Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Around The Intertubes Again

  • My curiosity about Republican candidate Ron Paul was piqued when Redstate.com banned any reference to him. Sully has posted Paul's recent Leno appearance here. I have to admit, his popularity (and subsequent demonization by Republican bloggers) is fascinating to me. And timely, given our recent discussion on libertarianism here at Think, Dammit!
  • I can't tell if the overall comparisons are skewed by changes in the poverty criteria (the article doesn't say) but these numbers seem very ungood. High concentrations of poor in any geographic area -- be it within a school district, a city, a state, or country -- usually creates a black hole of despair that is very difficult to undo.
  • WTF? I thought we were winning in Afghanistan. Or maybe we are, I can't tell if the Brits (or NATO) are just being whiny about it. I occasionally forget we're still there... I should look into that more.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Happy Halloween!


Behold my godson, Lincoln, as the cutest little "deviled egg" in the world!

My own little hobgobblins will be disguised this Halloween as well. Ryan will be a screaming ghoulie thing, a costume he built around his weapon of choice -- a plastic scythe. KK was going to be Hannah Montana until she removed the blond wig we bought from its package and discovered it looked more like randomly frizzy, deranged Barbie hair than anything Ms Montana would sport. I tried to convince her to reuse the hair as "Tabloid Britney" but she wouldn't go for it. Such a pity! She decided to create her own costume instead, "Kaitlyn-in-a-Box", which took some creative effort on her part and ended up being quite cleverly done. Kirsten is going as a UW student wannabe who is working in a Calzone joint while establishing residency to qualify for in state tuition.

I may still get my $13 out of that blond wig, though. I'm thinking about dressing as Trailer Park Barbie Mobile Home Community Barbie. Heavy make up, denim mini-skirt, black bra under Ryan's mesh practice jersey, Budweiser can in one hand (almost empty, of course), ciggie in the other. Shoes sold separately. Totally authentic.

Maybe too authentic... I'm pretty sure the neighbors would still recognize me. :-)

If Warren Says So

I thought I sounded like a horrible drudge last week when I wrote this. I mean, is it an unpatriotic leftist thing to sense a gloomy shift in the power paradigm and actually say so out loud?

I am feeling slightly validated today, however, having just read that Warren Buffet said this:
Becky: If the U.S. does go into recession, do you think it going to be the type of thing that catches around the globe like a cold? Are other economies going to get dragged into it?

Warren: Well, historically they've always said that if we get a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia or something. But, we are still very important in the U.S., and we are still very linked in many ways. But we aren't as important as we used to be relative to the rest of the world.

[...]

Warren: I think that China is going to be a greater and greater force in the world's economy in every way. And I think that in our relations generally with them, we've often had a superior attitude about things ... Americans do that all the time. I probably do it myself. We are used to being King Pin and, we may have to learn a bit more humility. I mean, there are other major countries in the world that do not have to accept orders from the United States.
Maybe I'm not crazy after all. Or maybe Warren Buffet is an unpatriotic leftist (I must point out that he is always rambling on about tax rates and economic justice and other blah blah blah).

Monday, October 29, 2007

Around The Intertubes

  • The Blackwater debacle has certainly proved to be a multi-layered pile of controversy. We have the whole military industrial complex thing. We have the outsourcing of critical military functions. We have the resultant procedural and chain of command gaps. And now it appears those involved in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians are immune to prosecution. Lack of accountability seems to be the norm for this administration. Maybe Bush will give the mercs the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  • Obama sure has managed to piss off a great many among the gay and lesbian crowd. I'm not sure I've caught the whole of it but it seems his attempt to be black enough and religious enough has inadvertently aligned him against his homosexual supporters. This shouldn't be too difficult to straight talk his way out of... a president, after all, must serve a country that is constantly at odds with itself.
  • It's going to be like this 4-ever more. Shoot me.
  • People keep conveniently overlooking that Bush was asking Qwest (and other telecoms) to break the law prior to 9/11. I'm not sure why people have such a hard time grasping the fact that this administration has fancied itself above the law since it took office... using 9/11 as the excuse for breaking the law was just a convenient afterthought. It'll also be interesting to see if Bush actually complies with legal requests for documents in the ongoing warrantless wiretapping investigation or if he thinks he's above all that, too.
  • This Sibel Edmonds case has been going on for years. I wonder if she'll get any takers in the media for her latest offer (my guess is no). I'd sure love to know what it is she has to say.
  • Understanding our Middle East policy in context can be a full time job. I usually read an article here, an article there, etc, and then spend a lot of time trying to string the facts together for some kind of big-picture perspective of what's really going on over there. A usually reliable shortcut, Juan Cole gives good context in his latest Salon article.
  • Can we really stop Iran from going nuk-u-lar? And if you think through what it would take to 'stop' them, under which scenario are we better off in the long term? Pakistan went nuk-u-lar years ago -- a country that's truly festering with rabid islamic extremists -- and yet we don't seem too concerned about invading them. I'd love to know why. It seems there's an agenda... and then there's the agenda. Trying to figure out which is which these days is getting to be quite a chore.

Monday, October 22, 2007

The Point System

Because the Terri Schiavo case was such a deplorable freak show -- complete with vainglorious politicians strutting around presuming themselves endowed with the power to make life and death choices for the rest of us -- Fred Thompson just earned half a point in my book for his refusal to cow to the so called values voters. He would have earned a full point had he simply taken a firm stand instead of hemming and hawing his response.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Shocking... Not.

And so it begins.

Plus, Paul Krugman nets out the whole Super Conduit thing in words I can understand (weeding through Roubini's industry jargon exhausted me):
Right now the bleeding edge of the crisis in confidence involves worries that there may be large losses hidden inside so-called “structured investment vehicles” — basically hedge funds that borrow from the public and invest the proceeds in mortgage-backed securities. The new plan would create a “super-fund,” the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit, which would seek to restore confidence by, um, borrowing from the public and investing the proceeds in mortgage-backed securities.

The plan, in other words, looks like an attempt to solve the problem with smoke and mirrors.

That might work if there were no good reason for investors to be worried. But in this case, investors have very good reasons to worry: the bursting of the housing bubble means that someone, somewhere, has to accept several trillion dollars in losses. A significant part of these losses will fall on mortgage-backed securities. And given this reality, the “conduit” looks like a really bad idea.

I’d put it like this: Investors aren’t putting their money to work because they don’t know where the bad debts are. And when investors need clarity, the last thing you want to be doing is pumping out more smoke.

Mr. Greenspan’s take, expressed in an interview with the magazine Emerging Markets, seems broadly similar. “If you believe some form of artificial non-market force is propping up the market,” he said, “you don’t believe the market price has exhausted itself.”

Translated: this rescue scheme could be seen as an attempt to hide the bad debts everyone knows are out there, and as a result could delay any return of trust to the markets.

Not Getting It

I don't understand the concept of Rudy Giuliani as presidential material. He's running sentimentally on 9/11 while his performance before and after was somewhat questionable. Is his appeal that he isn't one of those crazy christianists, or one of the crazy christianist wannabes?

He actually seems to me to be the ultimate bureaucratic city worker. Keep the garbage picked up, keep the trains running on time, clean up the city square. President? I just don't see it.

I also don't understand the bizarre anti-Mormon resistance to Mitt Romney. Sounds like a big chunk of the religious right is rejecting a rightly religious person on the grounds that he's not a Christian. I guess Christians aren't the only group being 'persecuted' these days, eh? Pot, kettle, blah blah blah.

I spent a lot of time with Mormons in my youth and, although I generally found them to be a one-off from most things I thought of as 'normal' as a youngster, I don't recall anything hideous or scary or threatening. As a whole they are very pro-family, pro-chastity, pro-service.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Weathering The Storm With Our Fair Weathered Friends

There is a running joke in my house that we pay our children's friends to be friends with them. It's not true, of course, but neither is it an unrealistic premise for a relationship.

There has not been a single day in my life that the US has not been the most dominant player in the world space. As a country, that kind of supremacy has its rewards -- everyone wants to be your friend. Fortunately for the rest of the world, and until recently, the US has also been a responsible neighbor. We've participated in a few just wars. We've staged a few token humanitarian interventions. Mostly we've used our accumulated power carefully, strategically, diplomatically. Yeah, we've run some puppet theater and some covert nastiness but karma has had a way of evening things out in the end.

When you consider the amazing progress we've made in just a few short centuries you realize that much of this good fortune has been due to the secluded Galapagosian existence we enjoyed in our formative years: We'll do our thing over here... you do your thing over there. We evolved into something strong and self-reliant.

I'm tempted to wax nostalgic on the age of isolationism but instead I'll admit that the globalization that's occurred since the 50's has made this country unbelievably wealthy. Even our poorest souls live well by global standards in 2007. We have to remember, though, that this prosperity has come with a price. We've traded our self-reliance for it. Not entirely a bad move but not entirely without consequences, either. Personally, I would have preferred a little less prosperity and a little more self-reliance. Apparently I am in the minority.

Where stock market performance has been making most people happy these days, I find it profoundly troubling... a sign of the kind of free for all excess that foretells certain doom. Alan Greenspan may have mastered the market by manipulating interest rates for short term benefit but I fear that what he's really created is a profitable illusion. Together, Greenspan and globalization have created a consumer driven economy that's about as stable as a house of cards.

Our banking community has just awoken from its cheap money binge like a college student on the morning after a big beer bash: panicked, broke, and trying to think of a good cover story for its parents. Nouriel Roubini discusses their frantic bail-out-that's-not-really-a-bail-out-but-still-kind-of-a-bailout scheme here. I usually only understand about every third word Roubini writes but this one especially is a doozy. The big worry is that our debt has become too high risk to buy. This wouldn't be such a problem if we hadn't been living like Wimpy for the past decade with an "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" mentality. It doesn't take an economics guru to figure out where this is leading: without foreign debt financiers we'll revert to traditional lending, which means tighter lending requirements, which means less consumer borrowing, which means less consumer spending, which means our consumer driven economy will shrink faster than Anna Nicole on speed.

This is on top of a decimated real estate market. As a reminder, the real estate market has been the primary contributor to at least one of the only four job growth sectors in the past 7 years: construction (the other three are services, health care, and government... everything else is a net loss).

Throw in some out of control oil speculation and you've got serious energy bubble concerns. (Is oil the new information technology real estate?)

I am not thrilled about facing an economic retraction but I'm more concerned about what it will mean in the changing world order. Think of it this way.... Everyone loves you when you're on top but gawd help you if you fall; all of the cling-ons who've been fawning over your celebrity will be the first ones to kick you when you're down and then step on your body in the hopes of being elevated an inch or two. What a culture shock that's going to be after the past 7 years of unparalleled hubris. Everyone was willing to smile and put up with us because we kept them all rolling in dough. They needed us as much as we needed them. What happens when there's no more dough? What happens when we need them more than they need us?

I could be wrong... we're resilient people, and maybe this whole economy thing isn't as bad as I'm thinking it's going to be. Or maybe it will be bad but only for a while.

I just have a really bad feeling.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The Disillusioned And The Delusional

My brother can't resist getting his 'anti-liberal' jabs in. I ignore it. He persists, slyly, and then covers with something like, "I'm just messing with you, Simoney." The reasons I ignore him are threefold: 1) there was a time when I used to do the same thing in reverse so I figure it's karmic payback, 2) every attempt at what I would like to think of as an "idea exchange" ends badly (always), and 3) for whatever primal brain logic has been hardwired in us to view the world differently, the truth is that having grown up together we still view the world very much the same way. If we remove labels from the conversation, and hyperbole, and political baggage, we would agree way more often than we disagree.

But this post is not about my brother. He just got me thinking about perception and political differences. Any similarity to my brother in this post from here out (real or imagined) is accidental and not the intent of the author.

I call myself a liberal. I don't believe it's a dirty word, regardless of what Newt Gingrich would have us believe. It's a legitimate political philosophy, the foundation of all of western civilization. If pressed, though, I would have to admit that part of my self-labeling is an act of rebellion. Defiance. An offense against what passes itself off as 'conservative' these days (since it certainly isn't what conservative used to be). You could even say that the source of my disaffection is the betrayal of true conservatism. I may not agree with every point of conservative philosophy but I can at least follow the logic. This bastard thing the Republicans have created under the tutelage of Karl Rove is another thing altogether. It's a lie. It's beneath contempt.

I am not an idealist. Naked idealism makes me uncomfortable. I don't view the world through a prism of idealism and, in fact, I think few people do. Most of us become a little jaded as we age, as our ideals are continuously pummeled by the blunt force of reality (I like to think of that process as 'gaining wisdom'). Political wingers -- the far left and the far right -- are the idealists. The rest of us fall somewhere in the middle. Wingers are actually quite rare... you can recognize them by the consistency of their positions. They are against all war. They are against all government. They are "all" or they are "nothing." On the plus side, there is no hypocrisy in these people. On the minus side, there is no reason.

It's an unfortunate reflex these days to label anyone who passionately disagrees with us as "far left" or "far right" whether they fit this definition or not. It's a lazy attempt to marginalize both the argument and the arguer. It's a bad (and easy) thing to do. At the center of these accusative declarations are the vanity pundits who will say anything inflammatory for fame and fortune. There are also shadowy organizations with lots of money, no frontman, and an unknown agenda, who can say anything they want without personal accountability. These entities distort the tone and context of our national dialogue. What should be an important conversation becomes a yelling match. It's a disgrace.

The truth is that the left-right paradigm isn't even all that relevant anymore. Sure, it exists in pure terms and in that regard it highlights legitimate differences of political philosophy. But in practice it's turned into a parody of itself. It's been perverted by political players who create wedge issues to draw and redraw lines of division in the hope of an increased power base. Even worse, it's been been perverted by the media to create and control new demographics for financial gain. The left-right paradigm in American politics has become a grotesquerie; it's nothing but the perverted, twisted carcass of political tradition.

One could spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint exactly where in our history we hopped onto this track. I'm a fairly recent student of politics so I can only hypothesize that the will to manipulate the political system has always been there and that only as the means to do it effectively have evolved (via mass media) has it intensified. It's an obvious game now and anyone who isn't caught up in the emotional sway of the rhetoric can observe the political parties twisting themselves like pretzels to manipulate the hapless electorate.

It's a very valiant thing to say you're above the politics, to say that you refuse to dwell in that gutter. Sadly, that all but ensures you'll become a victim to it. If there is one thing of which I've become convinced it's that there is nothing left uncorrupted by politics. Personal politics, national politics, international politics. And the one thing that politics requires is a rube.

So who are the rubes? They fall into three categories: the idealists, the ignorants, and the idiots. If you watch closely enough, you can actually see them being played.

The most recent display has been the Democratic Party's attempt to capitalize on the public's current anti-Iraq war sentiment by promising to deliver us out of Iraq. Swept into office by stunning margins, so far they've passed a few toothless bills, made a few speeches, and generally done zero to affect the war. To be fair, I don't think the Democrats can responsibly do much to pull us wholly out of Iraq but that sure hasn't dimmed their rhetorical fury. They're playing their electorate like a fiddle.

In 2004 we had the tirade against gay marriage which the Republican Party honed into a razor sharp wedge. After rallying around all of the fantastic rhetoric about gay marriage leading to the downfall of civilization, what has the Republican base gotten for their trouble? Oh yes... nothing. Unless we want to give Republicans credit for the fact that no man or woman, to my knowledge, has yet entered into holy matrimony with a box turtle. They're also playing their electorate like a fiddle.

If 2004 was the year of gay marriage, 2000 was the year of family values. And what did the true believers reap for all of their righteous Republican voting? Larry Craig, David Vitter, and Mark Foley. Nothing more. For what, at the time, appeared to be their electoral moment of glory, there have been no resultant vouchers for private (aka religious) schools nor are there commandments in the courthouse. Electorate, meet fiddle.

For many years before religious persecution became the cause celeb, abortion was the penultimate issue used to move otherwise apathetic voters to vote. And where people were uninspired to battle for, or rail against, the removal of a microscopic clump of cells from a woman's body, the specter of partial birth abortion (an exceedingly rare event) was wielded like a club to beat voters into the booth. This was routinely countered by the battle cry to defend the life of the hypothetical mother. And so on, and so on. And what have those years of endless intentional hostility wrought? Nothing. The issue itself has become a litmus test for identifying "real" Democrats and "real" Republicans. Those "real" politicos know it's stalemate, though. Roe v. Wade is here to stay. Electorate, meet fiddle.

In the same span of years, the Democrats have been routinely playing minority voters... promising them some vague form of recognition and then delivering nothing but equally vague lip service. More egregious is the travesty of collecting money from labor unions for decades and then turning the other way as manufacturing jobs were gutted from the economy. Electorate, meet fiddle.

The point I'm trying to make is that we're all viewed as pawns on a chessboard. The divisions that are being created between us are as politically convenient as they are substantively meaningless. It's not always easy to see through the illusions, to break from the delusion. In this age of instant information you'd think we'd all be too sophisticated to be easily deceived. The trick, of course, is that the golden age of media is a two way street. We use our increased access to media to be informed; they use increased media access to influence our thinking.

My political views aren't really out of the mainstream. I don't pretend complex problems have simple solutions. I abhor the state of our corporate media. I think our constitution is worth defending. I think laissez-faire capitalism is a zero sum game. And I really, really hate being played for a rube. None of this is radical stuff. In a way I feel cheated... idealists get all the passion. To be disillusioned is to feel kind of empty. That's why I've enjoyed my flirtation with Obama -- he's stirred my inner idealist. In the end, though, it's our responsibility to separate reality from illusion.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Happy Birthday, Brendan!

Hey little brother, today's your birthday! And don't think I forgot just because it's after 10:00 pm and I've lost my window of opportunity to call and harass you in person. Fortunately for us both I can still harass you virtually via the magic of the internet.

So I'm thinking you need something special to mark this hallmark birthday event. After all, your 37th birthday only comes once in a lifetime (unless you invoke the Law of Regression, in which case you'll be 37 again in 2013 -- hooray!).

Could there be a better way to "top off" your birthday than with a hat? Of course not. Hats are the penultimate form of birthday expression. We just need to find the right one for you!


Over here to the right we have the classic birthday hat model. See how conservative it is, how understated? Its simple cardboard cone engineering does rather resemble a dunce cap, however. I recommend against it.



The birthday hat ensemble on the left is ultra glam, to be sure. Not only do you get to adorn your coif with a red silk becandled topper but you also get to coordinate it with a red feathered boa! I know, I know... it takes a confident man to wear something so avant-garde. Most males I know would feel a bit self conscious sashaying down the beer cooler section of the local supermarket with a boa draped just so. Plus there's a real risk of cheaply dyed feathers floating uninvited into your pint where they could be unintentionally ingested. It's all about the consequences, bro.


Ahhhhh... a hat that's rife with literary reference without any of the intellectual snootiness. When Hemingway and Melville are just too pretentious to be fun, regular Joes turn to Theodor Seuss Geisel. Admit it: a Moby Dick birthday hat would be dry and humorless and drive birthday partiers toward a state of somnambulism. This hat, on the other hand, screams "I @#$% love green eggs and ham and know how to have a good time!" Unfortunately it's sold out... sorry.


Here we have birthday headgear of few words and many meanings. In the literal sense it infers you're a candle and invites your friends and family to snuff you. How cute... you're a candle!!

Figuratively, it's a gesture of birthday anger. It could rebuke well wishers with a curt "Blow me." Or maybe it's just a statement to Father Time, like "I'm still here, m***** f*****, blow me!"

Finally, it could be an emotional plea for human connection, imploring young single women in the vicinity to, indeed, "blow you." On second thought, it's probably best that you not make your mother wonder about this. *cough*

Moving on...

At last I think I've found the perfect birthday bonnet for you: it's fashion forward without being favored by drag queens, it's regal and (more importantly) in stock, and --best of all -- it's unlikely to offend your mother. Truly, it suits you!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
XOXOXOXOX

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Generally Speaking

Another newly retired General, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, admits that Iraq is FUBAR'd.

Pretty remarkable that we've got such a long list of distinguished ex-Generals, from Shinseki to Sanchez, who are trying to tell us that Bush has gotten us into a freakin' mess. Sure, a general or two could have it wrong... but the whole list of them? I don't think so. And yet we have that stubborn mass of people who still think that Iraq is a liberal media problem, with them reporting continuously on all of the violence and political nastiness and not enough on the school paintings.

The only context that makes sense to me anymore is oil. I'm a fairly recent convert in this regard... I wasn't willing to concede the emotional "blood for oil" argument that so many were citing a few years back. The facts are starting to make that seem unmistakable now and I'm a bit embarrassed for not having seen the obviousness of it from the start.

Because of this, I was interested to read Jim Holt's timely analysis of the situation (via Andrew Sullivan). Holt argues that Iraq may not have gone exactly as planned but it's still on target to achieve the desired results (which goes a long way in explaining Bush and Cheney's casual optimism).
Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush.

[...snip...]

How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.)

[...snip...]

But will the US be able to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? It will plausibly claim a rationale to stay there for as long as civil conflict simmers, or until every groupuscule that conveniently brands itself as ‘al-Qaida’ is exterminated. The civil war may gradually lose intensity as Shias, Sunnis and Kurds withdraw into separate enclaves, reducing the surface area for sectarian friction, and as warlords consolidate local authority. De facto partition will be the result. But this partition can never become de jure. (An independent Kurdistan in the north might upset Turkey, an independent Shia region in the east might become a satellite of Iran, and an independent Sunni region in the west might harbour al-Qaida.) Presiding over this Balkanised Iraq will be a weak federal government in Baghdad, propped up and overseen by the Pentagon-scale US embassy that has just been constructed – a green zone within the Green Zone.

[...snip...]

Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth.
Read the whole thing... it's actually quite interesting.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Almost Friday

I love great history and valiant female leaders and Cate Blanchett and all, but let's be honest about the real reason I'm going to see the new movie, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age."

Here it is:

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Unintentional Irony

I love Andrew Sullivan (the first blogger I ever read). His staunch conservatism annoyed me almost daily back in 1998 but his ability to break from the Republican party over the Iraq war (and the fiasco that is Bush) while still insisting on calling himself a conservative has earned my respect. At this point I think he's got one of the flat out most interesting blogs in the sphere.

Sullivan's unintentionally ironic summary of a reader's comments regarding the Clinton/Obama dynamic made me chuckle, though:
Many African-Americans simply do not believe that a black man will ever be allowed to be president. They're sticking with Clinton because she's the strongest non-black Democrat. And so racism perpetuates itself through the fears and alienation of its victims. Call it the audacity of hopelessness. And Clinton needs it.
A tribute to how fast our culture is moving, I guess. Hesitation about voting for a black presidential front-runner is causing them to throw their support behind the strongest non-black Democrat... a woman.

As an aside: I'm still far more inclined to side with Camille Paglia (a woman who grates on every single one of my nerves) on this one... I just don't think the country needs Hillary right now.

Red Wine Blogging

Normally I don't drink and blog for two reasons: 1) I pontificate even more than I do when I'm sober, and 2) I am generally appalled when I read it back the next morning.

Tonight I'll make an excpection. espection. exception.

It's been a rough few months. My husband has gone through an involuntary job change (including a switch to nights), my oldest daughter has been having some problems, and I've hit the 40 mile marker and am feeling every inch of it. Needless to say, I haven't felt much like talking.

Fortunately, things seem to be looking up for Kirsten. She's moving to Madison (this weekend) to establish residency before starting school up there. She'll be living with 3 other girls (students) in a 2 bedroom apartment right off of capital square. I know I should probably be less enthusiastic about this since it's not exactly the plan I had laid out but in my gut I'm pretty excited for her. For one thing, Madison is a great city and the square is a great neighborhood. I lived in Madison for six weeks during one of my old-enough-to-know-better fuck up periods (don't ask) and loved it. It's far enough to get away and close enough to come home. For another thing, nothing builds confidence and capability like independence. Plus the school is great. If she can focus herself forward I think she'll do really well up there.

When I was young I was always either wildly underestimating my abilities or wildly overestimating them. In other words, I had bad judgment... which in turn led to some pretty bad choices. I've tried to give my kids the benefit of this experience but they're not terribly interested in having it. In the end I know they'll have to learn like I did... the hard way. It's not an easy process to watch and, almost as bad, it's forcing me to relive my own life in review. And while I'm kicking myself for things I did in the past, I can't help but have a sinking feeling that I'm still making bad choices. I guess this whole "learning the hard way" thing is a lifetime deal.

SCHIP, The Frosts, And Dogs Eating Dogs

I know I should finish the post I started about Blackwater last week (still sitting in draft) but there's been a string of nonsense spewing forth from the Bush Cassidy and the Dumb Ass Kids crowd that I can't ignore.

While the right half of the wingersphere falls all over itself regarding SCHIP and the notorious Frost Family (trying desperately to revive Reagan's famous "Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen" strawman), here's a picture of the Frosts in front of the $263K mansion they share with their four kids:


I mean, come on people... how transparent does this shit have to be before y'all can see through it?

It's like this: Any time a program with the slightest whiff of socialism emerges, the mighty right raises the specter of the Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen to quickly whip up some outrage against it. It's like they're trying to inoculate their ideology against populist pathogens.

That's some pretty intellectually dishonest bullshit.

It's perfectly respectable for conservatives to remain true to their small government principles but in doing so they must also accept that there are consequences in their dog-eat-dog world order. They must admit that dogs get eaten. Everyone may not agree that it's okay for dogs to get eaten but at least then we can argue the idea honestly.

For conservatives to conveniently insist that there are no real consequences -- to insist that there are no doomed dogs or that they were just trying to rip everyone off anyway -- well, that's just about as dishonest as it gets. In fact, it's downright sleazy.

Obama And The Patriotic Flair Nazis

The ridiculousness of these people just KILLS me. This is what passes as news at Fox? Apparently Obama needs to plaster himself with flag pins before subverting the constitution and lying to constructively misleading the American people. Patriotism starts at the lapel, people!

I am reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies, "Office Space," where Joanna's Chotchkie's manager, Stan, lectures her on the importance of flair:

STAN
Joanna? Would you come here for a moment, please?

JOANNA
I'm sorry. I was late. I was having lunch.

STAN
I need to talk about your flair.

JOANNA
Really? I have 15 buttons on. I, uh, (shows him)

STAN
Well, ok, 15 is minimum, ok?

JOANNA
Ok.

STAN
Now, it's up to you whether or not you want
to just do the bare minimum. Well, like Brian,
for example, has 37 pieces of flair. And a
terrific smile.

JOANNA
Ok. Ok, you want me to wear more?

STAN
Look. Joanna.

JOANNA
Yeah.

STAN
People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, ok?
They come to Chotchkie's for the atmosphere
and the attitude. That's what the flair's about.
It's about fun.

JOANNA
Ok. So, more then?

STAN
Look, we want you to express yourself, ok?
If you think the bare minimum is enough, then ok.
But some people choose to wear more and we encourage
that, ok? You do want to express yourself, don't you?

JOANNA
Yeah. Yeah.

STAN
Great. Great. That's all I ask.

JOANNA
Ok.

Coincidence?

Having become quite familiar with this admin's MO, I think there's room for doubt.
Considering this White House's track record on leaks, it should be noted that the bin Laden video was leaked on September 7, the Friday before Gen. David Petraeus was slated to begin his much-anticipated testimony on Iraq the following Monday.
Not that they'd EVER politicize bin Laden or 9/11, like, ever!

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

SCHIP Wrecked (And Why The Right Makes Me Sick)

Oh my gawd, such drama! Check here, too. And especially here.

Yeah, it gets a little tiring when people trot out the "but it's for the children!" argument. Personally, I don't need an emotional hook to bring me into the discussion as long as the logic is sound. I can easily connect the dots between an abstract idea and how it might play out in reality. A lot of people, however, seem to lack whatever empathy chip is necessary to make such a connection. They require a more blatant demonstration.

And so it is that we find ourselves looking at 12 year old Graeme Frost as the new face of SCHIP.

Whatever you think of SCHIP, Graeme does indeed seem like the poster boy for promoting it. Unpredictable bad things can (and do) happen to good people who are unprepared to deal with the fallout. In health matters, if you don't have insurance and you get seriously sick or injured, you're pretty much fucked from every angle. It's an undeniable truth.

I have access to employer-offered insurance and, for all of my grousing about its imperfections, it's better than a lot of other plans. More importantly, I can afford it without having to make sacrifices in other standard areas like food, shelter, and childcare. 47 Million Americans are not so lucky. You can count on a certain percentage of idiots in the mix but for the most part these are people I can identify with. I've been there. I've had to make tough choices for my family. Regarding health care, it's not hard to imagine weighing risk factors along with available options. As in, "the odds of a catastrophic health event are low but the probability of my children needing to eat this month are high."

Here's the part where I get mad. Members of the right wingersphere are crawling out of the woodwork and onto a Fox News program near you to defend their world view by declaring Graeme and his family a fraud. Let's put aside, for a moment, their arguments (pitiful as they are). Let's look instead at their motives. It could be as simple as a reflexive anti-Democratic position but I think it's more subconscious than that. What I suspect to be the case with these people is that their egocentric, vain, tiny little minds are forever determined to disassociate luck from success. To accept that the two are commingled would be to rob them of the right to claim an earned superiority over the less fortunate. It would, in fact, undermine the whole of their conservative belief, which seems to be: you get exactly what you deserve in life and if you don't have much then it must be your own fault so for God's sake just shut up already and find some bootstraps from which to pull yourself up.

I have no problem separating myself from these noxious people. I look at my successes with pride and gratitude. I mean, I've worked hard and I've made some rather nice professional and economic advances in the past 20 years... it would be nice to stop there and give myself sole credit for it all, right? It's not humility that precludes such a thing, it's reason... my list of good fortune is long.

I was born in America. I was born white, middle class, and came of age post-feminism. My parents ensured that I understood the importance of an education and cared very much what I was doing at 1:00 in the morning. I'm healthy (despite my love of fast food and beer and whiskey). My kids are healthy. My husband is healthy. We haven't had any unforeseen, catastrophic events. I got my first IT job without any prior experience because I knew a guy who knew a guy. I have had three amazing mentors who taught me everything I needed to learn at various stages in my career. I haven't been offshored or downsized. In fact, my entire career has been one stroke of good luck after another, even when it initially looked like bad luck. You don't achieve success without hard work but hard work is hardly the only ingredient. Puffed up pride and holier than thou-ism doesn't make this any less so.

Which brings me back to SCHIP. The question we're forced to ask ourselves, now, is this: What kind of kind of society do we want to be and what are we willing to sacrifice to become it? That's the discussion we should be having about the whole damn SCHIP legislation. Obviously it isn't just a matter of conscience... we have a finite availability of resources (aka money) to work with. Just like a family must make hard choices on a micro level, as a nation we must make hard choices on a macro level. Pretending that misfortune is somehow deserved, though, just makes it way too easy to justify writing off an entire segment of the population.

To me, SCHIP seems like a fairly modest and worthwhile attempt to provide some very necessary health services to kids who probably wouldn't get them otherwise. Bush has passed a lot of congressional pork over the years without the threat of veto but I guess health care for poor kids doesn't quite trip his trigger. Maybe the new Dem strategy should be to extend SCHIP to cover corporate CEOs and fetuses.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

GO BEARS!

Of all the games that I love best for Chicago to win, it's when they play Green Bay... especially when it begins with the announcers engaging in an orgy of shameless Packer love.

It was worth staying up late just to see the look of despair on the faces of all the foam cheese wearing fans at Lambert Field after the Bears scored the winning touchdown. The final interception was just icing on the cake.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

QWERT

SCHIP is vetoed (good primer on the story here).

The current trajectory of health care in this country is untenable. In fact, I think everyone knows that -- which is why a majority of Americans are willing to entertain the idea of a national health care program. This is not to be confused with nationalized medicine (we're not communists!) or even with SCHIP (which uses an extension of private insurance).

A single payer system will become a reality eventually. It makes good economic sense to do this in the insurance space since insurance is all about leveraging risk pools. It won't happen for that reason, however. Or because Dems get their shit together. Or because Americans decide in overwhelming majorities that they want it (although they will). It will happen because corporate America will say they can no longer afford to provide health care coverage and stay competitive in the global workplace.

Mark.my.words.

P.S. Although I'm grateful to have it, given the alternative, my own very expensive employer-offered health insurance ain't all that hot anyway. A few factoids:
  • I haven't gotten to pick my own doctor (except off a short list) or select my own hospital in over 10 years.
  • I don't get to decide if I need to see a 'specialized' doctor like a dermatologist... I have to get a 'primary care provider' to give me a referral.
  • Doctors and hospitals rotate on and off the list on a whim.
  • A good percentage of the doctors on the list aren't taking new patients.
  • Each of my three kids was delivered by a different OB because of changing plans. I've gone through six Ob-Gyns, total (trust me when I say that's one Dr-patient relationship that is not easy to establish).
  • My current insurance plan has changed hospitals three times.

Another Bush Foreign Policy Triumph

Ah yes... it seems like just yesterday Bush was going to flex his man muscle and whip North Korea into shape. Great success, that. Suddenly he's a bit more interested in diplomacy.
Before getting too carried away, it should be noted that the Bush administration has a long way to go to even get back to the situation that existed with respect to North Korea's nuclear program when it took office. Early in the first term, then Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested continuing the negotiating framework that had been developed in the Clinton years -- a step-by-step approach that swapped moves towards dismantling the North Korean nuclear program in exchange for growing economic and political relations with the U.S.--Powell was immediately slapped down by the neo-cons. Within 48 hours U.S. policy had shifted to one of asking for major concessions BEFORE providing any benefits to North Korea (an approach that may sound familiar, as it bears a striking resemblance to the administration's current position vis-a-vis Iran).

Years were lost due to the Bush administration's intransigence, during which time North Korea tested a ballistic missile and a nuclear weapon, while accumulating enough bomb-grade plutonium to build at least nine nuclear bombs. In short, talking tough while refusing to negotiate was an unmitigated disaster.

Colin Powell wakes up every morning feeling:
a) bitter
b) angry
c) ashamed
d) relieved

Discuss.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Britney Misplaced

Britney Spears has lost custody of her children to perhaps only the second most notorious celebrity parent in La La Land: her ex-husband, Kevin Federline.

I know it's bad but I can't help myself... I was hooked on Britney from the moment she shaved her crazy little head to match her camera-friendly cootch. Fortunately I can rely on Perez Hilton and TMZ keep me informed regarding her every movement. Every trek to the local gas station for ice cream and smokes, every public restroom stop, every trashy, too-tight outfit, every club hopping excursion that ends with Britney being carried to her car. I've become a consumer of Britney's nosedive from grace.

The truth, of course, is that Britney's tragic flaw has been the inability to adapt to her surroundings. Britney is misplaced. In my old trailer park mobile home community, she'd blend right in with the other dozens of Britney variants. She'd be perfectly anonymous in her barefooted, bleached blond, black-bra-under-mesh-shirt conformity. Nobody would think of her as a spectacle. Hell... with a kid on each hip and a ciggy dangling from her mouth she'd be practically invisible.

But in Los Angeles she stands out as a Jed Clampett-like misfit (without any of the charming self-awareness). She's a polyester jumpsuit amongst white linen. She's a box wine among vintage cabernets.

It brings to mind one of my favorite sayings: You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl. Maybe it's time for Britney to seek respite and refuge back home.

The Third Way

(Annual) NU Tailgate


A friend of mine is a huge Wildcats fan and for the second year (in a row!) I've tagged along to Evanston for some tailgating and a game (in that order). Ryan came out with me this year. He seemed to have a great time despite the fact that he had to drink his orange juice plain. He did get some crazy purple troll hair as a souvenir... very fetching, don't you think? Not everyone can pull off that look.

NU Lost, as did the Huskies, as did the Bears, as did the Steelers. Bad weekend for football.