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Entries for 2012
Carter Wrenn posted on September 03, 2012 16:40
One hundred and eighty years ago, back in 1832, the first Democratic Convention was an enclave of white men – today the Democratic Convention is an enlightened convocation with a Women’s Caucus, a Black Caucus, a Hispanic Caucus, an Ethnic Caucus, a Native American Caucus, a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Caucus, an Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus and a European and Mediterranean Caucus.
Whether that’s a sign the Democrats are leading us upward to cultural “liberation” or proof they’ve succumbed to democracy’s incorrigible tendency to divide itself into interest groups (each with a legislative agenda to get its hands on other people’s money) time will tell.
But, right now, there’s a harder question President Obama has to answer over the next three days – Clint Eastwood put it this way, saying, “When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ‘em go.”
Almost everything that’s been said so far in the Presidential Election’s been political hyperbole and window-dressing – but Eastwood landed on a hard fact: After four years, Barack Obama’s Presidency is a failure.
Since spring, the President has been wrestling with that fact by giving us one reason to reelect him: No matter how hard the last four years have been, he says, the next four years will be worse if Mitt Romney’s elected. Give Obama credit, he’s got plenty of fight in him. But he’s got a hard sell on his hands. He’s arguing his opinion to voters while they’re staring his failure in the face – it’s like saying, What are you going to believe? What I tell you – or your own eyes?
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Carter Wrenn posted on September 03, 2012 12:30
There’s not much doubt there’s a lot of half-truthin’ and even some outright lyin’ going on in the Presidential campaign but the ‘Fact-Checkers’ who’ve proclaimed themselves the ‘truth-tellers’ in this election are starting to look a little blowsy themselves.
Last Wednesday night Paul Ryan said Obama “funneled $716 billion out of Medicare.”
‘Not so,’ the McClatchy newspaper’s Fact-Checker flatly declared the next morning.
In fact, McClatchy’s Fact-Checker continued, Obama didn’t gut Medicare at all. He simply instituted changes in Medicare that will lower health care costs and save $716 billion – changes that will affect health insurance companies and hospitals but not people on Medicare.
Huh?
Obama spends $716 billion less on Medicare but it doesn’t affect people on Medicare? How can that be? At a glance it looks like Obama called a ‘cut’ a ‘savings’ and McClatchy’s Fact-Checker swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Maybe there is a difference between a savings and a cut, but, if there is, McClatchy’s Fact-Checker ought to spell it out because, right now, it sure sounds like he’s spinning Obama’s line.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 03, 2012 12:09
I wonder if Paul Ryan claimed in Greenville today that he once ran a four-minute mile? It wouldn’t surprise me, given his tenuous grip on the truth. If political lying was an Olympic event, Ryan would get the gold. And that’s saying a lot this year.
Fresh off his fact-challenged convention speech (see “GOP Convention Triage” below), Ryan told an interviewer he had run a sub-three hour marathon. That is a remarkable time. So remarkable that Runner’s World magazine got suspicious. And started asking questions. Ryan quickly backed down. It was actually just over four hours, he admitted. He laughed it off as a simple error.
Hold the mayo. I’m a runner. I have been for 40 years. I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington some years ago. (Not close to three hours – or even four.) Runners know their times. You don’t forget whether your time was three hours or four hours or two days.
Ryan’s tale is like a golfer claiming: “Oh, did I say I broke 70? Oops! I meant I shot an 82.”
Now, this is a little thing. But little things can tell big stories. And this little fib suggests we have a candidate for Vice President who thinks we will believe anything he tells us.
Here’s what it tells us: Beware.
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Gary Pearce posted on September 02, 2012 10:40
Mitt was Mitt, Clint was crazy, and Paul Ryan did the most to damage himself of any speaker at the Republican convention. Let’s review the main players.
Romney had a good line: “I want to help your family.” But he didn’t shed the label Obama’s ads have stuck on him: Rich, stiff and out of touch with your family.
Ann Romney got the traditional break we give candidates’ wives. She was warm, she did well and she made him sound like an actual human being. We hold wives to different standards, and she met them. But neither did she shed the rich label.
Chris Christie was the Lead Zeppelin of the convention: full of hot air and ego, he crashed and burned.
Clint Eastwood went from Dirty Harry to Crazy Harry. You know it’s bad when Romney advisers denied it was their idea and, on background, blamed Romney himself for letting an egomaniacal 82-year-old Hollywood actor loose on the stage before your big moment.
Two words for Marco Rubio: rising star.
And Ryan: When he was picked, the Washington political-media establishment slobbered all over him for being a facts-oriented truth-teller. So much for that. His speech stretched the truth beyond the already-invisible standards of this campaign.
He blamed President Obama for a plant closing that came under President Bush. He attacked Obama for $700 billion in Medicaid cuts, when Ryan’s own supposedly courageous budget plan also proposes $700 billion in Medicaid cuts. And he attacked Obama for not doing enough to pass Bowles-Simpson, when Ryan was on the Bowles-Simpson commission and voted against it.
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 31, 2012 16:13
In the end the Republican Convention came down to two lines: Clint Eastwood saying, “When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ‘em go.”
And Mitt Romney saying, “Obama wants to save the planet – I want to help your family.”
All the rest – the political rhetoric – was window dressing. The bottom line was Obama hasn’t done his job, the country’s paid the price, and it’s time to replace him.
That leaves President Obama in a hard spot. Next week at the Democratic Convention he can argue the last four years could have been worse. And he can argue Mitt Romney will make the next four years worse. But he can’t argue with the fact that, after four years in office, his Presidency is a failure.
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 31, 2012 16:11
It’s odd: Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio didn’t fret the liberal pundits much at all but in twelve minutes Clint Eastwood sent them into orbit. After Eastwood’s speech Andrea Mitchell at NBC looked so shocked it seemed she was about to have a stroke.
Twitter and the e-world exploded with people calling Eastwood ‘kooky,’ ‘weird,’ ‘absurd,’ and a reporter at The Los Angeles Times wrote, Clint Eastwood has apparently lost his mind.
After the salvos started flying even Romney’s staff ran for cover.
Clint Eastwood didn’t give a political speech (which I guess is what the pundits expected) and, maybe, all the hollering is because he made his case not as a politician but as edgy, blunt Clint Eastwood, concluding with the most memorable line of the convention:
“When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let ‘em go.”
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 31, 2012 16:06
Most of the politicians at the Republican Convention stood up talked about what ails America: Too much government. Too much spending. Too much debt.
Except Chris Christie.
Instead of what’s wrong, Christie talked about why it’s wrong.
He began with a story of his Sicilian mother, who’d been raised by her own single mother, telling him, One day, you’ll have to choose between love and respect. Choose respect. Then he got right to the point: Our country, he said, is paralyzed by the desire to be loved. Our leaders want to be popular and say Yes rather than No and the rest of us have chosen the same easy path and let them get away with it.
Next Christie drew a line in the sand – a line that, let’s hope, doesn’t prove to be imaginary – between Republicans and Democrats, saying, We believe in telling working families the truth about our nation’s fiscal realities…that we have no other option but to make the hard choices…They believe the American people don’t want to hear the truth…that the American people are content to live the lie with them.
The pundits didn’t have much love to offer Christie after his speech. Ann Coulter said she was disappointed. Another pundit complained Christie didn’t mention Mitt Romney enough. But every other speaker talked about the symptoms of the disease, like too much spending and too much debt – while Governor Christie talked about the cure.
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Carter Wrenn posted on August 31, 2012 16:03
The first night of the convention the Romney campaign set out to ‘humanize’ Mitt and after living with Mitt Romney for thirty years Ann Romney surely knew his virtues but by the same measure also knew his warts – which created a conundrum for Romney’s campaign staff.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of a campaign staff – Mitt Romney’s or Barack Obama’s or anyone else’s – sitting down in a room and saying, Well, let’s tell the whole truth. Instead, campaign staffs prefer to tell the part of the truth that will help elect Mitt Romney (or Barack Obama or whoever). So, naturally, Mitt Romney’s campaign didn’t want to talk about his warts – which left Mrs. Romney in an awkward spot. Because how on earth could she ‘humanize’ her husband without discussing the flaws that make him human?
Mrs. Romney tried with grace and humor but when she finished explaining her husband’s virtues I expect most women listening, who’d been through the experience of being married to one man for thirty years, thought, Yes, well, that’s fine. But that’s not the whole story – is it?
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Gary Pearce posted on August 30, 2012 15:47
A friend asked if I’m going to the convention next week. No way. I’ve been to two national conventions – one in New York and one in San Francisco. And I’ve been to Charlotte.
I’m staying home like any sensible person and watching it on TV.
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Gary Pearce posted on August 30, 2012 07:24
They may be the Republican nominees, but Mitt Romney and Pat McCrory seem out of tune with the party in Tampa. That party loves the hard-edged, right-wing rhetoric of Paul Ryan and – before his bellyflop Tuesday night – Chris Christie.
The conventioneers celebrate Romney, but their hearts don’t seem to be in it. When he was there the other night, he didn’t seem to be in it either. Can he carry the tune tonight?
At bottom, Romney is a George H.W. Bush Republican. That’s where he’s from, that’s how he ran and governed in Massachusetts and that’s what he was until he realized he had to shed all that all skin to slither his way to the nomination.
McCrory seems to be a conventional North Carolina Jim Holshouser-Jim Martin-Richard Vinroot Republican. He kept his distance from Tampa. He occasionally makes moderate noises.
I know one prominent Republican conservative (not Carter) who scouted last year for a more conservative candidate for Governor.
Which raises the question: If they win, and if their party controls their respective legislative branches, how will they govern?
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