When you run up against irrefutable proof that you have been tying your shoes the wrong way your whole life, what do you do with that proof? You go with it. And then you go with it again.
Perry for president: all but certain now.
In the latest turn in the incipient Rick Perry for president campaign, two of the Texas governor’s former associates have left Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, Slate’s excellent blogger Dave Weigel reports. And the significance of this? A Wall Street Journal piece from a day ago explains:
Should he run, Mr. Perry would first have to overcome an organizational hurdle. Assured that he wasn’t running, his two top campaign aides, Mr. Carney and former campaign manager Rob Johnson, both signed up with Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker. … Members of Mr. Perry’s still-extant group of campaign consultants say there is little chance he would embark on a 2012 campaign without Messrs. Carney and Johnson at his side.
The die appears cast. A born-again Republican governor from Texas seeks the White House. I’ll be interested to see the next poll from Iowa. Because of his Christian, Tea Party and anti-intellectual bonafides, I suspect Governor Good-Hair will immediately rate ahead of all the other GOP candidates. Pawlenty, Romney and that other Mormon must be gnashing their teeth. Obama’s folks, meanwhile, sharpen knives in a Chicago diner, remembering the last time they sliced and diced a Texas governor on the way to the White House.
Filed under Uncategorized
Politico at its best
Many Politico stories can be aptly described as meretricious. They promise revelation and insight; they deliver commonplaces and common wisdom, presented in breathless, can-you-believe-this tones. But this Politico piece
on overall strategy for the Obama reelection effort seems both solid and interesting to me. It also acknowledges a reality that I’ve been throwing in the faces of friends for many months now: Yes, Obama will have a tough reelection fight, given the economic situation of the country. But incumbent presidents have enormous natural advantages — in fundraising, organization and visibility — and this president also has a seasoned and inventive political team. That team surprised the world in 2008, and 2012 will not be a simple reprise of that campaign. The Obama team will look to surprise again next year, and this Politico article looks at one way such a surprise might go — an expansion of states put in play. Republicans tut-tut such a strategy, but the common wisdom in late 2007 and early 2008 was that a black man couldn’t win the White House, and Obama should wait his turn, and Hillary had a lock on the nomination. The economy will not be great in 2012, but presidents have a lot of levers to pull when they want a better economy in an election year (look back to Nixon ’72, if you don’t believe me). The economy will be significantly better then than it is now, and it is likelier than not that Obama will win reelection. And if the economy does improve, and the Republicans don’t nominate someone more substantial and believable than Mitt Romney, there is a real chance that Barack Obama will win reelection by a margin that approaches landslide. When he does, remember that you read it here in June of 2011.
Filed under Uncategorized
Perry interesting
I horrified my coastal friends a few days ago with suggestions that when Texas Gov. Rick Perry “invited the country’s other 49 governors and evangelical leaders for a ‘non-political’ event to pray for the nation,” he was really, by the analysis of the Houston Chronicle‘s Austin bureau, taking a step toward a Perry campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Now let me horrify again, first with an example of lame journalism, courtesy of some guy named Alex Alvarez over at Mediaite.com, who basically just copied my Perry prayer event post and misidentified me as the editor of Miller-McCune, a job I left more than a month ago, to national publicity. Then I will horrify with the real stuff: a Wall Street Journal piece by Neil King Jr. that confirms Perry is at least considering a presidential run, which marks a 180 degree flip from his position just a few months ago. Here’s the takeaway from King’s piece:
For months, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has told potential donors and Republican higher-ups he has no interest in running for the White House in 2012. But over the past two weeks, political advisers and friends say, Mr. Perry has changed his tune on a possible presidential campaign. In privateconversations, they say, the three-term governor said he worries that the current GOP contenders have yet to stir real excitement within the party and may struggle when facing President Barack Obama.”He thinks there is a void [in the current field of candidates], and that he might be uniquely positioned to fill that void,” said one Perry confidant who talked to the governor last week.
Yes, the WSJ piece uses some unidentified sources, but it’s pretty clear they’re people who actually are familiar with Perry’s thinking. And at least they’re not misidentified sources.
Filed under 2012 election, Texas
Unfortunately, this video clip contains no bikini-clad girls who love guys with beer bellies
This is a very nice video about a seemingly starry-eyed plan to take an empty food processing building from the old stockyards district of the south side of Chicago and make it into “The Plant,” i.e. an urban farm that is “a completely self-sustainable non-waste facility, fish hatchery, vertical garden, aquaponics farm” — and here’s the part I love — “and microbrewery.” Totally green — with a malty aftertaste. Enjoy.
Filed under Chicago, environment
Booty call on the American Riviera
When someone plants this flag along a residential driveway in Santa Barbara — one of America’s wealthiest, but probably not sexiest cities — you just absolutely, positively have to go with it.
Filed under absurdity
I code, ergo I am narrow-minded
When you have a very fine essay by Larry Sanger (of all people) about the dangers of coder-geek 
anti-intellectualism, you go with it. (And then you link to your own column dealing with some of the same issues, mostly because you still love the headline you wrote for it, “The Gadget in the Gray Flannel Suit.”)
Filed under program developers, stupidity, You go with it
The one living literary genius
I suppose I can argue with my own headline and admit that Cormac McCarthy is also a genius, or at least the writer of one book of true genius, No Country for Old Men. At the same time, I am absolutely convinced that John Le Carré will be seen, after I’ve been rotting in the ground for decades, as the leading literary light of the late 20th and early 21st century. To be sure, there are some who argue — even now, despite decades of evidence to the contrary — that he’s a genre writer, but I suspect most of those who continue to put forward such inanity are unserious minds or people who have actually never read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the reissue of which gets a nice little write-up here by the L.A. Times. But those critics will also be dead in the ground for centuries as George Smiley lives on and on, cuckolded and protecting the West for eternity.
Filed under Uncategorized
Direct from the jungles of Panama
When you have a friend who sends you photos from the rain forest in Panama, you go with them.
Filed under environment, You go with it
Praying for the GOP nomination
I just thought I’d horrify my friends on the East and West coasts with this inspiring little report from the “Third Coast,” in which Texas Gov. Rick “Good Hair” Perry has, as the Houston Chronicle‘s Austin bureau puts it, “invited the country’s other 49 governors and evangelical leaders for a ‘non-political’ event to pray for the nation.” Of course, the non-political event actually appears to be another step in Perry’s nascent campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Or, as the Chron puts it:
Such an event would allow Perry to build his profile with Christian conservatives, a group that play a key role in Republican primary politics, especially in the South and the Midwest. The playbill for the call to prayer hits all of the notes that a candidate seeking the GOP nomination would be expected to hit (see: debasement of society). And the venue selection— Reliant Stadium (a football stadium) — indicates that organizers are aiming to make a splash with the event.
Beyond horrifying with words, this post hopes to cause widespread cursing at coastal computer screens via the picture, provided courtesy of the Texas Tribune, of Gov. Perry, praying to the heavens. Good afternoon, elite thought leaders. And you’re welcome.
John Mecklin, writer/editor 