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Thoughts About The Presidential Election Results

November 7, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

  • President Obama led the race every day, in both the popular vote and electoral vote, since the moment Mitt Romney won his party’s nomination. His lead grew after the DNC and shrunk after the Denver debate dud, but it was always there. National polls that suggested otherwise were wrong.
  • Intelligent readings of the polls were incredibly accurate. Will cable news still cherry pick polls four years from now to push false narratives? Probably.
  • Obama benefited from weak opponents in 2008 and now. If the Republicans had a more attractive ticket, they probably would have won this time around. (Of course, putting together an attractive duo when you have to pander to wingnuts isn’t easy.) You’ll hear plenty of pundits claiming America has become a liberal country, but I don’t agree. The current GOP extremism came awfully close and a more traditional brand of conservatism would have probably been a winner. Let’s remember that Team Obama was better in every way organizationally than its opposition and it needed to be. It’s still a conservative country.
  • But that may not be the case four years from now. Many Latino teens, part of the fastest-growing population, will have aged into the voting pool by then. Unless the Republicans seriously adjust their policies, they could lose this bloc for several election cycles.
  • Paul Ryan ultimately had little impact. He was a poor selection. Romney knew Ryan’s policies would be troubling, so why choose him only to hide him? Either Marco Rubio or Bob Portman would have been better picks. The former may have delivered Florida.
  • Romney’s strategy in Ohio was puzzling. Because of his reaction to the auto bailout, it was going to be a steep climb. But he absolutely had to have this state. There was no way around it. Why let Obama have 100 more field offices in Ohio? Would not go all in?
  • A lot of people owe Nate Silver an apology. It’s funny that Silver got his start as a stats guru in baseball, since many sports and political pundits have similarly reacted to logic and math with ad hominem attacks and general ignorance.
  • That sure is an incredibly ugly piñata hanging sadly at the empty Romney celebration. Oh wait, that’s Karl Rove.

Chriis Matthews: Nutsac tingling all night long.

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A Collection Of Some Abraham Lincoln Posts

November 6, 2012 in Film, Politics | Permalink

I would have preferred Paul Thomas Anderson.

Steven Spielberg has made a movie about the life of President Abraham Lincoln. I personally think they should have waited until he was dead before making the movie. Oh, I’m not taking about Lincoln. I mean Spielberg.

Some Lincoln posts:

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“Voting Really Matters. Not All Politicians Are The Same.”

November 5, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

I was listening to one of  Marc Maron’s WTF podcasts not to long ago, the one with Doug Stanhope. I really like the both of them and think they’re incredibly talented. But one passage rubbed me the wrong way. The host and his guest both agreed that voting for one politician or another doesn’t matter, that they’re all the same and nothing really changes. You can chalk it up to just two comics riffing, but I hear this bullshit too much, almost always from educated people. It’s as if they’re disappointed idealists who can’t have perfection so they don’t want to try.

Voting really matters. Not all politicians are the same. People’s lives really hang in the balance. Social Security is very important. It means a great deal to older Americans. Only some politicians would have fought for it. Invading Iraq was a decision that led to the deaths of at least tens of thousands of people. Thirty million at-risk Americans having health insurance will only occur if the Affordable Care Act survives. FEMA run correctly can save lives–or it can be dismantled as can Medicaid, Medicare and other programs.

Neither candidate in this or any other election is going to be perfect, is going to make everything alright. But the idea that everything is corrupt and nothing matters is as much an impediment to progress as any venal politician. 

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“What The President’s Embrace Gave Christie Was A Grand Identity”

November 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, not exactly a favorite of mine because of his economic politics and lapses into rudeness, acted correctly, bravely and resolutely in the face of Hurricane Sandy, putting the interests of Americans before politics. And that’s something Mitt Romney did not do once during the election season. 

Doesn’t Christie realize what party he’s in? For four years, even before his inauguration was complete, President Obama has dealt with an obstructionist opposition that didn’t want to moderate his policies but desired to bring him down. If Obama adopted a conservative idea (e.g., individual mandates), it became a “socialist” policy. And the American people are the ones who’ve paid.

Christie, who has been labeled cynical and egomaniacal by Republicans for his righteous embrace of the President during the crisis, has actually won wide respect from most average Americans. It wasn’t his goal, but he may have earned some votes and certainly earned much respect. About Christie’s calm during the storm, by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in New York:

“Which brings us to the defining gesture of Christie’s political career so far: His embrace, after the storm, of President Obama—a man whom two weeks earlier the governor had called arrogant, wondering, ‘What the hell is he doing asking for another four years?’ Suddenly, they were together, two politicians who double as literary archetypes—the rector and the brawler—looking down over battered amusement parks and swallowed towns, each borrowing the other’s authority and reputation for empathy to enhance his own. The president’s response was ‘outstanding,’ Christie said; Obama ‘ deserves great credit.’ When he was asked on Fox News whether he’d also tour the state with Mitt Romney, the governor dismissed the question as absurd: ‘I’ve got a job to do in New Jersey, and it’s much bigger than presidential politics.’ The reaction was divided between those (mainly Democrats) who viewed his gesture as heroic and those (Republicans and cynics) who detected some tactical play for the White House in 2016 and argued that Christie was nothing but a megalomaniac.

As if heroism and megalomania are not very often the same exact thing. One of the few things that Christie and Obama share is a palpable sense that their political opponents are lesser men, though in Obama this exhibits itself as an airy idealism and in Christie as an all-encompassing disgust. What the president’s embrace gave Christie was a grand identity—a national leader, bigger than politics—that for once matched his own self-image. And so here he was, Chris Christie, guardian of the boardwalk, canceler of Halloween, bard of the sausage-and-pepper stand, raging against the storm, ministering to sorrow, a man in full.”

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“Women Are Changing Into Men, And Men Are Becoming Women”

November 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Marcello Mastroianni was a sensitive, befuddled male icon of screen in the second half of the 20th century, often crumbling under the modern world and its changing mores. At the end of 8 1/2, in one of cinema’s greatest scenes, he walks away from all that he’s built, realizing the folly of constructing on a shifting landscape. In real life, the Italian actor was none too fond of the era’s feminist movement, never quite grasping that an unequal society is a sick one for masters and servants alike. Though, yeah, the masters have it way better. An excerpt from a 1965 Playboy interview with Mastroianni during the early days of the cultural revolution:

“PLAYBOY:

All the films you’ve made, in one way or another, are about weak men—psychologically, socially and often sexually impotent. Is that you?

MASTROIANNI:

Yes and no. It’s part of me; and I think it’s part of many other men today. Modern man is not as virile as he used to be. Instead of making things happen, he waits for things to happen to him. He goes with the current. Something in our society has led him to stop fighting, to cease swimming upstream.

PLAYBOY:

What is that something?

MASTROIANNI:

Doubt, for one thing. Doubt about his place in society, his purpose in life. In my country, for example, I was brought up with the thought of man as the padrone, the pillar of the family. I wanted to be a loving, caring, protective man. But now I feel lost; the sensitive man everywhere feels lost. He is no longer padrone—either of his own world or of his women. 

PLAYBOY:

Why not?

MASTROIANNI:

Because women are changing into men, and men are becoming women. At least, men are getting weaker all the time. But much of this is man’s own fault. We shouted, “Women are equal to men; long live the Constitution!” But look what happened. The working woman emerged—angry, aggressive, uncertain of her femininity. And she multiplied—almost by herself. Matriarchy, in the home and in the factory and in business, has made women into sexless monsters and piled them up on psychiatric couches. Instead of finding themselves, they lost what they had. But some see this now and are trying to change back. Women in England, for example, who were the first to raise the standard of equality, are today in retreat.

PLAYBOY:

How about American women

MASTROIANNI:

They should retreat, but they don’t. I’ve never seen so many unhappy, melancholy women. They have liberty—but they are desperate. Poor darlings, they’re so hungry for romance that two little words in their ears are enough to crumble them before your eyes. American women are beautiful, but a little cold and too perfect—too well brought up, with the perfume and the hair always just so and the rose-colored skin. What perfection—and what a bore! Believe me, it makes you want to have a girl with a mustache, cross-eyes and runs in her stockings. I got to know a few of them when I was there, but I swear it was like knowing only one woman. Geraldine Page was the only exception—and an exciting one.” (Thanks Cinema Archive.)

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Even In An Industry Of Blowhards, Joe Scarborough Stands Out

November 2, 2012 in Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Joe Scarborough: Glasses aren’t only for smart people anymore.

Joe Scarborough is almost always wrong, but that doesn’t prevent him from being smug and loud. The MSNBC puddinghead (and, oh christ, former congressperson!) likes to cherry pick political polls, especially the less helpful national ones, and sell lazy narratives based on one or two surveys. Lately he’s been peddling the idea that the Presidential election will either be a razor-thin victory for Obama or a rout for Romney, though the statistical evidence doesn’t suggest there’s any reason for the latter position. 

Scarborough has lately taken aim at Five Thirty-Eight pollster Nate Silver whose numbers disagree with his dubious plotline. Because Silver is smart and perceived as liberal, he’s attacked by the right as underhanded in some way. A recent Politico article by Dylan Byers had numerous media figures figures assailing Silver as some sort of hack. He’s not. He’s a bright guy working off an objective model, and he was more accurate during the 2008 election than anyone. It doesn’t mean that he will be correct this time–he has Obama as a heavy favorite–but at least his views are based on hard evidence.

In the Politico article, Scarborough, a human whoopee cushion, labeled Silver as a “joke.” He attacked the analyst’s  methodology without offering a better system because he doesn’t have one–he just makes shit up.  But the cable babbler went further, suggesting that Silver was an “ideologue,” a partisan in the tank for Obama, trying to nudge the election in the direction of his candidate. Without having any proof of such behavior, it was a pretty scurrilous attack. 

When Scarborough endlessly derided Team Obama’s Bain ads in the early summer as being tone-deaf and ineffectual, he was wrong. The commercials had the intended impact. But I don’t recall Silver (or anyone, really) accusing the Republican host of being an ideologue for his opinion. Anything could happen in this election, sure, but if Scarborough is right it would have to be by accident. And even then the way he portrayed Silver will never be right.•

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“Most Governors Don’t Last That Long”

November 2, 2012 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

“The Far-Out Candidate Who Puzzles Almost Everyone.”

Jerry Brown, during his his hippie-ish “Governor Moonbeam” days in 1981, chatting with Merv Griffin. Of course, he’s also the current California Governor. I have never understood exactly where Brown is coming from, what his core is, and I doubt he could articulate it very well, either. But that amorphousness hasn’t prevented him achieving successful governance.

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“He Also Understood That There’s Some Things We Do Better Together”

October 29, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The new Rolling Stone interview with President Obama is now online and ungated. It was conducted by historian Douglas Brinkley, who is not a bullshitter. An excerpt about Ayn Rand:

“Douglas Brinkley:

Have you ever read Ayn Rand?

President Obama:

Sure.

Douglas Brinkley:

What do you think Paul Ryan’s obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

President Obama:

Well, you’d have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a ‘you’re on your own’ society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

Of course, that’s not the Republican tradition. I made this point in the first debate. You look at Abraham Lincoln: He very much believed in self-sufficiency and self-reliance. He embodied it – that you work hard and you make it, that your efforts should take you as far as your dreams can take you. But he also understood that there’s some things we do better together. That we make investments in our infrastructure and railroads and canals and land-grant colleges and the National Academy of Sciences, because that provides us all with an opportunity to fulfill our potential, and we’ll all be better off as a consequence. He also had a sense of deep, profound empathy, a sense of the intrinsic worth of every individual, which led him to his opposition to slavery and ultimately to signing the Emancipation Proclamation. That view of life – as one in which we’re all connected, as opposed to all isolated and looking out only for ourselves – that’s a view that has made America great and allowed us to stitch together a sense of national identity out of all these different immigrant groups who have come here in waves throughout our history.”

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“Only Last Week Did They Announce Plans For A Mission To Mars”

October 28, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Modern India is the uneasy mix of two countries: the emerging global superpower and the corrupt slum. Can advances in high-tech also advance the majority of people, or is it a nation destined to be a robust body held back by a long tail of neglect and abuse? From Erich Follath at Spiegel:

“Almost no other country has as many cell phone users; almost nowhere is the communications industry growing faster. Today, Indians can choose from among more than 400 private television channels. The subcontinent is also making great strides in renewable energy. Indeed, Suzlon, the world’s fifth-largest wind turbine manufacturer, headquartered in the western city of Pune, recently enlarged its ownership stake in the German wind turbine company REPower and now plans to create more than 100 new jobs in Germany.

India is now the world’s largest weapons importer. It has become a self-confident player among leading nations and is now aggressively seeking a seat on the United Nations Security Council. It’s also a nuclear power that has expanded its arsenal of warheads and has no intention of signing the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The Indians sent satellites into space some time ago, and only last week did they announce plans for a mission to Mars. Prime Minister Singh described it as ‘a giant step for us in the field of science and technology.’

That’s the one India, the high-tech powerhouse of a rising global power, backed up by numbers and proof of its prowess. But then there is the other India: where one in three of the world’s malnourished children lives; where two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day; where half the population has no access to toilets and 25 percent still cannot read and write. It’s also a country where the power supply is so scandalously unreliable that, in late July, almost 700 million people were without lights and electricity for two days, the railroads stopped running, factories stood idle and some hospitals were crippled.

Is India on the road to becoming a superpower? Or is it condemned to forever remain a developing-world power, on the outside looking in?” (Thanks Next Big Future.)

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One Thing About That Chucklehead Piers Morgan

October 25, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

Piers Morgan, something that was found in David Frost’s stool sample, is not a bright person. An arrogant, dishonest, alleged phone hacker, sure, but not bright. It’s very hard to grow intelligent when you’re gigantic ego blocks the sun.

The other night poor Tyler Perry, who seems like a very nice man, had to sit there and be polite as Morgan showed a graphic which stated that President Obama has 92% of the African-American vote while Mitt Romney has only 3%. The blowhard Morgan said this: “You see, I just don’t think that helps the debate, either. It doesn’t help that almost no black people in America want to vote for one of the two candidates.” Perry made a quiet point about how African-Americans usually vote Democratic. Morgan didn’t clarify his comment and say that he meant that Republicans had behaved in a way that was repugnant to minorities, that their attempts to suppress the African-American vote and exploit racist Birtherism had done great damage. The implication seemed to be that there was blame to go around. It was a strange moment.

But regardless of what he meant, his underlying point was bullshit. As I’ve mentioned before, if Herman Cain was running against Hillary Clinton, the white candidate would enjoy the large majority of African-American support. So it’s not just about race–it’s more about Party and what one particular candidate can offer. I’m sure someone as self-important as Morgan has never thought this through, but this boob should be in no position to offer serious political commentary in any medium.

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Thoughts About The Final Presidential Debate

October 23, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

The last one. Thank you, Sweet Baby Jesus. I love politics but hate debates. I won’t go into that again.

  • Obviously a good night for President Obama. Any sitting President should have an advantage in the foreign-policy debate due to daily briefings and constant decision-making. But this is a particular weak spot for Governor Romney, so the gap was wider than usual. Segments of the debate felt like they were scripted by the Obama team. And I just don’t mean Obama’s parts. It wasn’t pretty for Romney.
  • Romney has maintained a strategy from the start he can run for President while running away from myself. He wants the election to be a referendum of the President while keeping himself hidden in an account in the Caymans. He backed off that stance when choosing Paul Ryan for a running mate and it looked for a moment like the race would be a battle of ideologies. But returned Ryan was quickly stifled, and Romney returned to the safer course. He only went for broke in the first debate because he had no other choice. Last night he was inordinately safe and deferential to the President, hoping once again that a weak economy will lift him.
  • Why did Romney change course in the final debate? There could be several reasons. •He was trying to run out the clock on a topic he’s uncomfortable with. •He thinks foreign policy won’t matter at all in this race (and perhaps he’s right). •He was told that his aggression and disrespectful tone was causing the gender gap to grow to unacceptable levels (which it has). But he’s kidding himself if he thinks that female voters are turned off by the GOP merely because of style. It’s really the content that’s the problem. •The criticism about his disrespectful attitude got to him. Romney isn’t the kind of person who wants to think of himself that way. •Or maybe just maybe, he had a bad night, like the President did during the first debate. The candidates have a travel and speaking schedule that is brutal. (And the incumbent is also running the country in the meanwhile.) I couldn’t handle a fraction of their schedule. I’d get fussy. I’d have to be put down for a nap.
  • Never in my lifetime has there been a candidate for either party at the Presidential level who’s morphed and changed so frequently and so dramatically as Romney. Usually they’re a little more to the left or the right during the primaries to appeal to the base and then move to the middle. But there are strong convictions within. Romney is the Oakland of political candidates: There is no there there. For a candidate to completely change course on major issues two weeks before the election is unheard of. It’s unprecedented as well as un-Presidential.
  • The Presidential debate moderator position has during this election cycle become equivalent to Oscar hosting chores–no one wants to do it but someone always will because it’s prestigious. The expectations of what can actually be accomplished in 90 minutes has to be tempered. If we don’t already know the two candidates by the time of the debates the fault lies with us.
  • With two weeks to go, Obama has a clear if not huge edge. Romney won’t have much of a chance to change the game going forward, so his campaign organization will have to be superior if he’s going to win.

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“They Bowed Their Heads And Raised Their Gloved Hands To The Sky”

October 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports | Permalink

From a 1968 Pete Hamill report in Ramparts about the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the Games of Tommy Smith and John Carlos’ Black Power salute but also of George Foreman’s flag-waving:

“HE FIRST BLACK SCOURGE of the Republic to appear at the games was Jim Hines, who won the 100 meters in the world record time of nine and nine-tenths seconds. Hines opposed San Jose State College Professor Harry Edwards’ proposed boycott, but let it be known that under no circumstances would he accept his medal if Avery Brundage was the man awarding it. Avery Brundage did not award the medal.

But the real confrontation was yet to come, and it came from John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who were running in the 200-meter dash. It began when they wore long black socks (later changed to ankle socks, to prevent cutting circulation in the legs) in preliminary heats. They went on to win with Smith finishing first, in a blazing 19.8, setting a new world record. Smith might have peeled another few tenths off the record had he not raised his arms in exultation as he crossed the finish line. Carlos finished third, behind Australian Peter Norman.

When they came out for the award ceremony, they walked without shoes, carrying a track shoe in one hand, with the other hand tucked into their windbreakers. They climbed the stand, and then, after receiving the medals, they turned toward the American flag as the Star Spangled Banner was played. They took their hands out. Smith’s right hand wore a black glove, Carlos’ left hand its mate. As the anthem played, they bowed their heads and raised their gloved hands to the sky in a clenched fist salute. Thirty hours later they were kicked off the team.

At this point the Olympic team almost collapsed. Carlos, who couldn’t stop talking before the protest, now wouldn’t talk to anyone. He stomped back and forth through the Olympic Village, followed by reporters and cameramen, and he even threatened to punch one of them. Smith, who had finished first, was less available than Carlos. In front of Building II, more than 100 people assembled while Roby tried to explain what had happened. The members of the committee had met (‘How many blacks on that committee?’ someone shouted) and decided that the two members of the team had violated the Olympic tradition of sportsmanship by their ‘immature’ conduct (‘What rule did they break?’ shouted Joe Flaherty of the Village Voice.) The crowd was told that if strong action was not taken, the American team would be completely disqualified.

A banner saying ‘Down with Brundage’ fluttered from the seventh floor of the American dormitory; on the fourth, a Wallace for President bumper sticker appeared. The seventh floor housed the black track athletes; the fourth floor housed the rifle team.

When Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman finished one-two-three in the 400 meters, everyone waited to see what they would do. They wore Black Panther berets because, said Evans, who had been in tears over the dismissal of his teammates, ‘It was raining.’ But they were not thrown off the team. They were still needed for the 1600-meter relay. Smith and Carlos had not been needed for anything.

The protest of the black athletes was more muted than had been expected. But the people on the IOC, and especially the members of the American Committee, seemed terrified. Something even as restrained as the gesture of Smith and Carlos had never happened before. They had always before been able, in Roby’s phrase, to ‘control’ their athletes.“

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Even More Proof That Donald Trump Is A Moron

October 22, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

Donald: I like her tits to be even bigger than mine.

Donald Trump is a deeply hideous man, but he thinks he should be judging women’s looks. It’s a weird control thing. Because no attractive woman would ever be near him if money wasn’t involved, he’s purchased beauty pageants. This puts beautiful women in the subservient position of vying for the approval of an ugly man. He also uses his Twitter account to disparage the looks of women from Arianna Huffington to Katy Perry to Kristen Stewart, all of whom are far better looking than he is. He think he needs to let these women know that they don’t meet his high standards. 

Because he’s a racist as well as a sexist, Trump believes that African-Americans (“the blacks,” as he likes to call them) also need to sit for his judgment. He likes to project his very real and disgraceful racism on others.

_______________________

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

NBC Wall St Journal Poll of African American voters: 94% @BarackObama, 0%@MittRomney.Even worse than Hillary’s old numbers. Is that racism?

_______________________

Of course if the election were, say, Herman Cain versus Hilary Clinton, what are the odds that Cain would enjoy the same support that Obama does? No chance at all. Something apart from race must be in play then. Of course, such reasoning gets lost in arrogance and ugliness.

We asked impartial women to rate Ben Hoagie’s looks.

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“It Was The Birth Of The Modern Attack Ad”

October 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Videos | Permalink

It’s hard to imagine that Upton Sinclair would have made a very good California governor in 1934, but he never had a fair shot thanks to the birth of the modern smear ad. From a Smithsonian post about the dirty race which saw the writer’s populist campaign undone by Hollywood filmmakers:

“Nothing matched the impact of the three ‘newsreels’ produced by Irving Thalberg, the boy wonder of the motion picture business, who partnered with Louis B. Mayer and helped create Metro Goldwyn Mayer while still in his early twenties. Mayer had vowed to do everything in his power to stop Sinclair, even threatening to support the film industry’s move to Florida if the socialist were elected governor. Like the other studios, MGM docked its employees (including stars) a day’s pay and sent the money to [Frank] Merriam’s campaign.

Using stock images from past movies and interviews by an ‘inquiring cameraman,’ Thalberg produced alleged newsreels in which actors, posing as regular citizens, delivered lines that had been written to destroy Sinclair. Some actors were portrayed as reasonable Merriam supporters, while others claiming to be for Sinclair were shown in the worst light.

‘I’m going to vote for Upton Sinclair,’ a man said, standing before a microphone.

‘Will you tell us why?’ the cameraman asked.

‘Upton Sinclair is the author of the Russian government and it worked out very well there, and I think it should do here.’

A young woman said, ‘I just graduated from school last year and Sinclair says that our school system is rotten, and I know that this isn’t true, and I’ve been able to find a good position during this Depression and I’d like to be able to keep it.’

An African-American man added, ‘I’m going to vote for Merriam because I need prosperity.’

The inquiring cameraman also claimed to have interviewed more than 30 ‘bums’ who, he claimed, were part of a wave of unemployed workers ‘flocking’ to California because of Sinclair’s plan. Stock footage showed such ‘bums’ hopping off packed freight trains. (Unemployed people did move to California, but did not pose the social and economic burdens implied by the newsreel.)

Greg Mitchell, author of The Campaign of the Century, wrote that the newsreels devastated Sinclair’s campaign. ‘People were not used to them,’ Mitchell stated. ‘It was the birth of the modern attack ad. People weren’t used to going into a movie theater and seeing newsreels that took a real political line. They believed everything that was in the newsreels.'”

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“Many Of The Giants Of American Finance Have Come To…’Hate’ The President”

October 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I never underestimate the ability of the American middle class to be fooled or swindled, but no one should believe the reasons why so many super-rich members of our executive overclass claim to hate President Obama so much.

It isn’t that he spends too much. He’s spent at a lower rate than the either President George  W. Bush or President Reagan; our huge deficit is the result of so many Americans being out of work after the economic collapse, thus being disappeared from the tax base. It’s not that he’s been bad to Wall Street. The TARP funds saved it and the market has flourished under his leadership. It’s not that he’s making government bigger; growth of government has been nominal under Obama while it grew greatly under his predecessor. It’s not that the Affordable Care Act will cost America so many jobs; 30 million new citizens receiving health care will create a huge number of jobs.

The hatred stems from two things: 1) He wants to do away with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and return to the Clinton rates. 2) He’s dared to point out that there are inequities in our system and that the 1% has become arrogant, entitled and destructive. And they’ve reacted to that news flash in an arrogant, entitled and destructive fashion.

From “The Billionaires Next Door,” an excerpt at Reuters from Chrystia Freeland’s new book:

“It is this not-our-fault mentality that accounts for the plutocrats’ profound sense of victimization in the Obama era. You might expect that American elites — and particularly those in the financial sector — would be feeling pretty good, and more than a little grateful, right now. Thanks to a $700 billion TARP bailout and trillions of dollars lent nearly free of charge by the Federal Reserve (a policy Soros himself told me was a ‘hidden gift’ to the banks), Wall Street has surged back to precrisis levels of compensation even as Main Street continues to struggle.

But instead, many of the giants of American finance have come to, in the words of a mystified administration economist, ‘hate’ the president and to believe he is fundamentally opposed to them and their well-being. In a much quoted newsletter to investors in the summer of 2010, hedge fund manager — and 2008 Obama fund-raiser — Dan Loeb fumed, ‘So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire.’ Two other former Obama backers on Wall Street — both claim to have been on Rahm Emanuel’s speed dial list — recently told me that the president is ‘antibusiness’; one went so far as to worry that Obama is ‘a socialist.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Rather Than Write, I Will Ride Buses, Study The Insides Of Jails, And See What Goes On”

October 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Social History of the Hippies,” Warren Hinckle’s 1967 Ramparts article about those who tuned in, turned on and dropped out, a segment on writer Ken Kesey after his fall from grace with the younger longhhairs: 

“HERE WASN’T MUCH DOING on late afternoon television, and the Merry Pranksters were a little restless. A few were turning on; one Prankster amused himself squirting his friends with a yellow plastic watergun; another staggered into the living room, exhausted from peddling a bicycle in ever-diminishing circles in the middle of the street. They were all waiting, quite patiently, for dinner, which the Chief was whipping up himself. It was a curry, the recipe of no doubt cabalistic origin. Kesey evidently took his cooking seriously, because he stood guard by the pot for an hour and a half, stirring, concentrating on the little clock on the stove that didn’t work.

There you have a slice of domestic life, February 1967, from the swish Marin County home of Attorney Brian Rohan. As might be surmised, Rohan is Kesey’s attorney, and the novelist and his aides de camp had parked their bus outside for the duration. The duration might last a long time, because Kesey has dropped out of the hippie scene. Some might say that he was pushed, because he fell, very hard, from favor among the hippies last year when he announced that he, Kesey, personally, was going to help reform the psychedelic scene. This sudden social conscience may have had something to do with beating a jail sentence on a compounded marijuana charge, but
when Kesey obtained his freedom with instructions from the judge ‘to preach an anti-LSD warning to teenagers’ it was a little too much for the Haight-Ashbury set. Kesey, after all, was the man who had turned on the Hell’s Angels.

That was when the novelist was living in La Honda, a small community in the Skyline mountain range overgrown with trees and, after Kesey invited the Hell’s Angels to several house parties, overgrown with sheriff’s deputies. It was in this Sherwood Forest setting, after he had finished his second novel with LSD as his co-pilot, that Kesey inaugurated his band of Merry Pranksters
(they have an official seal from the State of California incorporating them as ‘Intrepid Trips, Inc.’), painted the school bus in glow sock colors, announced he would write no more (‘Rather than write, I will ride buses, study the insides of jails, and see what goes on’), and set up funtime housekeeping on a full-time basis with the Pranksters, his wife and their three small children (one confounding thing about Kesey is the amorphous quality of the personal relationships in his entourage—the several attractive women don’t seem, from the outside, to belong to any particular man; children are loved enough, but seem to be held in common).

When the Hell’s Angels rumbled by, Kesey welcomed them with LSD. ‘We’re in the same business. You break people’s bones, I break people’s heads,’ he told them. The Angels seem to like the whole acid thing, because today they are a fairly constant act in the Haight-Ashbury show, while Kesey has abdicated his role as Scoutmaster to fledgling acid heads and exiled himself across the Bay.

This self-imposed Elba came about when Kesey sensed that the hippie community had soured on him. He had committed the one mortal sin in the hippie ethic: telling people what to do. ‘Get into a responsibility bag,’ he urged some 400 friends attending a private Halloween party. Kesey hasn’t been seen much in the Haight-Ashbury since that night, and though the Diggers did succeed in getting him to attend the weekend discussion, it is doubtful they will succeed in getting the novelist involved in any serious effort to shape the Haight-Ashbury future. At 31, Ken Kesey is a hippie has-been.”

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“Russia Actually Did Block Imports Of Monsanto Corn”

October 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Even if we were treating our environment well–and we’re not–eventually weather patterns will shift and the agrarian culture we’ve enjoyed will be imperiled. So it makes sense for humans to experiment with genetically modified foods. I know it seems intuitive that natural food is good and laboratory modifications are bad, but there is plenty of poison in nature. We should demand transparency from corporations involved with our food chain, but we should proceed. We need to have an honest discussion, not disinformation. Unfortunately, we’re often getting the latter. From Bjørn Lomborg at Slate:

“French researcher Gilles-Eric Séralini attempted to fuel public opposition to genetically modified foods byshowing the public how GM corn, with and without the pesticide Roundup, caused huge tumors and early death in 200 rats that had consumed it over two years.

Supplying an abundance of pictures of rats with tumors the size of ping-pong balls, Séralini certainly captured the public’s attention. France’s health, ecology, and agriculture ministers promised a prompt investigation and threatened to ban imports of Monsanto’s GM corn to the European Union. Russia actually did block imports of Monsanto corn. 

But Séralini’s research posed many problematic issues. For starters, the Sprague-Dawley strain of rats that he used is naturally prone to tumors. Studies of Sprague-Dawley rats show that 88 percent to 96 percent of those that serve as experimental controls develop tumors before they reach two years of age. But the public saw only pictures of tumorous rats that had consumed GM corn and Roundup. If the public had seen the similarly grotesque tumors that grow on untreated rats, officials most likely would not have acted so hastily.”

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Thoughts About Last Night’s Presidential Debate

October 17, 2012 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

  • I think you know how I feel about Presidential debates. They were very important in the 19th-century when there was no true mass media, and there needed to be an event which concentrated opinions, ideas and arguments. They were somewhat important for much of the 20th-century. But they’re just silly exercises at this point, speed-dating for Americans who lack focus and critical-thinking skills. These candidates have been on every screen in our lives for two election cycles. Three 90-minute shout-fests shouldn’t override what we’ve seen from them for six years.
  • Things obviously went much better for President Obama last night. He was forceful and lively, but Mitt Romney really made it easy for him. Too many rookie mistakes for someone making his final charge at the Oval Office.
  • Romney’s line during his closing statements about caring for 100% of the American people provided Obama with the exclamation point of the night. I would assume that Romney’s team decided to go with this line because they thought Obama would barrage him with “47%” references this time after failing to mention Romney’s gaffe at the first debate. But Obama again never raised the issue, so Romney should have pivoted away from any talk of percentages.
  • Rudeness and aggression throws Obama for a loop in public settings. Mitt Romney is likewise flustered when challenged on facts. He becomes inarticulate. How dare someone contradict the boss!
  • I guess it’s a sign of our polarized times, but not only do the two candidates apparently despise each other, but their families also seem to intensely dislike each other.
  • Undecided voters aren’t the first people to fold their umbrellas when the rain stops. Do not put them on TV after the debates.

••••••••••

Lincoln-Douglas debates, via SCTV:

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“The World Has Gotten Used To The Idea That A Woman Is In Charge Of Israel’s Affairs”

October 17, 2012 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

Edwin Newman conducts a Q&A with Golda Meir in 1973. The first question springs from the deadly terrorism at the Munich Olympics the prior year.

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“I Found Myself Incarcerated In An Anonymity”

October 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver was many things, and not all of them were good. But no one could deny he was a fascinating fashion designer. After fleeing the United States when charged with the attempted murder of police officers in Oakland in 1968, the revolutionary spent seven years hiding in a variety of foreign countries. A mostly forgotten part of his walkabout was Cleaver surfacing as a fashion designer in Paris at the very end of his exile. As shown in the print advertisement above, his so-called “penis pants” had an external sock attached so that a guy could wear his junk on the outside. I mean, just because your soul was on ice, that didn’t mean your dong had to be. Cucumber sales soared.

From an article Cleaver penned about the early part of his life at large for Ramparts in 1969, a look at the more serious side of expatriation:

“SO NOW IT IS OFFICIAL. I was starting to think that perhaps it never would be. For the past eight months, I’ve been scooting around the globe as a non-person, ducking into doorways at the sight of a camera, avoiding  English-speaking people like the plague. I used so many names that my own was out of focus. I trained myself not to react if I heard the name Eldridge Cleaver called, and learned instead to respond naturally, spontaneously, to my cover names. Anyone who thinks this is easy to do should try it. For my part, I’m glad that it is over.

This morning we held a press conference, thus putting an end to all the hocus-pocus. Two days ago, the Algerian government announced that I had arrived here to participate in the historic First Pan-African Cultural Festival. After that, there was no longer any reason not to reach for the telephone and call home, so the first thing I did was to call my mother in Los Angeles. ‘Boy, where are you at?’ she asked. It sounded as though she expected me to answer, ‘Right around the corner, mom,’ or ‘Up here in San Francisco,’ so that when I said I was in Africa, in Algeria, it was clear that her mind was blown, for her response was, “Africa? You can’t make no phone call from Africa!” That’s my mom. She doesn’t relate to all this shit about phone calls across the ocean when there are no phone poles. She has both her feet on the ground, and it is clear that she intends to keep them there.

It is clear to me now that there are forms of imprisonment other than the kind I left Babylon to avoid, for immediately upon splitting that scene I found myself incarcerated in an anonymity, the walls of which were every bit as thick as those of Folsom Prison. I discovered, to my surprise, that it is impossible to hold a decent conversation without making frequent references to one’s past. So I found myself creating personal histories spontaneously, off the top of my head, and I felt bad about that because I know that I left many people standing around scratching their heads. The shit that I had to run down to them just didn’t add up.

Now all that is over. So what? What has really changed? Alioto is still crazy and mayor, Ronald Reagan is still Mickey Mouse, Nixon is in the White House and the McClellan Committee is investigating the Black Panther Party. And Huey P. Newton is still in prison. I cannot make light of this shit because it is getting deeper. And here we are in Algeria. What is a cat from Arkansas, who calls San Francisco home, doing in Algeria? And listen to Kathleen behind me talking over the telephone in French. With a little loosening of the will, I could easily flip out right now!”

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“He’s One Of The Few Pundits Around Who’s Actually Fun To Listen To”

October 15, 2012 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

Morley Safer, who should always, always regret the awful posthumous piece he did on the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, was much better in this 1981 report on conservative icon William F. Buckley, which aired just prior to Ronald Reagan assuming the Oval Office.

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Even More Proof That Donald Trump Is A Moron

October 15, 2012 in Misc., Politics | Permalink

Donald: Will fire you but you better not quit.

Donald Trump hasn’t been told the truth very often in his life. He won’t allow it. He demands utter loyalty even when he is utterly wrong. And without honest feedback from those around him, his behavior hasn’t been held in check. He’s become a classless disgrace, someone willing to profiteer from racism, a bigoted Birther. He makes a target of the first African-American President not on political terms but on racial ones. In doing so, he mocks the very people who have historically had the rawest deal in our nation.

It’s funny that you never hear any of his children criticizing their father. Could it be possible that every one of them is also a racist buffoon? Not likely. So why don’t they, regardless of whom they support in the upcoming election, distance themselves publicly from their father’s racism? Why don’t they scold dad? It’s likely because they’re not permitted to. Like most deeply vengeful people, Donald Trump is frightened and insecure. He will lash out and dismiss those he feels have crossed him. He can accept no dissent.

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Donald J. Trump
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
When an employee leaves me and begs to come back–I never let them. Loyalty is very important.

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Donald Trump is part of an executive overclass who thinks employees owe him complete fealty. His catchphrase which he delivers with relish is “You’re fired,” but he doesn’t feel employees should have free will. The Washington Nationals shut down their brilliant young pitcher Steven Strasburg before the playoffs because he was coming off surgery and they were afraid he would get hurt. It’s a debatable decision, but it wasn’t made merely for Strasburg’s well-being. The team has him contracted for several more seasons and wants him to be healthy.

But Donald Trump will have none of it. When Strasburg becomes a free agent in a few years, he will be “disloyal” to the team. You know, by making the best financial decision for his life and family. Trump doesn’t like it when employees benefit from a free-market economy, only owners. He thinks Washington should have worked the potentially “disloyal” player into the ground.

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Donald J. Trump
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
When Strasburg leaves in a couple of years under free agency Washington will say “what were we doing”.

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You will not likely declare undying loyalty to wealthy people like Donald Trump? You will not put their interests above your own? Then you should be used and abused before they discard you.

Ivana: You were very loyal to me, Donald.

Marla.

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“Of The Many Secret Post-Victory Plans Floating Around…The Least Secret Is Romney’s Intention To Implement Paul Ryan’s Budget”

October 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Two quick excerpts from Jonathan Chait’s just-published New York piece about the post-election agendas of Mitt Romney and President Obama:

Romney’s plan:

“Let’s first imagine that, on January 20, Romney takes the oath of office. Of the many secret post-victory plans floating around in the inner circles of the campaigns, the least secret is Romney’s intention to implement Paul Ryan’s budget. The Ryan budget has come to be almost synonymous with the Republican Party agenda, and Romney has embraced it with only slight variations. It would repeal Obamacare, cut income-tax rates, turn Medicare for people under 55 years old into subsidized private insurance, increase defense spending, and cut domestic spending, with especially large cuts for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs targeted to the very poor.

Few voters understand just how rapidly Romney could achieve this, rewriting the American social compact in one swift stroke. Ryan’s plan has never attracted Democratic support, but it is not designed for bipartisanship. Ryan deliberately built it to circumvent a Senate filibuster, stocking the plan with budget legislation that is allowed, under Senate ‘budget reconciliation’ procedures, to pass with a simple majority. Republicans have been planning the mechanics of the vote for many months, and Republican insiders expect Romney to use reconciliation to pass the bill. Republicans would still need to control 50 votes in the Senate (Ryan, as vice-president, would cast the tiebreaking vote), but if Romney wins the presidency, he’ll likely precipitate a partywide tail wind that would extend to the GOP’s Senate slate.”

Obama’s plan:

“On the morning of November 7, a reelected President Obama will do … nothing. For the next 53 days, nothing. And then, on January 1, 2013, we will all awake to a different, substantially more liberal country. The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core. It will be a real-world approximation of the old liberal bumper-sticker fantasy in which schools have all the money they require and the Pentagon needs to hold a bake sale.

All this can come to pass because, while Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.”

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“We Are Witnessing A Shift To A New Social Model”

October 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

More people are opting to live alone, choosing to not have families. It’s mostly because we suck, and being in close proximity to other people who are similar to us reminds us of this fact. But there are other reasons. The opening of a piece about this significant societal shift by Joel Kotkin at New Geography:

“For most of human history, the family — defined by parents, children and extended kin — has stood as the central unit of society. In Europe, Asia, Africa and, later, the Americas and Oceania, people lived, and frequently worked, as family units.

Today, in the high-income world and even in some developing countries, we are witnessing a shift to a new social model. Increasingly, family no longer serves as the central organizing feature of society. An unprecedented number of individuals — approaching upwards of 30% in some Asian countries — are choosing to eschew child bearing altogether and, often, marriage as well.

The post-familial phenomena has been most evident in the high income world, notably in Europe, North America and, most particularly, wealthier parts of East Asia. Yet it has bloomed as well in many key emerging countries, including Brazil, Iran and a host of other Islamic countries.

The reasons for this shift are complex, and vary significantly in different countries and cultures.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“The Rightwing Has Staked It All On Being Able To Create An ‘Entity’ Out Of Comically Ill-Fitting Parts”

October 14, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I read Richard Ford’s most famous novel, The Sportswriter, when I was a teen and liked it, but I was probably too young to fully appreciate it. (The same goes for Saul Bellow’s Herzog.) I always felt old for my age on the inside, but some cultural experiences require life experience. Ford presents a clutch of ideas about America in a new Financial Times diary. His take on the condition of the modern Republican party:

“Before President Obama scored his unhappy ‘own goal’ in the first debate, I was thinking about what might happen to the Republicans if they lost the election. More than in most political seasons, the rightwing has staked it all on being able to create an ‘entity’ out of comically ill-fitting parts – nutcase birthers, gay-marriage haters, anti-government and anti-tax fanatics, gun nuts, a smattering of reluctantly legitimate Romney supporters, plus a few grumpy GOP moderates who can’t think of what else to do with the vote they inherited from their old man. Quite a colourful circus tent. Nobody, including the Republicans, thinks this comprises a real political party – the kind where members sort of think the same about stuff. All they jointly hold dear is a race-tinged abhorrence of our not-inept, but not-entirely-ept-either, chief executive, whom they can’t believe was ever elected in the first place. But if Obama gets elected again, and their cocked-up contraption teeters over on to its side, then I was thinking they don’t really have much left for the future, except cross-eyed bitterness. But I now think that’s wrong. They’ll just throw a few of the noisier birthers and gay-bashers over the side, spasm smilingly back toward the middle and call that ‘new unity.’ This may bespeak an actual virtue of a vast, ungovernable country like ours, able to absorb most discords into an accommodating mediocrity. Though there’s the new question now: what happens if the bastards win? Do they actually govern? How?”

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