WaPo: Can any president succeed in todayÂ’s political world?

Lost in the chatter about whether President Obama will win a second term in November is an even bigger — and perhaps even more important — question: Is it possible for a president — any president — to succeed in the modern world of politics?

Consider this: We are in the midst of more than a decade-long streak of pessimism about the state of the country, partisanship is at all-time highs and the media have splintered — Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth — in a thousand directions all at once.

Add those three major factors up and what becomes clear is that any president elected (or reelected) this November has slim hopes — or at the most a very narrow window — for political success.

This is usually the last position the media takes before jumping off the bandwagon completely.

More bad news for O: Consumer Confidence took a dive this morning. This is a decent indicator of an incumbent's reelection chances.

Thanks to @jeffemanuel for the WaPo story.

Update: Good catch by CJ.

Washington Post, 1980:

The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world.

...

Voters have lowered their expectations of what any president can accomplish; they have accepted the notion that this country may never again have heroic, larger-than-life leadership in the White House.

Some voters have entirely discarded textbook notions about presidential greatness and believe that Carter is doing as good a job as anyone could in facing new and difficult problems and in coping with an independent and restive Congress.

Posted by: JohnE. at 06:45 AM | Comments (336)
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Happy Monday.

European markets' initially rally this morning (after the pro-Euro Greek election this weekend) was brief.

Friday, Russia was sending attack helicopters to Syria. Today, they're sending two troop ships with marines.

Here's some sunscreen and sunburn treatment tips if, like me, you burn easy.

That's all I got. Maybe Vic I'll be by in a bit.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:56 AM | Comments (313)
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Since I was out most of the day doing Father's Day-family kinda stuff, you get the semi-cop-out ONT. But you also get the Daddy Saddle to go along with it.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:30 PM | Comments (387)
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I figure enough morons have seen the movie by now for us to have a pretty decent, spoiler-filled thread on it.

If you haven't seen it yet, don't say you weren't warned.

Posted by: andy at 01:25 PM | Comments (553)
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NY State is about to pass a teacher evaluation plan. Naturally the teacher unions are freaked out about it. But since they are alone in their opposition they are trying to minimize the damage. Unfortunately Governor Andrew Cuomo is willing to cave in to them.

A plan to restrict the release of teacher evaluations is an “outrage” and would be a major cave to the unions, Mayor Bloomberg declared Friday.

“We have to run the system for the kids, not for the teachers,” he said on his weekly radio show.

...

A Cuomo administration source insisted the governor has not signed on to the union plan, but didnÂ’t rule out portions of it being incorporated into a final deal.

Cuomo, the source said, supports full disclosure of all teacher scores — but the identities of the instructors would only be revealed to the students’ parents.

“If you’re not a parent, the name shouldn’t matter to you,” the Cuomo source said. “You may be moving to Brooklyn and want to know how the teachers in PS 40 are doing or how the sixth grade is doing. The name doesn’t matter.”

Bullshit. This information should absolutely be made public. Even if you're not a parent in a particular school or district you're paying city and state taxes that pay for the schools and for the teacher's salaries.

The reality almost all public employee pay and performance information should be public. If you don't want your work records made public...don't work for the public. Get a job in the private sector, problem solved.

When you find yourself agreeing with a moron like Bloomberg, you should reject your stance. Having done that, I'm chalking it up to Bloomberg being the blind squirrel who found a tasty nut. Hopefully, the NY State GOP, which controls the state Senate will stand tough for parents and taxpayers. We'll see.

BTW- It doesn't sound like the unions and Cuomo are expecting a lot of "Damn, they are doing awesome" reports, does it?

Posted by: DrewM at 12:24 PM | Comments (163)
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When I hear John McCain talking about someone being "uninformed, arrogant, naive" I figure he's talking about his approach to the First Amendment or his daughter Meghan.

Alas, no.

Question for Senator Maverick, if corporations (aka, individuals freely associating with one another) don't have First Amendment rights, why does NBC, the corporate owner of the show you were appearing on, enjoy them? Or do you think the government can regulate the speech of NBC and its programs?

Posted by: DrewM at 08:36 AM | Comments (282)
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Good morning to all and happy Fathers' Day to the dads. I don't have much this morning, so I'll have to start with a movie and use that to launch into books. On Thurs. night, I took Mrs. Muse to the movies. We saw For Greater Glory which is about the uprising in Mexico that occured during the 1920s known as the Cristiada uprising or or the Cristero War which came about when the Mexican government enacted and enforced a series of draconian anti-clerical laws that crossed the line of keeping the Roman Catholic Church out of politics to out-and-out persecution. I recommend it for all morons. Not only it is a good movie, but it is the kind of movie that Hollywood needs to be encouraged to make more of. And by that I mean it doesn't thrust some nihilistic/ironic/perverse worldview in your face but on the contrary, that which is good and noble is held to be good and noble rather than turned upside down, laughed at, or ground underfoot.

As I said, it's a good movie, but not a perfect film by any means. Still, it is well worth paying for to see in the theaters. Especially if you're Roman Catholic. If you're Roman Catholic, I think you're going to really like this movie.

So after seeing it, I was spurred to check out some books on Mexican history, about which I know nothing, and do you know what? During the early decades of the 20th century, Mexico was a pretty lively place: wars, revolutions, abrupt changes of government, new constitutions, political leaders ousted and forced into exile, etc. And all with mandatory rampant corruption, of course.

And the Cristero uprising resulted in something like 40,000 refugees, all of whom fled to the U.S, mostly to Southern California.

Perhaps it isn't much different nowadays.

The books on modern Mexican history I found on Amazon were mostly expensive ($30-50) academic editions, suitable for use as college textbooks, not mass market paperbacks. However, I did find a couple of less expensive ones, the companion book to the movie, and this one, which gives a wider perspective on Mexican history 1900-1930, which you can get as a Kindle edition for $7.99. That's a good deal for history buffs.

So that's all I have for this week.

As always, book thread tips may be sent to aoshqbookthread@gmail.com

Hopefully, you all have been reading some good stuff this week.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:02 AM | Comments (120)
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Happy Father's Day, dads.

Posted by: andy at 03:49 AM | Comments (244)
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Don't forget tomorrow is Father's Day you morons! And yes, it means wishing YOUR father Happy Father's Day, not some dude living in the White House as Michelle wants you to do.

Here are some Last Minute Father's Day Gift Ideas.

So who is your favorite fictional dad? Was it Ben Cartwright from Bonanza? Maybe Frank Constanza from Seinfeld? How about Homer Simpson? I think I'm gonna have to go with Al Bundy. He had to have some of the best politically incorrect quotes of any show. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:00 PM | Comments (459)
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Sorry about not being here last week, but last Saturday was right in the middle of the BK brouhaha and comments for all posts had been disabled. At that point, I really didn't know if there was ever going to be another chess thread, so I thought it prudent to just lay low for awhile and see how it all played out.

Seems to be back to normal now, though. More or less.

Anyway, here's a chess set worthy of a real moron:

Capture a piece, do a shot! What could possibly go wrong? Plus, I'm sure all you morons really like Pabst Blue Ribbon ("the Valu-Rite of beers").

The only thing lacking is that the shot glasses aren't in pornographic shapes. If we could only get that, then we could declare it to be the only official AoSHQ-approved chess set.

Another fun endgame

Unfortunately, I've been way too busy to go through all the analysis and comments about the endgame I put up last time, and you all have probably forgotten about it, anyway. So here's another problem:

Believe it or not, White to move can actually win in this position. The question is, how?
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:22 PM | Comments (82)
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