The Commentariat -- May 31, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on "Ross Douthat -- the Etch-a-Sketch Columnist" -- a work of journalistic excellence inspired by Akhilleus. The NYTX front page is here.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Just as strife in the former Yugoslav republic confounded first President George Bush and then his successor, Bill Clinton, the bloody crackdown in Syria -- underscored by last week's massacre of children and other villagers -- has put Mr. Obama in a deeply uncomfortable position."
New York Times Editors: "Mr. Obama ... is a politician, subject to the pressures of re-election. No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield -- depriving Americans of their due-process rights -- without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle.... To provide real assurance, President Obama should publish clear guidelines for targeting to be carried out by nonpoliticians, making assassination truly a last resort, and allow an outside court to review the evidence before placing Americans on a kill list. And it should release the legal briefs upon which the targeted killing was based."
Nicholas Kristof: "Michael Sandel, the Harvard political theorist..., argues that in \recent years we have been slipping without much reflection into relying upon markets in ways that undermine the fairness of our society.... 'The marketization of everything means that people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives,' Sandel writes. 'We live and work and shop and play in different places. Our children go to different schools. You might call it the skyboxification of American life. It's not good for democracy, nor is it a satisfying way to live.'"
Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Race is the project of the Roberts court – more than enhancing corporate welfare, more than lowering the barrier between church and state, more than redefining the boundary between state and federal authority." CW: no longer the court of last resort, the U.S. Supreme Court has become instead the last refuge of scoundrels, not to mention a sinecure for a few of those scoundrels.
Charles Pierce has concluded the jurors in the John Edwards trial -- who have come to no conclusion after eight days of deliberation -- don't know what they're doing, for which they can be forgiven inasmuch as almost nobody understands U.S. campaign finance law. "John Edwards ... will go down in political history as a joke and a knave and a hypocrite, even by American political standards."
As part of the White House's summer jobs program, Jimmy Fallon describes his first job. Very inspirational:
Ticks! Gail Collins: "I cannot tell you what a relief it was when I discovered that the multibillion-dollar trading loss at JPMorgan was because of deer." CW: this was my first thought, too.
Mary Carmichael & Stephanie Ebbert of the Boston Globe: "Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren acknowledged for the first time late Wednesday night that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American, but she continued to insist that race played no role in her recruitment....While she has said she identified herself as a minority in a legal directory, she has carefully avoided any suggestion during the last month that she took further actions to promote her purported heritage."
Presidential Race
Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "President Obama called Mitt Romney on Wednesday to offer his congratulations to the former Massachusetts governor on securing the Republican presidential nomination after Tuesday night's GOP primary."
Stephen Colbert on Romney's brilliant new campaign tool (watch to the end):
Andy Sullivan of Reuters: "Romney is hammering President Barack Obama for playing favorites with green-tech companies rather than letting businesses succeed or fail on their own.... It's a powerful line of attack....But it might invite unfavorable comparison with Romney's tenure as governor of Massachusetts.... During that time, Romney pursued a hands-on approach to economic development that favored some industries over others and, in some instances, singled out individual firms for special favors.... Sometimes ... Romney's efforts panned out. Other times they did not."
Jed Lewison of Daily Kos on Mitt Romney's brilliant jobs plan: "Mitt Romney on Tuesday morning, tell[s] the people of Craig, Colorado that he wants to put them back to work by firing 145,000 Americans for the simple crime of working in the public sector." Lewison explains why the Romney plan is (a) based on inaccuracies and (b) nonsensical.
Hmmm. Could this be a case of NPD? What's Good for Me Is Bad for Thee. Steve Benen: A Romney camp press release: "Governor Romney Inherited An Economy That Was Losing Jobs Each Month And Left Office With An Economy That Was Adding Jobs Each Month." Benen writes, "... if Romney's to be congratulated for inheriting an economy that was losing jobs and then turning things around, by that identical standard, he ought to be patting Obama on the back for a job well done.... Romney has spent two years arguing that this standard isn't good enough for the president, but apparently it is good enough for himself." CW: See also the Mike Tomasky's post, linked in yesterday's Commentariat, in which Tomasky did the math & found that percentage-wise, Obama has been a better jobs creator than Romney. ...
... Memo from David Axelrod (pdf): "Ten years ago, Mitt Romney told the people of Massachusetts that his experience in business uniquely qualified him to strengthen the state's economy. Foreshadowing the message of his current campaign, Romney presented himself as a 'job creator,' whose experience as a corporate buyout specialist had given him special insight into how to grow the economy.... It was a false representation.... When he left office, however, state debt had increased, the size of government had grown, and over his four years, Massachusetts' record of job creation was among the worst in the nation." ...
... AND now, here's the video:
... Amy Gardner of the Washington Post has a brief story on the Obama campaign's new Massachusetts front.
Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly has a nice post on Romney's "big, historic moment..., as Texas officially put him over the 1144 delegates needed to win the GOP presidential nomination. With precision timing, his team unleashed a barrage of attacks on Barack Obama's stewardship of the economy and the federal budget. But at the moment of his triumph, Mitt was in Las Vegas grubbing for money with Donald Trump at Donald Trump's hotel, with Newt Gingrich appearing as a sort of ragged supporting act." ...
... John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor, former Bush Pere Chief of Staff, really does not want to talk about the First Birther:
... CW: This kind of attack is what the media can expect when they ask principals of the Romney camp hard questions. Teevee "journalists" should buck up & take the verbal flak. It's nothing compared to what war correspondents endure.
Justin Berrier of Media Matters: "While Fox & Friends has long been a home for some of the most vicious, misleading, petty, and dishonest attacks on President Obama, they crossed a new ethical line [Wednesday] by producing and airing what is essentially a four-minute anti-Obama attack ad. The video -- opening with the text 'Fox & Friends Presents' -- played lines from Obama's past speeches mixed with commentary from unidentified speakers and graphics purporting to show that Obama has broken the promises he's made since his 2008 campaign":
... Oliver Willis, also in Media Matters: "The four minute long anti-Obama attack ad presented on Fox & Friends this morning not only crossed the ethical line but it may violate News Corp.'s own internal policy for ethical behavior."
... Joe Coscarelli of New York magazine: "The bajillion dollars Republican super-PACs plan to spend to take down Barack Obama does not include compensating Fox News for its services, but maybe it should. On Fox and Friends this morning, the cable news network debuted a four-minute, um, documentary looking back on the last four years of 'hope and change.' Cue foreboding music! Break out the apocalyptic video filters! Prepare for mayhem.... We can't wait to see what they come up with for Mitt Romney!" ...
... David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun: "Today's version of the [Fox "News"] morning show featured an anti-Obama video that resembled propaganda films from 1930's Europe more than it did responsible TV politics of today. And the remarkable thing was the witless crew on the couch that serves as hosts for this show had the audacity to present it as journalism and congratulate the producer who put it together." ...
... Even winger Ed Morrissey of Hot Air is squeamish: "The video starts with 'Fox and Friends Presents' on the screen, making this an explicit argument from the news channel itself. Should a news organization produce and publish attack ads like this?" ...
... Adam Peck of Think Progress: "Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has long defended his network from charges of bias, explaining -- incorrectly -- that only the network's primetime hosts are explicitly partisan."
... Guardian Update: "Bill Shine, the executive vice president for programming at Fox News, has released a statement denouncing the video. 'The package that aired on "Fox & Friends" was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network,' Shine said." CW: how ya gonna put that genie back int the bottle, Shiny Bill? ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: Shine's "statement answers one question — whether Fox News is standing by the video -- even as it raises many others." ...
... CW Update: Just checked in with Media Matters to see how "Fox & Friends" walked back their "unauthorized" airing of the video "package" on Obama's epic failures. They didn't: "Fox & Friends this morning did not address the widespread criticism of the 4-minute anti-Obama attack video it aired twice on Wednesday."
"How Do You Say Brouhaha in Polish?" Alec MacGillis of The New Republic: "In the case of the upset over President Obama's reference last night to 'Polish death camps,' I'm left with more mystification than dismay, because the uproar of sensible people like David Frum and Michael Tomasky is genuine.... And for this we fly into high dudgeon? Sorry, this is ridiculous." ...
... CW: MacGillis makes an important point: he distinguishes between gaffes that inadvertently betray the speaker's real thinking -- "cling to their guns & religion" -- and poor wording or a flubbed line that does not reflect the speaker's thinking -- "Polish death camps." (The poor wording here, BTW, certainly was the work product of a staffer, not of Obama. You have to think that Obama believes Polish people were responsible for the death camps for this to matter. It's ironic that wingers who think Obama is completely dependent upon a teleprompter because he's too dumb to speak for himself now claim Obama's reading the teleprompter speaks to his deepest, darkest hatred of the Polish people.) ..
... Here's Frum: "... this administration bungled everything: past, present, and future."
Quirky Economics. Catalina Carnia of USA Today reports that Ron Paul (remember that guy?) puts his money where his mouth is -- an advocate of returning to the gold standard, Paul has much of his net worth tied up in gold and silver mining stocks.
Right Wing World
Dana Milbank: Rep. Trent Frank (RTP-Arizona) brings racism to his anti-abortion crusade -- and not for the first time.
Local News
E. J. Dionne: Gov. Scott Walker (RTP-Wisc.) is being challenged not because he pursued conservative policies but because Wisconsin has become the most glaring example of a new and genuinely alarming approach to politics on the right. It seeks to use incumbency to alter the rules and tilt the legal and electoral playing field decisively toward the interests of those in power.
News Ledes
New York Times: "A federal judge on Thursday ordered Florida to stop enforcing several 'onerous' requirements on voter registration groups that were part of a law passed last year in an effort to tighten election rules.... But Judge Hinkle left most of the 2011 election law intact, a decision that pleased Gov. Rick Scott, who pushed for the changes last year."
Raleigh News & Observer: "The jury in the John Edwards trial on Thursday found the former presidential candidate not guilty on one of six counts in his campaign finance trial and announced it could not agree on the five remaining counts. Judge Catherine Eagles declared a mistrial on the five counts and dismissed the jurors. It was unclear whether the government will seek another trial." New York Times story here.
The Hill: "The House on Thursday rejected a Republican bill that would impose fines and prison terms on doctors who perform abortions for the sole purpose of controlling the gender of the child, a practice known as sex-selective abortion. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), H.R. 3541, was defeated in a 246-168 vote. While that's a clear majority of the House, Republicans called up the bill under a suspension of House rules, which limits debate and requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass."
The Hill: "Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod was shouted down Thursday at an event in Boston that was staged to attack Mitt Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts. Axelrod called the press conference to hammer home the Obama campaign's critique of Romney's time as governor, and brought along officials from around the state to reinforce the message." With video.
Washington Post: "Former President Bill Clinton has decided to go to Wisconsin to campaign against Scott Walker...."
New York Times: "Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan< of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee. Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a 'payoff' to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was 'false, preposterous and unjust.'" CW: I just checked with Dante Alighieri. Dolan is slated for the 8th circle of hell, which has a special liars ditch.
AP: "A federal appeals court Thursday declared that the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies federal benefits to married gay couples, a ruling all but certain to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. In its unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman discriminates against gay couples because it doesn't give them the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples." Boston Globe report here. You can read the court's opinion here.
New York Times: "President Barack Obama is putting increasing pressure on European officials to resolve crisis, talking with the leaders of Germany, France and Italy to help lay the groundwork for action before a Group of 20 summit meeting to be held in June in Mexico. Mr. Obama discussed the recent developments in Europe in video conference calls with the European leaders on Wednesday." ...
... New York Times: "Greece's four largest banks have regained access to normal credit lines from the European Central Bank after they received fresh capital from the European Union, Mario Draghi, the E.C.B. president, said Thursday." ...
Washington Post: "... the Irish go to the polls Thursday in a referendum on a regionwide fiscal treaty inked in January that would impose strict limits on budget deficits and debt. European governments that ratify the treaty will effectively surrender a measure of sovereignty over two of their most sacred economic rights -- how much they can borrow and how much they can spend -- to the bureaucrats in the region's administrative capital of Brussels. The referendum, in many ways, is shaping up as a litmus test of the willingness of Europeans to more deeply link their economic fortunes."
New York Times: "With his career in the balance, Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt told a judicial inquiry into the British media on Thursday that he had been personally sympathetic to a bid by Rupert Murdoch to take over Britain's most lucrative pay-television network but that he did not act with any favorable bias." The Guardian has a liveblog here, which includes a livefeed of the testimony.
Washington Post: "On Wednesday, Judge Catherine Eagles sent home the alternate jurors in the John Edwards case. Among them, the "Lady in Red" who had been flirting with Edwards. "They could still be recalled to replace a regular juror."
Reuters: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer and biggest seller of firearms in the United States, is dropping out of a conservative advocacy group in the United States that has been criticized for promoting 'Stand Your Ground' gun laws. Wal-Mart was suspending its membership in the American Legislative Council (ALEC), which the retailer joined in 1993, the company said late on Wednesday."
ABC News: "Eagle Scout Zach Wahls challenged the Boy Scouts of America's anti-gay policy today when he delivered three boxes of petitions demanding change, signed by more than 275,000 people. Wahls, 20, presented the petitions during the Boy Scouts' National Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla., on behalf of Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mom who was removed as the den leader of her 7-year-old son's Cub Scout troop in April because of her sexual orientation.... Wahls is the author of 'My Two Moms' and a video of his three-minute speech before Iowa legislators urging them not to pass a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and civil unions went viral in February." CW: if you've never seen Wahls' statement before the Iowa legislators, do watch it. Send it to your friends who may oppose gay marriage. It could change their minds.
Reuters: "Bruce Springsteen touched on a nerve of widespread discontent with the financiers and bankers at a Berlin concert on Wednesday, railing against them as 'greedy thieves' and 'robber barons.'"
ABC News: "The 43rd president and his wife, former First Lady Laura Bush, will be back at their former home for the official unveiling of their portraits, an often uncomfortable presidential tradition.... This time, the gathering will be a family affair. In addition to his wife, Bush will also be joined by his father, former President George H.W. Bush and his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush."
AP: "The SpaceX Dragon capsule left the International Space Station on Thursday and aimed for a Pacific splashdown to end its historic flight."
New York Times: "New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity."
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Reader Comments (9)
The Faux & Friends propaganda piece is fast becoming the Next Big Thing. All the gas bags are lining up to deride it or deny it's intent. Time for the FCC to threaten [at least] to yank Faux's license and quit namby-pambying around.
Loved the Collins piece, especially Trump eating the daylilies.
My brother-in-law, who was one of Collins' professors at UMass, recently was diagnosed with Lyme disease. Luckily, because of the recent suicide of a long-time Lyme sufferer, Amherst had just set in place a Lyme disease crisis team. I had no idea that it causes confusion and memory loss, but that was his first symptom.
As disappointed as I have occasionally been by the Obama administration, the degree to which the Right hates it and the man who leads it and the extent to which they have proved they will go to defeat him is sterling proof that Obama's reelection is absolutely necessary. If the Right's campaign tactics, a compound of lies, distortions, threats and an absolute absence of ethics, are a window on how they will govern--and during Bush II did for eight regrettable years--the country's condition by 2016 is unimaginable. Or maybe I just don't have the heart tonight to imagine it.
America used to despise bullies, at least as they were depicted in the moral fictions of my youth. Now that we have become acknowledged international bullies ourselves, is it possible that we've come to admire them in our politics, there too confusing the overbearing with the strong? Or will a sufficient number of voters retain enough sense to resent, resist and reject those who are beating them bloody, then burying their abandoned carcass with tons of cash?
Wisconsin will offer us a hint in less than a week.
So cranky pants John Sununu, who describes himself as Mitt Romney's crazy old uncle (wait....Willard isn't surrounded by enough crazy? He needs more??) is ready to duke it out with CNN over the fact that they keep doing stories on the ridiculousness of the doltish birthers, called to arm themselves with fairy tales and don their tin-foil hats once more in support of the chief dolt, the Donald.
But wait, John, where was all this outrage when the birther craziness was successful as an antagonization tool to be used against the president and his supporters? Republicans were guffawing like loons watching Obama do the birth certificate two-step. But now that it makes your guy look like the kid who can't go anywhere without his idiot brother who is constantly whipping it out in public, you want to put that shtick back in the cuckoo box.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You see, you can't pick and choose when you attach yourself to crazy. When you use morons and droolers to do your dirty work you can't disavow them when they start drawing on the walls of the RNC war room with crayons and urinating in your coffee pot.
Besides, your boy has joined himself at the hip to the Swiss Army Knife of Stupid. When you get Trump, you don't just get the handy little flat head screw driver and the tiny scissors, you also get the corkscrew logic thingy, the brain stem stabber, and the chromium steel emasculator with the hidden slicer. You get all this and more when you slide the Swiss Army Knife of Stupid in your pocket. So don't blame Wolf Blitzer next time your boy is speaking before the Daughters of the American Bigots Society and the SAKofS begins drilling a hole in the side of his carefully coiffed head and out pours all that machine oil.
The lying down with dogs saying comes to mind. Start scratching John.
Yesterday Akhilleus, taking the Donald to task, resurrected Jack D. Ripper with all his precious bodily fluids. This reminded me of the story of Dean Rusk who in 1967, as Sec. of State, was speaking to some one hundred student government presidents and campus-newspaper editors who had signed a letter questioning the Vietnam War. A kid from Mich. State asked, "Mr. Secretary, what happens if we continue with the policy you've outlined...this continued escalation until the other side capitulates...up to and including nuclear war and the other side doesn't capitulate?"
Rusk leaned back and solemnly replied, "Well, SOMEBODY'S going to get HURT."
According to Rick Perlstein: "Here, before their eyes, was the maniacal Air Force general Buck Turgidson from "Dr. Strangelove." The room grew silent, their thoughts as one: 'My God, the Secretary of State is crazy!"
Somehow that film never loses its hold. The message is the same; only the characters change.
Ken's words today reveal such a terrible frustration, something I, too, have felt and the feeling keeps growing. When I learn how much money the Republicans are spending on videos it makes me sick. The public is being bamboozled and I fear for the worst. I have lost faith in my fellow man for the most part––enough of this "American people" crap, as though we are one big gigantic US mindset––we aren't; we never have been.
In another life perhaps I could report that I watched the Fox "News" hit piece on the president with mouth agape. Sadly, that's not the case. All that I could muster was a slight shaking of the head. I don't know why anyone is surprised at the naked partisanship displayed by these poseurs, a predilection for partiality that borders on bigotry.
But they'll just go along screaming about how fair and balanced they are when compared to the rest of the media who are all on the Obama payroll.
Two things. First, didn't you love the tiny-brained host who gushed about the immense amount of research the producer put into the piece? Since when does anyone at Fox do actual research? They just make it up. Toss it in and see if anyone will buy it. Besides, if this guy had done any actual research he would have easily ascertained that one of the more inflammatory claims he repeats, the assertion by Newt Gingrich (another Fantasyland escapee) that Obama has put more people on foodstamps than any president in history. A three second Google search shows this to be a lie. The winner and still champion corraler of foodstamp beneficiaries? Round of applause please for tough talking conservative war monger and small government guy, George W. Bush. And a huge number of foodstamp recipients (4.4 million) went on the rolls in 2007 and plenty more after that as a result of the depression brought on by Bush and policies trumpeted and supported by the bigots, dunces, and simpletons at Fox. There. Didn't take long to debunk that claim. And that was just one out of many.
The second interesting element in this cloud cuckoo land example of jouralism, is the idea that no one else at Fox knew about it, especially Roger Ailes. Seriously? This is a guy who bought not one, but two papers in the swanky upstate NY county where he and his wife reside in their priapic mansion, so that he could remove comic strips he found offensive from the funny pages. He has his reporters and staff members followed and records their conversations and fires them if they say anything about him or his wife.
Not know? Are you kidding? Roger Ailes knows who goes to the bathroom, when, how long they're there, and what number they did.
And speaking of doing numbers, we're likely to see much more of this sort of thing, not less. The next ones might not be quite so blatant but because they just lowered the bar to World Class Limbo levels, they're now free to be completely biased as opposed to jaw droppingly biased.
Somewhere in some rat infested shithole in the Ninth Ring of hell (remember, the ring for traitors, according to Dante), Dr. Goebbels is smiling and keeping a seat warm for Ailes.
Well, I just gotta say–––I parse thusly because the English language has been devoid of grammatical correctness along with the dropping of "ings"––we are all, like, um, kinda homespun south of the border speakers–––that you, Akhilleus, makes me laugh and I love that. You are one clever dude and even though we are going down the tube it is so much fun to read about it through you.
P.S. Dante's ninth ring is overflowing at this point––Charles Taylor is the latest on the list and I've heard from the best of sources they are running out of Charmin––the extra soft kind.
PD,
Kind words. Thank you. One simply must maintain an even strain in these tumultuous times especially with all the icebergs in swimming into our ken (to swipe a great line from Keats). Outrage over the aliens who are bent on grinding us beneath the stinking boot of bilious bullies cannot be easily set aside without some humor. If we're all hell-bound, at least we can try to keelhaul some of the worst offenders while we're on the way.
No doubt they'll be happy to see Charles Taylor down there in Ring Nine. May he be frozen in ice up to his nostrils. I wonder if we can pre-book a seat for others?
Dick Cheney maybe? Hey...he might qualify for priority seating! "Travelers with the red tickets may board now. Your pilot today will be Captain Beelzebub."
Apologies to all for last night's grim thoughts, but that said, morning's full flush has energized me sufficiently to attempt what last night I could not: an if this goes on exercise in what the future will look like if we continue on our present path ala the Linda Greenhouse analysis above, which limns the fate of the whole nation in just a few words.
More resources and rights extended to corporations, and more of the same for churches, both entities we should note organized on autocratic principles. More power extended to the states, which in our republic's zero-sum game of power sharing, lessens the reach and influence of the federal government, the Constitution's designated and sole protector of the Bill of Rights.
Contrariwise, less protection for minorities and individual rights (tho' I would like to live long enough to watch the minority pendulum swing when white folks qualify as they will soon). In the context of a zero-sum power analysis, the movements against the rights of gays and women and the efforts to place insurmountable barriers to voting for potential apple-cart upsetters are particularly revealing of the dictatorial strain of the Right's white male power elite.
Despite their rhetoric, the only individual freedom the Right energetically defends is the freedom to arm ourselves to the teeth, and that I believe in a cynical campaign to perpetuate the illusion that we're all just as free and independent as we ever were or hoped to be back there in the good old days when men were men and women knew their place.
In short, the common themes that gave rise to last night's grim thoughts are the Right's movement toward autocracy worship, reflected in the its enthusiastic support of the anti-democratic power structures of corporation and church, most often at the expense of the individual's freedoms, and the deliberate weakening of the federal government's role as guarantor of the Bill of Rights and protector of the weak. The only legitimate roles the Right acknowledges for the federal government are corporate welfare and the military, often the same, and both perhaps not by coincidence, organized autocratically.
Finally, through their continuing attacks on all initiatives where we have come together to promote the good of all--education, social security, medicare and unemployment insurance-- the Right is orchestrating a gradual, sub-rosa substitution of corporation and church beneficence-- once dim-wittedly called compassionate conservatism-- which of course will have to be paid for in shekels or souls, as the only alternative to the compact we made when we created and funded our great public institutions.
It is the frontal assault on that compact that makes me saddest of all.
Next time I'll try to come up with a laugh. Promise.