I had heard recently that there was a cross set aflame in a rural area in the Northwest corner of Susquehanna County. So when I saw a headline on AOL that read "Racists React to Obama Victory" and said there had been ten incidents nationwide, I clicked on it to see if our little corner of the country actually made the list.
Oh, it did. Understand, we live in a geographically large county with a relatively tiny population and the distinction of being one of the two poorest counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But c'mon -- as rural as it is here, and as Republican as I know this county to be, I didn't expect it to make up 20% of the items on a supposedly national list. Don't believe me? Here's the link to the AOL article. But upon closer examination, it seems that the two items is all part of the same case. Whew! That's a relief -- we're just making up 11% of the nation's bigotry.
In Apolocon, a cross was burned on the lawn of a biracial couple. The couple in question (she's Jewish, he's black) have lived here for 5 years; they have a pottery studio where they teach classes and sell their creations. And in the Binghamton newspaper article (because you know it didn't make the local weekly newspapers), there is an open question of whether this was because the couple is biracial, or because she's Jewish (anti-Semitism, anyone?) or because they supported Barack Obama. In nearby Little Meadows, I learn, there used to be KKK rallies. This is so profoundly revolting, I don't know where to begin.
It turns out the Friendsville item may be the criminal action against the two men arrested for racial intimidation. Still not reported in our local newspapers; maybe next week when it will appear in the police blotter....
The point here is not a liberal trope about bitterness, guns, religion, and bigotry. It's not even the more nuanced point about racism going both ways, and that we need to condemn the cross-burning as much as the burning rhetoric from the Reverend Wrights of the world.
What I take away from this is the feeling that my county -- and yes, I wasn't born here but by gosh I live here now -- needs better education and more intervention and a chance for people to learn what's going on in the world without feeling like the world is leaving them behind. We need jobs, and services, and a chance to get better, do better, appear better.
Before I look to Barack Obama, or even to Congressman Carney (reelected to his second term), I have to look to myself. I am reminded that I need to be involved with the welfare of my neighbors. I could condemn them, but how does that help? So I have to figure out a way to help make this a better place. I can't do it single-handedly, but I can make a difference.
That's a change I can believe in.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
The Election
Hey, how about that -- my guy won. Whoo-hoo! And our lawn signs weren't stolen this time around. That's cause for celebration.
Mind you, Susquehanna County didn't go for Barack Obama, and my township sure didn't. I live in Harford Township, and it's pretty well Republican:
The first column is Barack Obama/Joe Biden, the second column is McCain/Palin. But I can't feel too bad about that result -- I suspect Barack for a vote or two from registered Republicans.
Coffee Jones, my famous cousin from the greater Boston area, came to town to help with phonebanking and canvassing on the weekend before the election. We were assigned to one of the two wards in Forest City. (Don't remember which one, sorry.)
We must have done our job because both Forest City precincts went for Obama! Whoo-hoo! Coffee even used the Internet to follow the returns from Susquehanna County. Gotta love the Internet...
And now for a sign of the apocalypse, Susquehanna County style. I again volunteered to be the lawyer for the Democratic Party in the county, and I also got to be Barack Obama's lawyer. My official title: "County Counsel for Change," which is silly, but this was a bunch of "inside the Beltway" guys who used acronyms and weird terminology like "flying squads" and "boiler room," so I let them call me what they wanted to.
My primary mandate was to deal with voter protection issues in the county. I made sure the Democratic poll watchers knew who I was and what I was about, and they all had (at some point in time, at least) my cell phone number. No one called me. *sigh* I did have one voter protection issue come up, but provisional ballots had already been cast and there wasn't much I could do.
So, in order to be helpful, I made phone calls (GOTV in our "flying squad" lexicon -- Get Out The Vote) on election day to make sure that likely Obama supporters voted. I had a specific precinct to call -- I won't say which one -- and was nearly through the list when I got a nice fellow. It was his wife I had on my list, but she was napping. Still, he assured me that they had both voted earlier in the day. Then he volunteered the following story.
When his wife gave her name to the election official handling the book -- you know, the book you sign -- the election official said, "Who are you voting for?" This is, of course, wildly illegal. But wait, there's more: When the voter answered (as she surely didn't need to) that she was going to vote for Obama, the election official then said, "You're going to vote for the Antichrist?"
Now, I have no idea if this actually happened, but if it did, it's vote suppression -- or at least attempted vote suppression. Only -- and this has to be classic Susquehanna County -- it wasn't a Republican effort to suppress the vote, it was a loony religious crackpot effort to suppress the vote.
The voter didn't want to lodge a formal complaint, so all I did was tell the election officials at the Courthouse of the anecdotal suggestion that someone at that specific precinct was, uh, taking a possible religious mandate as trumping the civic duty to permit voters to vote in peace. For what it's worth, none of the other voters I spoke with reporting anything like that. So who knows -- could be a one-off.
I finished my election day at the Courthouse watching as they tabulated all the votes. The folks who do this job are very very good at it, and I really didn't have any concerns going in. It was all very smooth, so I mostly listened to NPR's election coverage using headphones (I would share results with the Resolution Board -- a bipartisan group of four citizens who fill in replacement ballots when the machine kicks out a damaged ballot, but I was very discreet). But at some point it occurred to me that I was being treated with a certain amount of deference. I have to say, I don't see myself that way: you know, as someone who has to be treated with deference. And then it hit me: I was the Democratic Party in that room. I was the person prepared to testify if anything went wrong. I was the Official Observer. And there was someone doing this precise job in every other county in Pennsylvania, and presumably every county in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and so forth...
That was my election day. I voted, I called, I observed. And at the end of the day, I cried when I watched President-Elect Obama's speech from Grant Park. For me, the significance is so huge, but in no way greater than the fact that I actually want to keep following the political landscape. I didn't enjoy the election that much, but I suspect it will be fun to watch Barack Obama serve as our 44th president.
Mind you, Susquehanna County didn't go for Barack Obama, and my township sure didn't. I live in Harford Township, and it's pretty well Republican:
The first column is Barack Obama/Joe Biden, the second column is McCain/Palin. But I can't feel too bad about that result -- I suspect Barack for a vote or two from registered Republicans.Coffee Jones, my famous cousin from the greater Boston area, came to town to help with phonebanking and canvassing on the weekend before the election. We were assigned to one of the two wards in Forest City. (Don't remember which one, sorry.)
We must have done our job because both Forest City precincts went for Obama! Whoo-hoo! Coffee even used the Internet to follow the returns from Susquehanna County. Gotta love the Internet...
And now for a sign of the apocalypse, Susquehanna County style. I again volunteered to be the lawyer for the Democratic Party in the county, and I also got to be Barack Obama's lawyer. My official title: "County Counsel for Change," which is silly, but this was a bunch of "inside the Beltway" guys who used acronyms and weird terminology like "flying squads" and "boiler room," so I let them call me what they wanted to.
My primary mandate was to deal with voter protection issues in the county. I made sure the Democratic poll watchers knew who I was and what I was about, and they all had (at some point in time, at least) my cell phone number. No one called me. *sigh* I did have one voter protection issue come up, but provisional ballots had already been cast and there wasn't much I could do.
So, in order to be helpful, I made phone calls (GOTV in our "flying squad" lexicon -- Get Out The Vote) on election day to make sure that likely Obama supporters voted. I had a specific precinct to call -- I won't say which one -- and was nearly through the list when I got a nice fellow. It was his wife I had on my list, but she was napping. Still, he assured me that they had both voted earlier in the day. Then he volunteered the following story.
When his wife gave her name to the election official handling the book -- you know, the book you sign -- the election official said, "Who are you voting for?" This is, of course, wildly illegal. But wait, there's more: When the voter answered (as she surely didn't need to) that she was going to vote for Obama, the election official then said, "You're going to vote for the Antichrist?"
Now, I have no idea if this actually happened, but if it did, it's vote suppression -- or at least attempted vote suppression. Only -- and this has to be classic Susquehanna County -- it wasn't a Republican effort to suppress the vote, it was a loony religious crackpot effort to suppress the vote.
The voter didn't want to lodge a formal complaint, so all I did was tell the election officials at the Courthouse of the anecdotal suggestion that someone at that specific precinct was, uh, taking a possible religious mandate as trumping the civic duty to permit voters to vote in peace. For what it's worth, none of the other voters I spoke with reporting anything like that. So who knows -- could be a one-off.
I finished my election day at the Courthouse watching as they tabulated all the votes. The folks who do this job are very very good at it, and I really didn't have any concerns going in. It was all very smooth, so I mostly listened to NPR's election coverage using headphones (I would share results with the Resolution Board -- a bipartisan group of four citizens who fill in replacement ballots when the machine kicks out a damaged ballot, but I was very discreet). But at some point it occurred to me that I was being treated with a certain amount of deference. I have to say, I don't see myself that way: you know, as someone who has to be treated with deference. And then it hit me: I was the Democratic Party in that room. I was the person prepared to testify if anything went wrong. I was the Official Observer. And there was someone doing this precise job in every other county in Pennsylvania, and presumably every county in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and so forth...
That was my election day. I voted, I called, I observed. And at the end of the day, I cried when I watched President-Elect Obama's speech from Grant Park. For me, the significance is so huge, but in no way greater than the fact that I actually want to keep following the political landscape. I didn't enjoy the election that much, but I suspect it will be fun to watch Barack Obama serve as our 44th president.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Paulson's Plunder -or- Financial Armageddon?
As I type this, miserable with a weird cold, the House of Representatives has voted against the bailout plan proposed by the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, and the stock market has dropped 600 points or so.
Now, I'm in a weird position here. I'm not shocked by any of this. In fact, I predicted it (alas, without sufficient specificity to know precisely when it would happen), and I actually think worse news is on its way.
So sue me for being gloomy. Or blame it on the cold. But it just made sense to me -- we'd been so arrogant in our financial dealings and assumptions (we = Americans generically) that it seemed obvious to me that things had to collapse. In the past four years, I've said as much to two different financial advisors, both of whom looked at me funny and decided I was just "risk-averse."
Well, despite my prescience, I didn't really know what I was talking about, and so I've learned a bit in the past two weeks. Here's what I think I understand now: First, this is absolutely an instance of our having adopted a capitalist approach to gains and socialist approach to losses. And yes, the people who got so greedy should suffer the consequences. But I've seen the enemy, and they are us (or however Walt Kelly first put that). We're the ones who voted for deregulation, celebrated tax cuts, day-traded, bought homes with weird mortgages, invested in funds that promised big yields, and generally got greedy. Now, I know YOU aren't greedy/wealthy/knowledgeable about the stock market. You may not have a subprime mortgage, a house that's over-valued, or a job that's teetering on the brink. You may feel like you're the victim here -- that your economic security is going to go down the tubes because of someone else's greed and lack of oversight. And you'd be right. But you'd also be wrong to think that you had nothing to do with this crisis.
I do know some people with no connection to the current economic crisis; they are very poor. I agree, they had nothing to do with this. But the rest of us . . . well, that's a different story. We all benefited from the attitude, left over from the Reagan administration, that there was no reason why we couldn't have it all: artificially low gas prices, affordable housing, big SUVs, etc. We just are not very frugal in this country -- it's not in our culture. We live large, and we worry about tomorrow sometime next week. And we all did too little to say that the Reagan voodoo economics were dangerous. We got a huge reprieve with the Clinton administration and the dot com explosion; remember when there was no deficit? Wow, does that seem a long time ago.
And then came the current administration, which cut taxes and raised spending, particularly for a crazy war. (As an aside, did you know that there are people who actually believe that the wealthiest 1% has a legitimate complaint because when some past president raised taxes on the wealthy, that increase was promised to be temporary, so really their taxes should come down all the way to -- oh, the 1960s or something? Wow.) So now we have a massive deficit, and it's getting harder and harder to think that we'll ever be able to grow our way out of it, ever. What a legacy for our kids.
The thing about the bailout plan that bothers me is that it probably isn't enough at this time, so the next president (President Obama, if I have anything to say about it) will have to go through this process all over again. And that's why I think we need to back up and look at this whole thing a different way.
The current bailout is intended to help out the financial institutions who are holding all this bad paper that's basically every risky mortgage roled up into some weird sort of security. On the one hand, why should the taxpayers buy these securities when we didn't create the underlying problem? Let them eat the losses. Well, of course, it's not that simple -- if the financial institutions fail, and credit dries up, businesses will start to fail in huge numbers, people will lose their jobs, so they default on their non-risky mortgages, and the next thing we know, we've got a depression on our hands. It'll look different than the 1930s, but it will be just as bad.
But -- and here's where I get muddled up in my thinking -- why are we only getting one option? For example, why can't we pump money into the economy in key sectors (infrastructure, education, child care, health care) that can't be outsourced, need to be done, and help all of us in more tangible ways? Why can't some of the $1 trillion (counting the $700 billion plus the funds already spent on economic recovery/bailouts) be spent, as the language has it, on Main Street (or Elm Street or Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard)?
My congressman, Chris Carney, just voted against the bailout. Hmmm. He's a smart guy -- does he believe that to vote for it would be political suicide (he's running against a crazy-conservative rich guy), or does he believe a better plan can be passed, or does he favor letting the markets work it out. I'll be looking forward to his explanation -- I hope it's more than just "I heard from you, the constituents, that you didn't approve," because I'll tell ya, I don't think that we (the constituents) know precisely what's really going on.
I don't know what will happen if no bailout plan is passed, and I don't think it's even sensible to ask, because something will be done, even if it's too little and too late. But I guarantee -- come January. President Obama's going to have a lot more opportunity to be great than even we'd imagined. And we're all going to have a chance to get smarter about money. It's about time.
Now, I'm in a weird position here. I'm not shocked by any of this. In fact, I predicted it (alas, without sufficient specificity to know precisely when it would happen), and I actually think worse news is on its way.
So sue me for being gloomy. Or blame it on the cold. But it just made sense to me -- we'd been so arrogant in our financial dealings and assumptions (we = Americans generically) that it seemed obvious to me that things had to collapse. In the past four years, I've said as much to two different financial advisors, both of whom looked at me funny and decided I was just "risk-averse."
Well, despite my prescience, I didn't really know what I was talking about, and so I've learned a bit in the past two weeks. Here's what I think I understand now: First, this is absolutely an instance of our having adopted a capitalist approach to gains and socialist approach to losses. And yes, the people who got so greedy should suffer the consequences. But I've seen the enemy, and they are us (or however Walt Kelly first put that). We're the ones who voted for deregulation, celebrated tax cuts, day-traded, bought homes with weird mortgages, invested in funds that promised big yields, and generally got greedy. Now, I know YOU aren't greedy/wealthy/knowledgeable about the stock market. You may not have a subprime mortgage, a house that's over-valued, or a job that's teetering on the brink. You may feel like you're the victim here -- that your economic security is going to go down the tubes because of someone else's greed and lack of oversight. And you'd be right. But you'd also be wrong to think that you had nothing to do with this crisis.
I do know some people with no connection to the current economic crisis; they are very poor. I agree, they had nothing to do with this. But the rest of us . . . well, that's a different story. We all benefited from the attitude, left over from the Reagan administration, that there was no reason why we couldn't have it all: artificially low gas prices, affordable housing, big SUVs, etc. We just are not very frugal in this country -- it's not in our culture. We live large, and we worry about tomorrow sometime next week. And we all did too little to say that the Reagan voodoo economics were dangerous. We got a huge reprieve with the Clinton administration and the dot com explosion; remember when there was no deficit? Wow, does that seem a long time ago.
And then came the current administration, which cut taxes and raised spending, particularly for a crazy war. (As an aside, did you know that there are people who actually believe that the wealthiest 1% has a legitimate complaint because when some past president raised taxes on the wealthy, that increase was promised to be temporary, so really their taxes should come down all the way to -- oh, the 1960s or something? Wow.) So now we have a massive deficit, and it's getting harder and harder to think that we'll ever be able to grow our way out of it, ever. What a legacy for our kids.
The thing about the bailout plan that bothers me is that it probably isn't enough at this time, so the next president (President Obama, if I have anything to say about it) will have to go through this process all over again. And that's why I think we need to back up and look at this whole thing a different way.
The current bailout is intended to help out the financial institutions who are holding all this bad paper that's basically every risky mortgage roled up into some weird sort of security. On the one hand, why should the taxpayers buy these securities when we didn't create the underlying problem? Let them eat the losses. Well, of course, it's not that simple -- if the financial institutions fail, and credit dries up, businesses will start to fail in huge numbers, people will lose their jobs, so they default on their non-risky mortgages, and the next thing we know, we've got a depression on our hands. It'll look different than the 1930s, but it will be just as bad.
But -- and here's where I get muddled up in my thinking -- why are we only getting one option? For example, why can't we pump money into the economy in key sectors (infrastructure, education, child care, health care) that can't be outsourced, need to be done, and help all of us in more tangible ways? Why can't some of the $1 trillion (counting the $700 billion plus the funds already spent on economic recovery/bailouts) be spent, as the language has it, on Main Street (or Elm Street or Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard)?
My congressman, Chris Carney, just voted against the bailout. Hmmm. He's a smart guy -- does he believe that to vote for it would be political suicide (he's running against a crazy-conservative rich guy), or does he believe a better plan can be passed, or does he favor letting the markets work it out. I'll be looking forward to his explanation -- I hope it's more than just "I heard from you, the constituents, that you didn't approve," because I'll tell ya, I don't think that we (the constituents) know precisely what's really going on.
I don't know what will happen if no bailout plan is passed, and I don't think it's even sensible to ask, because something will be done, even if it's too little and too late. But I guarantee -- come January. President Obama's going to have a lot more opportunity to be great than even we'd imagined. And we're all going to have a chance to get smarter about money. It's about time.
Friday, September 19, 2008
46 Days and Counting
I got two viral emails this week that I love. I forwarded the first (it had lots of photos of an anti-Palin rally in Anchorage where the participants went to the trouble of making signs like "Hockey Mama for Obama" and "Voted for Her Once -- Never Again"), so if your mailbox got clogged uploading 4 MB of photos, I apologize.
But this one, I thought I'd put here:
But this one, I thought I'd put here:
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight . . .
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
If you spent 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black resident of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is: local sportscaster girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don't represent America's.
If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
I did some checking on the Internet, and I think the original author might be someone named Alan Goodman, posting in the Comments section of a post on Don Surber's blog where he asked people to list their five reasons why McCain has pulled ahead. Of course, according to the most recent Gallup polls, the race is pretty close and Obama has regained his pre-conventions narrow lead. If the news on Wall Street continues to be bad, I figure the polls will continue to edge toward Barack.
Also according to those recent polls, all Palin has done is energize the Republican base. That's fine. I'm glad the election is close. I'm glad the Democrats aren't getting complacent, figuring we can't lose. I'm glad independents and seldom-voters are getting involved. We need record numbers. Of course, I say that because I think more people voting = an Obama victory.
I've made my peace with the fact that there are people out there who won't vote for him, no way no how. They may say it's because of Hillary; they may say they genuinely believe he's been indoctrinated into the Muslim faith since childhood (and not ever ask themselves why that should even matter -- not all Muslims are actively trying to destroy America, you know); they may openly admit that it's because he's black. But I don't care about those people, and if McCain wins because there are more of "those sorts" in this country than I'd realized, well, then maybe we're just going to get the president we deserve, in a bad way.
But I don't think so. I think there are a lot of smart people out there who have moved away from politics and elections. Well, go register to vote, why don't you? Cast your ballot, get involved, make a difference. That's what will get Barack Obama elected -- people smart enough to have gotten disillusioned checking back in. Because if one thing's true, it's this: John McCain and Sarah Palin represent the very sorts of politicians who turned people off in the first place.
My favorite sign at the anti-Palin rally in Anchorage? That's a picture I'll share:
It's the sign on the left, mocked up to look like the McCain/Palin signs we see now. Only, doesn't that just sum them up? He's reckless and she's inexperienced. So people who just have to vote against Barack Obama can do so, but I hope they have half a clue what they're voting for.
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
If you spent 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black resident of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
If your total resume is: local sportscaster girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don't represent America's.
If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
I did some checking on the Internet, and I think the original author might be someone named Alan Goodman, posting in the Comments section of a post on Don Surber's blog where he asked people to list their five reasons why McCain has pulled ahead. Of course, according to the most recent Gallup polls, the race is pretty close and Obama has regained his pre-conventions narrow lead. If the news on Wall Street continues to be bad, I figure the polls will continue to edge toward Barack.
Also according to those recent polls, all Palin has done is energize the Republican base. That's fine. I'm glad the election is close. I'm glad the Democrats aren't getting complacent, figuring we can't lose. I'm glad independents and seldom-voters are getting involved. We need record numbers. Of course, I say that because I think more people voting = an Obama victory.
I've made my peace with the fact that there are people out there who won't vote for him, no way no how. They may say it's because of Hillary; they may say they genuinely believe he's been indoctrinated into the Muslim faith since childhood (and not ever ask themselves why that should even matter -- not all Muslims are actively trying to destroy America, you know); they may openly admit that it's because he's black. But I don't care about those people, and if McCain wins because there are more of "those sorts" in this country than I'd realized, well, then maybe we're just going to get the president we deserve, in a bad way.
But I don't think so. I think there are a lot of smart people out there who have moved away from politics and elections. Well, go register to vote, why don't you? Cast your ballot, get involved, make a difference. That's what will get Barack Obama elected -- people smart enough to have gotten disillusioned checking back in. Because if one thing's true, it's this: John McCain and Sarah Palin represent the very sorts of politicians who turned people off in the first place.
My favorite sign at the anti-Palin rally in Anchorage? That's a picture I'll share:
It's the sign on the left, mocked up to look like the McCain/Palin signs we see now. Only, doesn't that just sum them up? He's reckless and she's inexperienced. So people who just have to vote against Barack Obama can do so, but I hope they have half a clue what they're voting for.Monday, September 15, 2008
Those Chickens are Looking Better and Better
I was on the phone with a political contact and friend up here, and she said that if McCain/Palin win in November, she's out of politics for good. (I know the feeling -- I'm old enough that I can remember feeling that way when Nixon won in 1972!) And on a day when the Dow Jones lost 500 points, I can also understand why my friend thinks Armageddon is in store if the Republicans win the presidency for another term. Even I'm not that pessimistic, although I do look at our 24 acres and think, "Well, with some solar panels, a wind turbine, a vegetable garden and some chickens, we could probably eke out a living on this property..."
All of this led into a conversation I just had with my husband. He's thinking about seeing if he can get some work in his field (computer programming) to help offset some larger-than-expected outlays this year. This led to a conversation about the economy, a favorite topic of mine. I don't entirely subscribe to the notion of Armageddon, but I do think the economy is in the toilet for at least five years if McCain wins in November. Husband asked me why I think that.
"Because [McCain is] an idiot about economics," I said. Three times.
"Why do you [Americans] give so much power to one individual?" my English husband asked.
I spontaneously came up with the following theory, which you can all help me refine. It is in the American psyche to believe in the power of the individual. We don't do monarchies, we don't do collectives (except as exercises in counter-culture), and we don't really trust others too much. But we believe in superheroes, which is the individual come to save us! So we like to empower the president with the ability to get stuff done. It also helps that Congress is effectively a committee of committees, and committees are many people trying to do the work of one -- a pattern card of inefficiency.
[In defense of Congress, I would like to say at this point that we desperately need it to keep doing the watch-dog work it excels at. Congress doesn't make the president work better, it makes the president work more honestly.]
But when we elect presidents, we tend to like them stupid, folksy, or messianic -- or some combination of all three. Franklin Roosevelt was messianic, which turned out to be a good thing. Carter was folksy and not messianic; not such a success as a president. Reagan was, arguably, stupid and folksy -- he didn't accomplish a lot of the stuff he promised as a candidate; he might have been messianic, though. It's kind of an actor's trait, isn't it? Clinton: folksy & messianic. Bush: stupid & folksy.
Obama: messianic, in a good way. Not stupid or folksy, though.
McCain: None of the three. Which could explain why his campaign was so lacking in fire before the pick of Palin as his running mate. She's certainly folksy, and her lack of experience looks a bit dumb, and I think she's got messianic written all over her resume. The trifecta!
So what's the problem? Well, we have real problems in our economy. Funny thing I heard on the radio the other day -- some guy (and I feel bad that I don't recall enough about which program he was on to be able to scour the Internet for a link to his book) has a theory that Republicans rack up huge deficits in their presidencies solely so that the succeeding Democratic president has to deal with the carnage on his/her watch. It happened to Carter, it happened to Clinton, and it will happen to whomever follows George W. Bush. This makes sense -- Reagan talked a good game, but he left his successor (George H.W. Bush) with an economic mess, which as a basically honorable guy, he tried to deal with. (Remember "Read my lips"?) That was political suicide.
So if McCain wins, we're in the toilet, economically, for four more years, `cause I really don't see him raising taxes. And I don't think we can expect another technological boom to save us, the way in did in the 90s.
*sigh*
Those chickens are starting to look pretty good, right about now.
All of this led into a conversation I just had with my husband. He's thinking about seeing if he can get some work in his field (computer programming) to help offset some larger-than-expected outlays this year. This led to a conversation about the economy, a favorite topic of mine. I don't entirely subscribe to the notion of Armageddon, but I do think the economy is in the toilet for at least five years if McCain wins in November. Husband asked me why I think that.
"Because [McCain is] an idiot about economics," I said. Three times.
"Why do you [Americans] give so much power to one individual?" my English husband asked.
I spontaneously came up with the following theory, which you can all help me refine. It is in the American psyche to believe in the power of the individual. We don't do monarchies, we don't do collectives (except as exercises in counter-culture), and we don't really trust others too much. But we believe in superheroes, which is the individual come to save us! So we like to empower the president with the ability to get stuff done. It also helps that Congress is effectively a committee of committees, and committees are many people trying to do the work of one -- a pattern card of inefficiency.
[In defense of Congress, I would like to say at this point that we desperately need it to keep doing the watch-dog work it excels at. Congress doesn't make the president work better, it makes the president work more honestly.]
But when we elect presidents, we tend to like them stupid, folksy, or messianic -- or some combination of all three. Franklin Roosevelt was messianic, which turned out to be a good thing. Carter was folksy and not messianic; not such a success as a president. Reagan was, arguably, stupid and folksy -- he didn't accomplish a lot of the stuff he promised as a candidate; he might have been messianic, though. It's kind of an actor's trait, isn't it? Clinton: folksy & messianic. Bush: stupid & folksy.
Obama: messianic, in a good way. Not stupid or folksy, though.
McCain: None of the three. Which could explain why his campaign was so lacking in fire before the pick of Palin as his running mate. She's certainly folksy, and her lack of experience looks a bit dumb, and I think she's got messianic written all over her resume. The trifecta!
So what's the problem? Well, we have real problems in our economy. Funny thing I heard on the radio the other day -- some guy (and I feel bad that I don't recall enough about which program he was on to be able to scour the Internet for a link to his book) has a theory that Republicans rack up huge deficits in their presidencies solely so that the succeeding Democratic president has to deal with the carnage on his/her watch. It happened to Carter, it happened to Clinton, and it will happen to whomever follows George W. Bush. This makes sense -- Reagan talked a good game, but he left his successor (George H.W. Bush) with an economic mess, which as a basically honorable guy, he tried to deal with. (Remember "Read my lips"?) That was political suicide.
So if McCain wins, we're in the toilet, economically, for four more years, `cause I really don't see him raising taxes. And I don't think we can expect another technological boom to save us, the way in did in the 90s.
*sigh*
Those chickens are starting to look pretty good, right about now.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
How to Save a Polar Bear!
I have said in the past that I didn't see how a Democratic woman could be elected president. Misogyny runs too deep in some people, and I figured the only way some segments of the population could vote for a woman was if she was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican. President Kay Bailey Hutchison, anyone?
I know this seems a cynical viewpoint in a year when 18 million people voted for Hillary Clinton, but you'll notice she's not the Democratic nominee. And Sarah Palin, I would argue, not only makes my point but actually proves I wasn't cynical enough. Because as unpleasant as a Kay Bailey Hutchison presidency would be, at least she's arguably competent. And she's mature. And probably thinks before she speaks. (Even better case in point: Senator Olympia Snowe.)
By contrast, Sarah Palin is a MILF. Well, sorry folks, but after eight years of having as our president a guy a lot of people figure would be fun to drink a beer with, we now have the chance to elect to the second highest office in the land a woman some people would like to look like, and some others would like to "do."
Does commenting on Governor Palin's appearance really make me a misogynist? Why? It's clearly part of her appeal, and I for one am having trouble seeing the rest of the package. She is smart, to be sure (although I think I could take her in a debate, and I am certain Joe Biden can!), but she's aggressive, politically expedient, inexperienced and there's some evidence that what experience she does have reflects unfavorably on her qualifications. (Putting an airplane up on eBay doesn't set her that far apart from millions of other people who sell on eBay. In fact, I wonder that it was a smart thing to do, if the idea was to save Alaska money -- eBay isn't exactly the first website I'd try if I was looking to buy a used jet. That makes it a publicity ploy more than a real money-maker. Do we know what they got for the plane, by the way? And was it more than the cost of Ms. Palin's family travelling back to Wasilla, where they get a per diem for living in their own home?)
Wasilla -- I've been there, as it happens -- is a small town north of Anchorage. I can well believe the claim that it was debt-free before Ms. Palin became its mayor, and was saddled with $22 million in debt when she left. That's a rookie mistake -- the sort made by politicians who feel they have to do something to prove their worth and don't think out carefully enough what they want to do, how to do it, what the costs & benefits are, etc.
So, no, I'm not impressed with Sarah Palin. But here's a woman I can completely support: Eve Ensler! She wrote the The Vagina Monologues. And she wrote this for the Huffington Post:
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
(Click on the link above for the whole piece -- I heard it on the radio last night, and it's great!)
Eve, it seems, has a thing for polar bears. And really, who doesn't? They're beautiful, and they're endangered. And we want to fight for them, even when we really don't know what we're supposed to do to help. (Is turning off this light bulb really going to save a polar bear?)
But now, finally, we have a way to fight back against Sarah Palin! Let's claim that electing her will literally kill this:
(Credit: Alaska Image Library/United States Fish and Wildlife Service, via Bloomberg News and the New York Times. Read accompanying story here.)
What a gorgeous animal, wouldn't you agree? Wouldn't it be a shame if thousands of these lovely animals died because YOU voted for McCain/Palin? There's a very simple solution. Don't vote for the pretty girl just because she's a novelty, or fun to listen to, or you admire her moxie. She wants -- literally, from a helicopter -- to kill the polar bears.
What's that? Uh, sure polar bears are not particularly crucial to this campaign. But that train left the station a few weeks ago. We're supposed to be focused on the economy, and foreign relations, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you really think after a week of arguing over lipstick on a pig that it matters if I use a polar bear to counteract Sarah Palin's dubious charm as a VP candidate? Puh-leeze. To paraphrase, Nobody ever got elected overestimating the intelligence of the American public.
But its compassion for polar bears is legendary!
I know this seems a cynical viewpoint in a year when 18 million people voted for Hillary Clinton, but you'll notice she's not the Democratic nominee. And Sarah Palin, I would argue, not only makes my point but actually proves I wasn't cynical enough. Because as unpleasant as a Kay Bailey Hutchison presidency would be, at least she's arguably competent. And she's mature. And probably thinks before she speaks. (Even better case in point: Senator Olympia Snowe.)
By contrast, Sarah Palin is a MILF. Well, sorry folks, but after eight years of having as our president a guy a lot of people figure would be fun to drink a beer with, we now have the chance to elect to the second highest office in the land a woman some people would like to look like, and some others would like to "do."
Does commenting on Governor Palin's appearance really make me a misogynist? Why? It's clearly part of her appeal, and I for one am having trouble seeing the rest of the package. She is smart, to be sure (although I think I could take her in a debate, and I am certain Joe Biden can!), but she's aggressive, politically expedient, inexperienced and there's some evidence that what experience she does have reflects unfavorably on her qualifications. (Putting an airplane up on eBay doesn't set her that far apart from millions of other people who sell on eBay. In fact, I wonder that it was a smart thing to do, if the idea was to save Alaska money -- eBay isn't exactly the first website I'd try if I was looking to buy a used jet. That makes it a publicity ploy more than a real money-maker. Do we know what they got for the plane, by the way? And was it more than the cost of Ms. Palin's family travelling back to Wasilla, where they get a per diem for living in their own home?)
Wasilla -- I've been there, as it happens -- is a small town north of Anchorage. I can well believe the claim that it was debt-free before Ms. Palin became its mayor, and was saddled with $22 million in debt when she left. That's a rookie mistake -- the sort made by politicians who feel they have to do something to prove their worth and don't think out carefully enough what they want to do, how to do it, what the costs & benefits are, etc.
So, no, I'm not impressed with Sarah Palin. But here's a woman I can completely support: Eve Ensler! She wrote the The Vagina Monologues. And she wrote this for the Huffington Post:
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
(Click on the link above for the whole piece -- I heard it on the radio last night, and it's great!)
Eve, it seems, has a thing for polar bears. And really, who doesn't? They're beautiful, and they're endangered. And we want to fight for them, even when we really don't know what we're supposed to do to help. (Is turning off this light bulb really going to save a polar bear?)
But now, finally, we have a way to fight back against Sarah Palin! Let's claim that electing her will literally kill this:
(Credit: Alaska Image Library/United States Fish and Wildlife Service, via Bloomberg News and the New York Times. Read accompanying story here.)What a gorgeous animal, wouldn't you agree? Wouldn't it be a shame if thousands of these lovely animals died because YOU voted for McCain/Palin? There's a very simple solution. Don't vote for the pretty girl just because she's a novelty, or fun to listen to, or you admire her moxie. She wants -- literally, from a helicopter -- to kill the polar bears.
What's that? Uh, sure polar bears are not particularly crucial to this campaign. But that train left the station a few weeks ago. We're supposed to be focused on the economy, and foreign relations, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you really think after a week of arguing over lipstick on a pig that it matters if I use a polar bear to counteract Sarah Palin's dubious charm as a VP candidate? Puh-leeze. To paraphrase, Nobody ever got elected overestimating the intelligence of the American public.
But its compassion for polar bears is legendary!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Conspiracy of Dunces?
I got an email today from a woman in England whom my husband dated briefly. I call her "The Fair Arlene," not entirely sarcastically. (Actually, she's good fun.) Anyway, she wrote to us this afternoon, superficially to compliment us on our wedding photos, but really to ask for my opinion of some video that alleges our current economic woes are the result of a cabal of international bankers who planned to undermine our economy. (Why a woman from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, now living in the U.K., is concerned about the machinations of international bankers meddling in the U.S. economy, that I can't say.)
Anyway, I responded to her as follows -- and this is just what I dashed off in a rush, mind you, so no footnotes!
Arlene -- How nice to hear from you. Re: international bankers having it in for the U.S.: I hate to rain on a good conspiracy theory, but I have to suggest that we (Americans) managed to trash our own economy on all our own. I don't doubt we got help, but the whole thing has been the dog's breakfast. Here's my view of how it happened:
The dot-com boom in the mid- to late-90s was truly the rising tide that floated (almost) all boats in this country. That led to an explosion of the American tendency toward self-aggrandizement and arrogance. Truly wealthy people were convinced that they could do everything, buy everything, have everything. Merely moneyed people were convinced they were already really wealthy, or would end up very wealthy in short order. They favored regressive monetary policy that increased the opportunity (risk-free, they thought!) to make money hand-over-fist. Middle class folks also thought it was just a matter of time before they were rich too, so they voted in line with the wealthy. This was known as "aspirational voting."
So, when Bush took office in 2001, he inherited a surplus (not that we weren't still in debt, but we'd been making more money through tax and other revenues than we'd been spending) and a mandate to loosen or get rid of regulation that hampered the free market forces so loved by conservatives. The next thing you know, we have Enron (a company that really figured that their financial shell game was okay because, you know, they were making money), and the housing market that permitted absurd lending practices on the grounds that it was good for poor people to own their own houses, and after all, we're all making money. But then 9/11 happened (now, do you think that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of these shadowy international bankers? That would be hinky!), and Bush led us into not one but two wars in short order. Chasing after oil revenues was part of that, of course -- and don't miss the fact that the oil companies are pretty much the only sector making money hand-over-fist even today! -- plus the arrogance and self-aggrandizement natural to Republicans. (They *say* they're all about fiscal responsibility but it's a lie.) Well, just like Enron, so went the credit business entirely. And I'm not optimistic overall. But I really don't think anyone planned this. I'm pretty sure it happened the way all sorts of bad things happen: Nobody thought it could happen, so they failed to heed conventional wisdom and common sense, and then that it-could-never-happen bad thing happened.
As I say, though, if you prefer the elaborate conspiracy theory, don't let me stop you. There's undoubtedly enough bad news to fuel everyone's pessimism!
Take care -- Magdalen
Anyway, I responded to her as follows -- and this is just what I dashed off in a rush, mind you, so no footnotes!
Arlene -- How nice to hear from you. Re: international bankers having it in for the U.S.: I hate to rain on a good conspiracy theory, but I have to suggest that we (Americans) managed to trash our own economy on all our own. I don't doubt we got help, but the whole thing has been the dog's breakfast. Here's my view of how it happened:
The dot-com boom in the mid- to late-90s was truly the rising tide that floated (almost) all boats in this country. That led to an explosion of the American tendency toward self-aggrandizement and arrogance. Truly wealthy people were convinced that they could do everything, buy everything, have everything. Merely moneyed people were convinced they were already really wealthy, or would end up very wealthy in short order. They favored regressive monetary policy that increased the opportunity (risk-free, they thought!) to make money hand-over-fist. Middle class folks also thought it was just a matter of time before they were rich too, so they voted in line with the wealthy. This was known as "aspirational voting."
So, when Bush took office in 2001, he inherited a surplus (not that we weren't still in debt, but we'd been making more money through tax and other revenues than we'd been spending) and a mandate to loosen or get rid of regulation that hampered the free market forces so loved by conservatives. The next thing you know, we have Enron (a company that really figured that their financial shell game was okay because, you know, they were making money), and the housing market that permitted absurd lending practices on the grounds that it was good for poor people to own their own houses, and after all, we're all making money. But then 9/11 happened (now, do you think that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of these shadowy international bankers? That would be hinky!), and Bush led us into not one but two wars in short order. Chasing after oil revenues was part of that, of course -- and don't miss the fact that the oil companies are pretty much the only sector making money hand-over-fist even today! -- plus the arrogance and self-aggrandizement natural to Republicans. (They *say* they're all about fiscal responsibility but it's a lie.) Well, just like Enron, so went the credit business entirely. And I'm not optimistic overall. But I really don't think anyone planned this. I'm pretty sure it happened the way all sorts of bad things happen: Nobody thought it could happen, so they failed to heed conventional wisdom and common sense, and then that it-could-never-happen bad thing happened.
As I say, though, if you prefer the elaborate conspiracy theory, don't let me stop you. There's undoubtedly enough bad news to fuel everyone's pessimism!
Take care -- Magdalen
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