Tag Archives: politicians

President Obama’s Air Campaign Against ISIS

by Kali73Ukpvrtfio Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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By popular demand, here is a chart version of last night’s post about the French airstrike on Sunday vs. the ongoing coalition air campaign. Note that we’ve dropped a total of about 28,000 bombs and missiles over the past year, and so far the effect has been real but modest. There’s just a limit to what air power can do, especially in a region like northern Iraq.

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President Obama’s Air Campaign Against ISIS

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Let Us Now Praise Authentically Stiff Politicians

by YoungT08gxixm Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Brendan Nyhan thinks we spend too much time yakking about which candidates are “authentic” and which ones aren’t. For example:

George W. Bush and Al Gore were both born into powerful political families, but were perceived very differently. Mr. Bush successfully reinvented himself as a down-home Texas ranch owner despite being the son of a president with elite New England roots, while Mr. Gore was widely mocked as a phony who grew up amid wealth and power in Washington, especially when he invoked his childhood work on his family’s Tennessee farm. Again, one simple explanation for the disparate treatment they received is that Mr. Bush was a better political performer.

I would remind everyone that Brad Pitt gets paid millions of dollars for doing a very good job of pretending to be authentically charming. The ability to feign authenticity is called “acting,” and it’s a lucrative profession if you’re good at it.

Was Al Gore authentic? Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? Sure. Gore is genuinely sort of wonkish and stiff. Hillary is earnest and cautious around people. Romney is careful and detail-oriented. That’s authentically who they are. If they studied up and adopted a hail-fellow-well-met persona, everyone would think they were authentic, but they’d just be pretending.

If you prefer politicians who are bluff and emotional in public, just say so. If you can’t stand being around people who natter on about policy and guard their private lives, say so. But cut out the “authentic” nonsense. That’s not what this is about.

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Let Us Now Praise Authentically Stiff Politicians

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The GOP Establishment’s Sneaky Ben Carson Fundraising Ploy

by AlissaHardin483 Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon turned GOP presidential candidate now soaring in the polls, routinely rails against Washington insiders, the political establishment, and officials who have experience with governing. But none of this has stopped Republican Party insiders from exploiting Carson’s popularity and appropriating his name to raise money for, yes, the GOP establishment.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a wing of the Republican National Committee with strong ties to the GOP Senate leadership, blasted out an email this week urging recipients to sign a “petition” wishing Carson, who turns 64 years old on Friday, a happy birthday. But this was not just a polite and thoughtful exercise. To sign the petition, a Carson well-wisher had to provide his or her name, email address, and zip code. That is, he or she had to provide valuable information that NRSC fundraisers could use to identify—and later target—conservative voters who back Carson but presumably reject the Republicans who control the NRSC, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

And after a Carson fan finished filling out the “birthday card” for Carson, the NRSC asked him or her to make a donation—to the NRSC. But an email recipient could be forgiven for thinking this contribution was somehow going to help Carson’s presidential campaign.

Politicians and candidates sometimes strike deals with party outfits and political action committees: You can use my name on a fundraising note, if you share the information you obtain. But in this instance, the NRSC did not consult Carson or his campaign beforehand. It did not ask if it could use his name to fill its coffers with a somewhat deceptive pitch. “No heads up, no courtesy notice…nor any deal,” says Carson spokesman Doug Watts.

Still, Watts isn’t blaming the NRSC for trying to profit off Carson’s success—even if the birthday card was a a ploy by the GOP establishment. “Ben’s name is currently the most powerful name in fundraising,” he says.

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The GOP Establishment’s Sneaky Ben Carson Fundraising Ploy

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Why Does Donald Trump Have Nothing Against Germany?

by ValentiCatalano Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Which of these countries is not like the others?

  1. China
  2. Germany
  3. Japan
  4. Mexico

Answer: When Donald Trump goes on a tear about foreign countries that are stealing our jobs thanks to their “cunning” and “ruthless” leaders, he always talks about our horrible trade deficit. China: $300+ billion. Japan: $60+ billion. Mexico: $50+ billion.

Who doesn’t he mention? Germany, which is in second place at $80+ billion. Why is that? What is it that makes Germany not like those other countries?

And as long as we’re on the subject of Trump, I caught a bit of his speech in Dallas today and heard him bragging about the fact that every network was covering him. He explained it this way: “It’s a very simple formula in entertainment and television. If you get good ratings—and these aren’t good, these are monster—then you’re going to be on all the time even if you have nothing to say.” Credit where it’s due: Trump may not actually be much of a builder, but he sure does know his TV. And himself, apparently.

Also worth noting: Trump got plenty of cheers for all his usual shoutouts, but by far the biggest cheer came when he promised to toss out every illegal immigrant within his first 18 months. “We have to stop illegal immigration,” he said. “We have to do it.” That set the arena rocking for nearly a full minute, ending in a fervid chant of “USA! USA! USA!” Judging by this, immigration is still the single biggest key to his appeal.

Finally, on a more amusing note, Trump complained that because all his events are televised, he can’t just give the same speech over and over like other politicians. I wonder if he actually believes this? I haven’t heard anything new from Trump in months. Every speech he gives relies on all the same snippets. He changes the order depending on his mood, but it’s always the same stuff. He may be new to politics, but the idea of a standard stump speech is something he seems to have in his blood.

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Why Does Donald Trump Have Nothing Against Germany?

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Dreaming about Debates

by KristopherWylde Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ed Kilgore tells us about his night:

Ugh, dreamed about the Voters First Presidential Forum a good part of the night. ‘Twas even more boring the third time around.

Oh lordy. I wonder if I dream about stuff like this? Probably. So even though it would frustrate Freud, I think it’s all for the best that I never remember my dreams.

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Dreaming about Debates

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Tell Us What You Really Think About Donald Trump

by AOZSilkepxfuwi Posted on August 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’ve sort of promised myself not to write about Donald Trump, but (a) it’s a weekend, and (b) David Fahrenthold has a pretty entertaining piece about Trump in the Washington Post today. Here’s a brief excerpt of some of the reactions Fahrenthold got to a variety of Trump’s blatherings:

Mark Krikorian, a foe of illegal immigration, on Trump’s immigration ideas: “Trump is like your Uncle George at Thanksgiving dinner, saying he knows how to solve all the problems. It’s not that he’s always wrong. It’s just that he’s an auto mechanic, not a policy guy.”

David Goldwyn, a former State Department official in the Obama administration, on Trump’s plan to fight ISIS by simply bombing them and then taking all their oil: “That is sheer lunacy on so many counts, it’s hard to start.”

Some anonymous sources on the same idea: “Oil-industry experts expressed skepticism about this plan. Skepticism, in fact, may not be a strong-enough word.”

Michael Tanner of Cato, on Trump’s endless vision of new building projects combined with his insistence on lowering taxes: “You can’t spend more and collect less. That’s kind of basic math. You can argue about how the math adds up in the other people’s plans. But there’s math there. This, there’s just no math.”

Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute on Trump’s plan to jack up tariffs on countries he doesn’t like: “If you thought this had a ghost of a chance — which it doesn’t — you would sell all your stocks,” because of the damage that a trade war would do to the U.S. economy.

You know, when Mark Krikorian is critical of your anti-immigration ideas; Michael Tanner is skeptical of your tax-cutting ideas; and oil companies want no part of your oil-stealing ideas, you just know there’s something wrong.

Anyway, Fahrenthold’s piece is worth a weekend click. And you might as well do it while you can. We won’t have Trump to kick around forever.

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Tell Us What You Really Think About Donald Trump

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 July 2015

by Ewan45J515680712 Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hopper (left) and Hilbert are so entranced by something or other that even my sister wants to know what they’re looking at. My guess: a dust mote in the cat dimension.

Speaking of my sister, she is promising some guest cat blogging for next week. Will she come through? Tune in next Friday to find out!

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Friday Cat Blogging – 31 July 2015

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Will the Tea Party Shoot Itself in the Foot Yet Again?

by JoyPostbtocen Posted on July 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman notes today that although Jeb Bush is substantively pretty conservative, his tone on the campaign trail has remained resolutely moderate and affable. Waldman explains how this leads to Bush winning the nomination:

If you’re Bush, your path to victory looks like this: Trump soaks up all the attention for a while, but eventually gets bored (and hasn’t bothered to mount an actual campaign that can deliver votes), and either fades or just packs it in. Meanwhile, the conservative vote is split. Once the voting starts, the failing candidates will begin to fall away one by one. But by the time most of them are gone and their supporters have coalesced around a single candidate like Scott Walker, it’s too late — Jeb has built his lead and is piling up delegates, has all the money in the world, and can vanquish that last opponent on his way to the convention in Cleveland.

In other words, a repeat of 2012, when all the hard-core conservatives split the tea party vote ten ways while Mitt Romney quietly vacuumed up the entire moderate vote. By the time Rick Santorum was the last tea partier standing, it was too late. Romney coasted to victory.

This is the great conundrum of the tea-party wing of the Republican Party. What they should do is coalesce immediately around Scott Walker. He’s the most plausible winner among the tea partiers, and if the race was basically between him and Bush from the start, there’s a pretty good chance he could win. On the other hand, if he has to fight off a dozen challengers for months on end, it’ll just be rerun of 2012. He’ll get a share of the tea party vote, but it won’t be nearly enough to fend off Bush, who will have his own share of the tea partiers plus the vast majority of the wing of the GOP that’s disgusted that their party has been taken over by loons. And there are still quite a few of those folks around.

I guess this is where a smoke-filled room would come in handy. This is a classic collective action problem, but without party bosses who can step in and take charge, there’s really no answer to it. The tea-party candidates keep thinking that they can run and win because there are so many tea partiers among the Republican primary electorate. Unfortunately, there are too many of them who think so. The end result is that they tear each other to shreds and end up with John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush. And then they whine and complain about how “the party” has betrayed the conservative cause yet again.

This isn’t inevitable, of course. It’s possible that Walker or one of the other mean-boy candidates will break out and become the de facto tea party standard bearer. It’s just not as likely as it should be. It’s a shame the tea partiers can’t get their act together, isn’t it?

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Will the Tea Party Shoot Itself in the Foot Yet Again?

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ISIS Is Losing the War, But That Doesn’t Mean We’re Winning It

by ManualCruce7 Posted on July 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Zack Beauchamp says that ISIS is losing the war. His evidence is the map on the right. ISIS may have taken over Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, but overall they’ve lost about 9 percent of the territory they controlled at the beginning of the year:

This points to one of ISIS’s most fundamental problems: It has too many enemies….ISIS’s fighters might be skilled, but they can’t fight everyone at once.

True enough. What may be more interesting, though, is who they lost that territory to. Here are the numbers for territorial gains:

+11% — Syrian rebels
+10% — Kurdish forces
+4.5% — Iraqi government

In other words, Iraqi forces were responsible for less than a fifth of the total gains from ISIS. Add to that their humiliating loss in Ramadi, about an hour’s drive from Baghdad, and there’s still not much evidence that the Iraqi government has a clue about how to fight ISIS. It remains unclear how and when that will change.

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ISIS Is Losing the War, But That Doesn’t Mean We’re Winning It

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Today’s Trivia Quiz

by BrendanT62 Posted on July 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Quick trivia question: When was the last time one of the two major parties nominated a candidate for president who was neither a politician nor a former general?

The prize for the winner is that they get to relax about the possibility of Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States.

UPDATE: Such smart commenters! The answer is Wendell Wilkie, 75 years ago. He lost, of course.

So who was the last person to win the presidency with no previous political or military experience? Answer: no one. The closest call is probably Herbert Hoover, whose only political experience before 1928 was eight years as the appointed Secretary of Commerce. And look what happened to him.

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Today’s Trivia Quiz

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