p m carpenter's commentary

Where Obama went wrong

2012-06-04T11:42:53-05:00

Every time I read a Dowdian screed grounded in the argument that President Obama "has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation ... or stanch the flow of false information from the other side,"...

The impossibility of honest debate

2012-06-04T09:03:37-05:00

Dionne asks, "Can we at least reach consensus on the sort of debate between now and November that could help us solve some of our problems?" He answers, "I’ll let you in on the outcome in advance: Ideology quickly gets...

Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's love poem to Mitt Romney

2012-06-03T19:11:51-05:00

Just reading Bertrand Russell on Leibniz's theodicy (the theological proposition that the world's evil reveals God's goodness), the "proof" of which Leibniz provided to Prussia's Queen Charlotte. Observes Russell: This argument apparently satisfied the queen of Prussia. Her serfs continued...

The Donald Trump we all know

2012-06-03T08:55:11-05:00

Donald Trump, Friday night, speaking at the North Carolina GOP Convention: [T]he biggest thing Mitt Romney has to fear is the press. They don't tell the truth. Donald Trump, Friday night, speaking to reporters after his convention speech: I think...

Badass Jonah Goldberg

2012-06-02T16:52:43-05:00

The National Review’s badass social scientist, Jonah Goldberg: [I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. Well, let's see. He forgot voting Republican ... watching Fox News ... buying a Sarah...

Next Tuesday's hunting party

2012-06-02T10:36:57-05:00

The Daily Beast's Sally Kohn: The desire for power too often feels foreign to the marginalized and self-marginalizing left, which has seemed comfortable in Wisconsin with being angry without channeling that emotion into influence. Progressives have had a far harder...

Philosophical journalism

2012-06-02T08:39:10-05:00

This morning Politico's Robin Bravender spits up an astounding morsel of, uh, philosophical journalism? Here's the thrust, which, until the piece's very end, runs unmolested by any logical strafing or reportorial counteroffensive: Barrett has leaned hard into the idea that...

Again, the destructive politics of distraction

2012-06-01T12:45:44-05:00

This is the sort of unholy, godawful crap that keeps good, intelligent people out of electoral politics: It started as a one-day story, a chuckle on conservative talk radio in Boston.... But already, [Elizabeth Warren's] epic fumble of a simple...

A coming shift

2012-06-01T09:47:29-05:00

I think the Obama campaign will be compelled to shift its strategy. No more Bain, no more Governor Mittfit--just a jackhammering, Trumanesque, 1948, ferociously heartfelt 'Do-Nothing-Republicans' message, which has been vividly and brilliantly outlined by Mann-Ornstein and straightforwardly entitled: Let’s...

America and the Teacup Party

2012-06-01T09:04:45-05:00

Krugman the austerity hunter is exploring Teacup Party country: [T]he austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs.... [T]hey aren’t quite as crude as...

Bill Clinton is off to Wisconsin

2012-05-31T16:02:15-05:00

It could make a difference. I've written very little on the Wisconsin rebellions and subsequent recall battle, the reason having to do almost entirely with my immeasurable disgust with average Wisconsites. What the hell were they thinking when they voted...

And down ... goes ... DOMA

2012-05-31T12:13:47-05:00

Breaking Duh! news: [T]he 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the [Defense of Marriage Act] discriminates against gay couples by not giving them the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples and is unconstitutional. My intro was...

George Will in 'The Clouds'

2012-05-31T09:26:28-05:00

As the saying goes, The more things change, the more they stay the same. Accordingly we can see George Will as one of Aristophanes's "bloviating ignoramuses"--a hair-splitting, eristic, lawyerly Sophist of the first rank; an unscrupulous Machiavelli devoted to the...

On being Mittwitted

2012-05-30T15:27:02-05:00

Earlier today on MSNBC I heard the ineffably banal Michael Steele, former chairman of the ineffably hysterical RNC, remark that Mitt Romney's latest absurdity--Trumpism--would soon pass and then Romney could get on to more important things. But that's the point,...

Killing us fondly with her song

2012-05-30T09:49:07-05:00

Is this a parody?

Mitt Romney's cosmic ineptitude

2012-05-30T08:51:28-05:00

As I was saying, which was only what many others have said, and the NY Times says again this morning: It was supposed to be a day of triumph for Mitt Romney [and so on, and so on].... Instead, Tuesday...

Separating confidence from triumphalism

2012-05-29T13:37:51-05:00

Andrew Sullivan: It's clear enough by now that this election will be a nail-bitingly close one; and that any early triumphalism among the Obamaites is preposterous. Of course he can lose. Of course "of course he can lose." The Kansas...

For Mitt and the Donald, it's 20 bucks, same as downtown

2012-05-29T11:52:34-05:00

Unshakable idealists among both the left and right often question pragmatism's devotion to principle. Pragmatism, to the politically pure and philosophically pious, seems such a lady-of-the-evening kind of thing; the concerned parties may get some or even much of what...

Republicans remain the problem

2012-05-29T09:13:42-05:00

Everybody has a beef with one or another section of, or amendment to, the U.S. Constitution. And law professor Sanford Levinson, in his NY Times op-ed this morning, "Our Imbecilic Constitution," has a lot of them, from the Senate's disproportional...