Aftermath

I am not really depressed. I am not really angry. At least, not at the election--with the white noise on the right, sure, but.... I don't know.... Maybe it's becuase the candidates *I* voted for were elected, and maybe it's because the candidates in Cali whom I sent money to were elected. Those are the only ones I was invested in. Maybe it's becuase I think the the president dserved to get thumped for being such a piss-poor leader.

Mostly it's because THE GIANTS WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELECTION DAY

Well, it looks like the democrats are lining up for a good old ass whipping. It's like a long line of donkeys bending over on Folsom Street ready to take it.

I went to John Stewart's rally and then got into a huge argument over it with my friend Hugh on Facebook. He saw it as a clever ploy to blunt liberal losses at the polls by suing for peace. I mentioned this was out of Sun Tsu and he agreed, so I was gleeful when Stewart refernced Sun Tsu on his show last night.

Stewart's rally was actually a continuation of his normal critique of the media. His message was, basically, stop watching cable news. He presented both FOX and MSNBC as spreading fear and therefore making it harder to work out our problems. No surprise that FOX and MSNBC both hated it. Olberman went batsh*t on his twitter feed. He didn't like being lumped in with Bill O'Reily. I love MSNBC and watch it all the time, but I do so because it is stridently liberal. It is never lost on me that when Olberman criticizes O'Reily for how he uses the media as opposed to the content of what he is saying it is the pot calling the kettle black. MSNBC promotes a specific liberal agenda. They stake out a narrative that is nearly always incomplete. Olberman in particular treats the opposition as a bunch of raving idiots (the reason I prefer Maddow is that she's a thinker and, while she is a liberal, she actually discusses and debates people as opposed to just ranting about them). Olberman is the Glen Beck of the left, and he should get used to it. It's why I watch him.

But I'm writing because today is election day. Hugh and I have been having long arguments on Facebook over conservatism versus liberalism, and it has been helpful in that it has clarified much of my thinking and, sorry Hugh, strengthened my resolve. When you look at all this president and this congress has accomplished--I say for the good--it amazes me that they are in any kind of trouble. largest tax cut in history, lowered the deficit, health care reform, equal pay, veterans benefits, children's health care, and oh yeah staving off depression. The list is long and no matter how much the republicans lie about it the truth is that the country is better of with Democrats in charge.

Cali debate

I've been saying all along that Carly Fiorina can't win election during a recession. She is in a double blind. She runs as a pragmatic pro-business candidate who can bring jobs to California as a US Senator due to her strong business background. But as the head of HP she outsourced thousands of jobs to Asia and then got fired for poor stock performance, making her neither good for workers nor good at business.

No surprise then that Senator Boxer, whose name is descriptive, came at her with both fists in their only scheduled debate last night, hitting her on both jobs and her own job performance at HP. Fiorina painted Boxer as a typical job killing liberal, but Boxer had Fiorina on the ropes. Womens groups, gay rights groups, and unions should mobilize for Boxer, but with unemployment at 12% it is unlikely voters will send to Washingotn someone who sent so many of their jobs to China and India.

On BP, Tea Parties, and the Obnoxious Right

The right is obnoxious. We all know this. If the left is annoying in its whiny self righteousness (and let's admit it, sometimes we are), the right is just f*ing obnoxious. And I'm not talking about the talking heads who get paid to be obnoxious. I'm talking about the base.

Take the Tea Party for example. Here's a group of people that really don't know what they want other than lower taxes. They're part of an old American tradition of "I've got mine, now screw you" ethics. The big thing they are currently railing against is the extension of unemployment benefits that President Obama signed into law today. To them helping people continue to make their truck payments so they can keep looking for work makes people lazy. They believe in the boot-strap theory of economics. They think that people on unemployment stop looking for work. In fact, while the average time spent on unemployment is the highest it's been since 1948 at 19.7 months, that still means that most people do not fall under the category of "long-term unemployed." In other words it's a lie that people on unemployment stop looking for work, in fact they are so desperate for work that statistics show that they take jobs at lower pay than the jobs they lost.

In other words, the stuff the conservatives say about unemployment is a lie.

The Tea Baggers also like to complain about the so-called Wall Street Bailout, or TARP funding. They like to frame it as a big tax-payer gift to a bunch of rich fat-cats, one which propped up failing businesses at the expense of regular folks. They don't like to be reminded that a collapse of the financial system, which TARP prevented, would have led to total financial melt-down and plunged us into a second great depression. They really don't like to be reminded that unemployment would likely have topped 20% without the TARP money. But what they most conveniently forget is that most of the TARP money has been paid back already.

The list of things they are either ignorant of or just plain lie about goes on and on. They dispute global warming because science is so, well, theoretical. They don't like spending on things like roads and infrastructure because who needs roads? They think states should be free make all their own rules, including one supposes rules about slavery, if you follow their logic. Of their standard bearers, Rand Paul thinks the Civil Rights Act was bad legislation and Sarah Palin thinks you can simply wish your way to economic growth. They don't believe in universal health care because, apparently, the sick should heal themselves (boot-strap health care). And they all swear by the failed supply side economic ideas that caused the mess we are now in. What it all comes down to is they don't want to pay for anything. Or rather, they don't want to pay for anything for anyone else. God forbid you should try to touch their Medicare or social security.

What they are is greedy. There's no news in this. They are proud of it. They trumpet self interest as a virtue. They essentially echo Boesky (from whom Gekko stole it) that greed is good. It should be no surprise that they don't want to pay for anything for anybody but they want services to come to them. They want to pursue the policies of Ronald Regan and the Bushes, whom you will recall wracked up record deficits and de-regulated business to the point that it was able to run wild until collapsing and dragging the rest of us down with it. They want to repeat every terrible mistake of the last thirty years in the name of some selfish ideology designed solely to make rich people richer and poor people poorer and destroy the middle class (a creation, lets not forget, of the liberal policies of FDR). Many of them like to point to the 1870s as the last era of freedom in the United States, but do we really want to return to an era of horrible poverty, tenements, unchecked disease and hunger, rancid foods, environmental destruction, child labor, and robber barons running the world? That is their dream. In fact, that is what 25 years of reganomics eventually gave us: Enron, BP, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Katrina. And that is what they want for our country. They are crying foul now because we are actually trying to correct the mistakes of that era, rein in business and heal the environment. And they want it stopped. They want to take the country back (from whom is an interesting question).

So anytime you see a candidate who is supported by the tea party, remember: down that path lies ruin, so vote for the other guy.

Walt Kelley Wept

Well, Byrd is dead, and we will no longer be subjected to the undignified—or heroic, depending upon your perspective—spectacle of him be wheeled out onto the floor whenever the Democrats needed 60 votes. Like Thurmond and Kennedy, Byrd was what we picture a senator to be. We could easily see byrd in a toga (a long, tasteful one) speaking in the senate in Rome: an old man who appears wise, tackling with severity the problems facing the republic. That he was once a member of the Klan is usually brushed under the table, as was his participation in the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act. In the end he endorsed Barak Obama for president, and much had been forgiven. He was the picture of the gentleman statesman, and Hollywood should mourn his loss more than any. Well, except maybe the coal industry.

No one is surprised that MacDonald beat the City of Chicago. I’m a bit disappointed that it was a typical 5-4 decision, as much as I am that Bryer is suddenly a champion of states’ rights. But enough storage capacity has been devoted to the 2nd amendment for the time being for me to write about something that was a fait accompli, and which I wrote about when Helller was decided.

At the time of his death last week my dad was running for a seat on the Sacramento City District school board. I don’t know if he had filed yet, but he had a “friends of” account with $418 in it. I have no clue what to do about that. It’s a small matter, but campaign finance laws are tricky at any level.

A thought

Due to the passing of my father I have been more quiet than usual on this blog. I still don't have much to say, except this:

For a long while now I've been comparing President Obama to President Carter, as someone who is very competent but who does not appear presidential enough in a crisis. Honestly, I'd rather have him at the helm right now than McCain with everything going on. Or either Bush. I've compared the oil spill to the Iran Hostage Crisis. I was interested to note that the New York Post picked up on that theme, though not in the way that I did. They see it as demonstrating the President's incompetence as the Hostage Crisis did Carters. I don't agree that Carter acted incompetently in the hostage crisis. I think he acted deliberately and thoughtfully, with the right amount of diplomacy, and that if the helicopters hadn't crashed in the desert that Regan never would have been president and we might not have this insane Conservative movement. No, as I've said before, to me the spill is like the hostage crisis because it dominates the news cycle by going on so long, and threatens to undermine anything else the president does.

But with the firing of General McChrystal, it is safe right now to compare Obama to Truman. He appeared completely Presidential in a surprising way. He exerted his authority over the military. He also deflected the news coverage away from the oil spill for awhile.

Now, perhaps he should nationalize BP and send the Navy in to stop the leak....

The Curse of Competency

It's not really a condemnation, more of a sad truth, but Barak Obam looks more and more like Jimmy Carter every day. Carter may have been the best president we had in terms of actually running the country and doing stuff in the last forty years. He was engaged, competent, intelligent, thoughtful, and he got things done. He was dealt a terrible hand and he never connected with the American People, so they kicked him out in favor of a cowboy who was disengaged, not particularly competent, but was great on camera and looked good in a crisis. Carter was destroyed by the Iran hostage crisis. I often tell my students that they have no idea what the hostage crisis was like. It was on TV every night for 444 days. It dominated the news. There was no other story. The people wanted action--action movie James Bond type of action. They wanted a president who was a hero, and instead they got a president who was a thinker. It was actually probably better to have Carter in that situation than Ford or Regan, but when he deliberated all most people saw was a weak-willed liberal who couldn't get anything done. If they had sent more helicopters to the desert,or if the Navy hadn't washed the Army helicopters with sea-water, Regan might never have been president. But the rescue failed and we have been in this mess ever since.

And now we have Barak Obama. I think he's a great president. He has advanced the most far reaching progressive agenda since LBJ. He has enacted health care reform, new financial regulations, and launched a stimulus package that helped save the economy. Thank God he is our president right now. And honestly, I don't think he can do any more about the BP oil rig than he is already doing. But it is going on forever, and he is not connecting with the people, and that could spell his doom.

I think the democrats will do better in the mid-terms than people think they will. The republicans have been nominating some total whackos in the Sarah Palin mold, and I still say all the Democrats have to do is show those tapes of the republicans chanting "Drill, baby drill!" over and over again and they will do just fine. Add to that that they have found an effective formula for attacking, linking them to outsourcing of jobs, and I think the Dems will do fine.

But Obama is looking more and more like a one-term president. If Sarah Palin gets the nomination he will win, but if it's someone in the Mitt Romeny mold he is probably headed for the lecture circuit.