If you’ve never gone over to Compound Interest to look at one of the chemical infographics I borrow from them so often on Sunday mornings, go give this one a try. The page explains the contents of a vaccine, and what each of them do. So the next time someone screams about all the horrible stuff in there, you’ll be ready. And remember—it’s not too late for a flu shot.
The Miami Herald has a few words for Republican leaders.
Remember when Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, vowed to demonstrate that his party could actually govern rather than merely obstruct? Apparently, neither does Sen. McConnell.
Hyper-partisanship has been the rule in Washington ever since Barack Obama assumed the presidency in 2009. Partisan gridlock has produced two government shutdowns and has often led to paralysis in dealing with vital national issues like fixing Medicare and other government programs. The Republican refusal to work with the other party in the traditional give-and-take of politics began with the Affordable Care Act and extended to virtually every other important domestic and foreign policy issue.
The Herald clearly recognizes that the failure to act was generated by Republicans who won’t engage in any meaningful way. So why call it “partisan gridlock?” It’s not gridlock. It’s just sabotage.
...Sen. McConnell and his party have now taken partisanship to unprecedented levels, at least in modern times. It is almost as if they have decided to rewrite the Constitution to limit a president’s tenure in a second term to three years instead of four, to the point of irresponsibility.
Now that’s not completely true. I’m sure that had Scalia died last year, Senate Republicans would have discovered that the Senate doesn’t allow Court nominees in the last two years of a president’s term. It’s not just giving the first black president 3/5 of a term. They’re willing to whittle Obama’s term down to a toothpick, and they don’t care if the grounds are all lies.
The latest example is the refusal to consider the president’s plan to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo. In a way, this is the most egregious display of partisanship so far — Congress itself asked the president for a plan. Lawmakers wrote a provision into the National Defense Authorization Act setting Feb. 23 deadline for the president to act. Mr. Obama fulfilled his duty last week, but Republican leaders on the Hill declared the plan DOA immediately. If they didn’t intend to consider it, why ask for it?
Silly. If they don’t ask Obama for things, how can they talk about all the times they thwarted Obama?
Come on in. Let’s see who else is punditing.
Leonard Pitts talks about Ben Carson talking about President Obama.
Today’s column is for the benefit of one Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson.
He shouldn’t need what follows, but obviously does. No other conclusion is possible after his interview with Politico a few days ago.
The subject was Barack Obama and what the Republican presidential contender sees as the inferior quality of the president’s blackness. “He’s an ‘African’ American,” said Carson. “He was, you know, raised white. I mean, like most Americans, I was proud that we broke the color barrier when he was elected, but . . . he didn’t grow up like I grew up . . . ”
Carson doesn’t fail to mention that Obama spent some of his youth in Indonesia. I’m guessing the word “madrasa” came up.
Let’s not even get into the fact that the man questioning Obama’s racial bona fides once stood before an audience of white conservatives and proclaimed the Affordable Care Act “the worst thing that has happened in this country since slavery.” Let’s deal instead with Carson’s implicit assertion that to be authentically black requires being fatherless and broke, scrabbling for subsistence in the ’hood.
It’s not just a conversation I wish I could hear Pitts and Carson have face to face, it’s one that Americans of all races would benefit from hearing.
Elizabeth Williamson is either the quickest writer on the planet, or she sneakily had her Clinton Triumphant column written in advance. Hey, maybe she had a Bernie one, too. Just in case.
The Clintons worked hard to overcome a long and sometimes bitter history in the Palmetto State. After Mr. Obama trounced Mrs. Clinton in South Carolina in 2008, Bill Clinton, angry at her big defeat by a young idealist, compared Mr. Obama’s win to the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s victories in the 1984 and 1988 South Carolina primaries. Many Democrats were enraged by those comments, finding them sour and dismissive of black voters in general.
Mrs. Clinton’s win on Saturday suggests that she could dominate other Southern states with large proportions of black voters, such as Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, on Super Tuesday, March 1. Mr. Sanders seems to have all but given up on these states, and is not advertising in them. Instead he hopes to increase his delegate count in states like Minnesota, Massachusetts and Texas on Tuesday.
And… yeah. Not the deepest analysis of the election, and there’s not a lot of fresh insight to collect, but it was out fast.
The New York Times says the relationship between the GOP and gun manufacturers is as tight as ever.
Realistically, no one studying politics should have expected the remaining Republican presidential contenders to speak up at their latest debate about the nation’s harrowing problem of mass shootings.
For all their rambling conflict last Thursday, they did not say a word about the carnage, even if six more innocent citizens were shot dead just days before in Kalamazoo, Mich. Three other people were murdered by a gunman in Hesston, Kan., on the very night of the debate. But it’s been clear for months that facing up to the gun mayhem is a nonstarter for the Republican contenders except, perhaps, if one of the shooters turns out to have Islamic connections.
That would very likely spark another bout of dire campaign warnings about the threat of international terrorism, as distinct from the domestic kind that is perpetrated so regularly it slips off the Republican radar. (How many dead this time? Too few for the usual “thoughts and prayers” bromides from the candidates.)
And sadly, we’re not surprised. Just sad. Apparently there is no level of violence conducted by Billy Bob and company that moves the public needle.
Frank Bruni wins the Freaky Sunday Award for strange column titles with “If Donald Trump changed genders.”
Imagine, for a moment, the presidential candidacy of a rich, brash real estate magnate and reality TV star named Donna Trump.
Quizzically coifed and stubbornly sun-kissed, she’s on her third marriage. There’s clear evidence that infidelity factored into the demise of the first, and among her children is one conceived when The Donna wasn’t married to the other parent.
Her sexual appetites have been prodigious, at least according to her frequent claims and vulgar cant. And she has a tendency — disturbing on its own, even more so in someone who aspires to civic leadership — to talk about men as sirloins and rump roasts of disparate succulence. She denigrates those who displease her on cosmetic grounds:
How well do you think The Donna would do in the polls? How far into the race would she survive?
Hmm. Longer than Carly Fiorino, and roughly as long as every television show starring Sarah Palin?
The New York Times reminds us of the elevated importance of this election.
The decades-long crusade to end legal abortion in America after Roe v. Wade has again reached the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, the eight justices will hear a case challenging a 2013 Texas law that has already shut down more than half of the state’s 41 health clinics that perform abortions. ...
Texas’ law, like similar ones around the country, was written by anti-abortion activists with the sole purpose of shutting down clinics. Its two main requirements have nothing to do with protecting women’s health. ...
The outcome of the Texas case is now less clear with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade and was a solid vote in favor of all restrictions on abortion. If the justices split 4 to 4 in the Texas case, it would leave the Fifth Circuit’s decision in place, meaning that the Texas and Louisiana laws would remain in effect and women in both states would suffer the consequences.
Why even assume that these guys are passing umpteen variations on anti-abortion laws just for the effect of the individual bits of legislation? It’s likely that a major reason for the stream is the hope that the court will eventually provide a ruling so muddle-headedly open (i.e. Citizens United) that it can be used to justify flat out anything.
Ross Douthat explains… hang on. First, brace yourself. Ready? Okay, Ross Douthat now explains why Obama is to blame for Trump.
The spectacle of the Republican Party’s Trumpian meltdown has inspired a mix of glee and fear among liberals — glee over their rivals’ self-immolation, and fear that what arises from the destruction will be worse.
What it hasn’t inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.
You know why there hasn’t been much self-examination of how “Obama-era trends in liberal politics” fed the Trump monster? Because it’s a painfully stupid idea. That’s why. But please, break new ground. Tell us how we did it.
...Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Obama didn’t give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isn’t an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends — with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.
Wait. You’re saying that… no. Hang on. Obama is so… I mean, reality shows…
We’ve reached a new milestone. I can’t even figure out what Douthat is trying to say. Is it that after Obama has mind-controlled the nation for eight years, we have nothing between our ears capable of resisting The Tan One? Or is it just Douthat’s all purpose excuse: liberalism makes bad things happen? I want it noted that Douthat has achieved this intellectual mire without resorting to a single word of Old Icelandic or using even a snippet of marginalia from the Geneva Bible. That’s bonus points.
Kathleen Parker is convinced Hillary is Black Trump.
If Donald Trump speaks for disenfranchised whites, Hillary Clinton speaks mostly to blacks who feel the same.
Last week Bernie was the Donald Trump of the left. This week Hillary is the Donald Trump of the left. Because, dammit, Democrats should share the pain!
But the differences in how people, left and right, perceive the world’s injustices — and the various approaches today’s presidential front-runners are bringing to Super Tuesday — suggest that we dwell in worlds apart. Black and white, as ever before.
Oh, I see. Parker wants to make this easy. Trump speaks for the white people! Hillary speaks for the black people! The Lorax speaks for the trees! And we’re all angry (probably due to a shortages of thneeds). There’s more to this column, but it’s more of this plodding, pedantic effort to make this all simpler than it is.
R. R. Reno visits with evangelical Christians for Trump.
Donald Trump won the white evangelical Christian vote in the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucuses. This support has been evident for months, causing evangelical leaders to wring their hands. Last year, Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s influential Washington organization, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined: “Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values?”
Maybe, but the reason so many evangelicals are for Trump is fairly simple to explain. Religious conservatives have been losing a lot lately. This has put them in a rebellious mood.
Evangelical Christians have not been “losing a lot lately.” Evangelical Christians have been told that they’re losing a lot, what with the war on everything and one slim vote in the Supreme Court being all that holds the coliseums and lions at bay. People have been throwing an extra batch of hellfire and damnation their way, and look at that, they’re actually scared. Which is how evangelical leaders like their flock. They just don’t like them flocking to Trump.
Erik Wemple on a new promise from Trump.
...Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is:
One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.
An attack on media law is a logical extension of Trump’s rhetoric, not to mention a threat to American democracy.
Let’s see: deportation? Check. Wall? Check. Torture? Double-check. Ending pesky first amendment protections and making it illegal to criticize the glorious leader? Big fat check. Yes, we’re still on track for fascism, and don’t forget it.
Dana Milbank and the middle grade metaphor.
Have you completed the third grade?
If so, this may be why you are having trouble understanding the appeal of Donald Trump.
At Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, Ben Carson delivered an opening statement about “the abyss of destruction.” An analysis shows he was communicating at the level of a 10th-grader’s comprehension. Marco Rubio, who spoke of “the identity of America in the 21st century,” was also at the high school level. Ted Cruz and John Kasich were at middle school comprehension levels.
And then there was Trump — at a third-grade level:
Trump’s no dummy, dummy. He just assumes everyone else is.
This was no anomaly. Some noticed Trump’s peculiarly prosaic prose early in the campaign, but it has become even more pronounced: Simple words. Simple sentences. Simple concepts.
See Donald. See Donald run. See Donald win.
I’ve noticed this in his Twitter posts. They actually seem longer than they are, because Trump doesn’t bother with silly things like adjectives. He gives you Fun Fact #1. Something like “Last night I did so much better than Marco Rubio.” Short declarative. “Rubio always chokes under pressure.” And a final drive-it-home assertion. “Such a loser!” I made up this particular triptych, but it’s a structure that appears over and over again in Donald’s tweets and statements.
I wonder if Trump has read Snow Crash? Probably not, but the pattern and the words he chooses are interesting for more than their pure simplicity.