Paul Murray's weblog, with news you may have missed and my $0.02 worth on a number of topics.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald

I bet you don't have a friend who's an acupuncturist

E-mail me: pmurray [at] despammed.com

The pandering continues. "Every time I think I'm a Republican, they do something crooked. And every time I think I'm a Democrat, they do something stupid." That's how Jay Leno answered a question from a 60 Minutes correspondent about his political leanings. It's the most insightful thing I've ever heard him say, and current events frequently remind me of it.

Keeping track of stupid proposals by politicians would be a full-time job. I cataloged the Bush Administration's bad ideas for awhile, but eventually gave up. (Six months after they left office, we're still learning more.)

This week's political stupidity comes from Mark Brewer and the Michigan Democratic Party. Brewer was secretly behind last year's atrocious would-be ballot proposal that would have made about 120 changes (if memory serves me correctly) to the state constitution. He denied involvement until a Democratic PowerPoint presentation about it turned up on a union website. Courts ultimately threw it out.

Brewer's now back with more shamelessly pandering ballot proposals:

Party officials declined to release details on any of the plans, but said the potential measures include:

• Hiking the minimum wage to $10 an hour for all workers.

• Imposing a blanket moratorium on home foreclosures for 12 months.

• Cutting utility bills by 20% across the board.

• Requiring all employers to provide health care to employees and their dependents.

• Hiking by $100 a week -- and extending for six months -- unemployment benefits, while expanding eligibility.

Rather than document the overwhelming stupidity of these proposals, I'll just refer you to this Daniel Howes column.

We deserve better than absurd unrealistic promises.

Labels: bad ideas, politics

posted by Paul Murray at 3:30 PM | permanent link |

Inauguration Day.
A few days ago, they sent out an e-mail at work that the inauguration would be playing in the boardroom for anyone who would like to watch it. I thought about going down to watch it. Then I decided I would simply listen online. Then I changed my mind again and decided I wanted to watch it, being a historic occasion and all. After wasting several minutes trying to find a good online stream, I headed down to the boardroom, which is located on the first floor of our building, on one side of the main lobby.

I'd heard that the swearing-in was scheduled for 11:57 am, so I headed down at 11:55 ... to find people overflowing into the lobby. So I watched it while standing just outside the doorway of our boardroom, and stayed for the speech.

Immediately afterward, I headed upstairs to a conference room for a 12:30 meeting ... where I discovered they had it on a projection screen. This room even had a couch (I'm still getting used to being in "the other building" since our December move).

Labels: inauguration, Obama, politics, president

posted by Paul Murray at 11:37 PM | permanent link |

Obsessing over image. There's a number of things that trouble me about the idea of Hillary Clinton as president. One of them is her campaign's obsessive efforts to manage the media, well-described in this New Republic story.

If grumbling about a [NYT Barack Obama pickup] basketball story seems excessive, it's also typical of the Clinton media machine. Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. "It's one of the few times I've seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them," says a veteran Democratic media operative. The media has paved a smooth road for signature campaign moments like Hillary's campaign launch and her health care plan rollout and has dutifully advanced campaign-promoted themes like Hillary's "experience" and expertise in military affairs. This is all the more striking in light of the press's past treatment of Clinton--particularly during her husband's White House years--including endless stories about her personal ethics, frostiness, and alleged Lady Macbeth persona.

It's enough to make you suspect that breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign's strategy. And, if that sounds familiar, it may be because the Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation. "The Bush administration changed the rules," as one scribe puts it--and the Clintonites like the way they look. (To be sure, no one accuses the Clinton team of outright lying to the press, as the Bushies have done, or of crossing other ethical lines. And reporters say other press shops--notably those of Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards--are also highly combative.)

So far, the strategy has worked brilliantly. In the current climate, where the mainstream media is under attack from both conservatives and liberals, Clinton may have picked the right moment to get tough with the press. But, as the murmur of discontent among the fourth estate grows--and Hillary's coverage has taken a sharper tone since a widely panned debate performance late last month--even some Hillary supporters fear that the strategy may produce a dangerous backlash.

Emulating the Bush Adminstration -- yeah, that's an appealing attribute, all right.

Author Michael Crowley goes on to describe the various tactics the campaign uses, which are familiar to anyone paying attention. He also notes that many of her media advisors worked for fellow Senator Charles Schumer. (Schumer inspired the Bob Dole wisecrack that's been recycled about other politicians: "The most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.")

(via somewhere I can't remember -- I don't normally read the New Republic)

Labels: Hillary, journalism, media, politics

posted by Paul Murray at 12:06 AM | permanent link |