Unconventional Wisdom

From The Swamp…

It’s a given that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Ill.) and her husband are very popular with African-Americans, a popularity that was on display at last night’s Democratic debate at Howard University.

Gallup’s pollsters have a new survey that indicates just how highly thought of she is among African Americans but Hispanics as well.

According to the poll, 84 percent of blacks rated her favorably while only 10 percent viewed her negatively. That compared with 68 percent of blacks who view Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) positively and eight percent unfavorably.

Gallup’s report had this amusing explanation of Clinton’s strength with black voters:

Due to his strong support in the African-American community, some have cleverly referred to former President Bill Clinton as America’s “first black president.” Blacks also view his wife Hillary Clinton positively, with 84% rating her favorably and only 10% unfavorably.

Blacks also have positive views of Obama, who is seeking to become the first official black president.

This has honestly irked me to no end. I can agree that Pres. Clinton had a much higher comfort level with black folks, but I would really like to know what justifies that.

The news for the past week has been that Vice President Dick Cheney considers himself not a member of the executive branch but a member of the legislative branch. That’s mentioned in this column from Jonah Goldberg…

Take the current argument over Cheney’s self-exemption from the rules on how classified documents should be handled. Instead of getting a waiver from the president, Cheney argued that he’s immune to executive orders because he’s also the president of the Senate and hence a member of the legislative branch too. Not only is this a goofy argument on its face, it does nothing to restore executive authority. It’s not like the vice presidency was an outpost of the legislative branch before Watergate. Cheney’s argument amounts to a convenient rationalization for his own secretive style.

Sounds like Goldberg was a fan up until this point. This was about the middle of the column how did it start…

Why do I like Dick Cheney? Because at a time when everybody talks a big game about how they don’t like people-pleasing politicians who live by the polls, Cheney is pretty much the only guy out there who walks the walk. He truly doesn’t care what people think about him. I love that.

In particular, I like his stance toward the media. His view of the Fourth Estate is a bit like that of a bull elephant annoyed by varmints shnuffling around his feet: He’s not bothered enough to squish ‘em … yet.

But although I like Cheney’s style — particularly in contrast to his boss’ — it’s become clear that the Cheney method leaves a lot to be desired. He may be more popular than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but that’s like saying “This head cheese is tastier than carpet mold.”

Moreover, Cheney’s approach to government is ultimately counterproductive. That’s certainly the upshot of an epic exegesis on Cheney’s tenure that is unfolding like daily Pulitzer bait in the Washington Post this week. So far, the image of the VPOTUS emerging in the series is one of almost cinematic villainy. Like Cancer Man in “The X-Files,” he always seems to be standing in the shadows, moving the gears of government to his own nefarious tune. According to the Post, he even intimidated former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft — who, we all know, smells of sulfur and eats puppies like popcorn — into abandoning his objections to harsh treatment of enemy combatants.

The vice president is famously concerned with two things: restoring the prerogatives of the executive branch, lost in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and defeating our enemies in the war on terror. Both are admirable goals. But seemingly countless sources inside the Bush administration tell the Post that Cheney has a contempt for bureaucratic and legislative consensus-building that rivals his contempt for cultivating public support through the media. As a result, he often succeeds in bulldozing policies — on enemy interrogations, etc. — all the way to the president’s desk. But he’s isolated when it comes time to defend these policies.

You know I was reminded of this episode from this shortlived 2001 sitcom, That’s My Bush (btw, you can see eps of this program over at TV Links). This episode had President Bush becoming a pro-wrestler after he lost his job as leader of the free world so we see Dick Cheney become President of the United States and he seems to be more of a bully than the loveable President Bush. Hmm, leads to the next point…

Such opportunism undermines his more principled arguments and exhausts the goodwill of his defenders, precisely when Cheney needs that goodwill for bigger and better things. And it sends his detractors on the left around the bend, just like President Bill Clinton’s abuses — real and perceived — drove many of us on the right to kick our TV sets. The fact is that Cheney’s cause isn’t helped when millions of Americans think he’s a comic-book villain.

A big part of Cheney’s appeal in 2000 was that he was the first VP in memory without presidential ambitions. Cheney was going to be a managerial veep, bringing lessons from the private sector and his stint as secretary of defense to the job. That sounded good (and attendance at Cheney Fan Club meetings was high back then). But it turns out there’s a benefit to politicians behaving like politicians. If Cheney had been planning his own presidential run, he would have cared more not only about public opinion but also about the political relationships he’d need in the future — the same relationships this White House needs now.

“The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant monarchical claims,” Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, told the Post.

There’s the rub of democratic government. Sure, the act of building consensus often requires sacrificing on your most preferred policies. But such consensus-building actually convinces the public, the bureaucracy and legislators of the necessity to act and reduces the chances they’ll turn their back on the whole effort. The Cheney method instead creates a blowback that hobbles your efforts in the long run far more than compromise does.

You know I see the point of this column. There are some aspects of politicians I don’t like, but maybe the take charge aspects aren’t good sometimes. Whether you’re take charge or not you have to work with people.

I would like to do a newswire type thing here. And why not, this place is good for some frivolity, but also news of the day. So I’m going to work on finding some newsfeeds to to here in the future.

Maybe you’d like to do this one day. One of my favorite blog The Capitol Fax Blog has newsfeeds up using Feed Digest. Perhaps you can utilize that.

I found this game the other day. It’s fun but it can get difficult. Hopefully you will learn about the process of drawing up districts and maybe even the influence a mapmaker has in this process. A mapmaker can help maintain the status quo or they can shake things up big time.

This is a match up I would like to see. Sen. Barack Obama, the man who was for all intents and purposes was drafted into running for President of the United States even though he hasn’t even finished his first term as a United States Senator. Then there’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (yeah I understand that she’s dropped her maiden name) who seems to have been gunning for the White House since before she ran for the New York US Senate seate.

Yesterday in Chicago there was a fundraiser held. So they compete for dollars. According to the Chicago Sun-Times…

Barack Obama says he has no problem with Hillary Rodham Clinton coming to Chicago to raise campaign cash — even if her formal dinner Monday night was expected to raise seven times as much as his cocktail party earlier in the evening.

But the South Side Democrat wasn’t going to let anyone suggest the senator and former first lady was more qualified to hit the ground running as president than he is.

“The only person who would probably be prepared to be our president on Day 1 would be Bill Clinton — not Hillary Clinton,” Obama said when asked about unnamed Clinton backers questioning Obama’s experience.

“I think that we’re all very qualified for the job,” the freshman senator said. “The question is who can inspire the nation to get us past the politics that have bogged us down in the past. That was true, by the way, in the ’90s as well as more recently.”

It was an obvious dig at the political divisions of the Clinton years.

Clinton’s campaign officials declined to respond.

The two Democratic presidential front-runners held competing fund-raisers about six blocks apart.

The Chicagoan-turned-New York senator’s event was at the historic Palmer House Hilton, with a son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Yusef, and more than 300 others helping her raise an expected $750,000. Even Mr. Cub Ernie Banks helped out, although he didn’t attend the dinner.

For between $1,000 and $2,300 a pop, her donors dined on chicken with mushrooms, a garlic roasted risotto, tomato basil soup with blue cheese, triple chocolate mousse cake with pistachio sauce and fresh berries.

But if Clinton was trying to out-class or out-Chicago her rival on his own turf, Obama wasn’t biting — even though his event at Fulton’s on the River was expected to raise only $100,000.

For a suggested $2,300 donation, Obama’s 50 to 75 guests got hors d’oeuvres, red and white wine, Miller Lite, Miller Genuine Draft and Heineken. The hosts were Ariel Capital Management chief John W. Rogers Jr. and James S. Crown, head of Henry Crown & Co.

Wow, these politicians have all the great events. And they even go to the fine-dining restaurants.

One night I was talking to a friend about PW (that’s my name for Protest Warrior). He said that the typical M.O. of PW was to just go after the anti-war/leftist protestors with clever sarcastic signs and he suggested that this limited PW. He believe that the leaders of PW Alan & Kfir could have made a solid movement that could have united conservatives of different stripes.

Well in any political movement there is diversity. You’ve got Christian conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, and I’m sure there are other designations I can’t even consider. Still PW could have been that movement.

You wanna know how I discovered Protest Warrior. I would read this website called Brain-Terminal.com and I saw this video about Alan & Kfir’s encounters with the anti-war/leftists in San Francisco called “Warrior Among Them“. It was pretty hilarious, but it also helped that Kfir called the Rush Limbaugh program to talk about PW’s earliest exploits on two separate occasions. To be sure it was interesting to see these guys used most of these protestors half-baked slogans against them.

And the forums, where most of the people here at the Refugee Camp came from, were good for the lastest news and arguments. People of varying ideologies and stripes come together to exchanges ideas and debate. It was good for about a good two years until not too long after the last presidential elections.

This same friend talked about how the “neo-cons” and the Christian conservatives came to the forums and that ruined it for him. I’m not clear on what a neo-con is, but to be sure the old friend referred to them as socialists and not true conservatives. To be sure what ruined the forum for me was the petty arguments, off-forum drama leaking onto the forums, and the forums getting swamped by some non-contributing members especially those of the leftist bent that dropped by before the forums went down last September.

The forums are always rumored to return and hopefully not in the same fashion that they once were. I jokingly suggested that Alan & Kfir were better off just “nuking” (or closing the forums) and start all over again. It looks like Kfir (Alan is no longer with PW) has done exactly that. And hopefully PW can have a revitalized organization just in time for the 2008 presidential election.

BTW, I see that Alan & Kfir has just released their new book for sale. Does anyone have an opinion on it?

The court limits a high school student’s free speech. From the Chicago Tribune…

A high school student’s “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner got slapped down by the Supreme Court in a decision Monday that restricts student speech rights when the message seems to advocate illegal drug use.

The court ruled 5-4 in the case of Joseph Frederick, who unfurled his handiwork at a school-sanctioned event in 2002, triggering his suspension and leading to a lengthy court battle.

“The message on Frederick’s banner is cryptic,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. But the school principal who suspended him “thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one,” Roberts said in the majority opinion.

In a concurrence, Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy said the court’s opinion “goes no further” than speech interpreted as dealing with illegal drug use.

“It provides no support” for any restriction that goes to political or social issues, they said.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the ruling “does serious violence to the First Amendment.”

Students in public schools don’t have the same rights as adults, but neither do they leave their constitutional protections at the schoolhouse gate, the court said in a landmark speech-rights ruling from Vietnam era.

The court has limited what students can do in subsequent cases, saying they may not be disruptive or lewd or interfere with a school’s basic educational mission.

Frederick said his banner was a nonsensical message that he first saw on a snowboard. He intended it to proclaim his right to say anything at all.

Frederick displayed his handiwork on a winter morning as the Olympic torch made its way through Juneau, Alaska, en route to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

School principal Deborah Morse said the phrase was a pro-drug message. Frederick denied that he was advocating for drug use and brought a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Former independent counsel Ken Starr, whose law firm represented the school principal, called it a narrow ruling that “should not be read more broadly.”

Taking issue with that, Steven R. Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “It is difficult to know what its impact will be in other cases involving unpopular speech.”

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy said it was sad that the court thought there should be a drug exception to the First Amendment.

In their concurrence Alito and Kennedy said that the decision “goes no further than to hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use.”

Nor does it address political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use, Alito and Kennedy said, embracing language from Stevens’ strong dissent.