PJ Media engaged my services this morning to write about Karl Rove’s impending resignation. You can find it here.
A sample:
But why the hate directed toward Karl Rove by the left? Rove may be the toughest political operative produced by either major party in quite a while. He was a combination hatchet man and back alley brawler. I disagree with those who believe he politicized the War on Terror. Certainly he didn’t hesitate to exploit the political advantages presented by the domestic obsession with security following 9/11. But there is a fine line between creating fear and using it for political purposes.
Rove did not create the threats we face. But he never hesitated to remind people of the differences between how the Democrats wanted to fight the War on Terror and how Republicans were managing the threats we face. I challenge any Democrat to say with a straight face that a president from their party would have acted any differently as far as exploiting the philosophical and political differences between the parties on the war. Terrorism is too easy an issue to hit a home run with the public. And like a batter who gets thrown a hanging curve ball, the temptation to swing and knock one out of the park is just too great. If the next president is a Democrat, watch for many of the same charges hurled by the left against Bush about politicizing the War on Terror to be echoed by the right. It probably can’t be helped in this age of polarized, partisan politics – something Rove rarely if ever tried to address in a positive way.
My latest column is up at Pajamas Media. This one is about the decison of South Carolina to move its primary up so that it can still be “First in the South” by beating Florida who themselves moved their primary to top South Carolina.
If this keeps up, we may have Christmas Caucuses in Iowa:
It has even been suggested that presidents be nominated the old fashioned way – at the party conventions. This is how they were chosen for the 150 years prior to the party reforms initiated in the 60s and 70s which were supposed to make the process more “inclusive†and “transparent.†We’ve got inclusiveness and transparency coming out of our ears and look where we are now – Santa Claus and Hillary Clinton coming down the chimney together. Have the reforms improved the quality of candidates? Some would argue that the old wise men of the two parties who used to meet in smoke filled rooms to choose a nominee got it right more often than not. A debatable point to be sure and not relevant when discussing a process that cries out for openness and as much democracy as this poor republic can handle.
We Americans, being inveterate tinkerers, experiment with this primary process every four years. But instead of fixing the machine, we’re like the guy who takes the entire gizmo apart and looks helplessly at the pile of junk on his workbench without a clue how to put it all back together. He tries gamely, hammering away trying to make parts fit together that have no relationship with one another. When he’s finished, there are always a few screws and nuts he somehow couldn’t find room for.
My second article for PJ Media about my excellent adventure at YearlyKos is up. It’s about the eerie feeling of deja vu I’m getting walking around McCormick Place.
It reminds me of 1980:
Anyone who lived through those times and experienced the feeling that ideology and politics had merged so that the ends and means were exactly the same would recognize what is happening at YearlyKos. Top to bottom, inside and out, this movement is nothing less than revolution. The ideas driving it are standard liberal fare; anti-war, health insurance, environmental protection, education, and jobs top the agenda. But the way the issues are being framed by participants in the dozens of panel discussions, workshops, and forums is where the action is. The nuts and bolts savvy of the political activists fuses with the wonks and wise men of the left’s intellectual brain-trust to turn out a brand new way to showcase these ideas to the public.
Some will see my analysis as perhaps reading too much into what is going on there; a bunch of lefties having a conversation with themselves that in the end, won’t amount to a hill of beans.
If you believe that, you ignore the underlying trends in polling and an evolving consensus among Democrats about how they will package their core issues in 2008.
As for those trends, I attended a fascinating panel discussion on the 2008 Election that featured a series of (to my eyes) shocking graphs. These graphs were not “snapshots” of public opinion but rather trends in opinion going back 2 years or more. They revealed in full color the uphill battle faced by the GOP in 2008. On every issue, every perception of the candidates, Democratic trend lines were going up while Republicans were static or trending down.
Trends are not easily reversed. And if what I believe about what is going on at YearlyKos is true, something earth shaking could very well occur on election day in 2008.
NOTE: In my article yesterday, I quoted Markos Zuniga as using the word “cleanse” to describe the plans of the netroots to remake the Democratic party. The phrase Zuniga actually used was “cleaning the Democratic Party out.”
I regret the inaccuracy of the quote and the fact that this mistake was compounded by the negative connotations of the word “cleanse” which escaped my notice in my haste to write the piece.
I apologzie for the error and any aspersions cast on Mr. Zuniga.
My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s about my excellent adventures wandering around the YearlyKos convention.
I’ll have more to say about this next week. Until then, here’s a sample from my column today:
The third annual YearlyKos Convention got underway today at McCormick Place in Chicago with 1500 delegates from around the country attending workshops and listening to political experts while getting primed for political battle in 2008.
And as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, AKA “Kos,†made crystal clear at a press conference this afternoon, the battle will not only be against Republicans, but also against Democrats who need to be “cleansed†from the party. Kos didn’t name any names, saying we will find out “soon enough†which Democrats would be targeted for defeat in the primaries. But his message was clear; on issues near and dear to the hearts of the progressive on line community, Democrats will adapt or they will face the wrath of this new force in politics.
In effect, Kos has promised to remake the Democratic Party in the image of the netroots. And while many observers think that this would pull the Democratic Party too far to the left, Markos disagrees.
“There is no Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic party anymore. We are the center,†he said.
I may not get much on the site today or tomorrow due to my attendance at the netroots convention.
By at 2007-06-30
Roger Federer will go for his fifth straight Wimbledon title this month.
My latest Pajamas Media sports column is up. It’s about Roger Federer and his quest for a fifth straight Wimbledon tennis title. A sample:
You can’t help but feeling sorry for his opponents. There is no weakness in his game to plan on exploiting. When he powers his 125 MPH serve, you pray your racket can find the ball. His cross court forehand – “The best shot in our game,†according to John McEnroe – has opponents giving up on getting to the ball before he hits it. And in recent years his backhand has improved so much that serving to it is just asking for trouble.
But what Roger Federer has that no other player of this generation of tennis stars can boast is the Tiger Woods-like ability to rise to the occasion when the most coveted titles in his sport are on the line. In an incredible run of success, Federer has won 6 of the last 8 tennis majors (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open). He was runner up the last two years in the French Open, including a memorable 4 set loss in 2006 to his chief rival and nemesis — the number two ranked player in the world — Rafael Nadal. In fact Nadal, a clay court specialist, kept Federer from holding all four major titles at once with that victory at Roland Garros.
My latest column for Pajamas Media is up and it’s about - what else? - immigration. A sample:
One would think that the purpose of a political party is to grow larger so that when election time comes, they would get more votes than the other fellow. Not so the GOP. In what has to be considered a revolutionary approach to party building, the Republicans believe in first shrinking the party so that only little old ladies who think that Wendell Wilke is nifty and young hip-hoppers who took a wrong turn on their way to the MTV Video Awards show up at the next caucus.
Republican leaders should consider themselves lucky that they have the Wilke bloc wrapped up for 2008. Whether they can persuade the 50 Cent Fan Club to vote for the GOP is another question. And perhaps, if they try very hard, they may be able to snag a couple refugees from the last episodes of Survivor: Fiji, possibly the only souls in the nation who are unaware of how bollixed up the Republican Party has become.
By elvenstar522
Just another day at the Boz yard for these Buzkashi players.
My latest sports column is up at Pajamas Media. I chose to highlight the universiality of sport by trying to describe Buzkashi:
Watching these players race around the field, a look of concentration and determination on their faces, I was struck by the fact that we see that look all the time in our athletes. We like to say that a Michael Jordan or a Ty Cobb were fierce competitors in their day, that they would do anything to win. But they’re not really fierce in any real sense. Fierce is riding a Buzkashi horse over a dusty plain with a dozen riders behind you — another dozen bearing down on your flank — all bound and determined to use whatever means at their disposal to separate you from the carcass of a dead goat.
Now that’s fierce.
Read the whole thing…
My latest article for PJ Media is up and it should generate a little controversy.
Rudy Giuliani has made his actions on 9/11 the centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency - if not outwardly then certainly by implication. And there is no doubt that his performance that day was magnificent - for the most part.
But what he did prior to 9/11 and after may prove a little more problematic for Rudy:
“Questions that were arguably glossed over by the 9/11 Commission, about the communications snafus that led to so many firefighters losing their lives, as well as a perceived lack of compassion for workers cleaning up Ground Zero will dog his campaign and actually be used against him by his opponents… Instead of a positive, 9/11 could end up as a millstone around his neck, dragging him down to defeat.â€
My latest column is up at PJ Media. It’s about Barry Bonds and the controversy surrounding his assault on Hank Aaron’s career home run record.
One aspect of the controversy I cover is why Major League ballplayers overwhelmingly believe that Bonds is the greatest of all time. One reason they believe that certainly has a lot to do with how difficult it is to hit a baseball:
As it leaves the pitcher’s hand, the batter has about 2/10 of a second to read the pitch and decide whether to swing the bat or not. In those fractions of a second, the player must decide what kind of pitch is being thrown, how fast it is going to be arriving at home plate, and whether or not the ball will cross home plate for a strike. Being off a couple thousandths of a second means the difference between hitting the ball or not. And the pitcher, God bless him, has other tricks up his sleeve as well. He can change speeds from pitch to pitch to keep the hitter off balance. He can change the angle of his arm when he delivers the ball – coming “over the top†or “dropping down†and slinging the ball almost sidearm. This will change the rotation of the seams against the air between the mound and home plate causing the ball to shoot across the plate while diving downward.
The ball can also be made to curve so that when leaving the pitcher’s hand, the sphere appears to be making a bee line straight for the batter’s head only to fall harmlessly, knee high, over the outside corner of the pentagon-shaped home plate. The flight of the ball toward the hitter’s noggin initiates the “fight or flee†reflex deep in the primitive medulla oblongata, causing the batter’s rear end to begin to skedaddle and the knees to buckle in anticipation that trying to flee from the white demon would be useless. Meanwhile, 50 million years of cognitive mammalian evolution is screaming at the rump to stay put and swing the damn bat because the pitcher is making you look like an idiot.
The result? A brain cramp that causes the batter to freeze like a side of beef in a Kansas City meat locker while the ball drops gently over the corner for a called strike. The pitcher tries not to smile too broadly because he knows that the next curve ball he throws may not be so perfect. He may, in fact, make a slight error in the way he delivers the pitch and instead of curving, the ball will hang over the middle of home plate like a ripe plum thigh high, at which point the batter will swing, connect, and send the ball into the next zip code.
Thus be it ever the eternal battle between pitcher and hitter.