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Miley Cyrus Is A Better Political Philosopher Than Any Writer For The National Review
Matt Yglesias compares the evocations of American exceptionalism in Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party In The USA’ and a Ramesh Ponnuru-Rich Lowry piece in the National Review:
While hacks like Ponnuru & Lowry try to identify Americanness with a particular form of conservative politics, the fact of the matter is that America’s geographic and ethnic diversity entails political diversity. Their effort to identity the United States with opposition to mass transit, for example, founders on the fact that our largest and most important city is also one of the most transit-oriented city in the world.
“Party,” more plausibly, invokes popular music as a source of unity, capable of transcending both regional and racial (”And a Jay-Z song was on,” turned into “a Michael song” in her performance at the Teen Choice awards) divisions. The irony, however, is that American popular culture is famously global. The mere fact
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Popularity: 2% [?]
Why Does The Irish Prime Minister Spend St Patrick’s Day In America?
Briefly: Face time.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Maybe Not Tomorrow, But..
Via Greg Sargent, Ezra Klein highlights a bit of polling on Medicare right after it passed:
After Lyndon Johnson was elected, a Harris poll found only a minority, 46%, supported a Federal plan to extend health care to the aged. Today, of course, Medicare is overwhelmingly popular.
What matters less, I think, is when that 46% grew to the vastly larger amount of support the program enjoys 55 years later, when it paid off politically. And the fact is you cannot know when it will (could anyone have predicted the political circumstances that would allow the party opposing universal healthcare to invoke Medicare?) What matters is that the reforming party ruled by conviction despite the polling. As Sargent noted, the health agenda of Johnson’s predecessor was shot down, and opinion held the proposal in low regard (sound familiar?). But leadership drove it …
Popularity: 2% [?]
Want To Hear About Something Messed Up?
Justin Fox parses the dearth of commentary from business leadership on the finance reform bill:
The likeliest explanation for this abdication [of assuming a role in the debate of the bill] is that the Chamber and the Roundtable represent financial corporations as well as nonfinancial ones, leaving them tongue-tied on legislation that potentially pits the banks against the rest. Which means there’s no unified voice for the nonfinancial corporate world.
And because big banks have lobbyists going heavy against Dodd’s bill, the silence from non-finance corporations on measures that would benefit them is a crucial loss for the bill, as it puts the debate on the predictable consumer advocacy groups vs Big Finance track.
Why, though, would executives of the non-financers let measures that help their business fall by the wayside? Businesses, after all, ‘ought to favor a regulatory structure that keeps …
Popularity: 1% [?]
Rules Of Disorder
Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news.
-AEI’s Norm Ornstein on the Republican conference’s phony outrage over the use of reconciliaton and the so-called ‘deem and pass’ self-executing rule. Ornstein notes the rule was used dozens of times by the Rules Chair in the last GOP-controlled Congress.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)
Popularity: 1% [?]
