Chile Minister: Navy Made Mistake on Tsunami | read this item
Chile’s defense minister said Sunday that the navy made a mistake by not immediately issuing a tsunami warning after a mammoth earthquake, a step that could have helped coastal villagers flee to higher ground sooner.
Tonight’s Rangers are YatPundit, ItsJessMe, BentLiberal, dadanation, Alfonso Nevarez, and vcmvo2 as reader and editor.
The diaries up for rescue are:
zenbassoon shares with us an extraordinarily rich account of musical history from Harry Burleigh to Duke Ellington in Sunday Concert–Black History Edition. (BentLiberal)
AIG agrees to $35.5 billion unit sale to Prudential: sources | read this item
NEW YORK (Reuters) – American International Group Inc agreed to sell its Asian life insurance unit to Britain’s Prudential Plc for about $35.5 billion, in a deal that would help the U.S. government get back billions of its bailout money, sources familiar with the matter said.
A No-Win Situation -- By: Kathryn Jean Lopez | read this item
Make no mistake: If Barack Obama actually wanted to be the post-partisan agent of change in Washington, his health-care summit would have looked a whole lot different from the meeting at the Blair House, across the street from the White House. Every Republican from John Boehner to maverick John McCain (the latter is being challenged from the right in an upcoming primary, by the way) walked into the meeting imploring the White House to start over, to begin again, to hit the reset button. If the president wanted to meet them half-way, or any of the way, he would have done just that.
Instead the president continues to argue — aided in the media by folks ranging from practically everyone on MSNBC to Bill O’Reilly of the supposedly all-right-wing Fox News Channel — that the American people just don’t understand what his health-care plan is all about. In one sense I agree with him. Given the fact that even the Congressional Budget Office said it didn’t have enough details to do a proper score of the latest version of the legislation in time for the official summit, the man has a point. But it’s not voters’ slowness with the issues; it’s the White House’s.
If the president were serious about being a different kind of leader, he would have had governors at the White House summit on health care, as Republican governors requested.
He would have considered what Republicans had to say instead of dismissing criticism as he has been doing for the better part of a year in this and other debates. One of the best lines of the summit was “If you’re waiting for Mitch McConnell to roll in here a wheelbarrow full of a 2,700-page comprehensive health-care bill, that’s not going to happen.” Sen. Lamar Alexander continued, “We’ve watched the comprehensive, economy-wide cap-and-trade. We’ve watched the comprehensive immigration bill#…#we’ve watched the comprehensive health-care bill. And they fall of their own weight.”
That’s a message that Washington can afford to hear. That’s a message that gets back to constitutional principles of federalism. And, frankly, that’s a manageable message.
As Paul Ryan, a congressman from Wisconsin whose attention to detail is such that even the president has trouble dismissing him, explained at the summit, there are, in fact, real differences between the Republican and Democratic positions on health care in Washington. “We don’t really believe the government should be in control of all this,” Ryan said. Pointing to what he and others have been hearing from Americans — in town halls since the summer and, most recently, in the Massachusetts special election – Ryan said to the president, “I would respectfully submit: You’re not listening to them.”
Not listening isn’t exactly the “hope and change” people signed up for. It is hardly a new kind of leadership for him to rub in a year-old election victory when asked a question by the senior senator from Arizona at a forum he is hosting. It’s petty snippiness. It’s bullying. It’s a game of point-scoring of the kind he claims to be above and repulsed by.
The president of the United States is a liberal ideologue who isn’t comfortable telling you as much, so he ridicules those who try to highlight the truth. Without a penchant for honesty, it’s just about all he’s left with.
On perhaps no issue is his dishonesty more obvious than on abortion. And it’s been so with Barack Obama since before he was ever inaugurated. During the 2008 campaign, he outright lied about his position and accused those who talked about his record in the Illinois statehouse of being liars. He continues to do just that. Late last year he audaciously accused the Catholic bishops of the United States — as well as others who criticized various versions of health-care legislation for their abortion funding — of “bearing false witness.” And, after refusing to invite pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak to the summit, the president simply ignored the issue when John Boehner brought up the abortion question. He apparently didn’t believe that an issue that threatens the consciences of millions of Americans deserved a simple explanation from the White House. And, flanked by two “pro-choice Catholics,” the president was happy to let Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi state the dishonest talking-point — that what was being discussed would not fund abortion — on his behalf.
A Quinnipiac poll last year found that 72 percent of voters oppose federal funding of abortion. A recent poll from CBS – just to pick one non-right-wing entity — found that half those surveyed don’t approve of the president’s job on health care.
There’s something to what Paul Ryan said, and Barack Obama must know it; otherwise, he wouldn’t be trying so hard to dismiss objections and gloss over what he’s doing. His options right now are to force some plan through Congress or to walk away and blame the “Party of No” for killing his health-care hopes. But his own health-care summit is already on YouTube and provides ample fodder to counter that “Party of No” accusation. His opposition proved themselves anything but the troglodytes Hardball would have them portrayed as.
And if he does manage to get enough Democrats to go along with his politically suicidal gambit, good luck, Mr. President, coming up with an explanation when your impractical plan doesn’t become the panacea it was supposed to be — that you insisted we weren’t smart enough to understand it to be. The proof will be in the reality. At some point, your misinformation campaign will get tired, tiresome, and tossed out.
I, for one, though, am hoping your own party forces a change of course. We can’t afford your way, in more ways than one.
–Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com.
Rescuers Race to Pull Survivors From Toppled Apartments | read this item
Rescuers raced against the clock as quake victims trapped in a toppled apartment block early Sunday even as looters stole food and robbed banks after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Chile.
Gearing up for a new week after being blissfully unplugged with family this weekend. I’ve got jury duty in the morning. What’s on your minds?
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How to help the Chilean earthquake victims: Links. More links here.
Barclays hires former Goldman banker Leven | read this item
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Barclays Plc has hired former Goldman Sachs banker Johan Leven as co-head of corporate finance in Asia-Pacific, as the British bank continues its push as a full-fledged investment bank.
Chile restarts top copper mines hit by quake | read this item
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s biggest copper mines hit by a massive earthquake slowly resumed operations on Sunday despite limited power supplies, which analysts fear could curtail exports from the world’s No. 1 producer.
How Russ Feingold Became Middle of the Road, And Other Observations | read this item
National Journal, just this past week, released their annual rankings, always eagerly anticipated among the political chattering classes because they are used to crown the “most liberal” and “most conservative” members of each chamber.
For 2010, it is hard to find qualms with the winner of the most conservative crown, which was bestowed on the head of Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe.
(Although, rest assured that Jim DeMint is probably demanding a recount, even as we speak).
The “most liberal” crown actually was divvied up among a quintet of Democrats: Sherrod Brown (OH), Roland Burris (IL), Ben Cardin (MD), Jack Reed (RI), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). No real shockers there, either.
However, the National Journal rankings have a quirk to them, and that quirk comes up when one considers the 55th most liberal Senator in the Senate:
That’s right…in the #55 slot comes Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, just a smidgen more conservative than Arkansas Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, to say nothing of “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman.
You probably buy that about as quickly as you buy the notion that Dennis Kucinich is actually the 160th most liberal member of the House, or that California’s Maxine Waters is scored as “less liberal” than two of her California House mates that are commonly viewed as moderates: Jane Harman and Loretta Sanchez.
What gives? National Journal’s own Brian Friel offers the explanation:
When maverick liberals stand on principle and vote against others on the Left because they don’t think a bill is liberal enough, or when maverick conservatives buck the Right because a bill includes too many compromises with moderates, the vote ratings system sees only the vote, not the reasons behind it.
There is another potential liability to the National Journal ratings that is not applicable this year, but pops up every four years or so.
You might recall that the ratings were flogged mercilessly by conservatives in both 2004 and 2008 when they showed John Kerry and Barack Obama as the most liberal members of the United States Senate in the years immediately before their presidential runs.
Many on the Left cried foul, but, given the proper context, they were almost certainly legit. After all, both gentlemen were in the midst of preparing for presidential runs, runs which inevitably begin with a march through the Democratic Primary cycle. Therefore, a smart Senator/Presidential aspirant is going to be very wary of casting apostate votes in Congress that can be exploited by primary rivals.
Again, a very easily explained quirk in a member’s voting record, but a quirk that will not be picked up by a ratings system like the one employed by National Journal.
So, as we acknowledge the imperfections of the formula employed by the folks at National Journal, the question must be asked: is there a bug-free way to rate the partisan or ideological leanings of members of Congress?
Ratings such as those employed by Congressional Quarterly have a flaw in that it seems to take into account all roll call votes. This is going to tend to exaggerate things like partisan support. If a member breaks with his/her party on half of the critical votes, but sticks with the party on the rest of the more generic votes, their “party support” ratings will become surprisingly high. And that, in short, is how a conservative Democrat like Dan Boren of Oklahoma scores a 91% party unity rating from CQ in 2008. Nobody, not even Boren himself, would accuse the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma of being that loyal to the Democratic House majority.
Other ratings services try to delineate between generic votes and more highly charged voting opportunities. Progressive Punch, for example, grades members both on “all votes” and so-called “crucial votes”. The difference can be critical: the aforementional Dan Boren scores a somewhat respectable 70.73 lifetime rating for all votes cast, but a much more equivocal 44.76 lifetime rating for “crucial votes.”
Of course, these ratings are also going to be hamstrung by the same maverick vote quandary that confronts the National Journal ratings system. The votes subjectively selected by Progressive Punch are clearly different from NJ, however, which might explain why Dennis Kucinich ranks in top third of Democrats in the Progressive Punch ratings (slotting in at #71). Furthermore, a quick glance of the top 70 show few people that are, on the surface, obviously more conservative than Kucinich.
So, while it is entertaining political conversation to pore over ratings like the ones released by NJ or CQ, it is also helpful to understand their inherent flaws, and place them into the proper context.
That, or one of those two publications will have to come up with an entirely separate set of calculations for “principled/smugly self-righteous (depending on your perspective)” votes with the other party.
That might involve some pretty tricky math, though.
