Gayle Trotter has an excellent take on the Time mom and one part of her piece from today particularly stood out to me:

With the Grumet breastfeeding shot, the Time editors gain another entry in the pantheon of controversial magazine covers. They managed that feat this time without the downside of allegations like those surrounding their “photo illustration” of the O.J. Simpson mug shot in 1994, showing Simpson’s face darkened and giving him “a more sinister appearance,” according to critics.

Vanity Fair inaugurated a whole new genre of cover photo with Annie Leibovitz’s arresting shot of a very pregnant and equally nude Demi Moore.

Since then, a gaggle of pregnant stars have followed suit (birthday suit, that is), including Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Cindy Crawford, Miranda Kerr, Paula Patton, Claudia Schiffer, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and—well, if the trend continues, it will be easier to list the celebrity moms who have not yet appeared on a magazine cover great with child and in the buff.

Pop culture is the mirror that reflects our deepest insecurities, aspirations, and inquiry. The various forms of media, art, novels, nonfiction, and movies are an unending hall of mirrors of competing viewpoints.

Last week, I wrote about how the pop culture moment precipitated by the Time cover reflects our “mom anxieties.” The ideal of female beauty associated with pregnancy and fertility (that big = beautiful) has left our culture. Fertility is no longer something that we value, but something that we repress with latex and pills. That point struck me again as I read the above excerpt of Gayle’s post.

Compare the Time mom to the pregnant celebrities that have appeared on the covers of various major magazines. These celebs are an exception to the rule that I wrote about several days ago. They are big, sensual, and womanly. They are all flesh and curves and soft features. Their pictures call to mind other Great Mothers in art history (the Mariah Carey one specifically reminds me of Boticelli's Birth of Venus). But the Time mom doesn't. She looks boyish in her tank, skinny jeans, flats, and pulled-back hair. I'm shocked that her breasts, as small as they are, are holding any milk at all. Her slight and tone frame suggests athleticism. The look on her face is triumphant. Everything about her, except her nearly-exposed nipple, suggests masculinity. Yet she now represents attached motherhood. It's ironic.

Here's a fascinating point about how Republicans talk about immigration from a Newsweek interview with New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, who's been mentioned on one occasion or another as a potential Vice Presidential nominee:

As we sit down at a local Starbucks, I ask about immigration. It’s a topic she has been reluctant to discuss since winning the Republican primary in 2010, so what comes next is surprising: a battle plan that contradicts nearly everything the GOP has been doing and saying since 2007, Romney’s “self-deportation” strategy included. “‘Self-deport?’ What the heck does that mean?” Martinez snaps. “I have no doubt Hispanics have been alienated during this campaign. But now there’s an opportunity for Gov. Romney to have a sincere conversation about what we can do and why.”

Naturally, Martinez has some suggestions. First, Republicans should remind Latinos that Obama pledged to pass comprehensive immigration reform by the end of his initial year in office, but “didn’t even have the courage to try.” Next, the GOP should outflank the president--on the left--by proposing its own comprehensive plan. “I absolutely advocate for comprehensive immigration reform,” Martinez says, , sipping a caramel macchiato. “Republicans want to be tough and say, ‘Illegals, you’re gone.’ But the answer is a lot more complex than that.” Martinez envisions an approach “with multiple levels”: increased border security; deportation for criminals; a guest-worker program for people who want “to go freely back and forth across the border to work”; a DREAM Act-style pathway to citizenship, through the military or college, for children brought here illegally by their parents; and a visa (coupled with a “penalty” or a “tagback”) that allows rest of the illegal population to remain in the U.S. while they follow standard naturalization procedures.

Martinez’s point is not that Republicans should peddle so-called “amnesty.” In New Mexico, she’s taken a lot of heat from Latinos for repeatedly pushing to repeal a state law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses; she also opposes a standalone DREAM Act, arguing that politicians can’t “fix [immigration] by saying, ‘Here’s the DREAM Act and we’re done. It has to be part of a larger plan.” She simply believes that a more pragmatic approach will help Republicans in the long run, particularly if it’s paired with the sort of issues-based appeal that inspired her to switch parties and a more aggressive campaign to recruit Hispanic candidates for local office. Maybe then the GOP can finally do what she did in her first statewide contest: approach the magic 40-percent mark among Latino voters. That alone would be enough to swing a presidential election.

“We’ve got to stop with the rhetoric,” Martinez says on her way out of Starbucks. “I’m so tired of the rhetoric. ‘Lower taxes,’ you know. ‘More opportunity.’ Da da da. It’s this five-liner of nothingness. There have to be some distinctions for people to latch onto.”

This last point is particularly key, and I wonder if it's been lost on too many of those on the right. Hispanics are often painted as communities of outreach met with a broad brush of aspiration and pablum. But in reality, the overlaps on specific policy issues should allow for much more targeted appeals. Martinez's dismissal of the "five liner of nothingness" is refreshing to hear from a Republican, and others would be wise to heed it.

Loretta Lynn, the eighty-year-old country legend, has a new book out called Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics, which is a complete delight to read. Like her best-selling autobiography Coal Miner's Daughter (1976), adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film by the same name in 1980, Lynn's latest book is all about her fascinating life, the interesting people she knew, and how she came to write her chart-topping songs.

Lynn's plucky personality leaps off every page of this book--her voice so real and so sincere as she tells the reader about growing up in the south as a dirt-poor girl. She tells her stories in a folksy, conversational way that makes you forget you're even reading. It's more like you're listening to her talk at a concert in between songs.

She opens Honky Tonk Girl with these lines: "This is me. Loretta. And this whole book is me, too. These lyrics cover fifty years of my sittin' down with my pencil and my guitar and writing about my life."

Lynn taught herself to play the guitar after her husband "Doo" bought her a $17 one for her 21st birthday. When she was 24, he encouraged her to become a singer--and she did. Doo and Lynn got married, by the way, when she was 13-years-old and, despite his philandering ways, they stayed married until he died in 1996.

In the book, Lynn tells us about those early years of her marriage when she was first learning to write songs (via Amazon):

I wrote the song "The Story of My Life" just because I was born in old Kentucky in them hills where folks are lucky!

I wrote this song in about 1959. It was one of my first ones. Doo and I'd just started, and I was learning how to write songs. For me, I could and can only write what I've lived. I recorded this song on my very first session on Zero Records and forgot about it! Patsy, on the other hand, didn't. I told ya'll she is my biggest fan. She loved it, drug it out, and wrote a couple of new verses to it, played it for Jack White, and the rest is history. Now I can forget about this song again (laughing)!

The lyrics to the song are here.

The Lynn song that I love most is "Little Red Shoes," which she recorded with Jack White, who produced her latest album Van Lear Rose (2004). There are two stories here: the story she tells in the song and the story of how the song came to be. Here's the latter:

Jack White had this melody track, and he and I were talking about trying to write a song together to this melody. So we're sitting in the sutio listening and talking. Jack was having them play the track over and over for me so I maybe could think of a song title or words. But he pulled a fast one on me! I started telling him a story about when I was a little girl and my daddy and mommy had saved up enough money and they bought me a pair of little red shoes. They were the prettiest things I ever saw. That same year I got really sick, and the town doctor told mommy I might die, and I almost did. My mommy put my little red shoes away thinking I would never get to wear them. Well, I did get better and I did wear those shoes, and how I loved them! I was just sitting and talking to Jack, telling him all about this. I didn't know he was taping me. When we were done he said, "Well, there's the song!"

I said, "What?"

He played it back to me, and I said, "Are you kidding me?"

He said, "No," and he meant it.

Funny thing is a lot of people have told me how much they love that track of me just talking to Jack's music.

And, again, here are they words to the song "Little Red Shoes." They're adorable. You can also listen to it. I just listened to the song again and it made me realize how right Elvis Costello is when he writes the following in the foreword to the book (but about another song): "Now it was time for Loretta to fix one line that had dropped out on a live recording. I was gathering up our various drafts as Loretta slipped into the vocal booth. As I was closing my guitar case, I heard what I took to be a tape of the flawed live recording. Looking up, I saw it was actually Loretta delivering a first-take performance that few singers could achieve without an hour of warm-up. No preparation, no warning. She is right there when the red light goes on."

Her rags-to-riches life story, which has resonated with millions of people already, will soon hit Broadway. Lynn has recently tapped the buzzy young actress Zooey Deschanel to play her in a new musical about Lynn's life named after her autobiography Coal Miner's Daughter: "Well, there's a little girl back stage that's going to do the play of 'Coal Miner's Daughter' on Broadway," Lynn told the Los Angeles Times. "Zooey, where you at, honey?"

Just like that quote, the thing that makes Honky Tonk Girl so fun to read is Lynn's twangy charm. You can buy the book here.

Earlier this week, Common Cause filed a lawsuit that seeks to declare unconstitutional Rule XXII of the Senate (the filibuster rule), which requires an affirmative vote by 60 members of the Senate to bring a close to debate. The Rule has this oddity:  it takes more votes to close a debate than it does to pass the measure. 

It is easy to think of a thousand reasons why that supermajority requirement is a good idea—or a bad one. At certain times we all think that some legislation should proceed more rapidly, while at other times we would all like to stop legislation in its tracks. It is not possible to mold the filibuster rule to the peculiarities of each individual case, so that all concerned are required to take the bitter with the sweet once the rule is in effect.

In principle, we should all be ambivalent about the rule. In my view, the ideal Senate rule would look like this: it would take a simple majority to close debate on a measure to repeal existing legislation, but a 60 percent (or more) rule to pass new legislation. But there is not a shred of evidence in support of this approach in either past practice or constitutional text.

Indeed, there are two simple features of the Constitution that in all likelihood doom this lawsuit to defeat, both of which are noted in the complaint. The first is that there are six specific provisions (dealing with impeachment, expulsion, veto overrides, treaties and amendments) that require some supermajority vote to carry the day.  The second is that the Senate has -- under Article I, § 5, cl. 2, -- the power to “determine the rules of its proceedings.”

From the first, it seems clear that there is no indisputable constitutional preference for majority rule.  From the second, it is clear that the Senate and not the courts should determine its internal operation.

Common Cause huffs and puffs to escape the obvious. But it seems likely that this case is doomed from the start.

Once people start laughing at you, it's awfully hard to come back.

In an act of hubris that's stunning even for our most ego-maniacal president, it seems that he's inserted himself into the short biographies of other presidents in the White House website.  From Commentary:

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography onwww.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford). Here are a few examples:

• On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.

• In a 1946 letter to the National Urban League, President Truman wrote that the government has “an obligation to see that the civil rights of every citizen are fully and equally protected.” He ended racial segregation in civil service and the armed forces in 1948. Today the Obama administration continues to strive toward upholding the civil rights of its citizens, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, allowing people of all sexual orientations to serve openly in our armed forces.

• President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare signed (sic) into law in 1965—providing millions of elderly healthcare stability. President Obama’s historic health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, strengthens Medicare, offers eligible seniors a range of preventive services with no cost-sharing, and provides discounts on drugs when in the coverage gap known as the “donut hole.”

• On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.

• In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

Hilarious.  And now the subject of a fast-growing Twitter hashtag -- #obamainhistory -- that's worth following.

President Obama is now, officially, a joke.

Attention Ricochet Members,

We are all moving to Weston, Florida. Why, you ask? Because of this, from Governing:

Weston, Fla., an affluent suburb 25 miles northwest of Miami, has one of the most unusual charters of any city: it specifically discourages the city from hiring employees.

... Since its inception, the city has used contractors to fulfill virtually every city function. Today, the city of 65,000 has a budget of $121 million -- and just nine of its own employees. "I see no reason why we'd ever have to increase the number of employees," says Mayor Eric Hersh, who’s led the city for over 10 years. 

All total, the city has about 35 contracts for services such as parks maintenance, engineering, code enforcement, building permits, public works and custodial service. Fire and police service has been contracted out to Broward County.

The city has about 285 full-time equivalent employees who are "dedicated staff" provided by contractors. They work in city facilities and are treated like city employees, but on paper, they are actually employees of private companies that get paid by the city.

The result is a situation that many city managers and mayors may envy. City leaders don't have to deal with labor disputes or union negotiations; they aren't struck with ballooning pension obligations; and they aren't dealing with painful and politically unpopular layoffs.

Many of the contracts are for a particular level of service, as opposed to a particular number of employees. When the amount of work facing the building department slowed during the recession, for example, the city didn’t have to continue to pay idle workers. "That’s the vendor’s issue of what he does with the staff," says Daniel Stermer, who served as Weston city commissioner from 2002 to 2010 . "We’re not paying for it unless somebody’s using it."

Anytime that I get into a dispute with a liberal who believes that my conservative/libertarian fusionist worldview would deprive poor children of educations or leave old ladies out on the street to die (that one's for your French brother-in-law, James), I always tell them the same thing: just because government decides to finance a good doesn't mean that government should build the bureaucracy to provide that good. Little did I know that all this time there was a city living out that mantra.

Check out this French interview of Will Smith. He's explaining why he's happy to pay income taxes at a higher rate than less wealthy individuals. At 1:20 into the video, he's told that President-elect Francois Hollande wants to raise the top marginal tax rate to 75 percent.

Of all the words a White House speechwriter pens, perhaps none bring greater pleasure than those for a Medal of Honor recipient. In my time I presided over the speeches about a number of these men, and it brought tremendous satisfaction to help bring some deserved attention to the most selfless of our citizens.

Today President Obama bestowed our nation's highest wasrd for valor on Army Specialist 4 Leslie H. Sabo, Jr. Like so many others who have been so honored, Specialist Sabo died in the action that earned him this distinction -- during a secret mission to Cambodia to prevent North Vietnamese forces from launching attacks into South Vietnam.  In other words, in a long-forgotten battle that was part of a lost war that for so many of us is ancient history.

The cliche is that medals are just a bit of tin. I'm not so sure Rose Mary Sabo-Brown, his widow, would agree. Properly understood, medals are not for the fallen; they are to remind the living of the great debt we owe to those who put themselves in harm's way for our liberty. In this case, it's a great story of what the White House rightly calls "indomitable courage" and "complete disregard for his own safety" -- which saved the lives of his brothers-in-arms. 

And I for one never tire of hearing these stories, however late they may be in coming. The Army web page for Specialist Sabo is here. I would post President Obama's remarks but they are not yet up on the White House web page. 

Arthur Brooks opens the third chapter of his book about free enterprise with a story adapted from Jonathan Haidt, of The Righteous Mind, about a family dog. The children want a dog desperately, and implore their mother for one. The father is unconvinced, and so a period of bargaining follows. Eventually, he gives in. But his worries are swept away by the loving pet, who they name Muffin. Muffin is not a hassle after all, and is soon beloved by all. But then, tragedy: a squirrel across the road, an oncoming car, and smack, Muffin is gone. The family is horrified and aghast, distraught at the loss. So upon consideration, they gather the dog’s lifeless form up, take it inside the house, to cook and eat it.

What? Did you recoil as I did? Why? It’s perfectly legal. Heck, in other countries, who knows what goes on! But Brooks’ point is: what’s wrong with that story? The reaction you’re having right now is one of basic deeply ingrained morality – only after a few minutes have passed do you shift to making an argument based on a logical basis. Brooks uses this story, along with heaps of social science data, to emphasize the power of moral arguments over logical, data-based arguments when it comes to evaluating what has the most impact on the human mind. He then connects this to the vast maw of emptiness on the right when it comes to advancing the moral argument for free enterprise, tackling issues of income inequality, fairness, and a true understanding of earned success. So long as those on the right are making their case primarily with charts and graphs, and not arguments based on essential moral truths, they are losing.

The quarrel, as he sees it, is between redistributive fairness ("It is fair to equalize rewards. Inequality is inherently unfair.") and meritocratic fairness ("Fairness means matching reward to merit. Forced equality is inherently unfair.") Brooks rejects the idea that fairness is an inherently subjective issue, and draws a distinction between the attitudes people have towards rewards they view as unearned (entitlements) and rewards they view as earned (such as better salaries for better workers in the same job). He writes: “If individual opportunity is a sham - if the system is fixed and some people get the breaks only by virtue of luck or birth or skin color - then inequality isn't fair at all. We should redistribute wealth the same way we should redistribute unearned candy. But if America is an opportunity society - if, in fact, people have the chance to work harder, get more education, and innovate - then rewarding merit is fair, and for some people to make more money than others is good and just.”

Since taking over the American Enterprise Institute several years ago, Brooks has become the Steve Jobs of the right’s think-tank world – a charismatic speaker, eclectic thinker, and unconventional thought leader who is uniquely attuned to the way people think, live, and converse in the real world. He is a think tank president as happy to quote Bono as he is Friedman. In the Wall Street Journal, he writes that “I learned to appreciate the American free enterprise system by quitting a job in Spain.”  This is inspirational stuff. But the implicit conclusion of his book is not an uncontroversial one: it is, properly understood, an indictment of the right’s way of doing things in the post-Reagan era. Brooks is at heart a culture warrior, and he alone within the right’s intellectual leadership appears to understand that the battle over the future of American free enterprise and democratic capitalism is inherently a battle taking place within our culture, in normal conversation and interaction between citizens, not via Powerpoints. 

Why did the right fail? The assumption was simple: conservatives thought they had won. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the explosive economic growth of the Reagan years, the leading voices of the right concluded that they no longer needed to advance the cause for free enterprise to the country, and certainly not to their own people. Yet slowly but surely, the left’s attempts to redefine the conversation about fairness and equality encroached steadily into the right’s territory. Consider evangelical Christians, of which Brooks considers himself one (albeit a practicing Catholic), as the population at the center of this tug of war. The language of social justice deployed by the progressive left is targeted directly at the Christian populations who have been voting for Republicans purely for reasons of culture for years, and who harbor a latent populism and a dislike for the super-rich. They care about human flourishing more than wealth, and while they know capitalism can deliver the latter, they’re not sure about the former.

Beyond the matter of communication, the right failed to guard against the chief perversions of free enterprise which lead to distrust and unfairness. One motive comes from Washington, using taxpayer money to reward friends and corporate cronies; and the other from Wall Street, which pushes the costs of its mistakes onto society through bailouts, trade quotas, sweetheart loan deals, and corporate subsidies. One robs the taxpayer to hand out political kickbacks; another robs them for investor profit. The working public assumes the risk while others reap the rewards. A century after Weber’s Protestant Ethic, the young Huckabee voter is less enthused about the McMansion and more concerned than ever that their personal success benefits the poor and needy. With the arrival of the economic crisis, the bottom fell out: after two decades of failing to make the case for free enterprise, the right saw support for democratic capitalism plummet. 

The lesson to take from Brooks’ book is a straightforward one: those who favor the American system of free enterprise must learn to advocate for it clearly, in the language that has the most impact on those who can be persuaded. There are clear arguments to be made, and Brooks makes them. But if the free enterprise system which made America the envy of the world is going to endure, the right cannot afford for him to make them alone. 

From The Weekly Standard:

A new poll of Arkansas Democrats shows Barack Obama receiving support from only 45 percent of Democratic primary voters in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District, while 38 percent support his underfunded and relatively unknown primary challenger, Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe, Jr. Seventeen percent are undecided in the district poll.

Oh my. That image is via @hradzka, by the way. My husband says that Arkansas has an open primary. So if GOP voters wanted to crossover and vote for Wolfe, he's only down 7.

Last week it was Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Today, it's Deb Fischer in Nebraska.

In both cases these candidates took the ObamaCare Repeal Pledge. And in both cases, we at Independent Women's Voice communicated their signatures via paid advertising to make sure that voters in their respective states knew that they had signed the Pledge.  And because of that, the voters in those states knew that they would, if elected, do everything in their power to see that this government take-over of our private health care decisions is fully repealed.

In both states, the voters rewarded the candidates who signed the Pledge.

Voters recognize that we must hold our political leaders accountable for their actions. This point is particularly poignant for the voters in Nebraska, home of the Sen. Ben Nelson and the Cornhusker Kickback.

It was the power of the issue of ObamaCare that compelled Sen. Nelson into retirement. And it was the power of ObamaCare, and the commitment shown by signing the Repeal Pledge, that helped carry Deb Fischer to victory last night.

Other candidates around the country should take notice. Voters see the Repeal Pledge not only as a sign of a candidate's sincerity about walking the talk, but as a larger philosophical marker that they appreciate that this isn't just about cost, but about liberty.

I hope that candidates and incumbents alike will read the tea leaves, see what has happened in Indiana and last night in Nebraska, and be encouraged by their constituents to sign the ObamaCare Repeal Pledge (http://www.therepealpledge.com/) immediately.

If you've followed the news about Newark mayor Cory Booker rescuing citizens from a house fire or shoveling out snow when city services got overwhelmed, you may enjoy this video pitting him against Gov. Chris Christie. Done for a state-level correspondents' dinner, it makes you wonder if New Jersey elected officials could teach other states' politicos about humor:

It must be, according to Rich Cohen at the Wall Street Journal:

Having not won a World Series since 1908, and having last appeared on that stage in 1945—a war year in which the professional leagues were still populated by has-beens and freaks—the Chicago Cubs must contemplate the only solution that might restore the team to glory: Tear down Wrigley Field.

Destroy it. Annihilate it. Collapse it with the sort of charges that put the Sands Hotel out of its misery in Vegas. Implosion or explosion, get rid of it. That pile of quaintness has to go. Not merely the structure, but the ground on which it stands.

As a Cardinals fan, I can't get on board with any plan to improve the lot of the Cubbies. Still, he makes a persuasive case. The park maintains no home field advantage on account of how different weather systems change the ideal play so drastically, he says. Also, the stadium is so nice that winning games becomes less important to fans than just having a nice outing at the park. He even blames the way fans handled Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series on the park.

It sounds crazy, but I think he may be onto something.

We've all known this was inevitable for months. But today it starts:

The real question here is whether Romney learned anything from the beta version of this attack that he faced during the primary race. Will he attempt to dismiss these charges with a wave of his hand? Will he offer a narrow, specific defense of his time at Bain? Or will he turn this into a broad, thematic defense of capitalism and call out the economic illiteracy of those attacking him? The response he chooses will go a long way towards determining how this issue plays out over the next several months.

Would love to discuss the California budget.

~~~~~

Editor's Note: Welcome back to Ricochet, Mr. Murdoch.

As residents of California know, the state had a projected $9.2 billion deficit as recently as January.  But May's updated projection shows that California is on track to run a deficit of nearly $16 billion for the year.  Below is Gov. Jerry Brown's weekend address to the people of California.  Brown hopes to pass a November ballot initiative which would raise sales and income taxes.

What do Ricochet Members think of the Governor's proposal?  What should the state do to return to fiscal sanity?

Last week could not have gone better for the Obama campaign. The press coverage to which the administration and campaign have grown accustomed somehow became even more fawning when the President announced he was finally copping to being a supporter of redefining marriage to include same-sex unions. And that was just the first day. Then the Washington Post reported its bombshell story painting a teenage Mitt Romney as an anti-gay bully. Romney supporters remained somewhat calm about the President's announcement and the media onslought, prompting many to think that support for traditional marriage laws was a liability.

Take it from there CBS/New York Times poll:

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a slight edge over President Obama in the race for the White House in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

According to the survey, conducted May 11-13, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Romney, while 43 percent say they would opt for Mr. Obama. Romney's slight advantage remains within the poll's margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.

Last month, a CBS News/New York Times poll showed Mr. Obama and Romney locked in a dead heat, with both earning 46 percent support among registered voters. Polls conducted in February and March showed Mr. Obama with an advantage over Romney, while a January poll showed Romney edging out Mr. Obama 47 percent to 45 percent. Another January poll showed the two tied.

At least the Obama campaign has done a good job with campaigning for women's votes, right?

The survey also shows Romney leading Obama among women, with whom the president has consistently been ahead, prompting some complaints from Team Obama about how it was taken and whether it's accurate.

I would mock them for this complaint except that previous polls really did see dramatic support among women for Obama.

No matter what, this poll showing the cost of President Obama's same-sex marriage support and limits to his favorability has got to be pleasing to Team Romney.

Oh, one more thing. The New York Times reports:

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought that Mr. Obama had made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, with nearly half of Democrats agreeing.

Hmmm.

What's more audacious than hope? Cynicism. That's the lesson that President Barack Obama shared with Barnard College graduates yesterday in a commencement address.

The poor women in the graduating class had to stand in as props for the so-called "war on women." On a day celebrating their individual achievements, the graduates surely expected something more than focus-grouped, poll-driven drivel, but that's all they got.

Obama's speech was so cynical that he couldn't help but acknowledge its cynicism. "Nothing worse than commencement speakers droning on about bygone days," he said after already droning on about the bygone days before iPods. When he talked about how America would be better off with more women in power, he added, "Now, I recognize that’s a cheap applause line when you're giving a commencement at Barnard."

In The Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank summed up the speech up by writing that Obama's pandering to women had earned him a new distinction as the first female president.

Obama was still early in his address when he acknowledged that his praise for the young generation of women is “a cheap applause line when you’re giving a commencement at Barnard.”

But Obama was being modest. He didn’t deliver a cheap applause line. He delivered an entire speech full of them. His reelection campaign has been working for months to exploit the considerable gender gap, which puts him far ahead of likely GOP rival Mitt Romney among women. But Monday’s activities veered into pandering, as Obama brazenly flaunted his feminine mystique.

Here's what the GOP wants you thinking about for the 2012 election:

Here's what Obama and his allies want you focused on:

As Ricochet's resident San Franciscan, I bring tidings of important news: America's sole unionized strip club, finding itself unable to turn a profit, is on course to shut its doors.

Touted as "the most pro-feminist strip club in the city–and maybe in history," the Lusty Lady joined the SEIU fifteen years ago.  Shortly thereafter, the business began to falter (no doubt on account of the effect unionization had on profits) and the club's exotic dancers banded together to purchase it for $400,000, transforming it into a co-op.

From there, the Lusty Lady's business tactics became progressively more San Franciscan.  For example, the board of directors prioritized political correctness over profits which led them to employ "diverse body types and ethnically diverse dancers."

And so the business has driven itself to the brink of extinction.  But lest you start worrying about the strippers who may find themselves without a dancing gig, take heart — a number of them have useful credentials that should help them line up other prospects:

"Since 2008 my paychecks have been going down, down, down," said Bijou. "I'm making half of what I was making when I started in 2005."

She says she's out of the Pleasure Booth and out in the job market, where she hopes to use the doctorate she says she earned in sociology. [emphasis added]

Farhad Manjoo has written a piece headlined "What Eduardo Saverin owes America. (Hint: Nearly everything.)" It's about how the young Facebook entrepreneur immigrated to the United States from Brazil in order to avoid kidnapping and extortion from thugs.

The Saverins did well and he ended up at Harvard. Manjoo argues that he owes his success to the U.S. government. The background to this story is that the U.S. government has taken on the extortion and thuggery role, by trying to take hundreds of millions of dollars Saverin earned, and so the Singapore-based Saverin decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

Would Eduardo Saverin have been successful anywhere else? Maybe, but not as quickly, and not as spectacularly. It was only thanks to America—thanks to the American government’s direct and indirect investments in science and technology; thanks to the U.S. justice system; the relatively safe and fair investment climate made possible by that justice system; the education system that educated all of Facebook’s workers, and on and on—it was only thanks to all of this that you know anything at all about Eduardo Saverin today.

Manjoo says that this isn't fair. Worse, it's "ungrateful and it's indecent." So Manjoo comes up with a list of all the ways that the U.S. government is responsible for his entrepreneurial success and deserves to take a cut of hundreds of millions of dollars for it.

First and most obviously, he lived a life of relative safety in Miami, something that wasn’t guaranteed for him in Brazil. Second, also obvious: If Saverin hadn’t come to America, he wouldn’t have met Mark Zuckerberg, and—not to put too fine a point on it—if Saverin hadn’t met Zuckerberg, Saverin wouldn’t be Saverin.

Third: Harvard. Zuckerberg and his cofounders met in the dorms, and while Harvard is a nominally private institution, it enjoys significant funding and protections from the government. In 2011, Harvard received $686 million, about 18 percent of its operating revenue, from federal grants; that’s almost as much as it received from student tuition.

Fourth is the government's role in creating the Internet, Fifth is the judicial system.

Gee, it's almost like Saverin had nothing whatsoever to do with his own success.

This serfdom model is so deeply unattractive, isn't it? So un-American. Besides, now that other countries can compete more easily for talent and capital, it's a waste of time. Why waste time whining when you could work to create a more competitive or fair taxation policy?

Do any of you have a secret nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium hidden in your basement?

I never would have thought to ask, but just want to make sure. Anything else you want to get off your chest?

That it is high time to quit is the claim of an advertisement that appeared on p. A5 in last Tuesday’s Washington Post. An earlier missive along the same lines appeared in The New York Times on 9 March, and I will have to say that I heartily welcome the attacks mounted by the Freedom from Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin—for they are designed to force the lukewarm to ponder what they really think, get off the fence, and take a stand. In this regard, they are doing for the Catholic Church in the United States what the hierarchy has shied away from doing for almost a half century.

“It’s your moment of truth,” the advertisement begins. “It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs: Whose side are you on? In light of the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ war against women’s right to contraception. . ."

• Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly engaged in a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers?
• Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, overpopulation, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of your church’s pernicious doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.
• If you think you can change the church from within – get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research – you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.
• It’s a disgrace that U. S. health care reform is being held hostage to your church’s irrational opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No political candidate should have to genuflect before the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. President Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges. Instead it is launching a ruthless political Inquisition in your name.
• Your church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.” The louder the Church cries "offense against religious liberty” the hard it works to take away women’s liberty. Now your church has introduced into Congress a double-speak bill, the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” to allow dogma to trump the civil rights and private consciences of employees.
• The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to shun contraception now wants to use the forces of secular law to deny birth control to non-Catholics.
• You’re no better than your church, so why stay? Why put up with an institution that discriminates against half of humanity? Why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated into the next generation of obedient donors and voters? Can’t you see how misplaced your loyalty is after two decades of sex scandals involving preying priests, church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top? Apparently, you’re like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go. There is a more welcoming home for you.

I realize that this reads like a parody of left-liberal feminist thought. I realize that it is full of misinformation, hysteria, and hyperbole. I promise you, however, that it is the real thing, and I am delighted to be able to report that the archdiocese of Washington in My Catholic Standard published on Friday a fierce response, which was circulated to everyone in the pews yesterday.

Thanks to Barack Obama, who is for conservatives a gift that keeps on giving, the liberals are doffing the genial mask they donned in the days of Bill Clinton and revealing themselves as what they are. And, instead of seeking to subvert Roman Catholicism from within in the manner of Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy, as they have been doing with great success for half a century, they are attacking it head on, forcing the American church to return to its fundamental principles, and inducing non-members sympathetic to its understanding of human sexuality to think about joining.

Those who call themselves Catholics must, indeed, make a choice. They must choose between the worldview that underpins this advertisement and the Catholic faith. It is a choice that the hierarchy should have pressed on them long ago. What a strange and awful world we live in! One in which the professed enemies of Roman Catholicism are unwittingly its firmest and most reliable friends. But, then again, you could say precisely the same thing about the Republican Party. Adversity can be a tonic.

California's famously perfect weather and spectacular scenery have not been enough to save the state from an 11 percent unemployment rate, as officially measured, or gargantuan annual state budget deficits.  Liberal Democrats control the levers of power in the state and pretty much all the cultural assumptions, but reality stubbornly refuses to give way to the promised utopia.  Consider the lead article in this morning's San Jose Mercury News.

SACRAMENTO -- California's projected budget deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, much larger than predicted just four months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown said Saturday as he warned of draconian cuts to schools and public safety if voters don't approve his November tax-hike measure.

The governor said the shortfall grew from $9.2 billion in January in part because tax collections are sluggish and the economy hasn't recovered as quickly as expected. The deficit also has soared because lawsuits and federal requirements have blocked billions of dollars in state cuts to social programs, Brown said.

Could government tax and regulatory policy be contributing to our unexpectedly--notice how all statist failures are "unexpected"-- sluggish recovery?  Heresy.  Our state's economic underperformance must be the work of a wrathful and unjust god, or something George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did to us.  Somehow.

Meanwhile, consider the chart below comparing California's unemployment rate over time to that of Texas, another large industrial state.  The two states parallel one another until 2006, when California unemployment surges ahead.  Coincidentally, no doubt, 2006 was the year California passed AB32, the "Global Warming Solutions Act," which outsources escalating energy taxes and other job-killing regulations to the California Air Resources Board, now gearing up to reduce California greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Texas here we come.

The other day, I came across a piece entitled The Two Europes posted on The American Interest website by Francis Fukuyama. For a brief time, in the mid-1970s, Frank and I were graduate students together at Yale – I in history and he in comparative literature (wherein a man who writes as clearly as he does would have been bound to fail), and I have always found him worth reading.

So that is what I did. I read Frank’s piece, which made a simple, sensible point: to wit, that there is no way that Greece can remain in a European Union dominated by the likes of Germany. As he explains, there are two Europes. One is clientalistic; the other is not. Greece epitomizes the former; Germany, the latter.

Clientelism occurs when political parties use public resources, and particularly government offices, as a means of rewarding political supporters. Politicians provide not programmatic public policies, but individual benefits like a job in the post office, an intervention on behalf of a relative in trouble with the government, or sometimes an outright payment of money or goods.

Politics in Germany is about principles and policies; politics in Greece is about pay-offs – and no political party in a country like Greece can actually introduce a policy of austerity without committing suicide. Greece’s troubles arise from a swollen public sector. Absolutely nothing has been done in the last four years to fix the problem, and nothing is going to be done. The election a week ago simply confirms what everyone knew. This means that, unless the Germans are going to sign up to pay the bills of the Greeks in perpetuity, Greece will have to give up the euro.

In the absence of fiscal discipline – and no clientalistic state has any fiscal discipline – the only way to cope with the swelling of the public sector is to devalue the currency. In this fashion, you can effect a genuine cut in public-sector salaries across the board, and the private sector can adjust by raising nominal prices. This is what Greece and, for that matter, Italy, Spain, and France used to do at frequent, if irregular, intervals.

Frank’s argument, which makes perfect sense to me, set me to thinking about the United States. After all, we have the same problem as the European Union. Some of the states constituting our Union have spent money on public-sector salaries and benefits and on welfare programs as if there was no tomorrow. California has a budget deficit of $16 billion for this year, and that is just the beginning. As time passes and pensions promised in the past come due, public expenses will skyrocket. Something similar is true in Illinois and New York. In effect, these are clientalistic states on the Greek model, and they are approaching the end of their tether.

There would appear to be two ways in which this problem could be dealt with. The federal government could assume the debts and pension obligations of the more profligate states, and it could underwrite future profligacy. Or California, Illinois, and New York could leave the American currency union, introduce their new currency or currencies, and let them float against the dollar. This would inflate away public-sector obligations, open the door to tax cuts, and reinvigorate the private sector. It is true that it would also destroy the savings of anyone in these states foolish enough to have any. But, hey, you pay for the place in which you choose to live, right? Alternatively, of course, we could devalue the dollar (which, if you judge it with an eye to the Australian dollar, the Canadian loonie, or gold, is what we are doing). In this fashion, we could and stick it to innocent folks in Texas and Indiana.

My first thought, when at a manic moment I proposed this to my wife, was that California, Illinois, and New York should adopt the Mexican peso as their currency. But then I realized that this would be unfair to the Mexicans whose currency is in considerably better shape now than it would be if superintending it was shared by a civilized placed like Mexico with the governments of states like California, Illinois, and New York.

On reflection, I decided that each of these states needs its own currency. But what should we name them? I suggest that the Stoner Republic out on the West coast call its new currency the joint, that the people of Illinois name theirs after their favorite son and call it the obama. New York’s could then be called the spitzer.

But perhaps you, gentle readers, you could come up with names that are more appropriate.

President Obama seems to be getting a good deal of political mileage out of his declaration last week that he supports the right of gay couples to marry, but that he also believes that this is a matter to be decided state by state.

Unlike many of President Obama's pronouncements, however, his newfound faith in federalism can be put to the test in two immediate and direct ways.

1. Obama's Justice Department has refused to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.  The very purpose of the Act is to advance Obama's stated goal: to allow each state to decide for itself whether to legalize gay marriage, by allowing states to refuse to recognize gay marriages from out of state. President Obama can order -- tomorrow -- Attorney General Eric Holder to reverse the Justice Department's extraordinary decision to refuse to defend this federal law in court.

2. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this spring struck down California's Proposition 8, which prohibits gay marriage. The grounds of the decision are directly opposite to President Obama's stated belief: the court found that the right to gay marriage is nationwide and not subject to state choice. President Obama can direct his Attorney General to support the efforts of Proposition 8's defenders to overturn the decision. In fact, he could have his Solicitor General file a friend-of-the-court brief when Proposition 8's defenders appeal to the Supreme Court (known as "petitioning for cert") recommending that the Court accept the case and reverse the Ninth Circuit.  He could even issue the order now, to take effect when the Prop 8 case hits the Supreme Court.

I agree with President Obama's view that gays should be able to marry, and I agree that it should be up to each state.  My problem is that I don't believe him about federalism. His recent conversion on states rights is heartwarming, but not believable coming from someone who has pushed the nationalization of healthcare.  In this case, he doesn't need to await the courts or get legislation passed by Congress to show that his position is more than just talk.

I've spent the last week or so studiously avoiding my absentee ballot for California's June 5 primary election, which, like most political documents in the Golden State, is best consumed with a side of Vicodin.

When I broke down last night and finally cracked the thing, I immediately felt my aversion justified. Despite being home to one of every eight Americans, we Californians will once again have no meaningful say in choosing a presidential nominee; The GOP has failed to find a notable candidate to run against Dianne Feinstein for the U.S. Senate, despite the fact that she is 78 years old, has been in office for 20 years, and has some considerable ethical baggage; My congressional district -- previously represented by the laudable Dana Rohrabacher -- has now been redrawn to make Henry Waxman our new representative (I've already emigrated from Waxman's district once in the past); And our ballot initiatives are the usual pablum: a cosmetic alteration to legislative term limits and a punitive tax aimed at smokers (of which I am one of five remaining in the state).

Amidst this electoral carnage, however, there was one bright spot: Running for one of the judgeships on the Los Angeles County Superior Court is none other than Ricochet's own Joe Escalante.

Hopefully, Joe already assumes that he has earned my support. But he should also know that he's earned my thanks. Filling out this year's ballot just got a lot more tolerable.