QOTD: DOUG PREISSE

 "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine."


Doug Preisse is a Ohio Republican Party Chair and a member of the state's election commission. He gave this quote in an email to the Columbus Dispatch in response to allegations that Republicans that run the elections in his state are deliberately limiting in-person early voting hours to discourage blacks, who early-vote disproportionately compared to whites and lean overwhelmingly Democratic. His response to these claims:

"...bullshit. Quote Me."

ROMNEY's TAX RETURNS

The Washington Post reported today that Pres. Obama proposed a deal on Mitt Romney's tax returns: if Romney releases 5 years worth, the campaign will stop asking for good. Romney's campaign has contended for months now that one of the main reasons Mitt refuses to release more than 2 years of tax returns is because the Obama camp will, like a neighborhood gang lord, always ask for more. In a perfect world, the two candidates would shake hands, Romney's tax returns would come out and, being as boring as Romney's haircut implies about everything he comes in contact with, the story would fade in a single news cycle.

Ours is not a perfect world. If Romney releases his returns now, he looks weak. If he doesn't, he looks suspicious. Do not doubt for a second that Willard Mitt Romney will choose to look "suspicious" every time.

And what kind of name is Mitt, anyway? That nigga's mom wanted to name him "Mittens," y'all. I've got an anonymous source.

Romney's campaign predictably declined the request, citing the candidate's left middle finger.

"It is clear that President Obama wants nothing more than to talk about Governor Romney’s tax returns instead of the issues that matter to voters, like putting Americans back to work, fixing the economy and reining in spending." - Matt Roads, Romney for President Campaign Manager

Well, this is all fairly standard political theater. What I find really* surprising is how many non-politicos actually buy it. I hear ordinary conservatives, our friends and neighbors, with no obligation to stay on-message, pretty much repeat Matt Roads' reply verbatim. They cannot fathom why Mitt Romney's tax returns could possibly be of interest in the face of "real problems." For that, Matt Roads deserves a response:

First of, I'm a little dismayed that the only issues you include among the most important are economic, considering the social and military concerns the nation still faces.

Putting that aside for now, Romney's tax returns are certainly germane to the national conversion about fiscal policy. One of the loci of contention in our politics lately** is where to rest the tax burden for citizens across all income levels. The central theme of the left's argument is that the extremely rich (like Romney and, conspicuously, many others in government) benefit unduly from structural advantages within the tax code and, thus, do not pay their fair share, even if they pay what current law requires. Americans (including many/most prominent Republicans) have called for Romney to put his actual tax history on the record.

Additionally, Romney has been known to be less-than-truthful in the past vis-a-vis matters overlapping his business and public life. He filled taxes as a Utah resident while working on the Winter Olympics to save money, then he told the state elections board that he was actually paying in MA the entire time and was thus eligible to run for governor. This, as a matter of public record, is not true. And, of course, there is the lingering question of just when he was and was not working for Bain Capital. Americans are understandably reluctant to take this latest claim about his tax history on faith.

This, on top of the fact that the unprecedented move of releasing only the tax returns of years in which you knew you would run for President just strikes people as a little cagey. Romney has willingly allowed this sideshow to be created around him. Unless he really does have something to hide, it might better to just put the matter to rest, Obama-birth-certificate style.

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*  not really
**   for more information, see: the history of human civilization

Romney Spokesperson Accidentally Mentions Romneycare

Andrea Saul, the indeed-attractive-but-horrifyingly-Republican-faced press secretary for the Mitt Romney campaign, made the latest of a series of unforced errors today when she said, “if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.” In case you are somehow unaware, praise for the health care reform instituted under Romney’s governorship in MA, “Romneycare,” is uncharacteristic of Romney’s campaign. Despite the widespread popularity of the reform amongst MA citizens, critics have noted a number of affinities to President Obama’s divisive health care legislation (Obama has called Romneycare his “blueprint”).

Saul’s comments came in response to a particularly harsh anti-Romney ad in which a former steel mill worker laid off by the Romney-led firm Bain Capital associates the sudden loss of his employee health care to the death of his wife. In my opinion, it is important to put a human face on things like layoff when we consider Bain and its practices as one of the three major items on Mitt Romney’s resume. However, I find the ad itself perhaps “too human,” intentionally exploitative of real human suffering to prop up a very very vague political point. More importantly, it seems almost purposefully crafted to bait a Romney surrogate into a response like Saul’s.

The Reaction:
Out in pundit-world, conservatives jumped on Saul immediately. However, I have encountered an uncommon counter-argument:

“If Romney gets smart, he’ll embrace Romneycare and make it a states’ rights issue,” said a number of younger republicans on the message boards this evening (What? This is a blog, not Journalism.)

Well, he tried that during the primary and was shillelaghed with boos from the crowd. He can’t embrace it too much; it’s just too toxic an issue amongst his base. Plus, every positive thing he says about it gets immediately scooped up by the left and used against him. The “it’s right for my state but not right for the whole country” argument has A) never been well-articulated and B) would rely too heavily on nuanced policy-talk to strike the no-compromise chord of far-right voters.

One More Thing:

On the heels of a disastrous trip around the world in which he managed to offend just about every country that answers our phone calls, one might wonder why stuff like this keeps happening. The accident-prone Romney campaign has seemingly no control over its message or its surrogates. This, I imagine, is why Obama is up in the polls.

ABOUT THE BLOG

If you're joining me at any time 2012 or later and just love combing through archives, you may have noticed something strange about every post older than this one. Each of them begin with a reiteration of its title and a different post date, circa 2010.

Rad. What? and Blow. is the hastily-named spiritual successor of a politics blog I wrote during the mid-term election year of 2010, Edit: For Clarity. I started the blog as a way to harness the leftover fight I had in me from the year-long Obamacare wars and to meaningfully avoid studying for finals. Edit was written with a mission: to cut through the bullshit that I saw overtaking mainstream political coverage. I witnessed as the American people got used to a lot of laziness on the part of media outlets--a lot of misrepresentation of facts, a lot of outright, cynical lying, and a general failure to put stories into adequate context for fear of appearing partisan (in some cases) or not partisan enough (in others).

The rub: the more I wrote about politics, the more I read about politics; the more I read about politics, the more I concluded that there was nothing new to say about it. We had some fun debates in the comments sections of a few of the posts--I won't be re-posting those--but the whole project ran out of steam pretty fast.

It is a new election year and just maybe there a few things still worth saying. So, the old blog was revived here, in its new Blogger home. Look for design changes to come soon and have a good time.

Policy---------------Fund-raising

Policy —————– Fund-raising

Posted by donelder on December 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment (Edit)

“There is absolutely zero connection between policy and fund-raising,’’ says Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) spokeswoman, Gail Gitcho. “To insinuate otherwise is just plain wrong.’’

So?

So, during a period of about three weeks when Brown’s critical vote helped decide multi-billion dollar matters of financial industry reform, financial firms and their executive contributed $140,000 to his campaign finance fund. To put this in perspective, Senate Republicans averaged $26,000 over the same period.
Gail Gitcho may not believe that money influences policy, but the financial industry doesn’t seem to mind calling that bet.

Complete story from the Boston Globe.

Sprawling Thoughts on Tea Partiers and Anti-Elitism

Sprawling Thoughts on Tea Partiers and Anti-Elitism

Posted by donelder on October 26, 2010 · 4 Comments (Edit)

So, by now everyone has heard of Christine O’Donnell’s gaffe over the first amendment. You may have even heard that after the debate and to this very day she still believes that she won the point. Without getting into the issue (unless provoked), I can tell you categorically that she lost the point. For any other candidate, the fact that she hasn’t realized it and rolled back on it in the media would be alarming.

Sadly, that last sentence just isn’t true, anymore. In fact, I am dubious of any claim from a real follower of politics, policy or government that expresses anything but concern and sadness over the sheer stupidity of some of the people running for election this year.

I have been hesitant to talk about the tea party candidates this year because, frankly, they’re very soft targets. It occurs to me, however, that even saying this makes me an elitist in many eyes. That point actually warrants some discussion.

First, do you remember the central conceit of the film Armageddon, that it is easier to train oil drillers to be astronauts than to train astronauts to be oil drillers?

So-called Tea Party candidates routinely demonstrate a lack in sophistication in their understanding of government and public policy. It isn’t just O’Donnell not recognizing the Establishment Clause when it is paraphrased to her or Joe MIller failing to think of a Supreme Court case from the past ten years. Those things are only funny out of context. We know that these tea-partiers are not running on policy or even on their own merits, they are running on anti-Democratic and anti-establishment fervor. As a result their rhetoric is that of broad social themes and not of actual policy. This is not unusual. However, when you have the confluence we have now of candidates only going big and broad and the same candidates displaying ignorance of American government, you have to ask yourself if they are qualified to be Federal legislators.

Now, I know the rent-a-quote response: “I’ll let the voters of ____ decide whether or not they are qualified” (Not surprisingly on Meet the Press, Chairman Steele had a vocal opinion on every issue, except those pertaining to controversial Republicans), but let’s think about this critically for a moment.

Americans have, and have always had, this dream about the U.S. Congress. The dream is this: that when we are displeased with the state of the country, we can walk outside our front door, look to the front yard of a neighbor, someone we know, respect and trust, and we can send him to Washington to look after our community’s interests. This may be a difficult thing to accept, but that dream is bullshit.

To put it another way, listening to her rhetoric, Christine O’Donnell would have you believe that every day in the Senate there’s another trillion-dollar bill requiring a full measure of populist conviction to defeat. If that were true, she would be qualified Republican candidate. The reality is that every day in the Senate is going to put before her nuanced bills over the thousand or so areas and sub-categories of policy that we have no reason to believe she has ever considered. And what do Republicans AND Democrats do when they lack a sophisticated understanding of a bill the day it is discussed? Do they surprise us by staying up all night studying the bill, existing law, and pertinent social structures then wow us with impassioned, cogent arguments on the Senate floor, or do they get crib notes from staffers (who is a better world already be Senators) and fall in with the party line?

The latter is what you’re usually voting for when you pick someone with whom the everyman can actually relate to assume office. Sophistication is important because legislators get an opinion on EVERYTHING.
So, yes, I am an elitist. It isn’t perfect, but it seems like a good place to start.

What's Wrong With This Picture

What’s Wrong With This Picture

Posted by donelder on September 1, 2010 · 2 Comments (Edit)

Some odd stuff in political news today.
Obama addressed the world to commemorate the end of the Iraq War… okay, that wasn’t very interesting. In fact, it may have been the vaguest, most useless speech he’s ever given. Regardless of where you sit in relation to the country’s ideological middle, it’s hard to feel anything more positive than ambivalence toward the whole Iraqi affair. Which is why it was a little confusing as to why Senate Republicans decided to remind the public today that Obama has his predecessor, George W. Bush, to thank for tonight’s… erm… victory? “The surge worked,” still appears to be the party line. Of course, if Obama’s empty words made anything clear, it’s that the surge hasn’t clearly accomplished any deeper objective than killing more of the enemies we made for ourselves while we were over there. Well, to be fair, the surge did at least provide shrewd political cover for us to back away shrugging. Of course, as every liberal commentator has pointed out, the surge should never have needed to work, since none of the good reasons (and few of the bad ones) that Bush used to convince us to start that war were sound in the first place. So, thanks again.

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Don’t know how to feel about Iraq? Brace your fragile minds fora real blowing, because today, the world got so much weirder.
GLENN BECK LAUNCHES NEWS SITE
Take a moment. I understand.
GLENN BECK LAUNCHES NEWS SITE
Best headline ever.
Don’t forget to buy Gold.

The Blame Game

The Blame Game

Posted by donelder on August 30, 2010 · 2 Comments (Edit)

Clay shared this video today. It’s POTUS Obama’s five minute address to the press. Nothing particularly revelatory – he spoke with his economic advisors, he wants us to know there are still tools in the toolbox… and, oh yeah, the Senate Republicans are playing politics again. About as surprising as bad weather systems in the Gulf Coasts and CEO’s deflecting responsibility.
What interests me, though, was the part of the speech Clay singled out: “It took nearly a decade to dig the hole we’re in.” He calls it Playing the Blame Game. That was it. One remark.
Its a silly thing to get upset about, really. It is altogether proper that American politicians should acknowledge the policies that came before them. They are, after all constantly dealing with those policies, their substantive impacts, and their political consequences. I admit that, inevitably, pols on both sides get carried away, start Playing the Blame Game to assault their opponents, distract and manipulate the public, but a one-sentence reminder that a current conditions have a politico-historical context is just plain responsible.
Now, I haven’t observed many similar situations (there have only been two presidencies in my adult life), but I am given to hypothesize that the reason this has always been such a sore spot for conservatives-after-Bush, is that George W. Bush was a shitty president. He was, wasn’t he? Liberals, of course, think so; so does a great majority of the public according to polls; so do many conservatives, at least ostensibly, based on their frequent and elaborate efforts to distance themselves from him during campaigns. In mixed company, today’s conservative rarely speaks of W. at all, let alone to defend him. Defending W. has become taboo – the defender, subject to the surprised gaze of the “other,” experiences an unwelcome measure of shame, for which there is no socially acceptable outlet. I would want the topic avoided, too.
So, what is the recourse, here, particularly when the desire to violate the taboo becomes strong in the subject? If you cannot defend W., you can always employ the simple expedient of attacking his critics. This, I think, is what we’re seeing with this Blame Game accusation. In fact, I would go on to ask if the displacement of this desire explains a lot of the Republican minority’s adolescent resentment in the two years of the Obama presidency.
Yes, I have shifted gears from policy to psychoanalysis.

Arizona Immigration Law

Posted by donelder on May 4, 2010 · 4 Comments (Edit)

I know it’s old news, but with the U.S. Congress spurred into action, it isn’t news that’s going away. Let me give you the quick and dirty on the Arizona immigration law.
On April 23^rd, Arizona passed sb 1070. I read it. It’s not that long. Most of it, you’d be surprised that it wasn’t law already. The controversy seems to stem from three measures, two of which are terminological.

1. “Lawful contact” – Some conservative blogs and pundits have attested that “lawful contact” means police intervention, such as a traffic stop or a noise violation, or anything else for which one would normally show identification anyway. This is NOT ACCURATE. a quick look at the history of “lawful contact” in other bills and the collective shrugging of Arizona lawyers reveals that lawful contact could mean anytime a cop interacts with you without otherwise violating your rights. If you ask a cop for directions, that’s “lawful contact.” On the other hand, they can’t just kick down your door either.
2. “Reasonable Suspicion” – “Reasonable suspicion” is NOT “probable cause,” and requires less (or zero) evidence. With reasonable suspicion in the U.S., a cop can pull you over, and with reasonable suspicion in Arizona, he can ask to see your papers. Reasonable suspicion allows a cop to initiate lawful contact based on intuition.
3. A final interesting provision allows citizens to sue the police department if they don’t feel like they are enforcing these laws. In other words, if you are a cop and you don’t use your “reasonable suspicion” to make “lawful contact” with someone you think is illegal and then demand their papers under penalty of arrest, your department can get sued by pretty much ANYONE who wants those people gone.

Arizona Governor Jen Brewer expressed her absolute trust in the police department in upholding both these laws and the rights of citizens, despite admittedly having no idea of her own what an “illegal immigrant looks like.” Former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin concurs, stating that there is “no ability of opportunity” of this law to lead to racial profiling. Let me repeat: “NO ABILITY OR OPPORTUNITY.”
My opinion:

1. Of course there is the opportunity for abuse. Anyone who trusts the police implicitly when the state hands them vaguely defined powers has never been a minority in America. As yourself this: do you even know whose job it is to advocate for the rights of illegal immigrants in America. I’d bet you don’t, and that should tell you something.
2. I don’t want to be cynical, but given the statements made by Gov. Brewer, it’s hard not to think she’s being disingenuous. She signed a law that literally allows cops to harass people based on how they look (although race, she said, can’t be the only characteristic) and even though she admits not to knowing what that means, she simply believes it will never be abused? No one in politics is that naïve. It’s more likely that this is a power play to force federal immigration reform.
3. Republicans: DON’T AGREE WITH THIS! A New York Time/CBS poll shows that a slight majority of Americans actually agree with this law! I‘m looking at you, Republicans! A law that empowers the state to stop people at random and demand their identification under penalty of arrest is LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR! YOU DON”T TRUST THE STATE!

Hello.

Hello. My name is Don Elder. I smoke. I drink. I do not sleep.

During the past nine months, or so, people have been asking for my views on matters of national politics. I have come to understand this as an indication that they have no knowledge of their own, and cannot operate the internet tubes with enough dexterity to overcome this sorry condition(not you, of course, you’re great).

Now, as a number of 100+ comment Facebook battles demonstrate, I LIKED teaching people about healthcare reform. However, I came to a point where I resented having to explain the same basic concepts over and over.

For the time being, the battle over Health Care Reform is over. Unfortunately the culture of misinformation and mendacity, escalating trends towards political cynicism and nihilism, the ineptitude of so much journalism, and the irresponsibility of egomaniacal punditry on both sides has not relinquished, has not receded.

I have final exams to avoid acknowledging. Now is the perfect time to start a blog.

The purpose of this blog is to do the legwork for you, to cut through the noise of Google and cable TV news, and to try to pull out a thoughtful summary of both the facts and character of some of today’s most controversial arguments, to edit it all for clarity before you post your next status update and get my Irish up again.

My name is Don Elder. Do you see what I’m pointing at? It’s the goddamn TRUTH!