It’s horrifyingly ironic if you think about it: Republicans opposed expanding access to the health care system with a false claim that the Democratic plan included rationing of health care in a “death panels” clause. Completely untrue. The bill barely passed.
But did you see what happened last week at the Republican Party’s event featuring their candidates for president? Here a citizen responds to the Republicans:
In their silence, Republicans appear to support rolling back current health care, foregoing “death panels” as not harsh enough, and moving on to “let ’em all die.”
Talking Points Memo billed it as a dig at Rick Perry’s not-grounded campaign platform, but we’d all do well to listen to former President Bill Clinton’s larger point here: A good economy for a great nation requires a good, working government, regulations and all.
No love lost between Hutchison and Perry. Hutchison opposed Perry for the Republican nomination for governor of Texas in 2010. Perry was brutal in his criticism of her, and he defeated her in the primary.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry should not count on the support of his state’s seniority senator (and his 2010 Republican gubernatorial rival) if he decides to run for president.
(Polaroid photo by Sarah Tung/Hearst Newspapers)
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Dallas, told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell today that she is looking for a Republican candidate with private-sector experience as her choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nomination.
Perry is a career politician who has held elective office since 1985.
“He certainly has got government experience,” Hutchison told Mitchell on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” this morning, adding that “we need people who have been in the private sector, as well.”
The Republican senator’s comments hint strongly that she’d prefer one of the GOP candidates who has run a business: former Winter Olympics organizer (and venture capitalist) Mitt Romney, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain or former chemical company executive Jon Huntsman.
Hutchison said she has no immediate plans to endorse any candidate.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Ezra Klein’s on-line column this morning worries me more — will any Republican stand up for America?
No, I don’t mean lip service, I don’t mean flag lapel pins. I mean, will any Republican stand up for the policies we need to steer through the shoals of economic woe we face in the next 60 months?
The most telling moment of Thursday’s GOP debate wasn’t when Michele Bachmann cooly stuck a knife between Tim Pawlenty’s ribs, or when Rick Santorum plaintively begged for more airtime, or when Mitt Romney easily slipped past questions about his record on health-care reform. It was when every single GOP candidate on the stage agreed that they would reject a budget deal that was $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. Even Fox News’s Bret Baier couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He asked again just to make sure the assembled candidates had understood the question.
Primary debates are usually watched for what they say about the candidates, but they’re generally important for what they say about the party. This one was no different. With the notable exceptions of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, the candidates didn’t disagree over policy. They disagreed over fealty to policy.
Bachmann didn’t attack Pawlenty’s policy proposals. She attacked him for past statements suggesting he might believe in other policy proposals, like the individual mandate and cap-and-trade. Pawlenty’s assault on Romney took the same form. This debate wasn’t about what policies the candidates believed in. That was largely a given. This debate was about which of the candidates believed in those policies the most.
The best policy in this debate wasn’t the policy most likely to work, or the policy most likely to pass. It was the most orthodox policy. The policy least sullied by compromise. A world in which the GOP will not agree to deficit reduction with a 10:1 split between spending cuts and tax increases is a world where entitlement reform can’t happen. It’s a world where the “supercommittee” fails and the trigger is pulled, and thus a world in which $1 out of every $2 in cuts comes from the Pentagon. It’s not a world that fits what many in the GOP consider ideal policy. But it is a world in which none in the GOP need to traverse the treacherous politics of compromise.
Policies discussed weren’t mainline, capitalist economic policies, either. They’re so far out in left field they can’t even see the pitcher’s mound from where they are. Plus, they’re looking the wrong way.
Over and over again, [Michelle] Bachmann misstated basic facts. She said that Tim Pawlenty “implemented” cap-and-trade in Minnesota. He did no such thing. She said “we just heard from Standard Poor’s,” and “when they dropped our credit rating what they said was we don’t have an ability to repay our debt.” Simply not true.
S&P has never questioned our ability to repay our debt. That’s why we remain AA+. They have questioned whether political brinksmanship will stop us from paying our debt. The downgrade “was pretty much motivated by all of the debate about the raising of the debt ceiling,” said John Chambers, head of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee. That is to say, it was motivated by political brinksmanship from the likes of, well, Michele Bachmann.
It’s fitting that the candidate best able to resist compromise is the candidate who seems least able to correctly explain the policies at issue and the choices we face. It’s a lot easier to take a hard line if you don’t understand the consequences of your actions, and a lot simpler to belt out applause lines if you’re not slowed down by the messy complexities of the issues. But where Bachmann is leading, the other candidates are following. Mitt Romney knows perfectly well that a deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases is a great deal for conservatives. What he probably doesn’t know is how he’s going to explain why he pretended otherwise when he was vying for the nomination.
Winners in the debate? Unclear. Losers? You, me, and every American.
Can any Republican explain where in the world they got these nightmare economic policies? Are they being made up on the spot?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s reluctant grip on reality appeared to be vanishing fast in a stop in Iowa, Thursday. He said America’s schools are for indoctrination of students, and he doesn’t like the current round of indoctrination.
Geeze, this ought to be in The Onion. Is Santorum really this disconnected from America and life? Are there actually people out there who don’t look around for the guys in the white clothes with straight jackets and nets when they hear him say this stuff?
I don’t generally cite to The Huffington Post, but when the warning claxons go off, you ought to see if there’s danger before dismissing them as error:
Rick Santorum woos voters in Orange City, Iowa - Des Moines Register photo
During a stop in Iowa on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that “schools indoctrinate our children,” the Des Moines Registerreports.
“You wonder why young people can vote and flock for a guy like Barack Obama and say, if you look at the surveys, that socialism is better than capitalism — well, that’s because they don’t understand America,” he explained, according to the Register. “I said ‘indoctrination’ and I meant it,” he said.
What survey does he have that claims any group in America, other than the Tea Party or the American Communist Party, say socialism is better than capitalism? Since curricula in every state teach the opposite, the existence of such a poll would be powerful evidence of critical thinking powers in students that most teachers would not attest to.
Maybe more important, perhaps we should worry about just what all those thousands of nice Baptist ladies are teaching our kids in Texas, eh? Not to mention the Lutheran ladies in Iowa. Santorum is sniping at teachers, but if you look at the demographics, it makes little sense. Teachers are, like the rest of America, about 90% Christian, God-fearing, flag-waving American patriots.
Well, nothing Santorum says makes much sense, does it? Santorum lent support to the War on Education.
Santorum argued that the country’s education system is leaving students with an insufficient grasp of history. His remarks come with the widely-anticipated Ames Straw poll — a table-setter event for next year’s Iowa caucuses — less than two weeks away.
What in the hell do the schools in Ames, Iowa, look like, that Santorum can say that stuff about them?
By the way, if people learned history accurately in high school, Rick Santorum wouldn’t stand a chance in any election today. But I digress.
The Des Moines Register article adds the details that Santorum made note of recent testing that shows American kids don’t know enough about American history — always the case, by the way — and that a college prof from Kansas said he gives his students the test required of immigrants applying for citizenship, and most can’t pass the test.
I’m game: Let’s give the test to Santorum. If he doesn’t pass, though, we can’t deport him. We have no vehicles capable of getting to Mars.
HP offers information that may explain Santorum’s insanity: The same article notes he’s touring Iowa in two vans with his seven children. In this heat?
Does the Iowa division of child protective services know about this? How about the division that worries about children torturing their parents?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
After the Republican presidential candidates’ debate, observers of the pageant opined that Michelle Bachmann had little command of history (as usual, in her case), but a great command of turning phrases that telegraph to particular interest groups that she is one of them. For example, somewhere in the debate Bachmann sneaked in a claim that “we are the head and not the tail.” This was said to be a cryptic shout out to fundamentalist Christians, a reference to Deuteronomy 28.13.
So, if Bachmann is so thoughtful, so careful to send coded messages to her supporters, one may wonder: What group is she giving a shout out to, here, in her appearance in Waterloo, Iowa:
Oy. Wrong John Wayne to affiliate with Waterloo, or even to remind Waterloo residents about. History that is, regretfully, bogus. Or voodoo history, depending on whether one thinks Bachmann is conscious, not on drugs, and meant what she said.
Bachmann told CBS News that she’s running because “People are tired of being told things that aren’t so.” Practice what you preach, Ms. Bachmann?
Sunday I watched Bachmann vs. CBS’s veteran report Bob Schieffer. Schieffer asked her about her tendency to tell extremely tall tales — like her claim that the Obama administration had failed to approve any oil leases, when the total approved at that point was 270 leases. Bachmann went off on a tangent. Schieffer asked the question a second time. She went on another tangent. Schieffer asked a third time, a third tangent.
History challenged, veracity challenged: Every time Michelle Bachmann opens her mouth, it’s an adventure.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Sarah Palin's custom-painted bus, parked -- is this abandoned parking lot the last stop?
That’s rather unusual, don’t you think? Our Band of Merry History Teachers stuck to our bus tour last week until the bus wore out. I’d expect Palin to keep it up so long as the air conditioning held out.
No, I’m not running. I may be better prepared than some of the candidates, but I have a job to do, and I can’t speak Mandarin.
Ed Darrell wrestling with the Presidential Seal and a balky teleprompter.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I was traveling, learning about past presidents, and I missed did not see or hear the “debate” last week among Republican hopefuls for the presidency.
Old friend and commentator Pat Carrithers asked on Facebook:
What did we learn from the Republican debate last night?
We learned they all hate Obama.
We learned they have no new thoughts or ideas for economic recovery.
We learned that they still think “No” is a policy and a program.
So, I repeat, What did we learn from the Republican debate last night.
I look at the Republican field, and I worry. I may have explained before that my experience is that we should hope for, and work to obtain, the best possible candidate from each party, because circumstances well may conspire to elect the lesser of those two candidates. I cannot in good conscience hope for a clown like Bachmann or Palin to win the Republican nomination.
The Salt Lake Tribunes great, sharp-penned Pat Bagley's view of the June 2011 Republican Presidential Debates. (When is Bagley going to win a Pulitzer?)
It seems odd to me that the two candidates who rate highest on my Qualified to Lead (QTL) criteria are both Mormons, both of whom have employed people I worked with. (This contrasts sharply with Texas’s Rick Perry who is not in the campaign officially yet, but who, to my mind, has abandoned most standards of propriety in his false claims about his shepherding of Texas — remember he claimed we had a budget surplus a year ago, but this year announced deficits of nearly $30 billion, which led him to propose cutting essential functions of government; Perry would be at least a third clown in the Republican race, to me.)
Actually, there is a tour underway that highlights the great things about America, but it isn’t Palin’s. It’s the farewell tour of Robert Gates, defense secretary to presidents George W. Bush and Obama, whose work over the past 41 /2 years has dramatically improved the state of the U.S. military. While Palin played cat-and-mouse with the press corps on Interstate 95, Gates set off on a tour of Asia and Europe, where he is receiving the gratitude of soldiers and the acclaim of allies.
Gates, who remained on the job at Obama’s request, took on sacred weapons programs at the Pentagon, fired ineffective generals, won the surge in Iraq, revived a crumbling war effort in Afghanistan and got Osama bin Laden.
During that same time, Palin quit midway through her term as Alaska governor, then went on to a life of $100,000 speaking fees, reality TV shows and incendiary political speech.
There is no such delegation from the Republican Party on the way to Gates’s house, and there probably will not be. We are afflicted with Palin from the Republicans, even while Robert Gates affects us. Why can’t they figure that out?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Here’s a source of high-quality photos, most at least 90 years old. A lot of these photos would fit nicely into presentations for history classes: Old-Picture.com.
Many of the photos don’t appear much of any place else. There are historic maps, too.
For example: What’s a “whistlestop tour?”
Here is President William H. Taft making such a tour, or rather, speaking during a stop on such a tour, at Redfield (what state? South Dakota? Iowa? New York?):
W. H. Taft on whistlestop tour, in Redfield
Here’s Taft, again, at “Boutelle at Janesville;” note especially the boys climbing the pole to get a better look:
1908 Taft whistlestop tour, Boutelle at Janesville (wherever that is!)
Here’s Taft at a train, again in 1908 — might we assume it’s the same trip?
W. H. Taft at a train, in 1908 -- campaigning?
Here Taft and his party are pictured on a train, in Chicago. Same train? Same trip? Who are the other men with him?
W. H. Taft and party on a train in Chicago, 1908 presidential campaign
For another view, here’s what Taft saw at one of his stops — the crowd assembled to listen to him speak, in 1908:
Crowd gathered to hear Taft's campaign speech, 1908 (location, "West?") -- love that Tom Mix-looking hat on the guy in the middle, no?
Put these pictures together in a different order — it’s a clear illustration of just what a “whistlestop” tour is. These slides could complement a presentation comparing this trip with Harry Truman’s 1948 whistlestop tour, just two generations later. Or, juxtapose these pictures with pictures of John F. Kennedy in 1960, or Richard Nixon in 1968, or Bill Clinton’s bus tours in 1992 and 1996.
I’ll wager you’ve not seen at least one of these photos before (they are all new to me). Old-Picture.com has a great collection of stuff. So far as I can tell, the site administrator lists no copyright restrictions (there’s got to be a story in there somewhere).
What can you do with this collection?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I get e-mail from Nancy Pelosi from time to time, like tonight:
Ed —
It is my great pleasure to report that tonight, thanks to you, Democrat Kathy Hochul has won a triumphant grassroots victory in the special election in NY-26.
Victories like this are what happen when we fight together to protect our core Democratic values.
Congresswoman-elect Hochul’s victory in a staunchly-Republican district has shocked the political world and sent an unmistakable sign that the American people will not stand for the Republicans’ reckless and extreme agenda to end Medicare.
This is our third straight special election victory in New York — and it is truly one for the ages. All of the Republicans’ right-wing outside groups with their secret money and dishonest attacks were no match for the combined strength of grassroots Democrats.
Thank you again for fighting to protect and defend Medicare and bringing us one step closer to regaining our Democratic House Majority.
Nancy Pelosi
Democratic Leader
Is there a lesson in the election? Yes, there is: Republicans overreached when they started their march against Medicare.
Two months ago, the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, was considered an all-but-certain loser in the race against the Republican, Jane Corwin. But Ms. Hochul seized on the Republican’s embrace of the proposal from Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to overhaul Medicare, and she never let up.
On Tuesday, she captured 48 percent of the vote, to Ms. Corwin’s 42 percent, according to unofficial results. A Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, had 8 percent.
Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare.
Kathy Hochul claimed victory at an election party in Amherst, New York, on Tuesday night. Hochul won a seat in Congress in what has traditionally been a Republican district in New York. New York Times photo by Michael Appleton
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I get e-mail that makes me smile on a dreary day (everything below quoted from the e-mail):
Ed —
Let me introduce you to Jerome Corsi.
This week he released a new book that the publisher says will be a bestseller “of historic proportions.”
The title is “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” — yes, really.
Corsi’s work is a greatest-hits reel of delusions, ranging from 9/11 conspiracies to claiming that there is an infinite supply of oil in the Earth’s core. In 2008, he published a book about Barack Obama claiming, among other things, that he (a) is a secret Muslim; (b) is secretly anti-military; (c) secretly dealt drugs; and (d) secretly supported terrorist actions when he was eight years old. So many secrets!
FactCheck.org called Corsi’s work “a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.”
There’s really no way to make this stuff completely go away. The only thing we can do is laugh at it — and make sure as many other people as possible are in on the joke.
Last year, the President said, “I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.”
This is about as close as we can get.
If the facts can’t make these ridiculous smears go away, we can at least have a little fun with it.
And then we’ll get back to the important work of supporting the President as he tackles real problems like high gas prices, the deficit, and unemployment.
Thanks,
Julianna
Julianna Smoot
Deputy Campaign Manager
Obama for America
I get e-mail — with a few million others, I’m sure:
Ed —
Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign.
We’re doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you — with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. And that kind of campaign takes time to build.
So even though I’m focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today.
We’ve always known that lasting change wouldn’t come quickly or easily. It never does. But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we’ve made — and make more — we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest.
As we take this step, I’d like to share a video that features some folks like you who are helping to lead the way on this journey. Please take a moment to watch:
In the coming days, supporters like you will begin forging a new organization that we’ll build together in cities and towns across the country. And I’ll need you to help shape our plan as we create a campaign that’s farther reaching, more focused, and more innovative than anything we’ve built before.
We’ll start by doing something unprecedented: coordinating millions of one-on-one conversations between supporters across every single state, reconnecting old friends, inspiring new ones to join the cause, and readying ourselves for next year’s fight.
This will be my final campaign, at least as a candidate. But the cause of making a lasting difference for our families, our communities, and our country has never been about one person. And it will succeed only if we work together.
There will be much more to come as the race unfolds. Today, simply let us know you’re in to help us begin, and then spread the word:
In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:
“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
How many bites at the apple does stupid get? Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?
New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue — either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue? Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone. Accuracy isn’t in that animal
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 