Why him?

Seen an interesting question posed in more than one place lately. Why is Jon Huntsman getting so much coverage for a candidate who receiving only one percent in the polls? It does not appear to mimic what has happened in the past for one percent, so-called fringe candidates, like Dennis Kuchinich, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. Why would former New Mexico Governor Hunstman be getting so much publicity?

Hunstman's positions might overall be considered more mainstream than any of those three, or Rick Santorum or Herman Cain. It could be said that Huntsman's poll numbers are marginal, but not his policies. However, the Clarion Content would argue, wouldn't this make him less interesting, less appealing, less newsworthy as it were, not only is he not polling well, but he does not stand-out for unique and different solutions and ideas. (This media darling candidacy this reminds us of is Lamar Alexander.)

The Clarion Content has actually most frequently heard Jon Huntsman's name out of Democratic or Obama administration associated types. They have been out far and wide proclaiming that Huntsman is the candidate they least want to face. To us here, it sounds like the proverbial Briar Patch. President Obama and his men aren't the least bit scared of the tall, photogenic, Huntsman. Having nominated him to be Obama's ambassador to China, they must know the chinks in his armor, as it were. They are actually hoping that he somehow gains the nomination.

Is it their promotion of Huntsman that is getting him on the telly? This week he was on CNBC’s "The Kudlow Report," on Friday, and on Thursday, he was on Fox News’ "On The Record with Greta Van Susteren," before that on Wednesday, he was CNN’s "John King, USA." He capped it this weekend with Bob Schieffer on the prestigious, "Face the Nation," where he shared the screen with the leading insurgent candidate, Michelle Bachmann.

NY Times kills Obama

The New York Times killed President Obama for his compromise on raising the debt ceiling. While we do not view it in the apocalyptic terms of the NY Times editorialists, we do think it was a bad deal, typical Washington, a messy compromise that solves nothing and postpones addressing the real issues and root causes.

The NY Times sees it even more harshly than that, "

...the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. ...It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t."

Patron saints of PC strike again

The dark forces of political correctness have struck again, once more trumpeting morality over truth. As smarter political commentators than the Clarion Content have noted, these paragons of political correctness set the stage for King George the II and his lackey, the Dick, Cheney. Their willingness to put a moral code above the truth gave King George solid firmament to stand on as he blithely lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, like the PCers he knew what was best for the country, the facts be damned.

Unfortunately, those cardinals of political correctness still haven't learned their lesson. We read this week, in the Huffington Post, where they bludgeoned the President-elect of the American College of Surgeons into resigning, a man who invented the Greenfield Filter, a device that has saved countless lives as a means of preventing blood clots during surgery, a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan, who has written more than 360 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, 128 book chapters and two textbooks and served on the editorial board of fifteen scientific journals.

His crime? Citing a peer-reviewed scientific study that suggested semen had health and psychological benefits for women.

The sentence in question, "So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates."

His intention as he told the Detroit Free Press, "The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments..."

The response from the Inquisition on behalf of Political Correctness? You're fired.

What a country!

What happened in Egypt...

The Clarion Content is not a fan of seeing United States foreign policy conducted on a strictly pragmatic calculus. We do, however, support a pragmatic understanding of how events on the world stage play out. That is to say, sometimes foreign policy's motives have to be idealist, but interpretations of outcomes and results must be realist.

It is through this lens that we want to note that we strongly agree with George Friedman and Strafor's analysis of events in Egypt in recent weeks.

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe...We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.

The great majority of the Western media is running around foolishly asserting that there has been a revolution. This wild overclaim only shows the distortion between their hype-skewed lens and events on the ground. The Wikipedia entry on these events, for example, is hyperbolically headed, "Egyptian Revolution of 2011."

Political tragedy in Arizona

Representative to the United States Congress Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head during a public event in Tucson this morning. Tragic. We never want American politics to be conducted this way. This way lies madness.

Representative Giffords was holding an event outside a grocery store in Tucson, AZ when a man ran up and started shooting. The Pima County sheriff has told MSNBC that five other people were killed and six were wounded, including some members of her staff.

AOL reports, "Giffords has represented Arizona's 8th Congressional district since 2007 and is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats. She narrowly defeated tea party-backed Republican Jesse Kelly to win a third House term in November."

Domestic terrorism tends to be wildly underplayed and underreported by America's corporatist media. Bear this in mind as the story unfolds this week.

Different?

The faces have changed, but the game remains the same

Despite what the defenders of the Obama administration want to tell you, dear readers, the chilling post 9.11 security climate is still in effect. It is more than that Homeland Security is checking nutsacks at airport terminals this holiday season. Our quarrel is not only with the balance between safety and privacy, but with the attitude and atmosphere of the state. The mentality of the state's security apparatus has not noticeably changed under the ostensibly liberal Obama.

What the Clarion Content's small "c" conservative editorial board believes this reflects is that President Obama and his policy team do not come at the world from a less regulation where ever possible framework. Obviously. From their point of view, more is more. This means that, although the current administration does not believe in the invading one's privacy for the same draconian reasons as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, their p.c. based paternalism yields essentially the same result. Guantanamo is still open. Black prison sites are still likely maintained. Alliances with strong men across Central Asia, irrespective of national and individual citizen's sovereignty, continue. The state makes unwarranted, and frequently undisclosed, compromises of individual American citizen's civil liberties.

Ultimately there is a government mindset, led by the security apparatus, that believes proper enforcement and public safety trump individual rights and the protect and serve mantra of policing. We ran across another story today that underlined this message recently.

A fifty year-old airline pilot has come under fire from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, after posting a behind the scenes tour of security flaws at San Francisco International Airport on YouTube. The pilot, who taped the clips with his cell phone, has been flying for the airlines for more than a decade. He alerted Sacramento's KXTV when he posted the videos saying he wanted the information to be made public.

According ABC7 in San Francisco, the video posting resulted in federal air marshals and sheriff's deputies showing up, menacingly unannounced at the pilot's house. This appearance that the pilot, a deputized federal air marshal, also recorded, was made to personally and aggressively confiscate his federally issued handgun. Rather than handle this paperwork detail administratively in an office environment, security descended on the pilot in his own home, to make a show of force and displeasure.

His attorney, Don Werno, says he believes the TSA was sending a message that "you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety."

Once again, enforcement attacks the whistleblower. Obviously, this sort of individual incident is far below the Presidential radar, unless it involves Henry Louis Gates Jr. or another member of the elite with access.

Change? Only who is sitting at the table has changed, the game remains the same.

Rasmussen Reports polls widely wrong

The Clarion Content, among many others, has questioned the accuracy and neutrality of polls from the Rasmussen Reports. They were founded by a former employee of the coronation, errr, campaign, of King George the II. They consistently phrase their polling questions with just a little twist to produce the desired result.

Their defense? They were right on the numbers in 2004 and 2006.

Last night, however, they were outed. According to our friend Nate Silver, over at the 538, "Rasmussen polls quite consistently turned out to overstate the standing of Republicans tonight. Of the roughly 100 polls released by Rasmussen or its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research in the final 21 days of the campaign, roughly 70 to 75 percent overestimated the performance of Republican candidates, and on average they were biased against Democrats by 3 to 4 points."

Interestingly, it would be our argument that overstating your candidates odds at the polls actually hurts their chances. It would be analagous to the brass continuously telling American troops in Vietnam that the enemy was weak, under-armed, on the verge of starvation and primed for defeat. These lies and exaggerations actually harmed United States soldiers and Marines by leading them to regularly underestimate the enemy. We would argue that the Rasmussen Reports did something of the same for right-wing candidates last night.

Moving downmarket

Despite foolish claims from those safely ensconced in the ivory towers, the recession is in evidence everywhere. One of the ways the Clarion Content sees the impact of the widespread economic slump is the relentless moves downmarket by the American public. Sales of expensive tickets to sporting events are way down, cheaper movie ticket sales are up. Fancy, far flung tourists destinations are suffering, while it is less so for more humble, local places that folks can roadtrip to with the family.

This morning the Nation's Restaurant News pointed out another area where this downmarket shifting can be seen, convenience store food sales. Because what is even cheaper than fast food breakfast? The convenience store. The NRN reports that convenience store traffic rose 8% and sales jumped 11% in the second quarter of 2010.

Read more here in the Nation's Restaurant News.

Local Congressman in trouble

A local North Carolina Congressman is in hot water after being caught on tape grabbing an amateur videographer by the scruff of the neck. Congressman Bob Etheridge, of Lillington, NC, which is just north of Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, and south of Raleigh, was leaving a fundraiser hosted by California Congressperson Nancy Pelosi.

The amateur cameraman is waiting on the street ala the paparazzi and asks, "Do you fully support the Obama agenda?"

This question irritates the Congressman and he demands to know the video cameramen are. He repeats the question several times as they refuse to answer. He attempts to swat the camera out of his face unsuccessfully, then gets even more aggressive. The tape shows Representative Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, holding the young man by the wrist and grabbing him by the back of the neck.

Did the Congressman get ambushed? Yes. Did he overreact? Yes. This is the logical extension of what happens to public discourse when America plays gotcha politics. We can all get in the sewer together or we can all climb out of the sewer together.

Fascinating Context

This fascinating pair of photos shows just how much the photographer frames the context of a scene. This is something that we, the public, the people, the other, should never forget. President Obama and his wife Michelle were hiking in the woods this weekend outside of Asheville, North Carolina.

The first photo was taken by the official White House photographer. The second by the Associated Press. Context makes all the difference. All credit to Lynn Sweet who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, we found this insightful post on her blog, which frequently has fascinating presidential tidbits.

Photo One

Just off for a hike in the woods...


Photo Two

With our support staff, security, press people, and other assorted friends...

Conservatives

The Clarion Content happened across two articles that traipsed down the same path but came from very different views about the right and the left of American politics. (Please don't let label confusion trip you up, the spectrum is as broad as the population is diverse.)

One of the articles was on the BBC News website, the other was on the Washington Post site. Both attempt to trace why and how politicians of the left and right appeal to their constituencies. The BBC article, as one might assume, is written from a view sympathetic to the left. Somewhat more surprisingly the Washington Post is from the right. It is a feature is written by Gerard Alexander an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. It is part of a lecture he is delivering called, "Do Liberals Know Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on Knowledge." He is coming from quite a different perspective than the BBC.

It is interesting though that both news organizations chose now to publish articles on the subject. The parallels within the articles fascinate. For example both use the historian Richard Hofstadter to set the scene for the left's perception of the right. In the BBC article titled, "Why do people vote against their own interests?" Hofstadter is paraphrased describing the mixture used to win on the right,"'the paranoid style' of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington."

The BBC wants to explain why the right thinks and behaves the way it does.

Professor Alexander in the Washington Post believes it is the unfair labeling of the right done by the left that has coarsened the debate and diminished the conversation. He, too, cites Hofstadter, "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Both authors cite the use of the phrase Bolshevik plot to describe the Democrats health care plans. The BBC says

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Professor Alexander retorts,

Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments.

The parallels of the two pieces don't end there. Both articles cite books by Drew Western and Thomas Frank. The BBC gives them far more play, quoting a Bush-Gore debate excerpt from Western's book that shows the village idiot Bush "aw shucks" style paralleled versus the wooden, wonkish Gore. Bush dumbs down the issue to make his point and in the court of public opinion win the argument.

The BBC buys Franks's proposition about how this works when it says,

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronizing liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

And then it quotes from Frank about the vicious cycle he perceives on the right,

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining."

Fascinatingly Professor Alexander makes essentially the same argument in the Washington Post. The only difference? The BBC thinks Frank is correct. The professor thinks Frank is belittling right-wing voters and their reasoning.

"...liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas? Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution."

Their conclusions, despite their different takes on the narratives offered by the left to discern the right, are startlingly similar. Both authors see wellsprings of populism shooting up in America. Both see virulent anger and a distaste for intellectual elitism. The BBC says,

"the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all."

Professor Alexander addresses the issue of race that BBC omits. He almost has to, as the right feels compelled to explain away the en masse shift of the American South from the Democratic column to the Republican. The professor's not very convincing answer is that polls show racism has declined, and Obama won. Those who read the quotes of the Joe Sixpack in the South before the last presidential election will find those arguments a bit hard to swallow.

Professor Alexander cites Jay Leno's man on the street interviews and asks if one really believes that Jay only interviews people from the right, of course not is his conclusion. Yet Alexander says the left dismisses the right as if that were so. He cites everyone from John Stewart to the Daily Kos to the Obama White House as being willing to label the right wing and dismissively ignore their policy proposals. Unfortunately, he is reluctant to admit that the right does the same, claiming rather, "A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Still he sounds an important warning in his conclusion, one the Clarion Content firmly believes is important to heed,"Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend...Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras."


Link to the BBC article here. Link to the Washington Post article here.

Who's got next?

The Clarion Content has been hearing some fascinating speculation about who might be the next Republican Presidential candidate. Of course, President Barack Obama has yet to even complete his first year in office, so it is awfully early to ponder. It is only Obama's wafer thin stack of accomplishments that has discussion brewing this soon.

The two most interesting names reflect a trend, one that started long before Obama and Sarah Palin, but a trend that they most definitely epitomize. In the quest for the presidency today, it is far more important to be telegenic than to be substantial. In that same vein, two names that are being thrown around as potential Republican nominees are (former) television commentators, Lou Dobbs, of CNN fame, and Glenn Beck, of the ostensibly fair and balanced Fox News.

Dobbs appeared on former senator and previous candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, Fred Thompson's radio show. Dobbs was asked, "Have you given any thought for running for President?"

"Yes, is the answer," was his response.

The National Post of Canada reported, "Mr. Dobbs' spokesman, Robert Dillenschneider, said there was no timeline for announcing a decision." However, Dillenschneider did say, "People have always said Lou Dobbs had a bigger, brighter future. But he was very committed to CNN while he was there. He never really thought about running until the day after he left when people started coming to him."

Dobbs carries with him the baggage of all the rhetoric he spewed on the air. His rants against immigration carried with them a particularly dark vitriol and malevolence.

Dobbs has also yet to rule out challenging first term incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Menendez for his New Jersey seat in 2012.

Mr. Beck, who shares Mr. Dobbs hatred of dark skinned foreigners, has yet to make any kind of definitive statement. The New Times reports, "[Beck] says he will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington, D.C. in August."

It also quoted Grover Norquist, who is the president of Americans for Tax Reform, “They [TV personalities like Beck] are spokesmen for a movement that you can see emerging."

The Clarion Content agrees. While it is far from clear that either Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs have what it takes to seize the Republican Presidential nomination, the rumblings from their camps are symbolic. An ineffective (thus far) President Obama has a small window in which to improve his performance before the speculation about his imminent replacement intensifies significantly.

Double Standard Continues

The CBS Early Show this week continued to reinforce American culture's sexually exploitative, anti-feminist treatment of homosexuality. It aired footage of former American Idol finalist Adam Lambert kissing his male keyboardist at the American Music Awards with the big moment blurred out. "Oh the horrors," men kissing! Surely, the American public isn't ready to be exposed to that kind of open homosexuality. Unless... Wait for it...

Right. If it is ladies, it is A-okay, as the Early Show blatantly demonstrated when moments after airing the blurred male on male kiss, by Lambert and keyboardist, it showed Madonna and Brittney swapping tongue with nary a bit of discretion. No blurring necessary. The difference is ugly gender stereotyping that treats women as the objects of visual male sexual gratification.

Disney owned Good Morning America took an even more openly anti-gay stance when it canceled Lambert's schedule appearance the day after the American Music Awards.

Loose Nukes

Whether it was strictly a photo-op or something actually came of last month's meeting between President Obama and two former Secretaries of State, Republicans George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Democratic senator and defense wonk Sam Nunn, and William Perry, a former Secretary of Defense about the issue of the control and security of the world's existing supply of nuclear weapons, it was a Presidential bully pulpit moment and we were glad to see it happen. Even if all Obama is able to accomplish this early in his presidency is raising the volume on the subject, we are glad to see he is at least doing that. The Clarion Content believes loose nuclear weapons are probably the single greatest short-term threat to humanity.

Securing these existing nuclear weapons as tightly as possible is an extremely high priority, revitalizing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a far more specious and far less worthy goal.

David Feherty on the divide

Who gets it first?

It is easy to forget in these days of Obama-mania that ex-dictator George Bush II still has many ardent supporters. Golf analyst David Feherty writing for D Magazine provided a sharp reminder. Feherty, an Irishman by birth, has been living in the Dallas area for twelve years. He has been a big supporter of American troops, visiting Iraq to entertain as well as, working with the "Troops First Foundation," which is raising $15 million for soldiers who return wounded, many of them without limbs. He created his own division -- "F Troop" -- and last year took eight soldiers to South Dakota for pheasant hunting.

The 43rd and worst president ever is moving to the Dallas area. Feherty was writing for D Magazine about the return of the bumbler. King George the II received 62 million votes in 2004. In 2008 more than 61 million people voted for a candidate other than Barack Obama. Many of those folks were vitriolically opposed to Obama or any Democratic candidate. Feherty offered a semi-kidding commentary about how, in his view, most American troops feel about Democratic politicians today,

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though. Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

The Clarion Content is quite cognizant that America is still a 50-50 country, starkly divided on many issues, despite the papering over supported by many in the mainstream media. The Clarion Content reads comments like Feherty's and fears the huge backlash that is likely coming if President Obama isn't a massive, and all but immediate, success.

Read more here.

Problem Saturation

Swine flew indeed.

You may have wondered why the Clarion Content hasn't spent any time covering the swine flu. This contributor to Urban Dictionary is on point. We could not have said it any better ourselves. We do not want to contribute to the unnecessary, overboard, needlessly sensationalist coverage of the issue.

Too bad Veep Joe Biden can't say the same. What, nobody told him we already have a happy national consensus that Dan Quayle was the dumbest Vice President ever? He has got to try to move in on that role? Avoid closed spaces, Joe? Thanks, brilliant. Obama needs to ship him on a three month tour of the back country of New Zealand or somewhere equally out of the way.

Governments all over the world are reacting with a bludgeon to a problem that requires a scalpel. Hong Kong has quarantined a hotel full of people based on the probable case of one Mexican tourist. Egypt is attempting to kill all the pigs in the country (not coincidental primarily owned by a discriminated against minority, Coptic Christians.) This despite not having a single confirmed case of the so-called swine flu.

The hue and cry of the media is outrageous. The Clarion Content is coming to believe that their distortions and complicity in government and other power brokers behavior is almost as big a systemic problem as any. Michael Moore has been on this theme for a while, underlining in Bowling for Columbine the climate created and maintained by the media that serves America so poorly. In this case, the media by blowing the story way out of proportion is pressuring governments into unwarranted action. This kind of government action and overreaction fills our little 'c' conservative bellies here at the Clarion Content's offices with dread.

As for the swine flu, all we can say is here we go again.

The more things change

The more they stay the same, or so the old expression goes. Our northern most New Jersey reader related a sad story that underlined there is still a kernel of this old saw holding true even under the Obama administration.

According to the website Gadling.com, "An Air France flight from Paris to Mexico had to make an unscheduled stop in Martinique when US air traffic controllers notified the jet that it would not be receiving permission to fly over US airspace...on board the plane was Colombian Journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina."

Uh, oh, a scary journalist!

After all, "Ospina has written articles about the United States involvement in Latin America, and is currently writing a book about the CIA."

Reason enough to divert a plane from flying over American airspace. Who knows he might have been throwing anti-CIA fliers out the window!

Obama and the teleprompter

One of our intrepid Durham readers brought this note to the Clarion Content's attention; we didn't know, did you? Apparently, President Obama is hooked on the teleprompter.

He is widely know amongst the media for relying on it at events large and small. On the campaign he reportedly used it everywhere from a rodeo ring to a factory floor. Politco's Carol Lee quotes presidential historian Martha Joynt Kumar, "It’s just something presidents haven’t done. It’s jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter." Lee goes on to add, "...it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of the Grand Foyer."

Obama doesn't try to hide the teleprompter. Nor does he appear to be weaning himself of off it. It is not exactly FDR and the wheelchair, but interesting inside the White House baseball nonetheless. Link to the full story here.

Thanks for the heads up chef Don!

Be careful what you wish for

There has been so much noise and glee in Democratic party circles about the thought of Rush Limbaugh becoming the spokesman and face of the Republican Party. At the Clarion Content we can't help wondering if it isn't a case of be careful what you wish for!

The basis of the Democrats claim that Limbaugh is the head honcho of the Republicans is the kowtowing of first a couple Republican Congressmen and then new Republican party chief Michael Steel. The Democrats leaped into spin that this showed Rush was the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Maybe so. The Democrats have even constructed websites to push the notion.

Rush Limbaugh is a self-made media maven. His audience and thus his reach is enormous. His audience's loyalty is extreme, witness his ability to bounce back from allegations of heroin, oops, pain killer addiction. This is not to mention some of the outrageous things that he has said and been able to bounce back from. The guy reaches so many people Disney owned ESPN once had him covering NFL football. His is a powerful populist voice and it wold behoove the Democrats to think twice before daring Rush to the fore of the debate.

These are dangerous times in America, edifices are crumbling from General Motors to the banks, structural change is underway from the highways to health care. Change unhinges and disturbs people. Stressful economic times make people more prone to listen to populist voices. Disaffection seeks an outlet. President Obama is running a high-wire act in more ways than one in his engagement with economy. A perception of failure around his presidency could produce a serious backlash. In the interim, Limbaugh has the podium, it is unwise for Democrats to trumpet it. The specters loom large from Father Charles Coughlin to Joe McCarthy.

A post on the Post

The Clarion Content has observed the controversy surrounding the cartoon published last week in the New York Post from afar. We will not be linking to it directly. Here in Durham we have been unable to formulate a coherent perspective on the situation. Luckily we have a guest columnist from Morris County, New Jersey with a short take. Take it away AnthemSled...

It seems to me the real story here is that the Post, full of sour grapes and slouching towards irrelevance, decided to print this [cartoon] knowing that they could bait their favorite punching bag Al Sharpton into criticizing them for something they could defend with a shrug, "We're not racist, just obtuse and unfunny!" meanwhile helping white males to feel like they are the ones being persecuted. I can't really boycott the Post, cause I never buy it anyway.

The tragedy here is that all the lefty vehemence against the Post right now is giving them exactly what they were looking for - publicity.

Links do not imply endorsement. Food for thought only...