Watching the Democrats tear themselves apart and playing "Operation Chaos" was fun for a while, but now they're just distractions from very real problems on the GOP side. It seems to me that one of the motivations for hoping for a deathmatch on the Democratic (there it is again) side is that there is still some lingering disappointment with John McCain as the party's nominee. His admitted weaknesses on domestic policy certainly don't inspire confidence. The party also recently lost a 34-year seat in Louisiana. The tea leaves are suggesting a congressional disaster in November which could take down the party's whole leadership team. If the party wants to win in November, now is the time to get serious about addressing some very real problems with its image and its platform. McCain can make the first step by naming a fresh face with conservative credentials as his running mate. Mark Sanford anyone?
Today Indiana goes to the polls in what may turn out to be a decisive primary for the Democratic nomination. I live in a largely Democratic precinct and overheard this exchange while walking into the polling booth this morning:
Middle-aged white woman #1: "I really want to elect a woman president, but I'm just so smitten with Obama's family."
Hippyish twenty-something male: "I know what you mean. He's really cool."
Middle-aged white woman #1: "His mother had a biracial child in the 1960s! Think of what that would mean if he became president!"
Middle-aged white woman #2: "Yes, but black men have always had more rights than women. That's not right, so I'm voting for Hillary."
I thought this exchange would be beneficial for our international readers who might be interested in how some Americans select the leader of the free world.
Yesterday I was on the NewsHour to talk about the gas tax holiday. I asked if there was another guest and the producer said, "We tried, but we couldn't find anyone to argue the other side (that the gas tax holiday made sense)."
Armed with a popular bad idea, Hillary passes the real test of any politician -- she is undeterred by logic:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday dismissed the "elite opinion" of economists who criticized her gas tax proposal..."I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.
As seen in the comments at Balloon Juice, this commercial might explain the idea of a gas tax holiday--panned by economists of all political persuasions--now being advocated by John McCain and Hillary Clinton as a way to lower gas prices. Be sure to stick around to the end.
Here's hope for the future: 53 percent of 12-graders in America failed the Department of Education's NAEP assessment tests in U.S. history conducted in 2006. And this is actually an improvement over the results from the 2001 edition of NAEP, which 57 percent of 12-graders failed.
Then we have this report (PDF) from Common Core, a liberal arts advocacy group, which includes the lovely tidbit that only 43 percent of 17-year-olds placed the Civil War correctly in the period 1850-1900. 43 percent. That might explain some of the answers in our slavery thread (our longest ever?), but is still disconcerting to say the least. Might we be emphasizing standards in math and science to the detriment of the liberal arts?
