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Mar

18

Forced blog break

Filed Under Blogging, Jill Miller Zimon | 9 Comments

I don’t just love blogging, I need blogging.  And that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.  I have more than 170 open tabs in Firefox and 60 in Safari – which is to say, there’s a whole lotta things I want to be writing about – how Ohio rail is still in the transpo bill, how women anchors are more plentiful but they’re also paid less than men so it’s a cheap gain for media owners, how the myth of clean coal has a very curious and unsettling link to billions of federal dollars that are going to go to…Illinois, and tens of other things that I believe matter that aren’t getting nearly enough coverage.

But – I really really really have to be a good girl or I will never get better: I’m told that I’ve torn some muscles in my shoulder and neck related to the rotator cuff.  I don’t quite get exactly the physiology of all that, but I know that the position my arm has to be in in order to blog is not healthy while I’m trying to heal, no matter how ergonomically-well crafted my desk chair might be or how strong my meds are.

So – I’m taking off blogging for at least a full couple of days.  This actually means I have to restrain myself from checking the news as it happens because that’s when I start to accumulate open tabs and ideas to write about. But I was out of the country for an entire year a long time ago and stuff like Billy Joel marrying Christie Brinkley happened, term-limits happened and Madonna married Sean Penn.  Those two couples are long since broken up and term-limits are highly dubious in their value (I always thought they were wrong to be honest), but I’m still around – and I’d like to be for a good long while.

Have a fun WLST-less week and hopefully I’ll be well on my way to more prolificness sometime before Monday.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:02 pm March 18th, 2009 in Blogging, Jill Miller Zimon | 9 Comments 

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Mar

18

Obama set the bar, but the GOP embraces defense mechanisms

Filed Under Barack Obama, Congress, conservatives, democracy, Democrats, George Bush, Government, leadership, Politics, Republicans, Whitehouse09 | 24 Comments

One thing that I’ve noticed since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, but which comes as no surprise, is that, how, when you campaign on the idea of transparency, and you succeed a president whom people say they voted for because he was so folksy and you’d want to have a beer with him but that president then abused that folksiness image to let people who saw him as folksy trust him (because they’d have a beer with him) when they should not have (reasons for going to war in Iraq, shenanigans at the DOJ, Patriot Act, Real ID, CYA for using torture and so on), the burden – aka, the expectations of what transparency means, in comparison to an administration that conducted itself in line with the exact opposite of transparency – for the current holder of that elected office, of that context forces the reality of what people are going to want from that president to swing in the exact opposite direction from what people were used to.  

To be clear, Obama set this up for himself in many ways – people wanted transparency, it’s what we deserve and should have been getting more of during the Bush administration.  But now we’re gorging on pursuing it because we’ve lacked it for eight years.  And conservatives are using this hunger for transparency to enhance their own predisposition to not work with or support Obama.

What do I mean?

Check out The Fix this morning:

Last Tuesday — March 10 — was when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner first heard about the bonuses. The next evening Geithner spoke with AIG CEO Edward Liddy to express his dismay over the situation and tasked his legal team with finding a way not to stop the bonuses. On Thursday, Geithner told “senior aides” at the White House about the AIG bonuses and later in the day President Obama was informed. Geithner spent the weekend trying to re-negotiate the bonuses with Liddy — to no apparent end.

The release of the details is aimed at answering the ever-present “who knew what and when did they know” questions that, until today, the administration had not yet addressed. For an administration built on transparency, answering that baseline question is critical.

But, it remains far from clear whether the release of AIG timeline by the White House will quell the burgeoning controversy.

…

Republicans are showing a willingness to use the AIG bonuses as a political cudgel against Obama and the Democrats. 

I’d tell you to go check out the right-wing blogs to see more evidence of what I’m describing but honestly, with only a few exceptions, they are so proud of themselves every single time they think they’ve found a discrepancy with anything related to their current president or Congress or Democrats or left of center thinkers that frankly, like the chorus of no from the GOP members of Congress, you just can’t listen after a while.

There’s a name for their obsession with all discrepancies big and small; it’s called intellectualizing:

(psychiatry) a defense mechanism that uses reasoning to block out emotional stress and conflict 

And people do this when they’ve been able to identify a legitimate problem or matter or issue, but they don’t want to deal with the stress and conflict that most likely will ensue in order to resolve that problem, matter or issue.  So instead, they obsess over some self-made threshold that they then convince themselves is the threshold that everyone should be using in order to view and understand the problem, matter or issue.

It’s a cousin to the habit of navel-gazing or loving the sound of your own voice (or look of your own words), with a similar effect: the problem, matter or issue remains untouched.  Just the blathering about the problem, matter or issue exists.

And that is what people on the right who feel that they haven’t gotten their way, don’t like what Obama or Democrats or left of center folks are doing, as they continue to disengage from the system known as democracy: they are intellectualizing every probem, matter and issue so they can avoid the stress and conflict of sitting down and hammering out satisfactory legislation that would serve their constituents. They’d rather just say no so that they don’t have to do any of that other icky problem-solving stuff. Yucky, huh? 

If I were on the right, no doubt I would not hesitate to bring up every single time I thought I’d found a discrepancy.  Dissent is still one of the cornerstones of our democracy. But so is the offering up of realistic negotiations, which, if you’ve ever dealt with a toddler having a tantrum, you know cannot happen until they stop crying and calm down. When they have done that, then you can get to the next cornerstone – which is debate, and the next cornerstone, which is resolution.

Sadly, there seems to be no interest in the concept of next with the GOP right now. There is only no.  And so long as that’s their mantra, there won’t be any next for them in the foreseeable future either.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:37 am March 18th, 2009 in Barack Obama, Congress, conservatives, democracy, Democrats, George Bush, Government, leadership, Politics, Republicans, Whitehouse09 | 24 Comments 

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Mar

18

New Quinnipiac poll numbers re: Obama, Strickland, Senate 2010

Filed Under Economy, Education, Government, leadership, Ohio, Politics, Poll, Predictions, Primary, Republicans, Ted Strickland, Voting | Comments Off

You can read the information for the poll about Ohio Governor Strickland and challengers to him here. I don’t usually spend a ton of time on analyzing the polls – the pollsters and other bloggers do that for you.  I believe that they need to be put into the context of: when they were taken (From March 10- 15), how the questions were asked (all 50 questions plus results are at the link), who was asked (surveyed 1,299 Ohio voters, 463 Republicans, unknown number of Dems and Independents) and the margin of error  (I’m not sure how to read their info correctly because they offer two different MEs,  +/- 2.7 percentage points for the 1299 Ohioans, or +/- 4.6 for the Republican – check it out). Quinnipiac is considered to be one of the most reliable of the polls.

Overall: Ohioans are feeling somewhat uncomfortable with some of Governor Strickland’s ideas, including his education plan and his plan for using stimulus money to bridge a budget gap.  They’re also not feeling great about how he is handling the economic downturn. 

On the other hand, he continues to hold big margins over possible GOP rivals in 2010 for his spot and between the rivals, former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine leads former Rep. and Fox news talking head John Kasich.

The Columbus Dispatch mentions numbers in relation to the Dem primary but I didn’t see any questions about that in the Q-poll document. I think it’s an error so I have an email into the reporter.  Likewise, it reports on Ohioans’ opinion of President Obama, but there’s nothing in the poll about that either. I’ll update this post if I learn more.

Here’s the link to the poll of Ohioans re: Obama and the Dems. The Dispatch story only had a link for the above info.

Obama’s approval has dropped by 10 points but is still at 57.  Independents, and particularly Evangelicals, are switching back to what might be perhaps a more original position as they say in political theory.  Ohioans also give Obama better marks for his handling of the economy than they do Strickland.

In the Senate 2010 matchups, Lee Fisher and Jennifer Brunner both beat Rob Portman but 46% of Ohioans remain undecided as to which Dem should be the candidate (Fisher gets 18%, Brunner 14%, Tim Ryan 12%, Tyrone Yates 6%).  Between Portman and  Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor, if she were to enter the GOP primary to run in the race, Portman wins.

Numbers. Eh. Primary is nearly 15 months away.  Looooooong primary season.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:01 am March 18th, 2009 in Economy, Education, Government, leadership, Ohio, Politics, Poll, Predictions, Primary, Republicans, Ted Strickland, Voting | Comments Off 

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Mar

18

Salon state by state review: Ohio GOP heads are deep into blue sand

Filed Under conservatives, democracy, Ohio, Politics, Republicans | Comments Off

The Ohio assessment:

OHIO 

NewsPRESIDENTIAL VOTE 2000: Bush 50-47 2008: Obama 51-47
U.S. SENATE 2005: 2R 2009: 1D-1R
U.S. HOUSE 2005: 12R-6 2009: 10D-8
STATE HOUSE 2005: 61R-38 2009: 53D-46
STATE SENATE 2005: 22R-11 2009: 21R-12

Ohio remains the key to victory for presidential candidates of both parties, and its Republican cast has historically proven a structural advantage for GOP contenders. But everything has been downhill for the GOP since 2004, when evangelical voters turned out in force to help George Bush win the state and a second term. Ken Blackwell is no longer secretary of state, and didn’t get close to becoming governor, losing by more than 20 points to Democrat Ted Strickland in 2006. (Republicans may also regret that Blackwell lost his latest election, for RNC chairman). Democrats have also picked up four U.S. House seats, one U.S. Senate seat and control of the state House. The remaining Republican senator, George Voinovich, will not seek a third term in 2010. The most prominent Ohio Republican, at least for now, is U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner, whose “Party of No” strategy seems to be pushing GOP poll numbers even lower.

Memorable quote: ”Rather than discarding our platform, we need to embrace it. Rather than purging our ranks, we need to multiply them. Rather than simply rejecting the ideas of our opposition, we need to offer bold, visionary solutions of our own.” — Kevin DeWine, recently elected chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.

Like many of us have been asking, how’s that Party of No thing working out for you, Mr. Boehner?  Salon doesn’t even mention the kind of turmoil we’re seeing in the speculation around Ohio GOP candidates for 2010 races, Kyle Sisk’s blog being one place where that speculation gets a whole lotta bandwidth.

Sadly for the Ohio GOP, “oblivion,” just like Ohio, starts with an “O.”  So does “oblivious.”  The GOP team chant might be, “Give me an N! Give me an O! Not! Oblivious!”, but at this point, I don’t think anyone is listening to the toddlers stomping their feet until they get their way.

My advice? Start acting like you’re part of the democracy and do something other than not doing anything.  Otherwise, like the parent who continues to cook dinner while the toddler is in the middle of the kitchen floor banging the spatula on the pot to get candy, you – the GOP – will continue to be walked over and stepped around until you’ve exhausted yourself and your self-fulfilling prophecy of being irrelevant actually comes true.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 6:24 am March 18th, 2009 in conservatives, democracy, Ohio, Politics, Republicans | Comments Off 

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Mar

18

Carnival of Ohio Politics, St. Patrick’s Day edition

Filed Under Blogging, Carnivals, Ohio, Politics, Writing | Comments Off

Many thanks to Daniel Jack Williamson of BuckeyeRINO for this week’s very green edition of the Carnival of Ohio Politics – the St. Patrick’s Day edition.  Maybe not quite the green we’ve come to think of when it’s not a holiday with leprechauns but green still.

Appreciation to everyone who contributed and readers as well.  There are a few new bloggers around the state, so please spread the word that they too can submit up to three posts each week to the Carnival for inclusion in the roundup of Ohio political blogging.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:57 am March 18th, 2009 in Blogging, Carnivals, Ohio, Politics, Writing | Comments Off 

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