BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, May 2, 2005 3:58 p.m.
You Bet Your Life
ABC doesn't put transcripts of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on its Web site, which means it goes pretty much unnoticed except for TiVo-equipped political junkies. Fortunately for you, dear reader, your humble columnist is just such a junkie, and we sit through "This Week" so you don't have to. Anyway, here's a hilarious exchange from Stephanopoulos's interview yesterday with Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader:
Stephanopoulos: Why should American people trust the Democrats [on Social Security] if you don't have a specific plan?
Pelosi: The American people should trust the Democrats because we originated Social Security. This was a very entrepreneurial idea of the New Deal and Democrats will not allow the Republicans to turn this great deal for the American people into a raw deal for them by what they are proposing. They've never really supported Social Security, and the way to damage it, I'm trying to select my word carefully, is to destroy the universality of it. The genius of Social Security at the time was that everybody supported it in terms of the working families of America because they got a stream of income commensurate to what they put into the program.
So the Republicans have "never really supported Social Security" even though at the time it originated "everybody supported it." Granted, the GOP was the minority party in 1935, but like the Democrats today, it never quite ceased to exist.
Even funnier is Pelosi's statement that "the American people should trust the Democrats because we originated Social Security." Sounds great, except that Claude Pepper died in 1989, and every other New Deal-era Democrat we can think of predeceased him. Even Robert "Archaeopteryx" Byrd arrived in Congress almost 18 years after the passage of the Social Security Act.
Pelosi's comment has overtones of Marx--not Karl but Groucho, who in "A Night at the Opera" uttered this line: "Nix on the love-making because I saw Mrs. Claypool first. Of course, her mother really saw her first but there's no point in bringing the Civil War into this."
"A Night at the Opera" came out in 1935--the year Social Security was born, 70 years after the end of the Civil War, and 70 years before Nancy Pelosi's Marxian performance on "This Week."
The Oral Minority
A reader called our attention to a pair of strangely similar quotes from Democratic senators. On March 5, North Dakota's Byron Dorgan said of President Bush's Social Security ideas, ''This is a big wet kiss to Wall Street." Then, last Thursday, Nevada's Harry Reid, the minority leader, said of Majority Leader Bill Frist's filibuster compromise, "It's a big wet kiss to the far right."
We found several other examples of liberals referring to their opponents' actions as "wet kisses":
" 'South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias,' by Brian C. Anderson of the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute [available at the OpinionJournal bookstore], gives a wet kiss to one of the funniest and most foul-mouthed series on television."--Frank Rich, New York Times
"Ron Reagan, the president's son, on a talk show wondered why [Florida's state Rep. Dennis] Baxley was giving a big wet kiss to the National Rifle Association with the 'use of force' bill."--Tallahassee Democrat
"A sloppy wet kiss to the credit card industry."--Loren Steffy, Houston Chronicle, on the bankruptcy-reform law
Naturally, we wondered if American liberals have an oral fixation. About.com describes the Freudian "oral stage," which normally lasts from birth to age 1 1/2: "Because the child's personality is controlled by the id and therefore demands immediate gratification, responsive nurturing is key. Both insufficient and forceful feeding can result in fixation in this stage."
Here are the symptoms of oral fixation:
Smoking
Constant chewing on gum, pens, pencils, etc.
Nail biting
Overeating
Drinking
Sarcasm ("the biting personality") and verbal hostility
Seems to us we may be on to something here, though as we're sure Bill Clinton would hasten to point out, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Raise a Glass, Pull the Lever
Why do the British hold elections on Thursday? The BBC offers some speculation:
They do not have to be--it is just a convention. One theory about its origins is that people were not paid until Fridays and so holding polls on Thursdays ensured they were not too drunk to vote.
Here in America, though, the nexus between ballots and booze may have partisan implications. There's a proposal in Kansas for 23 cities to vote on whether to continue permitting Sunday liquor sales, and the Lawrence Journal-World quotes state Rep. Candy Ruff, a Democrat: "Anytime you have a liquor issue on the ballot, it brings out more Democrats." Note too the penultimate item on the oral-fixation symptom list above. We guess Republicans are strong in the Bible Belt, while Dems do better in the Bibulous Belt.
This Just In
"Blair Backed War Before Invasion"--headline, the Age (Melbourne, Australia), May 2
Will France Try an Insanity Plea?
"England Pleads Guilty to Abuse Charges"--headline, Associated Press, May 2
Is Patriotism for Rubes?
It's not exactly man-bites-dog story, but the editors at the Chicago Tribune thought it worth 2,500 words: Rural Americans are "overrepresented" in the military. The reasons "experts" proffer aren't surprising either:
There are more soldiers from small towns in the military, experts say, because the standard reasons young men and women join the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines--a desire to get out and see the world, a sense of patriotism and a lack of jobs back home--are often disproportionately represented in rural communities.
What is interesting about this is that the assertion that small-town folks are more patriotic than urban dwellers, as obvious as it may seem, turns out to be controversial. Interesting but not surprising, given how touchy liberal politicians and intellectuals are on the subject of patriotism. But this exchange from the Trib piece is revealing:
"A lot of these small towns have good families and good social systems that look after them. And many of them join the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and that all builds a sense of duty," said Maj. Terry Race, 49, a Marine Reservist who handled funeral arrangements for the family of Pfc. Andrew Halverson, a resident of Muscoda, Wis., who died last year in Iraq. "These people from these small towns have the same core values of courage, honor and commitment before they reach us.
"So, I don't think it's unnatural that a lot of these soldiers come from small towns," said Race, who grew up in Racine, Wis., and lives in Whitewater, Wis. "I find it very natural."
But Al Luloff, a professor of rural sociology at Penn State University, doesn't believe that.
"I have a hard time buying that one," said Luloff, who has studied the changes in rural America for 35 years, "because I have a hard time looking at rural people as rubes. I don't think they're any more patriotic or less patriotic."
Now of course that last phrase is a diversion; no one has suggested that rural people are less patriotic. What Luloff is really saying here is that patriotism is for rubes.
There He Goes Again
"One measure of how children have tumbled as a priority in America is that in 1960 we ranked 12th in infant mortality among nations in the world, while now 40 nations have infant mortality rates better than ours or equal to it," writes Nicholas Kristof in yesterday's New York Times. We explained in January why these numbers are meaningless: In brief, American physicians make heroic efforts to save low-birthweight and premature babies, whom other countries don't even count as having been born.
In his January column, Kristof was trying to make America look bad; the overall message of this column, that baby boomers are selfish, is far less objectionable. But even if we're willing to stipulate that all boomers are jerks, surely one can make this point without the use of misleading statistics.
Dog to Bite Man
"American Indians to Gather for Powwow"--headline, Associated Press, April 29
He Ought to Look Into Outhousing
"Jobless Programmer Gets Poop on Outsourcing"--headline, Houston Chronicle, April 29
We Didn't Know It Was Moving
"Hillary Clinton Makes Ohio Stop"--headline, Akron Beacon Journal, May 1
It's Called a 'Cell'
"Little Room for Sex Offenders"--headline, Orlando Sentinel, April 30
Now Will Someone Get to Work on Our Mismatched Socks?
"Researchers Locate Lost Fishing Nets"--headline, Associated Press, April 29
You Should've Seen the One That Got Away
"Men Pull Decomposing Cow From Iowa River"--headline, Associated Press, May 1
Ten Commandments Unfair to Workers
"Nurses Rally For New Contract At Mount Sinai"--headline, NY1.com (New York), April 29
Noah Nods
"Woodpecker Thought Extinct Rediscovered in Ark."--headline, Arizona Republic, April 29
High Hopes
"High Schools Hope Education Is the Answer"--headline, Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.), May 1
They Don't Know Beans
Police and school officials in Clovis, N.M., thought they had a combustible situation on their hands last week. But as the Clovis News Journal reports, it turns out to have been a comestible one instead:
A concerned citizen spotted a male juvenile carrying a suspiciously concealed item into Marshall Junior High School early Thursday morning.
Police were called. The school was locked down. Adjacent streets were closed and law officers were perched on roofs with weapons.
The drama ended about two hours later when the suspicious item was identified:
A 30-inch burrito, prepared as an extra-credit assignment and wrapped inside tinfoil and a white T-shirt.
"I didn't know whether to laugh or cry," school Principal Diana Russell said after the mystery was solved.
"Overall, I'd say we had a good learning day."
Thank goodness it didn't turn out to be something dangerous, like a chalupa.
Hey, We Won!
This Associated Press dispatch from Des Moines, Iowa, appears on Maine Today, the Web site of several Pine Tree State news organizations:
Xxxx of the tickets sold for the Powerball game Xxxxxxday night matched all six numbers drawn, which were:
XX-XX-XX-XX-XX
Powerball XX
(number, number, number, number, number, Powerball number)
Power Play: X
Players matching all five numbers and the Powerball would have won or shared the $XX.X million jackpot. The prize goes to an estimated $XX.X million for Xxxxxxday.
Hey, those are our numbers! We're so exxxxxxcited! We're a xxxxxxaire! (Though we're not looking forward to paying the taxxxxxxes on our winnings.)
Mice Guys Finish Last
The Associated Press reports on the latest chimerical goings-on in American higher education:
In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.
Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.
Run for your life, Stuart Little!
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