Obama signs Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act today, the first bill he signed. Great news. And yet another example of Republican stupidity when it comes to empowering the oppressed. Bush opposed the bill. Which got him and the GOP exactly nothing, other than a year or two of freedom to discriminate. But they handed Obama an opportunity to take the moral high ground on a silver platter. Ledbetter herself stood right behind Obama as he signed it. With one vote on the Supreme Court (it was a 5-4 decision), conservatives created a liberal martyr and symbol of injustice, whose name is now enshrined in the name of a law. Just amazing.

I'm not going to comment on the bill itself, as much has been written about it. For the best tearjerking perspective, read Gail Collins. And remember your grandmothers. And your mothers. Or, if you are a mother or grandmother, know that we are thinking of you.

Roland Burris

It looks like Roland Burris will be Obama's replacement in the United States Senate. That's nice for him.

I find it difficult to get worked up over this. It looks like the Senate Dems made a minor tactical mistake when they said that they weren't going to seat him, but these things blow over quickly.

I'm reminded of the old saying that those who like sausage and legislation should watch neither being made. Gamesmanship has been part of politics since politics was invented. This is all perfectly normal. I'm sure that, if you look into the history of Congress, there have been many episodes that are variations on this. Someone in the throes of a scandal does something weird or stupid or against the interests of his/her colleagues, which causes a strong adverse reaction.

What's different about this scandal is that it's taking place on a national (or world) stage, whereas before these things happened behind closed doors, or only within a select group of people. So it seems strange only because so many people aren't used to it. But it's really pretty normal.

Well, maybe not quite "normal." The circumstances of every scandal are unique. That's one reason they're so interesting. But Blago hasn't been convicted, and Burris hasn't done anything wrong, besides having a large ego. But, as Gail Collins points out:

Worst-case scenario, Illinois gets an overly self-involved lawmaker who seems, at this point in his life, to have a tendency to say things that sound somewhat silly. If that was a disqualification, the Senate could never meet a quorum call again.

The people of Illinois could do worse. And they have.

End of the year quizzes

One thing I like about the end of the year is the year-end quizzes. Here are three: two from the LA Times, and one from Gail Collins of the NY Times. I did pretty well on all three - only got one wrong on Collins' quiz!

LA Times Business Section 20 Questions. I got 16 out of 20, which qualified me as a "smarty pants," the highest rating.

LA Times - from the Op-Ed page (and therefore much more general). I got 15 out of 18, but several of them are multiple choice, so I'm going to give myself an A.

Gail Collins - because you know it's going to be funny. I only got one wrong!

Good luck!

Gail Collins: One pundit who gets Obama

I love Gail Collins. She's very sensible and calm, and has the most wonderfully dry sense of humor. And she's not angry, which is great. Her column on Obama and his alleged recent policy shifts is just wonderful:

Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.

Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?

When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a “new consensus,” he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.

Bingo. This is why I am surprised when liberals accuse Obama of moving towards the center. That's where he has always been. His raison d'etre, his modus operandi is to find a middle ground. If you deeply, passionately committed to one position, that will probably piss you off. If you are interested in resolving differences and getting things done, it's much more your style. Obama is not an ideological liberal. The sooner liberals figure that out, the better they will be able to deal with Obama.

Obama usually ends up on the liberal side of issues, but not because he's a liberal. He ends up there because he thinks things through, and usually ends up on the liberal side of an argument. But not necessarily.

Gail Collins explains it perfectly:

if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity.
. . .
Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance.

I love that: dumb-avoidance. If there is one thing that Americans should be in favor of in their next president, it is dumb-avoidance. I think many, many Americans, of all ideological persuasions, will agree that the President of the United States should be smart.

What George Bush demanded of his supporters was unthinking, unswerving loyalty. What Barack Obama demands of his supporters is the exact opposite. Barack Obama demands of his supporters that they adhere to that old-fashioned definition of what liberals do: Barack Obama expects his supporters to think for themselves.

More props for Hillary

Gail Collins has a good take on Hillary in today's column. She drops her usual gently sarcastic tone, which I love, and writes it straight. Which, this time around, I also love.

This is one of the things you have to admire about Hillary Clinton. She still enjoys the work.

Yes she does, and that is something I admire about her. I think I've only seen Hillary in person once. It was in DC, in some kind of office building, and she was on her way to some official event. I remember she walked down the hallway, surrounded by aides, as if she were in total control. Which she was.

By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

Which is one hell of an accomplishment.

Her campaign was messy, and it made some fatal tactical errors. But nobody who sent her a donation could accuse her of not giving them their money’s worth.

This was clearly money very well-spent. I might donate to her campaign.

For all her vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.

It’s not the same as winning the White House. But it’s a lot.

It's huge.

I haven't watched Hillary's concession speech, because I'm at work today, and I think I might cry.

Gail Collins on John McCain on Ledbetter

Gail Collins strikes me as a combination of Judi Dench and Tony Soprano. She comes across as this nice, sweet old lady, who is just the nicest neighbor you could possibly have, probably a perfect grandmother. Her columns are almost gentle, soothing odes to current events. And then, while she's smiling and pouring some tea, she quietly slips in a shiv and just devastates someone. Today her target is John McCain, as it probably will be, off and on, for several months. Specifically, it's his position on the Lilly Ledbetter legislation that failed to pass the Senate. Ledbetter is the woman who worked at Goodyear for 20 years, and discovered very late that she was being paid less than the men she worked with, even less than those with less seniority. She sued and won, but her case was turned down by the Supreme Court, 5-4. This legislation was designed to correct that. The Democrats failed to beat the Republicans. The Dems got 56 votes, but that wasn't enough to defeat a GOP filibuster. John McCain would have voted against it, but he was otherwise engaged:

John McCain — this is the guy, you may remember, who’s going to be the Republican presidential nominee — has been visiting the poor lately. Appalachia, New Orleans, Rust Belt factory towns. This is a good thing, and we applaud his efforts to show compassion and interest in people for whom his actual policies are of no use whatsoever.

I honestly think John McCain, unlike George Bush, wants to do good things for people less fortunate than himself. I just don't think he has any idea how, other than what every other Republican believes. And I think he sees national security as much more important. Collins is a little harsher:

McCain’s vote wouldn’t have made any difference. But his reaction does suggest that on his list of presidential priorities, the problems of working women come in somewhere behind the rising price of after-dinner mints.

McCain is going to end up looking like Scrooge in this campaign. But he's the one who decided to run for president in the shadow of George W. Bush.

Gail Collins on McCain's economic proposals

A day after David Brooks praised John McCain's foreign policy speech for being level-headed and NotBush, Gail Collins takes apart McCain's economic policies. Which is much more fun. I love Gail Collins. She always writes part of her column in a calm, soothing tone of voice, as if she was that nice lady who lives next door and always has the neighbors over for tea. And then she slips it in:

[A]t bottom, his economic vision makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. He’s going to keep the Bush tax cuts, continue our $3-trillion-and-counting war in Iraq and decrease corporate taxes. And how is he going to pay for it? By getting rid of pork-barrel earmarks.

How reasonable is this? Not very. Let's go with a simple domestic metaphor.

And I am planning to remodel my house by purchasing a tube of Elmer’s glue.

It's fascinating how a man who is so thoughtful and articulate in one respect, i.e. foreign policy, can be so out to lunch in another.