{"id":8175,"date":"2011-05-17T12:54:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T19:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=8175"},"modified":"2011-05-17T12:54:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T19:54:47","slug":"literally-one-thousand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2011\/05\/17\/literally-one-thousand\/","title":{"rendered":"Literally one thousand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something I did not know about the “Midnight Basketball” programs, but which I suppose makes sense.\u00c2\u00a0 They tended to be somewhat apolitical, or at least non-partisan, until it became a political bludgeon of attack.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s something here that puzzles me<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may remember that in 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a large crime bill with many features in it, including money to hire 100,000 new police officers. But when Gingrich mounted his campaign against it, he focused on one tiny element: “midnight basketball,” something that actually began under the George H.W. Bush administration, to give kids at risk of joining gangs something else to do.<\/em><\/p>\n

It seems likely that it was a Democratic editor who added this to wikipedia, following references from Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 (Gingrich’s criticism makes more sense than Limbaugh’s, and at least could be argued with — Limbaugh’s falls under line with the Prospect article.):<\/p>\n

Midnight basketball was not a proposal unique to the Democrats as it was one of George H. W. Bush’s “Thousand points of light”.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Was one of George H W Bush’s ‘Thousand Points of Light’?
\nWait.\u00c2\u00a0 George H W Bush actually had a list of a thousand “points of light”?\u00c2\u00a0 I have a vision of Bush getting stuck at around at 931 byte-sized items, and having to pad the list with filler — “932”\u00c2\u00a0 (pen twirl) “Lizard Pee Removal?”<\/p>\n

It’s not terribly surprising for a newly politicized item to come about.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s become de rigeour to reference the Dole Alternative Health Care Plan and the Romney Plan against Obama’s Health Care bill, and the Republican stance now.\u00c2\u00a0 Today we get this treatment from Prospect’s blog regarding the torn to shreds Paul Ryan<\/a> — and something like this is thrown into this process as well<\/a>:<\/p>\n

People in western New York used to roll their eyes when the name Jack Davis came up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Davis, a wealthy industrialist, spent over $5 million of his own money on failed efforts to win a seat in Congress. He once said, after a congressman sent sexually suggestive messages to young pages, that he would have used a bat on anyone who had done the same thing to one of his sons. He also predicted that states with large numbers of Mexican immigrants would secede and start a second Civil War.<\/em><\/p>\n

But these days, few are writing off Mr. Davis.<\/em><\/p>\n

A special election fight over a House of Representatives seat, which has attracted big money and huge interest from both parties, now appears to hinge on him. Running as a Tea Party candidate, Mr. Davis, 78, is siphoning support from the Republican candidate \u00e2\u20ac\u201d so much so that Republicans privately concede that if they do not stop him, they could hand a seat they have long held to the Democrats.<\/em><\/p>\n

Such candidacies, while throwing a Democrat into the lower house, probably takes some points of light off of the table of ideas.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something I did not know about the “Midnight Basketball” programs, but which I suppose makes sense.\u00c2\u00a0 They tended to be somewhat apolitical, or at least non-partisan, until it became a political bludgeon of attack.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s something here that puzzles me. You may remember that in 1994, Bill Clinton proposed a large crime bill with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8176,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8175\/revisions\/8176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}