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Guests: Mark Halperin, Ron Bonjean, Dana Loesch, Melissa Harris-Lacewell,
Anne Kornblut, Peter Canellos
HOST: Big Obama.
Let's play HARDBALL.
Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight:
Becoming president. American presidents don't always assume the office the
day of inauguration. FDR may have done it with his "We have nothing to
fear" speech, but most new American leaders need their moment. For
Kennedy, it was taking the blame for the Bay of Pigs. Reagan, it was
coming back with such brio from the assassination attempt. For Barack
Obama, it may well be sticking to his guns on health care, facing the abyss
of defeat and refusing to give up or give in.
Look at the steam in the man's stride. Since winning on health care
in the House last week, he's gone after Wall Street, punched through a big
nuclear arms reduction deal with the Russians, and yesterday gave Hamid
Karzai his warning to shape up. Has the big health care win fundamentally
changed the Obama presidency? That's our top story tonight.
One thing is certain, nothing succeeds like us success. Health care
has energized the Democratic base, and the ABC/"Washington Post" poll out
today says the Democrats have closed the enthusiasm gap with the
Republicans, meaning people are as anxious to go vote for a Democrat this
November as they are for a Republican, which is a big development that may
be what Democrats need to avoid big losses and hold onto power this
November. That's if they can keep it going.
Plus, what are the tea partiers really angry about, health care reform
or the fact it was an African-American president and woman Speaker of the
House that forced through major change?
Also: Call it Mitt Romney's preexisting condition. The health care
reform bill that he's campaigning against now looks an awful like guess
what? The Mitt Romney bill he signed into law in Massachusetts. How is
Mr. Houdini going to get out of this one?
And I'll finish tonight with some thoughts on what the tea party
movement could accomplish if it funneled the anger to actually
accomplishing something.
Let's start with President Obama's new momentum. Richard Wolffe is an
MSNBC political analyst and the author of "Renegade." And "Time"
magazine's Mark Halperin is the author of "Game Change." Powerful books,
very powerful.
Let's go to this question right now. The president, why does he have
steam in his stride? I can't imagine—let me go with you, Mark. It
doesn't seem like a week or certainly two weeks ago he would have gone over
with such power in his approach, as he did this weekend with Hamid Karzai,
basically telling Hamid Karzai, cool it with corruption, shape up or maybe
we'll ship out. But it's definitely a strong message.
MARK HALPERIN, "TIME," AUTHOR, "GAME CHANGE": He went from Jimmy
Carter to FDR in just a fortnight because, as you said, nothing succeeds
like success. I think the big thing is that nobody was afraid of him
before. The Republicans weren't afraid of him. The Democrats weren't
afraid of him. That bled over into the international community, where
people are pretty sophisticated viewers of American politics.
Now he's got this win under his belt and the kind of confidence as a
fourth quarter player that has to have Republicans worried. If he cranks
it up in the last two weeks before the mid-terms the way he did before
health care, they have a lot to worry about.
MATTHEWS: So what's in it for us, Richard? I mean the American
people. It seems to me we need a strong president. I mean, I don't care
what your politics are, if we have a weak president for the next three
years, we're in trouble. We got a lot of problems. We have friends that
need to be a little friendlier. We've got problems that are—go beyond
RICHARD WOLFFE, AUTHOR, "RENEGADE," MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: The
challenges at home and overseas are unprecedented. And yes, you need a
strong leader, but strength with a purpose here. I mean, if the guy didn't
have a clue where he was taking it, if it was just going to be about his
reelect or the party, then that doesn't solve anything. These are long-
term issues, and if you're just thinking about the next reelect, then
adding 40,000 or 60,000...
WOLFFE: ... troops into Afghanistan ain't going to help you reelect.
MATTHEWS: Well, look, I think he believes in this Afghanistan policy.
I may not, he does.
WOLFFE: Well, sure...
MATTHEWS: The Democratic Party may not believe it.
WOLFFE: That's right. That's...
MATTHEWS: He does. The Republican Party has common ground with him
on this, right?
WOLFFE: Up to a point, yes. They wanted it to happen quicker. They
didn't like the way he was going about it, but yes. Listen, he has taken
MATTHEWS: Well, the polls show they like him.
WOLFFE: The polls do. Absolutely. It's a strong number for him.
But he has taken the fight to al Qaeda's leadership with these drone
attacks in the way that President Bush never did, in spite of having talked
about it.
MATTHEWS: OK. I love this, Mark. The American people are not big on
regional studies. They don't really care about a lot of the parts of the
world much, but one thing they care about is somebody coming to hit us here
in this country. Those "Don't tread on me" flags have a lot more to do
with us than just the tea party crowd. And my question to you is, what did
you make of the fact that when he went to Afghanistan, he didn't talk about
Taliban, which is homegrown, he talked about al Qaeda and how we're going
to destroy them.
HALPERIN: Well, one of the things that he brought to health care at
the end was a passion, not as Sarah Palin likes to call him, a law school
professor. He brought a passion to the issue at the end. He personalized
it more, talked about his mother, talked about American citizens. He's got
to do the same thing in Afghanistan, and I think the language he used on
this trip was the same kind of thing.
HALPERIN: He was trying to make it personal and emotional.
MATTHEWS: Here is he now talking about the destruction of al Qaeda.
These are our enemies, our mortal enemies. He's talking about destroying
them, not just holding them back. Here he is, the president in
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our broad mission is
clear. We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda
and its extremist allies. That is our mission.
MATTHEWS: "Destroy"...
WOLFFE: And that's...
MATTHEWS: Brand-new language there.
WOLFFE: That's what the folks in the White House are feeling pretty
good about doing already. They think they've had a lot of hits on this al
Qaeda leadership.
MATTHEWS: Tell me how we've been—you're an expert. Tell me where
we've been able to hit the bad guys, kill some of them?
WOLFFE: This is hard to verify, but they are feeling very good inside
the White House that they've been able to take out leadership targets and
their replacements...
MATTHEWS: In Afghanistan and Pakistan.
WOLFFE: ... on both sides of the border with these drone attacks.
And the sheer numbers of them show that they have—this has been
increased frequency. So they're getting the intelligence. They feel that
they're squeezing them on both sides of the border. Again, can we verify
that? How many times did we hear about...
MATTHEWS: What are we doing that's changed our accuracy, improved our
WOLFFE: I think it's the intelligence coming on. They reckon a big
squeeze is coming on the Pakistani side of it. The cooperation they're
getting, the different kind of leadership they're seeing in Pakistan is
making all the difference. That's what they say. Again, very hard to
verify on the ground because, remember, through the Bush years, we heard
endlessly about al Qaeda number twos and all these masterminds who were
always taken out of the game, and there always seemed to be more.
MATTHEWS: Let's talk about where he goes to home. He's back already
now, Mark. Let's talk about home front. Is there chances now on the issue
of Wall Street corruption, if you will, Wall Street piggishness—can he
form common ground with enough Republicans—I noticed that Corker's
working with Chris Dodd on this in the Senate. Can we find a common front,
the American people against the poor sign (ph) behavior of Wall Street?
Will it happen?
HALPERIN: Well...
MATTHEWS: Can he win on this?
HALPERIN: It's almost exactly a year ago, Chris, when the White House
saw the Republican Party a little bit weak, not as—weaker than they are
now, and Rahm Emanuel and other people in the White House, their strategy
was to say, Let's give them tough votes, peel them off. They'll have to
vote for us. They're going to try to do the exact same thing again, and I
think Wall Street and education are two areas where Republicans might find
it—not all of them, but a decent number might find it irresistible to
balk their leadership's beck and call to say, Don't go, give the president
an accomplishment, and they may get some on that. And that'll be not just
a substantive accomplishment but a political one, as well.
MATTHEWS: It's better to get them to join or to fight? What's
better, Richard? If you're Barack Obama, do you want a division...
WOLFFE: Right now...
MATTHEWS: ... that's going to soften the Republicans...
WOLFFE: Right now...
MATTHEWS: ... or do you want them to join?
WOLFFE: Right now, you still want points on the board. But he's
going to have to pivot to the fight later on. The big test is...
MATTHEWS: No, but let's move—let's work our way through this.
Health care, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Wall Street—he can build support on
the Republican side, at least some of it, certainly with this fight against
al Qaeda. That's a common fight. But also with Wall Street, where most
people are upset about Wall Street and they want something done to regulate
the financial industry.
WOLFFE: True. No-brainer there. But why did the Republicans choose
not to stall this in committee but take it on the floor? That could be a
big tactical misstep for them because they're going to be on the floor of
the Senate putting down amendments that are going to be pro-Wall Street.
So there's a politics question that I think they've stumbled on.
MATTHEWS: So it's a wedge issue for him. He can separate them...
WOLFFE: A wedge issue for the White House.
MATTHEWS: ... from their constituents.
WOLFFE: You cannot be too tough on Wall Street. Who's going to argue
MATTHEWS: Well, you just said some Republicans will do that.
WOLFFE: Yes, they are going to try and do that, and I think it's
going to be a big mistake in terms of politics.
MATTHEWS: Why are they—why would they take Wall Street's side
WOLFFE: I think they're going to play the big government card.
They're going to say this is too intrusive.
MATTHEWS: But why are they doing it?
WOLFFE: Because that's their natural base and their allies and
WOLFFE: I mean, come on!
MATTHEWS: I think the Democrats got as much money. Let me go to you,
Mark, on that. When it comes to fighting Wall Street, who has the most gut
reason to do it? You and I, we all know that most of the money comes from
rich people to these political parties, whether it's ethnic money or it's
Wall Street money or it's California money, oil money, big money. It's
always big money. Do they have the guts to take on the hand that feeds
HALPERIN: Chris, as you know, and you and I have talked about this
before, the most fascinating issues in American politics are ones that
unite the far left and the far right. I was out in Searchlight this
weekend at the tea party event. They are as angry about Wall Street bail-
outs and at Wall Street as Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader are, and I think
that's why the president's going to have a lot of—a lot of strength here
to try to peel off some Republicans. And if Richard's right and some of
these people—a lot of Republicans vote for Wall Street, they will regret
it politically. And substantively, it doesn't make any sense to me
because, as you said, Democrats are getting just as much campaign money
from Wall Street as Republicans are.
MATTHEWS: So it makes sense for a guy like Corker from Tennessee, the
home of Andrew Jackson, to go after the banks.
WOLFFE: To go after them.
MATTHEWS: Andrew Jackson made a career out of it.
WOLFFE: Right, and he should have been there with Chris Dodd seeing
it through, all the way through. It would have been a big help.
HALPERIN: And it's not just political...
WOLFFE: The Republicans are in this strategic...
MATTHEWS: It's not just political. They really believe it. What are
you saying there?
HALPERIN: Corker and some of the other Republicans believe that there
needs to be regulation. And this is an issue, like on education, where I
think the president can bring people up short. He couldn't do it on health
care and say, There's a national interest here, let's get this done right.
Somebody like Corker is a serious guy on these issues, wants to get it done
and thinks there's a solution that doesn't violate his principles.
MATTHEWS: OK, let's take our title of your book, which is still
number one, "Game Change." Let me ask you this. Is it in the president's
interest to change the came from now to this November election by finding
Republicans to jump aboard with him, to be bipartisan on issues like
Afghanistan, al Qaeda, the banks, or is it more in his interest to separate
the Republicans out and show them to be pro-business and therefore the
enemy of the voter? What's smarter for him?
HALPERIN: Perfect for him...
MATTHEWS: Mark.
HALPERIN: Perfect for him is to peel off meaningful numbers of
Republicans on education, on financial reform and maybe a mini-energy bill
through Labor Day, try to get all that passed, you know, before the end of
September, and then turn starkly partisan on the economy and try to say,
You want to go back to George Bush? If he does that, he banks some medium
and long-term accomplishments and he gets the political environment ginned
up just the way he wants it for the mid-terms.
MATTHEWS: OK, he cuts—he peels off a few Republicans from the
herd, culls the—and then he goes after the main body in November.
WOLFFE: Energy and climate change, though, is a big prize out there
because he can have a transformational effect on a big chunk of the economy
and he's got a number of Republicans who are...
MATTHEWS: Who's he going to get to join Lindsey Graham? Who else?
WOLFFE: He had a whole a bunch of them in the White House in the Oval
Office before...
MATTHEWS: Give me one name.
WOLFFE: ... before the...
MATTHEWS: Susan Collins?
WOLFFE: Susan Collins was in there. There were a whole bunch of
WOLFFE: Different pieces of it. It's not economy-wide. They may
just go after the energy, you know, the power industry.
WOLFFE: But you know, that could be a big achievement for them.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Richard Wolffe. Thank you, Mark
HALPERIN: Thanks, Chris.
MATTHEWS: Mark Halperin, Richard Wolffe, thank you. Great book
writers, by the way.
Coming up: Democrats seem to be closing the enthusiasm gap with
Republicans as passing health care reform has revved up the base. Wait'll
you see this. Democrats are as antsy to vote in November as Republicans
now. That is a big change heading into November.
You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We've heard a lot of grumbling
lately that Democrats aren't quite as enthusiastic as Republicans about
this year's election. Well, a new "Washington Post"/ABC News poll finds
otherwise -- 76 percent of people who plan to vote for Democrats in
November say they're enthusiastic about that vote. That's compared to 75
percent on the Republican side. Looks pretty close to me, so it's an even
match. But will that enthusiasm on the Democrats' side hold up throughout
these months coming ahead?
MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney is a Democratic strategist and a
former communications director for the DNC and Republican strategist Ron
Bonjean is the former spokesperson for Senate leader Trent Lott and House
Speaker Denny Hastert. Thank you—we'll see if you're evenly matched
MATTHEWS: Let's look at this new poll that I was just talking about.
Here it is -- 76 percent of Democrats who say they're going to vote are
enthusiastic about it, same as 75 percent. That's an interesting number.
I want to give you some more numbers now. Here they are. Democrats
lead Republicans by 4 points, 48 percent to 44 percent, on that whole thing
of, you know, who's going to—who's—who's going to control the House.
That's called the "generic" vote. One out of four say their vote in
November for the House of Representatives will be support President Obama.
One out of four say it's a vote to oppose Obama. So that's about the same.
Overall, half say Obama's not a factor. That's hard to believe.
Right now, 36 percent say it would be a good thing for Republicans to
take control of Congress after the election, 34 percent say it would be
bad. But that's not as emphatic as right before the votes in 2006 or 1994.
So Ron, in the past, there's been a lot more dissatisfaction and
desire for change before these big pivotal elections than you have now. In
2006, when the Congress went Democrat, people really, really wanted change.
And in '94, when Newt Gingrich—your crowd came in, really, really wanted
change. Right now, they sort of want change only by 2 points. Is that
good for your party, only having a 2-point advantage of people wanting
ROBERT BONJEAN, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Well, first of all, I would
say about the Democrat enthusiasm gap tightening up—it's about time
Democrats got excited about something. For a long time, President Obama
wasn't getting anything done, and now that he's finally gotten something
done and something the liberal Democratic base likes, and sure, the numbers
have lowered a little bit in what you were just talking about, and that
makes sense.
But what really matters here is what independent voters and
conservative Democrats think in the election. And in some of these key
states, the numbers are not translating down to House Democrats who voted
for the bill.
MATTHEWS: OK. So he's basically dumping on your parade here.
KAREN FINNEY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Of
course he is!
FINNEY: He's also sort of making my point.
MATTHEWS: Well, OK, your point?
FINNEY: My point being that it is true that if you look at where
Democratic enthusiasm was, look—think about right after the
Massachusetts election, it was pretty low. So it is very important, and
there was a lot of conversation about, How are Democrats going to be able
to, you know, turn this thing around. I think we're lucky that that
happened early enough in the process that we have turned that around.
MATTHEWS: OK. To me—I mean, look, what's worst, to be left or
weak? For you guys? Who would you rather run against?
BONJEAN: Well, I would—I...
MATTHEWS: Would you rather run against a Democratic Party that's weak
and can't get its act together or a Democratic Party that's farther left
than you?
BONJEAN: I would vote for both. I would...
MATTHEWS: No, what's better? What's an easier target.
BONJEAN: I would say...
MATTHEWS: Weakness...
BONJEAN: I would say...
MATTHEWS: ... or disagreement?
BONJEAN: It depends on the situation, but left. I would say left
right now because the—centrists...
MATTHEWS: Why, because you can't run against weak anymore.
BONJEAN: No, because—well, because independents and centrists
voted President Obama in office and voted Democrats widely in office and...
BONJEAN: No, no, no. There's a new CBS poll out that says two out of
three independents would like Republicans to fight and to repeal the health
care bill.
FINNEY: I think it also says that independents are supportive of
Democrats. Look, I think the—here's the...
MATTHEWS: ... from Civil Rights to Medicare to everything in the mid-
'60s, he got elected with 60 percent of the vote. When Jimmy Carter...
BONJEAN: I wasn't born then.
MATTHEWS: What—what is that—that is childish.
MATTHEWS: Strong Democrats do better against Republicans than weak
FINNEY: And it's good to see the Democrats being strong. The
question as to whether or not Democrats will do well in December—or
November—I love my party, but having gone through this in 2006, we have
to keep it going. We have to continue to show some spine and show that
we're going to fight for the things and the promises that we made. I think
part of the reason that Democrats are getting a little bit of their mojo
back is they're seeing people like success. People like to see you get out
there and fight for something and actually win.
BONJEAN: Can I just jump in? In the state of Florida, you just
mentioned, there's a poll that just came out that said over 50 percent of
people disagree with the health care reform bill...
MATTHEWS: They already have government health care.
BONJEAN: ... 60 to 30 seniors, 60 to 30...
MATTHEWS: But Ron, you see the hypocrisy in that statement by those
people? They have government-paid health care, Medicare, and they're
against anybody else getting it.
BONJEAN: I don't question the independents and...
MATTHEWS: They're not independent. They're getting government-
controlled health care.
BONJEAN: But 60 percent of independents...
MATTHEWS: They're not independent health care.
BONJEAN: ... in Florida don't support the health care bill.
MATTHEWS: What do you think of that? But they get health care! Do
they want their Medicare?
BONJEAN: Well, sure, they want their Medicare, and they don't want to
see it cut. Absolutely.
FINNEY: The polls are also showing that for those seniors in
particular who actually understand what's in the bill, they are supportive.
And we know that part of what's happened here is that the Republicans took
control of the message last summer, and we've been fighting our way back.
Now that we're fighting against...
FINNEY: ... the lies and misinformation—and it is a lie to say
that there's death panels out there, because we know that's not going to
happen. The more we do to educate people about what's actually in the
bill, the more they like it.
MATTHEWS: Do you want to respond to that?
BONJEAN: No, that's OK.
I would say the number-one issue going into fall is going to be jobs
and the economy. The Republicans...
MATTHEWS: You have got this habit of changing the subject. You
didn't say death panels, at least.
BONJEAN: No, I don't say death panels.
FINNEY: There are not going to be death panels. Or do you think
there are going to be death panels?
BONJEAN: No. But what's coming out in the bill—and you talk about
framing the message—is that what Democrats have to do right now, over
the next two weeks, is they have to close the sale. They have to convince
voters this bill is a good thing.
Right now, there are a myriad of stories about increased taxes on
businesses, increased taxes on medical device makers.
MATTHEWS: I notice you're not pushing this Republican argument that
somebody cooked up in some latrine somewhere repeal and replace.
You don't have the two-thirds vote in the United States Senate to
override a veto of the presidency. You don't have any power to repeal in
the next three years.
Number two, replace? Since when have the Republicans ever had a
health care bill? You guys have never—you have been in power and never
had a health care bill.
FINNEY: Well, they did when they supported some of the same ideas a
few years ago that they're not saying...
MATTHEWS: You don't want to have a health care bill. You don't
believe in it philosophically.
BONJEAN: Sure, we believe in health care reform.
MATTHEWS: When have you ever done it? When have you ever done it?
You have been in power.
MATTHEWS: I ask the questions here.
MATTHEWS: Four years, you had control of the president and both
houses of Congress.
BONJEAN: We passed the Medicare prescription drug bill.
MATTHEWS: That's not health care reform for the 30 million people
BONJEAN: Sure, it is.
BONJEAN: But it does lower prescription drug costs.
MATTHEWS: Where is your national health care bill?
BONJEAN: We have a health care bill.
MATTHEWS: What is it?
BONJEAN: There's several health care bills out there supported by
Republicans that have, in terms of pooling insurance, tort reform, those
kind of things.
And you know what? Obama offered sprinkles of health care reform.
MATTHEWS: You sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger, "and those things,
and those things."
FINNEY: And, by the way, there was a little hole in that bill that
you passed that we actually...
FINNEY: ... closed.
MATTHEWS: You don't have a bill.
BONJEAN: But if you go back to closing the sale, Democrats haven't
done it yet.
And if you look at the signature part of Obama's bill, in terms of
covering children with preexisting conditions, right now, there are caveats
to that. If you're a kid and you're already insured and you have a
preexisting condition, then you're covered. However—however, if you're
not part of that program, health insurers don't have to insure you.
MATTHEWS: How do you marry together—I know politics makes strange
bedfellows, but do you marry together your stiff, three-piece suit, stuffy,
even, Republicanism, like Mitch McConnell, with a picture of Bob Dole and
Bob Taft on the wall, with these wild, almost crazed tea-baggers?
You have the one stuffed-shirt, banker types. Then you have these
populist people out there that don't like those banker types. How do you
get them in the same bed?
BONJEAN: Economy, economy, economy. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
MATTHEWS: How do you get them in the same bed?
BONJEAN: That's how you get them into bed. That's how you get them
working together.
MATTHEWS: Do you think Mitch McConnell could run a Tea Party rally?
MATTHEWS: Do you think Bob Dole could run one?
BONJEAN: I will tell you what. There's a lot of energy out there and
a lot of synergy out there between congressional leaders and the Tea
Partiers right now?
BONJEAN: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: What's his name? John Boehner is a real Tea Party type,
isn't he?
MATTHEWS: He's a golfer. He's the opposite of a Tea Party type.
FINNEY: Chris, if I may, I think you all, the weekend before the
health care vote, were actually suggesting that there wasn't so much
synergy between the Tea Partiers and the Republican Party.
And I think it lays bare the challenge that the Republican Party has
is that there's a real fraction within it between, are we going to go to
far right or are we going to be real conservative? Are you saying you're
going to align yourself with the far-right fringe of your party?
BONJEAN: We're aligning ourselves with independents and centrist-left
FINNEY: Independents don't support hate speech.
BONJEAN: Independents support jobs and creating—and growing the
FINNEY: And you're supporting with comments that—like the N-word?
BONJEAN: Oh, my gosh. We don't support hate speech either.
BONJEAN: And, frankly, there is radical left going after Eric Cantor.
FINNEY: That same guy actually went after Democrats and Republicans
pretty evenly, if you read the story.
MATTHEWS: Well, how did the radical left go after Eric Cantor?
BONJEAN: No, there was a death threat about him—on him today.
MATTHEWS: ... shooting a bullet into...
BONJEAN: There was a bullet, but then there was another death threat
on some YouTube video out there.
FINNEY: And the YouTube video, the same guy actually did a YouTube
video against Obama, Reid and Pelosi. So, I think he pretty evenly hates
Washington, I think, it's safe to say.
BONJEAN: Irrespective of that, all that voters care about in the fall
is, do they have more money on the table? Do they have their jobs back?
Is Washington—does Washington...
FINNEY: And your radical right fringe Tea Partiers are not going to
get those things back on the table for them. It's going to be...
BONJEAN: Well, they are certainly...
BONJEAN: ... for Democrats.
MATTHEWS: I love all these Republicans that hate Washington, but
can't wait to get here.
MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you, Karen Finney.
They're dying to get here every year. They love it here.
And, Ron Bonjean, thank you, sir, for coming here.
BONJEAN: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: Up next: Which politician donned a hippy word for a
charity this weekend? Wait until you see this guy. This is next in the
"Sideshow." He really did look like a guy from "Hair."
You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Back to HARDBALL. Now for the "Sideshow."
First: Mayor Aquarius.
Believe it or not, that guy in the hair band you are looking at is the
now three-term mayor of New York as a very convincing character from
"Hair." Look at him. Mike Bloomberg was appearing in a charity spoof on
the Broadway musical playing an aging hippy who is considering a career in
politics. He even did a little singing, belting out "Let the Sunshine In"
in the big finale.
Well, I saw that play, "Hair," my last afternoon in New York in
America, as I headed to two years in Africa in the Peace Corps. Diane
Keaton, by the way, played Sheila in that performance, the girl who doesn't
take her clothes off. I personally fell in love with Diane long before I
got married. Seats were three-and-a-half bucks, as I recall.
Next: a curious leap of logic. Here is Republican Governor Haley
Barbour of Mississippi, one of the smartest guys out there, making his case
against the individual mandate in the health care bill.
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR ®, MISSISSIPPI: I do not believe the United
States government has a right, has the authority or power to force us to
purchase health insurance, any more than, in the name of homeland security,
they could force every American to have to buy a gun.
MATTHEWS: Guns? No. It's precisely like making ordinary Americans
kick in for their retirement, a thing called Social Security.
Finally, the party of fiscal responsibility and family values has a
bill for you. The Republican National Committee submitted filings that
show them shelling out $2,000 of donor money for a night at Voyeur, a sex-
themed nightclub in West Hollywood. The RNC said today the charge was made
by one of its political consultants. I wonder who his guest was.
Time for "Big Number" tonight.
It speaks to one of the unintended effects of sowing distrust about
the federal government -- 34 percent of Americans nationwide have filed—
have filled out and returned their U.S. census forms. But what's the
number like in Texas, one of the more conservative states out there?
According to "The Houston Chronicle," just 27 percent, well below the
national average. This could, of course, cost the state congressional
seats and federal dollars. Just 27 percent of Texas, compared to 34
percent nationally, have returned their census forms, making the Lone Star
State down for the count. That's tonight's very telling "Big Number.'
Up next, is the anger we're seeing at Tea Party protests really about
health care reform or about the changing demographics in our government and
in our country?
You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
JULIA BOORSTIN, CNBC CORRESPONDENT: I'm Julia Boorstin with your CNBC
"Market Wrap."
Wall Street kicking off the week with a moderate rally today—the
Dow Jones industrials climbing 45 points, the S&P 500 adding six points,
and the Nasdaq finishing more than nine points higher.
The markets not reacting much to a report showing consumers are
consuming again. Personal incomes remained flat in February, while
spending ticked up 0.3 percent. That pushed personal saving to its lowest
level in 17 months.
In stocks, energy company shares rising with the price of oil today.
Investors are snapping up top performers like ExxonMobil and Chevron as the
first quarter winds to a close.
A little profit-taking on Citigroup, after a moderate run-up last
week, shares falling more than 3 percent. Morgan Stanley seeing a 2
percent bump after winning the competition to underwrite the government's
sale of its stake in Citigroup. And Boeing shares soaring more than 2
percent after successfully completing a key stress test on its new 787
That's it from CNBC, first in business worldwide—now back to
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
The passage of health care reform last week unleashed a rage on the
right, but "New York Times" columnist Frank Rich says that it wasn't health
care reform itself that stoked the anger, but instead a shift in this
country toward more diversity that has left some in the diminishing
majority anxious.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a professor of politics and African
students at Princeton, and Dana Loesch is a radio talk show host and Tea
Party organizers.
Let's take a look at the "New York Times" column that caused all this
conversation. Frank Rich wrote this—quote—"If Obama's first
legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate
change, we would have seen the same trajectory, the same conjunction of a
black president and a female speaker of the House topped off by a wise
Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay congressional committee
chairman. It would have sown seeds of disenfranchisement among a dwindling
and threatened minority in the country, no matter what policies were in
Professor, your thoughts. Is this fight from the Tea Party side aimed
at the—or ignited by the health care defeat last week they suffered
about ethnicity and gender and orientation, sexual orientation, or is it
about the substance of the issue, the fiscal policy, the social policy
involved? Which is it?
AMERICAN STUDIES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Well, I don't know that we can be
quite so dichotomous as to suggest which is it.
But, certainly, what we can see is that the tone or the strategies,
the language used about the policy has ended up having overtones around all
of these anxieties of diversity that Rich suggests in that "New York Times"
You know, we know pretty much from decades of social scientific
research at this point, including some really terrific work by Karen
Stenner in a book called "The Authoritarian Dynamic," that there are
individuals that have sort of a predisposition towards intolerance.
And when those individuals are in a society where things start
changing very rapidly, particularly if things start feeling like political
leaders are fighting, or if there's a lot of racial diversity or change,
then that kind of ignites this anxiety, and it creates precisely the kind
of intolerance that we're seeing.
So, my bet is that, certainly, part of it is about policy, but also
part of it is about the anxieties of this particular group. And that's why
we're seeing expressions around racial and homophobic sort of discourse.
MATTHEWS: So, just to stay with you for a minute, if Hillary Clinton
had won the Democratic nomination last year, and had won the general
election against John McCain—and that's iffy, but it's possible—we
can imagine that would have happened—would the anger be as extreme as it
has been with these placards, the people's faces, the contortion of anger
that you see, not in every face, but a lot of faces out there? Would it
still be there had that been the case right now, Hillary, not Barack?
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, sure. I mean, I—yes, yes, yes, yes.
I think Hillary Clinton also clearly produced this sort of anxiety,
even in the 1990s, in part because her role, although a white person, as a
white woman, her sort of system-challenging role there produced an enormous
amount of anxiety.
I mean, if you look at those final four contenders, we had a black
man, a Latino, Bill Richardson, a white woman, and really there was only
one white guy who made it to the final four of the Democrats. And that was
John Edwards. And, clearly, he would have made a lot of people angry right
about now.
MATTHEWS: Well, as angry as this?
MATTHEWS: No, seriously.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: No, well, not angry because—not angry...
MATTHEWS: No. If a southern white guy had been president and had
pushed the same agenda, would they be as angry?
MATTHEWS: I'm asking a simple question.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Sure.
MATTHEWS: With a Southern accent.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Sure. Let's pretend he was—let's pretend he was
a Southern white man. Then I think...
MATTHEWS: Well, he is. John Edwards is that.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is, Southern white
man as president who is passing this, then I think we have to take a moment
and look at LBJ and ask whether or not LBJ produced this sort of reaction.
And the fact is that, yes, LBJ's passage of the civil rights bill did
evoke similar kinds of reactions. Now, I think what Frank Rich points out
in that column is that this health care reform bill is really nothing,
substantively, like the civil rights bill in terms of its capacity to
fundamentally alter the life opportunities of Americans.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: And so—and so in this case it really does seem to
be this kind of confluence of...
HARRIS-LACEWELL: ... both the anxiety and the diversity and some
things around the policies.
MATTHEWS: Dana, your witness.
DANA LOESCH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Oh, gosh. I read that column,
too, and I thought it was kind of silly, just simply because I have been
doing this since before February of last year.
And all of my criticisms and everyone else that I have been around,
all—everyone's criticisms have been about nothing but policy.
And I think for Frank Rich to try to make—make this out to be
people who oppose big government are racist is intellectually dishonest,
and I think it's beyond silly. I just—it—you know what?
MATTHEWS: What do you make of the—what do you make of the signage?
Some of it is pretty nasty? And why don't people walk away from those
signs? Why are they comfortable standing there when people have nasty
signs up, Hitler mustaches, et cetera, et cetera?
LOESCH: Like they did with Bush Hitler? Because they had that on the
left as well.
I mean, I specifically—I explicitly remember the RNC protests from
the Republican National Convention that happened just a year—a couple of
years ago. There were Bush Hitler signs. I myself have been to protests
in Saint Louis where they have burned Bush in effigy.
So, I mean, to kind of like portray it as just being on one side or—
and not the other isn't—isn't exactly fair, because, I mean, Google
"Bush Hitler." You will get pages and pages of the same thing.
But the bottom line is, too, we know that with any large group of
people, you are going to have people who are on the fringe on both sides.
But the difference that I'm seeing is that a lot of people on the left like
to sit here and portray that the fringe on the right represent the whole of
the right. That's not accurate.
MATTHEWS: Did you see that sign, "don't blame me, I voted for an
American." There's a big number of people out there, led by Neugebauer of
Texas and other Congress-people, who challenge this president's birth
right. They challenge that he's an American. If you look at a poll I saw,
it shows that they were largely bunched in the south, those people who
believed that he wasn't an American. And you say that's not racial.
Why would it be bunched in the south so heavily, these people that
believe he's not an American? What's that about?
LOESCH: Do you mean the same way that the left tried to say that John
McCain wasn't an American because he was—you could say that's racial,
MATTHEWS: No. Don't chuckle about this. It isn't funny.
LOESCH: It is funny.
MATTHEWS: Nobody made an issue of John McCain being born—
MATTHEWS: Why are there so many Birthers out there?
LOESCH: I'm not a Birther, so I'm not quite sure.
LOESCH: Why are there so many people out there who deny 9/11 on the
left? We can sit here and do this all day.
MATTHEWS: I don't think the Truthers are part of the Obama coalition,
do you think? Whereas the Birthers are part of the Tea Party crowd. Why
are they comfortable in that group?
LOESCH: Who was it, John Cusack—maybe not John Cusack or Sean Penn
there was a celebrity who is a Truther that talked about this.
MATTHEWS: That's odd.
MATTHEWS: Let me bring the professor in here. I'm going to have you
go at each other.
LOESCH: Why can't we talk about the substance of this? Why do we
have to constantly try to invalidate people who are for smaller government
by saying that they're racist. That is—I think it's actually an insult
to the civil rights movement. And to say that—
MATTHEWS: Professor, you get in there. I have my reasons. They are
based on all the Birthers out there, that I do think are challenging his
LOESCH: This is about big government.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Let me just suggest this, that the Tea Partiers, by
using language of Tea Party, have asked us to draw a parallel between their
movement and the Revolutionary War movement. But I think if we look more
carefully, we will see that, in many ways, the Tea Party movement resembles
more closely the secessionist feelings that were both part of the
Confederacy before the Civil War and also remained in the post-Civil War
Reconstruction era. In other words—
LOESCH: It's about state sovereignty, not secessionism. It's about
the Tenth Amendment.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Except that secessionist language has been used
quite clearly, both by GOP elected officials and—
LOESCH: I heard Tenth Amendment language being used, like with health
care legislation. I know that there's been 14 states that have filed suit
against it because they are upholding their Tenth Amendment right under the
HARRIS-LACEWELL: I'm just saying that—
MATTHEWS: You never heard Rick Perry of Texas say secession, Dana?
HARRIS-LACEWELL: We saw Governor Perry talk about that.
LOESCH: I have heard people misconstrue and misinterpret talking
about Tenth Amendment rights and state sovereignty, people who want to
increase the size of federal government, that being intimidating, I think,
and them looking and saying, they are trying to succeed from the nation.
That's not what the Tea Party is about. The Tea Party is not about
The original Tea Party was about taxation without representation and,
in many instances, those parallels can be drawn.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: The people here are voters. I think we need to be
very careful about that. That's precisely my point. What the Tea Party
has asked me to do is to see themselves as these kind of disfranchised
colonists with this monarchy over them. But that's not what's going on
We have a duly elected government, with citizens who have a right to
vote for this government.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: But this is a duly elected government, where the
HARRIS-LACEWELL: It's not a situation of the Revolutionary War. This
is much, much closer to the Civil War.
MATTHEWS: This isn't working. Dana, your thoughts. Just for a
second, Dana. I want her to respond. It's your turn, Dana. I want you to
say, is there a parallel between a colonial government in London, that was
not elected—George II was not elected—and an elected president that
won with majority of American voters behind him? And the polls show he
still enjoys a modest advantage in that department.
But you say he's not really legitimate. That's one of the—when you
start talking about secession and nullification, that kind of—
LOESCH: I have never talked about secession and I never said—I'm
happy. He was elected by the people. The people voted and they elected
Barack Obama. I don't think anybody of my acquaintance has contested that.
But what I'm discussing is a piece of legislation that was passed by
Congress, which, by the way, has an all-time low now, 1994 level, the
latest Rasmussen poll this morning. What I'm talking about is a piece of
legislation that was put forth by this Congress, that's been opposed by the
majority of Americans from every single poll—I can rattle them off now,
if we need to be—that abuses the Commerce Clause, that abuses the power
of the Constitution. That's what I'm talking about.
MATTHEWS: The civil rights bill were opposed by a good segment of the
United States and so were the Voting Rights Act, opposed by good segment of
the United States.
LOESCH: Democrats were against the Civil Rights Act. Let's not
forget who set an 83-day record filibustering the Civil Rights Act. I
believe one of them is still a Democrat, Robert Byrd.
HARRIS-LACEWELL: The political parties have shifted places over the
years. We certainly know that after the passage of the Civil Rights Act,
in the south, these are precisely the Blue Dogs who ended up being
Republicans. No one is doubting on that. And also, by the way, no one
doubts the rights of political minorities to voice their disagreement.
That's absolutely an American right.
MATTHEWS: We have to go. Thank you both for coming on. Melissa
Harris-Lacewell of Princeton, thank you. Dana Loesch, thank you very much
for joining us.
Up next, talk about a preexisting condition; Mitt Romney, the guy who
brought health care reform to Massachusetts, is now fighting hard to
distance himself from that one-time accomplishment, now that Republicans
are against it. Romney's big problem is next. He's his big problem. This
is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. When Mitt Romney passed health
reform as governor of Massachusetts, it was one of his big achievements.
Now that it's part of plan, it's got to be a problem for his political
situation. He's eager to point out the differences between what he did and
what President Obama has done right.
Peter Canellos is editorial page editor for the "Boston Globe," and
Anne Kornblut covers politics for the "Washington Post." We only have a
little time here, Peter, but it seems to me that Governor Romney is running
away from his governorship. As governor he did two things: he was pro-
choice on abortion rights. He denied that when he ran for president. He
pushed through the template for the Barack Obama health care plan. He's
trying to walk away from that now. Is his theme song going to be, what
happens in Massachusetts stays in Massachusetts?
PETER CANELLOS, "THE BOSTON GLOBE": That was his problem in 2008,
that there kept being Massachusetts decisions that kept undermining his
credibility as a conservative. It's very bad news for him that he's going
to be stuck in that dynamic again for 2012.
MATTHEWS: Is it fair to say his individual mandate, the requirement
that grown up people have to pay for some kind of health care, which is at
the heart of the Barack bill, came from his plan?
CANELLOS: Yes, it did. And other things like the connector, the idea
of having private insurance companies, in a highly regulated way, competing
to cover individuals to hopefully drive down cost, that came out of
Massachusetts, too. There are two major elements that came straight out of
MATTHEWS: Anne Kornblut, politically he's had a problem being
legitimate to the conservative part of his party. How does he hide from
this fact?
ANNE KORNBLUT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I don't think he's going
to try to hide so much, as to argue that he never said the Massachusetts
plan should have been a federal plan. He's actually had time to practice
what he's going to say about the Massachusetts plan, having done this in
Look, the Romney campaign—the folks look at the McCain campaign and
say, you don't have to agree with the base on everything. You can figure
out a way to agree with them on some things and still get the nomination.
They know they have to work on this.
MATTHEWS: Let me play devil's disciple or devil's advocate. It seems
to me the problem he will have is you can't call the Obama health care plan
socialism if he advocated it in Massachusetts. Can you?
KORNBLUT: Look—
MATTHEWS: If it's socialism, then he advocated socialism. How can he
do that?
KORNBLUT: Their argument will be—I'm not saying you're going to
buy it, necessarily. But their argument is going to be that he was working
at the state level to do something that individual states should be
responsible for, not from the federal government. That's going to be their
MATTHEWS: So we have state-sponsored socialism in Massachusetts.
Will that sell as the laboratory of democracy? Peter?
CANELLOS: I think that he's going to have a tough time on this issue.
I think that otherwise, you know, there are things that are looking good
for him. The fact that the economy is a huge issue—he's much more
credible talking about the economy. He was in 2008.
If this is from the get-go an economy-generated election, which it
wasn't in 2008, Romney will look pretty good. There will be other things
he can talk about.
MATTHEWS: You know, Houdini would take him under water. They would
lock him in chains. They'd put him in a coffin. He'd still find his way
out. Is this guy that good that he can do that, Peter? Is he good at
politics enough to squirm out of this?
CANELLOS: I think there's some reason to believe he's not, but I do
think that he sort of stands a little apart from the other Republicans.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, if you have Huckabee and Palin and
Pawlenty and everyone trying to be the candidate of the Tea Party movement.
He's OK. He's got a niche.
MATTHEWS: Why not bring in Scott Brown? He's pro-choice. Anne, why
not Scott Brown, if you're going all the way with this difference thing?
KORNBLUT: Sure, why not? That would make for an exciting thing.
MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Peter Canellos. Thank you, Anne
Kornblut, for a short segment.
When we return, we're going to have some thoughts—I will—about
the Tea Party movement and what it could stand for, if it just weren't so
negative. You're watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.
MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with something positive about the Tea
Parties. If they're angry about having Barack Obama as president, I'm not
with them. We elected him. The time to change that is the next election.
If they're crazied about the decision to get health care to the 30
million-plus people who now have to wait in emergency rooms and charge
everything to us, I'm not with them. I think people ought to be required
to take responsibility for their health care, the same way they do for old
age with Social Security. Otherwise, everyone else has to deal with the
Where the Tea Party folks are right, I think, is on the central
problem of government and its cost. Look at President Obama's budget. The
numbers don't work. The government is spending a tad over 25 percent of
the economy and bringing in a little less than 20 percent.
The plain fact is the American government costs more than the American
people are paying for it. So we borrow. We write hot checks and hope that
the float from here to China will get us through to the next paycheck.
Except, the next paycheck in the U.S. government's case is already less
than the numbers on check it will have to write the next time around.
Part of the problem is that politicians don't like to say no to
spending, and even less, a lot less, saying yes to tax increases. People
like spending. It creates jobs. They hate taxes. Taxes are bad.
That's one of the realities facing politicians. The other is the cost
of our military. Other modern countries don't have the military fire power
we do, the force levels, the deployment capability, the state of the art
weaponry. We have them because we pay for them. Rather, we borrow to pay
for them.
The biggest problem with the U.S. government numbers is something
nobody wants to talk about, not even at the Tea Parties. It's all the
worthwhile commitments we've made for good things, Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid and programs for unemployment compensation. How do we
pay for those things? The numbers are just too big.
So the big question is whether all the steam from the tea kettle is
going to do anything to lead this country to facing up to its real numbers
problem. The president has created a deficit commission. But the elected
politician would still have to take the heat. If they try to bring
economic sanity to the budget, will you thank them with your votes? If a
member of Congress told you tomorrow that we have to bring our cost of our
government into line with taxes, cutting commitments here, raising taxes
there, would you buy it?
Or would you go for the demagogues out there who say, we don't have to
make those tough adjustments; all we have to do is get rid of, quote,
waste, fraud and abuse. All we have to do is improve government
efficiency. It's fun listening to that stuff. It's also no problem. All
you have to do is head to a rally somewhere and hold up a sign.
This Tea Party thing could be a good thing if it leads to a public
that knows more about what is really going on and will push politicians to
do the right things, to deal with it.
That's HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us. Catch us tomorrow
night at 5:00 and 7:00 Eastern. Right now it's time for "THE ED SHOW" with
Ed Schultz.
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text:
Doctor of Ministry, Theology of Ministry, Drew University
Master of Science, Pastoral Counseling, Iona College
Master of Social Work, Psychiatric Social Work, Yeshiva University
Bachelor of Science, Education, St. John's University
Office: Whittaker Hall, Room 101Hours: By appointmentPhone: 845-569-3158Email: email@example.com
Introduction to World Religions
Dominican Spirituality
Parables of the New Testament
Sister Margaret (Peggy) Murphy has been involved in the fields of Counseling and Education for 35 years. She has worked in schools in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Orange and Sullivan Counties in New York.
Sister Peggy has been a national conference speaker on Child Development and Mental Health issues. She has a bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education from St. John's University, a master's degree in Pastoral Counseling from Iona College Graduate School, a master's degree in Psychiatric Social Work from Yeshiva University, and a doctorate in Christian Spirituality from the Theological School of Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.
Sister Peggy has been a New York State Certified Substance Abuse Counselor for 30 years. She has worked in inpatient treatment at Veritas Villa Rehabilitation Center and at Downstate and Fishkill Correctional Facilities.
As a Social Worker in Pius XII Youth and Family Services, Sister Peggy was the Director of Substance Abuse Services at the Chester Campus residential program for adolescent males, where she initiated a Teen Parenting Program. As Senior Case Worker at Pius XII Monroe Alcohol Program, Sister Peggy was involved in adult and adolescent outpatient treatment services and Play Therapy Groups with children of substance abusers. In 1993, Sister Peggy opened the Pius XII Early Learning Center, a Montessori Pre-School and Daycare Center serving children aged 3-5 years, in Goshen, New York.
Sister Peggy has received the following awards:
2014 – Study Grant: Programs for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University Holocaust and Genocide Studies School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
2013 – Scholarship Grant from the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, Seton Hill University, for Study in Israel, International Seminars for Educators – Jerusalem University and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
2008 – Excellence in teaching award, Mount Saint Mary College Leadership Society
2003 – New York State Senate Woman of Distinction Award
2002 – Healthy Orange Volunteer Service Award
2001 – Middletown Lions Club, Knight of the Blind Award
2001 – Grand Marshall, Mid-Hudson St. Patrick's Day Parade
1999 – Orange County Martin Luther King Jr. Commission Human Rights Award
1998 – McQuade Children's Services Community Service Award
1996 – Orange County Woman of Achievement, Sarah Wells Girl Scout Council
1991 – Person of the Year, Orange County Alcohol & Drug Abuse Council
Sister Peggy is a founding member of the Orange County Irish Heritage Festival Foundation and serves on their Board of Directors. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Molloy College, Rockville Centre, New York, and a Trustee of Orange County Community College.
At present, Dr. Murphy is an Educational Consultant at Pius XII Early Learning Center, a Mental Health Representative in the Orange County Family Court Divorce Mediation Program, and a Professor of Religious Studies at Mount Saint Mary College. In September 2002, she was appointed Chair of the Philosophy and Religious Studies Division, Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh, New York.

subset: commoncrawl


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Nafessa Williams
The Man in 3BSD
IMDb: 4.4
1h 33min
Daryl Graham (Lamman Rucker) has just moved into a Jamaica, Queens, apartment building and his neighbors, both male and female alike, can't stop talking about ...
Genres: Mystery
Actors: Lamman Rucker, Christian Keyes, Brely Evans, D.B. Woodside, Nafessa Williams, Kellita Smith, Anthony Montgomery, Billy Dee Williams, James Black, Robert Ri'chard, Jackée Harry, Trisha Mann, Olivia Longott, Marla Gibbs, Thomas Calabro
Black Lightning - S01Eps13
IMDb: 8.1
Jefferson Pierce has made his choice. He hung up the suit and his secret identity years ago, but with a daughter hell-bent on justice and ...
Actors: William Catlett, Gregg Henry, Cress Williams, Skye P. Marshall, China Anne McClain, Nafessa Williams, Christine Adams, Marvin 'Krondon' Jones III, Damon Gupton, James Remar, Anthony Reynolds, Charlbi Dean Kriek, Donny Carrington, Tracey Bonner, Al-Jaleel Knox, Devon Mckelvin, Shein Mompremier, Chantal Thuy, Dabier, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Jimmy Woods, Stanley McLaughlin II, Erol Brandis, David Dunston, Brian Kayode-Patrick Johnson, Patrick Lamont Jr., Jason Louder, Van Marten, Matt Mercurio, Taylor Polidore
Black Lightning - S02Eps15
IMDb: 6.4
43 min
Black Lightning is a TV series starring Cress Williams, China Anne McClain, and Nafessa Williams. A crusading school principal gets back into action as the ...


text:
In virtually every business, from the bank to the boardroom, financial skills are in demand and offer many opportunities for finance students. Our alumni work as revenue specialists, financial planners, bank managers, security analysts, portfolio managers, insurance underwriters, and corporate treasurers.
In our finance concentration you'll study macro- and microeconomics and receive a thorough grounding in the mechanisms and methodologies of financial markets and institutions. Take advantage of terrific internship opportunities and our Center for Trading and Analysis of Financial Instruments, or "trading room," with its access to the same full spectrum of data available to professionals on Wall Street. These are just some of the many ways we make sure you'll be ahead of the curve.
A Treasure of Financial Data
Just wait until you see our trading room, with its access to more than 125 sources of stock, bond, commodity, and business data from all over the world. Or rather, don't wait. We're one of the few undergraduate institutions in the world where the ticker runs on real time -- Wall Street time. (You might notice a delay -- if you can measure a quarter of a second. That's the lag time between the exchanges and our data.)
The real treasure in the trading room, however, is Thomson One, a specialized software package developed by Thomson Reuters. The software gives you all the tools necessary to interpret, analyze, and monitor equities, options, futures, commodities, and other valuable market information. Such sophisticated software allows our faculty to teach courses that give you hands-on experience in securities trading and a deeper understanding of financial markets and trends. And with courses such as the Real Time Portfolio Management class, you can gain investment experience by managing an actual stock portfolio -- using real dollars.
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Staffing the trading room are members of Core Trading Consultants, a group of students trained in investment analysis who can help you negotiate the fine points of the Paris Bourse or the intricacies of option pricing. You'll be able to uncover business stories in the making, before they hit the Wall Street Journal or the evening news.


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The basic - and very efficient - separation method in Android is the multiprocess capability of the Dalvik VM. Dalvik is able to fork many instances of itself and can run applications in different Linux processes. By default, each application (the application tag in AndroidManifest.xml) has its own process. There is however another, often overlooked separation mechanism inside each VM process that provides further separation. The good old ClassLoader separation - originally designed to separate applets, used heavily in multi-module frameworks like OSGi - is also at work. Inside each VM process, each task - acitivity or service - uses in its own ClassLoader. This means that object instances created in different tasks are not visible to each other. The standard setup for Android applications is such that the classes.dex in the application's APK package is on the path of the application's own classloader. The application's own classloader delegates the loading of system classes to the boot classloader instance which is common for all the tasks in one particular VM process.
Class loading implementation in Dalvik is tied heavily to DEX files. This has visible side effects. Classes loaded by different class loaders that don't delegate to each other should be completely separated. The implementation differentiates the "initiating" and "defining" classloader (the latter is the one that managed to call defineClass() for a particular class from a particular DEX file in a particular VM process). This differentiation does not work very well and results in a glitch: once a class from a particular DEX file is defined, its static fields are visible and shared from all the class loaders that access the DEX file, even if they don't delegate to each other. This means that tasks of the same application (usually packed into the same DEX file) see each other's static fields.
As if this was not enough, Android provides control of task-VM process mapping. As said previously, usually each application goes into its own VM process. It is possible to declare, however, that applications share a process. This works like the following:
- First we declare that applications wishing to share the same VM process belong to the same user ID. This is done by adding the sharedUserId attribute to the manifest tag in AndroidManifest.xml file like the following: android:sharedUserId="aexp.share.sharedapp". The value of the attribute must be a unique string shared among the applications wishing to use the same VM process. This is a powerful mechanism, hence Android enforces strong check of the APKs containing the declaration. Only the first APK for a particular sharedUserId can be installed without limitation. The issuer of the digital signature of that APK is saved and further APKs with the same sharedUserId must have digital signature from the same issuer, else their installation is rejected.
- We have to declare the alias of the process a certain task or the entire application goes into with the process attribute. This attribute can be added to application, activity or service tags in the AndroidManifest.xml file. For example: android:process="aexp.share.sharedappprocess". VM processes are proper Linux processes identified by PIDs but Android does an additional transformation: whenever a process is started which is tagged by the process alias, the Android framework saves the Linux PID and the process alias. If some other application refers to that process alias and the VM process is still running, that process will be used.
Click here to download the example program.
Our two example programs demonstrate the techniques described below. SharedApp1 allows the user to enter a string and it shares that string in different ways. With its own popup, it shares the string by means of a static field of SharedApp1 activity class. SharedApp2 is another application, having its own APK file but is placed into the same process as SharedApp1. SharedApp1 and SharedApp2 communicate through the good old System.getProperty/setProperty mechanism. Observe, that this works only if the sharedUserId/process mechanism is properly used, if you remove e.g. the process attribute from the manifest file of any of the apps, the property set by SharedApp1 is not visible anymore to SharedApp2 because they run in different VM processes. Also note that I compiled these applications with the debug option which means that they are both signed with the debug key. That key is common for both applications therefore they can have the same sharedUserIds. If you use a proper signing key, take care of using the same key when you sign applications that depend on the sharedUserId mechanism.
And now for something completely different. I was one of the reviewers of Roy Osherove's book titled The Art of Unit Testing (Manning, about 27 USD). Even though the book uses .NET examples, it is easily readable for Java programmers too. Unit testing is one of the most useful techniques I am aware of in software engineering, if you feel that your knowledge is not up to date, you might as well read this book. :-)


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Q&A: Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Legislator and Activist
Just elected to her 10th term in Congress, California lawmaker Maxine Waters is one of the most powerful people of color in the history of American politics -- and not to mention, one of the most powerful women. A staunch advocate for the poor as well as Black and Brown people, Rep. Waters has helped lead our nation's fight against AIDS for more than a decade. She convened the first congressional meeting on AIDS in Black America. She also spearheaded the Minority AIDS Initiative (PDF), a $156 million program launched in 1998 to address HIV/AIDS in minority communities that has grown to about $400 million today.
But with the epidemic found in 2008 to be 40 percent larger than federal officials had previously estimated and primarily focused in Black communities, Waters is pushing President Obama to step up his commitment to eradicating the disease by earmarking more federal dollars for AIDS prevention, treatment and other services. We asked her to share her perspectives.
President Obama's most recent HIV/AIDS budget proposed a 2 percent increase over prior spending. What does the administration need do to end HIV/AIDS?
Money is always key, and we appreciate any increase in spending, but we'd like to have more. [I, along with other members of Congress,] would like him to talk about AIDS more in speeches. He must insist that his AIDS czar have a greater presence. And we would like President Obama to make AIDS one of his top priorities.
Recently you circulated a letter asking the House Appropriations Committee to increase AIDS funding by over 50 percent. How many of your colleagues signed on?
Fifty-seven members signed my bill. I am happy with the support we've received.
A couple of years ago you sponsored legislation that would mandate HIV testing for federal-prison inmates. Where does that stand, and what do you think about Governor Schwarzenegger's move to cut care for HIV-positive state-prison inmates?
We passed that legislation on the House side; we're now awaiting the Senate's approval. They're backed up with bills. [But now that health care reform has passed,] we're anxious to get the Senate to move on to this and other legislation.
Regarding Governor Schwarzenegger, I am outraged by his lack of leadership. He has had a poor tenure and he's led California to the brink. My heart cries out for all the people affected by the cuts he's proposing, including AIDS, home-supported health care, education -- you name it. California is last in the nation in handling its budget responsibly. I am anxious for his term to be over.
AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) budgets are being cut nationwide while ADAP waiting lists continue to grow. Do you worry that ADAP is targeted because it assists low-income people with HIV/AIDS?
As we struggle in this economic crisis with budget cuts, we must set priorities and be good advocates for the important issues. ADAP is at the top of many of our agendas. We can continue being supportive -- speaking up about funding, writing letters and rallying around those in need. [As legislators] we're constantly flooded with requests to support many issues and programs, ADAP included. We will do the best we can.
Given the current fiscal resource constraints, our dysfunctional political system and the state of HIV/AIDS, what must HIV-negative Black Americans do to help end the epidemic?
First we must educate ourselves about what HIV is and is not. We must all talk with young people about how it is contracted and how they can protect themselves. We must encourage all of our institutions -- schools, churches, sororities, fraternities and labor unions, places that are high-level and people-intensive -- to [provide workshops and host discussions] aimed at ending the epidemic. We have not done enough of that; we think someone else is doing it. We must make this education a part of our daily lives.
With nearly 25,000 Black people newly infected each year and almost 40 percent of them under age 29 (PDF), do you worry that we will eventually be wiped out?
I'm more optimistic than that. This is difficult work, but it's not impossible. I've been increasingly pleased about the growing support from the Black religious community. [In the 1990s] we were demonized by ignorant pastors who blamed AIDS on the gay community and had no intention of dealing with it. We now have many ministers promoting safe sex, holding discussions or distributing information on AIDS in the church. Some even have AIDS ministries. It's very important that we have a national ministerial community trying to come up with solutions for ending this epidemic.
Tomika Anderson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Essence_,_ POZ_,_ Real Health and Ebony magazines, among others.


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In his Jan. 26 letter, Jerry Jacobs accuses President Barack Obama of failing to launch a �rescue� during the attack. The facts are these: The nearest American forces which could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate were over 200 miles away.
Assuming the president was notified at the very start of the attack, it would have taken several hours for them to arrive in Benghazi. By then the attack was over. There would have been no one to rescue.
Jacobs accuses the president of perpetual delay. By delaying in Syria, we got the Syrians to negotiate a deal whereby they are dismantling their poison gas stockpile. We have had enough of presidents like George W. Bush; if there had been enough delay during the Tonkin Gulf incident, 48,000 Americans might still be alive.
A better question is, what was the American ambassador doing in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 in an undefended consulate?
Juliana Hackman


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Dave Smith, head coach of the Francis Scott Key High School varsity football team, was named this week as the Baltimore Ravens High School Coach of the Week.
The Ravens noted that with a 33-21 win over North Carroll last Friday, Oct. 12, Francis Scott Key ended a 23-game losing streak that began in 2010.
The eagles had a strong rushing attack of Clayton Vleck, Matt Clingan and Rye Thomas, posting 359 rushing yards and four touchdowns in the win. Clingan's 13-yard touchdown run on Francis Scott Key's opening possession of the game gave the Eagles their first lead of the season en route to their victory.
The win was also the first for Smith — who is in his initial season as head coach at Francis Scott Key after being a longtime assistant there.
"It's what we've been working toward," Smith said. "All the practice and all the reps prepared us for this, and it now shows us that we can do this.
"We are working to develop winning habits all the time, not just some of the time," he said.
Each week during the season, the Ravens will honor a high school coach who has made a significant impact on his student-athletes. Each winner will be present at the Ravens-Broncos home game on Dec. 16 for the naming of the Ravens High School Coach of the Year.
As part of the honor, each weekly recipient receives a $2,000 donation to the school's football program; an award certificate signed by Ravens head coach John Harbaugh; and a special Coach of the Week hat. the Ravens' program is co-sponsored by Toyota, and is in its 16th year.


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With a documentary about Lance Armstrong's fall from grace already set for release next month, two feature films about the cyclist are now in a race to hit theaters.
On Tuesday, the production company Working Title announced Ben Foster had been cast as Armstrong in a Stephen Frears-directed biopic set to begin filming Friday. Based on sportswriter David Walsh's "Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong," the picture will detail Armstrong's rise and fall, along with his contentious relationship with Walsh (played by Chris O'Dowd).
The film seems to be moving along more quickly than "Red Blooded American," a Bradley Cooper-produced and -starring take on the Armstrong saga. Set up at Warner Bros. and developed by director Jay Roach, that movie will touch on the relationship between Armstrong and his former teammate, Tyler Hamilton, who in a "60 Minutes" interview accused the seven-time Tour de France winner of cheating. (After vehement denials, Armstrong later came clean--sort of. The champion was of course stripped of all his Tour de France titles.)
All of this comes as a movie feauturing the real participants prepares to hit the screen. On Nov. 8, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney will bring his movie "The Armstrong Lie" to theaters. The filmmaker initially intended to chronicle the athlete's triumphs over the course of one comeback season several years ago, but decided to change course when, deep in the edit process, allegations of Armstrong's doping gained traction. (Incidentally, Sony Pictures and producer Frank Marshall had been prepping its own triumph-of-the-spirit movie based on Armstrong"s "It's Not About the Bike" for several years but, despite interest from the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, the project began to recede after Armstrong's problems grew.)
Interest in the Armstrong episode continues even nine months after the cyclist gave his now-famous Oprah Winfrey interview. But will moviegoers continue to care--and, if they do, will they care to support as many as three different movies?
PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments
When movies with similar themes are released within a short time span, one always seems to get the short end of the stick. In 2012, "Snow White and the Huntsman" ended up raking in $230 million more worldwide than "Mirror Mirror," a Snow White tale that had been released several months earlier. And this summer, June's big-budget "White House Down" collected less at the domestic box office than March's "Olympus Has Fallen" -- both movies about terrorist attacks on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
It may be that both Armstrong feature projects will wind up crossing the finish line. Wearing the yellow jersey, however, is another matter.


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Tag Archives: living
If I say so,
I have been working a lot in the past 2 weeks. A lot of work coinciding with a lot university it has made me really stressed. But back to the latter, as I said, I have been working heaps lately. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged amazing friends, angry, better, brain, brainwash, brainwashed, broaden, Cassimatis, china, commercial, conformity, control, death, die, do something, epiphany, explore, extortion, fly, good intentions, good times, ideals, ideas, Initiative, inspire, Inspired, James, James Cassimatis, learning, life, live, live life, living, living life, make the most, Meaning, mind, Money, order, plane, Positive, productive, questioning, school, see the world, society, the world, thinking, thought, thoughts, Travel, uni, values, why, Work, world 7 Comments


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Commercial, Personal/Corporate, Products
By Staff Writer | January 1, 2008
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MD Helicopters owner Lynn Tilton may move the manufacturer from Mesa, Ariz. if that city doesn't relent in demands for higher rent.
Tilton, whose New York investment firm Patriarch Partners bought control of MD in mid-2005, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram she'd hired the real-estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to find other possible homes for the manufacturer. She said one possibility would be moving to Grand Prairie, Texas. She is looking for communities that would offer MD major incentives to set up shop within their boundaries.
Patriarch last year bought the completions house Heritage Aviation, which is based in Grand Prairie, but Tilton has decided to close that operation.
MD is based at Mesa's Falcon Field, and company officials have complained that the city had wanted to increase its rent their 400 percent.


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Ambulance calls up 9.1% in November
Marion County Emergency Medical Service responded to 84 ambulance calls in November. That was an increase of 9.1 percent from the same month in 2011.
That brings the total for the first 11 months of 2012 to 965 ambulance calls. That is a decrease of 11.5 percent compared to the first 11 months of 2011, when EMS set a record with 1,176 ambulance calls.
The Marion ambulance was the busiest in November with 36 calls, followed by Hillsboro, 21; Peabody, 18; Florence, 6; Tampa, 3; and none for the back-up unit in Marion. First responders in Goessel went on five calls, and Lincolnville first responders went on one call.
There were 26 medical emergencies, 18 transfers, 16 no-transport calls, 13 falls, 4 cardiac emergencies, 4 motor vehicle accidents, 2 canceled calls, and 1 standby.


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HealthDay Reporter
Latest Cold and Flu News
THURSDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) -- Genetic mutations in two emerging "bird" flu viruses could turn them into potential sources of pandemics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers report.
One expert who was not involved with the new studies, however, said virus changes that may take place in the lab don't necessarily translate to a real-world threat.
These two emerging flu strains, H5N1 and H7N9, originated in birds but as yet don't spread easily to humans and aren't transmitted from one person to another. However, that eventually might happen if the strains were to mutate in certain ways, the researchers said.
The two reports were published June 6 in the online edition of the journal Cell.
The studies looked at specific proteins found on the viruses.
"It is important to understand how the 'bird flu' H5N1 virus surface protein known as hemagglutinin (HA) is able to latch on to human [cellular] receptors in the upper lungs," said Ram Sasisekharan, a distinguished professor of biological engineering at MIT.
This binding to human receptors is a necessary step that must occur before these viruses can spread from human to human, said Sasisekharan, the senior author of both new studies.
So far, neither H5N1 nor H7N9 has been able to efficiently bind to human receptors, Sasisekharan said.
"The H5N1 virus binds more readily to bird receptors, and a key question that we need to understand is [whether] the mutation is required in the HA protein to switch its receptor preference from bird to human," Sasisekharan said. "We found that some of the strains require as little as one base pair change to switch its preference to human receptors."
Although H5N1 has been evolving rapidly since 2005, none of the current strains has all of the mutations needed to spread from human to human, the researchers found.
Because of all the mutations that have occurred since 2005, the H5N1 vaccines that governments have stockpiled would probably no longer be effective, Sasisekharan said.
The virus went from birds to humans about 10 years ago and has infected nearly 600 people around the world, about 60 percent of whom have died, according to background information included in the study.
The study underscores the importance of carefully monitoring the evolution of H5N1 HA in the context of human adaptation, Sasisekharan said, because several strains have some key features needed for H5N1 to switch its receptor preference to humans.
H7N9 is another flu strain that could spread among people with simple mutations. This strain has infected at least 132 people this year, mostly in China, and 37 have died, according to the World Health Organization.
Given the rapid spread of H7N9 in China, it was important to understand how these viruses bind to human receptors, Sasisekharan said.
"We found that the virus binding to human receptor was poor," he said. "However, a change in a single amino acid was enough to significantly increase its binding to human receptors."
This is a rapidly evolving virus and it will be critical to monitor how it might adapt to humans -- especially how it might transmit from human to human, he said.
H7 flu typically circulates only in animals, so most people would not have an immune response against it, Sasisekharan said. There are some H7 vaccines in development, but the strains used to create these vaccines are different from H7N9 and likely would not provide any protection from this strain.
"In that context, understanding and monitoring mutations in H7N9 that leads to better human receptor binding will be key," Sasisekharan said.
One expert, however, doesn't think it's likely that the genetic changes the researchers produced in the laboratory will occur in nature.
"You can make these genetic changes in the lab, but it still doesn't make these viruses go easily from human to human," said Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "No matter what you manipulate in the test tube you can't predict all the exact factors in nature."
Science is learning what mutations it would take to make these deadly viruses spread among people, Siegel said. "This is not the same thing as saying these mutations will occur naturally," he said.
Siegel noted that these flu strains have not been the cause of flu pandemics in the past.
"There is probably a genetic reason why all human flu pandemics have been H1, H2 and H3 strains and not H5 and H7," he said.
"It's really unlikely that these mutations will occur naturally in either of these viruses," Siegel said. "People should be reassured that scientists are studying this."
Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
SOURCES: Ram Sasisekharan, Ph.D., Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; Marc Siegel, M.D., associate professor of medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York City; June 6, 2013, Cell, online


text: I look forward to an Arab director making a film about the hundreds of books and Torah scrolls seized from private Jewish homes and synagogues in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein's secret police. They were found in a flooded basement and shipped to the US for restoration. But the Iraqi government has not ceased to claim these stolen Jewish books as its 'national heritage'. Likewise the archives and ancient Torah scrolls of the Jewish community of Egypt are claimed to belong to the Egyptian state. This is nothing but state-sanctioned robbery.


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Tomás Carbonell '02 plays an important role in the well-being of our environment. While many people are satisfied with turning off the lights upon leaving a room, or taking the time to separate recyclables into the proper bins, Carbonell's position with the Washington, D.C. office of the Environmental Defense Fund puts him on the front lines of clean air legislation.
Tomás Carbonell '02 Champions Clean Air and Environmental Defense
By Valerie Schwartz | Posted in Park News | Tagged 2002, carbonell, defense, Dominican, environment, EPA, fund, guatemala, habitat for humanity, international, law, oxford, tomas | Comments Off on Tomás Carbonell '02 Champions Clean Air and Environmental Defense


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Seth MacFarlane accepted an assist from William Shatner to smooth his nerves during his first time as Academy Awards host.
MacFarlane, best known for behind-the-scenes Hollywood work as creator of the television series "Family Guy" and movie "Ted," seemed nervous in the traditional role telling jokes, although he did get in one quick poke at the academy for snubbing Ben Affleck as a best director nominee for the movie "Argo."
"The story is so top secret that the film's director is unknown to the academy," MacFarlane said.
One joke about "Amour" flew by so quickly that it was difficult to understand what he said.
He joked about "Lincoln" best actor nominee Daniel Day Lewis' habit of staying in character during filming days even when the cameras were turned off.
"If you bumped into Don Cheadle in the studio lot, would you try and free him?" MacFarlane asked.
A giant video screen was lowered near where MacFarlane stood, revealing Shatner in "Star Trek"-like regalia. Shatner said he was there trying to save MacFarlane from himself, showing a supposed headline from the future that declared MacFarlane the worst Oscar host ever.
It sent MacFarlane into more high concept comedy, with mixed results. MacFarlane was shown in a song and dance routine, backed by the Los Angeles Gay Men's Chorus, naming famous actresses and the films where they displayed their breasts. During a quick cutaway, Charlize Theron - one of the actresses named - did not appear amused.
In another skit, scenes from the movie "Flight" were performed by sock puppets. An overly long skit - again designed to illustrate MacFarlane's "bad taste" - showed him wearing a Flying Nun costume in an attempt to pick up Sally Field backstage.
MacFarlane made self-deprecation a theme of his Oscars hosting turn even before taking the stage, saying in interviews that he expected to get negative reviews.
He seemed to relax when the spotlight moved away and he had the quick job of introducing presenters with a handful of jokes. He had a handful of solid jokes when talking about Quvenzhane Wallis, the 9-year-old best actress nominess for "Beasts of the Southern Wild."


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Night Bird by Brian Freeman
Brian Freeman is a Minnesota-based author. This is the second in his Frost Eaton detective triller series. Eaton is a handsome, single, cat-loving San Francisco police detective, a very likeable character. The latest in the series, "The Night Bird" was just published February 1 by Thomas Mercer.
"Night Bird" is a very scary psychological thriller about a serial killer who copies the techniques of a San Francisco psychiatrist, Francesca Stein, but with an evil intention. Stein uses hypnosis and subliminal messaging to erase disturbing memories from patients and replace them with memories that will stop the phobias that developed around the trauma. The psychotic maniac, instead, uses hypnosis and psychological and sensory torture to cause some of Stein's patients to commit suicide upon command. The killer wears a mask, which in San Francisco, does not cause a lot of notice. He calls himself the "Night Bird" and uses all manner of technological tricks to spy on his victims and on Dr. Stein so that he knows what will trigger anxiety in the patients who become his targets. One of the songs he uses to trigger suicidal events in his victims is the song "Nightengale" by Carole King. I don't think I will ever be able to listen to that song again without thinking of this book!
It does not take long to get really sucked into this book. One reason is the main characters all have interesting lives and stories built around their own unique situations so it became easy to feel empathy for some characters and disgust and revulsion for others. The characters are all memorable whether they are heroes or villains. One way or the other, the reader can picture these characters living and working in San Francisco. The author appears to know the city well, even though he lives in Minnesota.
I am not totally convinced about the premise of the book that people who have been traumatized can be made to totally forget those traumatic experiences through hypnosis, drugs and subliminal suggestion, but I am willing to suspend my skepticism for the purposes of getting into the plot. The premise is similar to that of the successful new TV show, "Blindspot." There are some nice twists to the plot as well that keep the reader guessing until the end.
Overall, Freeman has a winner with "The Night Bird." It should be a hit with those who like to stay up late reading a real page-turner of a psychological thriller that will remain vividly in the memory bank for a long time to come.
Reviewed from a supplied copy.
Liz Nichols


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It gets terribly exhausting trying to convince people that The New York Times publishes some pretty interesting and solid pieces. It consistently gets accused of liberal or anti-religious bias, but it employs some good reporters. Unfortunately, The New York Times Magazine has just published a terribly embarrassing column from its outgoing executive editor Bill Keller that only fuels the anti-Times fire. Keller is determined to ask Republican candidates for president tougher questions about their faith, which is a good idea, if you can agree to hold the same standard to both sides. Unfortunately, you know the column is off to a poor start when it leads with, "If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him?" I'm not joking. Please do read the whole thing and then come back for some editing breakdown.
Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively. Michele Bachmann was asked during the Iowa G.O.P. debate what she meant when she said the Bible obliged her to "be submissive" to her husband, and there was an audible wave of boos -- for the question, not the answer.
Perhaps this is a legitimate question (as I explored earlier), but most people seemed to boo because her submission views have nothing to do with her policies. Presumably one could learn to distinguish between professional and personal decisions while getting a tax-law degree. I'm assuming that the the standard for questions about faith is something like, "How does your faith influence your policies?" Keller seems to want to take it further.
This year's Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a "cult" and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not "overly religious.")
If Keller's standard is "how does your faith influence policies," what do these views have to do with their policies? If that's not his standard, what is? Is he implying that we shouldn't support them because they are weird enough to support a "cult?" Why does it matter that other people think someone's views are "just weird?"
Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.
Speaking of fact and fiction, Rick Santorum is not an evangelical. He is Roman Catholic in good standing. Besides, where is the basis for these raised concerns?
I honestly don't care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans, or if he believes that the stories of ancient American prophets were engraved on gold tablets and buried in upstate New York, or that Mormonism's founding prophet practiced polygamy (which was disavowed by the church in 1890).
But Keller does care -- otherwise we wouldn't have to read this paragraph.
Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.
Did he really just dismiss a belief that most Catholics hold as "baggage" and "bizarre to outsiders"?
It's almost as though he is saying "I don't care," while demonstrating that he does. It's OK, he's not judging them because he was once an idiot, too. He's just enlightened now, or something.
But I do want to know if a candidate places fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon (the text, not the Broadway musical) or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country.
Is there any evidence to suggest these candidates have supported the idea that some other text but the Constitution will be their authority? Whatever you think about her as a candidate, it seems like Michele Bachmann hit this home in her interview with David Gregory.
And I care a lot if a candidate is going to be a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed.
Are we really talking about a Trojan horse? Is there any evidence that Mormons, evangelicals, Catholics, etc. would be Trojan horses? Did we not get past this idea with John F. Kennedy's candidacy?
So this season I'm paying closer attention to what the candidates say about their faith and what they have said in the past that they may have decided to play down in the quest for mainstream respectability.
From Ryan Lizza's enlightening profile in The New Yorker, I learned that Michele Bachmann's influences include spiritual and political mentors who preach the literal "inerrancy" of the Bible.
Yes, Bill Keller, perhaps you should pay closer attention to what candidates say about their faith. Without getting partisan about this idea (but acknowledging the glaring difference), you certainly avoided this in 2008 when covering Barack Obama's campaign. We already dealt with Ryan Lizza's profile, but it really isn't terribly unusual that Bachmann might believe in "innerancy" of the Bible.
Neither Bachmann nor Perry has, as far as I know, pledged allegiance to the Dominionists. Possibly they overlooked those passages in the books and sermons of their spiritual comrades. My informed Texan friends tell me Perry's relationship with the religious fringe is pragmatic, that it is more likely he is riding the movement than it is riding him. But as we have seen with the Tea Party (another political movement Perry hopped aboard in its early days), the support of a constituent group doesn't come without strings.
Does he really expect them to pledge allegiance to the Dominionists? (Which is what, by the way? Who created and defined that term, since there is no movement by that name?) Keller needs to make the jump from who Perry and Bachmann are courting to what kind of influence they have on the candidates. Is there any proof that these are political constituent groups and not more general, spiritual supporters of a prayer campaign?
And of course issues of faith should not distract attention from issues of economics and war. But it is worth knowing whether a candidate has a mind open to intelligence that does not fit neatly into his preconceptions.
News flash for Keller: many, many people take their personal faith more seriously than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Are we to assume that someone with strong religious beliefs would not be open to intelligence?
To get things rolling, I sent the aforementioned candidates a little questionnaire. Here's a sample:
* Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a "Christian nation" or a "Judeo-Christian nation?" and what does that mean in practice?
* Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? What about an atheist?
* What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution, and do you believe it should be taught in public schools?
Sure, I wouldn't mind knowing the answers to these questions in a nice bullet-point list. But I don't know, this list of questions just strikes me as pretty strange. Some of these candidates have already addressed these questions (Perry on evolution, Bachmann on appointing a Muslim/atheist, for instance).
Why does Keller get to decide which questions voters actually care about? Help us out, dear readers. If you were in Keller's shoes, what are you actually interested in?


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HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) D.D. Scarver scored 17 points and Dennis Tinnon posted 13 points and 16 rebounds to lead Marshall over Morehead State 70-67 Wednesday.
Nigel Spikes and DeAndre Kane scored 13 points apiece for the Thundering Herd (4-3).
After a back-and-fourth first half, Devon Atkinson's jumper drew Morehead State within 54-52 with 4:03 remaining in the second half. But Scarver hit his lone 3-pointer and Kane converted a fast-break layup to put Marshall up 59-52.
Morehead State (4-3) attempted to rally but Marshall hit 11 free throws over the final 1:17 to put the game away. Scarver had 10 of those free throws while Tinnon had the other.
Marshall has won 12 of the last 14 meetings, including the last 10 at home, against Morehead State. The Thundering Herd shot just 33.3 percent (20 of 60) but outrebounded Morehead State 53-46.
Jarrett Stokes led Morehead State 14 points.