Up Late with RealClearPolitics: March 27, 2014
RCP’s late-night comedy roundup, Up Late.
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Up Late with RealClearPolitics: March 27, 2014
Showing posts with label RealClearPolitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RealClearPolitics. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
From RealClearPolitics: Another Obamacare Delay; GOP Demographics; Christie"s Fundraising Record
Good morning. It’s Tuesday, February 11, the birthdays of inventor Thomas Edison, former governors Jeb Bush and Sarah Palin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, actor Burt Reynolds, singer Sheryl Crow, and professional surfer Kelly Slater.
An 11-time world champion, Slater blew the judges’ minds—they gave him a perfect 10—for his artistry in the pipeline at a pro tour event in Hawaii last week. Today he turns 42. Happy birthday, dude.
When George Washington was a boy in Virginia, he would have celebrated February 11, 1731, as his birthday. But in 1752 Great Britain and its colonies switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, which made the future general one year and 11 days “younger”—as Washington’s birthday is now demarked as February 22, 1732.
Tonight, Barack and Michelle Obama host a state dinner in honor of Francois Hollande, the president of France. Yesterday, Obama took his counterpart on a trip to Monticello, the estate of France’s former ambassador and good friend Thomas Jefferson. The president showed Hollande a sweeping view of the Virginia countryside from a Monticello terrace normally barred to tourists. “That’s the good thing as a president,” Obama quipped. “I can do whatever I want.”
Monday was perhaps not the right day to offer that witticism, as White House officials were simultaneously confirming that the administration had unilaterally executed yet another delay in implementing key components of the Affordable Care Act. But in the morning note this week we are concentrating on other historical events, namely, interesting mileposts in the relationship between France and the United States this week.
In that spirit, we note that 60 years ago today, President Eisenhower convened a top-secret meeting of the White House National Security Council. The subject: how the U.S. could assist the French in their quest to hold onto its colonial empire in Vietnam.
I’ll have more on that ominous meeting in a moment, after first pointing you to our front page, where we aggregate stories and columns spanning the political spectrum. We also offer a complement of original material from RCP’s staff and contributors:
* * *
GOP Irked by New Delay of Obamacare Mandate. Republicans expressed outrage Monday after the administration again extended deadlines for employers to comply with the law. Alexis Simendinger has the story.
Do Demographics Really Work Against the GOP? Sean Trende takes issue with a fellow analyst’s commentary that Republicans need to heed demographic trends and “reach groups that have not traditionally been supportive” of the party.
Nonbeliever PAC Gets Into the Midterm Game. Jose Gonzalez reports on a new political action committee dedicated to supporting humanist ideals and candidates opposed to religious influence on government policy.
Christie-Led RGA Sets Fundraising Record. Adam O’Neal has the numbers.
Clay Aiken Running for Congress as Defense Hawk. The onetime “American Idol” celeb surprised many observers by announcing his candidacy. But as Adam reports, the openly gay political novice had another surprise in store in his first campaign video.
Poll: Coloradans Say Pot Law Hurts State’s Image. Adam has the details here too.
10 Surprising Facts About the Sochi Games. RealClearSports reprises this info-graphic.
Was Mantle Was Better Than Mays? Also in RCS, Sheldon Hirsch lays out his case.
* * *
More than eight years after the end of World War II, the situation was deteriorating rapidly for the French forces in Indochina. France had requested—and had been given—American military assistance in the form of 200 U.S. airmen, various warplanes, and some replacement parts and mechanics.
It wasn’t proving nearly enough, and at the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower convened a top-secret war council that included three cabinet officials, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and top presidential advisers.
“The President commented on the extraordinary confusion in the reports which reached him from the area of Indochina,” according to the now-declassified notes of the meeting taken by the NSC staff. “There were almost as many judgments as there were authors of messages. There were, nevertheless, only two critical factors in the situation. The first was to win over the Vietnamese population; the other to instill some spirit into the French.”
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Eisenhower’s recently appointed U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who had had a great deal of experience dealing with the French, said “that if you get behind them and push hard enough they will do what is required.”
Eisenhower responded to this sentiment indirectly, according to the minutes of the meeting, and in two ways. First, he said he’d concluded that it was probably time for a change of ambassadors in Vietnam, which is ironic, because John F. Kennedy would later give that thankless job to Lodge.
Ike also subtly reminded his advisers that he himself had some experience with the French—and with war—by offering a prescient thought:
“The President commented that the mood of discouragement came from the evident lack of a spiritual force among the French and the Vietnamese. This was a commodity which it was excessively difficult for one nation to supply to another.”
Carl M. Cannon
Washington Bureau Chief
RealClearPolitics
Twitter: @CarlCannon
We update throughout the day at www.realclearpolitics.com.
From RealClearPolitics: Another Obamacare Delay; GOP Demographics; Christie"s Fundraising Record
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
From RealClearPolitics: Obamacare Enrollees; Fox News and The White House; Pope Discusses Abortion;
Good morning. It’s Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Congress came back in session with a bang, as a group of bipartisan, bicameral congressional negotiators produced a 1,582-page budget blueprint last night that is expected to pass both the House and the Senate.
The $ 1.1 trillion spending bill restores some cuts to social programs such as Head Start, gives federal workers a paltry 1 percent raise, and keeps the government running through the end of Major League Baseball’s regular season. (And they wouldn’t shut the government during the World Series, would they?)
Speaking of which, the National League team in Barack Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago has unveiled a new Cubs mascot to scathing reviews. The White House has not yet commented. Meanwhile, the president’s schedule includes lunch with Joe Biden, hosting the 2013 NBA champion Miami Heat in the East Room and meeting early this evening with Maria Shriver to discuss her report on the status of women in America.
As far as tomorrow goes, the president is heading to North Carolina. In his absence RCP is hosting a noon event at the Newseum focusing on America’s energy future with Sen. Joe Manchin as the keynoter. (If you wish to attend, clickhere to RSVP.)
Today’s date is a signature day in the history of television. Sixty-two years ago today, the incomparable Dave Garroway opened a live broadcast from New York City with the words “Well, here we are.”
Sporting a huge lavalier microphone around his neck, he got up from behind his desk and walked around the studio and said, “Good morning to you–the very first good morning of what I hope and suspect will be a great many good mornings between you and I. Here it is—January 14, 1952, when NBC begins a new program called ‘Today.’ And if it doesn’t sound too revolutionary, I really believe this begins a new kind of television.”
And so it did. I’ll have more on the Today Show and Dave Garroway’s influence on the medium in a moment. First, I’d point you to our front page, where we aggregate an array of stories and columns spanning the political spectrum. We also offer a full complement of original material from RCP’s own reporters and contributors, including:
* * *
Top 10 Lawmakers on Energy. As part of RCP’s weeklong focus on the issue, Caitlin Huey-Burns and Tim Hains collaborated on this slide show.
Just 24 Percent of ACA Enrollees Are Under 35. Alexis Simendinger reports on the data, released yesterday, which show a sign-up trend skewing older than hoped for.
A Second Look at Medicaid Enrollment Numbers. Sean Trende revisits the figures he explored last week, only this time using more precise — and revealing — data supplied by one state.
Christie Faces Tall Task in Reasserting Agenda. Amid fallout from last week’s “Bridgegate” revelations, the New Jersey governor will try to change the subject with his state-of-the-state address today. Scott Conroy has a preview.
Brett Baier on Fox News’ Relationship With the White House. Check out the latest installment of “RCP’s Morning Commute.”
Poll: 23 Percent Say U.S. Headed in Right Direction. Adam O’Neal has thenumbers.
Pope Ratchets Up Rhetoric on Abortion. Adam reports on the pontiff’s surprisingly strong words on the subject Monday in his State of the World address.
N.Y. Congressman to Wed Same-Sex Partner. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York is engaged to be married. Adam has the details.
Human Rights Buried Under $ 51 Billion Sochi Games. Mark Cunningham wonderswhether the international community will turn a blind eye next month to Russia’s oppression.
* * *
With his bow tie, horn-rimmed glasses, and everyman looks, Dave Garroway was perhaps an unlikely television star. His secret was his amiable manner and preternatural calmness—on live television, no less, amid a clattering newsroom—and his love of the subject material, whatever that happened to be.
TV critic Tom Shales has ruminated that the early television performers and producers were creators in the truest sense of the word. “Inventing TV—the machine—was not that hard,” he wrote. “Dave Garroway helped invent what you put on it once you’ve got it.”
When Garroway died by his own hand in 1982, Shales penned a poignant obituary. “Dave Garroway was very important to television,” he wrote. “If this were theater we were talking about, his death would be like all the Barrymores dying at once; everyone who’s come after him has owed him something.”
At the NBC studios in New York, they know this. Two years ago, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of “Today,” they paid him due homage.
“Dave Garroway was a master communicator,” said Al Roker. “He could talk to people. He, in a sense, was a showman. You know, the ‘window’ was his ring.”
“I grew up with Dave Garroway; it was a revelation,” added Tom Brokaw. “I lived in such a remote part of the country that we didn’t get television until 1955, and for that to come into our living room—I was going off to school, my mother to work—and we would sit and watch Dave Garroway, who was a maestro at what he was able to do.”
This was a maestro whose cast in the early years included a pet chimpanzee who frequently bit Garroway and was eventually eased off the show. At first, television writers didn’t know what to make of the mishmash of news and entertainment, but the show made money for the network, and Garroway’s relaxed work won over the critics.
“He does not crash into the home with the false jollity and thunderous witticisms of a backslapper,” New York Times critic Richard F. Shepard wrote in 1960. “He is pleasant, serious, scholarly looking and not obtrusively convivial.”
Garroway’s trademark was signing off by saying, “Peace,” while extending the palm of his hand. After this term became devalued by overuse in the political tumult of the times, he switched to “Courage,” something adopted years later by CBS anchorman Dan Rather.
In those early days of live television, Dave Garroway’s official title wasn’t “anchorman” or “host.” It was “communicator,” and it couldn’t have been more apt.
‘”He could look at the camera,” said Barbara Walters, who was hired by Garroway, “and make you feel he was talking only with you.”
Carl M. Cannon
Washington Bureau Chief
RealClearPolitics
Twitter: @CarlCannon
We update throughout the day at www.realclearpolitics.com. If you no longer wish to receive this morning missive, please type “unsubscribe” in the subject line and hit “reply” to this message.
From RealClearPolitics: Obamacare Enrollees; Fox News and The White House; Pope Discusses Abortion;
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