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Harold E. Ford Jr. Discusses Potential Run Against Gillibrand →

I’m a newcomer to New York State politics, too, but personally can’t imagine a less appealing Democratic candidate. I didn’t even include the part about pedicures:

He called for a major reduction in the corporate tax rate and a payroll tax holiday to encourage hiring.

He blasted [Gillibrand’s] support for the proposed health care overhaul, which is expected to cost New York an extra $1 billion a year, and for opposing the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry.

On many days, he is driven to an NBC television studio in a chauffeured car. He and his wife, Emily, a 29-year-old fashion executive, live a few blocks from the Lexington Avenue subway line in the Flatiron district. But Mr. Ford said he takes the subway only occasionally in the winter, to avoid the cold when he cannot hail a cab.

Asked whether he had visited all five boroughs, he mentioned taking a helicopter ride across the city with fellow executives, at the invitation of Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. “The only place I have not spent considerable time is Staten Island,” he said, adding that “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”

He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)

Mr. Ford twice voted for legislation in the House that would make same-sex marriage illegal. In 2006, when Tennessee voters considered a ballot initiative to outlaw the practice, he vowed to support it. “I oppose gay marriage,” he said at the time.

Mr. Ford has repeatedly described himself as “pro-life,” and has voted to ban a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortions and to require that minors receive parental consent before receiving an abortion.

In the interview, however, he said: “To describe me as pro-life is just wrong. I am personally pro-choice and legislatively pro-choice.”

Mr. Ford, a member of the National Rifle Association, also voted for legislation to limit lawsuits against gun makers, and he cast one of the few Democratic votes for a bill to repeal the District of Columbia’s restrictions on guns.

Asked about his own experience with guns, he said he was an occasional bird hunter. “I shoot at things that can’t shoot back,” he said with a smile, “and will continue to do that.”

Mr. Ford has officially been a resident of the state only since 2009, and did not vote in November’s mayoral election.

The 'Going Rogue' Index →

The New Republic indexes Palin’s index-less book. Don’t miss the 40 sub-entries for,

People or groups who have been mean to/spread rumors about/slighted/insulted/otherwise annoyed Sarah Palin

This is better than Chris Beam’s own take, at Slate.

Marriage politics

I happened upon the Clintons’ June 1992 appearance on the Arsenio Hall show, and an exchange struck me:

Arsenio: Through all this controversy, have you ever found yourselves at home, fighting? Honestly?
Hillary: No.
Bill: Nuh uh.
Hillary: Not about anything important. We fight about what movie we want to see…
Arsenio: Because, you know… it’s hard to think that you never at some point said Who is Gennifer? I mean, who the hell is she? You know?
Hillary: I know who she is. I mean, I know who she is.

It struck me in light of this moment in Jodi Kantor’s piece on the Obama marriage for the Sunday Times magazine:

Two months later in the Oval Office, I asked the Obamas just how severe their strains had been. “This was sort of the eye-opener to me, that marriage is hard,” the first lady said with a little laugh. “But going into it, no one ever tells you that. They just tell you, ‘Do you love him?’ ‘What’s the dress look like?’ ”

I asked more directly about whether their union almost came to an end.

“That’s overreading it,” the president said. “But I wouldn’t gloss over the fact that that was a tough time for us.”

Did you ever seek counseling? I asked.

The first lady looked solemnly at the president. He said: “You know, I mean, I think that it was important for us to work this through… . There was no point where I was fearful for our marriage. There were points in time where I was fearful that Michelle just really didn’t — that she would be unhappy…”

“If my ups and downs, our ups and downs in our marriage can help young couples sort of realize that good marriages take work… .” Michelle Obama said a few minutes later in the interview. The image of a flawless relationship is “the last thing that we want to project,” she said. “It’s unfair to the institution of marriage, and it’s unfair for young people who are trying to build something, to project this perfection that doesn’t exist.”

Of course, that was candidate Clinton in the final run-up to November, but to see how readily Hillary answers the question in that clip, the difference is striking.

It reveals as much about divergent political sensibilities as it does about very different marriages. With the Obamas in mind, it’s hard not to look back to 1992 and see a missed opportunity. But if they had answered otherwise, it wouldn’t have been the Bill & Hillary we know, would it?

In our name

Dick Cheney, notorious will-o’-the-constitutional-wisp, would like to see classified documents made public, so long as they confirm the effectiveness of Bush-era torture. The Gabfest has noted that there’s a delicious element to the man who wouldn’t turn over his doodles to the archivist now taking this position. But the New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch perfectly articulates the deeper fallacy of this debate; perhaps the thinking person’s version of the Sheppard Smith outburst I linked last week. Here’s Gourevitch on the Political Scene:

What if [the interrogation method] works but it happens to be a crime? It’s effective to assassinate people. They’re dead and they’re no longer a problem. I would just say the effectiveness debate is a false debate. I think the effectiveness debate is a sort of cloud that Cheney’s trying to cast over it and he’s trying to keep the debate very much also on this idea of “We did this to those terrorists…”

Slowly what’s changing is that we’re starting to realize that when we commit torture, it’s something we’re doing to us. When you look back five years ago at the Abu Ghraib pictures, everybody said, “Wow, why are our soldiers doing those things to those people?” But the important question, too, is why are we doing that to our soldiers – turning them into torturers? Why are we doing that to our nation? Why is this what we’re doing to our laws? Why is this what we’re doing to our political institutions and our standing in the world? And I think that that’s a debate that Dick Cheney knows perfectly well he’s lost catastrophically and cannot win on any grounds.

EDIT: Gourevitch’s above quote appears to have been a rought draft of a Comment piece that ran in the magazine two weeks later. You can read that piece here.

• Hendrik Hertzberg:  I'm calling him a bigot?
• 'Factor' producer Jesse Watters:  Yeah, you said he was a vicious bigot in the article, I have it right here... you don't understand how Newt was talking about people going into a church, screaming obscenities in front of children, throwing things around the congregation –
• HH:  'Gay and secular fascism'? That does not exist. That is a slander and it is bigotry. And I dare you to use that bit on your show. You'll probably just use the bits where I'm wondering what the [REDACTED] is going on because some [REDACTED] comes up to me on the street.
• JW:  Are you going to apologize to Mr. Gingrich?
• HH:  No. Are you going to apologize to me?
• JW:  For what?
• HH:  For invading my pleasant morning.

‘cuz we need you, on the front lines
not just writing for the New York Times.

I’m not sold on the idea of the man as Treasury Secretary, but “Hey, Paul Krugman” is a damn good song. [via Cam]

Missteps involve walking

• WaPo comment thread on Obama's Leno appearance,
• afmo:  wow...what kind of monster mocks the Special Olympics? Disgraceful.
• davenp35:  Obama is disgusting! Imagine what all the papers and channels would be doing tomorrow if Bush had said this?!?
• josephkenny:  Bush did not speak about the Special Olympics at all. In fact, he forbid his Surgeon General to endorse or attend the Special Olympics, due to the fact that they were supported by the Shrivers.
• ...oh.

The Insolvency Dilemma →

Add another notch to the board: Krugman makes the case for widespread insolvency in the troubled banks. He adds to a large number of voices – including my alma mater for my WikiPhD in Economics, Planet Money – who see things that way.

In opposition, of course, are Treasury and the White House, whose continued investment demonstrates their belief that the trouble lies in liquidity. And I find the logic there irresistible: look at the markets day to day - everyone is freaking out. Toxic assets aside (or even, to some extent, inclusive!), we have to be experience unprecedented illiquidity. Right?

Folks much smarter than me disagree, but I’ve yet to be swayed by a framing of the current climate in a way that supports their view. Treasury isn’t helping this much now, but if they can eventually inject confidence back into the system, it seems like assets good and bad are bound to recover a great deal of value. That’s liquidity.

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Pentagon to Lift Press Ban on Coffins at Dover - It’s the little things, people.