Archive for April, 2008
Nice to see that just as Obama manages to bail out the water from trumped up gaffes and stories, the Reverend Wright is there to piss on his boat again. It’s also exciting to hear that my favorite would-be Senator can now look forward to being branded a tax-dodger for the entire election. Obsidian Wings has some pretty good posts on Wright’s descent into narcissism. Damn, this is gonna be a long election.
At least on the bright side, Hillary is siding with McCain on the notion of having a ridiculous gas tax holiday (read: oil subsidy billed as consumer relief). So maybe we can focus on how Obama hates hard-working Americans so much that he won’t even cut them a break at the pump, instead of how he’s a Hamas-loving Muslim/Black liberation Christian who dines on white babies and hard-boiled Jews with Louis Farrakhan.
Just for some perspective, Henry “Don’t Call Them War Crimes” Kissinger is the voice of sanity in McCain’s cadre of foreign policy advisors. He is literally one of the saner, less neo-conny folks in the bunch. That might be something of a bad omen for what kind of president Long John would be. But at least McCain knows better than to be honest with the American people.
Ok, that’s over. Don’t call me bitter, though. That would be condescending. I’m going to go cling to my autographed copy of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” now.
April 30th, 2008
An American Prospect article notes that Clinton has taken to comparing herself to Rocky, the hero of Pennsylvania. Makes you wonder a little whether she’s seen the movie or not, because while Rocky does manage to drag the fight out to the convention for 15 rounds, he ultimately loses. Of course, since a majority of folks were actually rooting for Rocky to win, if we’re going to make a political comparison, Al Gore seems like a more obvious choice.
April 23rd, 2008
Paul Krugman had an excellent op-ed in the Times last week about Obama’s comments in San Francisco. Krugman discusses whether the argument Barack was making — basically, Thomas Frank’s argument from What’s the Matter With Kansas — is correct.
Frank’s thesis states that a lot of low-income voters vote against their economic interests to vote on things like God and guns. The data runs somewhat contrary to this, suggesting that low-income voters have, if anything, trended Democratic since the 1960s, and while religious voters are more likely to be Republican, that correlation is actually stronger among more affluent voters. Frank’s book provided a great snapshot of middle America, with some broad conclusions that were either inaccurate or have a narrower scope of application than he implied.
Chiming in on Obama’s remarks, Kevin Drum sums it up nicely: “Trying to reduce America’s cultural schisms to mere symptoms of economic frustration just won’t work.â€
So just as Barack can address uncomfortable truths with an eloquence and sincerity that few can match, he can sometimes oversimplify causality to avoid these uncomfortable truths. He has trouble in this case because while a lot of his better policy ideas will have a trickle down effect on small towns in middle America, his economic plan addressing the meat and potatoes issues of these areas — job creation, job security, home foreclosures and healthcare — are decent but don’t do enough.
Furthermore, while he can rail against NAFTA and outsourcing; with regards to globalization, that train has sailed, to quote Austin Powers. We aren’t going to repeal NAFTA, and we aren’t going to get back the quality factory jobs we lost to improved technology and cheap foreign labor. We have a changing economy that has left a good part of America behind, and while I believe Obama offers the best chance for helping out those folks, we haven’t really figured out all the ways we‘re going to do that. So voting for Obama requires a leap of faith from them. And based on the track record of politicians and their promises over the last billion years, who can blame voters if they remain a bit skeptical.
So all of that is true, but I don’t see what it changes. Refuting off-the-cuff remarks that don’t accurately encapsulate Obama’s thinking on the issue ignores the broader observation that Obama is trying to explain the world to voters, while Hillary Clinton and Long John McCain don‘t trust them with that information. Now, if Obama just doesn’t understand the world, or is merely better at pretending he’s being sincere, then that is a problem. And that is what dear Krugman is worried about. And I am too. But I don’t think criticism of Thomas Frank is the lens under which Obama will be revealed as a misguided phony.
April 23rd, 2008
About 45 minutes of Obama bashing before we get to any actual issues. George Stephanopoulos is a little weasel, it’s no wonder that Bill Clinton hates him, now. On a brighter note, Obama has gotten much better at handling this kind of stuff. A moment of hilarity: after dominating the first segment of the debate with attack questions to Obama, Chuck Gibson apologized to Clinton for not giving her enough time to speak. Now Stephanopoulos is talking about McCain’s grand plan to cut taxes, which will fix the economy, restore dignity to America and cure cancer. But Democrats are FOR outrageous taxes. Why do they hate the American people so?
I may have to stop blogging about the campaign. This election is important, what Clinton said about her trip to Bosnia is not. The friend of a friend of a neighbor of a kissing cousin to Obama who said “Fuck you America” is not important. If obsession over unimportant issues and a misunderstanding of the real issues puts John McCain in the White House 7 months from now, that will be important.
April 16th, 2008
A quick follow-up to my last post, which was already too long.
You can watch Hillary’s criticism of Obama, and the opinion of some surprisingly decent CNN journalists here.
You can watch Obama’s response to Hillary and McCain here. Pitch perfect, I thought, although he has backed down somewhat since then.
April 13th, 2008
I remember watching a scene from the epically forgettable First Knight where some guy asks Lancelot (Richard Gere) how to be a great fighter, after witnessing Lancelot do some amazing crap with his sword. Lancelot replies, “You must not care whether you live or die.†This seems to fall under the category of bold proclamations that sound intense, but don’t fare well under closer scrutiny.
Complete indifference to one’s fate doesn’t seem like the recipe for a successful sword fighting career. However, as a more general point, successful risk-taking does involve either conquering one’s fears, or at least refusing to let them dictate one’s actions.
Unfortunately, Democrats either never learned or forgot this message. They let their fear of losing elections and being called mean names by Republicans control what they say and how they govern. We’re playing a game so rigged that telling the truth is seen as politically damaging.
So then there’s this Obama guy, who’s trying to shift the paradigm a bit. He’s not completely honest (I am pretty sure he’d be for single-payer healthcare if it were more politically viable), but he has found a nice space to occupy where he says the essence of what he believes, and if some details aren’t fleshed out, or are rearranged a bit, oh well. There are very few politicians who even attempt this, and none who can connect with voters like Obama can.
Now he’s in trouble for telling some Democrats at a San Francisco fundraiser that:
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
He’s saying anger over bad governance is sometimes taken out on the wrong people. I suppose there is some arrogance (as the absolutely brilliant Glenn Loury has pointed out) to saying this is why people do what people do. Or this is what people should do. In fact, it takes a certain amount of arrogance to say I’m the best person to run the country. But that’s what leaders do. They look at what’s wrong, try and assess the problem, and then try and fix it.
Obama isn’t saying Midwesterners are dumb and petty, he’s not saying the only reason they like guns and the Bible is because they are angry and bitter, and he’s not saying they are to blame for what has happened. Nevertheless, Clinton called him condescending and then went on to say some of the most condescending shit I have heard in my life, talking about how when she tours Pennsylvania, she sees optimistic people, rolling up their sleeves ready to tackle the problems this country faces. McCain called Obama out of touch.
62 million people voted for George Bush in 2004. George Bush has not taken good care of the country. Is it condescending to point out that we need to find a way to convince people not to vote for any more George Bushes? I think condescending would be to refuse to admit that the American people are anything but perfect in all things, which seems to be the only appropriate way for politicians to address the electorate, these days.
Things is, by being honest about America’s imperfections, Obama gains a lot of credibility on his plan for the future and his appreciation of the American people. You don’t become a community organizer because you think people need to be talked down to, you become a community organizer because you have faith that with information and support you can help empower them.
Comments like the ones he made in SF will undoubtedly hurt his chances of becoming elected. As will his association with Reverend Wright. As will the fact that despite this heavily publicized crap about Obama’s Christian pastor, a good chunk of the electorate still think he’s a Muslim. This, “smart†critics say, is the continued raison d’être of Hillary’s candidacy. Obama has made himself unelectable, and Democrats must rally around her to stop four years of McCain.
Which brings us back to Richard Gere. If there weren’t a Reverend Wright, Republicans would focus on how black Michelle Obama is, or some other bullshit story. Loud conservatives will always lie and exaggerate and frightened Democrats will always rush to choose a less offensive candidate. Scared politics hasn’t worked out so well for us, so let’s ditch the fight-or-flight response.
April 13th, 2008
I checked online to see if Warner Brother’s Foghorn Leghorn was designed to be a Southern fried version of W.C. Fields, after hearing him utter Fields’ famous line “Go away kid, ya bother me.†Not so, it turns out. Foghorn’s voice was modeled after the faux Southern Senator from The Fred Allen Show, Beauregard Claghorn. Merlin the Magic Mouse, however (of similar Looney Tunes fame), is based on Fields.
In other breaking historical news, Dewey did not win, as had been previously reported. We will continue to bring you updates on this story as it develops.
April 7th, 2008
Finally. One of the people most responsible for Clinton’s decline. So maybe we should thank him. An utter asshole, though.
April 6th, 2008
Would you like to convert some of your mp3s into ringtones for your iPhone without paying Apple a dollar a pop? Well have I got news for you, brother. All you need to do is cut that song down to less than 40 seconds. Then you can open it in iTunes and convert the mp3 into aac format. Then rename your aac file with an m4r extension, reopen in iTunes, and transfer to your iPhone. Or you could just download this program, which does all that for you.
How do I know this? A little blogger told me. He also told me that bottled water is basically a sham and that public transpo is the highway lobby’s bitch. Gotta love the Information Age.
April 6th, 2008
I realize this may be in poor taste, but I have a couple things to say about the now deceased Charlton Heston. The Ten Commandments and Planet of the Apes were pompous, ridiculous movies, as were Heston’s performances in them. It is quite likely that he was much better in Ben-Hur, and I probably should watch that before rendering any final judgment.
In addition, while I personally am not a hunter, I see how it could be a great experience. I’m also somewhat opposed to the idea of guns in general, but absent that moral objection, gun collecting seems a perfectly compelling hobby.
What seems less reasonable to me, and perhaps entirely petty, is the idea of spending half your life stroking your own ego in 8 hour epics with thunderous scores, and the other half fighting for the right of every American to carry, shoot and wave any gun under any circumstance (not literally, that was Hestonian hyperbole). The AP is calling him a film legend, which may be true, but he was also a chronic overactor who worked really hard to keep guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Moses, here, served as an icon for the cultish libertarianism that too often stands in the way of decent policy and plain ol’ rational thought.
Of course, guns don’t kill people, bullets do. I mean, people do. Or whatever. Anyway, here is your moment of Zen.
April 6th, 2008
