Daily Archives: June 27, 2012

Selling the ‘party’ view of reality keeps on getting a little tougher every day

8 Replies

I took Dick Harpootlian to task a bit earlier today for his implied assumption that any Democrat is better than any Republican. Now it’s the GOP’s turn.

Just got this release from SC Senate Republicans:

Reform doesn’t come easy, even when we have a majority in the Senate.

Senate rules, arcane procedures, and the like let single senators or blocks of Democrats wield extraordinary power to block good reforms from becoming law.

We have a chance to change that. We have to go from a majority to a filibuster-proof majority…

To do that, not only do we have to pick up two seats, we have to maintain Republican control of two other critically important seats that will be heavily contested by Democrats – the seat held by Senator John Courson and the seat that was vacated by former Senator Glenn McConnell.

The bottom line? We need your help.

Yeah, OK. But here’s the thing: How does electing more Republicans automatically give you a stronger majority for “reform?” Let’s consider what one Senate Republican said himself within the last 24 hours (in a missive from the Senate Republican Caucus, by the way):

June 26, 2012 (COLUMBIA, S.C.) - Senator Jake Knotts (R-Lexington) today released the following statement:

“Michael Haley should be ashamed of himself for invoking the memory of dead soldiers just to make a partisan political point. As a commissioned officer in the South Carolina National Guard, Mr. Haley should know that he is not permitted to engage in partisan rhetoric. Yet he continues to participate in contentious partisan issues. Mr. Haley should immediately apologize to the families of those brave heroes for using them as political cover. As my friend and fellow veteran Senator Phil Leventis said from the state Senate floor this week, if Mr. Haley insists on being involved in politics, he should consider resigning his commission. The two cannot be mutually exclusive.”

“Everybody makes mistakes, including myself, but the important thing is to admit to being wrong, apologize for those mistakes and refrain from making them again. I call on Mr. Haley to do the honorable thing in this situation.”

First set aside Jake’s assertion that “The two cannot be mutually exclusive,” when I think he means “The two are mutually exclusive.” Or something, other than what he said. I’ve been scratching my head over that, but never mind; it’s irrelevant to the point at hand.

And the point at hand is this. Republican Jake is categorizing a push for “reform” by the Republican governor as “partisan rhetoric” and “contentious partisan issues.” In taking this position, he finds more common ground with Democrat Phil Leventis than he does with the GOP governor.

So… considering that Jake is a Republican (and he is a Republican, despite the fantasies of many Republicans to the contrary), how does it follow that electing more Republicans moves you closer to “reform,” even the GOP definition of reform, as limited as it may be?

Again, the whole logic upon which the routine assumptions of political parties rests falls apart. Despite his shaky ways of expressing it, the way Jake Knotts sees the Senate is a lot closer to reality than the way his party officially views it. Senators often do tend to form alliances based more upon whether an individual member agrees with them on a given issue than upon whether he has a D or an R after his name. Still. After roughly a decade of being organized along partisan lines (which happened as soon as Republicans had a majority).

And I’ll go farther: Not only is that the way it is, it’s the way it should be. Parties maintain that their members should always agree with anything said by a member of Party A, no matter how stupid, and always disagree with anything said by a member of Party B, no matter how wise. And that way of looking at things is indefensible.

Fast and Furious and Very Confusing

29 Replies

Some of my readers have evinced an interest in this Fast and Furious thing that is causing such a stir in Washington. Seeking to learn more about it, I started reading the results of a six-month investigation into the case by Fortune magazine. It left me more or less as confused as I was before.

An excerpt:

As political pressure has mounted, ATF and Justice Department officials have reversed themselves. After initially supporting Group VII agents and denying the allegations, they have since agreed that the ATF purposefully chose not to interdict guns it lawfully could have seized. Holder testified in December that “the use of this misguided tactic is inexcusable, and it must never happen again.”

There’s the rub.

Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It’s a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson’s anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration, which, for its part, has capitulated in an apparent effort to avoid a rhetorical battle over gun control in the run-up to the presidential election. (A Justice Department spokesperson denies this and asserts that the department is not drawing conclusions until the inspector general’s report is submitted.)

“Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false,” says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa’s committee.

The ATF’s accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn’t actually exist. “It gets back to something basic for me,” says Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). “Terry was murdered, and guns from this operation were found at his murder site.” A spokesman for Issa denies that politics has played a role in the congressman’s actions and says “multiple individuals across the Justice Department’s component agencies share responsibility for the failure that occurred in Operation Fast and Furious.” Issa’s spokesman asserts that even if ATF agents followed prosecutors’ directives, “the practice is nonetheless gun walking.” Attorneys for Dodson declined to comment on the record…

A bit further down, I find a description of the thing that has confused me the most about this case, and all the GOP indignation over it:

Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal…

And those grapes were probably sour anyway…

10 Replies

Dick Harpootlian is making the best of the fact that his preferred candidate lost the primary that he had fought and clawed to get him into, issuing the following statement last night:

I would like to congratulate Dr. Gloria Tinubu on winning the Democratic run-off election and becoming our nominee for the 7th Congressional District.  She ran a great campaign.  If Republican’s worked half as hard as Dr. Tinubu, state government wouldn’t be on the verge of a shutdown this week. The Republican runoff was a race between Nikki Haley and Andre Bauer and either way South Carolina loses.  They spent the last week in the 7th demonstrating the petty, selfish politics voters have come to expect from Republicans. Dr. Tinubu demonstrated the alternative Democrats are offering: determined and hardworking. The Democratic Party looks forward to working with Dr. Tinubu to elect her as our first Congresswoman from the 7th Congressional District this November.

Aw, he didn’t want those grapes he couldn’t reach anyway…

Remembering (or not) the creative act

25 Replies

This morning on NPR, Nora Ephron was remembered. Here are the opening lines of that report:

Nora Ephron brought us two of the most indelible scenes in contemporary cinema — and they’re startlingly different.

There’s the infamous “Silkwood shower,” from the 1983 movie, with Meryl Streep as a terrified worker at a nuclear power plant, being frantically scrubbed after exposure to radiation.

Then there’s the scene in which Meg Ryan drives home a point to Billy Crystal at Katz’s Deli, in 1989′s When Harry Met Sally. You know — the one that ends with “I’ll have what she’s having.”…

But here’s the thing. On the same radio station over the weekend, I heard Rob Reiner being interviewed on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” He directed “When Harry Met Sally,” and he said this about it:

GROSZ: You know, so many of your movies specifically have very quotable lines. From “I’ll have what she’s having,” or, you know, “turn it up to 11,” or, you know, how many times do you ask a waiter for something and he turns to you and he says “as you wish?”

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: I mean there’s so many lines from your movies that are quotable. Do you go for that? Do you grab the script and scream at the writer?

REINER: No, no, you know, you just make a movie and you put these things in. And you never know what’s going to – you know, “I’ll have what she’s having” was a line that Billy Crystal came up with in that scene. We didn’t – my mother, you know, is the one who delivered that line…

So which was it? If she were alive, would Ms. Ephron agree with Mr. Reiner’s memory? I guess when a lot of creative people get together and collaborate on something that works and is remembered, it’s sometimes tough to remember who did what.

I know I sometimes have trouble remembering, from my career, whether I came up with a particular idea — or even whether I wrote a particular editorial — because all I know for sure was that I was heavily involved in the discussion.

It’s funny the things you can’t remember, years later. For instance, when I mentioned the other day meeting Barack Obama, it got me to thinking about others I had met. And I remembered the first presidential candidate I covered. It was Jimmy Carter. I remember being excited to be there, not only because it was an exciting thing to be covering an aspect of a presidential election (it was a routine reception in Memphis), but because I really liked Jimmy, and was excited about his 1976 candidacy. I remember a number of details about the event — such as the Secret Service requiring me to take a telephoto lens I’d brought with me out of its cylindrical case, to make sure it wasn’t a weapon — but I realized I couldn’t remember whether I shook hands with Gov. Carter or interacted with him in any way.

Odd that I have no idea about that. Memory is a funny thing.

I was struck by this when I interviewed the late Ted Sorensen, JFK’s legendary speechwriter. In the video below, you’ll see him be unsure about who came up with a certain line, but generously and loyally giving the credit to President Kennedy…