Tiffany Williams says we should remind President Obama that he campaigned on a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. Another righteous but quixotic endeavor to crowd into the lame-duck session.
David Harsanyi, the Denver Post Op-Ed page's resident right-wing hard-nose, spends a little time reading George W. Bush's memoirs so he can inform us once again that Dubya is no true conservative:
Crisp sentences. Simple ideas. Definitive answers. The tale of a mildly ambitious, wide-eyed patriot and dynastic son, thrust into the daunting embrace of history. From his descent into teetotalism (in 1986) to his pronouncement that capitalism must be abandoned to save it (during the recent financial crisis), a reader is battered with 400-plus pages of over-confident moral puffery.
Debra Saunders says the uproar over TSA groping proves "America truly is a nation of whiners."
Self-anointed moralist Dennis Prager, who once argued that a few innocents being executed was the price to be paid for deterring crime, offers his usual upchuck:
Perhaps we are posing the question backward when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.
Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.
Why?
Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black will gravitate to liberalism, and liberalism will in turn make him unhappier by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.
The Sacramento Bee punches holes in the GOP's plan to challenge the 14th Amendment over "birthright citizenship," pointing to the 1898 Supreme Court case involving Wong Kim Ark:
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrants who were not allowed to become citizens. When he visited China, U.S. officials attempted to deny his return on the grounds that he was not a citizen. The Supreme Court, however, affirmed his birthright citizenship.
The court was crystal clear on this: "To hold that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States."
Jay Cost challenges Ruy Teixeira and Ed Kilgore's conclusion that the electorate is not moving right.
Ben Brandzel challenges Malcolm Gladwell's argument in "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted," which dismisses the role of online organizing in driving any significant progressive social change.
Katrina vanden Heuvel:
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes now estimate the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will reach $4 to $6 trillion. There have been approximately 2,200 US and coalition casualties in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands of Afghan civilian deaths. The Christian Science Monitor reports that “softening” the 2011 and 2014 deadlines “could add at least $125 billion in war spending—not including long-term costs like debt servicing and health care for veterans." …
But the fact is if Americans don’t begin to demand a change of course, then we probably won’t get one. The Generals (most notably, Petraeus) will continue to frame the debate—with little opposition and hundreds of Department of Defense and State Department war planners at their disposal—and declare that conditions on the ground will dictate when the troops come home.
The only way to challenge that is if the public and more Members speak out like those Congressmen who signed onto a bipartisan letter to President Obama last week in which they asked, "Is the war in Afghanistan and the price our nation is paying for this war truly in the national security interest of the United States?”
Paul Ingrassia says GM (and Ford) can only maintain their recent success if they keeping putting the screws to the battered UAW.
Bob Herbert reminds us how different things America was when John Kennedy won the election 50 years ago this month:
Kennedy declared that we would go to the moon. Chris Christie tells us that we are incapable of building a railroad tunnel beneath the Hudson River.
Whatever one thinks of the tragically short Kennedy administration, we’d do well to pay renewed attention to the lofty ideals and broad themes that Kennedy brought to the national stage. We’ve become so used to aiming low that mediocrity is seen as a step up. We need to be reminded of what is possible.
Salam Fayyad talks about aiming high in his discussion about what is possible:
…in Palestine, we are increasingly recognizing the importance of integrating green construction practices into our vision for building a viable, secure state. We must consider not only human and economic security, but in order to ensure these, we must also consider environmental security. Without ensuring that we proceed to ameliorate the effects of climate change, we cannot be assured that our efforts in construction of towns, homes – and a state – will not be undermined.
It was encouraging, therefore, to see President Obama’s recently launched policy directive on global development emphasize the importance of initiatives to counter climate change as being essential to his vision for long-term sustainable economic development and human security. Such an announcement makes it explicit that economic vitality and environmental responsibility go hand in hand.