progressive involvement

Hillary with massive lead

In a contest for the Democratic nomination, she bests runner-up Joe Biden by 61 points--73-12.  Uber-liberal heartthrob, Elizabeth Warren, clocks in at 8 per cent.

"Communist propaganda," said the FBI

In a 1947 report on communist infiltration in the movie industry, the FBI considered "It's a Wonderful Life" to be "communist propaganda."  It shows rich people as "mean and despicable characters" and it "maligns the upper class"--yep, that's communist all right.

Where are they now?

Ken Starr was the Captain Queeg of special prosecutors.  He kept fishing around in Lake Clinton, looking for any nibble which would justify impeaching the (person he supposed was a) lout.  He investigated every phone call either Bill or HIllary Clinton ever made, and investigated every check they ever wrote--and that was just for starters.

While he could find nothing good in the Clinton's, Starr has managed to come to the defense of a family friend who is also a confessed child abuser.  Christopher Kloman abused abolescent women repeatedly over a 20 year period.  The youngest of his victims was 11 years old.  Said Starr:

Mr. Kloman is currently repenting for his past sins and will continue to do so if given a chance to serve his community and neighbors. Community service would be a far better punishment than having him languish in jail.

Ken Starr is also president of Baylor University, the premiere baptist college in the country.  

November 22, 1963

I was a freshman in high school, in chemistry class, sitting next to Roger Workman at the third table from the front in the middle aisle.  

It was about 12:30 p.m. when the principal of the school, Arnold Anderson, his voice crackling through the intercom, announced that President Kennedy had been shot.  He didn't say if he was dead, only that he had been shot.  About ten minutes later, Anderson confirmed the President had died.

That weekend was a marathon of black-and-white television--Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, and Smith foremost, each with their retinue of reporters.  Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, was killed on live television.  

The procession of the President's body through the streets of Washington on the way to the funeral contained several elements now considered iconic--the riderless horse, JFK Jr'.s salute, the cadence of the drums, world leaders such as Charles DeGaulle and Haile Selassie leading the international delegations.  Most Americans over the age of 60 will remember this:

 

It wasn't long before the official story of the assassination, the Warren Report, was called into question by a number of reporters and writers.  In a short period of time, most Americans became convinced that the assassination of JFK involved a conspiracy of some sort.  In the 1970's, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed with them.

In more recent years, revisionists such as Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi have argued that the Warren Commission basically got it right.  Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and he fired three shots at President Kennedy, including the final and fatal one that struck the front part of his head.

The Zapruder film clearly shows President Kennedy's head being driven back, apparently by a shot from the front.  The revisionists want to argue that the Zapruder film shows Kennedy's head move slightly forward at impact before an "exploding nerve" drove his head backward.  

In other words, even though, with his head being struck in the front and exploding backward, it looks as though the President was shot from the front, he really wasn't.  They might as well be saying, "Who you gonna believe?  Us, or your own lyin' eyes."

John F. Kennedy presided over the United States at the heighth of its power and influence.  World War II had ended only 15 years before his election, and we were still enjoying the benefits and advantages of victory.  We were well on our way to repairing the damage done by the Great Depression.  Our military power was such that Kennedy could stare down the Soviets over Cuba.

After his assassination, nothing seemed quite right.  Hopeful and optimistic at the beginning of the decade, America sunk into recriminations and hostility, even near chaos, by the decade's end.  Many Americans, inspired by JFK, went into politics in the early 60's.  By the late 60's, politics was out.

It has been 50 years since that fateful day, but his death still haunts us.  Politicians of all stripes, but especially Democrats, tried to mimick the Kennedy style and associate themselves with his energy and "vigor."  They all sounded inauthentic and "tinny."

Was John F. Kennedy a great President?  Yes.  He was smart enough to end-run the military hawks on Cuba, and tough enough to make Khrushchev blink.  To his political detriment, he embraced the civil rights movement.  In his American University speech of 1963, he was looking forward to a world that was not bogged down by intractible ideological conflict.

Of the many books that have been written about President Kennedy and the Kennedy assassination, these would be at the top of my list:  JFK and the Unspeakable, by James W. Douglass; An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek; Kennedy, by Ted Sorenson;  Brothers:  The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, by David Talbott; President Kennedy:  Profile of Power, by Richard Reeves; Johnny, we hardly knew ye, by Kenneth O'Donnell;  and The Making of the President, 1960, by Arthur Schlesinger. 

 

 

Neither Cruz, nor Christie

Nor Elizabeth Warren either.  Norm Scheiber makes the case for a Warren candidacy in an article this week for the New Republic.

It's not going to happen.  Every cycle, the uber-liberal wing of the Democratic Party searches and searches for an alternative to the so-called "establishment" candidate.  Remember Jerry Brown?  Paul Tsongas?  Gary Hart?  Bill Bradley?  Howard Dean?  (Were any of these fellows really more liberal than Bill Clinton, Walter Mondale, John Kerry, or Al Gore?)

Elizabeth Warren is the uber-liberal candidate du jour, and a fine United States senator, but there's no way she wrests the nomination from Hillary Clinton.  Hillary's coalition will be the same as last time--hispanics, the elderly, a sizeable chunk of the liberals, and women.  Plus, this time, add African-Americans.

Hillary's critics say she was the inevitable nominee last time, and look what happened.  Yes, look.  Against a heavily-touted phenom, she won two-thirds of the primaries--the only large state primary won by then-Sen. Obama was his home state of Illinois.  

Obama narrowly won the nomination contest by building up delegates in red state caucuses, and then prevailing through sheer muscle in the party's Rules Committee.  (Hillary was supposed to be the insider power-broker, but you don't get more "inside" than control of the party's Rules Committee.)

President Obama is the one nomination contest the uber-liberals were able to win.  They combined their 20% of the Democratic vote with the 25% represented by African-Americans.  This time, African-Americans will be for Hillary.

Chris Christie is the toast of northeastern Republicans this week, all six of them.  His claim to fame is being able to pull a majority of the young, African-americans, Latinos, and women.  For Republicans interested in reaching out beyond their base, all six of them, Christie is The Man.  Christie would lose to Hillary in all those voter groups, even in New Jersey.

It's been done

When Kathleen Sebelius appeared yesterday before the House Republicans, Cong. Joe Barton said, “Dorothy at some point in the movie turns to her little dog, Toto, and says, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Well, Madam Secretary, while you’re from Kansas, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Barton meant this lame cliche as a display of his incisive humor and wit.  Does Barton know that that line has been repeated over and over in popular culture for over 70 years now?   

I wouldn't have been surprised if Secretary Sebelius had said, "Congratulations, Cong. Barton, you are the 1000th person to use that hackneyed and unoriginal expression with me, in the past 5 years alone!"  

Works now

I went to healthcare.gov this morning and browsed around.  I know HHS has had problems with this website, but it worked just fine this morning.  

In fact, it seems pretty well laid out.  If you're a business you go one direction, if an individual you go another.  Simple enough.  For individuals, the next most important thing is what state you live in.  For Colorado, you are directed off the government site to the state site.

If you're in a state that doesn't participate in ACA, and has done everything it can to undermine it, like Texas, for example, you stay on the government website and then must open an account.  I would imagine that this is where the sand got in the gears.

Cruz crests as tea party favorite

Ted Cruz was the big winner in the government shutdown/debt ceiling debacle.  By posing as the nation's foremost opponent of Obamacare, to the point of suicidal mission, he has managed to separate himself from the pack by finding a way to be seen as the most conservative out of a slew of very conservative potential candidates.  This is quite extraordinary, and an exceptional display of political skill on the part of Cruz.

He was never very serious about his scheme to "defund Obamacare."  His alleged "strategy" was a chimera from the start and reminiscent of this classic cartoon which once appeared in the New Yorker.  The scheme is quite elaborate, but it depends on a miracle at the critical juncture.

Cruz's strategy to "defund Obamacare" was based on putting pressure on the Senate Democrats to do it.  The GOP House would be stalwart.  The Senate Republicans would be stalwart also, he supposed, but that would not be a majority.  In order to get a majority in the Senate, Senate Democrats would have to cave.

That's when the miracle would happen.  Cruz supposed that, because Obamacare was so massively unpopular, that public opinion would storm over the Senate Democrats and cause them to flip.

There are several flaws in that alleged "strategy," the most notable being that Obamacare is not that unpopular.  True, the polls are roughly 60-40 against Obamacare, but about one-fourth to one-third of the people who say they oppose it do so because they wanted single payer all along.  They fault Obamacare for not being liberal enough.  

Put another way, support for Obamacare, or a more liberal alternative, is about 60-40, which is a considerable majority, and which further means there is no massive groundswell of opposition that could shake the Senate Democrats. 

Ted Cruz knew all this, of course.  He went ahead anyway because the surest route to the heart of the GOP base is ideological fidelity combined with crusader-like zeal.  It worked like a charm.  One recent poll showed that Cruz was now the choice of 74% of tea party Republicans.  That's the base.  

His strategy never stood a chance, but that doesn't matter too much to Cruz since he accomplished so much by pursuing it.  In one swoop, he has assured himself of adequate financing for the 2016 campaign of which he is now the frontrunner.  

He hears tea party footsteps

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) has not lived in the sunflower state for many, many years.  He lists an address in Dodge City, but I'm not sure that anyone has ever been able to find it.

Roberts went to Washington way back in the 1970's as a congressional aide to Cong. Keith Sebelius (R-KS).  When Sebelius chose not to run for re-election in 1980, Roberts stepped in, won his election, and served in the House of Representatives until running for the Senate in 1996.

Earlier this week, he called on Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, to step down from her post.  Kathleen is married to Gary Sebelius, son of Keith, the mentor of Pat Roberts.

PPP Poll has bad news for Mike Coffman

A recent PPP poll of 24 House swing districts found that in the Colorado 6th District, incumbent Congressman Mike Coffman has a approval rating of only 31%, and a disapproval rating of 47%.  

The 6th is a district where tea party favorability is a negative 35-55.  By 62-33 margin, residents of the 6th oppose the government shutdown.  Democrats lead a generic ballot, 51-41.