O’Donnell recounted. “Romney didn’t stop there,” the book reads. “About a year later, it became apparent that the park would need regular maintenance and repairs. ‘The next thing I know, my wife calls me up and says, “You’re not going to believe this, but Mitt Romney is down with a bunch of Boy Scouts and they’re working on the park.”’…
Personally, I don’t think any of this should have bearing on whether or not Romney deserves to be president. But those who want to make the fact that Romney reportedly did something inexcusable in high school into a campaign issue must also grapple with his numerous acts of charity and generosity over the course of his lifetime.
***
“The real question here is, is Mitt Romney a bully? And the answer is no,” she said. “Mitt Romney is absolutely, as his other friend from high school said — he doesn’t have a vicious bone in his body.”
In defending Romney as “deeply compassionate” and “unfailingly kind,” she pointed to moments during the GOP primary when Romney was “being attacked from every side.”
“His response was always professional, calm, civil,” she pointed out. “In fact, he even intervened on behalf [of] — to try to help — Gov. Perry when he was stumbling [in attempting to remember a talking point during a debate]. His impulses are very kind impulses and there should be no debate about whether or not Gov. Romney is a bully.”
***
It’s standard fare for revelations about a candidate’s past to be leveraged against him. But it’s unfair to draw sweeping conclusions about Romney’s character based on allegations of high school cruelty. For one thing, it’s hypocritical. The vast majority of high schoolers, as anyone who attended high school can tell you, are pretty unbearable. They can be mean, stupid, cliquish, insecure. They blame everything on their parents, probe for signs of weakness, bad-mouth one another. There is no such thing as a human being who did not make bad decisions in high school, whether it involved binge drinking or bullying a weaker kid. That’s not to minimize the pain Romney allegedly caused; as Horowitz shows, the incident haunted both the victim and some of the perpetrators for a very long time. But it’s not necessarily a measure of who Romney has become.
It was silly four years ago to argue that Barack Obama was unsuited for the presidency because he smoked pot and snorted cocaine once upon a time. It is silly to reach the same conclusion about Romney now. Recreational drug use and adolescent bullying are different — the former crime, most of the time, is victimless. But in 1965, homophobia was even more common than it is now. That doesn’t excuse it, yet even today, in what is supposed to be an era of social progress, anti-gay epithets are still flung haphazardly by kids grasping for touchstone insults, including kids who aren’t anti-gay…
It would be relevant if Romney exhibited this kind of bad judgment, prejudice or cruelty in his adult life. There’s no evidence of that. If Obama is allowed to “evolve,” Romney is entitled to the same privilege.
This Mother’s Day, thank mom for the gift of life by helping to ensure that other kids don’t receive it. Honestly, the only surprise is that she didn’t go the whole nine yards and make this a pitch for Planned Parenthood instead. “This Mother’s Day, I can’t think of a better way to honor all the mothers in the country — past and present — than with a contribution to EMILY’s List,” Gillibrand writes. “They’re the ones working tirelessly to elect the pro-choice Democratic women who are making sure that our freedoms are protected for generations to come.”
“So, this year, join me in commemorating Mother’s Day with a contribution to EMILY’s List to help elect the Democratic women who will continue to secure our rights,” the senator continues. “On Mother’s Day, let’s get women involved and make sure they know who is truly fighting for them – the pro-choice Democratic women EMILY’s List is working each day to elect to office. Make this Mother’s Day extra special. Honor mothers around the country with a contribution to EMILY’s List.”
The fundraising appeal features a photo of the New York senator with her children — even though Emily’s List requires all candidates it supports to back taxpayer funding of abortions on children who could have been born to other mothers. Instead, Emily’s List supports denying millions of women like Gillibrand a Mother’s Day.
I’d been thinking it might be nice to take mom to an upscale restaurant on Sunday to celebrate, but no, on second thought, spending that money to help thin out the population of the next generation probably is better. Look at it this way: In years to come, the restaurants on Mother’s Day will be that much less crowded. Easier to book.
Gillibrand’s e-mail is one end of the spectrum on how to celebrate Mother’s Day this year. Here’s the other end. Exit quotation: “This isn’t how we breast-feed at home, it’s more of a cradling, nurturing situation.”
What do you think, guys? Do we let The One slide on this or should we indulge in a little end-of-the-week outrageous outrage over a shiny news object of our own? What would the left do? Or rather, let me rephrase: What did the left do four days ago? Do note, this comes from a left-wing paper. The shout from the crowd was clear. As President Barack Obama gave the first official campaign speech of his re-election bid at a sports arena in Ohio last weekend the first mention of his Republican opponent Mitt Romney prompted a male voice in the throng to yell: “Traitor!”
Earlier in the rally, held in the Ohio state capital of Columbus, several warm-up speakers for Obama had derided and mocked Romney for once using a Swiss bank account. Campaign videos played to the audience had prompted loud boos when Romney appeared or was mentioned…
“People look at Romney, and he is the personification of everything that is wrong with the system,” said Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, a web-based group that campaigns on progressive causes. Ruben said the group had recently taken an internal poll of its left-wing members and been surprised that 68% of them felt Romney was as bad as or worse than President George W Bush as an American politician. “That was striking. I was not sure that our members had a scale that went beyond Bush,” Ruben said.
Obama apologists will distinguish this from Monday’s incident with Romney by noting there’s no proof that O heard this guy whereas Mitt obviously did hear the questioner with the microphone. (Never mind that Romney’s typical line on O is that he’s a “nice guy” who’s in over his head or that Mitt later emphasized that of course he disagreed with the questioner.) It didn’t matter in 2008 whether McCain or Palin heard some guy allegedly yell “kill him” at the mention of Bill Ayers’s name, which over time metamorphosed into a bogus claim that the “kill him” comment had been directed at Obama, and which persists to this day even though the whole story ended up being bogus. Supposedly, the “kill him” thing was a grand insight into the dark souls of Republican voters, irrespective of McCain’s feelings about it or whether he even knew about it. How much Romney-hatred will it take from O-bots before the media starts running similar dumb concern-troll stories about the sinister “anger” or whatever among his constituents? Class-warfare campaigns have been known to stir up some pretty bitter resentments, don’tcha know.
Exit question: If 68% of the MoveOn crowd is already treating Romney as worse than the Bushitler, where will that number be circa Election Day? And will that insane figure affect any media calculations about the terrible rigid partisanship that grips the land, or will that continue to be pawned off as some uniquely Republican failing?
With all of his other competition out of the way, no one should be surprised how Mitt Romney stacks up against other Republicans in the Oregon primary, set for next Tuesday. A new SurveyUSA poll shows Romney with 58% of the vote, with Ron Paul in a distant second at 14%, which means that the May 15th primary will be as drama-free as possible. However, the poll also shows Romney within the margin of error against Barack Obama in the Democratic stronghold — and gaining:
In a November match-up between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for President of the United States, Obama today edges Romney, 47% to 43%. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released 2 months ago, when the Republican primary was still competitive, Obama is down 3 points; Romney is up 4. Among women, Obama leads by 13; among men, Romney leads by 6 — a 19-point gender gap. Independents break 4:3 for Obama. In 2008, Obama defeated John McCain by 16 points in Oregon.
The sample in this poll uses registered voters, a survey type that normally tilts a little more toward Democrats. The split might tilt more toward Republicans, though, with a D/R/I of 38/35/27. The D/R/I in 2008 was 36/27/37, and given that independents break more for Obama in this poll (44/33), the difference could be having a substantial impact on the results.
The other internals are intriguing. Anyone from Oregon will be unsurprised to discover that Obama’s strength comes from the Portland area, which he leads by 12 over Romney, but only at a bare majority of 50/38. In the rest of the state, Romney leads by 13 points, 53/40. Obama also leads among 18-34YOs, but not by as much as one would imagine, 49/38, short of a majority. Obama only scores majorities among self-described liberals and very liberals, while carrying Oregon moderates only by a plurality of 47/37.
Obama may have a solid lead, but it’s an unimpressive one in what should be a no-worry, loyal Democratic state. By failing to get to 50%, Obama gives an impression of vulnerability in Oregon, a state that last went Republican when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election. Romney might have Obama playing defense outside of the normally-accepted set of swing states in November.
Today, on the Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), we’ll take a look at the past week with Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson of the Hugh Hewitt Show. Duane and I will talk about the fallout of the gay marriage endorsement from Obama, the media’s obsession with bullying in 1965 rather than in 2012, and Obama forgetting about the recession. All of this and more — and stay tuned for a preview of tonight’s Hugh Hewitt Show. The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!
Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.
The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.
America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.
Michelle has a new update on the case on the one-year anniversary:
Exactly one year ago today, my 18-year-old cousin Marizela (known affectionately to her family and friends as “Emem” or “Mei”) Perez disappeared from the University of Washington campus in Seattle.
She is still missing.
Those words form on the computer screen with disembodied disbelief. But my heart is screaming:
SHE IS STILL MISSING. WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!!!!
The not-knowing is every parent’s worst nightmare. It brought normal life to a standstill for Marizela’s parents, Edgar and Jasmin. And yet, they have to keep living and working and praying for their only daughter. Because that is what they must do. Their strength and dignity through all the suffering has been an inspiration to me.
There have been no new developments in Emem’s case. No word from the police or the medical examiner’s office. No activity on her bank accounts or social media accounts.
And no response from the Google legal department to our request for help in January.
Yesterday, Barack Obama told an audience at a campaign rally that “sometimes I forget” the magnitude of the recession … and today, the RNC wants to make sure everyone remembers this quote. Their rapid-response team already has a video spot up less than 24 hours later, complete with somber, funereal music and the obvious data points in the graphics. And Democrats can’t complain that the remarks were taken out of context, either:
Don’t expect the RNC or Mitt Romney’s team to get amnesia over this, either. “Sometimes I forget” will likely accompany every spot on the economy both organizations produce from now until the election.
Throughout the controversy over Elizabeth Warren’s claimed Native American ancestry, Warren has maintained she was unaware that Harvard Law School touted her heritage in defense of it’s diversity hiring practices in the 90′s. As reported by the Boston Herald, the Harvard student newspaper The Crimson published at least two contemporaneous articles on this topic which made reference to Elizabeth Warren as a Native American professor, in defense of the Law School. But it turns out this controversy generated ink in more than just the Harvard school paper: it also found it’s way into the New York Times. This is the full text of a letter published by the Times on Feb. 1, 1998 (emphasis added):
To the Editor:
Re the Jan. 29 Op-Ed article on hiring at Harvard Law School: Since 1989 the school has appointed to the faculty or voted tenure for four African-Americans, a Hispanic professor and eight women, including a Native American.
The school first offered a visiting professorship to Lani Guinier in 1992. Because of her nomination by President Clinton and for personal reasons, she was unable to accept our offer until January 1996. We offered her a tenured professorship in February 1996 and were happy to receive her acceptance of the offer this month.
Over all, 44 percent of the people appointed to positions of professor or assistant professor since Robert Clark became dean in 1989 have been women or minorities group members. We expect this trend in faculty hiring to continue.
MICHAEL CHMURA
News Director, Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 30, 1998
The Jan 29 Op-Ed that this was in response to was an editorial written by former Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell, of all people, in which he questioned why it had taken Harvard Law so long to hire it’s first minority female professor (Lani Guinier). “At Last, Harvard Sees the Light” was the headline, and it was featured prominently on the Times editorial page (you can see an image of the story over at Breitbart, thanks to John Sexton who unearthed this at his local library.)
So Chmura’s letter was clearly an effort to counter the bad publicity generated by Bell’s Op-Ed. And given that Bell’s criticism was focused on the lack of minority women hired at Harvard, Chmura’s assertion that they had in fact previously hired one individual who fit this description – a Native American woman – was central to his case.
Now, obviously Chmura’s letter did not mention Warren by name. However, an article which appeared in the Harvard Crimson only 3 days later, welcoming Guinier to the School, also included the following text:
Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American. The racial makeup of the HLS Faculty has been an issue before as well: in 1989, Harvard dismissed Weld Professor of Law Derrick A. Bell after 18 years of teaching because the noted expert on race and law refused to end his leave in protest of the absence of minority women on HLS faculty.
Chmura himself also directly identified Warren as a Native American, and Harvard Law’s only minority female faculty member, in an article published a couple of years earlier in the Crimson. So it seems pretty unlikely to say the least that Chmura could have been referring to anyone other than Warren in his letter to the Times. Both this letter, and the article published in the Crimson just 3 days later, were directly related to the hiring of Lani Guinier. And as far as anyone knows, there was no one else at Harvard Law claiming to be a Native American woman in this time frame.
Ok, so what? I suppose this may be just another footnote to this whole episode. But I also think this further calls into question Warren’s claim that she was unaware that her heritage was being used by Harvard in this manner. Now that we know this controversy involved not only a long-simmering controversy with a prominent former law professor in Bell, but that it also spilled over to the pages of the New York Times. Could Warren have somehow been oblivious to all this? That a Harvard spokesperson was effectively promoting her claim to be a Native American to the world? I suppose it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem very likely. In fact I think it’s much more likely that the reason no one has found any other references to Warren’s Native American status after 1999 is that Warren ultimately put a stop to it knowing how ridiculous it looked for Harvard to claim her as a diversity hire.
Even if somehow Warren was unaware of this as she now claims, Harvard Law School was clearly promoting her heritage as a counter-point to criticism over their hiring practices, and in the pages of the New York Times no less. Warren says she listed herself as a minority only in the hope of making new friends, but it sure seems to have played a more important role than this, at least for Harvard.
(For some additional background on just how prominent the controversy was over Harvard Law’s diversity hiring practices in the 90′s, I recommend this informative piece by Hans Bader who was a Harvard Law student in this era.)
Not just the timing, either. Joe Scarborough also questions the prominence of the Washington Post hit piece, as well as its relevance. Mediaite captures the discussion on Morning Joe this morning, as Joe scoffs at the media reaction to Barack Obama’s “big nothingburger” of an evolutionary statement (via Freedom’s Lighthouse):
“It means nobody can run for president,” added Mark McKinnon. “When you look at, you know, what our public life looks like today, good people aren’t going into public service anymore. I was told the other day that the number of women running for office now is declining. And I think it’s the nature and the poisonous environment, and the media scrutiny, that are just driving good people out.”
“And there’s no doubt that the timing of this, Willie Geist,” Scarborough said, “the timing of this obviously is in line with Barack Obama coming out a couple of days ago, saying — I’m sorry. It’s a fun — I mean, the media response to Barack Obama saying absolutely nothing. In the immortal words of Pat Buchanan, celebrating “a big fat nothing burger” when Barack Obama basically said, ‘I’ve got the same position on gay marriage as Ron Paul or Ronald Reagan. I’m not going to do anything about it. The states can do what they want.’ But it seems to me that a story like this is timed to go along with the media celebrating Barack Obama saying he’s going to let states ban gay marriage.”
“Mark Halperin said it yesterday on the show, and I think he’s right,” responded co-host Willie Geist. “There’s no downside for the President given that just about every single member of the media agrees with his positions. So it will be celebrated. The timing of the piece — I’m sure they’ve been working on it for some time — it is a bit curious, the day after.” He then noted that ABC News had spoken to the sister of the man allegedly attacked by Romney all those years ago, who shared that the portrayal of her brother “is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda.”
Scarborough’s ire is also directed at Democrats, about whom he says that “never have so many Democrats been champions of state’s rights since Lester Maddox and George Wallace ran southern states back in the days of segregation.” He expanded on this, and the media’s fawning over Obama’s non-statement, at Politico:
The best laugh-out-loud moment came when the Times sent out a breathless breaking news alert at 3:16 pm, crammed with shameless spin and naked cheerleading. Public Editor Arthur Brisbane take note that the Newspaper of Record recorded the moment this way:
“President Obama declared for the first time that he supports same-sex marriage, putting the moral power of his presidency behind a social issue that continues to divide the country.”
The moral power of his presidency? Really?
Exactly how did the New York Times come to that conclusion when Barack Obama said he would not use his power as president to stop others from banning gay marriage?
Did any member of the Times newsroom actually believe that the president was ever personally against same-sex marriage? Where was the editor who approved that language over the past decade?
Do these progressive cheerleaders of the president realize that their hero has now adopted a position on gay marriage that is horrifyingly close to the views of Ron Paul, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and yes, even me.
If Obama’s statement was a big nothingburger, at least everything that followed in the media provided an eye-opening insight into media bias.
Eight states will cut off long-term jobless benefits this weekend, which comes from an agreement in Washington to dial down the length of benefits from 99 weeks to 79. The move will add more than 230,000 to the numbers of those cut off in 19 other states, bringing the total this year to over 400,000 who have been dropped before the end of the 99-week provision. But Congress isn’t the only driving force behind the change. Thanks to the oddities of the jobs data, the federal formula for jobless funds have shut down the support:
Most states provide 26 weeks of benefits, and the federal government provides the rest, partially through a complicated formula that requires jobless rates to be both high and increasing to reach the benefit limit.
But the nation’s jobless rate has been steadily declining — from 9.1 percent in August, to 8.1 percent last month — causing the maximum benefit period to contract in most states. The extended benefits were reauthorized in February, but efforts by some Democratic lawmakers to adjust the formula in a way that would have kept the 99-week limit intact were unsuccessful.
Although unemployment rates are declining, job growth remains weak. More than 5 million Americans have been out of work for at least six months, and the average duration of unemployment for the 12.5 million jobless Americans is 39 weeks, according to the Department of Labor.
The nation’s jobless rate may have been steadily declining, but not the number of jobless people in the potential workforce. That’s part of the problem with reporting on jobs numbers over the last three years. The previous 27 years saw either a steady increase in the percentage of people participating in the workforce or a steady plateau in the measure. Here once again is the 30-year chart for the civilian population participation rate, which sets the denominator for the equation that produces the overall unemployment rate:
For 20 years, that rate held very steady, which made the overall unemployment rate a very reliable indicator of job growth and job destruction in the US economy. The sharp drop in the participation rate changes the context of the jobless rate. Don’t forget, as I mentioned in my column for The Fiscal Times yesterday, that our population added at least 4 million people as eligible to the workforce over the last three years of recovery. Even though we have appeared to regain the jobs lost since January 2009 in this chart, the context of population growth shows that we haven’t even really kept pace with the post-crash loss:
One can argue that we have made up the ground lost in 2009 on jobs, or at least had until March and April of this year. That ignores the problem of population growth. Economists differ on how many net additions of working-age adults occur on an average each month, with a range from 100,000 to 160,000.
Even at the low end of the range, we would have added 3.9 million working-age adults to the workforce over this period of time, and at the more-accepted benchmark of 125,000 per month, that number goes up to 4.68 million. As this chart shows, just by getting back to the start of 2009, we are now 4 million jobs or more further in the hole.
We have added more than 7.9 million people to the category of workforce-eligible persons not in the labor force since 2009, and the most rapid increase has come post-recovery:
Those numbers continue to climb. In that period, more than five million have moved to disability insurance (another 225,000 in April alone), most likely after their jobless benefits ran out, while another million still want to find work while not formally participating in the labor force by looking for work. Thanks to that exodus — and thanks to that exodus alone — the jobless rate has fallen to a level where even more people will get thrown out of the workforce.
The Washington Post only notes the aftereffects of this problem while repeating the contextless claim that “the nation’s jobless rate has been steadily declining”:
The GAO estimates that 2 million people exhausted unemployment benefits as of early 2010, and although some had spouses or accumulated assets for financial support, nearly one in five fell into poverty. An additional 3.5 million exhausted benefits in late 2010 and 2011, the GAO reported.
“These cuts are coming faster than the economy is improving, which means more workers will have to survive without any jobless assistance, and families will have less money to put back into the economy,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
The real problem is that we have added only 1.862 million jobs since the June 2009 recovery while adding 4 million people to the eligible workforce. We have spent the last three years falling behind, not catching up, and the media seems incapable of connecting those dots.
Hey, who would have dreamed that Mitt Romney could use evolution to unite the social-conservative base? Thanks to Barack Obama’s “evolution” on same-sex marriage, and Romney’s declaration that he will remain unmoved on the topic, social conservatives who had heretofore pledged to remain on the sidelines are now suiting up for November: Social conservatives who doubted Mitt Romney now have a reason to rally around him after President Barack Obama’s embrace of gay marriage.
Despite the fact that very conservative and religious voters didn’t support Romney in the primary, their fierce opposition to the issue will give the presumptive GOP nominee a way to harness conservative enthusiasm in November.
And for Romney, whose position on same-sex marriage has been consistent over the years, conservative activists say Obama’s declaration may be a way for Romney to finally prove his bona fides to voters on the right who have always been suspicious that he’s not one of them.
“President Obama just ‘evolved’ himself into a one-term president,” said Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage. “This is a disaster for the Democratic Party: The reality is that the exact states he needs to win are the states that have overwhelmingly passed legislation defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”
“What I’m hearing from folks around the country is: ‘Game on, we’re in, we will do whatever is necessary to elect Mitt Romney now because Obama has shown where he really stands,’” Brown said.
It’s difficult to know just how much this will help Romney. Part of the problem in discerning that is calculating just how disaffected evangelicals and social conservatives would have really been in the general election. It may be difficult to imagine millions of them sitting on their hands when given the opportunity to vote Obama out of office, but at least a few activist groups have threatened to do so unless Romney engaged in some explicit ring-kissing to their agendas. Obama’s announcement this week might have taken all of that off the table and repositioned their thinking about Romney as no longer not reliable enough, but now a much better option in contrast to the status quo. Best of all, that doesn’t require Romney to actively adopt those agendas and potentially alienate social moderates.
This hot-button issue might provide even more than simple motivation to cast votes. With this attack on traditional values, it seems inevitable now that social-conservative groups will unlock their wallets and checkbooks in an effort to fight Obama over the next five-plus months. Put that on top of the battle that Catholic bishops are now fighting with Obama in the parishes over the HHS mandate on contraception and sterilization and we may see the largest faith-based mobilization and alliance ever in a presidential election.
For that reason, I’d guess that Obama will try to find his way to an accommodation with the USCCB over the HHS mandate. I’m still surprised he hasn’t done so already to defuse the anger among Catholics who voted for him in 2008, but now he can’t afford to fight both the Catholics and a newly-mobilized evangelical movement. Otherwise, the next evolution will be, as Brown says, a transition from Obama to Romney in January.
Still think that Barack Obama might pull a convention surprise and put Hillary Clinton on the ticket and bounce the human gaffe machine Joe Biden out of his administration? Edward Klein has a reminder for all of us why Hillary wasn’t on the ticket in 2008. The title for Klein’s new book for Regnery on Barack Obama, The Amateur, comes from a conversation that took place last summer between Hillary and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in a passage excerpted by the New York Post today:
“Barack Obama,” Bill Clinton said, according to book excerpts, “is an amateur.”
The withering criticism is incredible, given the fact that Bill Clinton is actively campaigning for Obama’s re-election.
But according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president’s home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.
“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating . . . You know better than Obama does,” Bill said.
Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.
Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”
Hillary replied that it didn’t make any sense to take a risk now (in mid-2011), which implies that she’s not as ready to hang up her political spurs as she claims. Bill responded that the nation needed Hillary, but then amended it to “The country needs us!“ That is, of course, the same selfless attitude that so many of us recall from the Clinton days. The memories of The Big Me have only faded because the self-absorption of the current President makes Bill Clinton look like the amateur in that regard.
Besides, had Hillary run against Obama, it would likely have finished both of them. The fight would have drained the surprisingly limited resources that Obama has accrued and would have forced Hillary to do real damage to Obama in a primary. There would have been no guarantee that she would have won, either, against an incumbent President whose party establishment would have feared losing the White House altogether had he been supplanted in a primary. Plus, let’s not forget that Hillary couldn’t beat Obama when she was the favorite and had a large initial funding edge. If Obama lost a general election after taking damage from the Clintons, the party would never have forgiven her — or Bill, for that matter.
Otherwise, this is just popcorn-passing time for Republicans. The Clintons will deny the quotes, and they’ll go after Klein as a tool of Regnery, a conservative publisher known for its broadsides against the Obama administration. Klein has a resume that might make that difficult, however, as Amazon notes in the entry for the book:
Edward Klein is a seven-time New York Times bestselling non-fiction author. He is also the former foreign editor of Newsweek and former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine. Klein frequently contributes to Vanity Fair and Parade, and currently lives in New York, New York.
In other words, he’s no amateur. This new book just might have to be The Official Book of the Obamateurism Series here at Hot Air. It definitely makes my reading list.
