| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty August 27, 2013 There's Good News and Bad News in the Colorado-Recall Rumor Mill The fact that liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas sees different states of play for the two recall elections out in California suggests that this is, indeed, his best assessment of how things stand out there, and not a fear-mongering effort to raise funds: The scuttlebutt from people who have seen the numbers are that [State Sen. Angela] Giron is relatively safe (or as much as you can be in a summer special election with an uncertain electorate), but that state Senate President John Morse, the other recall target, lags slightly among likely voters. The NRA certainly smells blood in the water (they have lots of practice with that), and are trying to close strong. Meanwhile, Democrats have shifted strategies. Rather than fight over the gun issue that dominated the early parts of the race, they are expanding the playing field, particularly focusing on women's reproductive rights. These are Democratic districts, and the approach seems to be to remind people that they can't be single-issue voters. Whenever the opposition wants to change the subject, isn't that a sign that you're winning on that issue? The local Republican parties selected former Colorado Springs city councilman Bernie Herpin to take on Morse and George Rivera, former deputy chief of the Pueblo police force, to take on Giron. Anyway, they're still sorting out the rules for the September 10 recall election: The Colorado constitution requires voters to vote "yes" or "no" on the recall question in order to have their vote for a successor be counted, but that provision could be in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, said Attorney General John Suthers. He said a nearly identical provision in the California state constitution was declared unconstitutional during the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. Gov. John Hickenlooper wants the state Supreme Court to decide whether the California ruling is applicable and, if so, to waive the "prior participation requirement." "We need this clarification from the court to determine how to count the ballots," Suthers said. "If they tell us the Colorado constitutional provision is unconstitutional, then you don't have to vote in the recall election to have your vote count in the subsequent election." If the issue is not addressed, a successful challenge to the recall election on constitutional grounds could mean the invalidation of the entire election, according to an interrogatory to the Colorado Supreme Court filed by the attorney general's office on behalf of Hickenlooper. The court may rule as early as the end of today. A Weird March 2003 Feeling of Deja Vu Syria's a hell of a mess, isn't it? And while we may fume at President Obama's boast-to-action ratio when discussing Syria's ongoing civil war, it's a difficult choice that's before him, isn't it? I can hear the voices now: "No, Jim, it isn't a hard choice. It's a quagmire, with bloodthirsty al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists on one side and a bloodthirsty dictator with deep ties to Hezbollah, Russia, and China on the other. If we should be doing anything, we should be rooting for the conflict to go on forever." All of that is true. But we're also seeing men, women, and children killed by the truckload. And we do have a national interest in keeping the chemical weapons genie in the bottle, right? This latest attack -- anywhere from 300 to 1000 killed, several thousands with neurotoxic symptoms -- came after a bunch of smaller ones. (Lest you figure that's a bit of neocon war propaganda, check out the assessment of Doctors Without Borders.) Had there been a sufficiently negative consequence to those earlier attacks, Assad may not have launched this one. If there's not a sufficiently negative consequence to this attack, who knows how big the next use of chemical weapons will be? The world has actually made good progress at eliminating existing stockpiles of chemical weapons. Most regimes have concluded the diplomatic and public relations cost isn't worth keeping their aging stockpiles around. But . . . if an embattled regime like Assad's successfully uses them to put down an insurrection with no major consequence short of rote international denunciation . . . how quickly will the cost-benefit calculus change? How certain could we be that Pyongyang, or some other embattled regime, wouldn't feel the temptation? These sorts of weapons are cheap and relatively easy to make using regular civilian chemical equipment. If you're one of the minority that wants an escalation of U.S. action in Syria -- remember, earlier this year our government "began making salary payments to members of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army," -- there are a lot of reasons to be wary about a large U.S. role -- starting with the skeptics' accurate observation that right now Syria has no real "good guys" worthy of our assistance. All of this is to say that anyone looking at Syria seriously has to acknowledge that their preferred course of action could have some serious bad consequences -- either the United States getting dragged into a bloody war with the worst of allies and foes, or a dictator gassing his way to a chokehold on power and setting an example for the worst rulers of the rest of the world. Previewing the new Crossfire last night, former Obama mouthpiece Stephanie Cutter and conservative commentator S. E. Cupp managed to take this messy, complicated issue and turn it into a classic from Hannity & Colmes. You know I'm lining up with S. E. Cupp about 99 times out of a hundred, but it felt like CNN was shoehorning the usual right-left debate format on a question where the parties don't split neatly. In a matter of minutes, Cutter said that President Obama seems like he's going to take action and that's a good thing; then scoffed when Cupp cited Turkey, asking why the Turks weren't intervening with their own military. Cutter scoffed at the idea of a no-fly zone as expensive and ineffective, leaving unspoken the question of whether air strikes really will be much more effective. She cited how the U.S. didn't have a good sense of the endgame in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . really doing no favors for the president she seemed hell-bent on defending. Cutter moved on to the "you're not in the Situation Room, you don't have access to intelligence" appeal to authority that liberals spent most of the past decade mocking and deriding. Josh Trevino: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see a liberal Democratic administration ramp up to war against a Ba'athist dictator with WMD." It's like everybody switched sides and changed uniforms at halftime. A Few Words About the Birds, Bees, and the Boring, Clichéd Miley Cyrus Permit me to offer a criticism of Miley Cyrus one notch off from the consensus. Yes, it was tawdry, sleazy, grotesque, debauched, wince-inducing, exploitative, horrifying, gross, slimy . . . It was also . . . clichéd. Come on. We've seen this schtick before. Madonna. Britney. Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl. Heck, it looks like Miley used the same backup singers as that infamous halftime show. Yes, people like sex. It's how all of us got here. It's a very big part of Hollywood's formula for success, and it is the primary subject matter of a big chunk of the Internet. (I see the Huffington Post is starting to slack on its wardrobe malfunction coverage.) Pop stars have traded on their sex appeal since Josephine Baker, Jean Harlow, Mae West, Bettie Page . . . But our music industry has built, and refuses to stop using, a paint-by-numbers conveyor belt designed in the 1990s: Find some cutie, cast her on a show on the Disney channel; then as she hits the teen years, move her to slightly edgier teen programming and an album full of songs about love that might kinda-sorta allude to sexuality. After she's 18, put her on the cover of Maxim, and then showcase every legally-permitted bit of flesh in a big debut on MTV's Video Music Awards. It's as if some sinister Powers That Be have decreed "ordinary" grown-woman sexiness -- take your pick: Dolly Parton, Susanna Hoffs, Chrissy Amphlett, Shakira -- is now insufficient, and that really sexually exciting material requires a starlet whose previous work is still in reruns on the Disney Channel. This phenomenon marries two of our culture's worst traits -- the reduction of people to objects and the celebration, worship, and obsession with youth. I could go on for hours about the negative side effects of the blurred lines -- no pun intended -- between images of girlhood and sexual images, and the societal train wrecks that ensue when you start defining the prime years for sexual attractiveness as comparable to the age range of the prime years of an Olympic gymnast. But allow me to speak to the self-absorbed, image-obsessed Masters of Our Popular Culture in terms they can understand: Eventually, even you will age out of the 'young, sexy, hip and exciting' demographic.It's in everyone's interest if attractiveness can last beyond the year when you're old enough to rent a car by yourself, because most of us are going to reach that age. (Some of us might even like to think that bloggers can remain dashing and attractive beyond their late 30s.) Wrap it up for me, Ace: "It's like a Super Bowl halftime show if the two teams vying for the championship were the San Francisco Schizophrenics and the New York City Exhibitionists." ADDENDA: In the "race" to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, a once-maligned possible candidate is the frontrunner once again. Finally, the Obama administration was justified the headline, "Recovery Summers." NRO Digest — August 27, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . Editor's Note:
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