"I'm switching to Polish now, in stores and elsewhere. But I find that I have that American softness to my speech. The Polish melodic inflection is gone too."

"I hear its absence, but I do nothing to force it back. I'm kind of enjoying the reaction. At several points, people think that I am an American who has learned Polish very very well. Nearly perfectly! The accent isn't perfect, but so what! Which brings me to this question that I come back to again and again: why do so many Poles love America so much? Even as that love is not at all reciprocated. I mean, America let them down. Again and again. Thinking back to the war (and I do, every time that I am here)...."

My colleague Nina, in Warsaw, with lots of photographs, including one of a snow-covered statue of Ronald Reagan.

"Ronald Reagan's 'First Time' Vote [Joke] Was Dirtier Than Lena Dunham's."

Does that mean we can't criticize the Obama campaign for that Lena Dunham ad anymore?

Possible arguments:

1. Reagan was talking to guys in a working-class bar, not putting the smutty material in a carefully crafted, glitzy ad aimed at everyone.

2. If Obama got caught on an open mike saying something like "I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever; we begin bombing in five minutes," there would be nothing to complain about because Reagan did that.

3. We remember Ronald Reagan. We knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. Lena Dunham, you're no Ronald Reagan.

ADDED:

4. For Ronald Reagan's remark to be taken as sexual, we would need to believe that he wanted us to visualize him on the receiving end of sexual penetration, and he couldn't have meant that.

5. The comparison to Reagan's joke assumes that the criticism of Dunham's ad was based on prissiness about sexuality, but it was really about trivializing the election and treating women as if they vote based on their sexual attraction toward the President.

Rocky Mountain high Obama?

“I’m going to say something controversial here... Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started. Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe....”

Al Gore said on his TV network that apparently somebody watched.

I've also heard that Obama has trouble when you rouse him at 3 a.m. with a telephone call.



And don't bring up the writing on the pajamas. I'm cautioning against that sort of thing now. Stay upbeat, Romney people. Romney sounded like Reagan last night. He's full of optimism and energy. He can speak cogently for 2 hours in the mile-high city, and he can, I presume, answer the phone in the middle of the night.

AND: Just because we're talking about Al Gore and screwing up debates, I want to show you what I find the funniest presidential debate moment of all time:



Bush's head nod is epic, and if you ever want to make me laugh, just look at me with Gore-y triumph and ask "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?"

67% said Romney won the debate.

And "No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984," according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

That is, it was by far the most decisive win they'd ever measured. And they measured that time Dukakis didn't seem to mind if his wife was raped and that time Reagan said "There you go again."

"Why are you making this about race?"

Elspeth Reeve answers a question she's been asked after her "How Racist Is the Obama Phone Video?," which I linked, approvingly, yesterday.

This is a he-who-smelt-it-dealt-it argument. Or, as Stephen Colbert's persona likes to say, "I don't see race." This line of argument wants to change the subject to something, anything other than race. Hey, what about free phones?! Patterico at Patterico's Pontifications tried defending the video, saying, "The above video is hilarious. It is representative of a group of Obama voters who feel entitled to handouts from government. It does not matter what the color of the speaker is. It’s news... Conservatives should not have to shy away from such amusing examples of entitlement mentality simply because the particular proponent of that mentality happens to be black." This is intellectually dishonest, at best. We await Patterico delving into the minutiae of the Universal Service Fund. Until then, it's just "hilarious." Specifically, it's hilarious because it uses one person to portray a huge group of people in a negative way is. The point of the video -- and the reason Drudge and Limbaugh hyped it -- is to say, this is what Obama voters look like: black, poor, stupid, and after your money. The video's subject wasn't picked out because she "happens to be black," she was picked out because she is black. Lee Atwater, strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, explained how this works way back in 1981 -- better to talk about cutting taxes and bussing, because it's "a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Ni***r, ni***r.'" Of course, this Internet meme isn't all that abstract.

If it's insufficiently abstract, it won't work. Our conscious anti-racism filters may keep the material from reaching us. In fact, as I said in my post yesterday, what I feel happening to me emotionally — and what I'm guessing may happen to other middle-of-the-road types like me — is repulsion away from the Romney side. It's not Romney's fault, he can't control what his supporters say in their efforts to promote him, but he needs to be a more dominant figure in his own campaign. Voters need to associate him with a clear and compelling message that doesn't feel connected to this racial material coming from other sources.

Fashion predicts an economic upturn and a victory for Romney.

Interpret this shirt:



That's something new, selected to illustrate the latest email from Macy's. Macy's — and the shirtmaker, Ralph Lauren — are in the game for the money, so they've got to predict where the mind of the American shopper is going (and where they can make it go, with some prodding). Anyway, you read the tea leaves, I will read the fabric print.

First: Ann Romney! How many ways does that shirt say "Ann Romney"? 1. Horses, 2. Animals boldly emblazoned on on your chest, 3. Unapologetically rich.

Second: The 80s! This thing looks like it sprang right out of the 80s, the Reagan era. Put aside your sorry old sweaters, your poverty looks. We're going to strut proudly into the Morning in America.

Did you know that Time Magazine, just last January, ranked Jimmy Carter's cardigan one of the Top 10 Political Fashion Statements"?

In Feb. 2, 1977, just two weeks after being sworn in as the 39th President, Jimmy Carter delivered a fireside chat from his West Wing study. Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., was using the power of network television to "keep in close touch with the people of our country, to let you know informally about our plans."

Your plans to depress the hell out of us. Thanks, old man.

What caught the attention of viewers that night wasn't necessarily what Carter said, but what he wore: Unlike today's era of hyper-stylized image consultancy, in which everything a politician wears is scrutinized, Carter simply wore for the taping what he had worn to dinner. 

Oh, really? What was for dinner? Ramen noodles?

He asked his TV adviser and adman what they thought, and they told him to look at the TV monitor to see for himself. While Carter would have myriad difficulties in the coming years, that early high point was purely authentic. "He was folks, and folks is in," a Republican insider told TIME. "I hate to say it, but from a purely analytical point of view, I loved it."

Folks was in. But not permanently. We got exuberance later.

"Here’s a first look at the unlikely casting but uncanny resemblance of Jane Fonda as former First Lady Nancy Reagan."

"Alan Rickman plays President Ronald Reagan... The pic stars Forest Whitaker as White House butler Eugene Allen whose career spanned 34 years there."

Email from John Kerry: "I have one message burned into my memory..."

What?! I can't believe Kerry would evoke his old "memory which is seared — seared — in me" line. If you don't have that seared in your memory, here's a 2004 WaPo article, "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper."

It's weird to get email from a character from the past and have it begin with, essentially, remember me, the big liar. The email reads:

I have one message burned into my memory for everyone who cares about the outcome of this year's presidential election:

Respond quickly and powerfully to attacks from the other side...

If you tune in to the convention, you'll see that Mitt Romney and his allies have no qualms about misleading voters if it means defeating President Obama.

But their attacks won't work if enough people step up to protect the President's record.

Meanwhile, over on Rush Limbaugh's show, the complaint is that the Republicans are afraid to attack Obama. After the first night of the convention, he quotes Fox News commentator Ed Rollins, who said: "Not hitting on Obama was a perfect way to go. We all know the Obama record and don't need to have it reinforced." That exasperates Rush:

Clearly what we've known for years is true. The Republican hierarchy, from its consultants on down, truly believes that mentioning Obama by name and then criticizing will cause these swing voters that [focus groupster Frank] Luntz had that I told you about to run straight back to the Democrats. It is clear they believe it.

Naturally, I profoundly disagree.

But I think also it's obvious that these people don't see this as a turning point election. They see it as just another one in the cycle. Here's Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi is a Democrat consultant. Trippi ran Howard Dean's ill-fated campaign in 2004 when John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) ended up being the nominee. He was also on the Fox show this morning. After Ed Rollins said, "Yep, yep! Not hitting Obama was the perfect way to go," Joe Trippi said...

TRIPPI: Christie last night, there's been some disappointment he didn't go after Obama enough. But what he did was talk to the undecideds out there. If he had pounded on Obama in that way, I think it woulda turned those people off.

RUSH: Folks, I'm literally going insane hearing this. I want to know why these independents don't get turned off when Obama calls Romney a murderer and a felon. Why is it that independents only get turned off? Why is it that our guys are agreeing with a Democrat consultant? Why is it that the independents only get turned off when we're critical? And we're not even being "critical" when we tell the truth!

Did you notice the name John Kerry in there?

Kerry's name came up in a different point in the show yesterday, when I caller said:

You know what, Rush, I am so sick of the Democrats painting Mitt Romney as some out of touch rich guy.  I mean, can we say John Kerry, John Edwards, Algore, and you know I see Kerry is scheduled to speak at the DNC next week.... So they're actually featuring the most out of touch rich guy at their own convention.  I mean, how can they get away with this, Rush?

Rush said:

'Cause he's a Democrat, and Democrats care about poor people and Republicans don't, and that's it.  I'm doing this my 25th year.  I have every day, for 24-plus years, said what you just said.  I've been pointing it out.  I've written columns about it. I've said it on TV. I've said it on radio. I've made speeches about it.  Kerry is five times wealthier than Romney, and... he inherited it all, and he's much more flagrant in his consumption of his wealth.... than Romney is. 

I think he means that Kerry married into money. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry inherited her money, which Kerry married into. 

Romney gave away his inheritance.  He gave it away.  He donated it to charity.  Look, I understand your frustration, 'cause you don't like being on defense.  Why do we have to respond to these guys?  They feel the need to do it because the truth still isn't out there, and it's wrapped up in something that isn't complicated at all.  Kerry is a Democrat; they care about the poor.  Republicans only care about the rich and Wall Street, and that's what doofuses, morons, in this country believe.  The people who are not informed, who think they're lifelong Democrats, born and raised hearing that every day of their lives, particularly if they're members of unions, that's what they've heard.

I must say I did not know that Mitt Romney gave away his inheritance. I hear it said over and over that he was born into money, and I don't remember ever hearing that Romney gave the money he inherited from his father away. But it's true. He gave the money to found a school at Brigham Young University.

Why don't we hear more about it? I assume it's the same thing Ann Romney was talking about the other night: "Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point." In my mind, this connects to what Jesus said about charity and good works:

Be careful! When you do good things, don't do them in front of people to be seen by them. If you do that, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

When you give to the poor, don't be like the hypocrites. They blow trumpets in the synagogues and on the streets so that people will see them and honor them. I tell you the truth, those hypocrites already have their full reward. So when you give to the poor, don't let anyone know what you are doing. Your giving should be done in secret. Your Father can see what is done in secret, and he will reward you.

And yet the task at the moment is winning the Presidency (not heaven). We're told people don't find Romney likeable enough, and the Democrats pound away on the message that he's a horrible man. He doesn't care about people.

Jesus said:

People will insult you and hurt you. They will lie and say all kinds of evil things about you because you follow me. But when they do, you will be blessed. Rejoice and be glad, because you have a great reward waiting for you in heaven. People did the same evil things to the prophets who lived before you. 

But then, reading on, we see:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its salty taste, it cannot be made salty again. It is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and walked on.

"You are the light that gives light to the world. A city that is built on a hill cannot be hidden. And people don't hide a light under a bowl. They put it on a lampstand so the light shines for all the people in the house. In the same way, you should be a light for other people. Live so that they will see the good things you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

That's saying let your good works show. I don't want to say Jesus contradicted himself. Commenters will explain this seeming discrepancy, which is undoubtedly the subject of numerous sermons that I have not sat through. But I have read that passage many times over the years.

And... city on a hill. City on a hill! Talk about your Republican conventions.

Goodbye to Phyllis Diller.

She was 95.

Diller was nearly 40 when she began performing, with five children and a successful career as an advertising copywriter. At the time, women were a rarity in the world of stand-up comedy.

Thanks for all the laughs! Here she is on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1969:



AND: Here she is roasting Reagan:



"If you ever get to be President, and I think you may...."

AND: Many commenters are talking about Diller's skill on the harpsichord. Here she is flaunting her talent to Liberace:

"R and R, Romney and Ryan — Republicans will like that."

Says Meade, and I say: "The military?" (R&R is military slang.)

"RR," he prompts, and I think of railroad, but don't bother to say it, even though in 2010 I voted for a Republican (Scott Walker) on the single-issue of the railroad.

"RR — Ronald Reagan!"

Let the Romney/Ryan logos use the double R to remind us of the party's greatest modern-day hero, Ronald Reagan.

"President Obama's newest campaign commercial was filmed inside the West Wing of the White House..."

"... an act that campaign finance experts and good government groups generally agreed was legal if not particularly commendable."

Staffers for President George W. Bush say they expressly avoided filming campaign ads within the West Wing itself....

Previous presidents saw no such lines. When President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 he was featured in the Oval Office... President Ronald Reagan's 1984 convention documentary featured the Oval Office and the Roosevelt Room....

In 1976, President Gerald Ford was filmed working with his top advisers in the Oval Office itself and speaking directly to camera in an interview with a tell-tale curving wall behind him....

Four years later, President Jimmy Carter was filmed in the Oval Office for a reelection ad....

So what's the big deal? Must a President live up to the George Bush standard? That's awfully rigorous!

"Where miracles are made. Not in Washington, D.C."

FDR would have a hard time fitting in with today's Democratic Party.

That post title is just putting 2 things together.

1. In yesterday's NYT: "But tough talk about the state of the [Republican] party on Monday by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — who went so far as to say that Ronald Reagan and his father would have a 'hard time' fitting in during this Tea Party era — exhibited a growing distance between the [Bush] family, which until not very long ago embodied mainstream Republicanism, and the no-compromise conservative activists now driving the party."

2. A big meme in the Wisconsin recall election: 

Roosevelt's reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation's workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt.

But only for the private sector. Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.

"The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

And if you're the kind of guy who capitalizes "government," woe betide such obstructionists.

Roosevelt wasn't alone. It was orthodoxy among Democrats through the '50s that unions didn't belong in government work. Things began changing when, in 1959, Wisconsin's then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson signed collective bargaining into law for state workers. Other states followed, and gradually, municipal workers and teachers were unionized, too....

(Isn't it interesting that Wisconsin led the way into the unionization of government workers and now it's leading the way out?)

"Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The most frightening words you could hear are 'I’m from the government and I’m here to help'?"

Goofy poll question requires people to puzzle over whether to take jokey hyperbole literally. But 32% of likely U.S. voters did agree with the famous Reagan remark. Rasmussen, the rascally pollster, says "Ronald Reagan would be disappointed."

When you're polled, you don't get to explain. Among those who disagree with the statement, what is the percentage of people who thought things like "Actually, I think the government is often quite helpful," and what is the percentage of people who thought things like "It would be much more frightening to hear 'I'm afraid you have 3 weeks to live' or 'Your child has been in a terrible accident'"?

This is the same point I was making the other day about that poll where 31% of Republicans said they thought Obama is Muslim: "They might simply have thought that he was Muslim by inheritance through his father, a cultural matter, which would be quite true. Why make fun of the people who are stuck within the constraints of a poll question?"

This is how pollsters can crank out raw material for propagandists. I'm calling bullshit. I mean, it's a cowpie of distortion.

"This grasping at straws was just the capstone to what even liberal observers admitted was a week of self-immolation..."

I'm annoyed that I can't get into that article — about the SG's argument in the Obamacare case — because I don't have a subscription to the Weekly Standard. Now, I'll never know whether that article contains a funnier mixed metaphor than that.

What are those images?

Self-immolation is deliberately setting oneself on fire. I picture dramatic protests from the Vietnam era, but it's been going on for centuries:

It was Western media coverage of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the South Vietnamese regime in 1963 that introduced the word "self-immolation" to a wide English-speaking audience and gave it a strong association with fire. The alternative name bonzo comes from the same era, because the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves were often referred to by the term bonze in English literature prior to the mid-20th century...

Bonzo! Most Americans think of that Ronald Reagan movie when we hear "Bonzo." Perhaps some think of Led Zeppelin. But fiery suicide, to make a political point? That's new to me.

A capstone is "a stone that caps or crowns." I'm quoting the OED, where we can see the metaphorical use of the word goes back to 1685: "Here is the fair occasion... to put the cap-stone upon his other perfections" (tr. B. Gracián y Morales Courtiers Oracle 150). By the way, the Great Pyramid is missing its capstone. Ever notice? Makes you want to put an eye there:



Okay, now what about grasping at straws? What's the image there? I realize I've always pictured ants trying to get out of water by climbing onto some bit of straw. Focusing on that for the first time, I can see that grasping at straws would probably work for an ant. You're supposed to picture a human being trying to escape drowning and desperately grasping at anything, no matter how absurdly useless it is. Wiktionary tells me that the image goes back Thomas More, "Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation" (1534). More is talking about people who will not seek the "comfort" of God. Some of them are completely lethargic — "so drowned in sorrow that they fall into a careless deadly dullness." Others are so "testy" and "fuming" that you don't even want to talk to them. Then there are people who do want to be comforted. Some of them "seek for worldly comfort":

He who in tribulation turneth himself unto worldly vanities, to get help and comfort from them, fareth like a man who in peril of drowning catcheth whatsoever cometh next to hand, and that holdeth he fast, be it never so simple a stick. But then that helpeth him not, for he draweth that stick down under the water with him, and there they lie both drowned together. So surely, if we accustom ourselves to put our trust of comfort in the delight of these childish worldly things, God shall for that foul fault suffer our tribulation to grow so great that all the pleasures of this world shall never bear us up, but all our childish pleasure shall drown with us in the depth of tribulation.

You know, that eye on the pyramid, as seen on the Great Seal of the United States dollar bill is the "Eye of Providence":

On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words Annuit Cœptis, meaning "He approves (or has approved) [our] undertakings", and Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning "New Order of the Ages". The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country. The lowest level of the pyramid shows the year 1776 in Roman numerals. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God, favors the prosperity of the United States.

Have we gone so deeply into the mixed metaphor that it's all coming together somehow?

"The vocabulary of class warfare may have begun on the left—a very socialist left..."

"... but in mainstream American politics it didn’t gain much traction until the Republicans took it up."

Framing the struggle as cultural and tribal rather than as economic, they proved to be more effective class warriors than the Democrats. Richard Nixon won over the “silent majority” by casting intellectuals, student radicals, and the media as enemies of those he awkwardly termed “the so-called unimportant people.” Ronald Reagan called out “welfare queens” for bilking the government. The Bushes brought down their opponents by igniting incipient racial and cultural resentments. Michael Dukakis fell to the vicious Willie Horton ad. The infamous Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry impugned his war heroism; an ad showing him windsurfing off Nantucket became an emblem of unseemly privilege.

 So what's Obama supposed to do?

"I have these other aspects of my life that no one knows about. I’m an artist. I’m a musician."

"Nobody knows that... They just see me at the guy who tried to kill Reagan.”

In the wake of last year’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by accused gunman Jared Loughner, John Hinckley asked one of his therapists, “Wow. Is that how people see me?”

Ronald Reagan was the most influential President of the last 50 years.

Say 40% of Americans. Bill Clinton is in second place, with a mere 16%. If you add Clinton, JFK, and Barack Obama together, you'll get to 41% and beat Reagan. Oh, basically, the country's split in 2, Republican and Democrat, but the Republicans' minds lock easily and immediately onto the same man.

"Profs Criticized for Insufficient Love of Reagan."

Hmm.

In the 1980s, Gingrich "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism."

"Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong." — Elliott Abrams.

ADDED: That article is regarded as one element of a concerted effort by conservatives to destroy Newt.

AND: Newt himself seems to be joining the effort:



He totally lied.