Speculum

Typical right-winger reaction to the Rhandi Rhodes story:

"How dare lefties imply that some kind of right-wing hit squad attacked Ms. Rhodes. That accusation is based on nothing more than unfounded speculation and rampant paranoia. Get a life losers.

Besides... I heard from some anonymous commenter on a gossip blog that she was drunk!"

(hat tip to LTR)

Due Diligence

Of course, the previous story raises a different question. The LA Times obviously spend several (hundreds of?) man hours tracking down these "poor Chinese immigrant" donors to the Clinton campaign. This is called diligent journalism and I applaud it.

But are they just as diligent in chasing down leads with other candidates? Or are we returning to the days of yore when anything connected to the Clintons is always deserving of extra levels of scrutiny?

How many other campaigns have connections to shady fund-raisers? How often do they have to answer for these things?

Shakedown

There is an interesting story here. It certainly appears that some of these Chinese immigrant organizations are shaking down their members in order to raise money for the Clinton campaign. But there is no evidence (yet) that Clinton herself is performing a shakedown. Of course, that won't stop Drudge and company from implying just that. I just hope that progressives don't allow their distaste for Clinton to lead them into perpetuating Republican talking points.

This kind of thing is distasteful, counter-productive and totally unnecessary. Obama, Dean and others have demonstrated that you can bring in considerable amounts of money without having to rely on these shady fund-raisers to do the dirty work. I wish more of our candidates would figure this out instead of taking the "easy" route.

Laugh it up fuzzball!

(The following was inspired by this)

When I was growing up I was picked on on a fairly regular basis. All through elementary and junior high the taunting and harassment grew to the point where I was starting to get broken bones in the fights I would get into. My experience has taught me that there are essentially four strategies you can use to deal with a bully.

1) Fight back. Now, if you happen to be a good enough fighter to hold your own with a bully, this isn't all that bad a strategy. People respect someone who fights back. In fact, the person you are fighting with may come to respect you as well. Of course, they might also beat the crap out of you and you might get in serious trouble with the authorities. Fighting back is a viable strategy, but one with many potentially serious consequences and not really much long-term viability.

2) Run away. Not a bad strategy, if you are fast enough. Of course, you will have to suffer the consequences of being labeled a coward. But at least you didn't get your ass kicked. Still, you can't just keep running from your problems. They have more endurance than you. I actually rank this below the "fight back" strategy.

3) Ignore it. This is the favorite advice of teachers and parents, all who mean well but are really lost when it comes to giving advice on how the little kids can deal with the bullies. I'm here to tell you that, after many years of following this advice, I came to realize that it was the single worse bit of advice you can give a kid. The truth is that ignoring a bully just makes them want to try harder. Because they know that eventually you will crack and the show you will put on will be even better for all the effort you put into ignoring it. I have talked with teachers in later years who agree with me on this. But they also know they can't advice a student to "fight back". Not if they want to keep their jobs. So they keep falling back on a failing strategy.

Which brings us to...

4) Make a joke out of it.

One day, many years ago (sigh), I walked into a class room to see that someone had written "Chris eats boogers" on the chalkboard. Some of the kids started laughing once they saw that I had noticed it. My typical reaction would have been to hide my head in shame and hope that they would leave me alone. But for some reason I was just in that kind of mood. So I glanced back at those who were laughing and said, "Ha! Good one!" Not in a mocking fashion. I really did just laugh at it and acknowledge the humor of the situation (boogers!!!).

Nothing else happened for the rest of the day. The guys who typically harassed me left me alone. It was almost as if they didn't now how to respond to my reaction. They expected me to get upset. They expected me to ignore it. They didn't expect me to laugh at it.

It took me many more years to realize that, as the above linked post suggests, Mel Brooks had it right. The best way to deal with people who piss you off is to turn them into a joke. They really don't know how to deal with that.

Laughter really is the best medicine.

Bing!

Digby: "Back in 92 many of us were convinced that the time had come. The Democrats finally controlled the government, the country was barely emerging from an ugly recession, (which throws a lot of previously covered workers into the pool of uninsured) and some races around the country had been fueled from the grassroots on a health care reform platform. The conditions were optimal. But it failed , for many reasons, (including the way it was negotiated and sold) but mostly because the Republicans were able to effectively demagogue the fears of losing what you have as opposed to the Democrats who had to explain a complicated formula for protecting you against something that may not happen."

My God! No wonder the Democrats have problems selling universal health insurance! There are few people more hated in this culture than insurance salesman! Just think of Ned Reyerson, the insurance agent from "Groundhog Day", who chases Bill Murray's character every day trying to pester him into buying insurance.

Bing!

The Theory of Relevancy

I think there is one important difference between the "relevancy" statements made by Clinton and Bush (as described here by The Carpetbagger Report).

Clinton: “The president is still relevant here ...”

Bush: “I want to make sure — and that’s why, when I tell you I’m going to sprint to the finish, and finish this job strong, that’s one way to ensure that I am relevant; that’s one way to sure that I am in the process.”

The difference: Clinton referred to "The President" in the third person while Bush did in the first person.

In other words, for Bush, it's about his relevance while for Clinton it was about the relevancy of the Presidency as an institution.

(Caveat: Bush's statement was preceded by the following quote, “Sometimes the legislative branch wants to go on without the President, pass pieces of legislation, and the President then can use the veto to make sure he’s a part of the process. And that’s — as you know, I fully intend to do.” So Bush did start out talking about Presidential relevance in the third person, but it eventually came back to talking about himself. I don't have the full text of Clinton's comments to refer to so maybe he also used the first person at one point.)

Our guy isn't as unpopular as your guys!

Voters unhappy with Bush and Congress: "Bush's job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month's record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month's record low."

These results are generating the typical cacophony of "Bush may be unpopular but Congress is worse!" from the usual suspects. Besides this being a pathetic attempt to grasp at a mirage of a silver lining there are two fundamental problems with comparing these results.

First, Bush and Congress' unpopularity are tied primarily to the same phenomena: the unpopularity of the Iraq War. Bush is unpopular for getting us into this war and refusing to listen to any suggestions for getting out. Congress is unpopular because they aren't doing enough to force him to listen.

Even so, why is Bush's popularity still higher than Congress'? This gets to the second problem. Polls of Bush's popularity are of a polls of one individual. Polls of Congress' popularity are polls of a faceless institution. In other words, its a generic poll.

The generic presidential preference polls (Democrat vs. Republican) have Democrats with large double-digit leads. Yet specific head-to-head matchups of actual candidates are much closer (with the Democrats still holding a smaller, but still significant, lead).

Also, people generally always rank Congress as lower than their own representatives. It's easier to be angry at a faceless CongressCritter than to criticize the guy who you voted for in the last election.

An 11% approval rating is nothing to dismiss out of hand, of course. It is distressingly low. But Bushies have nothing to be happy about when looking at their guys 24%.

Republican partisanship? Gasp!

Given the attempts in recent days by the four Republican front runners to play "I'm more partisan than you" games I have to wonder when the guardians of bipartisan comity inside the beltway (Broder, et al.) will start criticizing the Republicans for being to partisan?

Could be a long time.