In an era of instant, mass communication, the image will be, indeed already has been, circulated widely and will gradually lose whatever “ironic” edge it once had. That the image derived from a New Yorker cover and was intended for an audience of high-information, predominantly left-leaning voters who already support Obama will be irrelevant or will add to the “credibility” of what the image conveys. Then the word will go forth in forwarded emails everywhere: “Even The New Yorker thinks Obama is a secret Muslim, etc…”If, after a torrent of publicity over "People won't get the joke", there truly are some people who don't get the joke... Well, that brand of "true believer" wasn't going to vote for Obama in the first place.
When you combine McCain's individual war chest with his party's bankroll, it turns out the Republican nominee has about $90 million currently burning a hole in his pocket, while Obama and the DNC weigh in at a relatively paltry $47 million, or half as much. And even though McCain has agreed to an $84.1 spending limit by accepting public funds - a decision he likes to portray as a principled stand against the corrupting influence of money on politics - at least double that sum will be dropped on his behalf before Election Day thanks to loopholes in the law that allow outside groups to effectively skirt such limits with largely unregulated "soft money" contributions.This is defended as "the only way the Arizonan can stay competitive" with Obama's fund-raising from "his network of 1.5 (mostly small-sum) donors", but by the same token it was Obama's decision to reject public financing that enables him to compete with these fund-raising techniques - and you're deluding yourself if you think McCain would have stopped this third party activity had Obama accepted public funds.
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Meanwhile, McCain campaign is stepping around federal spending limits by funneling cash through the state and national party machinery--and potentially benefiting from donations to a non-RNC organization that could boost his chances in key states. As the Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday, the Republican Governors' Association, a GOP group unrestrained by federal spending limits because it's designed to elect governors, is now "marketing itself as a home for contributions of unlimited size to help Sen. McCain."
Two months ago, Google held a series of secret focus groups with employees who have children in Google’s day care facilities. The purpose was to gauge their reaction to the company’s plan to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent.The back story? A Google executive and champion of on-site daycare, Susan Wojcicki (who also happens to be Sergey Brin's sister-in-law, and the daughter of the woman who rented them garage space for their start-up days), decided that the services of an outside contractor, C.C.L.C., didn't follow her preferred educational philosophy, resulting in Google's opening its own cutting edge facility at a much higher cost per child.
Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 — well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.
According to Google, there were numerous complains about C.C.L.C., but the Google parents I spoke to disagree. They say that at the Kinderplex, child-teacher ratios were low, teachers were first-rate, the facility was clean and upbeat, and the food - organic, naturally - was terrific.Google ended up with 200 daycare spots, and a 700 person waiting list, with waits of up to two years for a child care spot.
But at least one parent wasn’t happy: Ms. Wojcicki. She is a proponent of a preschool philosophy called Reggio Emilia, the hot kiddie philosophy of the moment, which stresses even small children’s ability to chart their own learning paths.
Meanwhile, someone at Google woke up one day and realized that the company was subsidizing each child to the tune of $37,000 a year — which nobody had noticed up until then — compared with the $12,000-a-year average subsidy of other big Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems and Oracle. Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was - are you sitting down for this? - to get rid of C.C.L.C. and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods! (Google says it was always planning to replace C.C.L.C.) Given that decision, the only possible way to reduce the subsidy was to raise prices through the roof.The New York Tmes sees Google's actions this way:
If you are shaking your head at this point, that’s because you lack the proper understanding of Google’s culture. Having conquered the Internet, Google’s executives tend to believe that they can do pretty much everything better than everybody else — even day care. When I spoke to Laszlo Bock, the company’s vice president for “people operations” (a k a human relations), he told me that “what is really driving the cost is eliminating the two-year wait list while focusing on providing really high quality.”The Times suggests that under Google's corporate culture it has to have the greatest daycare on earth, whatever the cost, and that the high cost of the new program was seen as ending the "inequitable" waiting list. They also recite an allegation from parents, denied by Google, that Sergey Brin described the daycare situation as "a supply-and-demand issue" to be resolved by charging what the market would bear. The Times concludes,
Google may be providing the greatest day care ever, but so what? It doesn’t matter how good the day care is if only its wealthiest employees can afford to use it. If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to “scale” day care for everybody no matter what their salaries.I suspect that something a bit different was going on. To reduce the subsidy, Google could have offered "mere" excellent daycare, and probably could have expanded its program to eliminate the waiting list. The problem is that if you eliminate "excellent" child care in favor of "the best in the world", you either have to continue the extraordinary subsidies or price most employees out of the program. But if you give employees a choice, you risk that they will sign up for the merely "excellent" care and that you won't have sufficient enrollment in "the best daycare in the world" to keep that program economically viable - you might get back to a mere $12,000 (or lower) annual subsidy for most employees, but you might see the subsidy for your "best in the world" program increase as people choose the cheaper program. The choice becomes, coddle the executives and millionaires, or serve the larger population of employees.
McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller. Obama is a first-term senator with no legislative achievements to speak of. His campaign has helped him seem bigger, more presidential.There are two obvious potential explanations for this, and they're not mutually exclusive:
McCain's campaign has lessened him. His eagerness to win has resulted in his moving away from a lot of the positions that once attracted people to him.
Obama is "bigger" and more presidential than McCain.
Even Obama’s adjustments for the general election — his flip-flops — have served in an odd way to enhance his stature. Some of them suggest, after all, that he is at least trying to think seriously about what he would do if he were actually president. So Obama has achieved the important feat, as the campaign has moved on, of seeming an increasingly plausible president. McCain seems a less plausible president today than he did when he clinched the nomination.This is where McCain is hoist on his own petard. He can do little to directly attack Obama as "flip-flopping" as he has done at least as much (to my eye, far more) flip-flopping himself, including on issues that previously defined him (e.g., campaign finance reform, immigration, balanced budgets). When he chooses to mischaracterize Obama as having abandoned prior positions (e.g., his timetable for ending the Iraq War) and that Obama's positions are becoming indistinguishable from his own, that doesn't come across as "straight talk."
The current McCain campaign is chock full of G.O.P. establishment types, many of whom aren’t great fans of the irreverent [GOP strategist Mike] Murphy. Murphy’s also made no secret of his low opinion of the Bush-Rove political machine that has produced many of these operatives.And that's a real problem. When you load up your campaign with people whose stock and trade is a type of campaigning you claimed to deplore in 2000 and 2004, you're going to end up with a campaign that is inconsistent with your professed values. And if you decide your ship is sinking, you're going to trigger enormous ripples through your entire campaign if you try to shift it into a new direction that is just as anathematic to the scores of Bush-Rove "do anything to win" types you previously hired.
The McCain campaign this year desperately needs a message and a narrative that is both appropriate for the candidate and for the times. Thinking such a complex challenge through, and executing it, is Murphy’s strength.Wait a minute - isn't McCain's message, "I'm the outsider on the inside; the maverick who stands up to my own party, can bridge the center, and can transform Washington"? If that message has failed, what sort of rebranding could resuscitate McCain's Campaign?
"First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election." - except, of course, that wasn't his promise. The promise he broke was to work with his opponent to stay within the public financing limits, and it's fair to criticize him on that - but where's the piece lambasting McCain for walking away from everything he supposedly believes in, in relation to campaign finance reform, lying about his commitment to public financing during the primary campaign, and possibly breaking the law in his hasty retreat from that promise?
"The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11." - I think that's a fair criticism, particularly given the New York Times' consistent advocacy against an immunity provision. But why is it that the Constitution is seen as something Democrats must defend but that Republicans are free to ignore? I can't help but wonder, if major newspapers held some Republican feet to the fire over their disdain for civil liberties, this dispute would have ended a long time ago in favor of the Constitution. The "he said, she said" framing of issues by the media also contributes to the problem. "Democrats say important freedoms are at stake. Republicans say that the only freedoms the Democrats want to protect are those of terrorists, that Democrats agree that not closing FISA loopholes poses a danger to this country, and all they are trying to do is to prevent trial lawyers from bringing frivolous lawsuits against companies that were acting in good faith and trying to help protect the nation from terrorism. You decide."
"The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations - a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation." - As I understand the proposal, Obama is proposing rolling back some of Bush's excesses, and expanding upon the approach to funding religious charities that existed even before Bush took office. Further, there is no contradiction between "stand[ing] before interest groups and tell[ing] them tough truths" and recognizing that religious charities can offer a significant contribution to the public welfare. McCain seems to be all for continuing Bush's existing policies - again, why are only Democrats supposed to oppose positions that, in the Times' words, "violate[] the separation of church and state"?
"Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to 'reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.'" - So here there's no actual contradiction, but the Times takes the position that the Heller decision was wrongly decided, and that Obama shouldn't support an opinion that could restrict "handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children". I think it's very much an overstatement to suggest that Heller provides a guide to what type of regulation is reasonable, but this is neither a flip-flop, nor is it sensible for Obama to try to turn this into a major issue by reversing his stance on individual rights and implicitly promising to appoint justices who will reverse or limit Heller.
"We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder." - That's fair also, particularly in contrast to his embrace of Heller - what's his standard for picking and choosing which Supreme Court decisions to support or decry? But again, what's the distinction here from McCain? Why, if this is such an important civil rights issue, does McCain get a free ride?
We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.McCain has made similar representations about himself -a maverick, independent, able to work across the aisle. So where's the similar analysis of his flip-flops and contradictions, even if not a similar attack on his disdain for civil rights and liberties?
I share Ann's affection for bloggers who are trying to observe and understand what they are writing about, rather than always writing op-eds with a thesis they are trying to prove (which is one reason that I enjoy reading her blog). Unfortunately, I find that many blog readers prefer strongly thesis-driven posts, which they can either echo or attack point by point.1Spare me.
If you wish to assert that something is not torture, you subject yourself to the technique at the hands of those who disagree. If, after a standard application of the technique, you continue to insist that the technique is not torture, you win! If you confess that it is torture, even if just to get things to stop, you lose.Although my challenge likely fell far below his radar screen, other similar challenges did not - and Christopher Hitchens decided to prove the challengers wrong.
The "official lie" about waterboarding, Hitchens says, is that it "simulates the feeling of drowning". In fact, "you are drowning - or rather, being drowned".I'm a bit surprised that it took the experience of being waterboarded for Hitchens to recognize something so obvious, and if he refreshes his memory on the history of waterboarding he will discover that this is one of the techniques we have historically complained about "them" doing to "us", and some of our ideas were taken from "them" (even though "they" used the same techniques on "us" to elicit false confessions), but I'll give him credit for being honest about his experience.
He rehearses the intellectual arguments, both for ("It's nothing compared to what they do to us") and against ("It opens a door that can't be closed"). But the Hitch's thoroughly empirical conclusion is simple. As Vanity Fair's title puts it: "Believe me, it's torture."
Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia.His realization,
Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.Almost in the next breath, he retreats from those words:
When contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay. No thumbscrew, no pincers, no electrodes, no rack. Can one say this of those who have been captured by the tormentors and murderers of (say) Daniel Pearl? On this analysis, any call to indict the United States for torture is therefore a lame and diseased attempt to arrive at a moral equivalence between those who defend civilization and those who exploit its freedoms to hollow it out, and ultimately to bring it down. I myself do not trust anybody who does not clearly understand this viewpoint.Hitchens continues, explaining why he still (now) comes down against waterboarding. But he seems to have forgotten another point of history - the forms of torture that don't leave marks were developed in no small part because they are as effective, or more effective, than those that do, by regimes that wanted plausible deniability when western groups challenged them as torturing political prisoners. Also, how much thought does it take to realize that torture that leaves you "unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for another bout in quite a short time" is likely to be far more beneficial to your interrogator than torture that leaves you unresponsive or kills you.
It would be bad enough if you did have something ... but what if you didn't have anything? What if they'd got the wrong guy? Then you would really, you'd be in danger of losing your mind very quickly, I think.Because if it makes you lose your mind but doesn't leave a scar, it's not "real" torture?
But it is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama has gained the nomination without fully earning it. Unlike Clinton or Bush, his intellectual contributions have been slight. The wave he rides may take him far - but he is not determining its direction.Now granted, when you're as... oblivious? infatuated? ...as Michael Gerson, G.W. may look like an intellectual giant. But wake up, Michael. The fact that G.W. gave lip service to "compassionate conservatism", and made a few nodding gestures in that direction during his first term, neither constitutes an "intellectual contribution" nor even evidences that G.W. was actually a "compassionate conservative". He should have known from the way the Bush/Rove machine savaged John McCain in South Carolina that he was working for men without honor, and that any lip service they gave to "compassion" or "honor" would wilt in the face of political opportunism, cronyism, and self-dealing.
Casting guilt by surrogate association is a bipartisan affliction, so ours is a nonpartisan lament: Cut it out! The Clark blooper is no more revealing than was the Charles R. Black Jr. pseudo-outrage or the James A. Johnson ersatz scandal. What Gen. Clark had to say - that Sen. John McCain's military experience was not "a qualification to be president" -- was stupid, substantively and politically.Except Gen. Clark did not say anything of the sort.
Moderator Bob Schieffer, who raised the issue by citing similar remarks Clark has made previously, noted that Obama hadn't had those experiences nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark replied.So the Washington Post's attack on Clark is a fabrication - a smear - and the author doesn't have the courage to sign his name to it. Go figure.
By the same token, there's also no reason to believe that Gen. Clark's blunder has anything to do with Mr. Obama's fitness for the presidency. Had Mr. Obama not immediately repudiated the comments, that would be noteworthy. Under the circumstances, we find it hard to understand why this was even a one-day story.Could it be... because reporters and pundits who are dishonest, inept, or both keep mischaracterizing Gen. Clark's comment? Really - could it?
If Sen. Barack Obama's campaign somehow whispered in Gen. Clark's ear to adopt this approach, the campaign has obviously been taken over by people other than the smooth crew that helped Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination.Is there any basis for that innuedo? If not, why compund the sin of misrepresenting Gen. Clark's comment by breathing life into baseless innuendo?
When McCain zoomed in the New Hampshire polls in 2000, W.’s supporters insinuated that McCain’s years in Vietcong dungeons, including two suicide attempts, left him with snakes in his head.
Now McCain is trying to magnify the words of Obama surrogates on Vietnam to tarnish his self-styled postpartisan rival as partisan. On the way to Colombia, he talked about Clark and said it was time for Obama to “cut him loose.”
Yet McCain himself has joked: “It doesn’t take a lot of talent to get shot down. I was able to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane.”
The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had “attacked John McCain’s military service record.” Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.And how's this for a "pots and kettles" moment:
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It’s crucially important that we have a political debate in this country that’s at least sophisticated enough to be able to handle the following rather basic idea: Arguing that a person’s record of military service is not a qualification for the presidency does not constitute “attacking” their military credentials; nor can it be described as invoking their military service against them, or as denying their record of war heroism.
That’s not a very high bar for sophistication. But right now it’s one the press isn’t capable of clearing.
If that’s the kind of campaign that Sen. Obama and his surrogates and his supporters want to engage I understand that, but it doesn’t reduce the price of gallon of gas by one penny. It doesn’t achieve energy independence [or in the midst of a foreclosure crisis] help an American stay in their home.That sort of negative campaign rhetoric does precisely... what to alleviate those problems? (Probably about as much as McCain's actual energy policy, but....)
The New York City law which most obviously violates the right to arms is the complete ban on air guns. The venerable Daisy Red Ryder BB gun is contraband. Heller and the Supreme Court's previous major Second Amendment precedent, United States v. Miller (1939) forbid the prohibition of arms "typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes."Has Kopel read Miller, the case that upheld a ban on short-barrelled shotguns? That case said this:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State of Tennessee, 2 Humph., Tenn., 154, 158.Note, I'm not defending the air gun ban. To me it seems excessive. I suspect that the concern is that people will commit crimes using air guns that the victims believe to be actual firearms, or that the police will encounter civilians or children with air guns potentially resulting in tragedy. But I'm not going to premise a Second Amendment argument for a right to possess air guns on, of all cases, Miller.
Unlike firearms, air guns (which shoot small BBs or pellets) can be safely used inside an apartment or house. An old sofa cushion is a safe backstop. In a city where target ranges are few and expensive, air guns offer a practical way for people to practice safely with a gun. The right to arms necessarily includes the right to practice arms safety.So if you have a right to keep and bear arms, you have a right to practice firing your arms. But the government has legitimate safety reasons to prevent you from doing so in your home. And it's inconvenient to go to a shooting range. So you should be able to shoot other things that resemble the weapons you actually want to train with, within your home. Provided you stack some couch cushions against the wall. Okay - but how many people actually do that - use their BB guns to train instead of using their actual firearms? And why don't I have the right to shoot actual firearms into a stack of sandbags in my basement, assuming reasonable noise proofing?
Regarding gun carrying, Heller might, arguably, mean that New York City would have to follow a similar policy to Connecticut (and 39 other states): issue permits to carry a concealed handgun for lawful defense if the applicant is over 21, and passes a fingerprint-based background check and a safety class.My initial reaction is, "Not gonna happen." Or perhaps it will happen, but only after a lengthy period of adjustment to the new case law and its effect on crime (which I expect to be minimal). But I can't think of a better way to cut off that process of adjustment and inspire the New York legislature to amend state civil rights law than to argue, "Second Amendment scholars are arguing that under Heller, most people will be allowed to freely carry concealed weapons throughout New York City."
Subsequently, one of the pregnant student told Good Morning America that was no pact to get pregnant. The 17-year-old mother to be said that a bunch of girls who were already expecting decided that they would help each other raise their babies while staying in school. Somehow, the rumor mill twisted this benign self-help arrangement into a bizarre reproductive conspiracy.
To the Editor:A recent article provides more information on the salary situation for justices.
After a career in public service, I regretfully say, I would not do it again.
Philosophy and point of view led me to doing good instead of doing well, so I never expected to become rich. But now that I’m in my 10th year of a frozen judicial salary - less than summer students are being paid at law firms - I have concluded that whatever I may have accomplished for the public, I have wasted 25 years of my life by serving on the bench.
Emily Jane Goodman
New York, June 23, 2008
The writer is a New York Supreme Court justice.
Weighing in on a longstanding tug of war between New York’s jurists and lawmakers, a State Supreme Court justice1 ordered the Legislature on Wednesday to give the state’s 1,250 judges their first pay raise in 10 years.Now I don't want to get into a debate over judicial salaries beyond agreeing that New York's sound like they're on the low side, and ten years without a raise is a long time. But even at $136,700, I find it hard to sympathize with a judge who is upset that she has "wasted 25 years of [her] life" by serving as a judge because she wasn't paid more. If her qualifications approach those of the "summer students" she complains about, she should have been easily able to join a private firm at a vastly larger salary.
The ruling, by Justice Edward H. Lehner, came in response to a lawsuit filed last September by Patricia M. Nuñez of New York City Criminal Court, Michael L. Nenno of Cattaraugus County Family Court, Susan R. Larabee of New York City Family Court and Geoffrey D. Wright of New York City Civil Court. Justice Lehner gave the Legislature 90 days to increase the current salary of $136,700 for all New York State trial judges.
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Mr. Smith, the lawyer for the four judges, said he believed that state judges should earn a salary comparable to that of Federal District Court judges, who currently earn $169,300 annually.
