Barack Obama

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“I Think It Is Perfectly Sensible To Trust The Russians”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not everyone believes in the Tao of Steve, but Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer, feels, as many of us do, that Apple has limped along since its co-founder’s death, offering new iterations instead of innovations. In a Financial Times article about the state of Apple and other topics, the former Time Managing Editor also analyzes the tense situation in Syria, seeing an intersection of Russian and American interests. An excerpt:

“I was at a dinner in Manhattan a few weeks ago, just as the Syria issue was heating up, with one of my previous biography subjects, Henry Kissinger. He gave a dazzling analysis (I would call it ‘incredible’ except that it was, in fact, exceedingly credible) of how Russia would see its strategic interests, and predicted that Russia’s president would soon insert himself into the situation by calling for an international approach to the problem. So I was impressed but not surprised when Vladimir Putin did precisely that a week later.

On some of the TV shows I went on to talk about Steve Jobs, I was asked instead about Syria – and the question was usually about whether we could possibly trust the Russians. Most of the guests got worked into a lather, saying that Barack Obama was being horribly naive to trust them. But I think it is perfectly sensible to trust the Russians: we can trust them to do what they perceive to be in their own strategic interest.

Some of Russia’s strategic interests clash with ours: they want to protect their client state Syria and minimise US influence in the region (and yank America’s chain when possible). But to a great extent, Russia’s interests in this situation actually coincide with ours – at least for the moment. Russia fears as much as the US does the rise of radical Islam just south of its borders. It doesn’t want chemical weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists. And it would like to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power.

That last interest seems to conflict with ours, since the US has called for regime change. But the Russians believe that toppling Assad is not the best idea when that might lead to al-Qaeda and other jihadist forces taking over much of Syria and getting control of some of the chemical weapons. Thus it is in Russia’s interest to get Assad to surrender his chemical weapons, rather than summarily topple him. That might actually be in the west’s interests as well.”

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Quick Thoughts About Politics, NYC And Global

September 12, 2013 in Politics | Permalink

  • You see some terrible things living in New York. Like Bay Ridge, for instance. How awful. But there was nothing awful about Election Day here this week. Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson seemed like the best candidates in an uninspiring field, and they finished one-two. (It may or may not take a run-off to decide things.) Much is being made about de Blasio using his multiracial family to woo voters–Mayor Bloomberg stupidly called it a “racist campaign”–but the candidate did so well because he’s the only one who identified and addressed the overwhelming worry of most New Yorkers: the fear of falling. Larger and larger swaths of this city are for the wealthy and tourists, with middle-class and poor residents wondering whether there is still room for them. If de Blasio emerges as Mayor, we’ll see if he has any answers. But at least he knows the question.
  • In order to beat Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary of the NYC Comptroller’s race, Scott Stringer had to show himself to be as credible (or nearly as credible) as his opponent. If Stringer fumbled, he would have lost. This wasn’t a victory won out of moral outrage. This was New Yorkers seeing a pair of strong candidates for the post and giving the victory to the one who hasn’t previously disappointed them. Spitzer ran a strong campaign and didn’t lose this election; Stringer won it.
  • On the inernational front, I was pleased with President Obama’s brief address on Syria Tuesday night. If we can stop the atrocity of chemical weapons and send a message to the whole world that such a tactic is a tipping point, that would be great. Though I certainly hope that result comes from diplomacy rather than explosions. Blowing up stockpiles of chemical weapons will release those chemicals into the environment, and that can’t be good for anyone.
  • Two issues Obama wanted to avoid at all costs–gun control and new military intervention abroad–chipped away at his conscience until he couldn’t avoid them any longer. But while Sandy Hook deeply saddened him, Syria is the first time in his Presidency that he hasn’t been able to contain his fury publicly.
  • We all need to stop using the phrase “line in the sand,” or at least use it more honestly. As horrifying as it would be if, say, the Chinese government used chemical weapons on its people, we would not bomb that country. Sure, there’d be international pressure and sanctions, but there would not be bombing. The line always depends on whose sand we’re talking about.

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“It Would Make Obama The First President Since President Jimmy Carter To Go Green”

August 15, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I knew that Jimmy Carter had installed solar panels on the White House in the late 1970s, but I never realized that Ronald Reagan had them removed roughly a decade later. Dipshit. President Obama is putting them back as the solar-energy biz enjoys a renaissance. From Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica:

“On Thursday, a White House official confirmed to the Washington Post that President Barack Obama would finally make good on a 2010 promise to install solar panels on the First Family’s residence. The panels are being installed this week.

Once complete, it would make Obama the first president since President Jimmy Carter to go green. Carter’s solar panels were installed in 1979, but President Ronald Reagan had them removed in 1986. It also makes the Obama family part of the rapidly expanding growth in solar energy across the United States.

According to new industry data from GTM Research, solar panels have fallen in price, and their installation and collective energy-generating capacity has consequently skyrocketed. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s existing solar panels have been installed in the last 2.5 years.”

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“What We Have To Recognize That Those Old Times Aren’t Coming Back”

July 31, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Amazon, David Blum, the editor of Kindle Singles, has a very smart (and completely free) interview with President Obama about the state of the economy. The President touches on the sweeping changes that automation has brought to the job market, though he doesn’t go nearly far enough in acknowledging the seismic shifts that are occurring. Globalization may have been just as disruptive thus far, but it’s automation that will ultimately have a deeper and more-lasting impact. And I don’t know that community college courses will remedy that. An excerpt:

“President Obama:

Where I think we have fallen is in staying focused on the benefits of an economy where growth is broad based and everybody has opportunity. We have increasingly resigned ourselves to a ‘winner-take-all’ economy–again, driven a lot by technology and globalization, where folks at the very top are doing very well and the broad middle class of people, people trying to get into the middle class, are having a tougher and tougher time. You will see that in every profession. You see that in journalism. It used to be that there were local newspapers everywhere. If you wanted to be a journalist, you could really make a good living working for your hometown paper. Now you have a few newspapers that make a profit because they’re national brands, and journalists are having to scramble to piece together a living, in some cases as freelancers and without the same benefits that they had in a regular job for a paper. What’s true in journalism is true in manufacturing and is true in retail. What we have to recognize is that those old times aren’t coming back. We’re not going to suddenly eliminate globalization. We’re not going to eliminate technology. If people are going to book their vacation over the Internet, they’re not going to go down to a local travel agent. If that’s the case, then where are the new opportunities? Where are the new industries? With just a few modest, but really important, changes to government policy, we could be doing an awful lot better than we’re doing right now. American living standards would still be higher than folks a generation ago. People might have different jobs, so instead of a guy who had just graduated from college walking over to the local plant, like his dad did, and getting a good middle class job doing blue collar manufacturing work, now he might have to go to a community college and get more specialized training because he’s working as a computer technician. The opportunities are available. We just haven’t done a good job of making sure they’re accessible to all people.”

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“So What Should Jay Z Be Doing Instead Of Currying Favor With Critics In An Art Gallery?”

July 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “This Charming Man,” Sasha Frere-Jones’ obliteration of Jay Z ‘s American Dream (and President Obama’s performance) at the New Yorker blog, which I don’t necessarily agree with but enjoyed reading nonetheless:

“But just like the politician that he occasionally texts, Jay Z is exactly who should disappoint us, unless our admiration is mute conformity and our optimism was a party smile. His friend has disappointed us by allowing a squeegee of surveillance to be dragged across America and approving the killing of foreign civilians with robots. Those civilians, in another country, see America the way Trayvon Martin saw George Zimmerman—a force they couldn’t stop physically creating a story they couldn’t fight historically. So what should Jay Z be doing instead of currying favor with critics in an art gallery? Maybe something like what his friend Kanye West thought up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when he blurted out, ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people.’ Jay Z may be our most accomplished rapper but he rarely does anything to alienate anyone the way that West continually, and valuably, does. Which is probably why Carter represents athletes now, for profit and pleasure.

Hang on, hang on—no entertainer has to become a political figure because they are, well, de-facto political figures, right? (Jay Z prefers the word ‘influence,’ which he will admit to having.) Jay Z’s performance at the Pace Gallery, a transparent rewrite of Marina Abramović’s ‘The Artist Is Present,’ took place three days before the Zimmerman verdict, so what could he have done to leverage his influence? He could have ditched the idea of lip-synching to ‘Picasso Baby‘ (a weak retread of ’99 Problems’) and recreated the Zimmerman-Martin showdown with everyone in the room, following them around the perimeter of the gallery and scaring the shit out of them, eventually pulling a gun. And though that would have been the aggressive vision of a different artist, Jay Z is exactly the kind of figure who could weather the ensuing controversy, retaining all of his homes and maybe even his Samsung deal.”

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“Oh, West, You’ve Got The Biggest Ego In The World”

July 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I don’t agree with all of President Obama’s policies–I’m not happy about Gitmo still being open and a lack (thus far) of meaningful Wall Street reform–but I think in the big picture he’s done an excellent job, reversing the disastrous course the nation was on, and setting us up in many ways in the future to be healthier, fairer, more environmentally friendly, more scientifically savvy and more welcoming to minorities of all kinds. It’s even more impressive when you consider that he’s done so while dragging along the corpse of this dying iteration of the GOP.

And when I hear the remarks the President made at the White House on Friday in regard to the George Zimmerman trial, I tend to wonder whether there’s another person in the country quite like him, who has that ability to articulate such complex thoughts in such a measured and nuanced way. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere, but they don’t make it to the Oval Office very often. In moments like those on Friday, I’m pretty much awed.

Of course, not everyone agrees. In addition to right-wingers accusing him of trying to start a race war, two people who’ve long dogged the President with criticism on almost every front (including this one) are the clownish tandem of Tavis Smiley and Cornel West. This pair has been on a for-profit, anti-Obama tour for years, and I don’t believe for a moment it has anything to do with policy. I think it’s all about ego and jealousy.

Smiley is self-styled champion of the worker and the impoverished whose well-appointed lifestyle is funded in part by generous support from Walmart, a corporation not exactly know for its worker-friendly ways. He responded to the President’s Trayvon Martin comments on Twitter and on Meet the Press.

 ________________________

Tavis Smiley@tavissmiley

Took POTUS almost a week to show up and express mild outrage. And still, it was as weak as pre-sweetened Kool-Aid.

 ________________________

Smiley may think President Obama’s words on the topic were “mild” or “weak,” but his own words about Walmart’s worker abuses are nonexistent. Unlike President Obama fighting for health-care reform while dealing with the political realities trying to stop that from happening, Smiley is impeded only by his own ambition and wants. No one who is poor will ever get health insurance because of Smiley. No one poor will ever have anything because of him. He is all talk and no action. He is a hypocrite.

West, that educated fool, who is in business (and cahoots) with Smiley, went even further. He continually grows his desperately needy and delusional cult of personality because he’s a narcissistic poseur who regards himself as the martyr of a cause–which turns out to be Cornel West’s outsized sense of himself. He and his pal want attention–and lots of it–or else. 

From “I Want to Be Like Jesus,” Lisa Miller’s sharp 2012 New York magazine profile of West:

“Barack Obama and Cornel West first crossed paths in 2004, after Obama, then a senator from Illinois, spoke at the Democratic National Convention. In that speech, Obama called the United States of America ‘a magical place, a beacon of freedom and opportunity,’ and West went on television to debate the point. Americans have fought hard to earn and protect their freedoms, he said; magic has nothing to do with it. The senator phoned West, and the two men talked for four hours, especially about their mutual commitment to the dreams of Dr. King—’It was a wonderful conversation,’ West says. During the 2008 primaries, West stumped for Obama, making 65 appearances in half a dozen states, and he was in the room as Obama prepped to debate his Democratic rivals at Howard University. West had the candidate’s personal cell-phone number, and he left messages on it frequently. ‘I was calling him, not every day, but I did call him often, just prayed for him, prayed for his safety and that he’d do well in the debates and so on.’

But after Election Day, the man whose character and judgment West had so enthusiastically lauded at the Apollo never called to express his gratitude, and West found himself unable to procure tickets to the inauguration—something he desperately wanted to do for his mother. West was infuriated. Even now, when he talks about the break in their relations, West uses the language of a jilted lover. ‘One of the reasons I was personally upset is that I did not get a phone call, ever, after 65 events. It just struck me that it was not decent,’ West says to me. ‘I don’t roll like that. People would say, ‘Oh, West, you’ve got the biggest ego in the world. He ain’t got time to say nothing to you.’ I say, ‘Weeell, I’m not like that. I’m not like that. If somebody does something for you, you take time to say thank you.’’

West speculates that something scared the president-elect off. Perhaps, he says, it was his long friendship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s problematical former pastor. “Jeremiah Wright is my brother,” says West, who was in the audience at the National Press Club, when Wright combusted in May 2008, refusing to repudiate the sermon in which he said “God damn America.” Or it might have been that Obama needed to distance himself from the “socialist” label that was dogging him. West himself suspects he was “too leftist.” He believes someone in Obama’s circle said, “We don’t want to get too close to this brother.’ (A senior official from the 2008 campaign insists that no one had any intention of shutting West out of the proceedings. ‘If something dropped there, that’s unfortunate. But whatever happened, that isn’t President Obama’s fault.’)

Despite his lack of access, West arrived in Washington with his mother and brother on Inauguration Day, wanting to participate in the historic event. As they were checking into their hotel, the Wests were astonished to find that their bellhop was luckier than they. “We drive into the hotel, and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration,” he told Truthdig. “We had to watch the thing in the hotel.” Later that day, West’s ruffled feathers were smoothed when he ran into Arianna Huffington and she invited the West brothers to join her at the Huffington Post party. Of all the celebrations that night, “that turned out to be the best one,” says West. Arianna let him pick a few people from the rope line, he says: friend of Obama’s John Rogers, and Michelle Obama’s brother Craig ­Robinson. Inside, West ran into his nemesis, Larry Summers. “I shook his hand. He looked like a skeleton. I said, ‘Congratulations, my brother.’ ”

West continues to insist that it’s the president’s policies, and not what he perceives as ingratitude, that motivates his critique. “

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“It’s Really Only Delayed The Waterloo”

July 12, 2013 in Politics | Permalink

“There’s a mighty judgement coming, though I could be wrong,” sang the poet. The stars are aligning for just such a reckoning for the GOP over the next three years.

Back before the 2012 election, there were people who believed the Republican Congress would be more conciliatory toward President Obama if he won reelection, especially if he swept most of the swing states. Obama himself used that reasoning during the campaign, though I don’t know if he truly believed it. But things have only gotten worse. From immigration to voting rights to women’s rights, the GOP has been emboldened somehow to double down on antagonizing as many people as possible outside of their white, male base. They’ve learned nothing.

The party’s hold on Congress has largely been enabled by gerrymandering and not the will of the people. But it’s really only delayed the waterloo. If Hilary Clinton runs for President the next time around and wins the Democratic nomination, the demographics favor her so powerfully that it could be a devastating defeat for the Republicans. The way many female voters have been angered and the number of young Latinos who are aging into voting eligibility spells a doomsday scenario.

If you lose the large majority of the female, African-American, Latino, Asian American, Jewish, youth and LGBT votes, and you win a smaller portion of the white vote, that spells a rout that could sweep the GOP completely out of power. Of course, I could be wrong. A lot can change between now and then, but the Republicans have so far shown no ability or even desire to change,•

 

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“Mr Obama’s Standard Approach Is To Touch Down, Give A Great Speech, Proclaim Lofty Goals, Then Move On”

June 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The opening of Edward Luce’s Financial Times critique of what he believes is President Obama’s non-engagement with the African continent and its growing economies:

“History does not repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes. The fact that Barack Obama’s first real presidential trip to Africa coincides with the could never have been scripted. It is an eerily moving moment. America’s first black president enters the stage just as South Africa’s first black president is taking a bow. No one should doubt Mr Obama when he describes the great freedom fighter as his ‘personal hero.’

And yet Africans could be forgiven for wondering how long Mr Obama’s renewed interest in Africa will last. Having spent a total of 20 hours on the continent in his first term – on a 2009 stopover in Ghana – Mr Obama’s six-day tour is meant to underline a new phase in US-Africa relations. The age of foreign aid is passing, say US officials. Seven out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa. Yet it is China – and increasingly Turkey, India and Brazil – that is reaping the new investment opportunities. Now is Mr Obama’s chance to put that to rights.

Mr Obama’s style of doing business, and particularly his diplomacy, does not lend much confidence that his interest will be sustained. With the exception of China, where his engagement has been intensive, Mr Obama’s standard approach is to touch down, give a great speech, proclaim lofty goals, then move on.“

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“The Sheer Meanspiritedness Of The Obamacare Opponents Will Become Ever More Obvious”

May 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fears can divide and threats can hold people in place. But what if those boogeymen are cast aside even for a little while? What if the curtain is drawn back and the worst fears are never realized?

The biggest worry that his enemies have had about President Obama from the very beginning isn’t that he would fail but that he would succeed, that he could present a plausible alternative to the harmful reality most Americans have been facing since the start of the Reagan revolution. And we’ve stayed there thanks to the use of wedge issues and demonizing. But the President wanted to transform that. Time, technology and demography are on his side.

What if health-care reform makes our lives better while costing us less money? What if gay marriage isn’t harmful to the moral fabric of society but actually improves it? What if women having control over their lives makes for a healthier, more secure country? What if all the things that we’ve been told are un-American actually make for a stronger America? Once we know the truth, how will lies ever work again?

A brief explanation from Paul Krugman, if you missed it on this Memorial Day holiday, of the potential of Obamacare in action:

“Still, here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious.

So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.”

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“The President Is Playing The Long Game”

May 6, 2013 in Politics | Permalink

Whenever President Obama endures a setback or is stymied by the GOP-controlled Congress, he’s all but pronounced as finished by some members of the media, and that will only increase as we progress in his second term, the lame-duck one. But when Obama holds a press conference to decry the defeat of gun background checks, he isn’t just arguing that issue. That’s just the battle, and he wants to win the war. Every time the President appeals to the common sense and decency of the American people, every time he speaks to the future and progress, he’s putting the country on a path that resembles his vision. The President is playing the long game.

The bigger picture is that the Republicans will likely maintain its Congressional majority in the midterm elections in 2014 because of gerrymandering, but what if Hillary Clinton runs in 2016 and the more moderate Republicans all take a pass? That could be a landslide that completes Obama’s goal, that gives his party the wherewithal to drive the nation’s politics for decades. That’s the long game, that’s his far-reaching hope. 

Whenever you consider Obama’s presidency, sure, think of universal health care, energy independence and the drawing down of two wars. But also recall the thesis sentence from his candidacy in 2008, which he articulated to the Reno Gazette-Journal, a remark that ruffled stalwarts of both parties at the time: 

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Mr. Obama told the newspaper. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

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“Could It Be That You Were An Actor In An Aaron Sorkin Liberal Fantasy?”

April 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama’s best joke was this one: “I know Republicans are still sorting out what happened in 2012, but one thing they all agree on is they need to do a better job reaching out to minorities. And look, call me self-centered, but I can think of one minority they could start with. (Laughter.) Hello? Think of me as a trial run, you know?”

But a close second was this: “Of course, everybody has got plenty of advice. Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in The American President. (Laughter.) And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael, what’s your secret, man? (Laughter.) Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy? (Laughter.) Might that have something to do with it?”

I know that well-to-do op-ed writers, tossing their precious bon mots, are generally as divorced from the reality of how most Americans live as Washington politicians are, but it amazes me how people who are Beltway insiders can think of politics as a fantasy world. From “Obama and the Myth of Arm Twisting,” a New York Review of Books piece by Elizabeth Drew:

“The nonsense about what it takes for a president to win a victory in Congress has reached ridiculous dimensions. The fact that Barack Obama failed to win legislation to place further curbs on the purchase of guns—even after the horror of Newtown, Connecticut—has made people who ought to know better decide that he’s not an “arm-twister.” Ever since Obama took office, others have been certain about how he should handle the job and that he wasn’t doing it right.

Yet if the health care law is allowed to work, despite continuing Republican efforts to try to make sure that it doesn’t, and if we take into account some other victories—the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the stimulus that was as large as the political market would bear, the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, the largest since the New Deal if Congress will let it be implemented—his presidency could go down as a time of historic achievement.

Nevertheless, when an insufficient number of senators was available to kill a hypothetical filibuster of the gun bill—a watered-down measure to expand background checks for gun sales (while opening gaping loopholes)—suddenly the word went out that the president is hopeless as an arm-twister; the assumption of course was that being a good arm-twister was critical for a successful presidency.

Wait a minute.

Arm-twisting is a narrowly defined and seldom successful maneuver by which a president can supposedly work his will with the legislature. It assumes that an elected official will cry “uncle” and change his or her mind upon being visited with presidential blandishments and threats: If you vote this way I will see to it that you get that dam. Or the other way around. Or: If you don’t vote for me on this I will make your life miserable for however long you are in office. That’s the popular image.

The problem is that such threats are rarely successful and a president would be most unwise to try to adopt them as a method of governing.”

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Shocker: President Obama Announces Resignation

April 23, 2013 in Fake, Humor | Permalink

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down your hand grenades and cheeseburgers for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

I

I ran for the highest office in the land in order to improve this country. But I’ve come to the conclusion that you violent half-wits deserve to continue sitting in your shit-filled diapers. So I am resigning.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

I have seen some horrors during my time as President of this deeply stupid country.

Social drinkers with odd tans.

Social drinkers with violent mood swings.

Senators with pretty lips who seem to have a lot of repressed energy.

Senators with delicate lips who seem to have a lot of repressed energy.

Women who've had sex with guns.

People who love their assault weapons so much that they might as well fuck them and give birth to their children.

Dipshits who don't realize that the fucking Joker is a character in a fucking movie.

Dipshits who are unaware that the Joker is a fucking character in a fucking movie.

And whatever this thing is.

And whatever this thing is.

It's me!

It’s me!

You white people have aged me horribly. I look like Dr. J's grandfather.

You fat stumblefucks have aged me horribly. I look like Dr. J’s grandfather.

You tell ’em, Pop-Pop.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

In summation, I hate you all so much. In addition to resigning, I’m renouncing my American citizenship and moving to Kenya.

I knew it.

I knew it.

Farewell. Now you jackasses will get what you so richly deserve.

Now you jackasses will get what you so richly deserve.


More fake crap that seemed funny at the time:

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“President Obama Is The Most Radical Man Ever To Occupy The Oval Office”

March 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Liz Cheney, that miserable dipshit and daughter of a waterboarder, has outdone herself with one of the more overheated and ludicrous op-ed pieces of the year, with her insane new crap in the Wall Street Journal. Before I present a passage, I will say this: The constant state of crisis in Washington is caused by Cheney’s extremist party, President Obama has spent at a more conservative rate of anyone in the White House since Eisenhower, the debt grew because Cheney’s cracked party destroyed the economy, and the Affordable Health Care Act will create new jobs. 

As I’ve said before, this version of the GOP is in a death spiral, unwilling and unable to reform. An excerpt from Cheney’s drivel:

“These days Washington careens from crisis to crisis, most of them manufactured. The Obama White House and its allies are engaged in the kind of sky-is-falling melodrama normally reserved for the lives of teenage girls. (As the mother of teenage girls, I speak with authority on this, though the comparison does a disservice to teenagers.) With our attention diverted by each fiscal cliff or sequestration drama, we are at risk of missing the real threats to the republic.

President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office. The national debt, which he is intent on increasing, has passed $16 trillion. He believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem. He seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man.

Perhaps his ignorance of that fact explains his hostility toward the private sector. In one of his autobiographies, the president writes that he felt ‘like a spy behind enemy lines’ during his brief stint working for private industry.

The president has launched a war on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. He has launched a war on religious freedom. He has launched a war on fossil fuels. He is working to nationalize one-sixth of the economy with job-killing ObamaCare.”

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“Any Remaining Balance That’s There At The End Of 2017 We’ll Pay Off As A Balloon Payment”

March 12, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

During the first Presidential debate last year, the one where Mitt Romney was supposedly so brilliant, he asserted that half of the clean-tech companies President Obama had invested stimulus money in had gone belly up. Not even close. Tesla Motors was one of the businesses he was talking about. They’ve just announced they’re expediting their loan-repayment schedule. From Alan Ohnsman at Bloomberg:

“Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), which received $465 million in U.S. Energy Department loans to develop and build electric cars, will repay the funds five years ahead of schedule in a plan approved by the government.

The carmaker said in its annual report yesterday that the department approved amended terms of the loan agreements that enable it to complete repayment by December 2017. Starting in 2015, the Palo Alto, California-based company will make accelerated payments from excess free cash flow, Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja said in a telephone interview.

‘Any remaining balance that’s there at the end of 2017 we’ll pay off as a balloon payment,’ Ahuja said yesterday.

The maker of battery-powered Model S sedans, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has a goal of becoming profitable this quarter, with deliveries of the vehicle forecast to rise to a record 20,000 units in 2013. Production snags in last year’s second half boosted operating expenses and triggered a wider fourth-quarter loss for Tesla than analysts anticipated.

The original terms required repayment of the loans by 2022, 10 years after the funds were drawn down. Tesla said on Sept. 25 that it was working with the Energy Department on a modified repayment schedule. Amended terms of the loan agreements were registered on Dec. 20 and March 1, the company said yesterday.”

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“I’m Not Sure About The Drones. It’s Very Aggressive. I’m Not Sure That If Bush Jr. Were Doing It I Would Say The Same.”

February 4, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

sto

Drones are scary as hell, but they do keep boots off the ground, which is what leads to quagmires and tens of thousands of deaths. Still, it’s a scary precedent we’re setting.

In a wide-ranging Geuernica interview, Martin Amis offers his take on drones as well as health care and the history of American slavery. An excerpt:

“Guernica:

In May 2009, in an interview with Prospect magazine, you discussed your enthusiasm for the possibilities of the Obama presidency. What are your thoughts on his first term and on what might come in the next four years?

Martin Amis:

It’s often said of American politics that it’s a huge juggernaut and the president can change the direction by two or three degrees in either direction, but not much more. In fact, I think the president’s power is limited, much more than the prime minister in England. So, I’m not too disappointed, although I didn’t like his deportations, and I’m not sure about the drones. It’s very aggressive. I’m not sure that if Bush Jr. were doing it I would say the same. It’s better than having troops on the ground, and it’s horrifying for the terrorists. I mean they’re all sitting there waiting.

I haven’t liked him during the campaign. He hasn’t been above the fray. I guess you can’t afford to do it. If you are going to get reelected you have to make some of the usual noises: You don’t talk about global warming, and you don’t talk about gun control. He hasn’t been the great exception.

I also think there’s been another resurgence of racism. All that rejection from Republicans has a bit of a racist element. It was very necessary to have a black president, and it’s been a great thing. It will help, in the end, to ease the trauma of slavery and civil war. The war against slavery cost almost 800,000 American lives—that’s how strongly they felt about it. And it’s not going to go away in a century.

Obama will have a bit of capital for a year or two. Even his imperfect health reform was a tremendous step in the right direction—the direction of sanity and equity. Just to give up this enterprise health system and adopt government health care like in Canada is cheaper and fairer. But the key part about that is that no American will accept that some of his tax money is going to pay for people who smoke. It’s horrible for them: ‘Some low-life bum taking advantage of the state.’ They just have to get over it.”

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“Don’t Force The Issue When You Don’t Have The Power”

January 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I think when history is written, it will be considered that Barack Obama came of age as President during the payroll-tax extension struggle of 2011, when the Republican-controlled House was backed into a corner and had to return, crawling, to the center. Among the far-right pundits who’ve driven the GOP almost off the map–the electoral map, at least–Charles Krauthammer at least seems to have a unique understanding that a more-seasoned Obama is likely to manhandle his political opponents during his second term if they don’t put strategy before severity. From the right-wing writer’s recent column:

“The Gingrich Revolution ran aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.

Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.

The debt-ceiling deadline is coming up. You can demand commensurate spending cuts, the usual, reasonable Republican offer. But you won’t get them. Obama will hold out. And, at the eleventh hour, you will have to give in as you get universally blamed for market gyrations and threatened credit downgrades.”

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“We Must Do These Things Together, As One Nation, And One People”

January 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

“Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.”

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“They Had More Staff In Florida Than We Had In The Country”

December 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe exhaustively analyzes why President Obama beat Mitt Romney, giving credit, yes, to a more information-rich campaign, but also stressing the importance of marrying big data to retail politics. An excerpt:

“Tagg Romney could not figure it out. Why had Obama spent so heavily during the primaries when he had no primary opponent? Only later did Tagg realize this was a key to Obama’s victory.

‘We were looking at all the money they were spending in the primary and we were thinking ‘what are they spending all their money on? They’re wasting a lot of money.’ They weren’t. They were paying staffers in Florida’ and elsewhere.

If Romney’s Manhattan Project had been debate preparation, then Obama’s was the ground game.

Building on its 2008 field organ­ization, Obama’s campaign had far more people on the ground, for longer periods, and backed by better data. In Florida, for example, the ­Romney campaign said it had fewer than 200 staff members on the ground, a huge commitment of its total of 500 nationwide. But the Obama campaign had 770 staff in Florida out of 3,000 or so nationwide.

‘They had more staff in Florida than we had in the country, and for longer,’ said Romney adviser Ron Kaufman.

Indeed, in swing state after swing state, the Obama field team was much bigger than the Romney troops. Obama had 123 offices in Ohio, compared with Romney’s 40. Obama had 59 offices in Colorado, compared with Romney’s 15, accord­ing to statistics compiled by the Obama campaign.

Stevens said he expressed alarm about the Democrat’s early advantage in money and staff. He said Obama’s decision to reject public financing for the fall campaign (a move Romney followed) worked to Obama’s advantage ­because Obama used primary funds to prepare for the general election, and it meant there was no ceiling on how much could be spent.

‘It is like sitting in the ­Alamo,’ Stevens said in the postelection interview, comparing the siege by Mexican troops in 1836 to competing against the superior forces of the Obama campaign. ‘Yes, it is alarming. There are a lot of Santa Anna’s soldiers out there.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“The Goal Was Not To Build A Product. The Goal Was To Reelect The President.”

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

Alexis Madrigal has an interesting article in the Atlantic about the data stream vs. anecdotal evidence divide of the recent Presidential election. An excerpt about Obama’s tech team:

“To really understand what happened behind the scenes at the Obama campaign, you need to know a little bit about its organizational structure. Tech was Harper Reed’s domain. ‘Digital’ was Joe Rospars’ kingdom; his team was composed of the people who sent you all those emails, designed some of the consumer-facing pieces of BarackObama.com, and ran the campaigns’ most-excellent accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, video, and the like. Analytics was run by Dan Wagner, and those guys were responsible for coming up with ways of finding and targeting voters they could persuade or turn out. Jeremy Bird ran Field, the on-the-ground operations of organizing voters at the community level that many consider Obama’s secret sauce . The tech for the campaign was supposed to help the Field, Analytics, and Digital teams do their jobs better. Tech, in a campaign or at least this campaign or perhaps any successful campaign, has to play a supporting role. The goal was not to build a product. The goal was to reelect the President. As Reed put it, if the campaign were Moneyball, he wouldn’t be Billy Beane, he’d be ‘Google Boy.’

There’s one other interesting component to the campaign’s structure. And that’s the presence of two big tech vendors interfacing with the various teams — Blue State Digital and NGP Van. The most obvious is the firm that Rospars, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, and Clay Johnson co-founded, Blue State Digital. They’re the preeminent progressive digital agency, and a decent chunk — maybe 30 percent — of their business comes from providing technology to campaigns. Of course, BSD’s biggest client was the Obama campaign and has been for some time. BSD and Obama for America were and are so deeply enmeshed, it would be difficult to say where one ended and the other began. After all, both Goff and Rospars, the company’s principals, were paid staffers of the Obama campaign. And yet between 2008 and 2012, BSD was purchased by WPP, one of the largest ad agencies in the world. What had been an obviously progressive organization was now owned by a huge conglomerate and had clients that weren’t other Democratic politicians. 

One other thing to know about Rospars, specifically: ‘He’s the Karl Rove of the Internet,’ someone who knows him very well told me. What Rove was to direct mail — the undisputed king of the medium — Rospars is to email. He and Goff are the brains behind Obama’s unprecedented online fundraising efforts. They know what they were doing and had proven that time and again.”

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“We Are Greater Than The Sum Of Our Individual Ambitions”

November 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

“Obama invoked average Americans living out this ethos of mutual responsibility.” (Image by David Shankbone.)

Where are the “job creators” right now? Probably eating freedom fries. As the language of manipulation has been drowned out by machines crunching raw data, it’s good to remember that some people in addition to Nate Silver were calling bullshit on the GOP narratives leading up to Election Day. One was New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who called out the wishful thinking being sold in earnest daily by Joe Scarborough and others. (It’s very amusing that Scarborough is now angrily calling out the lies of the conservative media, considering he was a big part of the problem.) Chait’s well-tuned ears also caught the gist of Obama’s victory speech which  might have been lost in the wee hours of the morning. From his new article, “We Just Had a Class War: And One Side Won“:

“Obama then proceeded to define the American idea in a way that excludes the makers-versus-takers conception of individual responsibility propounded by Paul Ryan and the tea party. Since Obama took office, angry men in Colonial garb or on Fox News have harped on ‘American exceptionalism,’ which boils our national virtue down to the freedom from having to subsidize some other sap’s health insurance. Obama turned this on its head. ‘What makes America exceptional,’ he announced, ‘are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations.’ Obama invoked average Americans living out this ethos of mutual responsibility (such as a ‘family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors,’ the example of which stands at odds with the corporate ethos of a certain ­Boston-based private-equity executive). And even the line about red states and blue states began with the following statement: ‘We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions.’

Presumably more was at work here than mere uplift. The president was establishing the meaning of his victory.”

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“The Campaign Guarded What It Believed To Be Its Biggest Institutional Advantage Over Mitt Romney’s Campaign: Its Data”

November 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Our society has gone from one that is verbally driven to one that is defined by algorithms, and politics is no exception. There was a time when Newt Gingrich and his ilk felt they could control the power if they could control the language. But it doesn’t work anymore. Data is king now. The opening of “Inside the Secret World Of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win,” by Michael Scherer at Time:

“In late spring, the backroom number crunchers who powered Barack Obama’s campaign to victory noticed that George Clooney had an almost gravitational tug on West Coast females ages 40 to 49. The women were far and away the single demographic group most likely to hand over cash, for a chance to dine in Hollywood with Clooney — and Obama.

So as they did with all the other data collected, stored and analyzed in the two-year drive for re-election, Obama’s top campaign aides decided to put this insight to use. They sought out an East Coast celebrity who had similar appeal among the same demographic, aiming to replicate the millions of dollars produced by the Clooney contest. ‘We were blessed with an overflowing menu of options, but we chose Sarah Jessica Parker,’ explains a senior campaign adviser. And so the next Dinner with Barack contest was born: a chance to eat at Parker’s West Village brownstone.

For the general public, there was no way to know that the idea for the Parker contest had come from a data-mining discovery about some supporters: affection for contests, small dinners and celebrity. But from the beginning, campaign manager Jim Messina had promised a totally different, metric-driven kind of campaign in which politics was the goal but political instincts might not be the means. ‘We are going to measure every single thing in this campaign,’ he said after taking the job. He hired an analytics department five times as large as that of the 2008 operation, with an official ‘chief scientist’ for the Chicago headquarters named Rayid Ghani, who in a previous life crunched huge data sets to, among other things, maximize the efficiency of supermarket sales promotions.

Exactly what that team of dozens of data crunchers was doing, however, was a closely held secret. ‘They are our nuclear codes,’ campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt would say when asked about the efforts. Around the office, data-mining experiments were given mysterious code names such as Narwhal and Dreamcatcher. The team even worked at a remove from the rest of the campaign staff, setting up shop in a windowless room at the north end of the vast headquarters office. The ‘scientists’ created regular briefings on their work for the President and top aides in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, but public details were in short supply as the campaign guarded what it believed to be its biggest institutional advantage over Mitt Romney’s campaign: its data.”

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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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“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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“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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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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