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Poll on Birthers: Most Southerners, Republicans Question Obama Citizenship
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2009 Comment (68)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Dixie may once have been the so-called land of cotton, but it has become the cradle of creeping Birtherism. According to a new poll from Research 2000 (commissioned by Daily Kos), a majority of Southerners either believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States (23 percent) or are not sure (30 percent). Only 47 percent of Southern respondents believe Obama was born in the USA. By contrast, 93 percent of Northeasterns said yes, he was born here, 90 percent of Midwesterners did and 87 percent of Westerners.
Wow.
And while 93 percent of Democrats say he was born in the country and 83 percent of Independents, the figure is only 42 percent for Republicans. A majority of Republicans either believe he was born abroad (28 percent) or don't know (30 percent).
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New York Times Goes to the Dogs
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Today's New York Times has an interesting piece on how corporations are using Internet cookies to more specifically target ads at computer users (or, depending on how you see these things, burn away more vestiges of privacy left in our society). But one paragraph struck me as, well, odd:
But consumer advocates say such unseen tracking is troubling. On the old Internet, nobody knew you were a dog. On the new targeted Internet, they now know what kind of dog you are, your favorite leash color, the last time you had fleas and the date you were neutered.
A dog? Who exactly is reading the Times these days?
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William Shatner, Stephen Colbert Take on Sarah Palin's Farewell
Tweet Share on Facebook July 28, 2009 Comment (23)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My initial take on Sarah Palin's farewell address was that it was a nothing-burger and therefore a waste: She had the attention of the 24-hour news networks and could memorably lay out her vision for the country, or at least try to appeal to people who aren't already media-hating members of the cult of Palin. Instead, I thought, her farewell speech was mostly forgettable and much like her resignation speech: a strange hodge-podge of self-congratulation, stir-up-the-base sound-bites and awkward ad libs.
Oh was I wrong. Unfortunately for Palin, her speech is proving memorable, specifically a nonsensical sequence early on where she waxes poetic about Alaska. Poetic is the operative word, according to Conan O'Brien and the great William Shatner (h/t Andrew Sullivan):
And yes, that really is verbatim from her speech.
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Hey NRA, Why Doesn't Congress Have Guns?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 27, 2009 Comment (13)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne makes a good point in his column today: Members of the U.S. Senate should pack heat. Various senators and other legislators have been pushing a variety of pro-gun measures, from allowing guns in national parks to letting patrons of bars be armed. So, Dionne argues, why don't these same legislators follow their own dictates to their logical conclusion and allow guns in the senate? Or to put it another way, why waste taxpayer money on the security of the capitol police when the free market could do it probably more efficiently by simply arming the senators, their staffs and the tourists?
And he's not kidding:
Don't think this column is offered lightly. I want these guys to put up or shut up. If the NRA's servants in Congress don't take their arguments seriously enough to apply them to their own lives, maybe the rest of us should do more to stop them from imposing their nonsense on our country.
Agreed.
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Steroids, Baseball and the Hall of Fame
Tweet Share on Facebook July 26, 2009 Comment (17)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Today is baseball's Hall of Fame induction day, with Rickey Henderson, Jim Rice and Joe Gordon taking their places among the sport's celebrated greats. Rickey was a slam dunk, but Rice's credentials remain the subject of debate and Gordon played on the great 1940s Yankees teams and so too was apparently not a no-brainer inductee. The Hall of Fame debate is going to achieve a new level of sporting contentiousness, however, as the steroid becomes eligible. Mark McGwire has been eligible for a couple of years now, without making the cut. But he's the leading edge of a generation that will, in 15 or so years, wind down when Alex "A-Roid" Rodriguez becomes eligible. In between we'll have to worry about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and many other great players who have been linked to performance enhancing drugs.
So how should Hall voters handle the steroid era?
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DeMint Doesn't Sound Like a Candidate for President in 2012
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (2)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is in the discussion as a potential GOP presidential candidate in three years, especially since he gained national publicity for saying that healthcare reform could be President Obama's "Waterloo" and could "break" him. And he's making the rounds promoting his new book Saving Freedom which talks about what he sees as creeping socialism threatening to destroy our country. But when my colleague Andrew Burt asked him about a 2012 run, he didn't sound like he's preparing a run:
When you put all your ideas down in a book, you're less likely to be able to endure a campaign--they'll take a lot of things out of context on you. For me, the big battle between socialism and freedom comes down to this healthcare issue.
Of course as DeMint well knows writing a book is a fairly common precursor to a presidential run. Perhaps he's less worried that his ideas will be taken out of context than that they'll be taken seriously? You can read the entire interview in the current issue of our weekly digital edition.
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Even if Henry Louis Gates' Arresting Officer Is Right, He Was Wrong
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (200)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Assume for a moment that Cambridge Police Officer James Crowley is telling the absolute truth in his incident report and subsequent press appearances and that Henry Louis Gates is lying about the events that led to the Harvard professor's arrest. Assume for a moment that when Crowley showed up at Gates' home, Gates was belligerent, angry, immediately started in on race and racism and made a "your mama" comment. Assume that he spouted inanities to the effect that Crowley didn't know who he was "messing" with. Assume that when Crowley, satisfied that Gates did in fact live in the home and so was in fact not burglarizing it, started to leave Gates kept yelling at him.
Even if all of that is true ... Crowley was still wrong arresting Gates. "The professor at any time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or going back inside the house," Crowley said in a radio interview. Maybe so. But Crowley could also have resolved by rolling his eyes at the cranky--but not criminal--professor, getting back in his car and driving away.
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Stop the Presses! Obama Dislikes But Still Uses Media Cycle!
Tweet Share on Facebook July 24, 2009 Comment (52)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Peter Baker's piece in today's New York Times is actually pretty interesting, but the headline ("Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Manipulates It, Worrying Some") and lede are a bit goofy. Baker writes:
It has become his common lament. Challenged about difficulties with his economic or legislative programs, President Obama complains about the tyranny of “the news cycle,” pronouncing the words with an air of above-it-all disdain for the impatience and fecklessness of today’s media culture.
Yet after six months in office, perhaps no other president has been more attuned to, or done more to dominate, the news cycle he disparages.
That's the equivalent of saying: Robert Schlesinger complains constantly about the summer heat. And yet weeks into the annual heat wave, no other blogger has used air conditioning as much. Just because you don't like the atmosphere in which you're operating, you're not obliged to operate as if it didn't exist.
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Obama Was Right About Henry Louis Gates Arrest
Tweet Share on Facebook July 23, 2009 Comment (156)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So I was playing softball last night and missed the big news--I guess President Obama called a press conference to denounce the Cambridge police's arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., right? What? Not so much? OK, so Obama held a press conference on healthcare and apparently the only news he committed was ... saying that arresting someone in their own home when they're not committing a crime is stupid.
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The Birther-9/11 Connection
Tweet Share on Facebook July 23, 2009 Comment (12)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As I mentioned yesterday, the video of Mike Castle getting ambushed by a "Birther" (as in Barack Obama's birth took place somewhere beside the United States of America) has given the televised media an excuse to more closely examine the puzzling movement. Chris Matthews has been on it a couple of nights in a row now and I've heard Republicans play it off a couple of times as fringe-nuts analogous to liberals during the Bush years who said that W had broken laws and/or should be impeached. But that's not correct: There is a serious argument to be made that Bush overstepped the laws and the Constitution in his exercise of presidential power while in office; you might disagree with the assertion, but it's on-its-face, slam-dunk nutty in the way Birther theory is.
Rather the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg comes up with the proper analogy: The birthers are the equivalent on the right of the "truthers" on the left—people who believe that the U.S. government was secretly behind the September 11 attacks. In both cases you've got people who believe that the press is complicit in a government conspiracy to assault society.
Robert Schlesinger
Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of "White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters." E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.
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