Clarion Content

The Clarion Content is a dedicated and loyal follower of Nate Silver's statistical analysis of elections in his blog the 538.¹ Long time readers find great irony in this, because as a baseball analyst the Clarion Content's editor is likely to be the first one jumping up and down screaming if Mike Trout somehow steals Miguel Cabrerra's Most Valuable Player Award. Silver, the creator of PECOTA, is renown in baseball circles as a statistical guru only slightly below Bill James on pantheon.

Statistics aren't everything. Math isn't religion. It is a language, descriptive, but limited by its own conceits and structures.²

The problem is that the average moron in the media doesn't speak math. In 2008, Silver correctly predicted the Obama vs. McCain results in 49 of 50 states. He predicted every Senate race correctly. In 2010, he did pretty well too, nailing 36 out of 37 gubernatorial races, although missing on some individual House and Senate races.

This year, using his rigorous statistical analysis and as many polls as he can lay hands on, he has been predicting an Obama victory for some time. His model did show Romney making gains after the first debate, but it was from getting beat handily in the Electoral College to getting beat barely. In the weeks since, the model has drifted back up to an 86% chance of Obama winning, with the two most likely outcomes being the President gets 300 electoral votes, rated a 14% chance, and the President gets 330 electoral votes, rated a 17% chance.

Rocket scientists, like MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, laughably conflate polling and statistics to understand the President and Romney each have a 50% chance of winning. Ah, the dim.³

In fact, Silver predicts that Obama will win only 50.6% of the popular vote. But as those of you who are old enough to remember the 2000 Presidential Election know, the popular vote is not the deciding factor for presidential elections in the good ol' U.S. of A. We have this rigamorole known as the Electoral College.⁴

Silver has done the legwork and the math. He is convinced Obama is going to win. One reason he cited as an example on the 538, in twenty-two polls of swing states Friday, not national polls, individual state polls, Obama led in nineteen, two showed a tie and Romney led in one. This is not what one would call a dead heat, regardless of the national aggregate numbers.

Silver is not alone in his quantitative analysis, Deadspin notes, "the criminally underrated Princeton Election Consortium... [which] nailed the electoral vote count in 2004, and missed it in 2008 by just one... [forecasts] Obama's re-election chances at 98%."

Vote! The Clarion Content's article is not a reason, not to vote. It is about math and bias. Please, please, please go vote! North Carolina is going to be razor close for the distribution of its electoral college votes. There are also a bevy of important state races which will effect everything from schools and state taxes, to energy policy and the environment.⁵


Notes
¹The 538 sadly now belongs to the New York Times, meaning we can read it no more than ten times per month.
²Show us past the Godel theorem, "For every consistent formalization of arithmetic, there exist arithmetic truths that are not provable within that formal system." And furthermore, almost all statisticians concede, small sample sizes can yield lots of surprising results, often called "noise." See the Central Limit Theorem.
³Deadspin notes in its article about Silver, just like math class in high school, some of the bullies use Silver's ostensible nerdiness and high-pitched voice to accuse him of one of their greatest sins, homosexuality. Of course, if he is smart and effeminate, he must be queer. Ahhhh, the sophistication of the narrative that comes from certain parts of the Right Wing.
⁴Interestingly, one might wonder if this will bring the Republicans behind a proportional distribution of states' electoral college votes, rather the winner take all model used everywhere but Maine and Nebraska.
⁴The era of fracking in North Carolina is about to begin.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Politics, Predictions

Today we bring you a special addition of the Clarion Content's periodic feature, Interesting links and Links of Interest. To see old Interesting Link posts click here and scroll down.

We find and you, the readers, submit good stuff that might not otherwise cross our radar.


Like Dutch here...telling us how he really feels.

First up, a piece from the site Real Clear Politics challenging whether or not liberals and Democrats are prepared to debate their positions this coming election season. The thesis is that they are so cocooned, so hostile and unwilling to give any merit to the other side's thoughts and beliefs that they are unable to muster winning arguments against them in the public forum. It is a fascinating take. It is the underlying premise as to why supreme strategists say, 'read your enemy's writings.'

Next, from the New York Times¹, is an evisceration of the myth that a businessman makes a good president for tough economic times. The examples for their argument may be a bit thin, almost anecdotal, referring to the Roosevelts, Eisenhower and Reagan as great non-businessman presidents, with Herbert Hoover and King George II serving as the examples of businessmen who made lousy presidents. The more compelling critique is their indictment of the foolishness spewing out of Mitt Romney's mouth,

I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birth place of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.²

And you thought, Sarah Palin was a rocket scientist.

Our next article comes from the Economist. Two veteran political analysts, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings Institute, argue that partisan Congressional gridlock is even worse than it looks. They say that America’s political parties have become as vitriolic and vehemently adversarial as the parties are in a parliamentary system. Unfortunately while a parliamentary system allows the majority to rule, as the opposition waits and plots for the next election, America’s separation of powers hardly gives one party the power to rule unconstrained. The result is disastrous gridlock surrounding many, many real time problems.

In addition to the carping typical of so many political tomes, Mann and Ornstein do offer some solutions. Sadly, they are very pessimistic about the likely outcomes of the 2012 election. Quoting from the Economist,

They fear that the coming election will neither affirm the existing order nor accomplish sweeping change "in a way that will recreate a functional and legitimate political process". If President Obama is elected he may still be hobbled by a divided Congress, or one in which the Republicans have a majority in both chambers. Even if the Democrats recapture the House and hold the Senate, the Republican minority could continue to use filibusters and other measures to block the majority's business. And even if the Republicans captured the White House and both chambers and embarked on sweeping change, the changes "would come to a country that is deeply divided politically, and more than half of whose citizens would likely strongly oppose these moves."

Finally, a block of three interesting articles highlighting the strong anti-incumbent sentiment still prevalent in this election cycle. First from Fox News, the story of sixteen year Democrat Congressman, Sylvestre Reyes, who lost his primary race in southwest Texas. This second one is not a joke, or if it is, it is a bizarre and foreboding one. 41% of those who voted in the Democratic primary in West Virginia, selected a Texas prison inmate over President Obama. This was probably worse for the Obama re-election bid than "none of the above" giving the president a run for his money in the Kentucky primary. Keith Russell Judd, from his cell in Texarkana, Texas without any organized support, was simply not Obama.

The good news for the White House is that the Republicans are fielding a milquetoast weakling of a candidate. The even better news for President Obama, given the fever pitch of anti-incumbency; the Tea Party and Occupy are dormant not gone, is no viable third party or independent candidate has emerged. It felt to the Clarion Content like this was a year when a Michael Bloomberg or Simon Cowell (jk) could have grabbed the baton and made things interesting. Americans Elect, who spent the last several years organizing and attempting to draft an independent candidate, admitted last month that their efforts have come to naught. No candidate cleared the threshold of required support, not even the darling of rabblerousers everywhere, Ron Paul.

What does this all mean, dear readers? Well you know we are lousy at the predictions business, so we won't hazard a guess at the election's outcome, but we do think voters will be choosing between two choices they are not thrilled by, and turnout will be much lower than in the last presidential election.


Notes
¹Occasionally worthy, though you won't see us going over that pay wall.
²Yes, we believe he was serious, not kidding.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, interesting links, political quips-n-quotes, Politics, Predictions

What, me, worry?

The Clarion Content could not disagree more with the assertion of the New York Times editorial page this morning that President Obama should have used the 14th Amendment to make an end run around Congressional obstructionists and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. It is a suggestion straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook. It advocates that when checked by a legitimate institutional disagreement, presidential power should be expanded so that the executive can still get his or her way. It is the methodology of Empire and dictatorship, the road to ruin.¹

We are glad President Obama did not pursue this course.

We do not think that he made a great deal on the compromise to raise the debt ceiling. We disagree with kicking the problem further on down the road, by appointing a bogus, super-committee to make the hard decisions Congress has been putting off for a generation.² President Obama already ignored the recommendations of his own deficit committee.

We are in no way impressed by President Obama's facetious claim that the Bush II tax cuts for the uber-rich will go away in 2013. Firstly, Obama would have to get re-elected, his prospects look pretty dismal right now. Secondly, he would have to keep his promise to let the tax cuts end, something he has not managed to do in his first term.

Bottomline on the debt deal, typical Washington, an ugly boiler room compromise that solves nothing and only delays the reckoning. It highlights the desperate need for a third party to break the political gridlock.

Obama was right about one thing change is coming, the only question left is the agent. If not Obama...this month has highlighted some of the more extreme alternatives.


¹President Obama has already showed his willingness to follow the Bush II-Cheney guide to concentrating power in the Executive Branch. Signing statements, extraordinary Presidential Czars, Afghan policy, etc.

²Nothing stops progress from happening like a committee.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, constitutional issues, economics, Politics

The Washington Post, certainly no more of an unbiased source than most media outlets, published these notes on how the United States government debt was accumulated.

*Projected federal government surplus in 2001 $2 trillion.

*Projected federal government debt in 2011 $10 trillion.

*50% of this swing is caused by tax revenue decreases (tax cuts) of $6.3 trillion.

*Federal tax collection is at its lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.

*The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have added $1.3 trillion in new debt.

*Obama's economic stimulus package added $719 billion in new debt.

*The TARP bailout program added only $16 billion in new debt.

*Overall King George the II and his follies added over $7 trillion to the government's debt.

*Obama has added $1.7 trillion to the government's debt.

They didn't note, but we read elsewhere, the debt ceiling was raised by Congress seven times during the eight year reign of Bush II.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, economics, Politics

One of our photogs spotted this graffiti in Durham...

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Durham, photos, Politics, Pop Culture

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Politics, Pop Culture

New dog, old tricks?

We can't believe how many times in the last two years we have had to ask the same question?!? How different is Barry Obama from King George the II?

Despite the craven slobbering of the Obama apologist crowd, the facts are he represents more continuity with George Bush II than we ever expected. This today from The Hot Air Archives,

"Obama’s new Afghanistan ambassador is... Bush’s old Iraq ambassador... That would be Ryan Crocker, of course. Please don’t confuse him with David Petraeus, Obama’s top Afghanistan commander who used to be … Bush’s top Iraq commander. Or with Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense who used to be … Bush’s Secretary of Defense.

Gates, of course, is stepping down in a few months. At this rate, I wonder if O will replace him with Rumsfeld."

Oh wait, no we forget, Obama's policy is more nuanced. He is using more remote control drones to shoot missiles into Pakistani villages...

As the author of the Hot Air piece notes, the only saving grace of this appointment would be if it is political cover for the President to back away from his dangerously foolish pledge to keep United States troops on the ground in Afghanistan until 2015. The Clarion Content has long held that there is no political center with which to form a congruent Western style State in Afghanistan. There is no more right or reason to prop up a Hamid Karzai than there is a Muammar Gaddafi or a Bashar al-Assad. (Barry and Hillary are backing only one of those other two, this month.)

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Central Asia, Middle East, Politics, war

Regular readers of the Clarion Content know how bitter we are about the Obama Presidency. Perhaps our hopes were too high. His administration has underlined and put an exclamation point on the premise that there is no significant difference between Republicans and Democrats. Obama was the first major party candidate that the Clarion Content endorsed and oh, how we regret it.

He is cut from the same cloth as Slick Willie and King George the II.

CIA assassinations up under the Obama regime.

Guantanamo still open.

Non-combatants being tried in military courts without the protection of the Constitution.

Signing statements still being used to sidestep the Constitution.

Dictators being backed against freedom fighters wherever it is deemed politically expedient.

Oh, and that rhetoric about helping the little guy, who has been buffeted by King George the II's wars of choice and blase, "Let them eat cake" attitude? Sorry that's out the window.

Tax cuts for the rich extended.

Massive tax breaks for the biggest corporation continue.

And is independent, Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders points out...

Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits, but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Duck and Cover is on-point as usual. It is awfully hard to feel optimistic. There are no saviors over the American horizon, rather a passel of psychotic Nero's are vying for Obama's throne and scepter.

While bearing in mind, the first moment of violence co-opts the Revolution, it is time for radically new approaches.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, corruption, Politics

How bitter is the irony of Obama playing Nixon to Bush II's LBJ in the Middle East? In this scenario Bush's Dad is Kennedy, cautiously engaging in Iraq the same way Kennedy was only willing to dip America's toes into Vietnam. Bush I let the Shi'ites get massacred by Saddam because he was unwilling to commit to a drive on Baghdad. The follies of the son have shown this was the more prudent, if less moral, policy.

Here is Obama, following Bush II's LBJ, after a disastrous War with a massive cost of blood and treasure, he is married to staying the course. But why, Mr. President? For Nixon, the answer was ideological, but Obama is a pragmatist.

Iraq has yet to form a government and civil war is never more than a moment away. Afghanistan is mired in corruption and warlordism. In Pakistan, the United States is on the side of the anti-democrats. America is on the side of the dictators in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Bahrain, too, yet Colonel Quaddafi must go? Alas and alack.

Where is the administration's analysis for maintaining a massive, resented, military presence in Afghanistan? What about supporting an independent Kurdistan? A democratic Pakistan? Why support the status quo in Yemen and Bahrain?

Much like we would have voted for McGovern over Nixon, we should have gone Kucinich or Paul over Obama.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Central Asia, Middle East, Politics, war

Mubarak and Condi yuk it up...

Remember the heady days in the middle of the reign of King George II, when a moment of calm, a lull, an eye in the maelstrom of Iraq's civil war, allowed the mad king to dream of democratic contagion. It was argued for a moment that like so many of Kissinger's dominoes the dictatorships of the Middle East were going to morph into peaceful bucolic multi-party democracies. There was the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, that; that is going well. There was also the full-court press on Egyptian President Hosni Murbarak who made just enough of the right noises to pass the muster of Condi Rice. A sad sack herself, she will go down in history as a world-class dupe.

Sadly, the Obama Administration represents continuity within the American Empire rather than fundamental change, as things stand, Veep Joe Biden is now playing the Condi role. Unfortunately, the fire brigades brought in during the mad reign of King George the II, as they did in so many other places, threw fuel, rather than water, on the fire. Egypt has gone from smoldering to smoking. Faux moves toward democracy gave Murbarak what he thought was cover to attempt to squash and imprison leading voices of dissent and plurality. There were no real changes or democratic accommodations. Mubarak, and more importantly the people of Egypt, fully expect his son to succeed him under the status quo ante. America has ignored, to its detriment, any moderates within the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Today a full-fledged uprising grips Egypt. Stock market worldwide are tumbling in response. Gold and crude oil prices are soaring.

What a wonderful world.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, corruption, economics, Middle East, Politics, public protest, war

This guy, Thomas E. Donilon is replacing this guy, General James L. Jones, Jr.

One of the most influential people briefing President Obama is his incoming National Security Advisor, Thomas E. Donilon. Donilon is an old political hand, for fifty-five. He has been in politics since the Carter administration. As a twenty-something he led Carter's 1980 Democratic convention efforts to fend off a nomination challenge from the recently deceased Teddy Kennedy. (Incidentally, for all the fits and the false starts, that was the only time that Ted Kennedy ever ran for President.)

Donilon, a native Rhode Islander and former adviser to Vice-President Joe Biden, switched his brief sometime shortly after the Carter's defeat in the 1980 general election from political campaigning to foreign policy, parting directions with his former roomie, Terry McAuliffe. Warren Christopher, later Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, suggested Donilon read Dean Acheson's memoir Present at the Creation and consider another course.

The long and winding road has him succeeding General James L. Jones, Jr. of the Marines as President Obama's second National Security Advisor and the 24th in the positions long and unsavory history at the heart of anti-democratic politics in America.

The Washington Post has a fascinating in-depth profile of Tom Donilon, a must read for foreign policy wonks. The Post's Jason Horowitz reports, amongst many other delectable nuggets, that Donilon is the most Asian(India/China) focused of all of Obama's top-level advisors.

Read the whole article here.

Many thanks to long time Clarion Content fave, Information Dissemination for pointing the way.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Politics, thought, war

Once again, President Obama continues and extends the polices of King George II. This is not the change we were hoping for here at the Clarion Content when we endorsed Obama. What say those of you who mocked voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 now?

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, corruption, economics, Politics

"...there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."---Elizabeth Edwards

Labels: 2008 presidential election, quotes, thought

John McCain could not have done any worse...or two sides of the same coin

The Clarion Content is not usually a big fan of Frank Rich of the New York Times Op-Ed page. While well meaning, we feel like, on occasion, Rich overclaims his case to the detriment of the point he is trying to make. Since we are often guilty of the same, perhaps we are more troubled by this habit than most of his audience.

This past week, however, in light of President Barry Obama disgusting and shameful speech given shortly after United States troop strength in Iraq was cut to only 50,000, Rich penned a gem. He quoted Boston University professor of history and international relations Andrew Bacevich, who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. The Pentagon under Obama is rebranding Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn — a “name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid." But despite Obama's, Cheney's and Bush II's attempts to whitewash history, the reality is far different.

Bacevich continues, "common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment...The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget."

Rich reminds us of the obvious fabrication, even at the time, of Rummy's pet attack dog, Paul Wolfowitz. Iraq's oil revenue was going to pay for the costs of the war to the American taxpayer. After over 100,000 deaths, over a trillion dollars of American tax dollars and one global crash later, dear readers, you should read the whole Rich article.

Find it here.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, Central Asia, economics, Middle East, thought, war

This question pictured above is posed by a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minnesota. It is not exactly the center of civilization when one gets to the point in Minnesota where they start naming towns after Wyoming.

According to National Public Radio the push is on to find out who paid to have it put up. The hope is that this will resolve the debate about the billboard's message. Surely, it is ironic?

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Politics, Pop Culture

When our lead political editor was a Cold War kid, this picture consisted of three white males, every year, year, after year. The picture has changed for sure. Has America come as far down the road? Surveys of racism indicate that it has declined. The pollsters believe our attitudes toward women have changed, too. Do we believe them? Have moved as far forward as a society as the picture makes it look like we have?

Labels: 2008 presidential election, facing race, Politics, thought

The Clarion Content happened across two articles that traipsed down the same path but came from very different views about the right and the left of American politics. (Please don't let label confusion trip you up, the spectrum is as broad as the population is diverse.)

One of the articles was on the BBC News website, the other was on the Washington Post site. Both attempt to trace why and how politicians of the left and right appeal to their constituencies. The BBC article, as one might assume, is written from a view sympathetic to the left. Somewhat more surprisingly the Washington Post is from the right. It is a feature is written by Gerard Alexander an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. It is part of a lecture he is delivering called, "Do Liberals Know Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on Knowledge." He is coming from quite a different perspective than the BBC.

It is interesting though that both news organizations chose now to publish articles on the subject. The parallels within the articles fascinate. For example both use the historian Richard Hofstadter to set the scene for the left's perception of the right. In the BBC article titled, "Why do people vote against their own interests?" Hofstadter is paraphrased describing the mixture used to win on the right,"'the paranoid style' of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington."

The BBC wants to explain why the right thinks and behaves the way it does.

Professor Alexander in the Washington Post believes it is the unfair labeling of the right done by the left that has coarsened the debate and diminished the conversation. He, too, cites Hofstadter, "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Both authors cite the use of the phrase Bolshevik plot to describe the Democrats health care plans. The BBC says

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Professor Alexander retorts,

Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments.

The parallels of the two pieces don't end there. Both articles cite books by Drew Western and Thomas Frank. The BBC gives them far more play, quoting a Bush-Gore debate excerpt from Western's book that shows the village idiot Bush "aw shucks" style paralleled versus the wooden, wonkish Gore. Bush dumbs down the issue to make his point and in the court of public opinion win the argument.

The BBC buys Franks's proposition about how this works when it says,

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronizing liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

And then it quotes from Frank about the vicious cycle he perceives on the right,

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining."

Fascinatingly Professor Alexander makes essentially the same argument in the Washington Post. The only difference? The BBC thinks Frank is correct. The professor thinks Frank is belittling right-wing voters and their reasoning.

"...liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas? Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution."

Their conclusions, despite their different takes on the narratives offered by the left to discern the right, are startlingly similar. Both authors see wellsprings of populism shooting up in America. Both see virulent anger and a distaste for intellectual elitism. The BBC says,

"the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all."

Professor Alexander addresses the issue of race that BBC omits. He almost has to, as the right feels compelled to explain away the en masse shift of the American South from the Democratic column to the Republican. The professor's not very convincing answer is that polls show racism has declined, and Obama won. Those who read the quotes of the Joe Sixpack in the South before the last presidential election will find those arguments a bit hard to swallow.

Professor Alexander cites Jay Leno's man on the street interviews and asks if one really believes that Jay only interviews people from the right, of course not is his conclusion. Yet Alexander says the left dismisses the right as if that were so. He cites everyone from John Stewart to the Daily Kos to the Obama White House as being willing to label the right wing and dismissively ignore their policy proposals. Unfortunately, he is reluctant to admit that the right does the same, claiming rather, "A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Still he sounds an important warning in his conclusion, one the Clarion Content firmly believes is important to heed,"Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend...Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras."


Link to the BBC article here. Link to the Washington Post article here.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, economics, media, Politics

Regular readers know that the Clarion Content has been complaining for some time that the Obama administration has represented far too much continuity with previous governmental policies and behaviors and too little change. Perhaps our expectations were raised by the soaring rhetoric of the Obama campaign, as the President's defenders have pointed out he cannot waive a wand and close Guantanamo, for example. And the President did signal in his campaign that he was going to forge onward in Afghanistan, (the decision that most irked the Clarion Content). However, it is when the administration patently reneges on a campaign promise that our hope is dented. One such moment was when Obama and the Senate refused to allow C-Span to tape the conspiring that wrought the now failed Health Care Reform bill. Another such instance occurred yesterday.

The President's most ardent defenders point to the reform of the Justice Department as one of Obama's significant breaks with the reign of King George the II. The Clarion Content does not buy that for a moment. Although, we are willing to grant the administration a temporary pass on Guantanamo, it has yet to stop warrantless wiretapping of phones or speed the declassification of documents. Yesterday in a move that underlines just how embedded corporatism is in American government, the Justice Department announced its approval of a merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. The DOJ claimed that this merger would not increase ticket prices. This is so patently bullshit that it would be easier to argue in favor of the Orwellian equation 2+2=5. Since Ticketmaster and Live Nation came to dominate over the last decade, concert prices have more than doubled and service fees for processing tickets have climbed to as high as 50% per order.

In the first major anti-trust case for the "new" Department of Justice what this opinion makes patently obvious is that Obama has not changed the government's support for big corporations over the little guy one iota. The more evident that becomes, the more likely he is swept aside by the same populists and progressives that brought him to power. Regardless of the claims of his defenders about the Department of Justice, given the choice and the chance, the Obama Administration has repeatedly stood with elite and entrenched interests over those of the outsider.

Like all of us, he will reap what he sows.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, economics, Politics

For all the Clarion Content's criticism of Barry Obama's first year in the presidency, which has recently downshifted from simply poor (ala C-) to outright crummy (more like a D,) it is important to occasionally recall how truly awful his predecessor was. America and Americans should still be weeping at the legacy of the tyrant King George the II (and not just for starting two wars of choice that have cost thousands of lives).

This week another one of King George the II's bequests reached out and bit the country in the ass. The Supreme Court struck down large portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. The vote was along strictly partisan lines. Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, several of whom would have been comfortable sitting on the bench in the CCCP, voted to eviscerate McCain-Feingold. The Clarion Content is reminded despite our disagreements with Al Gore and John Kerry neither of them would have nominated the likes of Alito and Roberts to the bench. (Goodness knows who Ralph Nader or Ron Paul might have put up there.)

The justices (it almost sounds farcical to call them that) King George the II wrought gave the Supreme Court a 5-4 majority to strike down the provisions of McCain-Feingold that banned political advertising paid for by corporations and unions in the thirty days before a presidential primary and sixty days before general elections. The court, cloaking its decision in the rubric of free speech, decided that American elections are indeed for sale. No doubt it was not far from their minds that unlimited corporate spending on elections will disproportionately benefit their benefactors, Republicans and entrenched political interests.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, constitutional issues, Politics

The Democrats couldn't lose his seat, could they?

How abysmal has the Obama presidency been so far?

If one simply judges from the perspective of the American citizen, it has been a C, maybe a C-. Starting with health care was an atrociously bad idea. Going for too ambitious a health care bill compounded the problem. And settling for a bill that may not only be not good, but actively bad, surely proved that three wrongs don't make a right. Escalation in Afghanistan was an even worse decision for the health of American. Still it is year one, the presidency has a steep learning curve, and Obama has at least managed to produce rhetoric on the right side of some constitutional issues. Recall the last guy was an F- who thought of the Constitution as an impediment, so Obama has been better than that by far.

However, if one were to rate Obama strictly as a member of the Democratic Party, which no one on the Clarion Content's current editorial board is, we would have to think that they would be tempted to give him that F. Democrats are on the run nationwide. Obama and health care have set them up to be routed in the mid-term elections. Last week saw retirement announcements by Senators Chris Dodd and Bryon Dorgan, as well as Colorado Governor Bill Ritter. But even more dismaying to Democratic party members has to be that Obama is perceived as so bad that the most solidly blue of states may be abandoning him. Nowhere on the political map is a state as blue as Massachusetts. The Democrats have viewed the state as a birthright since the Kennedy era. But amazingly the special election to fill Edward Kennedy's Senate seat, to be held on January 19th, is in doubt. Or so say some of the polls.

The Wall Street Journal quotes one pollster, "The Massachusetts Senate race is shaping up as a potential disaster for Democrats." Our favorite poll analyst, since the untimely passing of Tim Russert, is Nate Silver. He takes on the various Massachusetts polls on his blog, FiveThirtyEight. His conclusion, "part of being a good forecaster is knowing when to make a bold forecast and knowing when to proceed with more caution; the Massachusetts race calls for a heavy dose of the latter."

Labels: 2008 presidential election, Politics