Saturday Open Thread [1.26.13]
Nate Silver: “Mr. Obama ran for and won a second term, something only about half of the men to serve as president have done (the tally is 20 or 21 out of 43, depending on how you count Grover Cleveland). We can also note, however, that Mr. Obama’s re-election margin was relatively narrow. Do these simple facts provide any insight at all into how he might be regarded 20, 50 or 100 years from now?”
“Over all, there is a positive relationship between a president’s performance in the Electoral College when seeking a second term, and how the historians have ranked him. (The regression line in the chart below predicts that Mr. Obama will eventually come to be regarded as about the 17th-best president, somewhere on the boundary between good and average.) But it is an extremely rough guide — especially for the presidents who are successful in winning a second term, and who have an opportunity to enhance or undermine their reputations. Voters may judge a president’s first term, but history will judge his second.”
When he starts knocking Republicans heads together and busting out the FDR progressive mojo this term – he is going to be regarded as the best President in history and be added to Mt Rushmore within a generation.
I am STILL standing by that prediction.
More Arizona crazy on the loose — a bill to require that high school students recite a loyalty oath to the US before they can get their diplomas.
I guess every single problem facing Arizona has been solved by the legislature and they are now just doing things to fill up the day.
What’s going to happen to Arizona after they’ve sucked every drop of water from the ground?
What a crappy place full of so many crappy people….
I don’t know — some parts of AZ are astonishingly gorgeous. You just have to get away from Phoenix to see them. One of the best road trips I ever took was a drive from ABQ to Tucson via back roads. But AZ is struggling with water and the CAP project isn’t the savior they overspent for to get. Maybe they’ll decide that a civil war with a neighbor to capture water is in order.
Here’s another interesting bit of news — remember the head of Murray Energy laying off mine workers in UT and OH so he could blame Obama? These were some of the same workers that he forced to attend a Rmoney rally without pay too. Well, Murray Energy is hiring back quite a few of those workers. Because no matter your political bent, you still need workers to get coal out of the ground when you have customers for that coal.
Biden-lovin’ sap for one of the worst DINOs on the Hill, Mary Landrieu http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/279497-biden-praises-landrieu-at-la-fundraiser
If anyone was wondering about child porn, the victimless crime. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/magazine/how-much-can-restitution-help-victims-of-child-pornography.html?pagewanted=4&ref=magazine …
How simple the world is for those who feel instead of think.
You linked to Page 4 of a 10-page article — the page that concentrates on the emotional devastation these girls suffer. Did you skip the rest of the article, or did you read passages such as:
“There is almost no research, however, that deals with the specifics of Amy and Nicole’s experiences: What additional harm comes from knowing that pictures of your childhood exploitation are circulating widely?”
Or:
“defendants who look at sexual pictures of children can spend more years in prison than people who abuse children but don’t have pornography of them.”
Or:
“The United States Sentencing Commission held hearings last February to discuss whether the punishment for child-pornography offenders has become both disproportionate and unfair — with people who committed similar crimes receiving vastly different penalties, based on the subjective decisions of judges.”
In short, it’s a complicated issue — and anyone who thinks otherwise is allowing compassion for the victims to overrule the facts that make it complicated.
Wilmington’s new mayor.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20130127/NEWS02/301270059/Nepotism-good-hires-Time-will-tell-mayor