Monday Open Thread

 

Looks like no less a GOP operator than Bill Kristol has conceded that the economy was going down in flames under Bush, and Obama has turned it around pretty well.  He says Romney needs to make the campaign a referendum on the next four years, but good luck with that in both ways - either convincing Romney to go with that game plan, or finding any sort of win in it. 

But it doesn't exactly do wonders for the logic of Romney's campaign as it is. 

In other news, I know it will shock you to find out that Chick-Fil-A's purported withdrawal of support from anti-gay causes was a shell game.  Instead of sending money directly to these causes, they were holding a fundraiser where other people would send checks to the anti-gay outfits.

Exactly how is this not bearing false witness, guys?  Gotta love those Christian values.

Open thread.

Comments

[janinsanfran]

Just want to note that the NYT has an article to today on Boomers turning on the Republicans, switching from McCain last time to Obama this time. We like "our" Medicare and Social Security. And we're 37 percent of the electorate. The Reps are really going down in flames. If only they weren't taking whole swathes of the country with them!

[paula]

Jan, I'd like to think some of our blogs had something to do with this turnaround. Ronni alone has thousands of readers, many of whom would fit the profile.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The Kristol piece is a lot more significant than that. Steve Benen is perfectly right that this is a rejection of Romney's entire argument for voting for him. It is 'papered over' by a suggestion that Republicans fight it out on foreign policy and national security issues -- really, after Mitt the Twit, the killing of Bin Laden, and Libya? -- but it is a strong argument not just for ignoring Romney, but for working against him.

Even I, in my 'over-sanguine' view of the election hadn't foreseen this, even though it is obvious in hindsight. Romney is not merely the "Worst. Candidate. Ever." (and he definitely is that) but finally the (comparatively) intelligent Republicans are beginning to realize what sort of President he would make. And they are getting scared, as scared -- for different reasons -- as we are.

We're mostly afriad of him because he is a Republican, and we see him as ushering in the full party platform. They see him as an irresponsible, self-centered, permanently adolescent wild card, who will do or say anything for his own advantage -- and is simply too stupid to realize when he shoots himself in the foot.

(Ironically, his very riches keep him further out of control -- a moderately wealthy man could at least be bribed into line, but Romney will do whatever his little brain thinks is to his advantage -- and assumes he's got free 'mulligans' on everything, that if he repeats a lie often enough it will be believed, or he can just wipe or hide the evidence.)

Most Republicans are wrong men whose wrongness has them make evil decisions rather than being intrinsically evil themselves -- we can think of exceptions from DeMint to Perkins to Limbaugh to Chaney as well as others whose 'wrongness' has taken them into the lands of insanity (*Hi, Michelle, Steve, Alan") -- and I think they -- the honestly wrong ones -- sincerely love the country in their own way. They have -- or will -- imagine a foreign policy crisis happening with Romney at the other end of the '3 A.M. Phonecall.' The more that picture sinks in, the less they will want him to win.

(These people -- even the ones who use 'Obama-hatred' as a tactic, know he's been a competent, centrist President. They might not like what he'd do in a second term, but they know what it would be, in general, and they can live with it. Romney could blow up anything by accident. You don't give the keys to your half-million dollar custom-made car to an alcoholic teenager whose girlfriend likes to give blowjobs to drivers while driving.)

[oddjob]

Thanks for the link, jan!

[low-tech cyclist]

Great column by Ezra up at Bloomberg:

[T]he worst of Romney’s comments were these: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

When he said this, Romney didn’t just write off half the country behind closed doors. He also confirmed the worst suspicions about who he is: an entitled rich guy with no understanding of how people who aren’t rich actually live.

The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier.

That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream.

The problem is that he doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, or the agonizing choices faced by families in which both parents work and a child falls ill. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.

[kathy a.]

that really is a stinging criticism from kristol. he suggests that romeny go forward by pressing national security and foreign policy -- but romney is tragically weak on foreign policy. (insult britain; use the murder of overseas personnel to attack the president.)

jan -- great article on boomers and medicare. the free market is not much of a solution to health problems that more or less come inevitably with age; nor is "get a job, you moocher."

l-tc -- ezra nails it. things really are much harder when one cannot just purchase help, or afford things like appliances or a car. working parents who are not in the wealthy category are just constantly juggling, and the less they have, the harder it is.

and looping back to jan -- foisting the costs and physical burdens of elder care (or care of a disabled family member) onto a generation that is struggling with their own lives and careers is not a decent solution. i honestly do not think romney has ever had to think in practical terms about that kind of problem; there has always been plenty of money.

[kathy a.]

actually, paul ryan is talking about death panels again. he knows the concept of "death panels" is false, but why let an inflammatory phrase go to waste when one is trying to trick seniors into voting for one?

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Going off politics and onto the open, another example of "It's obvious in hindsight, but nobody predicted it" is the Kindle's revival of long forgotten public domain books, particularly detective and mystery stories.

I still don't have an actual Kindle itself -- maybe by Christmas, especially if they combine the keyboard one with the new 'paperbright' ink -- but I downloaded the free app for the PC, and I am amazed at what is available for next to nothing -- or in many cases actually nothing, there are hundreds of these available literally for "$0.00" along with with 'expensive' ones that give you twenty books for $0.99 or $1.99. I started with the complete Baum Wizard of Oz series, something I've long wanted -- actually, because of various editions looks like I'll have to double my investment, and spend another $1.99 because the one I got didn't include the short stories.

But then I discovered the detective colections, writers I hadn't seen for 50 years, and which were 'old books' even then -- or whose names and occasional short stories I'd find in anthologies but never dreamed of finding the complete books. I could go on for pages just listing the names that would be meaningless to most of you and incredible to any of you who share my interest, but I'll just discuss one.

in 1878 Anna Katharine Green (yet another contribution Brooklyn has made to the arts) produced THE LEAVENWORTH CASE -- the name is a family name, not a reference to the prison. It was the first American Detective Novel, the first Detective Novel anywhere written by a woman, the book that introduces Ebenezer Grice, the first series detective. Because of that, it has always been possible to find the occasional reprint of the book if you spent a lot of time looking -- or had plenty of money to spend.

But she wrote about 40 books, and the others had been forgotten, "Grandma's attic books" (the sort where there are maybe 100 known copies in the hands of libraries and collectors, and maybe a dozen more waiting to be found in old trunks or forgotten boxes -- and that's it.) Even THE GOLDEN SLIPPER, the nine cases featuring Violet Strange, the first female private detective, was, 80 years ago, condemned by Ellery Queen as being 'merely of historical interest' -- an intensely wrong call. (Actually two of the cases still deserve mention as 'simon-pure detective stories' and the others -- Green never wrote the same story twice as far as I have seen -- drift into Poe territory, into one at first absurd but extremely haunting melodrama, and into a story that, well, you won't believe this but imagine an O. Henry story whose ending turns a stark story into a Shakespearian tragedy.

Green is a great writer -- but not a great stylist. Spme of her stylistic peculiaritoes seem quite deliberate character points. She has a great skill at getting into her character's minds and staying there so that her narration is the events seen not just through the eyes, but the heart and emotions of th narrator -- when she uses one. Thus THE LEAVENWORTH CASE is a 'straight' detective story -- and a good one that still holds up, in fact the central idea was used on a current tv show the week before I read the book -- but the narrator is an emotional, romantic young lawyer, one who could go from 'interested spectator' to 'passionately in love' in a moment. It's natural he'd see and write things in a melodramatic style because he sees things that way.

A STRANGE DISAPPEARENCE, the second Grice book is a true, classic melodrama -- but again one based on real emotions, exaggerated but believable even today. But it is narrated by a brash, intelligent, univolved policeman, and the style is far more 'matter of fact' even with the melodrama being recounted.

(Unfortunately some of Green's stylistic lapses, particularly run-on sentences and paragraphs -- are not deliberate, and it takes a (very brief) time to get used to her. It's worth it, but, before Kindle, you never would have had the chance. LEAVENWORTH might have been reprinted occasionally, I could barely see a publisher producing the Strange stories, or even the three novels featuring Amelia Butterworth along with Grice -- even Christie credited Butterworth as the inspiration for Miss Marple. But those would be small editions that would go mostly to libraries and collectors. The others wouldn't have been worth even considering in 'dead tree' editions. But they are sensible to be produced in an edition which costs no more for additional copies -- and which people are willing to volunteer to produce the originals just to preserve the works.

Oh, and if you decide to check out the Green -- and I've only read about five of the books so far -- the Strange stories are a nice place to start. The first one is minor, an introduction and, I'd guess, a test to see if her audience would accept a female private investigator. Then things take off, every story is different, and I'd guess at least three will haunt you for months and years, they are that good. (Green never insulted her audience, and never created cardboard characters unaffected by the events she told. Murder and death affect people, and Green understands people.)

But also get XYZ -- A DETECTIVE STORY (and I have no idea what the title means, btw.) This is one of the most charming books in the field, indescribable and pure delight, and the last sentence might be among the great last sentences in the entire field.

[nancy]

Prup, In checking in on morialekafa, who, as I recall, was added to the blogroll at your suggestion, one finds him in mourning over the sudden loss of his younger wife.
He wrote a moving tribute to her. Special people, both of them. I believe I remember you indicating that he is in his 80's. She was 60. And as he wrote, it wasn't supposed to happen this way.

[kathy a.]

david corn revisits the romney BigBuck fundraiser debacle, with the most damning line:

I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

he doesn't get out much, is the kindest thing i can say. mostly, this line makes me seethe with fury. i don't do furious seething well.

[Sir Charles]

Hey guys!

I've been lawyerin' my head off.

I have to say I am amazed at the degree to which the Romney campaign is an utter mess -- and that the lion's share of the blame clearly falls on the candidate.

I am not sure what Kristol's game is -- it puzzles me.

We should all think about sending some money to Tester, Heitkamp, and Baldwin. And maybe Chris Murphy in CT, although I still have a hard time believing that he could lose to Linda McMahon.

[beckya57]

Hi SC, I've sent some $$ via the Act Blue button on Balloon Juice. Easy way to do it. I have an auto deduction on my credit card for Obama, but I agree that we need to shift our focus a little to the congressional races. Not that we should be taking anything for granted in the presidential race....

kathy, I don't do seething well either, and Romney brings that out in me too--that is, when I'm not laughing my head off. Drinking game for the debates: have a drink every time Romney says something really stupid. Of course this would have us all under the table within an hour....

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Sir C: Any supposedly intelligent adult who has flown even occasionally -- not to say owns his own plane -- amd who doesn't understand why airplane windows can't be opened at 35,000 feet doesn't have the mental capacity to be president of anything. (And any person who continues to rely on "Etch-a-sketch" Fehrnstrom through a decade of gaffes doesn;t have the judgment required.)

Romney's campaign has been this big a mess from the beginning. His surrogates have dissed him, his base doesn't trust him, he can't stop lying -- and lying incompetently -- and he has no issue, no experience, no attractiveness, no reason to vote for him except "I'm not Obama." (I still insist that if he'd come out for marijuana legalizatio in the Spring, it was the least offensive 'pivot to the center' and would have knocked out all but the craziest of Paulistas, but he couldn't dare even that.)

I still think he's got a long way to fall -- and barring an incredible turnaround at tje first debate, he'll fall every inch of it.

[nancy]

kathy -- Read that earlier today and it's all over the twitterverse. What blasé self-important hauteur. It's the guy with scissors at prep school school on display. "That hair. That's just not right." My mob and I are going to put things right, by golly. Convince? Responsibility?

I also agree with the good folks at First Draft who called this Mormon "male crapola."

At the risk of sounding like a religious bigot, this is classic LDS male crapola. Mormon men are raised to think of themselves as mini-Gods who have reserved seats in the great luxury suite in the sky. The Willards among them lack curiosity because God, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Ezra Taft Benson are on their side or some such shit.

Sorry, but been there with the extended family and it's too true. Unfortunately.

Sir C, Lawyer away. Am sending my paltry bucks to Tester and Rich Cowan, my local Democratic challenger to Rep. "there's no war on women" Cathy McMorris. He founded a filmmaking company, North by Northwest, and is getting ready to throw up ads. He knows his biz. We shall see.

[beckya57]

nancy, good luck on getting Cathy McMorris out. That woman is an embarrassment to the rest of us.

On a totally different subject: Will I be run off of this blog forever if I admit I went to the Train concert last night and had a really good time? I'm assuming you music sophisticates will be appalled. I like a lot of blues and jazz, but sometimes light pop is just the thing I want to hear.

[Sir Charles]

I don't know what to make of Mittens' airplane windows bit. I mean it is so ridiculously stupid -- and I don't really think he is stupid. Just weird and out of touch and arrogant and pathologically indifferent to the truth.

I was on a plane once -- an MD 80 -- when the seal on the rear door got a little balky mid-flight. You could hear the noise increase and the flight attendant sent to check on it peered around the corner from the rear work station rather than stand in front of it, which was quite comforting to me and the other guys sitting directly across from it. I was really happy when we landed and they took the plane out of service for my connecting flight. I had that seat belt pulled so tight it hurt.

[kathy a.]

richard cohen hands the republican party its hindquarters.

[kathy a.]

becky, i'm not exactly a music sophisticate. if it made you happy, it is good.

[low-tech cyclist]

becky - I'm not gonna insult anyone over their musical tastes. A couple months ago, I heard an ad for the Turtles' "Happy Together" tour, accompanied by the Grass Roots, the Buckinghams, and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. The last three are straight 1960s light pop - teenybopper stuff, and while the Turtles are harder to categorize, that's where they aimed, just with a bit more tongue in cheek at times.

And I really, really wanted to go to that concert, but it was the same weekend as the kid's birthday, it was way on the other side of the DC megalopolis (Wolf Trap's a loooong way from Calvert County), and it just wasn't do-able.

I'll also admit to liking Neil Diamond (up to about 1972, anyway) and Glen Campbell.

So I'm not in a position to look down my nose at anyone's musical tastes. When it comes to music, you gotta like what you like.

[low-tech cyclist]

kathy - the anecdote from that David Corn piece was devastating.

I don't usually quote excerpts this long, but:

Here was Romney sharing his view that Americans who don't make enough money to pay income taxes and his fellow citizens who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or other government programs are lesser people than he and the millionaires before him. These people, Romney was saying, are not adults; they do not, and will not, fend for themselves or do what they must to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and care for themselves and their family members. It was an arrogant insult spoken with true detachment. This was 100-percent 1-percent.

My view of this one line was reinforced this morning. I walked into a store to buy some cleaning products. The 40-something woman at the counter rang up the purchases and kept looking at me. Once I had paid, she said in a low voice, "I really don't want to bother you, but..."

Go ahead, I said.

But I know who you are, and I just want to say that Mitt Romney doesn't know what he's talking about. Not at all. I am college-educated, but look where I'm working now. I can't find a better job now. And, and….

She paused and lowered her voice more:

I'm on food stamps. I didn't have a choice. I'm making about $12,000 a year now. And I need them. I work hard. And I'm looking for other work. But just because I'm on food stamps doesn't mean I'm not taking care of myself. Doesn't he know that? Doesn't he get it?

Apparently not. Many people on food stamps, Medicaid, and the like do strive to provide for themselves and their families. The working poor…work. They may even park cars at fancy fundraisers for minimum wage. Romney all-too glibly characterized anyone receiving any public assistance as a parasitic freeloader, and he revealed an us-versus-them attitude that was tremendously ungracious, mean-spirited, and predicated on ignorance of the real world.

"Thank you, thank you," the woman said. "You showed us what he really thinks of us, what he thinks of me."

Mitt Romney built that.

Anybody who votes for that worthless POS should have the decency to first figure out just what they would say to that woman if they'd been the ones to hear her tell her story.

[low-tech cyclist]

We should all think about sending some money to Tester, Heitkamp, and Baldwin. And maybe Chris Murphy in CT, although I still have a hard time believing that he could lose to Linda McMahon.

SC - haven't sent any money to Chris Murphy's campaign, because like you, I expect he's going to open up some daylight soon. I just can't believe Linda McMahon has a chance in Connecticut. But I'll chip in if things haven't improved for him in a week or two.

But I've chipped in to the campaigns of Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Shelly Berkley (NV) (have I mentioned that it's great that we've got a bunch of topnotch women candidates?), Jon Tester (MT), Tim Kaine (VA), Richard Carmona (AZ), and Joe Donnelly (IN).

If I had to give money today, I'd probably drop Warren and Kaine from the list, because they're opening some daylight over their opponents, and Warren's got a pretty big war chest at this point. (I expect Kaine does too - he's well-connected.) I don't know much about Donnelly, and he may be a bit of a Blue Dog, but that's Indiana we're talking about. An actual liberal Dem isn't going to win Indiana unless John Mellencamp ever decides to run.

There's a good ActBlue page that has just about all the close Senate races on it, for one-stop-shopping convenience: 11 (Make That 12) Key Senate Races We Can Win. It's got all the candidates I gave to, plus Chris Murphy (CT), Claire McCaskill (MO), Martin Heinrich (NM), and Bill Nelson (FL). Heinrich and Nelson have opened up solid leads, so I'd recommend giving so some subset of the other ten.

[oddjob]

Warren's out-raised Scott Brown ever since she jumped into the race, but Brown had a big, big head start.

Also, I've indicated before I worry about a Wilder effect come election day. Scott Brown is very much "one of the guys" and for rather a few Massachusetts voters that seems to mean quite a lot.

[low-tech cyclist]

That's a real possibility, oddjob. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure that giving more money to her is likely to make that much difference. She's probably got enough bucks to make her case, and at this point, her campaign will stand or fall on how well she does that, and the quality of her GOTV effort.

I think there's more bang to the buck to be had from giving to off-the-radar campaigns in smaller states - North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, and to a lesser extent Wisconsin, Arizona, and Indiana.

[oddjob]

You're probably right about that at this point. Regarding GOTV, fortunately for her the mayor of Boston has decided to go all out helping her win. Despite being a Democrat himself he hasn't always done that with Dem. candidates for statewide races, especially if he personally liked the Republican candidate (& he personally likes Brown).

[low-tech cyclist]

Glad to hear that, oddjob. It's perfectly OK for him to say that Brown's a nice guy, but as a Democrat, he's got to base his decisions on how Brown and Warren are likely to vote in the Senate.

Nothing wrong with having a beer or playing a round of golf with someone on the other side of the partisan divide, but when it's back to politics, they're still on the other side.

[oddjob]

About a year and half ago Mayor Menino publicly stated he thought Brown was unbeatable.

[low-tech cyclist]

As my grandfather used to say, "another great theory ruined by the facts."

[nancy]

Remember way back when the Republicans were thought of as the party of slightly square grown-ups. Here are some Brown staffers at a rally in Boston on Saturday . Racist sexist children. Nothin' to it. Bonus fashion faux pas.

[oddjob]

How classy. His regular office staffers no less.......

[oddjob]

I wonder how warm Senator Brown's next meeting with Massachusetts Wampanoags is going to be.......

[kathy a.]

what is wrong with these people? warren did not mention this piece of her ancestry to gain any preferences in admission or hiring; they know that.

it is simply something from what she has been told of her family history that causes her to think about the different experiences people have had. brown hit pretty low when he said, "look at her" to denigrate the idea that her own family history had any impact on her thinking. these latest antics go a bit further, denigrating "those people" who are in her family history. that is reprehensible.

my husband's grandparents escaped the armenian genocide in 1915, when they were teens. no, we don't have paperwork about that; but he was partly raised by those grandparents. we have always wanted our kids to know what happened, the struggles they went through, and that most of their families were lost.

my husband is only half armenian; his father was a blondish, blue-eyed guy of french descent. my husband looks armenian, and our son also has darker skin and middle-eastern features -- so our son has been called a "raghead." and our daughter turned out blond and blue-eyed, with a considerable assist from my family's genetics. is one of my kids a terrorist by default, and the other "one of us"? is one a liar if she mentions the experiences of her great-grandparents?

these messages from the brown campaign are stupid and ugly in ways that i care about.

[nancy]

Somehow in all the election noise, I missed the fact that stupid, spoiled, entitled and nasty frat-brat child, Ben Quayle R-AZ, will be no longer be playing games in the House after November. I know nothing about his primary challenger but can't imagine he could possibly be worse than mini-Quayle. This story, involving his high-fiving on the floor of the House after defeating a bill to repeal a 2003 military pay cut, in May of 2011, and the arrest of and aftermath for a military mother in the gallery that day, ranks right there with those stories that fully encapsulate what the GOP has allowed itself to frivolously become. Check your blood pressure before reading.

kathy -- what is wrong with these people? This is what's wrong with them.

[Crissa]

I took aeronautical engineering, so I know planes. Not as well as a real pilot or engineer, mind, but I'm no idiot.

Still, if there's a fire in an aircraft, the pressure in the cabin is really the least of your concerns. You can't really get much oxygen from smokey air, no matter the pressure. And there's this huge pool of clean air outside. Why wouldn't you want to open the damn windows?

Of course, that's the only time you would want them to open, which is why they don't.

Romney may have been joking - and reporters there said the audience laughed and he seemed to intend it so - but mostly this just confirms that his sense of humor sucks rocks.

[low-tech cyclist]

From Politico:

Paul Ryan has gone rogue. He is unleashed, unchained, off the hook.

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Maybe it's a cunning plot to make us overconfident. Hell, I can't believe it myself - my Too-Good-To-Be-True-ometer is pinging like crazy. But there's more:

Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)

Gilligan. I mean, way too good to be true, right?

Of course, buried in there is "Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers," which I don't think was intended as tongue in cheek. But the idea that any serious pol would take on Dan Senor as one of his closest advisors is definitely one for the books. I mean, would that be dumb or insane, or both? I knew Senor was advising the campaign, but one of his closest advisors? I've died and gone to heaven.

Nah, this has to be a parody piece.

[low-tech cyclist]

On second read, it's GOT to be parody, but just that Politico would go there is mindboggling.

[kathy a.]

via plum line, brown's attacks on warren's character. (NYT; the link from plum line worked even though i'm over limit.)

i can see why warren did not want to go wading into details of her work at harvard and her work on this very complex asbestos case -- that would be letting brown derail the issues she needed to talk about.

but his attacks are extraordinarily silly. she had a limited role in the asbestos case, to protect a settlement trust fund using her expertise; she had no responsibility for the eventual outcome. explaining in detail the facts, the procedural posture, the legal issues, and her precise role -- that does not fit a sound bite. but this attack is cheap and baseless.

so is the one about warren's work at harvard. teaching law students at one of the premier schools in the country, and writing scholarly books and journal articles, involves a good deal more than showing up for a few hours a week. one does not win an award for excellence in teaching that way. he probably thinks the amount of her pay is the big shocker.

it isn't. law partners in DC bill, on average, $600 per hour. big city low-level associates bill ~ $375/hour. that is income to the firm, and it includes overhead, and not all hours are billable -- but the truth is that warren chose a less lucrative and more challenging path. brown is choosing easy cheap shots, and thinking that reveals something good about his character. what a doofus.

[kathy a.]

p.s. -- i don't mean to suggest that all lawyers are swimming in money. or, that warren was not earning a handsome salary -- she was. but she earned that salary with her talent and hard work, not because she fooled harvard into hiring her and then just sat back and rolled in the cash.

[Sir Charles]

Man, my clients are getting a good deal. My average hourly rate is about $225. After 27 years.

[kathy a.]

i am not a sports person -- but really? romney names jack nicklaus the greatest athlete of the entire last century?

[oddjob]

To those paying attention Brown's attacks are thin gruel, but to those not paying much attention Brown is reminding them that she's "not one of us". Whether that succeeds remains to be seen.

[low-tech cyclist]

kathy - I guess it all depends on how you define athleticism.

For me, 'athleticism' encompasses physical strength, grace, and skill applied across a wide variety of activities. Swinging a bat or golf club is too limited by itself. Mark McGwire was a great power hitter; Willie Mays was a great athlete. Jesse Owens was a great athlete. Darrell Green was a great athlete. And even though I'm not much of a basketball fan, to me, Michael Jordan in his prime was the epitome of a great athlete.

The NFL and the NBA have each showcased hundreds or thousands of greater athletes than Nicklaus. Even baseball, which doesn't require or reward the full range of athletic gifts that football and basketball do, has surely produced a hundred or so greater athletes. Hockey probably too, although I know too little about hockey to speak about that.

[oddjob]

In terms of cardiovascular fitness I'm guessing pro ice hockey athletes are much more fit, and therefore athletic, than most pro golfers are likely to be.

[kathy a.]

well, in retrospect, my note illustrates why warren doesn't want to start refuting this crap with specifics. but on the other hand, "hey, i'm not a lady professor who is blond but says she's native american, vote for me!" does not have a lot of ring to it.

[nancy]

I ♥ Elizabeth. From a campaign event on Wednesday night. I'm not worried so much about a Wilder effect as one where the *guys* in class start rallying around their guy because the "straight A's girl in class" annoys them, harkening back to memories of grade school. Go into voting booth and vote up the guy's guy.

Little bit of town and gown thrown in as well? I'm puzzled as to why Massachusetts would be rallying around Brown. What has he done to deserve six years in the Senate? Viewed from a perch on the other coast, this does not make sense. I'm guessing all the trendy "end of men" pronouncements of late aren't helping her at this juncture either.

[kathy a.]

mother jones, with an analysis of guns and mass shootings.

[oddjob]

I'm not worried so much about a Wilder effect as one where the *guys* in class start rallying around their guy because the "straight A's girl in class" annoys them

That was what I meant by a "Wilder effect". That's the sort of thing that I think polling will miss.

[oddjob]

I'm puzzled as to why Massachusetts would be rallying around Brown. What has he done to deserve six years in the Senate?

He's come across as relatively non-partisan, and the moment he opens his mouth it's really, really clear from his accent that "he's one of us". To the extent that Massachusetts voters are tribal (& there are quite a few Mass. voters who are exactly that) he connects to those voters extremely well.

[John Q]

Hey, Lowtech:

Off subject of your post here, but anyway...

About your comment on Brad's blog:
Al Gore took terrorism seriously. And the approach he and Clinton went with for the Millennium attacks would have worked perfectly to foil the 9/11 attacks. There were people in lower levels in the FBI and whatnot who had evidence that they were desperately trying to get their bosses to move up the ladder. And if there had been people on top who had been sending down word that they were looking for exactly that sort of thing, then the bosses who were putting a lid on their subordinates would instead have been seeing their subordinates' alarms as a ticket to a promotion. We would have taken a subpoena to examine Moussaui's laptop to a FISA court in August, not on the afternoon of September 11.

No, 9/11 would have been just another day if Gore had been President.

I happened to meet the Clinton White House anti-terrorism advisor (now at the Sate Dept.) a couple of years ago. He told me just what you said above.

[oddjob]

Ironic, John Q, and to top it all if that had happened President Gore would not have received any credit for preventing 9/11. He still would have been regarded by so many as a tiresome, self-righteous, self-promoting, scolding nanny not worthy of respect or to be president (regardless of whether that was true or not).