Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Calling All Conservatives 10/22
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Why Liberals Need A Saner Conservatism Oct 21, 2008 (6 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
A few days ago Christopher Buckley proposed:
The smart ones in the movement should get together right after the election at the Greenbrier or the Homestead, you know, where they typically have these kinds of get-togethers, and have a long dark night of the soul. And I’ll tell you what the conference should be called: Conservatism–What the F?
Conor Friedersdorf has drafted a conference schedule. I approve. It should have happened in 2003, of course. The talk I gave above [www.cato.org] is from two years ago. Part II is here. The debate with David Brooks here. Oh, and here's the book. I'm struck by how many in the press keep talking as if the conservative rebellion against Bush began three weeks ago. It began five years ago. And some of us stood up to him when it wasn't obvious his legacy would be political oblivion for the reasonable right.
Why Liberals Need A Saner Conservatism Oct 21, 2008 (6 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Scott Payne responds to a few of my posts and argues that those on the left have reason to invest in a better conservative party:
The fact of the matter is that while we might be talking about the “future of conservatism,” that does not mean that we are entertaining the notion that conservatism will actually blink out of existence. What we’re really talking about is what kind of future American conservatism will realize, and the future of American liberalism is fundamentally tied to that of American conservatism.
Each ideology is, whether thy choose to acknowledge it or not, one side to a very complicated and intricate coin. this is what I want to see, understand... They don’t really survive without one another because each, left to its own devices, as Sullivan, again, pointed out in his book, will invariably sow the seeds of its own destruction. Each ideology, as vociferously as they denounce one another I'm not even clear on what the simple oppositions are, provides a vital balancing point to the other. It is the back and forth between the two and the ineffable cross-pollination that their waxing and waning enables, that provides the foundations upon which America is able to flourish.
Conor chimes in with his two cents.
Death Throes 10/21
The Assisted Suicide Of The American Right 10/24
The evidence is really piling up.
Limbaugh and Giuliani are blaming Clinton for 9/11
Charlie Crist has given up on McCain
McCain's not just giving up on Colorado, but New Hampshire and Wisconsin too
McCain called parts of Pennsylvania racist
The GOP's reg'lar gal got $150,000 from the GOP - for wardrobe.
Hey. Someone pick up these wheels, please? They fell off of something...
The Assisted Suicide Of The American Right 10/24
Could any paranoid far leftist have *invented* the story of the mugging hoax? Just read AllahPundit who was one of the saner ones. Yes: Michelle Malkin is now the voice of calm reason on the right.
Glenn Reynolds' [Instapunit] first post yesterday:
This is so serious that I predict it will get almost one-tenth as much national coverage as something some guy may have yelled at a Palin rally once.
McCarthy [corner.NRO]:
I'm not apologizing, because the story is news and it would have been discussed whether I'd posted on it or not.
Steyn [corner.NRO]:
I regret that I was among those (while being interviewed on the radio yesterday, and having not seen the dubious pictures) who took the story at, so to speak, face value.
Jonah [corner.NRO]:
I have a debilitating cold and am now going to bed for a while.
The Conservative Crisis 2:26 PM (16 minutes ago)
What Policing Dissent Leads To 11:52 AM (1 hour ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
"A Bloody Struggle Over Palinism" Oct 24, 2008 (3 days ago)
We've Sprung A Leak Oct 22, 2008 (5 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
No Party For Independents Oct 21, 2008 (6 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan by
What Policing Dissent Leads To 11:52 AM (1 hour ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Peter Suderman has a very sharp post [culture11] on the GOP's acute malaise:
Why hold your tongue when the party nominates a lackluster candidate? This tendency is no small part of what allows a problematic candidate like Palin to be nominated. ...Eventually, you reach the situation we may be in now: An incoherent and out of date set of ideas, an unappealing party, no trustworthy leaders, and few electable candidates.
(Hat tip: Larison)
"A Bloody Struggle Over Palinism" Oct 24, 2008 (3 days ago)
Packer is transfixed [End of an Era -- George Packer: Interesting Times (Online Only)The New Yorker ] by "the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America":
Like Democrats running against Herbert Hoover well into the 1970s, the Republican campaign still thinks it’s 1980. But it turns out that in 2008 voters can actually imagine worse things than tax rates on upper incomes returning to their Clinton-era level.[...]
The Republican Party’s immediate post-election future will be a bloody struggle over Palinism. It’s already started at National Review online, where the growing hysteria of the posts signals that the roof is falling in on conservatism. Everything that worked for forty years has suddenly not just stopped working, it has become self-defeating. Republican candidates, strategists, and pundits are like witchdoctors who keep repeating the old incantations over and over, their voices rising in furious shock, to no effect. That’s the sound of an era ending.
We've Sprung A Leak Oct 22, 2008 (5 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Larison on [Eunomia » Abandoning Ship -amconmag.com-larison-2008-10-22-abandoning-ship] the sinking GOP:
In the end, the selection of Palin was not only a desperate and cynical move designed mainly to mobilize core constituencies, but her candidacy quickly turned into nothing more than a vehicle for riling up the remaining true believers who still approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance. If recognizing this obvious truth makes one a “me-too” conservative, you’re going to find a lot of people clamoring to acquire that designation.
Obama endorsers are a somewhat different story, as they are trying to jump on the popular bandwagon, but rather than wailing about the perfidy of the defectors and demanding to know what side people are on one might want to consider what it is about one’s own side that seems to have become so radioactive. It’s all very well to say that the critics and defectors are rats deserting a sinking ship, but instead of worrying about that one might spend a bit more time considering how the ship came to be in this situation. When in an imploding political system or an imploding political movement, it is usually more important to change conditions inside to keep people from fleeing than to wish them all good riddance while building higher walls.
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan by
Larry Gellman is tired of the GOP:
This latest descent completes the utter destruction of the Republican party as a force for good in this country. Until eight years ago, Republicans had a deserved reputation for being more socially and fiscally conservative and responsible. When the party culture became infected with the Bush/Rove/Cheney virus, it began to morph into a divisive force that possessed none of those qualities.
Now the mass exodus is underway. Anyone who is fiscally conservative can't call himself a Republican anymore. Anyone who is a religious Christian can't honestly be part of this since Jesus preached about caring for the sick and the poor--not about eliminating reproductive choice or issues related to same-sex marriage. There's nothing Christian about the agenda of the Religious Right--it's a totally political movement focused on issues that Jesus never mentioned and they ignore the issues about which Jesus preached constantly. Anyone who believes in honesty or competence in government wouldn't call themselves a Republican after Bush. And now, no one who is not a committed soldier in the Holy War against the Left is welcome either.
Best of the ’08 Campaign III: Best National Columnist—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) prvs (dlcs tag main+a) Best of '08 Campaign: best speech in comic mode McCain, best local newspaper ADN
In a sense, a presidential campaign provides the ultimate test of the mettle of the political punditry. Does the pundit simply disintegrate into political hackery by reciting the talking points of the campaign to which he is beholden? Or does the writer operate from a set of political and philosophical convictions and hold rigorously to them notwithstanding the temptation to answer the siren call of partisanship?
Will To Power 9:12 AM (2 hours ago)
...Although I am far from agreeing with George Will on many points of policy, his writing about the ’08 campaign has been exemplary. I always learn something from it.
He is relentless in analysis. Indeed, he has been perhaps the single most penetrating and effective critic of both major candidates.
I am particularly taken by Will’s criticisms of Barack Obama and the lofty rhetoric of his campaign. Will clearly recognizes in Obama a politician of extraordinary skill and potential, but he is adept in bringing Obama’s shortcomings to the surface–in highlighting the unreasonableness, even the foolishness of some of his campaign rhetoric. There is never a mean-spirited word uttered in this process, however–it appears that Will is anticipating an Obama presidency, and is taking pains to offer a constructive critique.
Will senses the rising tide against Republican leadership; he sees a shift to the left. He opposes this with a firm and persuasive argument for old conservative values. If Obama does prevail, the nation’s conservatives will face some serious introspection. They will need to reexamine the premises of what is “conservative.” The Republican Party, the nation, and Barack Obama would do well to listen carefully to George Will in the process.
In a sense, a presidential campaign provides the ultimate test of the mettle of the political punditry. Does the pundit simply disintegrate into political hackery by reciting the talking points of the campaign to which he is beholden? Or does the writer operate from a set of political and philosophical convictions and hold rigorously to them notwithstanding the temptation to answer the siren call of partisanship?
Will To Power 9:12 AM (2 hours ago)
Scott Horton dubs George Will the best national columnist of the campaign. He's certainly been more solid than anyone else on the right:
In my view, the best of the best is George Will. He holds to a set of Tory principles that, whether you subscribe to them or not, withstand the test of time and belong to the heart of the American political dialogue.
In America, what has been called “conservative” has undergone dizzying transformation in the last eight years. It ends, somehow unsurprisingly, in a total reversal of accepted measures–with a massive nationalization of private debt and a partial nationalization of the nation’s largest banks. That can be explained as a failure of the old conservative vision, but more likely it is something else: the substitution of a weak counterfeit for that vision. The counterfeit involves the adoration of a leader, whose every decision and attitude is then qualified as “conservative.” Few commentators have stood as rigorously against this nonsense and as firmly for old, sober conservative values as George Will.
...Although I am far from agreeing with George Will on many points of policy, his writing about the ’08 campaign has been exemplary. I always learn something from it.
He is relentless in analysis. Indeed, he has been perhaps the single most penetrating and effective critic of both major candidates.
I am particularly taken by Will’s criticisms of Barack Obama and the lofty rhetoric of his campaign. Will clearly recognizes in Obama a politician of extraordinary skill and potential, but he is adept in bringing Obama’s shortcomings to the surface–in highlighting the unreasonableness, even the foolishness of some of his campaign rhetoric. There is never a mean-spirited word uttered in this process, however–it appears that Will is anticipating an Obama presidency, and is taking pains to offer a constructive critique.
Will senses the rising tide against Republican leadership; he sees a shift to the left. He opposes this with a firm and persuasive argument for old conservative values. If Obama does prevail, the nation’s conservatives will face some serious introspection. They will need to reexamine the premises of what is “conservative.” The Republican Party, the nation, and Barack Obama would do well to listen carefully to George Will in the process.
Here are a handful of the best George Will columns from the last several months:
Going Down Screaming - by Andrew Sullivan - New York Times (1998)
Starr report and its aftermath represents not simply a case study in wh has gone wrong w an Amer Presidency, but also wh has gone wrong w Amer conservatism. To be sure, Bill Clinton goaded the indep counsel into some of this detail by th hairsplitting of his legal defense. But Clinton was not resp for the *prurient, lip-pursing moralism* of the report, nor for the subseq egregious outspilling of grand-jury testimony. proof of perjury or obstructn of justice req none of this, as most Amers understood. This *moral obsessiveness* was the creation of Kenneth Starr & sth far larger, a *conservatism become puritanism*, a conservatism that has long lost sight of the principles -privacy, restraint, modesty, constitutionalism- wh used to be its hallmarks.
Amer conservatism has bn in prd radical intellectual reconstructn, in journals & magzs & seminars largely unnoticed by general public, but openly discussed among the conservative intellectual elites. The dominant ideas that have emerged in the last few years bear only the faintest resemblance to the major themes of the 1980's: economic freedom, smaller government, personal choice. Although libertarians are certainly numbered among the intellectuals of the right of the late 1990's, they are clearly on the defensive. What is galvanizing the right-wing intelligentsia at century's end is a different kind of conservatism altogether: much less liberal, far less economic, only nominally skeptical of government power. It is inherently pessimistic -- a return to older, conservative themes of cultural decline, moralism, the need for greater social control.
...p1 of 10...
Our Kristol Problem - And The GOP's 9:40 AM (1 hour ago)
Starr report and its aftermath represents not simply a case study in wh has gone wrong w an Amer Presidency, but also wh has gone wrong w Amer conservatism. To be sure, Bill Clinton goaded the indep counsel into some of this detail by th hairsplitting of his legal defense. But Clinton was not resp for the *prurient, lip-pursing moralism* of the report, nor for the subseq egregious outspilling of grand-jury testimony. proof of perjury or obstructn of justice req none of this, as most Amers understood. This *moral obsessiveness* was the creation of Kenneth Starr & sth far larger, a *conservatism become puritanism*, a conservatism that has long lost sight of the principles -privacy, restraint, modesty, constitutionalism- wh used to be its hallmarks.
Amer conservatism has bn in prd radical intellectual reconstructn, in journals & magzs & seminars largely unnoticed by general public, but openly discussed among the conservative intellectual elites. The dominant ideas that have emerged in the last few years bear only the faintest resemblance to the major themes of the 1980's: economic freedom, smaller government, personal choice. Although libertarians are certainly numbered among the intellectuals of the right of the late 1990's, they are clearly on the defensive. What is galvanizing the right-wing intelligentsia at century's end is a different kind of conservatism altogether: much less liberal, far less economic, only nominally skeptical of government power. It is inherently pessimistic -- a return to older, conservative themes of cultural decline, moralism, the need for greater social control.
...p1 of 10...
Our Kristol Problem - And The GOP's 9:40 AM (1 hour ago)
One paragraph from 1998:
This scolding, moralizing conservatism is one with a lineage; it is the construction of a cadre of influential intellectuals who bear as much responsibility as anybody for the constitutional and cultural damage this moment may have already wrought. And they will bear an even greater responsibility if the ultimate victim of this spectacle is the reputation and future of conservatism itself.
Some of us saw this implosion coming for a while.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Losing the Narrative - By Glenn Loury - March 31, 2008, TPMCafe special guest | Talking Points Memo | ..race..
Wright's error, Obama tells us, is that Wright's view of Amer is static, ignoring how things have changed -- so much so that one of his own parishioners now stands on the threshold of being elected to the highest office in the land. ..I know, just as Wright surely knows, th things have changed a great deal. I also know that, as I write this, 1 million young black men are under th physical control of th state; a third of black children live in poverty, and, the Southside of Chicago, w more than one-half million black residents, is one of most massive, racially segregated urban enclaves ever to hv bn created in hist of modern world. These things reflect social, cultural, economic, political forces enmeshed in structure of Amer society; not merely conseq of attitudes wh can be thrown-off if only we were to, under the inspiring & inspired leadership of the junior senator fr Illinois, work togthr to solve our common problems, etc.
Obama, a self-identifying black man running for the most powerful office on earth, does threaten some aspects of the conventional 'white' narrative. But, he also threatens the 'black' narrative -- and powerfully so. In effect, he wants to put an end to (transcend, move beyond, overcome...) the anger, the disappointment and the subversive critique of America that arises from the painful experience of black people in this country. Yet, the forces behind his rise are NOT grassroots-black-American in origin; they are elite-white-liberal-academic in origin. If he succeeds, there will be far fewer public megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons and Cornel Wests of this world, for sure.
But a great deal more may also be lost including, just to take one example, the notion that the moral legacy for today’s America of the black freedom struggle that played-out in this country during the century after emancipation from slavery – I speak here of Martin Luther King's (and Fannie Lou Hamer's, and W.E.B. DuBois's, and Ida B. Wells’s and Frederick Douglass's ...) moral legacy – should find present-day expression in, among other ways, agitation on behalf of and public expression of sympathy for the dispossessed Palestinians – who are, arguably, among the 'niggers' of today's world, if ever there were any. (We all know that Rev. Wright’s publicly and vociferously expressed sympathies in this regard – his condemnation of America’s support for what he called ‘state terrorism’ in the Middle East – are a central aspect of the political difficulty that Obama now finds himself having to deal with.) Speaking for myself, and as a black American man, if forced to choose, I'd rather be "on the right side of history" about such matters, melding the historical narratives of my people with those of the 'niggers' in today's world, than to make solidarity with elites who, for the sake of political expediency, would sweep such matters under the rug. My fear is that, should Obama succeed with his effort to renegotiate the implicit American racial contract, then the prophetic African American voice – which is occasionally strident and necessarily a dissident, outsider's voice – could be lost to us forever.
Finally, one could argue, with good reason, that the purportedly post-racial Obama candidacy has been hypocritical in its exploitation of a simple-minded racial voting reflex among black Americans. This central fact of the current campaign is only spoken of guardedly, and often goes unnoticed altogether. (This, by the way, is the same reflex that installed Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court a decade and a half ago. These are very different cases, to be sure; but, it’s the same reflex.) Here we have the ‘post-racial’ candidate who is favored to win the crucial North Carolina primary because he can confidently rely on drawing 90% of the black vote. Can I be the only observer who sees a profound irony in that?
George W. Bush has managed to profoundly damage conservatism's brand. "Liberalism" was long ago discredited -- Bill Clinton himself drove a stake through its heart ("the era of big government is over.") Obama's post-ideological campaign, by eschewing explicit identification with the great tradition of Democratic progressivism, by trumpeting the 'transformative leadership' of Ronald Reagan, etc., only reinforces this tendency. And so, Obama and his followers speak of transcending ideology: no more "red states vs. blue states" or left wing vs. right -- that's the old way of thinking, it is said. We need to transcend those categories, to move-on from those old arguments, to seek a new direction, to inaugurate a new generation of leadership, etc. etc.
-What a great post by Glenn Loury. I think it gets to the crux of the issue in asking what Obama's candidacy and his race speech mean for the important Black oppositional narrative. But I still think this is a fair question, and I'll note I'm white: Is it Obama's ambition to be a post-racial candidate, or a post-race-exploitation candidate? I'm not sure, but I read Obama's ambitions as the latter. I agree that racism is as racism does: it's functional, not attitudinal. Or as Glenn Loury says, racism is structural, not personal.
One of the main structural functions of racism in the U.S., arising from the elite interest in fragmenting working & middle-class electoral power (and sustaining the exploitability of Black Americans economically), has been to divide working & middle class voters against their own interests by driving white voters to vote "White." It's been a very successful strategy for conservative Republicans since Nixon. And it's a strategy that has produced public policy that's been lousy for most Americans and disastrous for Black Americans--look at the crack cocaine laws largely responsible for the obscene prison numbers Loury mentions. Broadly, Republican race politics have deepened the geographic, educational and economic segregation of African American.
I'm not sure how to parse those two social dynamics--the importance of the oppositional Black narrative, apparent in that enduring structural segregation, and the devastatingly effective anti-progressive use of race-division by Republicans (and sometimes conservative Democrats).
But it does seem to me that if the Obama campaign can undermine electoral racial polarization, he will have achieved a huge advance for progressivism for all Americans. And I think that that at least possibly opens up more, not less, space for a respectful, serious discussion of structural racism in America --s pace for the oppositional Black narrative to be better heard. In fact, that's one way of reading Obama's statement in his speech that we can't afford to ignore the subject of race at this point in our history -- to investigate and understand the roots of Rev. Wright's anger in the realities of Chicago's Southside, and also (my framing) to understand that working class whites, struggling to make lives for themselves within a structural racist frame they didn't create and don't fully understand, also need to have at least their perceptions of racial realities respectfully engaged. Can we have both an electoral politics that moves past racial polarization in the progressive interests of all Americans, and a new and honest engagement with the realities of structural racism as well? I'd like to think that the former might facilitate the latter. Is that naive? Posted by jcd.
-I second beve83's comment on your bloggingheads appearances with John McWhorter. They're great, easily the best on the site (amongst plenty of other good duos). asllvn linked to a blogginheads btw these two today, that's how I came to be looking up Glenn Loury.
-
Wright's error, Obama tells us, is that Wright's view of Amer is static, ignoring how things have changed -- so much so that one of his own parishioners now stands on the threshold of being elected to the highest office in the land. ..I know, just as Wright surely knows, th things have changed a great deal. I also know that, as I write this, 1 million young black men are under th physical control of th state; a third of black children live in poverty, and, the Southside of Chicago, w more than one-half million black residents, is one of most massive, racially segregated urban enclaves ever to hv bn created in hist of modern world. These things reflect social, cultural, economic, political forces enmeshed in structure of Amer society; not merely conseq of attitudes wh can be thrown-off if only we were to, under the inspiring & inspired leadership of the junior senator fr Illinois, work togthr to solve our common problems, etc.
Obama, a self-identifying black man running for the most powerful office on earth, does threaten some aspects of the conventional 'white' narrative. But, he also threatens the 'black' narrative -- and powerfully so. In effect, he wants to put an end to (transcend, move beyond, overcome...) the anger, the disappointment and the subversive critique of America that arises from the painful experience of black people in this country. Yet, the forces behind his rise are NOT grassroots-black-American in origin; they are elite-white-liberal-academic in origin. If he succeeds, there will be far fewer public megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons and Cornel Wests of this world, for sure.
But a great deal more may also be lost including, just to take one example, the notion that the moral legacy for today’s America of the black freedom struggle that played-out in this country during the century after emancipation from slavery – I speak here of Martin Luther King's (and Fannie Lou Hamer's, and W.E.B. DuBois's, and Ida B. Wells’s and Frederick Douglass's ...) moral legacy – should find present-day expression in, among other ways, agitation on behalf of and public expression of sympathy for the dispossessed Palestinians – who are, arguably, among the 'niggers' of today's world, if ever there were any. (We all know that Rev. Wright’s publicly and vociferously expressed sympathies in this regard – his condemnation of America’s support for what he called ‘state terrorism’ in the Middle East – are a central aspect of the political difficulty that Obama now finds himself having to deal with.) Speaking for myself, and as a black American man, if forced to choose, I'd rather be "on the right side of history" about such matters, melding the historical narratives of my people with those of the 'niggers' in today's world, than to make solidarity with elites who, for the sake of political expediency, would sweep such matters under the rug. My fear is that, should Obama succeed with his effort to renegotiate the implicit American racial contract, then the prophetic African American voice – which is occasionally strident and necessarily a dissident, outsider's voice – could be lost to us forever.
Finally, one could argue, with good reason, that the purportedly post-racial Obama candidacy has been hypocritical in its exploitation of a simple-minded racial voting reflex among black Americans. This central fact of the current campaign is only spoken of guardedly, and often goes unnoticed altogether. (This, by the way, is the same reflex that installed Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court a decade and a half ago. These are very different cases, to be sure; but, it’s the same reflex.) Here we have the ‘post-racial’ candidate who is favored to win the crucial North Carolina primary because he can confidently rely on drawing 90% of the black vote. Can I be the only observer who sees a profound irony in that?
George W. Bush has managed to profoundly damage conservatism's brand. "Liberalism" was long ago discredited -- Bill Clinton himself drove a stake through its heart ("the era of big government is over.") Obama's post-ideological campaign, by eschewing explicit identification with the great tradition of Democratic progressivism, by trumpeting the 'transformative leadership' of Ronald Reagan, etc., only reinforces this tendency. And so, Obama and his followers speak of transcending ideology: no more "red states vs. blue states" or left wing vs. right -- that's the old way of thinking, it is said. We need to transcend those categories, to move-on from those old arguments, to seek a new direction, to inaugurate a new generation of leadership, etc. etc.
-What a great post by Glenn Loury. I think it gets to the crux of the issue in asking what Obama's candidacy and his race speech mean for the important Black oppositional narrative. But I still think this is a fair question, and I'll note I'm white: Is it Obama's ambition to be a post-racial candidate, or a post-race-exploitation candidate? I'm not sure, but I read Obama's ambitions as the latter. I agree that racism is as racism does: it's functional, not attitudinal. Or as Glenn Loury says, racism is structural, not personal.
One of the main structural functions of racism in the U.S., arising from the elite interest in fragmenting working & middle-class electoral power (and sustaining the exploitability of Black Americans economically), has been to divide working & middle class voters against their own interests by driving white voters to vote "White." It's been a very successful strategy for conservative Republicans since Nixon. And it's a strategy that has produced public policy that's been lousy for most Americans and disastrous for Black Americans--look at the crack cocaine laws largely responsible for the obscene prison numbers Loury mentions. Broadly, Republican race politics have deepened the geographic, educational and economic segregation of African American.
I'm not sure how to parse those two social dynamics--the importance of the oppositional Black narrative, apparent in that enduring structural segregation, and the devastatingly effective anti-progressive use of race-division by Republicans (and sometimes conservative Democrats).
But it does seem to me that if the Obama campaign can undermine electoral racial polarization, he will have achieved a huge advance for progressivism for all Americans. And I think that that at least possibly opens up more, not less, space for a respectful, serious discussion of structural racism in America --s pace for the oppositional Black narrative to be better heard. In fact, that's one way of reading Obama's statement in his speech that we can't afford to ignore the subject of race at this point in our history -- to investigate and understand the roots of Rev. Wright's anger in the realities of Chicago's Southside, and also (my framing) to understand that working class whites, struggling to make lives for themselves within a structural racist frame they didn't create and don't fully understand, also need to have at least their perceptions of racial realities respectfully engaged. Can we have both an electoral politics that moves past racial polarization in the progressive interests of all Americans, and a new and honest engagement with the realities of structural racism as well? I'd like to think that the former might facilitate the latter. Is that naive? Posted by jcd.
-"he can only succeed by abandoning the critical, skeptical, dissident's voice which is the truest political expression of the lessons learned by black people over the long centuries of being America's 'niggers." This is an important point to make, and one which I agree with, but which is also inevitable if a person of any minority group comes into power. A dissident who moves to the center of power is no longer a dissident. The dissident and skeptic are always looking on from the sidelines--this allows them their unique perspective--because they are not active participants in the creation of something. ~?criticism can create, redefine
This is a very similar argument to what many activist in the gay rights movement have been making for years as the "gay lifestyle" has become more incorporated into mainstream culture. There are many gay activists who are actually against the idea of gay marriage because they fear that their struggle to redefine sexuality in American society is co-opted by the attempt to confine queer relationships to the heteronormative institution of marriage. In the face of gay marriage they fear that the essentially radical nature of being queer will be lost, even though the battle for true equality and acceptance in society is far from over.
Racial politics might lose some of its edge if Obama comes into power. And we certianly risk being complacent and naive if we see Obama as the beginning of the end to racism in this country. But I think there is also a lot to be gained by being in the center.
-One of the points of Loury's post seems to be making is that Obama is trading in a connection with black dissent for mellower, please-everyone politically expedient philosophy on race. But I'm thinking that what Obama's shown (might be politically expedient, might also be his honest view) is a view that isn't ignoring the past nor the anger, but one that's including everyone -- something any president would have to do.
-I second beve83's comment on your bloggingheads appearances with John McWhorter. They're great, easily the best on the site (amongst plenty of other good duos). asllvn linked to a blogginheads btw these two today, that's how I came to be looking up Glenn Loury.
-
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Best of the ’08 Campaign II: Best Local Press Coverage—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
As the former mayor of Wasilla got the Republican vice presidential nod, however, I took to reading the Anchorage Daily News most mornings, often clipping and circulating its articles to journalist and blogger friends. What I discovered was very impressive. ADN was indispensable to understanding the curious world of Alaska politics.
The reporting in ADN helped answer a critical question: can local papers make a meaningful contribution to presidential election coverage? In an earlier series of posts, I have discussed the local papers of one state which are not bad, but actually appalling. They have deteriorated that state’s political culture. wh state wh paper is that? But ADN provides a counter-example. It shows what a local paper with limited resources and reach can do, not only for its immediate readership, but for the country as a whole.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, no local paper made a stronger contribution to our understanding of the presidential campaign. In fact I am tempted to put the Anchorage Daily News in head-on competition with industry leaders such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The ADN took advantage of its position as the principal newspaper of Alaska and offered Americans a deep glance into the problems and scandals that affect the state’s politics. It was prepared to expose the sores that a less rigorously professional paper would happily have covered up in the interests of parochialism. And it was unflinching but also rigorously fair in its coverage of and editorializing on Alaska’s native daughter, Sarah Palin.
Here are some of the pieces—both original reporting and opinion—that lead me to cite the Anchorage Daily News as the best local newspaper in campaign 2008 coverage:
As the former mayor of Wasilla got the Republican vice presidential nod, however, I took to reading the Anchorage Daily News most mornings, often clipping and circulating its articles to journalist and blogger friends. What I discovered was very impressive. ADN was indispensable to understanding the curious world of Alaska politics.
The reporting in ADN helped answer a critical question: can local papers make a meaningful contribution to presidential election coverage? In an earlier series of posts, I have discussed the local papers of one state which are not bad, but actually appalling. They have deteriorated that state’s political culture. wh state wh paper is that? But ADN provides a counter-example. It shows what a local paper with limited resources and reach can do, not only for its immediate readership, but for the country as a whole.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, no local paper made a stronger contribution to our understanding of the presidential campaign. In fact I am tempted to put the Anchorage Daily News in head-on competition with industry leaders such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The ADN took advantage of its position as the principal newspaper of Alaska and offered Americans a deep glance into the problems and scandals that affect the state’s politics. It was prepared to expose the sores that a less rigorously professional paper would happily have covered up in the interests of parochialism. And it was unflinching but also rigorously fair in its coverage of and editorializing on Alaska’s native daughter, Sarah Palin.
Here are some of the pieces—both original reporting and opinion—that lead me to cite the Anchorage Daily News as the best local newspaper in campaign 2008 coverage:
- Michael Carey, “Palin Losing Friends on the Home Front”
- Troopergate Video: “Sarah Palin Promises Transparency in the Troopergate Probe, Turns to Secrecy as She Joins the McCain Campaign”
- “Palin Vindicated?”
- Dan Joling, “Parnell to Battle Young in Alaska Republican Primary”
- Martha Mendoza, “Palin Foreign Experience Limited to Canada”
- “Palin’s Stall: The Governor is Stonewalling the Troopergate Investigation”
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thinking About Obama - David Brooks, Op-Ed Columnist, NYTimes.com. published: October 16, 2008 :
We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness. the Obama calm. 'first rate temperament.'
Some candidates are motivated by something they lack. For L.B.J., it was respect. and for Nixon? For Bill Clinton, it was adoration. These politicians are motivated to fill that void. Their challenge once in office is self-regulation. How will they control the insecurities that fired their ambitions?
But other candidates are propelled by what some psychologists call self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mold, most heroically F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realize some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics and infuriating to their foes. to realize his capacity ~ yes that seem right about Obama. not a drive for power, not a stark ambition, but a tough, forward-moving fulfillment of capacity.
that's an insufficient articulation of how it is not about personal power , ambition. also not exactly a calling, but closer to that, to a vocation. this is your work, you are good at it, you are suited to it, and you pursue it to the best of your ability. ..ok Brooks are you going to help me with this? ...oh: no. but it's int...
Obama has the biography of the first group but the personality of the second.
He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician a person with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds. But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day. well, he had steady love from his mother, I think? and the solidity of her parents, his grandparents, who helped raise him. so the absent father was not the only and probably not the strongest influence in his life (though maybe loomed large wrt identity). I imagine he had a pretty solid base (but need to read Dreams straight thr to say that, not so solid if he could not 'trust' his childhood, if things were not as seemed ~ that yes is toxic.) and then it seems he found a home with Michelle, drawn to the rootedness of her family and finds solidity in her. ok that's the story, but it's a believable one.
There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. hmm. whoa Brooks that's a little bold of you, talk of the unconscious. I don't know. an organized *consciousness* I would say. self-awareness, yes. integrated. not troubled by the unconscious, no egregious ruptures. so maybe by organized that is what you mean: integrated. not a false self -a persona- with a silenced stirring true self beneath. integrated. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine.
When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night, he would step back and describe the broader situation. When John McCain would hit him with some critique — even about fetuses being left to die on a table — he would smile in amusement at the political game they were playing hey he din't smile about the fetuses. and he made clear that there was already an existing law (as well as the doctor's hippocratic oath) requiring treatment to the infant in a botched abortion. At every challenging moment, his instinct was to self-remove and establish an observer’s perspective.mm maybe that's what I recognize in him.
Through the debate, he was reassuring and self-composed. McCain, an experienced old hand, would blink furiously over the tension of the moment, but Obama didn’t reveal even unconscious signs of nervousness. There was no hint of an unwanted feeling.
They say we are products of our environments, but Obama, the sojourner, seems to go through various situations without being overly touched by them. Over the past two years, he has been the subject of nearly unparalleled public worship, but far from getting drunk on it, he has become less grandiloquent as the campaign has gone along. [ "Don't underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't underestimate our ability to screw it up." -- Sen. Barack Obama, quoted last night by the Chicago Sun Times . [link 10/17] ]
When Bill Clinton campaigned, he tried to seduce his audiences. But at Obama rallies, the candidate is the wooed not the wooer. He doesn’t seem to need the audience’s love. But they need his. The audiences hunger for his affection, while he is calm, appreciative, didactic. maybe I recognize this as well. and that, maybe, comes up a relation to an absence. you are not hungry, you are not making an appeal. what you want is just not there. it's not there to want.
He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan. "not a movement candidate" - keep going back to that, seems key to much about how he has behaved, how he has disappointed ppl at Harvard Law Rvw, in Chicago.
It is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather —already has gathered— some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem. Of course, it’s also easy to imagine a scenario in which he is not an island of rationality in a sea of tumult, but simply an island. It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. No, I on't think so. He has moved forward pretty aggressively, he seems very comfortable taking control. 'Look. Here's what we're going to do.'
Over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters. Far from a celebrity fad, he is self-contained, self-controlled, maybe even a little dull.
We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness. the Obama calm. 'first rate temperament.'
Some candidates are motivated by something they lack. For L.B.J., it was respect. and for Nixon? For Bill Clinton, it was adoration. These politicians are motivated to fill that void. Their challenge once in office is self-regulation. How will they control the insecurities that fired their ambitions?
But other candidates are propelled by what some psychologists call self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mold, most heroically F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realize some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics and infuriating to their foes. to realize his capacity ~ yes that seem right about Obama. not a drive for power, not a stark ambition, but a tough, forward-moving fulfillment of capacity.
that's an insufficient articulation of how it is not about personal power , ambition. also not exactly a calling, but closer to that, to a vocation. this is your work, you are good at it, you are suited to it, and you pursue it to the best of your ability. ..ok Brooks are you going to help me with this? ...oh: no. but it's int...
Obama has the biography of the first group but the personality of the second.
He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician a person with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds. But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day. well, he had steady love from his mother, I think? and the solidity of her parents, his grandparents, who helped raise him. so the absent father was not the only and probably not the strongest influence in his life (though maybe loomed large wrt identity). I imagine he had a pretty solid base (but need to read Dreams straight thr to say that, not so solid if he could not 'trust' his childhood, if things were not as seemed ~ that yes is toxic.) and then it seems he found a home with Michelle, drawn to the rootedness of her family and finds solidity in her. ok that's the story, but it's a believable one.
There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. hmm. whoa Brooks that's a little bold of you, talk of the unconscious. I don't know. an organized *consciousness* I would say. self-awareness, yes. integrated. not troubled by the unconscious, no egregious ruptures. so maybe by organized that is what you mean: integrated. not a false self -a persona- with a silenced stirring true self beneath. integrated. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine.
When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night, he would step back and describe the broader situation. When John McCain would hit him with some critique — even about fetuses being left to die on a table — he would smile in amusement at the political game they were playing hey he din't smile about the fetuses. and he made clear that there was already an existing law (as well as the doctor's hippocratic oath) requiring treatment to the infant in a botched abortion. At every challenging moment, his instinct was to self-remove and establish an observer’s perspective.mm maybe that's what I recognize in him.
Through the debate, he was reassuring and self-composed. McCain, an experienced old hand, would blink furiously over the tension of the moment, but Obama didn’t reveal even unconscious signs of nervousness. There was no hint of an unwanted feeling.
They say we are products of our environments, but Obama, the sojourner, seems to go through various situations without being overly touched by them. Over the past two years, he has been the subject of nearly unparalleled public worship, but far from getting drunk on it, he has become less grandiloquent as the campaign has gone along. [ "Don't underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't underestimate our ability to screw it up." -- Sen. Barack Obama, quoted last night by the Chicago Sun Times . [link 10/17] ]
When Bill Clinton campaigned, he tried to seduce his audiences. But at Obama rallies, the candidate is the wooed not the wooer. He doesn’t seem to need the audience’s love. But they need his. The audiences hunger for his affection, while he is calm, appreciative, didactic. maybe I recognize this as well. and that, maybe, comes up a relation to an absence. you are not hungry, you are not making an appeal. what you want is just not there. it's not there to want.
He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan. "not a movement candidate" - keep going back to that, seems key to much about how he has behaved, how he has disappointed ppl at Harvard Law Rvw, in Chicago.
It is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather —already has gathered— some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem. Of course, it’s also easy to imagine a scenario in which he is not an island of rationality in a sea of tumult, but simply an island. It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. No, I on't think so. He has moved forward pretty aggressively, he seems very comfortable taking control. 'Look. Here's what we're going to do.'
Over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters. Far from a celebrity fad, he is self-contained, self-controlled, maybe even a little dull.
Time and Materials, by Robert Hass:
I hear what do I hear in these sounds I hear myself I hear My uncle is a lawyer's clerk the taste of glue on envelopes, I call him twice a year, sunlight on red brick, the jersey shoreline and familiar air, as if I licked stamps for a living.
'like someone falling down and getting up. and running and falling and getting up.'
I hear Hass, in whom I always heard myself, Privilege of Being, Meditation at Lagunitas, one only needs a few poems for a lifetime of remembered cadences..
'..the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
..and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you, dear heart, cure my loneliness'
I woke up and the animals were all around, the giraffe with his head in the lap of hyena
saying blackberry blackberry blackberry
The object of this poem is to report a theft,
In progress, of everything
That is not these words everything that is not these words, this arranging, is being taken. lost.
And their disposition on the page. this is all we can keep, if I tell you, we will be okay, if the weather is what happens. (preservation it's all the same, straightened a shirt on its hanger, the world is touching itself and I cannot stand it). if the losing is what happens. lost into it. arrangements on the page, having by heart.
Pages are browning in the sunlight,
A collar is wrinkling, not organized
Properly on the hanger. The world
Is touching itself and I cannot stand it.
Preservation it’s all the same
I held a voice to my lips
I pressed a hand on my word
By heart had all the arrangements
When the body left out
into it
Yet speaking against
the losing
Or to render time and stand outside
The horizontal rush of it, for a moment
To have the sensation of standing outside
The greenish rush of it.
green, the green rush.
'if only for a minute, or two, I want to know what it feels like to be without you' lucinda
under cover, *my* daylikewidewater, of thorpe's poem posted by m # 1:42 PM maybe it sounds so my own bcs it sounds like Hass? but maybe more abrupt than.
My uncle is a lawyer's clerk in London I call him twice a year Dear heart, he says, How are you?
The Atlantic takes dictation Every syllable a naval boy Down the chute, his coffin made to sink.
Very discursive
Love, if the sauce is too clear, Just add cornflour
My hands make a frame Left / Right The Jersey shoreline and the familiar air As if I licked stamps for a living
Feb06
source
--------
you're reading a book and you make some notes in the margin -- you say
things similar, more or less of your own. this goes on for days.one day, you open the book to a new page and there
in the book's text are sentences that you have written.
before, already. or not? maybe, it must be,
you had already read this page and then
you wrote it down. no. the footnote in the book's text credits you.these are sentences you wrote in the margins. flip back and see.
repose
--------
That's what I wanted to tell you.
All the things you could say, you're saying this. -With all the fish in the sea? -Not like her.
These are what I am thinking when I am at the window. when I wake up. when I brush my teeth.My mind returning home, says I'm so sorry.-I want to know things. -Why didn't you tell me sooner? -I just wanted to hear you say it. -So you're not angry? - I'm not done yet. –Shhh... -Just let me get my mind around this. –What
is that—that metaphor? -Don't do this. -I'm sorry.
I still miss you. I'm looking out the window, this is the voice in my head.
To me these are the only real things in the world.
To make layers,
As if they were a steadiness of days:
It snowed; I did errands at a desk;
A white flurry out the window thickening; my tongue
Tasted of the glue on envelopes.
On this day sunlight on red brick, bare trees,
Nothing stirring in the icy air.
...
Made love, made curry, talked on the phone
To friends, the one whose brother died
Was crying and thinking alternately,
Like someone falling down and getting up
And running and falling and getting up.
I hear what do I hear in these sounds I hear myself I hear My uncle is a lawyer's clerk the taste of glue on envelopes, I call him twice a year, sunlight on red brick, the jersey shoreline and familiar air, as if I licked stamps for a living.
'like someone falling down and getting up. and running and falling and getting up.'
I hear Hass, in whom I always heard myself, Privilege of Being, Meditation at Lagunitas, one only needs a few poems for a lifetime of remembered cadences..
'..the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
..and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you, dear heart, cure my loneliness'
I woke up and the animals were all around, the giraffe with his head in the lap of hyena
saying blackberry blackberry blackberry
The object of this poem is to report a theft,
In progress, of everything
That is not these words everything that is not these words, this arranging, is being taken. lost.
And their disposition on the page. this is all we can keep, if I tell you, we will be okay, if the weather is what happens. (preservation it's all the same, straightened a shirt on its hanger, the world is touching itself and I cannot stand it). if the losing is what happens. lost into it. arrangements on the page, having by heart.
Pages are browning in the sunlight,
A collar is wrinkling, not organized
Properly on the hanger. The world
Is touching itself and I cannot stand it.
Preservation it’s all the same
I held a voice to my lips
I pressed a hand on my word
By heart had all the arrangements
When the body left out
into it
Yet speaking against
the losing
Or to render time and stand outside
The horizontal rush of it, for a moment
To have the sensation of standing outside
The greenish rush of it.
green, the green rush.
'if only for a minute, or two, I want to know what it feels like to be without you' lucinda
Some vertical gesture then, the way that anger
Or desire can rip a life apart,
Some wound of color.
green is a color. anger, desire, wound, these are not green.under cover, *my* daylikewidewater, of thorpe's poem posted by m # 1:42 PM maybe it sounds so my own bcs it sounds like Hass? but maybe more abrupt than.
My uncle is a lawyer's clerk in London I call him twice a year Dear heart, he says, How are you?
The Atlantic takes dictation Every syllable a naval boy Down the chute, his coffin made to sink.
Very discursive
Love, if the sauce is too clear, Just add cornflour
My hands make a frame Left / Right The Jersey shoreline and the familiar air As if I licked stamps for a living
Feb06
source
--------
you're reading a book and you make some notes in the margin -- you say
things similar, more or less of your own. this goes on for days.one day, you open the book to a new page and there
in the book's text are sentences that you have written.
before, already. or not? maybe, it must be,
you had already read this page and then
you wrote it down. no. the footnote in the book's text credits you.these are sentences you wrote in the margins. flip back and see.
repose
--------
That's what I wanted to tell you.
All the things you could say, you're saying this. -With all the fish in the sea? -Not like her.
These are what I am thinking when I am at the window. when I wake up. when I brush my teeth.My mind returning home, says I'm so sorry.-I want to know things. -Why didn't you tell me sooner? -I just wanted to hear you say it. -So you're not angry? - I'm not done yet. –Shhh... -Just let me get my mind around this. –What
is that—that metaphor? -Don't do this. -I'm sorry.
I still miss you. I'm looking out the window, this is the voice in my head.
To me these are the only real things in the world.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
dlcs
Obama - re him, his backround, character, temperament...
punditry - re infighting, positioning - of political bloggers - 24 hour news cycle ...
10.16. 08 go thr dlcs-main to add Obama or punditry tag where appropr, only take main tag off if not timely, not part of larger narrative might want to read thr all main tags for... narrative of the campaigns, but also (of course) of my reading about it...
pro-life ~ specifically for the (just a few) posts re prolife shld also mean against torture, against war where can avoid it. like hpotter or sopranos-end, this is a limited use tag for a specific topic of int to me. rather than: a tag naming a broad kind of intention, a relation to the pgmk.
~ eh it's only two posts, easily turned up by search. so just ..pro-life.. in title line. no tag.
ggl rdr
cannot replace tag.
have to scrolllllll to get to post in context of feed, where can edit tags. cannot do this from search, nor from the original post (as can in dlcs) bcs that is separate: in ggl rdr I am tagging my instance of the post in my feed. not the orig page. and if "share" a post (in order to add a note), that is yet another instance of it. the note does not appear on the post in my feed. and the tags do not appear on shared post (unless tagged there, additionally).
so, you have:
search: yields orig posts, on wh cannot operate, cannot go to that post in feed to tag.
feed, in wh tagged posts: can tag, does not show notes added in share
shared posts: does not show tags added in feed, does not allow you to edit the note you add.
and when you view all posts fr feed with a certain tag, order is messed up. I think. ordered by when tagged, not where were in feed.
and for shared items, these post when you share, not keeping order of feed. bcs its just like sending content to a blog, I guess, only it's a very limited blog platform, where you cannot edit your note later. you can only choose 'share' again, sending a new instance with a new note of that
just not well integrated.
I guess works well only as a reader, not as a marking context, a place to collect & organize.
so, just use to read, and ok to tag casually, but do not get bogged down, eg trying to organize all asllvn posts, at 50+ a day at lst some days that is not worthwhile.
just skim there, then get out, get back to dlcs as homebase.
also unsure: when asllvn deletes a post, does it remain in my feed, my infinitely scrollling feed (well, back as far as feed goes, I assume depending on when subscribed - but avail feeds hold posts from some distance in past, so eg my feed does not start w 10.14 but in September or perhaps even further?)
party politics - pleased w this tag. for anyth characterizing the Republicans, or the Democrats, or wrt who is liberal who conservative. or (also) re the 2-party system.
punditry - pleased with this also. as above. re political blogging, 24 hour news cycle, shillers for their party.
campaign tactics: 'joe' the 'plumber' is a tactic ~maybe repr a strategy~ so posts about him go here. and any posts re ads. re how campaign run.
prejudice
gay equality: incl current 'No on prop 8' posts along with whatever other posts on topic...
christianism ~ or, could be: religion. but I think the category I want is mostly re fundamentalist christian religion (as, per asllvn, perverting Republican party away fr conservatism)
z for other ~ a stand in for 'untagged' so that could look at posts without any of above tags
x for of not m int to me
Palin, McCain, Obama calm
Obama - re him, his backround, character, temperament...
punditry - re infighting, positioning - of political bloggers - 24 hour news cycle ...
10.16. 08 go thr dlcs-main to add Obama or punditry tag where appropr, only take main tag off if not timely, not part of larger narrative might want to read thr all main tags for... narrative of the campaigns, but also (of course) of my reading about it...
pro-life ~ specifically for the (just a few) posts re prolife shld also mean against torture, against war where can avoid it. like hpotter or sopranos-end, this is a limited use tag for a specific topic of int to me. rather than: a tag naming a broad kind of intention, a relation to the pgmk.
~ eh it's only two posts, easily turned up by search. so just ..pro-life.. in title line. no tag.
ggl rdr
cannot replace tag.
have to scrolllllll to get to post in context of feed, where can edit tags. cannot do this from search, nor from the original post (as can in dlcs) bcs that is separate: in ggl rdr I am tagging my instance of the post in my feed. not the orig page. and if "share" a post (in order to add a note), that is yet another instance of it. the note does not appear on the post in my feed. and the tags do not appear on shared post (unless tagged there, additionally).
so, you have:
search: yields orig posts, on wh cannot operate, cannot go to that post in feed to tag.
feed, in wh tagged posts: can tag, does not show notes added in share
shared posts: does not show tags added in feed, does not allow you to edit the note you add.
and when you view all posts fr feed with a certain tag, order is messed up. I think. ordered by when tagged, not where were in feed.
and for shared items, these post when you share, not keeping order of feed. bcs its just like sending content to a blog, I guess, only it's a very limited blog platform, where you cannot edit your note later. you can only choose 'share' again, sending a new instance with a new note of that
just not well integrated.
I guess works well only as a reader, not as a marking context, a place to collect & organize.
so, just use to read, and ok to tag casually, but do not get bogged down, eg trying to organize all asllvn posts, at 50+ a day at lst some days that is not worthwhile.
just skim there, then get out, get back to dlcs as homebase.
also unsure: when asllvn deletes a post, does it remain in my feed, my infinitely scrollling feed (well, back as far as feed goes, I assume depending on when subscribed - but avail feeds hold posts from some distance in past, so eg my feed does not start w 10.14 but in September or perhaps even further?)
party politics - pleased w this tag. for anyth characterizing the Republicans, or the Democrats, or wrt who is liberal who conservative. or (also) re the 2-party system.
punditry - pleased with this also. as above. re political blogging, 24 hour news cycle, shillers for their party.
campaign tactics: 'joe' the 'plumber' is a tactic ~maybe repr a strategy~ so posts about him go here. and any posts re ads. re how campaign run.
prejudice
gay equality: incl current 'No on prop 8' posts along with whatever other posts on topic...
christianism ~ or, could be: religion. but I think the category I want is mostly re fundamentalist christian religion (as, per asllvn, perverting Republican party away fr conservatism)
z for other ~ a stand in for 'untagged' so that could look at posts without any of above tags
x for of not m int to me
Palin, McCain, Obama calm
Friday, October 17, 2008
O-bam-a
young boy in bookstore, waiting while mother paid at register, saw the books with Obama on the cover (Beginner's Guide To Obama, Audacity of Hope, collection or two of speeches) and said "O-bam-a" melodiously to himself, I liked it, sounded wondrous, wonderful.
I want there to be a generation for whom the first president they remember was President O-bam-a, said like this boy said it.
or like Oprah's anecdote of Republican friends, watching Republican primary debates, and their young son said, Where is Rock-O-Mama?
______________________________10/18/08 adding:
Obama And The Kiddies - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (October 18, 2008):
I voted for McCain in the primary. As a political reporter and columnist in Michigan, I have the news on in our house with some frequency. That's how my now 6-year-old got to know Barack Obama. And she loved him. She asked to tag along when I went to cover his events. Maybe it's the smile, the calmness. But she felt very assured by the idea of this man being president, long before I was ready to switch my vote. She was the one trying to convince her grandparents to vote Obama last winter.
And I've found that Obama has the same effect on lots of kids, whether they come from liberal or conservative homes. He is a rock star with the under 10 crowd, believe me. And I have to say, as a journalist, I found their reactions fascinating in light of both the race debate and the fact that kids tend to be carbon copies of their parents. but not here. So that Scholastic poll doesn't surprise me at all.
So the next time you see a kid with an Obama shirt, she just might have asked for it for her birthday, like mine, instead of having it foisted upon her by overbearing parents.
Yes We Can (hold babies).
What I Hear When I Hear Obama - Michael Copperman - Open Salon - first comment:
It's the picture that gets me: that little boy is really HUGGING Obama, and the way Obama is looking at the back of the boy's head (and not up at the cameras to maximize the photo op) with tenderness, says he is paying attention to the fact that he is being genuinely hugged, that it is affecting him, he is moved.
...a man who would be a leader of all of us, showing us his thoughts and feelings in action, showing us an example of being authentic without having to say a word. What eloquence.
I want there to be a generation for whom the first president they remember was President O-bam-a, said like this boy said it.
or like Oprah's anecdote of Republican friends, watching Republican primary debates, and their young son said, Where is Rock-O-Mama?
______________________________10/18/08 adding:
Obama And The Kiddies - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (October 18, 2008):
I voted for McCain in the primary. As a political reporter and columnist in Michigan, I have the news on in our house with some frequency. That's how my now 6-year-old got to know Barack Obama. And she loved him. She asked to tag along when I went to cover his events. Maybe it's the smile, the calmness. But she felt very assured by the idea of this man being president, long before I was ready to switch my vote. She was the one trying to convince her grandparents to vote Obama last winter.
And I've found that Obama has the same effect on lots of kids, whether they come from liberal or conservative homes. He is a rock star with the under 10 crowd, believe me. And I have to say, as a journalist, I found their reactions fascinating in light of both the race debate and the fact that kids tend to be carbon copies of their parents. but not here. So that Scholastic poll doesn't surprise me at all.
So the next time you see a kid with an Obama shirt, she just might have asked for it for her birthday, like mine, instead of having it foisted upon her by overbearing parents.
Yes We Can (hold babies).
What I Hear When I Hear Obama - Michael Copperman - Open Salon - first comment:
It's the picture that gets me: that little boy is really HUGGING Obama, and the way Obama is looking at the back of the boy's head (and not up at the cameras to maximize the photo op) with tenderness, says he is paying attention to the fact that he is being genuinely hugged, that it is affecting him, he is moved.
...a man who would be a leader of all of us, showing us his thoughts and feelings in action, showing us an example of being authentic without having to say a word. What eloquence.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The New Yorker: Table of Contents: October 20, 2008
Times Tough
Facing down the credit crunch.
by Nick Paumgarten
Campaign ’08 Abroad
Japanese fans of Obama and Palin.
by Dana Goodyear
Thumbspeak: Text messages—good, bad, or indifferent?
by Louis Menand
Briefly Noted: “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”;
Per Petterson’s “To Siberia.”
by Jeffrey Frank
note url format this current "table of contents The October 20th issue of The New Yorker"
= newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2008/10/20/toc_20081013
so can call up previous table of contents, for *The Political Issue*, following format toc/date of issue/toc_dateminus7 (~maybe bcs posts one week before 'date' of issue?)
yes, consistent: newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2008/10/13/toc_20081006 cool. copying fr TOC here bcs numerous items of int, of wh one - Biden's Brief' alrdy pgmrkd to read, via asllvn.. ...read these items also...
The New Yorker: Table of Contents: October 13, 2008 - The Politics Issue
Archive: The New Yorker
Newyorker.com offers the full text of most articles published in The New Yorker since 2001 and of selected stories from before that time, as well as abstracts for all other pieces, going back to 1925. To search articles and abstracts, use the box to the right.
but not by issue, as far as I've been able to see - no list of the issues' tables of contents. right?
- Beyond the Palin
Hendrik Hertzberg on fighting dirty.
by Hendrik Hertzberg (most popular: Hendrik Hertzberg: The negativity of John McCain. )
Times Tough
Facing down the credit crunch.
by Nick Paumgarten
Campaign ’08 Abroad
Japanese fans of Obama and Palin.
by Dana Goodyear
- Biden’s Brief
What kind of Vice-President would he be?
by Ryan Lizza (most popular: Ryan Lizza: What Joe Biden wants as Vice-President. )
Thumbspeak: Text messages—good, bad, or indifferent?
by Louis Menand
Briefly Noted: “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”;
Per Petterson’s “To Siberia.”
by Jeffrey Frank
note url format this current "table of contents The October 20th issue of The New Yorker"
= newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2008/10/20/toc_20081013
so can call up previous table of contents, for *The Political Issue*, following format toc/date of issue/toc_dateminus7 (~maybe bcs posts one week before 'date' of issue?)
yes, consistent: newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2008/10/13/toc_20081006 cool. copying fr TOC here bcs numerous items of int, of wh one - Biden's Brief' alrdy pgmrkd to read, via asllvn.. ...read these items also...
The New Yorker: Table of Contents: October 13, 2008 - The Politics Issue
- The choice for President.
- (most popular: Comment: The better candidate for 2008.)
We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. after all. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. yes. he is so well suited. hope and realism, brings change and steadiness, yes. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. oh I'm happy. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.
—The Editors
- Verbage
The Republican’s word thing.
by James Wood - read thr this in print magazine, tht: well I guess The New Yorker willing to be partisan. I suppose above The Choice from the Editors makes clear that yes The New Yorker is liberal.
Archive: The New Yorker
Newyorker.com offers the full text of most articles published in The New Yorker since 2001 and of selected stories from before that time, as well as abstracts for all other pieces, going back to 1925. To search articles and abstracts, use the box to the right.
but not by issue, as far as I've been able to see - no list of the issues' tables of contents. right?
Joe the Plumber was of little use to John McCain - Los Angeles Times
Mere minutes into the final presidential debate, John McCain evoked the blue-collar man as a potential victim of Barack Obama's tax plan -- one that would prevent him from buying his own business and, as the Republican candidate put it, from "living the American dream."
Me, I want to know more. How much is ol' Joe pulling in, anyway? What company is he trying to buy? A two-man operation or, say, Roto-Rooter?
But what we do know, for sure now -- courtesy of Joe the Plumber -- is that Obama is a liberal and McCain is a conservative. So thank you, Joe the Plumber.
Never before have the two men been in such direct opposition, both in policy and in personality. Obama remained cool, even in the face of what seemed like intentional baiting by McCain, who on several occasions praised Obama's "eloquence" as if it were a synonym for duplicity.
A half-hour in, Schieffer asked the question everyone was waiting for -- would the two candidates now make the same accusations their campaigns and running mates have been leveling?
McCain strangely chose to go on the attack and said he was disappointed at Obama's silence in the face of comments that compared him to George Wallace.
Obama pointed out that he had repudiated the remarks and moved quickly to the high road, arguing that voters were less concerned with the candidates' hurt feelings than with solving economic problems.
"I don't mind being attacked for the next three weeks," Obama said, sounding like the embodiment of benevolence. "What the American people can't afford, though, is four more years of failed policy."
It's hard to imagine that McCain had planned to give the Illinois senator such an easy lob; it allowed Obama not only to look gracious, but to point out that all the recent polls indicate that Americans feel McCain has been too negative.
Mere minutes into the final presidential debate, John McCain evoked the blue-collar man as a potential victim of Barack Obama's tax plan -- one that would prevent him from buying his own business and, as the Republican candidate put it, from "living the American dream."
Me, I want to know more. How much is ol' Joe pulling in, anyway? What company is he trying to buy? A two-man operation or, say, Roto-Rooter?
But what we do know, for sure now -- courtesy of Joe the Plumber -- is that Obama is a liberal and McCain is a conservative. So thank you, Joe the Plumber.
Never before have the two men been in such direct opposition, both in policy and in personality. Obama remained cool, even in the face of what seemed like intentional baiting by McCain, who on several occasions praised Obama's "eloquence" as if it were a synonym for duplicity.
A half-hour in, Schieffer asked the question everyone was waiting for -- would the two candidates now make the same accusations their campaigns and running mates have been leveling?
McCain strangely chose to go on the attack and said he was disappointed at Obama's silence in the face of comments that compared him to George Wallace.
Obama pointed out that he had repudiated the remarks and moved quickly to the high road, arguing that voters were less concerned with the candidates' hurt feelings than with solving economic problems.
"I don't mind being attacked for the next three weeks," Obama said, sounding like the embodiment of benevolence. "What the American people can't afford, though, is four more years of failed policy."
It's hard to imagine that McCain had planned to give the Illinois senator such an easy lob; it allowed Obama not only to look gracious, but to point out that all the recent polls indicate that Americans feel McCain has been too negative.
'reax' to final debate
Final Debate Reax - (October 15, 2008) The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Ambinder: Every single attack that Sen. McCain has ever wanted to make, he took the opportunity tonight to make.
*Ta-Nehisi Coates .theatlantic:
You just heard why John McCain will lose. He pivoted from an attack on ACORN and Ayers to his campaign getting the economy back on track. Worst segue ever. The two don't line up. Ayers and ACORN don't take you to a larger campaign theme. This isn't "Swiftboating" which took you to the War on Terror. This isn't Willie Horton, which took you to crime. This isn't "States Rights" which takes you to busing and the Voting Rights Act. It's just empty demagoguery. It doesn't say anything about what is foremost in the electorate's minds.
Megan McArdle .theatlantic:
Okay, I wasn't voting for him anyway, but I find McCain's focus on attacking Obama, rather than his own policy, unbelievably grating. His strongest performance of the night has been talking about the benefits of his own health plan, drawing a reasonable distinction between his philosophy and Obama's, and coherently explaining that difference, without resorting to either whining or calumny.
Dreher - blog.beliefnet:
Obama -- man, nothing rattles that guy. McCain was two tics away from a vein-popping "You can't handle the truth!" Jack Nicholson moment, I felt. At one point, I thought: Which one of these men would I want in the White House when the 3 a.m. phone call comes in?
Jonathan Chait - blogs.tnr:
The cost of McCain's sharper tone was that he sounded more like a dogmatic Republican. Obama was softer, let many points go, but was much more effective at sounding like a moderate.
*James Fallows .theatlantic:
[Both men look very weary, and who can blame them... but]the ten minute or twelve minutes that began with Obama looking at McCain and talking about crowds at Palin rallies saying "Kill him" were riveting TV and seemed to reveal purified versions of the persona each candidate has been presenting through the previous sessions. say more about that.This debate may matter less in the long-term outcome than the others, since that's typically true of final debates. But because the contenders are engaging each other more directly -- being at the same table, being physically so close to each other, having more trouble containing their emotions, being aware that the whole thing is almost over -- in human terms this is actually the most interesting.
[More later.] = Last words from me about debates until 2012 (at the soonest) - James Fallows
- This format is the winner, compared with all the others we have seen. Forces a kind of personal engagement -- though the fact that this was the third and final round probably made a difference too. Clarifying discussion of actual substance, from health care to abortion, and rawly-honest seeming exchange about the excesses of the campaign.
- Bob Schieffer was a winner, raising provocative issues without being mindlessly horse-race oriented or too obsessed with time. His questions about dirty campaign tactics and about Sarah Palin were exemplary in this regard. yes yes yes.
- This time, McCain looked at Obama (unlike the first debate), and didn't call him "that one" (unlike the second). But he did the equivalent of both in his final statement, addressing Schieffer and others by name and then turning to Obama and saying "and it's been good to be with.... you." Not "you, Senator Obama" or "you, Barack." It was involuntary and gone in a flash, but watch it again and you'll see what I mean.
Here's why the third debate, and all three debates, helped Obama so much more than McCain.
In general-election debates, it's a losing strategy to "rally the base." That's what your own campaign events, and your fund-raisers, and your targeted ads, and your running mate are for. Especially by the time of the second and third debates, the job is to "rally the center." That's where most of remaining persuadable and undecided voters are.
Everything about Barack Obama's approach to this debate, and all debates, was consistent with this reality. Almost nothing about John McCain's approach was:
- Obama took every opportunity to steer questions back from campaign tactics to governing issues. ("It's been a tough campaign, and we have hurt feelings, but what really matters is avoiding four more years of...." All quotes here are from memory and therefore approximate, but true to the general spirit.)
- He took every opportunity to talk about "working together" to deal with those issues, ("The reality is, it's going to take Republicans and Democrats working together.")
- He took nearly every opportunity to suggest encompassing rather than polarizing approaches to the substance of those issues. ("Do we want to reduce the cost of health care or expand the coverage? We've got to do both...")
- He took every opportunity to identify areas where he and John McCain actually agreed on approaches. ("I agree with John..." might have seemed an over-used trope in the first debate. This time, very selectively, it helped in the control-the-center strategy.)
- He took most opportunities to remain calm, to stay above the fray, to seem amused rather than frazzled, not to take personal offense.And because of this general self-possession --realizing, for instance, that there was only upside in being gracious about Sarah Palin-- when he decided to bear down, as in the breathtaking "At your running mate's rallies, when someone mentions my name they say 'Terrorist' and 'Kill him,'" it was the more powerful.
Ambinder: Every single attack that Sen. McCain has ever wanted to make, he took the opportunity tonight to make.
*Ta-Nehisi Coates .theatlantic:
You just heard why John McCain will lose. He pivoted from an attack on ACORN and Ayers to his campaign getting the economy back on track. Worst segue ever. The two don't line up. Ayers and ACORN don't take you to a larger campaign theme. This isn't "Swiftboating" which took you to the War on Terror. This isn't Willie Horton, which took you to crime. This isn't "States Rights" which takes you to busing and the Voting Rights Act. It's just empty demagoguery. It doesn't say anything about what is foremost in the electorate's minds.
Megan McArdle .theatlantic:
Okay, I wasn't voting for him anyway, but I find McCain's focus on attacking Obama, rather than his own policy, unbelievably grating. His strongest performance of the night has been talking about the benefits of his own health plan, drawing a reasonable distinction between his philosophy and Obama's, and coherently explaining that difference, without resorting to either whining or calumny.
Dreher - blog.beliefnet:
Obama -- man, nothing rattles that guy. McCain was two tics away from a vein-popping "You can't handle the truth!" Jack Nicholson moment, I felt. At one point, I thought: Which one of these men would I want in the White House when the 3 a.m. phone call comes in?
Jonathan Chait - blogs.tnr:
The cost of McCain's sharper tone was that he sounded more like a dogmatic Republican. Obama was softer, let many points go, but was much more effective at sounding like a moderate.
*James Fallows .theatlantic:
[Both men look very weary, and who can blame them... but]the ten minute or twelve minutes that began with Obama looking at McCain and talking about crowds at Palin rallies saying "Kill him" were riveting TV and seemed to reveal purified versions of the persona each candidate has been presenting through the previous sessions. say more about that.This debate may matter less in the long-term outcome than the others, since that's typically true of final debates. But because the contenders are engaging each other more directly -- being at the same table, being physically so close to each other, having more trouble containing their emotions, being aware that the whole thing is almost over -- in human terms this is actually the most interesting.
[More later.] = Last words from me about debates until 2012 (at the soonest) - James Fallows
- This format is the winner, compared with all the others we have seen. Forces a kind of personal engagement -- though the fact that this was the third and final round probably made a difference too. Clarifying discussion of actual substance, from health care to abortion, and rawly-honest seeming exchange about the excesses of the campaign.
- Bob Schieffer was a winner, raising provocative issues without being mindlessly horse-race oriented or too obsessed with time. His questions about dirty campaign tactics and about Sarah Palin were exemplary in this regard. yes yes yes.
- This time, McCain looked at Obama (unlike the first debate), and didn't call him "that one" (unlike the second). But he did the equivalent of both in his final statement, addressing Schieffer and others by name and then turning to Obama and saying "and it's been good to be with.... you." Not "you, Senator Obama" or "you, Barack." It was involuntary and gone in a flash, but watch it again and you'll see what I mean.
Here's why the third debate, and all three debates, helped Obama so much more than McCain.
In general-election debates, it's a losing strategy to "rally the base." That's what your own campaign events, and your fund-raisers, and your targeted ads, and your running mate are for. Especially by the time of the second and third debates, the job is to "rally the center." That's where most of remaining persuadable and undecided voters are.
Everything about Barack Obama's approach to this debate, and all debates, was consistent with this reality. Almost nothing about John McCain's approach was:
- Obama took every opportunity to steer questions back from campaign tactics to governing issues. ("It's been a tough campaign, and we have hurt feelings, but what really matters is avoiding four more years of...." All quotes here are from memory and therefore approximate, but true to the general spirit.)
- He took every opportunity to talk about "working together" to deal with those issues, ("The reality is, it's going to take Republicans and Democrats working together.")
- He took nearly every opportunity to suggest encompassing rather than polarizing approaches to the substance of those issues. ("Do we want to reduce the cost of health care or expand the coverage? We've got to do both...")
- He took every opportunity to identify areas where he and John McCain actually agreed on approaches. ("I agree with John..." might have seemed an over-used trope in the first debate. This time, very selectively, it helped in the control-the-center strategy.)
- He took most opportunities to remain calm, to stay above the fray, to seem amused rather than frazzled, not to take personal offense.And because of this general self-possession --realizing, for instance, that there was only upside in being gracious about Sarah Palin-- when he decided to bear down, as in the breathtaking "At your running mate's rallies, when someone mentions my name they say 'Terrorist' and 'Kill him,'" it was the more powerful.
Althouse: Live-blogging the final debate.
8:05: The first question, on the financial crisis, gives them both a chance to give a speech that they could have prepared in advance. With a chance at a follow-up, McCain plugs in prepared material about Joe the plumber who is worried about taxes. He should have listened to Obama's answer and responded very precisely to that. Generally, Obama seems much more fluid and complex, and McCain is wooden and overprepared, unwilling to react on the spot. When he's not speaking, McCain sits with his hands folded on the table. Obama speaks again, then McCain hits him with the "spread the wealth around" comment that Obama made to Joe the plumber. He's coming alive a bit now [McCain]. But I don't know how many more times he can say "Joe the plumber." If we'd put "Joe the plumber" on the drinking game list, we'd be sprawling under the table already.
8:22: McCain asks Obama to say when he's ever stood up to his party. And Obama has (what sounds like) some good examples: tort reform, charter schools.... which McCain then unconvincingly refers to as unconvincing.
9:07: The Supreme Court. McCain notes his record of voting for judicial nominees based on their qualifications. This is a good point, because Obama has voted against highly qualified Supreme Court nominees, while McCain voted for Justice Ginsburg. They're both against "litmus tests" (of course).
8:28: The closing statements at last. McCain sounds over-rehearsed and he stumbles over many things. He says "abased" for "based." I think he knows he hasn't done enough tonight. He hasn't rattled Obama, not enough anyway. Obama is doing his final statement now. It's not particularly interesting, but it's filling the space, and we're probably not listening, because we know, he's survived the final ordeal. He will be our President, I think, and I think they both know that. wow. have there been moments like this before? of, this person is probably going to win, and it seems momentous. was it like that with Clinton, in campaign against GWHBush? or does it specially feel like ppl say this "He will soon likely be our President" in a slower, weighty way bcs of his race, what he represents for progress, change, hope? They shake hands, and we hear McCain vigorously congratulating the younger man -- our future President, in all likelihood -- "Good job! Good job!" really? I didn't catch that. but was up moving about. and it sounds like McCain I guess same way he said 'good job' on night of Obama's acceptance of nomination at DNC.
8:05: The first question, on the financial crisis, gives them both a chance to give a speech that they could have prepared in advance. With a chance at a follow-up, McCain plugs in prepared material about Joe the plumber who is worried about taxes. He should have listened to Obama's answer and responded very precisely to that. Generally, Obama seems much more fluid and complex, and McCain is wooden and overprepared, unwilling to react on the spot. When he's not speaking, McCain sits with his hands folded on the table. Obama speaks again, then McCain hits him with the "spread the wealth around" comment that Obama made to Joe the plumber. He's coming alive a bit now [McCain]. But I don't know how many more times he can say "Joe the plumber." If we'd put "Joe the plumber" on the drinking game list, we'd be sprawling under the table already.
8:22: McCain asks Obama to say when he's ever stood up to his party. And Obama has (what sounds like) some good examples: tort reform, charter schools.... which McCain then unconvincingly refers to as unconvincing.
9:07: The Supreme Court. McCain notes his record of voting for judicial nominees based on their qualifications. This is a good point, because Obama has voted against highly qualified Supreme Court nominees, while McCain voted for Justice Ginsburg. They're both against "litmus tests" (of course).
8:28: The closing statements at last. McCain sounds over-rehearsed and he stumbles over many things. He says "abased" for "based." I think he knows he hasn't done enough tonight. He hasn't rattled Obama, not enough anyway. Obama is doing his final statement now. It's not particularly interesting, but it's filling the space, and we're probably not listening, because we know, he's survived the final ordeal. He will be our President, I think, and I think they both know that. wow. have there been moments like this before? of, this person is probably going to win, and it seems momentous. was it like that with Clinton, in campaign against GWHBush? or does it specially feel like ppl say this "He will soon likely be our President" in a slower, weighty way bcs of his race, what he represents for progress, change, hope? They shake hands, and we hear McCain vigorously congratulating the younger man -- our future President, in all likelihood -- "Good job! Good job!" really? I didn't catch that. but was up moving about. and it sounds like McCain I guess same way he said 'good job' on night of Obama's acceptance of nomination at DNC.
dailykos; in-fighting
Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga - Wkp: (born 11 September 1971), often known by his username and former military moniker "Kos" (kōs), is the founder and main author of Daily Kos, a weblog focusing on liberal and Democratic Party politics.
Moulitsas was born in Chicago, Illinois to a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, and grew up in El Salvador. (Following the Spanish language custom for surnames, his last name is "Moulitsas", not "Zúniga".)
He served in the U.S. Army from 1989 through 1992; while stationed in Germany, and after missing deployment to the Gulf War "by a hair",[1] he changed his political affiliation from the Republican to the Democratic Party. He has described the American military as "perhaps the ideal society – we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return."
Moulitsas founded Daily Kos in May 2002, and the site quickly rose to prominence. Kerry, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and many other Democratic senators, congressmen, governors and candidates have posted on the site. The site now has more than 180,000 registered members.
looking at kos, wh I've heard of but scarcely read (like all the political blogs) before now, bcs of this on asllvn:
The Socialization Of The Pundit Class - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Kos is onto something. I'm horribly anti-social with my fellow pundits. And I'm lucky enough to have been able to write this blog for eight years without having to belong to any party or clique. I realize now how unusual this is. But it helps explain why it was a lot easier for me to call these Republicans out as total poseurs long before most of my fellow conservative hacks.
= kos: Getting invited to all the cool shows and parties
Douhat:'I've always found the class-war element in inter-pundit sniping a little bizarre: Whether it's the netroots types hating on center-left columnists, or paleocons whining about how neocons get invited to all the cool parties, or Hanson's peculiar vision of David Brooks and Barack Obama chatting about Proust on the Acela (or something like that)...'
Problem is, it's pretty much true. NYC and DC sports a cocktail party circuit, and remaining in its good graces requires toeing the line of David Broder and Joe Klein. .. It's clear that the social aspects of these scenes do reinforce certain ideological tenets, depending on the scene. You even see that in the blogosphere, as bloggers "socialize" with each other via links and whatnot. And if one of our set's members goes off the reservation, like John Cole did last year? Mass delinking.
Today, the establishment conventional wisdom is that Palin is a cancer on the Republican Party, and that CW is getting circulated at those cocktail parties, reinforced time and time again. And if those social-climbing pundits and establishment types want to keep their social graces, they must play along. int. so the toeing of the line here is the people ~ like Brooks ~ denouncing Palin. not the ~loyalty~ of the folks eg at The Corner, National Rvw, who continue to enthuse about her and who have been playing up the Ayers attack. Thus you see a rift forming on the Right -- between the establishment types and dogmatic conservatives. In this case it's the establishment that is right, not the ideologues, but that's beside the point.
NRO's Mark Levin bemoans here: Let's be honest, Frum was invited on CBS because the producer knew he has expressed repeatedly his dislike of Palin. He represents a tiny fraction of conservatives but makes for good liberal TV. K-Lo responds: No question about it, Mark. I never got more media requests than the day I criticized the campaign for holding Palin too tight, overcoaching her, and not setting her free.
The media loves internal fights like nothing else. yeah why is that? I mean, I find it int. good human drama? It has nothing to do with "liberal TV", as Levin fantasizes. Like K-Lo says, nothing will generate more media requests than one of my pieces blasting Democrats. Those requests are certainly ignored, since there's a place for our dirty laundry, and it ain't on some bullshit cable news show. But for years it's our side that has had to suffer Harold Ford, Joe Lieberman, Lanny Davis, and the whole lot of "Democratic strategists" who do little but criticize and undermine our own party. Conservatives haven't had to deal with that annoying media tic because 1) conservatives had little to complain about, they had the trifecta, and 2) conservatives have always been able to keep their people in line better than us. That's all changing. And while I sympathize, all I can say is "welcome to our world". View Comments | 198 comments
Bitter, Party Of Rove - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Wolcott: ...does anyone truly believe that the Rovians around McCain wouldn't be wielding a mace against Wright if they thought it would work? Even if it offended McCain's proud sensibilities, we know Sarah Palin wouldn't have any hesitation spouting whatever shit they set before her. The meta ruckus over Rev Wright ruckus is the preliminary round of the blame game Republicans are ready to play to rationalize what they fear will be a wipeout this November. It's already a treat watching Mark Steyn in a mock-populist snit over Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Obama, and Mark Levin rattling his parrot cage over the media attention given David Frum's thumbs-down of Sarah Palin. It can only get better (i.e., more bitter) from here.
All The King's Men - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Larison has some good insight into GOP fidelity: The loyalist is bound by devotion, and the conformist by fear, usually fear of an enemy or opponent. We see the former when people rally to a monarch or leader they genuinely admire, and we see the latter in support for a dictator as the lesser of two evils.
Moulitsas was born in Chicago, Illinois to a Salvadoran mother and Greek father, and grew up in El Salvador. (Following the Spanish language custom for surnames, his last name is "Moulitsas", not "Zúniga".)
He served in the U.S. Army from 1989 through 1992; while stationed in Germany, and after missing deployment to the Gulf War "by a hair",[1] he changed his political affiliation from the Republican to the Democratic Party. He has described the American military as "perhaps the ideal society – we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return."
Moulitsas founded Daily Kos in May 2002, and the site quickly rose to prominence. Kerry, Jimmy Carter, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and many other Democratic senators, congressmen, governors and candidates have posted on the site. The site now has more than 180,000 registered members.
looking at kos, wh I've heard of but scarcely read (like all the political blogs) before now, bcs of this on asllvn:
The Socialization Of The Pundit Class - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Kos is onto something. I'm horribly anti-social with my fellow pundits. And I'm lucky enough to have been able to write this blog for eight years without having to belong to any party or clique. I realize now how unusual this is. But it helps explain why it was a lot easier for me to call these Republicans out as total poseurs long before most of my fellow conservative hacks.
= kos: Getting invited to all the cool shows and parties
Douhat:'I've always found the class-war element in inter-pundit sniping a little bizarre: Whether it's the netroots types hating on center-left columnists, or paleocons whining about how neocons get invited to all the cool parties, or Hanson's peculiar vision of David Brooks and Barack Obama chatting about Proust on the Acela (or something like that)...'
Problem is, it's pretty much true. NYC and DC sports a cocktail party circuit, and remaining in its good graces requires toeing the line of David Broder and Joe Klein. .. It's clear that the social aspects of these scenes do reinforce certain ideological tenets, depending on the scene. You even see that in the blogosphere, as bloggers "socialize" with each other via links and whatnot. And if one of our set's members goes off the reservation, like John Cole did last year? Mass delinking.
Today, the establishment conventional wisdom is that Palin is a cancer on the Republican Party, and that CW is getting circulated at those cocktail parties, reinforced time and time again. And if those social-climbing pundits and establishment types want to keep their social graces, they must play along. int. so the toeing of the line here is the people ~ like Brooks ~ denouncing Palin. not the ~loyalty~ of the folks eg at The Corner, National Rvw, who continue to enthuse about her and who have been playing up the Ayers attack. Thus you see a rift forming on the Right -- between the establishment types and dogmatic conservatives. In this case it's the establishment that is right, not the ideologues, but that's beside the point.
NRO's Mark Levin bemoans here: Let's be honest, Frum was invited on CBS because the producer knew he has expressed repeatedly his dislike of Palin. He represents a tiny fraction of conservatives but makes for good liberal TV. K-Lo responds: No question about it, Mark. I never got more media requests than the day I criticized the campaign for holding Palin too tight, overcoaching her, and not setting her free.
The media loves internal fights like nothing else. yeah why is that? I mean, I find it int. good human drama? It has nothing to do with "liberal TV", as Levin fantasizes. Like K-Lo says, nothing will generate more media requests than one of my pieces blasting Democrats. Those requests are certainly ignored, since there's a place for our dirty laundry, and it ain't on some bullshit cable news show. But for years it's our side that has had to suffer Harold Ford, Joe Lieberman, Lanny Davis, and the whole lot of "Democratic strategists" who do little but criticize and undermine our own party. Conservatives haven't had to deal with that annoying media tic because 1) conservatives had little to complain about, they had the trifecta, and 2) conservatives have always been able to keep their people in line better than us. That's all changing. And while I sympathize, all I can say is "welcome to our world". View Comments | 198 comments
Bitter, Party Of Rove - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Wolcott: ...does anyone truly believe that the Rovians around McCain wouldn't be wielding a mace against Wright if they thought it would work? Even if it offended McCain's proud sensibilities, we know Sarah Palin wouldn't have any hesitation spouting whatever shit they set before her. The meta ruckus over Rev Wright ruckus is the preliminary round of the blame game Republicans are ready to play to rationalize what they fear will be a wipeout this November. It's already a treat watching Mark Steyn in a mock-populist snit over Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Obama, and Mark Levin rattling his parrot cage over the media attention given David Frum's thumbs-down of Sarah Palin. It can only get better (i.e., more bitter) from here.
All The King's Men - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Larison has some good insight into GOP fidelity: The loyalist is bound by devotion, and the conformist by fear, usually fear of an enemy or opponent. We see the former when people rally to a monarch or leader they genuinely admire, and we see the latter in support for a dictator as the lesser of two evils.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
final debate
Daily Kos: Post debate thoughts: On substance, I actually thought McCain had his best performance thus far yes, when not distracting with his weird facial expressions and snorting. But still, Obama is on another level altogether. Perhaps if Romney or Giuliani was the nominee these would be fairer contests, but it's not even close. And while McCain seemed better prepared than in the previous debates, tonight was also the wingnuttiest McCain has looked all campaign. huh. is that bcs his aim was to show Obama as liberal? big spending, tax raising, anti trade (Colombia). All the veneer of being a moderate was stripped away as he derisively tossed aside the notion of "health of the mother". The notion was a insult to his sensibilities!
Not that it matters. There was nothing here tonight that would change minds. Given that Obama has already broken 50 percent nationally and in the key battleground states, and that significant percentage of voters have already cast their early votes, McCain needed to radically transform the shape of the race. That means a homerun performance coupled with an Obama collapse. Neither happened. I'll let the snap polls determine who "won" the debate, but no matter what they proclaim, this race is pretty much over.
Permalink :: Discuss (514 comments)
Look at McCain's "Deer in Headlights" moment: Permalink [youtube vid of Obama addressing Joe: your fine will be zero. McCain: zero? I think McCain meant to convey derision here, mocking astonishment at what Obama was saying (not that he was simply taken aback at the answer, that he was wrong), right? and he then tried to reply by saying that since Joe wants to buy the company he works for, that would put him in the big business category -did I follow McCain correctly here? that would not be exempt from Obama's 'fine' - in Obama's words, from contributing to a kitty that covers the uninsured, so that taxpayers don't have to.]
kos- Snap Polls: CBS and CNN -- Obama wins big Permalink ::Discuss (466 comments)
CBS poll of undecided voters: Who won the debate? McCain (R) 22 Obama (D) 53
Shares your values: Obama, Before the debate: 54 Obama, After the debate: 63
McCain, Before the debate: 53 McCain, After the debate: 56
CNN poll of voters who watched debate: Who won the debate? McCain (R) 31 Obama (D) 58
Favorable/Unfavorable Obama, before debate: 63/35 Obama, after debate: 66/33
McCain, before debate: 51/45 McCain, after debate: 49/49
McCain LOST popularity.
asllvn- The First Poll Permalink CBS unsurprisingly gives it to Obama by a big 53 - 22 percent margin. McCain made some headway on taxes, but this is brutal:
Before the debate, 54 percent thought Obama shared their values. That percentage rose to 63 percent after the debate. For McCain, 53 percent thought he shared their values before the debate, and 56 percent thought so afterwards.
kos- CNN poll, broken down Permalink :: Discuss (292 comments)
So the CNN pundits kept harping on the fact that their snap poll gave Dems a 10-point sample advantage, thus supposedly rendering it less accurate. Well, now they've broken it down:
Who did the best job in the debate?
Independents: McCain (R) 31 Obama (D) 57
Republicans: McCain (R) 68 Obama (D) 18
Democrats: McCain (R) 5 Obama (D) 88
Look how poorly McCain did with Republicans, compared to Democrats and Obama. And of course, Independents LOVED Obama.
asllvn- CNN Too Permalink
Another very clear victory for Obama: 58 to 31 percent.
kos- No one gives a crap about Ayers Permalink :: Discuss (193 comments)
CNN poll: Obama's connection to William Ayers matters to you...
Not At All 51 Not Much 11 Somewhat 14 Great Deal 23
So let's see, the crazy NRO set is about 23 percent of the country, which also --by the way-- is the number of people who still think President Bush is doing a kick-ass job. Everyone else has other,more important things to worry about.
Not that it matters. There was nothing here tonight that would change minds. Given that Obama has already broken 50 percent nationally and in the key battleground states, and that significant percentage of voters have already cast their early votes, McCain needed to radically transform the shape of the race. That means a homerun performance coupled with an Obama collapse. Neither happened. I'll let the snap polls determine who "won" the debate, but no matter what they proclaim, this race is pretty much over.
Permalink :: Discuss (514 comments)
Look at McCain's "Deer in Headlights" moment: Permalink [youtube vid of Obama addressing Joe: your fine will be zero. McCain: zero? I think McCain meant to convey derision here, mocking astonishment at what Obama was saying (not that he was simply taken aback at the answer, that he was wrong), right? and he then tried to reply by saying that since Joe wants to buy the company he works for, that would put him in the big business category -did I follow McCain correctly here? that would not be exempt from Obama's 'fine' - in Obama's words, from contributing to a kitty that covers the uninsured, so that taxpayers don't have to.]
kos- Snap Polls: CBS and CNN -- Obama wins big Permalink ::Discuss (466 comments)
CBS poll of undecided voters: Who won the debate? McCain (R) 22 Obama (D) 53
Shares your values: Obama, Before the debate: 54 Obama, After the debate: 63
McCain, Before the debate: 53 McCain, After the debate: 56
CNN poll of voters who watched debate: Who won the debate? McCain (R) 31 Obama (D) 58
Favorable/Unfavorable Obama, before debate: 63/35 Obama, after debate: 66/33
McCain, before debate: 51/45 McCain, after debate: 49/49
McCain LOST popularity.
asllvn- The First Poll Permalink CBS unsurprisingly gives it to Obama by a big 53 - 22 percent margin. McCain made some headway on taxes, but this is brutal:
Before the debate, 54 percent thought Obama shared their values. That percentage rose to 63 percent after the debate. For McCain, 53 percent thought he shared their values before the debate, and 56 percent thought so afterwards.
kos- CNN poll, broken down Permalink :: Discuss (292 comments)
So the CNN pundits kept harping on the fact that their snap poll gave Dems a 10-point sample advantage, thus supposedly rendering it less accurate. Well, now they've broken it down:
Who did the best job in the debate?
Independents: McCain (R) 31 Obama (D) 57
Republicans: McCain (R) 68 Obama (D) 18
Democrats: McCain (R) 5 Obama (D) 88
Look how poorly McCain did with Republicans, compared to Democrats and Obama. And of course, Independents LOVED Obama.
asllvn- CNN Too Permalink
Another very clear victory for Obama: 58 to 31 percent.
kos- No one gives a crap about Ayers Permalink :: Discuss (193 comments)
CNN poll: Obama's connection to William Ayers matters to you...
Not At All 51 Not Much 11 Somewhat 14 Great Deal 23
So let's see, the crazy NRO set is about 23 percent of the country, which also --by the way-- is the number of people who still think President Bush is doing a kick-ass job. Everyone else has other,
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