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The last thing I would want is to live in a place where everyone was exactly like me.
So it seems both funny and tragic that two industrious European monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, had no problem with this.
The push for homogeneity, for sameness, does often lead to traquility and a life of familiarity. However, the overzealous iron fist of sameness can cause irreparable damage, both for the majority and for the minority that is now outcast.
This was the case on March 31, 1492, when the Catholic monarchs of Spain issued a decree that would reverberate over three continents. Less than three months after vanquishing the last vestiges of Islamic Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella issued what was called the Alhambra Decree, later called the Edict of Expulsion. It declared that the Jews of Spain, a community that thrived on the Iberian peninsula since Roman times, had four months to liquidate their belongings and leave the country. Those who did not would face death.
For centuries, Jews had lived in communities in present-day Spain, first under the Romans after the Third Jewish Revolt of the 2nd century, and subsequently under the Visigoths and Islamic Moors. Jewish Spain flourished most under Muslim rule: the caliphs of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) saw the Jews as fellow "People of the Book." They were given special status, allowed to operate businesses and own land, and especially to worship with little interference from Muslim authorities. Since the Jews were an ethnic as well as religious group, there was little fear of the conversions and evangelization with Christian communities.
Even as the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula gained prominence, Jews continued to live their life and worship, providing massive contributions to Iberian culture. Often, Jewish communities were the most literate, and local princes and sultans employed Jewish scribes that produced reams of edicts, writs and decrees–often in Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew. Jewish bankers and merchants helped keep the warring kingdoms solvent with trade and loans (often to the irritation of local religious zealots who saw Jews as mere usurers). Spanish Jews excelled in diplomacy, art, literature, science and philosophy through luminaries such as Maimonides, Solomon ibn Gabirol, and Yehuda Halevi.
However, little by little, attitudes towards Jews in Spain began to change.
Once in a while, even during the Muslim period, occasional massacres and banishments of Jews occurred, as rulers (who often could not–or would not–repay their loans to their Jewish creditors) placed Jews under more intense scrutiny. Land would eventually be taken away. Jews would be restricted to certain neighborhoods in certain cities. Jewish businesses were ransacked, synagogues were defiled, and pressure to convert or emigrate became ever greater.
Then came Ferdinand and Isabella.
The dynamic duo of medieval Iberia came with an agenda: unite the peninsula under one crown, one language, and especially one "true" Catholic faith. As the military might of Castile and Aragon brought the neighboring states to heel (a movement known as the Reconquista), the Catholic Monarchs had to contend with large populations of minorities, especially Jews. There is no exact number of Jews that came under Spanish rule: estimates range from 250,000 to almost 900,000. The Christian Spaniards viewed these people with suspicion and contempt, especially since they were portrayed as collaborators to the Muslim caliphs–a gross misinterpretation since the caliphs also engaged in occasional anti-Semitic abuse.
Thousands of Jews sought to escape persecution through conversion to Christianity. These conversos often resumed their original status with the veneer of Catholic baptism, which infuriated local Christians. Also, many conversos were suspected of not being genuinely loyal to the church, but rather of keeping their Judaic religious practices in secret. These crypto-Jews, known as marranos, were seen as an even bigger threat, a Fifth Column that undermined the unity of the new Catholic Spain.
Starting in 1480, the Spanish Inquisition was instituted to solve the problem of the conversos. Headed by Tomas de Torquemada, the Inquisition's mission was to root out heresy, including any suspected secret Jewish activity on the part of the newly converted. Reams have been written about the horrors and abuses of the Inquisition, yet it needs to be said that not a single out-and-out practicing Jew was targeted. The Inquisition was not concerned with Jews who stayed true to Judaism, but rather those who wanted to be Catholic out of "convenience."
Ferdinand and Isabella would take care of the observant Jews personally. For lack of a better pun, the Edict of Expulsion was their "final solution" to their Jewish problem.
The edict gave Jews about four months to sell all their belongings and leave Spain. Any non-Jew who aided in hiding a Jewish person was punished by confiscation of property and rescinding of privileges. Jews who did not leave were put to death. During the four-month preparation period, Jews were under royal protection and could take their belongings except ""gold or silver or minted money."
Of the 200,000 to 800,000 Jews who left in 1492, many settled in North Africa. Some went to neighboring Portugal, only to be expelled five years later. The Spanish Jews would then find refuge in Italy, in the Balkans, in Greece, and eventually in England, the Netherlands and the New World of the Americas. In the case of the Americas, the Inquisition often followed the Jews into Latin America, thus further forcing other migrations into North America and Canada.
So what did Ferdinand and Isabella gain in this act? Though Spain would remain a predominantly Catholic country for the rest of its history, it is a homogeneity fed by theft, torture and murder–and the loss of two rich, sophisticated cultures in the process.
There were still conversos to consider, and their allegiance would remain suspect for centuries. The missionary zeal of Torquemada would stretch into Spain's new colonies in America; leaving men such as Bartholome de las Casas to document the tragic results. The property, businesses and riches of the expelled Jews mingled with new gold and silver from Mexico and Peru in the royal coffers. Synagogues were transformed into churches. Hebrew texts were destroyed. In the early 1600s, it was the Muslims' turn, as thousands of moriscos, or Islamic converts to Christianity, would go down the same dark path as the Jews.
So what happened to the expelled Jews?
Like their kindred spread across numerous continents, the Jews of Spain provided far more than they received from the countries that hosted them. In England, Jews welcomed under Oliver Cromwell would help cement England's maritime power. In the Netherlands, Spanish Jews would rise in the tolerant society of the Dutch Republic, and help spread trade and ideas to Asia and the New World. In the Americas, Jews would gain a foothold and create among the most free societies on the planet.
Baruch Spinoza, Benjamin Cardozo, Benjamin Disraeli, and many others made great advances in philosophy, in law, in politics and government.
Yet the great lesson of the Expulsion is not what was lost or gained, but what survived. In the end, Ferdinand and Isabella failed in their xenophobic quest to rid Christendom of "heretical" influences. They failed because the heresies–namely Judaism and Islam–are still alive and well.
The Jews were not crushed, they were not annihilated–and not for lack of trying. They survived, and their culture survived to enrich and progress humankind even today. None other than the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote the following:
"What is the Jew?…What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?!
The Jew – is the symbol of eternity. … He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity."


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text: One of the things that has truly been lost in American education is the fundamental concept that the American Constitution is not only a legal document, but a reflection and refinement of enlightenment thinking. To some extent, there used to be this theory that the Enlightenment was comprised of a number of different thinkers, but political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin who posited that there was both an Enlightenment and an Anti-Enlightenment, or Counter Enlightenment, followed by Enlightenment Responsa. In short, this was sort of the blog of the 18th Century, and it makes life a lot easier for modern students of political philosophy to be able to admit that the writers are not consistent because they disagree. The Counter Enlightenment was often dominated by monarchists and church officials. In almost any school standards, a study of the Enlightenment is pretty much limited to about twenty minutes of confusing back and forth on two or three of the nearly 80 prominent philosophers. Trouble is, the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay and few others were reading the blogs back then, and much of our Constitution consists of compromise between the pure Enlightenment ideals of Jefferson and the somewhat more practical opinions of the federalists. Nonetheless, the Constitution is remarkably consistent if you know the philosophical background to it. On many occasions, I've heard people shake their heads that the same document that talks about "all men are created equal" also enshrined slavery. Actually, its not confusing at all. As we've been arguing on another thread, the concept of human dignity and compassion are not Enlightenment philosophies and are, in fact, Counter Enlightenment philosophies. The Bill of Rights, particularly the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth reflect the means of protecting the individual from religious philosophy of an eighteenth century European monarchy. An individual is autonomous, is what the Constitution says, and the autonomous individual remains autonomous when the government does not compel interference in the right of the citizen to remain autonomous. Since 1932, this country has veered sharply away from its founding principles, which is why we find ourselves in a state of decay and corruption. Attempts to graft the anti-Enlightenment on to our Constitution is grinding the government to a halt. It is not a joke that Congress is the opposite of Progress, or that "govern" means "to slow or halt" or that "governor" is an "instrument of hindrance." The inheritors of the Enlightenment are the current Tea Party Patriots, and when you trash the Tea Party you trash and spit on the Constitution.


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Decomposing whale carcass fascinates visitors and gives fundraising event a boost
A blubber bag of bones is all that's left of the juvenile humpback whale that washed up in Plymouth, but the smelly, sagging carcass may be a boon to the whale's brethren.
The 29-foot, 4-ton behemoth that washed up on the Plymouth shoreline about 1 mile south of Manomet Point is sparking interest in a local whale and dolphin conservation fundraiser.
"We were having trouble getting residents and businesses interested in the event, but since the carcass washed up we've had numerous calls from people wanting to help," senior biologist Regina Asmutis-Silvia said. "It's kind of sad that a dead whale is inspiring people."
Asmutis-Silvia works for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in Plymouth. For more information on the fundraiser, scheduled for Oct. 2 in Marshfield, visit awhaleaffair.org.
Asmutis-Silvia and New England Aquarium and state wildlife officials are working to save the bones of the dead humpback.
State wildlife officials offer such bones to institutions and museums for display and education.
Although decaying rapidly, the carcass is still drawing visitors.
"You can't believe these things are out there, they are so big," Michael Cashman said, standing near the whale remains. "You only see part of them when they're in the water."
Cashman and his wife, Dawn, came down from Kingston to see the carcass.
They moved to the area this summer and took their first whale-watching trip in July.
"We've seen about 30 whales," Dawn Cashman said. "It's sad to see this one."
"It's awesome, really," Natick resident Bill Minichiello said. "I've seen them in the wild but never a dead one."
Biologists hope to have the necessary manpower to cut up the carcass on Friday, but the task may have to be put off until next week because of an expected storm.
Tamara Race may be reached at email@example.com.


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Several news stories about pensions have crossed my desk in recent days, each of which made me realize how poorly the vast majority of individuals – even many highly educated individuals – understand financial risk. It might not be so surprising if this lack of understanding was limited to the "general population." What is more surprising is how often highly educated financial market participants and regulators exhibit their ignorance of fundamental finance principles. Unfortunately, these misunderstandings can have real consequences.
Let me give two examples.
Yesterday, a piece appeared on the Reuters MuniLand blog under the (confusing) title of "Greece is not Germany, and California is not Vermont." In the piece, the author made the following statement, in which she refers to research by Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University:
"Rauh insists that when projecting pension fund returns, the interest rate for 10-year Treasuries must be used. Pensions do not allocate their assets 100 percent into Treasuries, though."
This is an example where you can take two true statements, put them side-by-side, and end up with a false implication. It is true that Joshua Rauh and his co-author Robert Novy-Marx use a Treasury rate to discount pension liabilities. It is also true that pensions do not allocate their assets 100 percent into Treasuries. The problem is that the second statement is 100% irrelevant to the first!
As any individual who receives a passing grade in my finance courses should be able to explain, the appropriate discount rate to use when computing the present value of a stream of cash flows depends on the riskiness (generally defined as the correlation of those cash flows with the market) of those cash flows. In the context of pensions, the discount rate depends on the risk of the pension payments to beneficiaries. In many states – such as Illinois and California – there are strong constitutional protections in place that make already-accrued benefits risk free. Thus, what Novy-Marx and Rauh do in their research is to apply basic finance principles to come up with a more accurate measure of pension liabilities than what one gets from using official government statistics. Cate Long fell into the same trap that so many others have – including the Government Accounting Standards Board (about which I have previously blogged here and here) – of thinking that the right discount rate is a function of the risk fo the assets, instead of the risk of the liabilities. As a result, she – like GASB – completely ignores an enormous implicit put option that is being dumped onto taxpayers. Her piece also contained other problems that are discussed Josh Rauh's response.
A second example comes from the ongoing debate about pension funding policy for corporate pensions. In January, the American Benefits Council put out a press release (which you can read here) basically arguing for "relief" from fully funding pensions ("funding relief" is a political euphemism for not meeting the required funding obligations.) At the core of the American Benefits Council's case is that interest rates change, and that the result is that pension liabilities look "artificially high" when interest rates are "artificially low." What this argument ignores, however, is that any firm could choose – if they so desired – to nearly completely immunize themselves against interest rate fluctuations by investing in a fixed income portfolio that has the same interest rate sensitivity as do the pension liabilities. Firms choose not to do this for a variety of reasons, but it is a choice. Some firms – most recently, Ford Motor Company – appear to understand this. Most other companies choose to expose themselves to risk in the pursuit of higher returns. That is their right and their choice, but they should not expect a back-door government bail-out in the form of funding relief when the risk then materializes.
In both of these examples – the choice of discount rates and the choice of asset allocation – the common element is a lack of understanding of risk, how to measure it, and how to manage it. Unfortunately, such a misunderstanding has real economic consequences, and it always seems to be the taxpayer who ends up paying for it.


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Here are some good examples:
|Sent to me by Twitter pal @midnightrem. Don't you just want to devour it?
|My mom at a hot dog shop on the island of Kauai.
Then there are the outliers. The advertisers who may or may not have intended to be perverts, but who nevertheless leave me giggling like a hormonal middle schooler. Check these out...
|Writer pal Harley May texted that to me yesterday. Apparently it's the sign adorning the front of a shop specializing in painting and coffee. Um, OK.
|Regular blog reader Shain Brown tweeted that one to me yesterday. I don't think I want to touch that. (That's what she said)
|I snapped that billboard in Tampa last January, and still can't figure out if they meant to be filthy or not. Either way, that guy looks very capable.
|Surely Dr. Scholl's has a large enough marketing budget to have people reviewing their packaging materials. Were they trying to be provocative, or did it really not occur to anyone that Rub Relief for Her might have multiple meanings?
I'm off to buy some Rub Relief for Her. What? It sounds like a good product.


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SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) ? Nearly 50 years ago, every congressman from the Deep South was a white Democrat.
Now the U.S. House has just one white Democrat from the five states that comprise the region: Georgia's John Barrow.
Barrow last year survived the Republican tide that wiped out 20 white Democratic members of Congress from the across the South, yet his toughest battle may lie ahead. New political maps approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature leave him politically homeless, placing his residence outside the 12th District that he now represents and stripping away the base of his Democratic support ? largely African American ? along the coast.
His precarious fate raises a larger question: Can white Democrats chart a course back in the Deep South ? Georgia, Mississippi. Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina ? where they were once as plentiful as sweet tea on a hot summer day? Or will the party that once dominated the Bible Belt become reliant almost exclusively on black urban voters, leaving the region even more racially polarized?
"For the Democratic party to be defined by race means that it's politically marginalized," said Merle Black, an Emory University political science professor and author of "The Rise of Southern Republicans."
The recent trend could portend a struggle for Democrats to win statewide offices or be successful outside of safe Democratic districts, Black said.
Another outcome is Democratic elected officials who are more liberal than voters in the state, said John Kirincich, a former Georgia Democratic Party head. He served as chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, a conservative white Democrat who lost his seat last year.
"It's a systematic disenfranchisement of moderate and conservative Democrats," Kirincich said.
Barrow, 55, a conservative Democrat with deep family roots in the region, pledged to soldier on in his redrawn district and get to know his new constituents. But he lamented the shift away from swing districts that are more representative of the views of most Americans.
"One very real effect of partisan redistricting is that congressional districts have become far more extreme politically than the American public is," Barrow said. "You have members in 'safe districts' that never have to consider what the other side is saying or what is best for the folks back home."
The Deep South once was solidly Democratic, represented in Washington by white segregationist senators. But after President Lyndon Johnson won passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that began to change. Republicans such as Richard Nixon ran on a "Southern strategy" of appealing to white voters unhappy with Democrats over civil rights legislation. Johnson himself recognized there would be a backlash, admitting to an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation."
Democrats have had the hardest time in Deep South states in recent years, particularly last November, when Republicans capitalized on voter dissatisfaction with the economy, the health care overhaul and President Barack Obama to score major gains. Republicans now control the governorships and legislatures in the five Deep South states, allowing them to redraw political lines to conform with population changes as measured by the Census.
Georgia Democrats are expected to file a legal challenge to the Republican map, alleging it unfairly dilutes minority voting strength.
Meanwhile, Barrow must focus on winning in his new, more conservative district. Political observers say Barrow will need to forge a new multiracial coalition.
"The Democratic Party cannot allow itself to be defined by race, so John's fate is ours as well," said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and a leader in the civil rights movement.
A trial lawyer and former county commissioner first elected to Congress in 2004, Barrow has survived his share of political near-death experiences.
"John has been handling, fairly masterfully, a swing district for many years now," said U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Republican whose district borders Barrow's and which will now include the Democratic stronghold of Savannah.
"It's winnable for him to hang in there, but it will be a tough, tough fight," Kingston added.
Barrow has not said whether he plans to move to the new 12th District.
In Savannah, Spanish moss hangs in languid sheets from the live oak trees that arch protectively over Georgia's oldest city. Graceful, and a little eccentric, the city surrendered with such charm that Gen. William Sherman famously spared it the destruction that he rained down on other Georgia cities on his ruinous Civil War march to the sea.
Barrow has called Savannah home since 2006, when lawmakers drew him out of his old district in Athens, a liberal enclave that's home to the University of Georgia. Barrow moved to Savannah and eked out a win, defeating Republican Max Burns by just more than 800 votes.
Since then, Barrow has beaten back challenges from the left and the right, straddling a careful line between satisfying his largely African-American Democratic base and crossing party lines to appeal to more conservative white swing voters.
Tom Bordeaux, a Democratic former state representative and a longtime supporter, said Barrow won again and again by hewing to political pragmatism rather than party orthodoxy.
"He remembers what he's going to have to say at a town hall meeting on Saturday when he's casting a vote in Washington on Wednesday," Bordeaux said.
In an interview, Barrow said he votes with his constituents rather than his party.
"I evaluate every issue on how it affects my district," he said. "More members of Congress should do that."
The divorced father of two seems, at first glance, an unlikely candidate for the role of scrappy survivor. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he wears round Harry Potter-style glasses and seems ill-at-ease with the backslapping style favored by many Southern politicians.
But Barrow is a shrewd political tactician. He voted against the health care overhaul, but still managed to survive a Democratic primary challenge last year from a black opponent in a district that is about 45 percent African-American. He is a formidable fundraiser, with many of his contributions flowing from fat Atlanta wallets outside his district.
Barrow hails from Georgia political aristocracy: His father was a lawyer and judge who helped integrate the University of Georgia. His mother was a matriarch in the Democratic politics of Barrow County, the northeastern Georgia county that bears his family's name.
While supporters praise his willingness to cross the aisle, critics paint him as a contortionist who will say just about anything to get elected.
"I just can't trust someone like that," said Don Hodges, who owns a construction company in Savannah. "He'll do what he needs to do to survive so you can't say what he really believes."
Barrow said he sees both sides.
He voted against cap-and-trade controls on air pollution emissions but for an increase in the debt ceiling. He voted against efforts to limit war spending in Iraq and supports tough limits on illegal immigration but supported bank bailouts and a minimum wage increase.
Barrow has also distanced himself from national Democrats at times, such as in 2004 when ? looking to woo swing voters ? he stayed far away from Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid. But in 2008, facing a black primary opponent, Barrow touted an endorsement from President Obama.
At a town hall meeting in Savannah earlier this year, Barrow may have summed up his philosophy, answering a question about ways to reduce the deficit and control government spending.
"I am an 'all of the above' kind of guy," Barrow said. "If it's a good idea, an idea that will work, than I am for it."
Follow Shannon McCaffrey at www.twitter.com(backslash)smccaffrey13


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WASHINGTON DC, July 8, 2012— -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MORAN (voice-over): Good morning, and welcome to "This Week."
The economic recovery, strong.
ROMNEY: This kick in the gut has got to end.
MORAN: Another bleak jobs report.
OBAMA: We've got to grow the economy even faster, and we've got to put even more people back to work.
MORAN: Refocuses the presidential race on the struggling economy. The big questions: Can President Obama turn the economic tide before November? Can Mr. Romney convince voters he can do better? Two governors debate those questions, potential Romney running mate Bobby Jindal and key Obama ally Martin O'Malley. Jindal versus O'Malley, only on "This Week."
ROMNEY: It's a tax. They decided it was constitutional, so it is a tax and it's unconstitutional.
MORAN: More fallout from the Supreme Court's health care decision.
Our third heat wave...
(UNKNOWN): In Philly, 103.
MORAN: ... and a record heat wave have people asking, dog days of summer or evidence of global warming? That, plus all the rest of the week's politics on our powerhouse roundtable with George Will, E.J. Dionne, Gwen Ifill, Mort Zuckerman, and Steve Rattner
ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. It's your voice, your vote. Reporting from the Newseum in Washington, Terry Moran.
MORAN: Good morning, everyone. George Stephanopoulos has a well-deserved morning off. Hopefully, he's cooling off somewhere.
Big news this week, that depressing jobs report, new evidence of a struggling economy, truly. And that means more questions about whether President Obama or Governor Romney is the best man to fix things. Our guests are ready to continue that debate, so let's get right to it, Louisiana's governor, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, and Maryland's Democratic governor, Martin O'Malley.
Thank you both for being with us.
O'MALLEY: Thank you, Terry.
MORAN: Governor O'Malley, let me begin with you.
JINDAL: Thank you, Terry.
MORAN: And let's -- let's not mince words. The economy stinks. Let's take a look at the trend. This is not just a one-month blip. Look at these numbers. There is the first part of the year. The second quarter, 80,000, 77,000, 68,000. That's the worst quarter of job creation in two years.
So, Governor O'Malley, how does President Obama, how do his supporters answer a voter who says, "You inherited a terrible mess, granted. We hired you to fix it, you failed. You're fired"?
O'MALLEY: Well, I think what you have to look at is where the president started from. I mean, we faced the biggest job losses since the Great Depression. That's what George W. Bush and his failed policies left to us.
We've now put together as a nation, under President Obama's leadership, 28 months in a row of private-sector job growth. Would we like it to be happening faster? You bet we would. And we also have to I think admit that the Tea Party Republican Congress has done everything in their power to try to stall this jobs recovery and slow it before the election.
And you know what? Perhaps they might succeed. But our direction remains a direction forward. And no one can argue the fact that last year we created more jobs than were created in all eight years of George W. Bush, and that happened in 2010, as well.
So, look, we need to keep moving forward. And it would be great if the people of our country make a change, get rid of this do-nothing Congress, and put in some people that will work to create jobs, as the president has urged.
MORAN: So, Governor Jindal, what about that point, this is forward motion, it is job creation, and more, overall, than the Bush administration created?
JINDAL: Well, Terry, let's actually look at the facts for the whole four years now, three-and-a-half years where President Obama has been president, we've lost nearly half a million jobs since this president was elected.
O'MALLEY: Not true.
JINDAL: You look at his numbers, you look at -- at family income, median family income has now decreased now under this president over $4,000, median family worth, two-decade low. By any measure, his policies have been a failure.
The president himself said at the beginning of his term, he said give us three years. If we can't turn this around, this will be a one-term proposition. President Clinton went to Ohio two years ago, 2010, said give us two years. If we can't turn this around, throw us out of office.
Let's -- look, the president himself, his administration himself said this word that words matter. Let's take them at their word. Their policies aren't working. Albert Einstein said it best. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
He passed an $800 billion stimulus package, promised that unemployment would be below 8 percent. It's been above 8 percent for 41 straight months. If we were where they told us we would be -- they told us we'd be at 5.6 percent unemployment under his stimulus -- you would have 8 million more Americans working today than is actually the case.
Look, kids come out of college, half of them are going to be underemployed, unemployed, 23 million underemployed, unemployed Americans. However you measure this, this economy is not growing. This president's policies simply aren't working.
MORAN: It's tough. And, Governor O'Malley, one of the tough things for the president, as Governor Jindal points out, is that he made promises, so he's had to come before the American people and explain what went wrong. Republicans are having a field day with this. Here's Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS, an ad that they have put together with some of those statements. Take a look.
(UNKNOWN): America's jobless rate is still too high. Barack Obama's got lots of excuses for the bad economy.
OBAMA: Headwinds coming from Europe. We've had a string of bad luck. An earthquake in Japan, an Arab spring. An ATM, you don't go to a bank teller. Some things that we could not control. You go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk. We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.
MORAN: You know, Governor O'Malley, obviously, that's political ad, but doesn't Barack Obama own this economy?
O'MALLEY: Well, I think what he owns is the leadership of our country forward. What he owns is the responsibility to do everything in his power to dig us out of the hole that we found ourselves in.
And, look, President Obama is not running against the almighty. He is running against the alternative. And the alternative in this case is Governor Mitt Romney, who had the 47th worst job creation rate as governor and also has a -- a penchant, a talent for offshoring American jobs, sending them overseas, and also maintaining offshore bank accounts in Bermuda, Swiss bank accounts. And so the question he'll have to answer, Terry, is what is his alternative?
I've never known of a Swiss bank account to build an American bridge, a Swiss bank account to create American jobs, or Swiss bank accounts to rebuild the levees to protect the people of New Orleans. That's not an economic strategy for moving our country forward.
MORAN: All right. Just for the record, I did ask you about President Obama and you ended up attacking Mitt Romney. We...
O'MALLEY: Because this is a choice, Terry, between two gentlemen. Look, President Obama's talked about what we need to do as a nation. It's what our parents and grandparents did, to invest in our country, to believe enough in her to invest in education, in our infrastructure, and also in innovation. That is not the proposal that Mitt Romney has. He wants to make it even easier for very wealthy people to avoid paying taxes, to offshore American jobs, and to maintain their Swiss bank accounts while our roads and bridges and levees crumble.
MORAN: OK. Let -- let me pick up on some of that with Governor Jindal. Mitt Romney does spend most of his time attacking President Obama. That's the nature of this campaign right now. But when he does put forward his own program, in broad generalities, he talks about cutting taxes, especially for the very rich, cutting corporate taxes, deregulation, especially for the financial sector, because apparently they don't need any more regulation. And what do you say to a voter who says that is the precise recipe that cratered the economy in the first place when Bush and the Republicans were in power and cooked it up and ruined everything in the first place? What's the answer to that?
JINDAL: Well, Terry, sure. First of all, let's look at the actual policies he's proposing. And let's correct some of the misstatements that we've just heard. The reality is, we can't afford -- we've got up to over $15 trillion of debt. We can't afford to continue on the same path we've been. You look at Mitt Romney's record when he was governor of Massachusetts. Unemployment rate, it was below 5 percent. Per capita income growth, higher than the national average, their unemployment below the national average, ranked one of the top 10 turnaround states, so he's got a great track record both in the private sector, governor of Massachusetts, creating jobs in the private sector...
MORAN: But the question, Governor Jindal, is aren't these policies going backwards? Why won't voters say, "We tried that"?
JINDAL: Absolutely. Absolutely. Listen to the policies he's actually outlined. He has said we need a lower, flatter tax code, so we need to cut individual tax rates 20 percent. We need a corporate tax rate that is competitive in the world. We now have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire industrialized world.
But he's also said, let's take away some of those loopholes, those deductions, especially for high-income earners, so we're not growing our December.
Secondly, he says let's produce more energy at home. Let's approve that Keystone pipeline, over 100,000 jobs there. Let's do more domestic energy production in the gulf and elsewhere in this country. Let's produce more oil and gas, especially from shale plays, already created over 600,000 jobs, could create another 250,000 jobs, will help secure manufacturing jobs in the steel industry, in the plastics, in the fertilizer industries.
Third, he -- he has also said we can't afford all of this spending. You know, President Obama created a new entitlement program, and we can't afford the entitlement programs we've already got. Mitt Romney has said let's repeal and replace Obamacare, get rid of those over 20 tax increases, $500 billion in tax increases, $500 billion in Medicare cuts, a program the president promised to protect, making cuts now that (inaudible) says are not sustainable, not realistic.
JINDAL: So Mitt Romney has already said on the first day he would not only cut taxes, he would also rein in spending and stop all of these regulations that are killing jobs, while at the same time regulating Wall Street in a prudent way.
MORAN: Well, OK, so, Governor O'Malley, this is a forward-looking program, according to Governor Jindal.
O'MALLEY: The Romney program?
MORAN: Yes.
O'MALLEY: You mean the health care program that Governor Romney passed?
MORAN: No, the whole economic recipe.
O'MALLEY: Oh, the economic recipe. That would say -- or an economic recipe for disaster. And it's been proven. You want to talk about insanity, doing the same thing over and over again? You know, nostalgia is not want it used to be. I don't think most Americans want to go back to the days of George W. Bush, record spending increases, record deficits, record unemployment, record job losses.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, while we would all like the recovery to be happening faster, unemployment is lower now than it's been in three years, home foreclosures are now lower than they were before President Obama took office.
Look, the direction's clear. We need to move forward. And we need for the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, to reclaim their party from the radical Tea Party Republicans that would rather kill our economy than -- in order to try to score points in this election rather than move forward.
MORAN: It may be a tough sell for voters to say that the economy is doing as well as you point out.
O'MALLEY: No, I'm not saying -- I'm saying, look, this is hard. The economy is moving in a better direction than it was, but it needs -- the acceleration needs to happen, and that requires both parties to work together for the common good.
MORAN: You know, Governor O'Malley, you raised something I want to raise with Governor Jindal, and that is something the Democrats are going to talk a lot about. Voters still aren't really sure of who Mitt Romney is, and this week, there were two major articles, Vanity Fair, Associated Press, taking a look at his fortune. And as you pointed out, he had a secret company in Bermuda. Not a lot of Americans have that, 12 offshore tax haven funds in the Cayman Islands and that Swiss bank account.
Let me go to Governor Jindal. Is it fair for voters to consider, Governor, what Mitt Romney does with his money outside the United States?
JINDAL: Terry, a couple -- I'll definitely answer that question. A couple things that I just want to again correct...
MORAN: No, no, no...
JINDAL: If you heard my friend, Governor O'Malley -- I will get to that question, but, look, Governor O'Malley, he's talked about President Bush several times now. That election was eight years ago. This election, this is a choice between President Obama and his failed policies and Governor Romney. This past week, David Axelrod tried to run against President Nixon. This is not about the past. This is about the future. Secondly, this...
JINDAL: ... Governor O'Malley is angry at Congress. He needs to be angry at the American people. They elected this Congress to stop some of these Obama policies. And this Congress, by the way...
MORAN: OK, what about his -- what about his...
JINDAL: ... policies about more domestic energy production. They passed policies...
MORAN: Got it. Got it.
JINDAL: ... to say regulations that cost our economy over $100 million...
MORAN: What -- what about...
JINDAL: ... should come in front of them.
MORAN: OK, filibuster.
JINDAL: They passed policies to rein in the NLRB. In terms of Governor Romney's financial success...
MORAN: Yes.
JINDAL: Look, I'm happy he's a successful businessman. We've got a president today who's never run a business, never run anything including a lemonade stand before he was president of the United States.
O'MALLEY: Governor, what about the Swiss bank accounts?
JINDAL: We can't afford four more years of on-the-job training. Look, the bottom line is, I'm thrilled that Mitt Romney has been successful in the private sector. I want somebody who's got that private-sector experience...
MORAN: But what about his money out of the country?
MORAN: Is it OK -- is it OK for voters to consider the amount of money that he's put out of the country in tax havens offshore, in secret Bermuda companies? Does that make sense for voters to consider?
JINDAL: Look, I think -- I think voters will consider all of the distractions thrown out by the Obama campaign. But at the end of the day, this election is about two fundamental choices. It's about President Obama, who wants to continue to spend money we don't have. They incurred now $1 trillion-plus deficit every year he's been president, after he promised we'd cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. He hasn't done that. Promised unemployment would be below 8 percent, hadn't done that, promised he'd reform the entitlement programs, hasn't done that.
We're going the way of Europe. You may have noticed a couple of weeks ago, the German finance minister actually lectured the America -- actually lectured the American president about borrowing. He said, don't tell us what to do until you get your house in order. It's pretty embarrassing when the Europeans are telling us we're spending and borrowing too much...
MORAN: And -- and with those problems...
JINDAL: There will be a lot of distractions from the Obama campaign...
MORAN: And with those problems...
JINDAL: But this is about two fundamental choices.
MORAN: Got it. So, Governor O'Malley, it is a distraction, according to the Republicans. This is really just sand in the eyes of the American voter.
O'MALLEY: Oh, it's not a distraction at all. Look...
MORAN: What's the relevance? What's the relevance?
O'MALLEY: The relevance is this, that Governor Romney can't can claim that his state actually was great at creating jobs when he was governor, so he's falling back and said, look, vote for me, I was a businessman, I created jobs.
You want talk about going the way of Europe? What went the way of Europe were the -- the Swiss bank accounts and the American dollars that Mitt Romney stuffed in that offshore Swiss bank account, jobs that he facilitated companies in moving offshore, out of places like Ohio, out of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
I mean, this is a fundamental disagreement between two different candidates and their vision for our country's future. Barack Obama believes enough in our country to be willing to work for and invest in it. Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda, which, by the way, in order to avoid disclosure, he put in his wife's name right before he became governor of Massachusetts.
These are legitimate questions that a man who is holding himself out as wanting to lead our country forward needs to answer. He doesn't have an economic policy. And his track record in business was to offshore American jobs and to set up secret bank accounts offshore to shelter his own fair share of paying taxes to make our country stronger.
MORAN: All right, I'm going to let Governor Jindal have a brief last word on that.
JINDAL: I need to respond to that real quickly. Three things. Under Governor Romney, they did create jobs in Massachusetts, top 10 states turned around, unemployment below 5 percent. I'd love to see that for the country right now.
Secondly, independent fact-checker organizations have made it very clear these claims are false about the outsourcing of jobs when Governor Romney was at Bain.
But, third, look at this president's policies. Just this week, a political attempt to try to do something about China, Mitt Romney has said on the first day he would declare them a currency manipulator. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio -- Democratic senator said, look, this Treasury Department has not done enough against the Chinese. Mitt Romney will create jobs right now in America. I don't blame Governor O'Malley for trying to change the topic. They can't run on the president's track record...
O'MALLEY: Oh, I'm not changing the topic.
MORAN: OK. All right, gentlemen, we're going to have to leave it there.
MORAN: That will -- that will be the last words, I guess. And, Governor Jindal and Governor O'Malley, thanks very much for being with us this morning.
O'MALLEY: Thank you, Terry.
MORAN: Well, don't go anywhere. Our powerhouse roundtable is coming right up in just 60 seconds.
(UNKNOWN): Those jobs numbers, and as one economist said today, this country is stuck in quicksand.
(UNKNOWN): Stocks sinking following the weaker than expected June jobs report.
(UNKNOWN): Well, the headline from the June jobs report is disappointing.
FALLON: President Obama said Americans need someone who will wake up every single day and fight for their jobs. Then he said, but until we find that guy, I'm still your best choice. It's really...
MORAN: If you're an incumbent president running for re-election, that's not the kind of joke or headlines you want to hear. Let's talk about it with our powerhouse roundtable. As ever, George Will is with us. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who has a new book out, "Our Divided Political Heart," it's called, the conflict between the individualism and community in American politics. Looks very good.
From PBS, the host of "Washington Week," Gwen Ifill is with us. Steve Rattner, former automobile czar in the Obama administration and investor. And Mort Zuckerman, the editor of U.S. News and investors.
Well, so let me begin, George, with you. How bad is it? How bad is it in reality? How bad is it for President Obama?
WILL: It's bad, bad, bad across the board. We're now in the fourth year of a recovery, which if 7 million people had not left the workforce, so the workforce participation is way down, we would have 10.9 percent unemployment and no one would be talking about a recovery.
It's quite clear the president got terrible advice early in his administration. First, his advisers said we'll do this stimulus and it will never reach 8 percent; 41 weeks now -- 41 months over 8 percent. But beyond that, they assured him that this was going to be a V-shaped recovery. Precipitous downturn, but a commensurate upturn. It turned out to be not quite an L-shaped, but more like a hockey stick, so that we're in what is now called properly a growth recession. We're getting some growth, but not enough to accommodate even the growth of the workforce.
MORAN: And let's go to our friends in the business sector, Steve and Mort. Mort, is this the new normal, this kind of struggle?
ZUCKERMAN: Well, it's certainly going to continue for a while. I think whatever has been tried, add a huge amount of deficit spending, has simply not worked, and so this is going to continue, I believe, for quite a while. And I don't see any way of getting out of it, because it's going to be very difficult now to improve the economy through additional fiscal spending. We are on the verge of being broke. You know, I think as some Hemingway novel, there was a guy who said, how did you go broke? He said, first slowly, and then suddenly.
We are -- we have to be very careful that people do not lose confidence in the American dollar, because we have to borrow huge amounts of money. It's not -- it's not sustainable, and it has not worked. So we're going to have to find a whole set of different policies that will work.
MORAN: Hmm. Steve, we're tapped out?
RATTNER: We are tapped out in a sense, yeah. We have to deal with the long-term deficit problem, as Mort said. There's no question about that. But in the short run, there are things that we can and should be doing to fix the economy.
First, I would not take issue with George's facts, but I'd take a little bit of issue with the packaging, in the sense that I would argue that the stimulus program, the financial rescue, the auto rescue all got us in a much better place than we would have been had none of those things happened.
The second point I'd make is you have to remember that a lot of this unemployment is coming from a few very defined sectors: government, which has cut employment, state, local federal; construction, home-building, not surprising. Even things like media, which some of you guys are in, have had flat to declining -- and finance, where Mort and I live, have flat to declining employment.
So when you have roughly a third of your economy either losing jobs or not gaining jobs, it becomes hard. So when you ask the question, is this the new normal, yeah, we face a bunch of headwinds, including the fiscal situation, including Europe, including the factors that I mentioned in those other sectors, including global competition and the effect that it has on our wages. These are massive problems, and we need to address them.
MORAN: And the buck stops, Gwen, with the guy in the office with no corners.
IFILL: Well, it does. The office with no corners, I mean, it's true, because in the end, no one really cares about the numbers and the excuses. That's why that Romney ad is actually kind of useful, because no president wants to be put in the position of always looking like he's on the defensive.
People care about whether they feel anxious or not, and people feel a great deal of anxiety. The choice they're making now isn't between whether they're going to have a job next month or their kids are going to have a job. Their choice is whether either of these guys is going to make their lives better.
And if they don't -- if Romney can't convince them that their lives will be made better, they'll just stick with the one they know. But if Obama seems like he's always on the defensive and can't -- no matter what we keep digging deeper, he is in peril.
So that's -- that's how voters talk to me about this. They don't talk about the numbers. They don't even say, well, you know, he saved the auto industry, unless you live in Ohio or Michigan, in which they think it's a great thing. But otherwise they're thinking, what about me? Did they save my kids' future? And that's not -- that's an open question at this point.
MORAN: You talk about headwinds, E.J., for the president.
DIONNE: Right. Well, you know, I mean, two things. One is, from the beginning, the stimulus should have been bigger. He cut it back partly to get votes in Congress. He had to cut it back further to get those last three Republican votes.
If you had simply the growth in government employment now that you had under Ronald Reagan, the unemployment rate would probably be a point lower. And so ironically, because the Republican control in local government, the pushback in the Congress, and the fact that Obama didn't go big enough at the beginning, you've got the unemployment rate higher.
I think the interesting question is, why is President Obama still ahead in these polls, and especially still ahead in the swing states?
MORAN: Why?
DIONNE: I mean, we've had this sluggish growth. And I think part of the problem for Romney is that he's making a very simple argument, which is things aren't working, Obama didn't fix them, try me.
And if the economy were actually falling, if there's ever a negative number in front of the jobs number, then President Obama is in big trouble. But at the moment, Romney isn't offering much except for tax cuts, cuts in regulation. And there is sort of a feeling that, well, that won't work. And so I think -- and Romney also is in trouble with a lot of switches in positions. So Obama is maintaining a lead in the face of pretty bad economic numbers. That's a really interesting fact about our politics.
WILL: Steve, like God in Genesis, has looked upon his work and found it good. His work (inaudible) was the auto bailout. But without re-litigating that, surely the stimulus was an exercise in faith-based economics. These were all communicants in the Church of Keynes, and they had this touching faith in the multiplier effect of federal spending. Well, it didn't multiply by the standards they enunciated.
DIONNE: All the evidence is that it grew jobs.
RATTNER: That's not really true.
RATTNER: This has been studied -- this has been studied by bipartisan economists, Mark Zandi, Alan Blinder. I know -- the problem Obama has is he's trying to prove a counterfactual. He's trying to prove that without the stimulus it would have been worse. There's no way that we can all agree on that. There's no way that we can come to a consensus necessarily, but it has been studied.
And the fact is, as E.J. said, without the stimulus, you would have had much higher unemployment. Simply, imagine this. A third of that stimulus went to state and local governments that have to balance their budgets. They've already cut hundreds of thousands of workers. If they had not gotten that $300 billion, imagine how many people would have lost their jobs at those -- at the state and local level.
ZUCKERMAN: But the problem with that argument, if I may say, is that if that money had gone into some area of the economy where you would have had a job multiplier effect, which is what it didn't do when you're trying to save the so-called state and local municipal jobs, OK, we would have had a much better economy. That was a payoff, if I may say so, to the public service unions. That's where it was going. It was a political thing. And $400 billion of the $800 billion went to that area.
So I -- I disagreed with it at the time, because I said it was not going to work, and it didn't work. It didn't work well enough, and the president has to be held responsible. The great American job machine has now broken down. We are four years into a so-called recovery, and it is the worst recovery we've ever seen, and now we are -- we are looking at the possibility of a double-dip recession. This would be disastrous.
DIONNE: I just don't think it's true that there's no multiplier. Money in the hands of cops, firefighters and teachers is circulated through the economy. All the studies show the stimulus created jobs.
I think one of the great ironies, you've got a campaign here that's about, well, government is too big. The most interventionist policy -- I don't want to accuse an investment banker of being a statist -- but the most interventionist policy by the Obama administration, the auto bailout, is also the most successful. And I think one of the great ironies of this election is that if Obama wins by carrying Michigan and Ohio, bailing out or rescuing the car industry will be the key to his re-election.
MORAN: Well, as Gwen points out, that doesn't seem to have a lot of traction even in those states with voters who aren't involved in the...
IFILL: Actually, one of the great ironies of this election is that they're -- neither of these candidates is having this debate that we're having at this table. In fact, they're talking in circles around each other. And in the end, for most voters, this is a choice of alternatives. They may think that President Obama could have done more. They may think there should be more jobs created, but Governor Romney still has to prove that he is a reasonable alternative. That's always the choice.
MORAN: And it feels almost as if voters are saying neither one of them has the answer.
RATTNER: Let me just tell E.J. the secret of the auto bailout. The secret of the auto bailout is we didn't have to go to Congress. We did it using TARP money. We didn't have to go to Congress. It never would have happened with Congress. And I think that is a metaphor for the broader problem. Congress is doing nothing. They sit there with their 17 percent approval rating, and they pass nothing, and I think you have to put them in the mix as we debate who's responsible for this problem.
DIONNE: ... the Obama campaign is going to try very hard to tie them to Mitt Romney, and he seems to keep ceding ground to the Republicans...
ZUCKERMAN: Let me just say, while I'm sorry to interrupt, this country responds to presidential leadership, not to congressional leadership. With a different kind of leadership, I think we would have had a different kind of stimulus program and we would have different kinds of effects. That is the core issue of our government. It responds to presidential leadership, not to congressional leadership. And that's always been the case in this country.
WILL: E.J. sounds -- and it's an interesting point -- that in spite of all this bad news, it's essentially tied or Obama's slightly ahead. Let me remind you of 1980. A week before the election, when Reagan left to go to Cleveland for the one debate with Carter, ABC had Reagan ahead a little bit, Time magazine had Carter ahead a little bit. Statistical tie. A week later, Reagan carried 44 states. So the country will at some point decide -- they'll throw a switch and say this isn't working or this is the best we can do. I wouldn't be confident.
DIONNE: There were only three problems with that metaphor. Reagan -- Romney isn't Reagan, Obama isn't Carter, and hostages aren't in Iran. Otherwise...
MORAN: We're going to take a break right now. There's a lot more to come from our roundtable. We're going to talk about the veepstakes. They're heating up.
PAWLENTY: Barack Obama's basic slogan for this campaign is, hey, it could be worse. Mitt Romney's slogan is it will be better.
MORAN: President Obama's campaign pounces on reports of Mitt Romney's offshore bank accounts, as we've heard.
(UNKNOWN): Doesn't it make you wonder what Mitt Romney is trying to hide from the American people?
MORAN: And extreme storms, what's to blame?
LENO: Hundred degrees in New York City. It was so hot, Mayor Bloomberg said, screw it, give me an extra large soda. I don't care. Give me the big...
OBAMA: Maybe you took a vacation every once in a while. And it wasn't necessarily some fancy vacation at some fancy resort. The best vacation I had when I was a kid was we traveled around the country on Greyhound busses and on t rains and we stayed at Howard Johnsons.
ROMNEY: You know, I'm delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family. I think all Americans appreciate the memories that they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope that more Americans are able to take vacations.
MORAN: Well, so do I. The battle of the vacations. We're back with more of our roundtable. And, George, this seems silly. Maybe it is. But it does go at something that is at work in this campaign, does it not, which is essentially a class conflict.
WILL: Well, they're trying to make Mitt Romney not likable. Peter Hart -- I've said this before -- Peter Hart over and over says go back -- all of the complicated metrics you want, go back to Truman against Dewey and Eisenhower against Stevenson, the likable guy usually wins. And they're trying to -- and so far has succeeded in making Mitt Romney's core argument, "I'm a business guy," a negative. The country doesn't look upon his business career in a happy way.
MORAN: And what they're doing with that business -- what do you guys think of this -- with the notion of going after his investments abroad, offshore accounts, and making that part of the argument against him?
RATTNER: Well, certainly it's part of the argument against him, because he's done things that the average American can't relate to, doesn't understand, doesn't think are fair. Look, I'm a private-equity guy, and I'm aware of some of these ways to use the tax code...
MORAN: Do you have offshore accounts?
RATTNER: But I have never -- I actually was with a very prominent private equity guy last night who said he'd never heard of some of the things Mitt Romney has done in terms of putting money offshore, in terms of having $100 million IRA, basically getting an interest-free loan from Uncle Sam on the taxes, on all that money, until he brings it home. And I think these are all -- I think these are absolutely fair game.
ZUCKERMAN: Well, I think what is fair game about Romney is that he was a very effective governor of Massachusetts. He was a very effective governor when he came to the Olympics in Salt Lake City. He has done a lot of things that shows that he knows how to manage situations.
And this one of the problems we have with a president who's never run anything. There are astonishing parts to that, including his inability to communicate with the Congress, which is just astounding when you meet people there who say they've never met with him in three-and-a-half or four years, since he's been president. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, with a front-page story in the New York Times, he hadn't had a single meeting or conversation with the president in 18 months. Government doesn't work that way. This president does not know how to work government. And that is critical.
IFILL: Well, you can argue whose fault these non-meetings are, but that's kind of off point. To me, it's 100 degrees in Washington today. I do not begrudge anyone a vacation. I would love to be on vacation on a lake right now.
MORAN: That boat looks nice.
IFILL: That boat looked kind of sweet. But what they are trying to do on the boat is that it was loaded up with his family. They're trying to make Mitt Romney more likable. Every time you see him, he's out -- sure, he's at a lakefront mansion, but he's with his grandchildren, who will obviously adore him. When you see the president talk about his childhood, bouncing up on beds in Howard Johnsons, and when you see him more interestingly in his speeches say, I see my daughters in you, he also is trying to make himself likable and playing up the things which are most normal guy.
This is what they do. Now, when you vacation at an estate in Martha's Vineyard, which the Obamas will not be doing this year, that takes away from this, so they will not be doing it.
MORAN: And windsurfing is a bad idea.
IFILL: And windsurfing, not so good.
DIONNE: One of the most interesting voter interviews I've had at this campaign -- I was with Joe Klein at a Gingrich rally in New Hampshire, way back at the beginning of the campaign, and there was a gentleman there, and we asked him, why are you for Gingrich over Romney? And he said Mitt Romney reminds me of John Kerry.
And I thought of that when I saw all of these -- this focus on the vacation, because we all remember, as you suggested, that the Bush people jumped on the windsurfing thing. Class is always used in American politics. And I think George underscored the essential point, which is Mitt Romney hoped that his experience at Bain Capital would be a political asset. Well, guess what? After all of this argument and all of this advertising, it's turned into a liability.
And it's especially a liability in the swing states. And it's partly because there are different ways of having capitalism in our country, and there are aspects of the way the private-equity business works, the way Mitt Romney's business works that don't sit well with Americans. And that's why we're having this big argument.
MORAN: And putting that on trial. Let's get to an issue, health care. The Romney campaign was all over the map again this week. Take a look at Romney's -- one of Romney's top advisers and then Mitt Romney himself cleaning things up.
PERRY: The fact of the matter is, you're for individual mandates. And you can get up and stand up and talk about, you know, I'm against it now and I'm going to rescind Obamacare, I'm going to repeal Obamacare, but the record is very clear. And the question has been, who can stand on the stage, look Obama in the eye, and say, "Obamacare is an abomination for this country"?
MORAN: All right, well, obviously, that was back in the Republican debates, but it presents the problem that Rick Perry presented very pointedly. Can a guy who had that health care program in Massachusetts take it to the president on this issue? He's having trouble.
WILL: He's having trouble, even with an assist from the chief justice who said -- sorted this out and gave him an intellectual framework for attacking it. He cannot make the case. He has not made the case. He wants to change the subject. And in this regard, he has the president's cooperation, because the president wants to change the subject. Neither side wants to talk about health care, which is a very interesting development.
IFILL: Well, both sides want to talk about taxes. And as long as they can take this health care debate and turn it into a debate about who will raise your taxes, that wonderful, old story that they drag out every four years, then that's what this debate is going to be engaged on. It was interesting this week to see the president actually step out on his campaign to start to defend his health care plan. He actually started to say what it would do and how it would help, instead of being on the defensive. So clearly they think they have an upper hand here.
DIONNE: I think that's right. I think that the Obama campaign now wants to talk more about those aspects of the health care bill that they didn't talk enough about before that are actually popular with people. But this was an amazing moment for Romney, because, you know, he did so many things wrong there. They should have had a position ready before the Supreme Court made a decision. They should have sort of worked this out. Why they had this fight with their own Republican Party was strange. It looked like he switched his position and caved to pressure from the Republican Party. And that plays into another narrative the other side is trying to build, and there -- it's hard to understand how the campaign got to that point.
ZUCKERMAN: But there have been two studies about what they call regulatory insecurity or political insecurity, one by Stanford and one by the University of Chicago. And both of them came to the conclusion that between 2 million and 2.5 million jobs were not created primarily because of the health care program and their concerns about it.
And look at just one thing in the health care program, which I find astonishing. Every company that has 50 employees or more is going to have to take on a new level of health care which is going to raise their costs by $70 a week per worker. Do you know what that's going to do to low-income and low -- sort of restaurants and the very labor-intensive jobs? It's going to be devastating. So nobody things about what the real effects of that health care bill are.
RATTNER: But, look, at the same time, Mort, the health care bill does do a lot of things. It takes care of the pre-existing conditions, children under -- up to 26, 30 million uninsured coming on the rolls. But fundamentally I agree with George, much to my -- I guess slightly to my surprise, which is...
WILL: And my chagrin.
RATTNER: I think that -- and your chagrin -- I think Romney potentially had an issue in health care, that he might have been able to do something with -- notwithstanding Massachusetts. He had had -- he sort of found a line that got him through Massachusetts and allowed him to get to Obama, and I think this past couple of weeks, between the Supreme Court and what he did on the taxes on the mandate, going back and forth and back and forth, over something that amounts to $7 billion in 2019 -- this is a tiny little thing he couldn't get out of his own way on it. I think he's lost his ability to press that issue.
MORAN: And there are Republicans who are very concerned right now about the way the Romney campaign is going. The Wall Street Journal, among others, are just hammering the Romney campaign right now. In an editorial -- this is the gospel of the conservative movement, in some ways -- in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House. Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.
And that's just one place. George, how do you think they're doing?
WILL: Well, to be fair to the Romney campaign, at some point in every campaign, the people who are not included in the campaign, which is 90 percent of Republican activists, say we should be -- we could do it better.
IFILL: That happened a month ago for the Democrats.
WILL: So this is normal. On the other hand, the president does seem -- sorry, not the president -- Governor Romney seems to be risk-averse. He does seem to be in something like a four-corner stall in basketball, which almost killed basketball, and they put in a 30-second shot clock to change that.
But you can't get to the NCAA championship, you can't get to the presidency running out the clock. So he's going to have to do something more than say Obama's not working. And he said to CBS News this week, as long as I keep talking about the economy, I'll win.
IFILL: He did say that.
WILL: It's what you say about the economy and what hope you give to people.
DIONNE: The Wall Street Journal editorial paper attacking the Republican nominee, it's like George Will attacking baseball. This isn't supposed to happen. That's a bad week for a Republican nominee.
And I think, on the one hand, George is right. There is a risk aversion there. He just thinks if he just keeps talking about how bad the economy is, he'll win. But there's also a problem for some of the conservatives making this case, which is they want Romney to go all the way over to the right where they are. In my book, I talk about this radical individualism. And that's where they want Romney to be.
The Romney campaign knows that if they go that far right, they're going to lose some of the middle ground voters that they need to win. So there's a kind of -- they're both right and both wrong about this one.
IFILL: But if you're going to have a bad week, don't you want to have it be Fourth of July week rather than, I don't know, Columbus Day?
RATTNER: But it's a long-term problem for him, because I think it's more than just risk-aversion. I think it's suicide-aversion. Because if Romney actually starts talking about his economic plan and lays out clearly for the American people what he's in favor of, 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts that aren't paid for, privatizing Medicare and turning it into a voucher program, sending Medicaid back to the states as a block grant program, cutting a whole series of programs like food stamps by 33 percent, I'm not sure he's going to win the election if people actually understood what he's in favor of.
MORAN: (inaudible) let's close this up by talking about the vice presidential stakes, the veepstakes. I want to get your thoughts on who's out there. And this is the kind of process where everything goes into the pot for each one of the candidates being vetted and considered, including Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. And Jake Tapper sat down with him for "Nightline" and talked to him about one of the issues that's probably in the calculation of whether he should be the vice presidential candidate. Take a look.
CHRISTIE: Some people, you know, drink too much. Some people take drugs. Some people eat too much. See, you can go -- live every day without drinking. You can live every day without taking drugs. You can't live every day without eating. And I've struggled with it for the last 30 years, on and off. And I'm trying. It may not look like I'm trying sometimes, but I am.
MORAN: It's a fact, weight is probably an issue, as is everything else. I just want to go around the horn. Who'd you like to see on the ticket? Who do you think will be there?
ZUCKERMAN: I think it'll be either Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman of Ohio, Tim Pawlenty, of course, of Minnesota. I think Portman is a very strong candidate and may help him carry Ohio, which is a very, very critical state in the election.
RATTNER: I think Mort is probably right about that. I think the only real issue here is whether he picks something that is a mistake, like Sarah Palin, because, frankly, I don't think it matters that much. I think if you look at history, fewer and fewer times has a vice president actually helped a presidential candidate, even in his home state.
IFILL: I'm an agnostic on veepstakes, in part because we're always wrong, and in part -- not always, but often wrong, and part because, you know, Steve's right. It doesn't really matter. People are going to vote for the candidate, not for who it is. But this gives us something to talk about during the summer.
MORAN: It does. And it does tell us something about the candidate. It tells us something about McCain, right?
IFILL: Yeah. Yeah.
DIONNE: I could predict with absolute certainty it will not be Sarah Palin. And I think Sarah Palin looms over this whole process, which was why the choices are all safe. Portman is clearly the Washington choice. He may end up being the choice because of Ohio. But I think there's a competition between Pawlenty and Jindal. I still think Jindal is in it, and so he was kind of trying out for it today.
IFILL: ... Chris Christie, huh?
WILL: Steve's right. There's precious little political science evidence that this matters in electoral politics. It matters in American history, because 14 vice presidents have become president. So we ought to be careful about who we put there. Mitt Romney has been risk-averse. Mitt Romney needs an alternative narrative on health care. There are two people who give him that, and that is Bobby Jindal and Paul Ryan.
MORAN: All right. There you have it, those predictions. We'll have more of our roundtable in just 60 seconds, discussing this furnace heat that's out there, the record heat wave, and America's pastime at the All-Star Break. Stay with us.
ZEE: Good morning. I'm meteorologist Ginger Zee in Central Park. What an extreme historic weather week it has been. The heat has been ferocious. Nationwide, around 2,000 record highs set this month alone. The middle of the country hardest hit, St. Louis with 10 consecutive triple-digit days. But it's not just the heat. Across the heartland, droughts and devastating crops prompting comparisons to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and raising the prices you pay at the supermarket.
Out west, wildfires have claimed hundreds of homes and more than 2 million acres this season. And don't forget the storms, like last weekend's derecha windstorm that left more than 20 dead and millions without power.
Now, we know that one week of extreme heat cannot be called climate changes. However, the Associated Press wrote this week, this summer is what global warming looks like. But, Terry, the most important thing is we're finally going to get some relief this week, and that can't come soon enough.
MORAN: (inaudible) Ginger, thanks very much.
What's to blame for this extreme heat? We're back with the roundtable here. The thing that strikes me as odd is that -- is that we don't make neuroscience, brain surgery a political question, but we have made whether or not the climate is changing because of human activities an article of political face on both sides. That seems silly.
ZUCKERMAN: Well, I think there is probably the chance that weather has a broader application than brain surgery. I don't know why I come up to that conclusion.
But it's something that really affects, you know, the vast number of American people, so why shouldn't it be an issue, you know, particularly people losing their home? I mean, the great American dream has long been to have your own home in the suburbs, in particular. I mean, the great American dream may now be getting a job now, but it's still a key factor for every American.
MORAN: Climate change is a political issue.
DIONNE: Well, it is a political issue, because the question is, are you going to do something about it or not? And, you know, during heat waves, belief in global warming goes up, surprise, surprise, in the polls. But what's really -- what we've really seen is wild weather, not only here, but all over the world.
And what I don't understand is why people are so resistant -- why my conservative friends are so resistant in taking out an insurance policy. There is a lot of evidence that human activity is changing the climate. There's not a lot of dispute among scientists about this. Why wouldn't we want to take out an insurance policy to protect ourselves? Because if we go wrong on this, we're making an awfully big mistake.
IFILL: George?
WILL: You asked us -- how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. I grew up in central Illinois in a house without air conditioning. What is so unusual about this?
Now, come the winter, there will be a cold snap, lots of snow, and the same guys, like E.J., will start lecturing us. There's a difference between the weather and the climate. I agree with that. We're having some hot weather. Get over it.
RATTNER: Well, wait a minute. But wait a minute. But wait a minute. I agree with that. But the 10 hottest years on record have been in the last 12 years. The 20 hottest years on record have been in the last 30 years. There is a lot of science around this. The polar icecaps, everything we've all read, I don't think we can just ignore it, George. And it is an issue, because it's something that our political leaders need to do something about, unlike neuroscience.
MORAN: Is it an issue for voters? Is this salient? Is this even on the radar screen?
IFILL: I come back to my argument in favor of vacations. I believe this is what most voters are thinking about now. I don't think they're getting drawn into scientific or political discussions about climate change. They just want it to stop, and they want their power to stay on.
Now, of course there are -- there are ramifications for this. And none of this comes for free. I don't think that this election is going to be decided on it.
ZUCKERMAN: If we had a heat wave in November of this kind, it'll be part of the election.
ZUCKERMAN: I doubt if that's going to be the case.
MORAN: All right. Well, we do have right now this time of year, it's the All-Star Break, and we're lucky to have one of the great baseball minds with us. George, my Cubs not doing too well, but what do you think of the -- of where the season is?
WILL: Every baseball fan talks about the golden age of baseball, and it's always when he was about 12 years old. I have news for you: This is the golden age. Competitive balance is back. The Pirates haven't had a winning season in 20 years, 1992. They have the best record in the National League. They have the best new ballpark. They have the most exciting player in the National League in Andrew McCutchen in centerfield.
But more to the point, the product is selling. People are coming out as never before. In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers win their only World Series, great team, Robinson, Furillo, Hodges, Reese, all those guys. Whole city of New York loved them. They drew 13,500 a game. This year, the average attendance in baseball is 31,000 a game and going up. This is the golden age.
MORAN: The golden age of baseball.
ZUCKERMAN: Absolutely.
ZUCKERMAN: And in New York, I have to say, the New York Yankees are once again doing fabulously well, which is a great thing for...
RATTNER: Yawn.
MORAN: ... newspapers like...
MORAN: We're going to close it off on the Yankees. George Will, E.J. Dionne, Gwen Ifill, Steve Rattner, Mort Zuckerman, thanks very much for being with us.
"Your Voice This Week" is coming right up.
But first...
MORAN (voice-over): Three moments from "This Week" history. What year was it?
(UNKNOWN): Somebody, possibly a terrorist, tried to blow up the World Trade Center.
MORAN: Al Qaida targeted the World Trade Center for the first time. The government siege of the Branch Davidian community's Texas compound ended with a fire claiming nearly 80 lives.
(UNKNOWN): How did the victims die? And how did the fire start?
MORAN: Plus, the political discussion.
GORE: Ask the wealthiest 1 percent to pay higher tax rates...
MORAN: Dominated by talk of the 1 percent and health care.
(UNKNOWN): Is it really possible to give full health care to everyone in the United States?
MORAN: Some things never change. Was it 1993, 1994, or 1995? We'll be back in a moment with the answer.
MORAN: So what year was it? When did Al Qaida first target the World Trade Center and Al Gore make the case for raising taxes on the top 1 percent? It was 19 years ago, 1993.
And now we honor our fellow Americans who serve and sacrifice. This week, the Pentagon released the names of three soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
And in "Your Voice This Week," today's question comes from Gwen Romack, who asks, what are the best sources to get accurate, non-politicized, untwisted information, actual facts put in context, about the candidate's position on key issues?
It's a good question. First place to go, candidates' websites. Go to the horses' mouths. Yes, it's their spin, but it belongs to them, and they own it.
There are some independent sites. C-SPAN has a great resource. PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Project Vote Smart, they all try to play it right down the middle. And I've got to say this, our own great site at abcnews.com, go to Otus, Otus. It really is a great source for this kind of information.
And that is all for us today. Check out "World News" with David Muir tonight. And tune in tomorrow -- this is exciting -- the debut of "Good Afternoon America," with hosts Josh Elliott and Lara Spencer.
Thanks for sharing part of your Sunday with us. George Stephanopoulos will see you back here next week.


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Prince Andrew becomes first UK royal on Twitter
Twitter is now a bit more royal.
Britain's Prince Andrew has joined the micro-blogging service as @TheDukeOfYork.
Within hours of opening the account Monday, Andrew had more than 10,000 followers — but also had received several abusive comments.
The son of Queen Elizabeth II has served as a navy helicopter pilot and a British business ambassador, and is following charities, arts organizations and the Hunstanton Golf Club on Twitter.
So far he is was not following his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, who tweets as @SarahTheDuchess.
The British monarchy has two official Twitter accounts, but Andrew is the first family member to tweet in a personal capacity, signing messages he has written AY.
Asked about abusive tweets Andrew had received, a palace spokesman said the duke is a champion of free speech.


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David Barron (or Baron) was born, say, in the 1720s in Northumberland. He was buried 17 Mar 1796 in the same town, as "David Baron of Nesbit Hill Head." David was married probably about 1745 to a woman named Mary –?–; she was buried 19 Feb 1769 in Stamfordham.
David probably belonged to a Stamfordham family that dated back nearly 100 years before his birth. William Barron was christened there 24 Sep 1671, possibly a son of George Barron. And Roger Barron was christened there in 1669, identified as a son of George Barron. A Matthew Barron was born about 1640 and had five children baptized in Stamfordham from 1663 to 1689; others in Matthew's family lived in Hartburn, Northumberland.
David Barron was not a member of the Church of England. As a member of any other church, he was listed as a "recusant," that is, a nonconformist. David Baron of Grange House, Stamfordham, was added to the offical listing in 1745; nonetheless, his children were baptized in the official Church.
David and Mary were the parents of the following children:
1. John BARRON. Baptized 27 Jul 1746 at Stamfordham, Northumberland. On 17 or 18 Mar 1782 when John was 35, he married Ann YATES in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
2. Margaret BARRON. Baptized 18 Jul 1748 at Stamfordham, Northumberland. On 12 May 1774 when Margaret was 25, she married John NEVINGS in Stamfordham.
3. George BARRON. Baptized 25 Jun 1750 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
4. David BARRON. Baptized 25 Dec 1753 in Stamfordham, Northumberland. On 14 Jun 1773 when David was 19, he married Eleanor HOLMES in Stamfordham.
5. William BARRON. Born and baptized on 25 Mar 1756 in Stamfordham, Northumberland. William died in Seneca Twp, Geneva, Ontario Co NY, on 14 Jul 1833; he was 77. 1800 census: Ontario Co NY, p 379. William Barrow, 21010/00100. 1810 census: Seneca Twp, Ontario Co NY, p 231. William Barren, 11101/01001. 1820 census: Seneca Twp, Ontario Co NY, p 271. William Barnes [sic], 001201/00001. 1830 census: Ontario Co NY, Seneca Twp, p 51. William Barron, 2000100001/0000100001. On 2 Jun 1785 when William was 29, he married Margery WILKINSON, daughter of William WILKINSON & Rebekah CHARLTON, in Simonburn Northumberland. Baptized ca 3 Dec 1761 in Simonburn, Northumberland. Margery died in NY on 6 Jun 1855 at the age of 93; two of their sons also lived into their nineties. They had the following children:
i. William (1787-<1860)
ii. David (1800-1895)
iii. Mary (1801-1879)
iv. Thomas (ca1802-1892)
6. Joseph BARRON. Baptized 18 Jan 1759 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
7. Mary BARRON. Baptized 23 Aug 1761 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
8. Thomas BARRON. Baptized 25 Oct 1763 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
9. Matthew BARRON. Baptized 12 Mar 1767 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
© 2009, Kathy Alvis Patterson
Age based on oldest known child, baptized 27 Jul 1746 in Stamfordham, Northumberland.
Stamfordham Parish registers for Christenings and Burials (films #252551 & 252552), and Marriages (films #252572 & 252553), located by Ramona Duff at SLC, Oct 1988.
Northumberland Index to Recusants (film #1068929, SLC).
My typing error. The microfilm would have the correct date.
His birthdate is known from his descendants in New York, and it is the same as his baptism.


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Tango Tuesdays
Tuesday, 02/26/2013, 08:00 pm – 01:00 am
337 S.W. 8th Street,
Miami, Florida 33130
Webpage Link
Mariano & Chantal Presents;
Milonga Guacha
Get inspired discover the passion of Tango, explore the culture.
Tango Classes and Social Dance to follow every Tuesday.
All levels welcomed.
Intermediate Class 8pm
Beginners Class 9pm
Social Dance (Milonga) 10pm


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The Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association has launched a new program called the Citizens Legal Academy, and the first program-on election law-begins tomorrow, September 12th, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. The list of speakers is impressive:
Jane Platten, who is the Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
Jeff Hatings, Esq., who is the Chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
Sandy McNair, who is a member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
Timothy F. Mellet, Deputy Chief, Department of Justice, Voting Rights Section
Jonathan L. Entin, David L. Brennan Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve University
Judge John J. Russo, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, moderator
This event is free and open to the public, but because seating is limited, registration is requested.
For those interested in attending, the CMBA's website provides more information about the program.


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Remembering Dana Brand
I got the call about a week and a half ago, when the days were blurred together by a fever that had me bed-ridden and a flu that would take two weeks to beat. I could barely talk or think, but Lynn Cohen (of GaryKeithandRon.com) was calling to tell me that Dana Brand had suddenly passed away. Dana – whom we'd just seen the Saturday before at a joyous (despite the Mets loss) GKR event, flanked by his smiling family. In fact it was Dana who email-introduced me to Lynn back in 2008. He had a way of bringing Mets fans together – of bridging the faceless voids between urls to gather avid, vocal blogging fans face-to-face.
The first time I met Dana in person he was doing just that – summoning Mets bloggers, the kind of fans he wrote about and considered his brethren, to celebrate the launch of his book, Mets Fan. That was September, 2007 (an eternity ago in blogger-time) and I urge you to read about the event in Dana's own words here.
But the memory I'll hold most dear of Dana was the day I got to see what a wonderful father he was. Almost exactly a year ago, June 10th 2010, Lynn got a bunch of last minute tickets in Citi Field's Bridge Terrace. Never heard of the Bridge Terrace? I hadn't either, but I'd seen the seats – little green cafe tables directly above the Mets bullpen, in front of the Shea Bridge. I arrived solo, planning to watch the game pretty much on my own, enjoying the sun and Johan Santana on the mound for the first game of a double-header.
But then I saw Dana sitting with his lovely daughter Sonia, and they waved me on over. I hesitated internally – I didn't want to interrupt daddy-daughter time, but Dana and Sonia could not have made me feel like less of an imposition. Dana was so open that way. If you knew him at all you could understand why he literally wrote the book – Dana loved talking to Mets fans, about Mets fans, and about Mets baseball. And so as the game went to pot pretty quickly – it was not a good day for Johan – Dana, Sonia, and I mostly kibbitzed. Before the game, we peered over the side of the bullpen at the birds-eye view of Henry Blanco's tattooed arms catching Johan's warm-up pitches. We marveled over the sound of the ball hitting the mitt. I heard about Sonia's college life, saw Dana proudly nodding. I heard a bit about Sonia's new boyfriend Pete and noticed the gleam in her eye when she talked about him.
And then Lynn came on by holding something magical. Two tickets to the 2nd game of the double-header. These past few post-collapsalypse years the words "magical" and "Mets tickets" haven't been used together all that often, but these were 2nd row seats. Behind the Mets dugout. Almost on the dang field itself. Lynn said, "These seats have to go to someone who'll appreciate them." That someone was obviously Dana.
But Dana didn't hesitate. He even managed to hide what might have been personal disappointment. He just said, "Oh, we can't. Sonia has to get home to Skype with her new boyfriend." Dana was going to give up 2nd-row dugout seats…so that his daughter could talk long distance on a computer with her boyfriend. Because that's what she wanted, and he wanted what she wanted.
But, no. That was so not going to happen.
I don't remember exactly what I said to Sonia, but it was along the lines of, "Girl, you can talk to your man anytime. Look at these seats!" I could see her getting excited about them. The kind of seats non-corporate Mets fans usually only get to dream about. And I'm so glad I had even a little part in convincing Sonia to delay her Skype chat with Pete, because the game that night was amazing. Jon Niese's one-hitter. We were all gabbing about it the next day. Dana wrote about the whole experience, the day game and the night game in the seats, here.
Knowing that Dana and Sonia had that night together, at a place that may not have been Shea but was still pretty special, to watch one of the greatest Mets games in recent years, and in those seats, warms my heart. To know that they won't again breaks it. But I imagine that night was just one lovely memory in an overflowing treasure trove of them.
Dana was a great writer, a die-hard Mets fan, and a special guy. We will miss him, and he won't soon be forgotten.
If you'd like to participate in a memorial at Citi Field for Dana on July 16th, please click here. I'll be in Florida for my grandfather's 90th birthday, but I'll be sending lots of loving thoughts back to Flushing.


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How to Style a Concert Tee
Have a fashion crisis that needs solving? Every week our editors answer a reader-submitted question, so tell us all about your wardrobe woes. Read on for this week's advice!
Fifteen-year-old Marifer L. of Mexico writes: "I recently bought a concert T-shirt, but I'm not sure how to wear it without looking too casual. Help me!"
Now this is a great festival season question! We love a good concert tee, but definitely hate when they make an outfit look unintentionally messy. As such, we have plenty of tricks to make sure you show off your excellent musical taste in style. But before we dive in, an important(ish) note: While we're all about fan-girling out, we don't suggest wearing a band T-shirt while seeing said band play. You have to keep it a little cool, okay?
Now go on and click through to see our styling tips!


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Meet Darcelle, Drag's Iconic Portland Designer
Old Town, 1967. Darcelle XV uncorked a drag revue in a Portland where a big-name newspaper columnist called homosexuals "Unmentionables" and the city had closed the most prominent gay bar just two years before. Suffice it to say that fashion—let alone the culture at large—hadn't learned how to "werk" its quirk just yet. Drag queens wouldn't battle New York cops at the Stonewall Inn for two more years; RuPaul wouldn't storm the Billboard charts with "Supermodel (You Better Work)" for another 26; Drag Race, cable TV's drag queen reality show, wouldn't strut into the public eye until 2009.
Thanks to Darcelle, Portland beat them all to it, claiming one of the nation's original independent drag designers. For the past 53 years, the 90-year-old, whose given name is Walter Cole, has stitched, beaded, and glued every costume for his nightly show, the longest-running show of its kind in the country. Darcelle is now also Guinness World Records certified as the "World's Oldest Drag Queen."
"He's taken what used to be a 'weird' thing into the mainstream here in Portland—going to ribbon cuttings with the mayor, being in parades—when all of that was not yet part of the culture," says Don Horn, managing director of local Triangle Productions.
Over five decades—and an estimated 1,500 costumes—the trained-on-the-job designer, who's never taken a lesson or used a pattern, praises the evolution of fabric for drastically changing the design game. Once forced to spend three months applying hundreds of rhinestones by hand, now Darcelle can buy yards of pre-glammed fabric and stitch together a fancy frock on his reliable Pfaff home sewing machine and serger in just 30 minutes. Not that he's tossing out any of the old ones: He keeps all of his creations in a massive underground closet beneath Darcelle's stage. (Take a look below at some of his most cherished costumes from the past.)
One thing hasn't changed, though, in a half-century of designing: Darcelle's taste. "I very much love the fabrics that look like glass on stage," he says. "Fabric has to glitter or I don't buy it."
Listen to our June, 2016 interview with Darcelle and her right-hand queen, Poison Waters, as they talk about the early days, their favorite fashion, and what drag has given them.
Darcelle's Closet
We combed through decades of dresses beneath Darcelle's stage and unearthed these standouts.
Made: 1969 or 1970
This was the first and last hand-rhinestoned dress Darcelle made. The dress, which weighs an estimated 30 pounds, took three months to craft because each of the thousands of rhinestones had to be pushed in by hand and the grommet edges turned down with the back of a spoon.
Made: Early 1970s
Darcelle made this 80-pound flapper gown with strings of individual hand-tacked pearl tassels for legendary Portland nightclub owner Gracie Hansen, who passed away in 1985. But her will called for the dress to go back to Darcelle, who incorporated it into his show.
Made: Early 2000s
Darcelle's famous Christmas tree dress and matching headpiece star in the annual number "A Girl for All Seasons." Glued-in-place Christmas lights pop through individual holes in the dress, and a 100-foot-long extension cord runs out the back to allow for a full electric glow.
Update, 11/16/20: This article has been updated to make the references to time and Darcelle's age accurate.


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When we hunt for our own food, we can rest assured that the animal has led a free and natural life, that has come to an instant and humane end. Deer have been hunted in the woodlands of Britain for thousands of years and, as such, their meat forms a very natural part of our diets.
Venison is one of the leanest and healthiest of red meats, and a casserole provides a great way of cooking it outdoors. The Hunter's Stew is a hearty, warming meal that is perfect for the cold evenings of winter and early spring. The dish shown here was cooked in a small Dutch Oven suspended over the fire, and served two people.
- 2 x small venison steaks
- 1 x handful of flour
- 1 x knob of butter
- 1 x large onion
- 2 x cloves of garlic
- 6 x rashers of bacon
- 1 x handful of mushrooms
- 2 x sticks of celery
- 2 x carrots
- 1/2 bulb of fennel
- 1/2 bottle of Merlot
- 2 x bay leaves
- 1 x sprig of thyme
- 1 x tablespoon of honey
1. Cut the venison into large chunks. Roll the pieces in flour until covered.
2. Melt the butter in a pan and add the meat. Cook until browned.
3. Dice the onions and add them to the pan along with the garlic. Cook until softened.
4. Add the mushrooms and chopped bacon and fry them off.
5. Add the chopped celery, carrot and fennel. Cover with wine and bring to the boil.
6. Add the thyme and bay leaves.
7. Simmer until the dish has reduced and thickened.
8. Remove the pan from the fire and stir in the honey. Serve with warm, crusty bread or creamy mash.