LISTEN to The Capitol Steps on-line [or on your local NPR affiliate]: This year’s and last year’s Fourth of July broadcasts are available for download here in RealAudio format.
Fourth of July 2008 Edition: Politics Takes A Holiday! NEW
Recorded live at the Ronald Reagan Building in DC.
(One half hour: 4.5 MB) RealAudio/RA
Fourth of July 2007 Edition: Politics Takes A Holiday!
Recorded live at the Ronald Reagan Building in DC.
(One half hour: 4.5 MB) RealAudio/RA
This is a Guest Voice post by journalism professor and author Walter Brasch who is also a syndicated newspaper columnist and radio commentator, and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
The Rocket’s Red Glare May Be Chinese
by Walter Brasch
Wearing a pith helmet and brandishing a blunderbuss, Marshbaum burst into my office and ordered me to the floor. I looked at my faux friend and media foil, about to ask him what his latest scheme was. With Marshbaum, who was fed “Honeymooners” episodes by IV when he was a child, everything is a scheme to make money. But, in the fraction of time I had before he yelled for me to get under my desk and cover my head, I quickly determined he was serious.
“We’re at war!” he shouted, hyper-kinetically upset.
“Of course we’re at war,” I said. “Bush diverted resources from Afghanistan to invade Iraq. Been at war five years.”
“Not that war,” said Marshbaum. “This is bigger. China invaded our homeland. We’re under attack. And thanks to a 5–4 decision by the Supremes, me and Ole Betsy will defend my home from the Commie invaders.”
“You been watching too many recycled Cold War films?” I asked. “China is our trading partner. They loaned us billions to reduce our exorbitant unbalanced budget. Their factories are producing goods for the American consumer almost as fast as Washington politicians have been producing verbal diarrhea.”
“The Chinese have launched rockets at us. We don’t have much time.”
“I didn’t see anything on the 24/7 news channels about an invasion.”
“Of course not,” said Marshbaum, “they’re too busy tracking celebrity weddings, break-ups, and drunk driving arrests.”
“Even the worst journalist would pick up on an invasion of the U.S,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied sarcastically, “like they picked up on the PATRIOT Act violating a half-dozen constitutional amendments? Like they figured out the Bush–Cheney Oil and Screw Corp. lied to them about Iraq, the environment, the housing crisis, the economy, and how to make barbecued burritos?”
It used to be that Latin Americans viewed Europe as far more humane than the United States because of the way undocumented workers there were treated. No more …
According to this editorial from Diario Co Latino of El Salvador:
“According to news coming from the Old Continent, a law passed by the European Parliament on the 18th of this month not only permits the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also provides for prison terms of up to 18 months and five-year prohibition on returning to Europe. … Many believed that today’s Europe, because its past was so appallingly bloody, was more democratic and humane than the U.S. But with this newly-adopted law, it has demonstrated that it’s the equal of the United States.”
July 4th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
In India many boys of my generation in school grew up on a staple diet of American/British comic books (to the great annoyance of our parents who felt we were neglecting our textbooks). I was delighted to read The Independent report that comic/graphic books are emerging stronger and gaining popularity in view of the failure of the media to satisfy public thirst for information regarding the raging conflicts, including the Iraq war.
Here is what The Independent writes: “They’re a far cry from Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk. A daring new generation of graphic novelists is using the conflict in Iraq to explore America’s relationship with the rest of the world – and itself.”
But what is this ‘graphic novel’? The term ‘graphic novel’, in the Comic Books genre, was first coined by Richard Kyle in 1964, mainly as an attempt to distinguish the newly translated works from Europe which were then being published from what Kyle perceived as the more juvenile subject matter that was so common in the United States. More here…
The Independent continues:“Today’s broad countercultural coalition in the US is often motivated by frustration at the news coverage of the Iraq conflict and its aftermath from traditional media outlets. In such a climate, comic books thrive by reflecting the public bad mood, and they remain streets ahead of many of their rivals in the creative industries.
“While authors and filmmakers have taken their time preparing fictional responses to the war, comics are a relatively immediate form. In theory…’you can write and draw a comic and see it on the stands three months later. A movie can take years’.” More here…
Talk about a company that’s jerking around customers and employees! It makes the big store closings announcement, then leaves employees in the dark about whether they have jobs or not. On top of that, customers are wondering if their favorite Starbucks will remain open. (And all day, employees have to listen to: Is this store closing? Are you staying open?) WHAT STARBUCKS SHOULD HAVE DONE: Immediately release a list of stores that are going to be closed, and let employees know if they’ll be laid off or possibly transferred.
They called Starbucks PR for more info. No word yet. Here’s a STARBUCKS GOSSIP message board post from SEADAVE:
A few months ago Home Depot announced it was closing a number of underperforming stores. That very same day they released the list of stores. No rumors and speculation, just a clear message from the execs that these are the stores we are closing. Period. Once again the message from Starbucks’ executive management is unclear and in my opinion the ensuing rumors, worries, and wild speculation is doing more harm to the company than good.
And here’s the “angst-ridden decision” message from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to employees.
As anyone who regularly visits the Moderate Voice or WORLDMEETS.US knows by now, the world’s attention is riveted on the U.S. election campaign. And in every nation, different lessons - some of them cautionary - are being drawn.
Writing for Brazil’s Estadao, Lourdes Sola explains why American election campaigns - particularly this one - create so much emotion in the ‘other three corners of the world’ and how the way Americans choose their leaders proves the resiliency and health of U.S. democracy. Sola then outlines the lessons that people in other nations, particularly Brazilians, should glean from the U.S. presidential race.
“American democracy shows the enormous capacity of institutions to absorb and filter change in society without resulting challenges to the law. The dispute in the Democratic Party between ‘a woman’ and ‘a Black,’ leads to an institutional question: Why and by what mechanisms were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chosen as the most competitive electoral candidates? The same question can be posed about the nomination of John McCain since it also reflects a shift in the value system of the Republican Party on immigration, the environment and secularism. Taken together, this is a “change in season” in the sphere of politics and reflects a profound transformation in that society’s system of values and criteria for political legitimacy.”
“Societies today are exposed to global processes of political interaction and a dissemination of values over which nations and party leaders have little control. Apart from changes in the axis of global power and the role of the major emerging countries, it is the force and vitality of American democratic institutions - and not its economy - that the election campaign brings to the fore of the international debate. Confronting the successive “shocks of reality” to which U.S. society has been subject - from the losses associated with the war in Iraq to the subprime crisis - the process of regenerating American social life has begun in the political realm rather than through any particular policies. This will now play out in the contest between Obama vs. McCain.”
Beyond Charles Manson himself, Susan Atkins was the most public face of his murderous family during the 1970-71 Tate-LaBianca trial. She bragged about stabbing the pregnant Sharon Tate and laughed when details of the slaying were presented in court.
Her death sentence was later changed to life imprisonment and now Atkins, who says she has found God and her sins have been forgiven, is asking to be released from prison because she is terminally ill.
The man was a sponge. Creating and editing New York Magazine, he soaked up the zeitgeist of the late 1960s and 1970s and gave it back to readers as a heady brew of New Journalism and cultural chic. Clay Felker, who died today at 82, was one of a kind.
Between jobs as a magazine editor, I wrote for him and witnessed the workings of his restless mind and insatiable curiosity. Visits to his office were a montage of people popping up at an open door with gossip, news and rumors and his prowls through the corridors, asking everyone who passed, “What’s new? What’s new?”
Magazine editors are unique among journalists in that they invent their readers. Rather than covering news over which they have no control, they fill their pages with whatever interests or obsesses them and, like magnets, draw the attention of those who find the results to their taste. Felker’s contemporary, Harold Hayes of Esquire, called it delivering an attitude toward the world on a regular basis.
Between them, they gave birth to the New Journalism, which mirrored a new kind of politics with a new kind of reporting. In New York, Tom Wolfe wrote about Radical Chic and Gloria Steinem profiled the man who was moving into the White House in 1968 (”When Richard Nixon is alone in a room, is there anyone there?”)
Almost single-handedly, Felker made journalism a subject of popular interest. Wolfe satirized the New Yorker, and everybody reported on the New York Times. Even I got into the act with a piece titled “The New York Times Discovers Sex” while writing about literary auctions (”What Am I Bid for Lyndon Johnson?”). Ralph Ginzburg going to jail for what he published (”The Punishment for Bad Taste Is Three Years”) and the melodrama surrounding the death of the Saturday Review.
Writers became celebrities, and Felker nurtured their fame but stayed out of the spotlight himself. After he lost New York to Rupert Murdoch in 1977, he moved to California and tried to duplicate his success there, but LA was too shallow for his kind of in-depth reporting and he turned to teaching journalism.
I would see him for lunch out there every so often, and he was still asking, “What’s new? What’s new?”
In this Guest Voice “Raging Moderate” political comedian Will Durst takes a look at the Vice Presidential sweepstakes in the Democratic and Republican parties.
Talking Veepstakes
by Will Durst
This seems like a good time to talk about the race for the vice presidency. Not because of the overwhelming excitement involved in what is essentially a backstage safari. And not because of the dazzling personalities being rigorously vetted. Because nothing else is going on. Right now, the Veepstakes is the only game in town. The presidential campaign has entered what can only be described as its dormant hibernation phase. The whole damn thing has stalled like John Goodman over the dessert table at a 4-star casino’s Sunday Brunch on the Mississippi Coast.
Think of an endlessly looping PBS pledge drive.
The candidates have abandoned the playing field and are sucking down Gatorade while the trainers search for additional wads of cash to stuff into the hollow portions of their uniforms. And the score at halftime finds Barack Obama leading John McCain by about 15 points. Which should excite Democrats. I mean the last time they had this kind of a lead, at this point in the race, was way, way back, four years ago when John Kerry enjoyed a similar lead over George Bush. Oh.
Meanwhile, welcome to silly season. To demonstrate their unity, former sworn mortal enemies, Senators Obama (Crips) and Clinton (Bloods) met up in a New Hampshire town named Unity where, back in January, both received 107 votes. Get it? They’re not at each other’s throats anymore. They’re in Unity. You can’t make up stuff like this. And no, I have no idea if Truth or Consequences, New Mexico or Maggie’s Nipples, Wyoming were considered as alternates in case the civic fathers of Unity proved truculent.
We should relish these two months of campaign down-time before the conventions begin, and where, just like now, absolutely nothing will happen. The only difference is then, that nothing will be reported upon at such a great length, that grown men are developing rashes on the insides of their thighs just thinking about it. Read the rest of this entry »
[ahem] Personally, I shall never in all my life forget the howling persecution that we endured from the O-bot smear machine and the Clintonazi long-knifers. They have tried to marginalize us, but ho! now we will band together and marginalize them.
Yes, as Dodd is our witness, it will be “unity” on our terms.
UPDATE: Judging by the comments, I need to explain that this is satire.
Why does this column have no title? Because, good readers, I began looking at this editorial from the L.A. Times last night and it’s still too mind boggling to wrap my brain around. Jeffrey Fagan and Stephen D. Sugarman seem to be upset over the Supreme Court’s finding that the people’s right to keep and bear arms actually means they have a right to keep and bear arms. Further, they’ve never quite gotten over Congress deciding that people can’t sue gun manufacturers out of existence for selling products that do exactly what they are advertised to do. Never ones to be deterred, however, the intrepid duo have a modest proposal for us. (All supplied emphais mine.)
By using a strategy known as “performance-based regulation,” we would deputize private actors — the gun makers — to deal with the negative effects of their products in ways that promote the public good.
In other words, rather than telling gun makers what to do, performance-based regulation would tell them what outcome they must achieve: Reduce deaths by guns. Companies that achieve the target outcomes might receive large financial bonuses; companies that don’t would face severe financial penalties. Put simply, gun makers — whose products kill even when used as directed – would have to take responsibility for curbing the consequent public health toll.
So under this plan, products manufactured to meet or exceed all current safety requirements, (multiple safety locks, able to be fitted with trigger guards, fail-safe firing pins, etc.) would still be responsible for the actions of people employing them long after they leave the factory. I must say… that’s some crackerjack thinking. In fact, I believe this revolutionary model could be employed to solve a host of other problems.
Police have recently noted the rise in cases of young people illegally obtaining powerful prescription drugs and abusing them for dangerous, recreational use. For each instance of such abuse, perhaps we could levy multi-million dollar fines on the pharmaceutical companies. Soon we could effectively shut them all down and there won’t be any drugs for anyone. Problem solved!
Obesity is a growing problem (… sorry) in our nation which leads to a host of health related disasters. Beyond that, it can ruin the view at public beaches and pools, so it hurts the tourism industry as well. (It’s sort of a negative trickle-down thing, don’t you know.) Let’s propose a set of benchmarks for restaraunts in the United States to meet. If the average Body Mass Index in the country doesn’t come down by a given percentage each year, these transfatty death merchants would be fined en masse. To avoid the penalties, restaurant owners would have to be able to demonstrate that they only served tofu, garden salads, green tea and room temperature tap water.
Oh, and while we’re at it, every time some gang-banger beats up another gang-banger with a Louisville Slugger, let’s impose a massive fine on Major League Baseball. I’ve still never really gotten over the players’ strike of 1994, and this would be an excellent way to show those bastards that we’re still ticked off.
June 29th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
As a young journalist I was once reminded that a journalist could either be a watchdog or a lapdog, can’t be both. Journalism, like other professions, has undergone a visible “change” in the past three decades. There was a time when many considered it a vocation (a calling), but now it is being increasingly treated as a mere job in any other industry.
Shaun Mullen’s earlier post on TV personality Tim Russert evoked interesting comments in TMV. Who is a real journalist? Can he survive in the changed world and the present media industry/culture? I have to battle with these tough questions often during my lectures on media/journalism.
A friend in India, Sanjay Sethi, draws my attention to a piece by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. Hedges latest book is Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
To take the discussion further, let’s see what Hedges wrote: “The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year…No journalist makes $5 million a year.
“No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview.
“All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system…” More here…
In keeping with the changing times, who knows journalists may soon be known as media workers (belonging, as they do, to the second oldest profession in the world). This would be in line with the change in name in the oldest profession in the world — from prostitute to sex workers….
While the reaction to last week’s Supreme Court decision affirming the right of detainees held at Guantanamo to challenge their detention may well be described as a global sigh of relief, the fact that things were permitted to go so wrong in the Land of Liberty remains shocking to many.
“This is an opportunity for us to reflect on the nature of the torturers and in particular, the manner in which torture can be installed so insidiously within the heart of a liberal democracy. … Nothing can justify the use of torture, not even a sense of extreme urgency. No democracy is immune from the slide into prolonged exception or from the legal death of liberty, and certainly not the French Republic, where anti-terrorist legislation is less and less respectful of fundamental freedoms.”
Away from the public spotlight, a Ventura-based puppet maker who was enchanted by Muppets creator Jim Henson’s creations as a kid has now become the Walt Disney of puppet makers. In reality, he has been on that track now for several years — but today he literally ushers in a revolution in puppetry, ventriloquism and character robots.
You’ll be seeing many more “hands free” puppets and cutesy entertainment robots as we move into the 21st century…
And for that, you can thank Steve Axtell.
Just as Walt Disney took his skills and used them, painstakingly honed them, stuck to his vision, expanded the artistic “product” he offered, and expanded his initial cartoon realm by innovating and using the latest 20th century technology, Axtell has used his skills, painstakingly honed them, stuck to a vision, expanded the artistic “product” he offered and is expanding his initial realm by innovating and using the latest 21st century technology.
The result of all this bursts on the scene today as he begins to offer “hands free remote controlled puppets.”
Disney worked in drawings, film and theme parks. Axtell has worked in drawings that he transformed into latex-faced hand-controlled cartoon-like puppets. As a result, his company Axtell Expressions has had a huge impact on puppetry all over the world since the last quarter of the 20th century. It’s the birthplace to cartoon-like puppets you see on TV, cruise ships, at fairs, at private parties — even in a movie such as the remake of “Planet of the Apes.”
At 12:01 a.m. this morning, eager customers from 12 countries started getting on a waiting list to buy these new-era puppets that could re-define a segment of 21st century entertainment. They’ll pay roughly $3,000 to $4,000 for them ($2500 deposit required) and take a new kind of entertainment once only available in certain venues into everyday places. Details on the new puppets are HERE.
“We are bringing the cost of high level animatronics down to a level that small businesses and entertainers can afford,” Axtell says. “Prior to this only available to theme parks and museums before now. Axtell robots will now be performing at your kid’s next birthday party and greeting you at the door of your favorite hot dog stand.”
The controls? MP3 technology. He’s selling remote control ventriloquists’ puppets, remote control magic puppets (for magicians, non-ventriloquists, educators, churches, corporations, clowns and comedians) and remote control live puppets for live events with a hidden operator. Axtell was always good at steadily churning out a batch of new characters, so expect to see a far bigger line a year from now than the present monkey and bird.
[UPDATE: A few more details via Axtell that again seems similar to Disney reaching out to others who knew technology to put his concepts to life:
Ron Palmer, a 40 year robotics specialist, is making the Axtell characters come to life with this new technology. Ron has made thousands of professional robots and his work has been seen in movies like “Knight Rider” and “Lost In Space”.
Greg Jackson, Axtell’s Studio producer & musical arranger, is producing the specialized mp3 which control the robots and synchronize the actions with the voice. His Masters in music is being applied to this cutting edge concept.]
Axtell has always pushed the envelope. His innovations included the the patented Magic Drawing Board (which comes “alive” after the entertainer draws a face on it via a moveable mouth and eyes…and then can be completely erased), and characters such as an elephant that squirts water through its trunk and a dragon that has smoke (canned mist) come out of his nose.
Puppetry Journal has a long bio piece on Axtell which details his life and his multi-media combination workshop/studio in Ventura in detail HERE (it is a PDF file). It also explains the genesis of these 21st century puppets, the work Axtell put into them, and the collaborators who helped him create them.
To visit the homes of many famous people is usually not to really know them. A conspicuous exception is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the third president’s self-designed masterpiece of Palladian architecture where he lived for 56 historic years — from 1770 before he wrote the Declaration of Independence until his death on July 4, 1826.
Monticello, Italian for “little mountain,” sits atop an 850-foot peak in the Southwest Mountains above Charlottesville, Virginia and the world famous university that he founded. What was so striking for this first-time visitor was how small the house depicted on the flip side of the American nickel and countless other places actually is.
Befitting the life of the great man himself, Monticello seems much larger on the inside. It also is full of hidden passageways, secret chambers and other surprises.
This 322-page exposition on the outer actions and inner thoughts of the most complex and contradictory Founding Father focuses on the 17 turbulent years after Jefferson handed the reins of state to James Madison in March 1809, ducked out of his successor’s inaugural ball through a back door and without fanfare rode into a retirement during which he never stopped fretting about the future of a republic at whose birth he had played such a huge role.
I admit it’s not exactly the normal kind of post for TMV but I had to chime in on one of the best stories to come out of the sports world in quite a while.
The Fresno State University Bulldogs are not exactly who you would pick as serious contenders for a national title. They started out the regular season with a record of 8 and 12 and then turned things around to make it into the national playoffs.
They entered the playoffs ranked 89th and most figured that they would be lucky to make it past a few games but they just kept winning and made it into the College World Series. Even there things looked pretty hopeless. They lost game one of a three game series and went down 5-0 in the 3rd inning of game 2.
But they rallied to win Game 2 by an amazing 19-10 and tonight they completed the run by winning the game and the national title 6-1.
It might normally sound like hyperbole but in this case it is true, literally nobody in the history of college sports has gone from 89th ranked to winning a national title.
So congratulations to the Fresno State Bulldogs….. National Champions.
The research shows that while people claim social norms are the weakest of influences on them, the evidence indicates they are among the strongest. It’s good to see the pols picking up on that:
Most of us are not robots or Vulcans. Though sane, rational beings, we often behave illogically… In making decisions we often suffer from inertia, preferring the status quo to the unknown new. We are also poor at judging risk, probability and our own capabilities. According to Nudge, written by two American academics, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, 90% of drivers think they are better than the average – a mathematical impossibility.
And, most important, we are strongly influenced by those around us, even though we may think we are not. Nudge gives the example of an experiment in which people are shown a number of lines and asked to identify the two that are the same length. The answer is clear, and on their own, people make the right choice. However, if participants are told that a majority before them have made another choice, in many cases they will give the same wrong answer.
These experiments have been replicated around the world. Sunstein and Thaler propose we use this understanding to build what they a call “choice architecture” which can be a powerful tool for positive social change.
“Telling people what others are doing does tend to have an effect,” [Wes Schultz of California State University] said. “But there are instances where it can boomerang – if you are using less energy than your neighbours, say by making a sacrifice by not running your air-conditioning, you can feel like a sucker.” The result: your energy consumption goes up, not down, to meet the norm. The same has been found in studies of student drinking. Told how much the norm is, some students drank less, but others started to drink more.
Schultz’s solution was to add a little nudge. Some of the participants in his study had a smiley face added to their bill if they used less energy than the norm and a sad face if they used more. The results were startling. Among the participants receiving the emoticon, the boomerang effect completely disappeared. High users reduced their consumption by even more and low users kept their own down.
I became familiar with him in the early 1990s for his work on the First Amendment, which I assume grew out of his clerking for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. That he’s rumored to be engaged to Samantha Power and a potential Obama Supreme Court pick only makes the story better.
Parenthetically…
Just as we are now seeing progressives learn the lessons of GOPAC, I expect that we will soon flip the doctrine of original intent right back on those conservatives who have so successfully used it to mask their social agenda. Sunstein will be invaluable in that effort.
See, for example, this excerpt from a 2005 Fresh Air interview, on the history behind the 14th Amendment and our color-blind Consitution. He will be similarly devastating on the 1st and 2nd Amendment, among others.
It emerged in the East Asian press on Sunday that China is seeking to arrange a meeting between George W. Bush and North Korean despot Kim Jong-il, which would take place during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
According to this news account from the South Korean newspaper the Daily North Korea, several Japanese publications published the details over the weekend.
“Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that Taku Yamazaki, the former secretary general of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party told reporters, ‘Chinese Vice President Xi-jinping asked Kim Jong-il to attend the Olympics during their meeting on June 18. … If Kim attends the opening ceremonies, both President Bush and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda would respond favorably. It would provide a good opportunity for a discussion on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.”
“one of purposes of Jinping’s visit to Pyongyang was to bring President Bush and Kim Jong-il together for a meeting at the Olympics. … A high-ranking Chinese official has been visiting Pyongyang on a regular basis to encourage Kim Jong-il to attend. If things go well, relations between the United States and North Korea would improve and China’s national prestige as host of the Six Party Talks would also be enhanced.”
On The Media did its program from China last week. A story on pitching brand China to the world took a fascinating tour of that nation’s emerging business, fashion and cultural media. Almost in passing, there came this important truth:
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Publisher and blogger Hong Huang says that the deepest generational divide separates those born before 1980 and those born after, because of what they saw happening around them, and what they saw on TV.
HONG HUANG: If you want to know [LAUGHS] what contributed most to a peaceful evolution in China, it would be pirated DVD. From cartoons, from Disney to movies, it’s the only thing that broke the censorship barrier. I’m sorry Hollywood lost a lot of money about this, but just consider it a donation to democracy around the world.
“The 2008 Democratic primary race illustrated how, first and foremost, America is a grand spectacle of democracy. … The primaries cost one dearly. They are reserved for highly-trained athletes capable of committing themselves to a quasi-permanent campaign. But they have served to give America some of its biggest stars, like Ronald Reagan who reinvented conservatism to Bill Clinton who introduced a “third way.” And tomorrow …”
The research shows that while people claim social norms are the weakest of influences on them, the evidence indicates they are among the strongest. It’s good to see the pols picking up on that:
