Ronald Reagan Couldn't Get Elected Today

The Republican presidential candidates love to point to President Reagan as the inspiration for everything they do.

And that's understandable. Given the passage of time, President Reagan is almost universally loved.

But this new wholesale worship of The Gipper ignores an inconvenient truth, as the Economist pointed out this weekend:

Today, Ronald Reagan could never win the GOP nomination.

Imagine a Republican candidate trying to win the GOP nomination with these outrageous beliefs today. The man would be howled out of town!

The broader story here, as the Economist observes, is that the Great Silent Majority of reasonable Americans are being ignored in the rush to pander to extremists. This, by the way, is happening on both sides of the aisle, as Republicans fight about who plans to cut government spending and taxes the most and Obama turns to fat-cat bashing and class warfare.

The answer to the country's problems lies in the middle, with a candidate who can mobilize reasonable people, not extremists, and take the painful but necessary (and reasonable) steps to getting the country back on track.

These steps will involve both raising taxes (gradually, on those who can afford it) AND cutting government spending.  And the sooner the country grows up and realizes that, the better.

6 Reasons Mississippians Said No to "Personhood" Amendment

Only a few months ago strategists were urging their candidates in Mississippi to stay clear of the "Personhood" initiative they'd be sharing space with on the ballot. More than a few candidates, believing it was the only safe path, chose to take a public position in support of the measure defining human life as existing at the moment of conception (or cloning, or a twinkle in an eye). Disease, rape, incest not counting as exceptions. Nothing would. Felonies for everyone.

Mississippi has a massively conservative voting base and heavily entrenched conservative politicians and institutions. Polling showed white and black voters overwhelmingly favored the initiative.

In January, I sat in the lobby of a Washington, DC hotel with a group looking for ideas on how to defeat Personhood. My advice, partly, based on my experiences with races in the South, polling data and my personal knowledge as a native Mississippian was to assume its passage, run a singularly grassroots operation and craft a campaign that would look beyond Election Day. Fortunately, I did suggest a flexible campaign with data collection and growth capacity in case the unexpected happened and defeating the measure came into play.

The unexpected happened. Mississippians defeated "Personhood" driving a stake in the heart of a movement that was planning on sweeping, state by state, through the nation.

Why did they lose in arguably the most conservative state in the Union? Why did the anti-Personhood forces win a majority of the vote in Mississippi? Here are six reasons Personhood failed in Mississippi:

6.) The Personhood Initiative language was poorly crafted and made for bad policy. Doctors, for instance, became concerned about the legality of carrying out their oath to save lives. Medical groups organized. This created a foundation for thoughtful people to begin speaking out. Policy generally doesn't win elections but it does create the intellectual depth political passion and message need to prevail.

5.) Clergy stood up and said no. The Episcopal and Methodist Bishops for Mississippi publicly opposed the measure. The Catholic Bishop would not support it instead offering a critical critique. This empowered other ministers to begin speaking out. By the numbers, nothing trumps Southern Baptists in Mississippi, and their leaders remained lividly in support of Personhood. But, Methodists are the second largest denomination in the state, the Episcopal bishop and his family are legendary profiles in courage for Mississippians and the Catholic bishop's pro-life credentials brought attention to his refusal to support the measure. The clergy who spoke out provided a moral framework for the bad policy argument and an even larger moral foundation for voters.

4.) Haley Barbour, the Guv himself, publicly raised concerns about the implications of the measure; right before saying would vote for it. But, he chose to share his concerns. Why? I have no idea. He's an excellent political strategist. Like President Clinton, he's his best strategist. I find it hard to believe he didn't speak out knowing he would have an impact against the measure. He did. Haley "green lighted" many to do what they wanted to do. Vote no.

3.) The Mississippi NAACP announced their opposition to the measure. Derrick Johnson is the president. He is about as courageous and shrewd as they come. He took a stand. And, you know what? The large percentage of black Mississippians supporting Personhood began to crumble. It was leadership in action. And, it changed the outcome. A voting majority began forming of African Americans, white Democrats and upper middle class, educated white conservatives.

2.) "Mississippians for Healthy Families" organized; then they organized the state around defeating personhood. It was this group that brought together the policy concerns, messaging and grassroots organizing that synergized the opposition. Prior to the existence of "Mississippians for Healthy Families" there were only voices in the wilderness throughout the state in search of a movement. This gave them a movement. They connected these voices and brought depth, know-how and resources. Basically, they turned the opposition into a campaign; a winning campaign. Perhaps, "Mississippians for Healthy Families" has a second legacy in creating the largest and most powerful progressive database and organization in Mississippi.

1.) The forces who brought Personhood before the public insulted the intellectual and cultural sensibilities of thousands of Mississippians. They assumed Mississippi would be a cake walk. They provided grandma's 1970's abortion language that didn't speak to many younger, yet conservative, Mississippians. They were sloppy in their organizing and flippant about their opposition; condescending. Their official Personhood website looks like my child's 4th grade class designed it.

I talked to many Mississippians leading up to Election Day; acquaintance after acquaintance, folks I grew up with and know as devout social conservatives. And, to the last one they were voting NO on Personhood. They were turned off by those leading the Personhood campaign. They were insulted by the assumptions of how they thought and that they were supposed to follow the leader without question. They didn't.

There's a lesson here about showing up in Mississippi without your game face on. As the Ford Expedition set grows in the 'burbs with their venti bolds in the cup holders so does the sophistication. Don't bet the farm unless you've invested in the crops. Otherwise, you will lose. Ask the people of Personhood.

Passengers held at station after woman reports sighting

Passengers were forced to remain on board a train for two hours at Shepley station in Yorkshire on Sunday after police received a report of a lion on the loose in the vicinity.

West Yorkshire police received a call at 3.30pm from a woman saying she had spotted a lion as she was driving through Shepley, near Huddersfield. Officers say they believe the woman was a genuine caller but, after a two hour search involving a police helicopter and 12 officers, the inquiry was brought to a close with no lions found, and no further sightings.
Inspector Carlton Young, of West Yorkshire police, said: "We've had unconfirmed reports of a lion or a lion cub in the area. We've had officers looking around. We've had nothing confirmed and we've not located anyone who is claiming to have lost an animal."
National Rail Enquiries wrote on its Twitter feed on Sunday: "Passengers are currently unable to alight from trains at Shepley due to reports by police of a lion in the area." It later issued an update that normal service had been resumed.
In May a police helicopter was scrambled after a white tiger was spotted in a field near Hedge End, Southampton.
Specialist staff from Marwell Zoo were called to advise and potentially tranquillise the animal and a golf course was evacuated. But as police officers approached it they realised it was not moving and the helicopter crew, using thermal imaging equipment, ascertained that there was no heat source coming from it. The tiger turned out to be a stuffed toy.

The Airlines the New Dracula

I am surprised that no one would help her with the extra $30 so she could check both bags initially.  I wondered if she asked people around her to help out.  Even with $5 each, she only needed to find 6 people.  But the whole story is just ridiculous.  The airlines could turn $60 into $210 (change fees + baggage fees) then to $1000 for re-booking.  Absurd.  What airlines is this?  U.S. Airways.  Who flies this piece of shit airlines nowadays?

Wessigner had nothing but an airline ticket and $30 in her pocket.  The U.S. Airways agent checking her in told her that it was cost $60 to check both her bags. Weissinger offered to pay the fee when she arrived in Idaho, but the agent declined.  She also offered to leave one bag there at the San Francisco Airport.  That, the agent explained, would be in violation of security regulations.

Wessigner’s next move was to try to scare up the full fee by calling friends in the area.  She came up empty, and by the time she’d finished working the phones, she missed her flight.  That’s when things started to get truly Kafka-esque.  To get a new flight “she’d have to pay her bag fees plus $150 in change fees,” Finney notes. Without a place to stay nearby, Weissinger stayed the night at the airport.  She awoke to more bad news: U.S. Airlines explained that, since she couldn’t pay a change fee, she’d have to book a new flight from scratch.  That would run about $1,000.

The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet

Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.

That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft's Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product--let alone one from inside Microsoft's walls--that threatened the foundation of Microsoft's flagship operating system. But Sinofsky's tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

For Ballmer, it wasn't an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next-generation brain trust. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary he's trusted more than any other over the decades--Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsoft's chairman and co-founder to meet for a few hours with Allard; his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach; and two other Courier team members.

At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates' waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft's executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn't trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

But the device wasn't intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn't want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft's Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard's team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

"This is where Bill had an allergic reaction," said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

It's not hard to understand Gates' response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft's development process, Gates' concerns didn't bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.

The story of Microsoft's Courier has only been told in pieces. And nothing has been disclosed publicly about the infighting that led to the innovative device's death. This article was pieced together through interviews with 18 current and former Microsoft executives, as well as contractors and partners who worked on the project. None of the Microsoft employees, both current and former, would talk for attribution because they worried about potential repercussions. Microsoft's top spokesman, Frank Shaw, offered only a brief comment for this story and otherwise declined to make Microsoft's senior executives available.

"At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them," Shaw said in a statement when word leaked in April 2010 that Courier had been cancelled. "It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time."

While the internal fight over Courier occurred about 18 months ago, the implications of the decision to kill the incubation project reverberate today. Rather than creating a touch computing device that might well have launched within a few months of Apple's iPad, which debuted in April 2010, Microsoft management chose a strategy that's forcing it to come from behind. The company cancelled Courier within a few weeks of the iPad's launch. Now it plans to rely on Windows 8, the operating system that will likely debut at the end of next year, to run tablets.

Courier's death also offers a detailed look into Microsoft's Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 90,000 employees, has plenty of brilliant minds that can come up with revolutionary approaches to computing. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company's Windows and Office empires.