NYCweboy

We're On The Road... To Nowhere.

One of the things that's kept me silent these days is that the Presidential race is at once so lopsided and at the same time so unappealingly dull that it hardly seems worth the effort. John McCain appears to be such a mess-up at campaigning that even the basics of, you know, having a different view from your opponent - nevermind one that actually makes sense - seems to elude him. Which would be a pure romp... for anyone except Obama, who seems determined to be his own lackluster argument against himself.

I'm not really sure what one can or should say about his far-flung, mostly weird, foreign trip; shamed - by McCain! - into arranging a trip to Iraq, he's tacked on a string of destinations that would seem like a Presidnetial tour... except, you know, he's not President, at least not yet, and so often he seems to leap ahead to step 7 expecting us not to ask pesky questions like... when did you do the first 6? And again, this would work against him... but the only one underlining his not-yet-President-ness is Obama himself. McCain seems utterly flummoxed by how to run against the guy. And this is, well, how else to put it, not exactly a recommendation for becoming the leader of the free world.

Obama benefited tremendously, I think, from the fact that Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's President, has both seen the handwriting on the wall (about Obama's near sure victory), and, well, the handwriting on the wall (that being perceived as pro-America will wreck his political chances long term), and decided to press for American troops out of Iraq as fast as possible. Which, conveniently, fits a timetable a lot like the one Obama's proposed. Well, except that it isn't.

That al-Maliki wounded McCain, I think, was incidental: his real goal was gnawing off the chain attaching his leg to the Bush Administration, and McCain was just collateral damage. There's been somedebate over at Ezra's about whether Obama was just lucky, and I said there (with mostly the usual opposition) that it wasn't dumb luck, but it was the luck of dovetailing with al-Maliki's spectacularly lousy judgment. The point is, we are where we are on Iraq because Nuri al-Maliki has turned out to be such a remarkable dud: a Shi'ite who can't work with the Sunnis, who can't put down armed rebellion on his own, and who can't broker the political compromises necessary to successfully govern. That he now sees the Bush folks as adversaries isn't surprising; what is surprising is that he can't see that courting both ides is his only way to hang onto power. Obama can leave Iraq, just as al-Maliki asks, owing him basically nothing... and probably favoring another leader in his place. While the bridge burning he did this week with his neoconservative support base here pretty much dooms him.

And all of this makes Obama look like a genius... though I suspect, even now, that his skill at benefiting from other's weaknesses isn't the same thing as the skills a President needs to lead; the actual genius in Obama, I'm still waiting to see. I have my doubts about seeing it before he gets back: the leadup to "the speech in Berlin" seems like serious oversell, yet again trying to draoe a Kennedy mantle on Obama that doesn't fit the man or the times. Obama's no Kennedy (which isn't a bad thing, really), and this is not Berlin in the postwar, Cold War frontlines. Berlin, as an example of the challenges the European Union faces... isn't the best model; why not Brussels, or Frankfurt, or Ireland? And if it's terrorism or Arab/European divides that Obama plans to highlight, Berlin's connection to those issues is tenuous, at best.

This trip "makes Obama look Presidential" in the sense that, well, lacking one and lacking a serious Republican challenger, almost anything Obama does, and almost anywhere he goes, makes it look as though the matter has already been settled. I'd like to think McCain's just waiting for his moment to strike... but I'm pretty sure that what he's throwing at Obama now is pretty much all he has, and it's not very much. And, yet again, in the absence of opposition, Obama provides his own: witha huge lumbering doreign policy operation atht seems to struggle with the basics, and who ultimately seem to offer little beyond "we're not them" in terms of alternatives to the Bush Administration. And who can blame them? "We're not them" is pretty much enough for many. It's a shame because I think what we're already learning is that without dissent and a strong opposing argument, Obama tends to assume we're all on the same page... his page. And of course, lots of people aren't on it. As if that matters, on the road to nowhere.

The Sunday Funnies

As long as I am praising articles from the Sunday New York Times, let's give a shout out to Lee Siegel, who makes the point I was trying to make about the New Yorker cartoon being poor satire... and of course, doing it that much better.

Oh, and as long as I'm at it, let's give a link to TalkLeft's presentation of Vanity Fair's tweak of their Conde Nast cousin, with an even funnier version of a McCain cartoon.

One... And That's Not Funny. (Or, Are You Ready For The New Seriousness?)

Time and others are taking her (as usual) to task for her snarkiness, but I have to say I think Maureen Dowd is onto something... though not something that's as bad as she thinks.

Flash forward to the kerfuffle — and Obama’s icy reaction — over this week’s New Yorker cover parodying fears about the Obamas.

“We’ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor, too?” wrote James Rainey in The Los Angeles Times, suggesting “an irony deficiency” in Obama and his fans.

Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

Dowd, of course, is worried about being out of a job... or at least, as Joe Klein suggests, forced to be serious.. but as I said, I think she's on to something, something I've been noting for a couple of posts and counting: the New Yorker flap, the discussion of humorlessness... there's something of a sea-change coming in political comedy, I think.

The Book, Not By It's Cover

Mom finally got her New Yorker issue last night, and while the cover is no more or less what I thought it was  (and as a aside to commenter Fabio, I think "irony" may be slightly ahead of "satire" in words we misuse to describe humor). I also got a glance, finally, at that article by Ryan Lizza inside. Only a glance because my Mom and my sister both have claims on reading it first.

Still, here's the online version, and I urge anyone who wants to fill out their picture of Obama to give it a read. I have to say I find it as disconcerting as anything I've read on the man - Lizza approaches Obama with the kind of healthy skepticism that's been missing from a lot of coverage (and I'd say the reactions to his piece suggest we're not getting the rest of the press on board for deep scrutiny anytime soon), and paints a picture of a man better defined by his ambitions than by his actual works (from what I've seen, Lizza's explanations of Obama's political calculations in joining Trinity United Church alone speak volumes).

Although I have my issues with the New Yorker, and its political coverage operation (I don't think they get a lot of great insight from Rik Hertzberg, especially, or really even Seymour Hersh), but they've got some great talent and a healthy skepticism - something that I think many New York lefties may be uncomfortable with when they're ferreting out the untold stories of an Obama administration rather than the failures of the current one. In any case, read that piece (and check out this recent one by Dorothy Wickenden, while you're at it). Don't - just - judge a book by its cover.

Hot Stuff

I think it's the heat.

The string of heat waves this summer have done a lot to sap my brain power, and make almost any distraction from writing look appealing. I think the heat has also made news a bit stupid, too: precious little of any real import is leading the news - even though the serious stuff that's happening is pretty awful and serious - making Christie Brinkley's divorce settlement somehow seem deep.

So, while I've been pretty silent, I haven't been completely out of the loop. Here are the things I've been following, in short form. I'm thinking a summary approach may help me jump start my writing again... plus it doesn't take so much energy.  Plus... with the rain this morning, it's also a little bit cooler. So here goes:

• FISA Follies - I'm sort of fascinated at how the FISA story won't go away, and how it's become something of a rallying cry for a new disillusionment with Obama. What's really disheartening is that all the protesting won't amount to a hill of beans.  And PS, funny how Clinton wound up on the right side of that one... and hilarious how the Hillary Haters just couldn't admit she'd gotten it right without some caveat...
• Testicular Fortitude Theology - I think anyone's slow slide into irrelevancy after years in the public eye is a sad, painful thing to watch. Still, it's a real car crash moment with this whole Jesse Jackson "cut his nuts off" comment, ain't it? I mean can't look away, can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy... the whole bit. Still, what an amazing, spectacularly inappropriate thing to say - and on a live mike! - and while some want to try and hang an Obama critique on it... I'd say... best not to go there. Jackson's notion of his own importance is such a lost cause, and his irrelevancy so apparent at this point... I think it's best not to draw more attention to him.
• Mediscare - One of the somewhat overlooked stories of the past couple of weeks is the collapse of... er... testicular fortitude when it comes to dealing with the healthcare crisis. Paul Krugman suggested - and Ezra Klein approvingly noted - that Congress' decision to raid Medicare HMO funds to fund a softening of cuts in doctor's fees under Medicare fee for service was a good thing... but it's totally not. Aside from the fact that Medicare HMOs are proving to be a positive step in delivering care to some seniors the fact that no one wants to address spiraling healthcare costs in any serious way is the biggest indication that the talk of "healthcare reform" is almost entirely talk (for the best explanation of this, check out wisewon's comment in Ezra's post; wisewon is one of the smartest people I read on healthcare issues, a doc with a great understanding of the issues). Krugman points to the notion that a united Democratic front can defeat GOP intransigence... but when that united front is in place largely to give gifts to doctors... that doesn't seem like a good place to be.
• Fannie and Freddie - One very large hen came home to roost this week, a two- headed monster called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The two semi-private mortgage banks have been in free fall as the extent - and depth - of the mortgage crisis became all too clear in the last few weeks. Though "too big to fail" may turn out to be true, the real problem with Fannie and Freddie is not that they are part of the mortgage crisis... it's that, with some 50% of all mortgages tied to them, they are the mortgage crisis. It's easy, as some have done yet again, to blame mismanagement at both firms; there's definitely loads of scandals still to come. But this is also a problem 70+ years in the making, as a reasonably well conceived and intentioned notion of providing government support to some home buyers gradually morphed into a system of purchasing every mortgage under $400,000.  Now the two lenders have some 5 trillion dollars worth of potentially wrecked debt that the government may have to assume... which will double the national deficit overnight. And for once, the Wall Street Journal is right: this was avoidable, and it's astonishing how stupid people have been in letting Fannie and Freddie grow beyond all reason.
• Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today - oh come on, you know you looked at the Christie Brinkley story too: and what earthly good to drag each other through a week's worth of embarrassing revelations (worse for him... but who wants a psychiatrist's testimony that you need therapy for your lousy taste in men?), to reach a settlement that almost everyone knew was pretty much where they'd wind up anyway? And while Cook may look like a total loser while Brinkley hangs on to most of her fortune, one of the interesting side notes was the fact that she's sitting on some 18 properties in the Hamptons; which, given the disastrous real estate market out there and everywhere, may not be the gold mine some think it is.

The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds

As I started thinking about a post for this week's politics, I remembered "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". What I forgot was where the phrase came from, or the quote in its entirety.  The line comes, naturally, from Emerson; as Secretary of The Emerson Literary Society at school (It sounds far more formal than it ever was in reality), one of my duties - and one I took seriously - was to find Emerson quotes to read at regular House meetings. The result was an exposure to Emerson for which I am still grateful.

But I'd forgotten that the line about consistency comes from Self Reliance, and speaks, actually, to the fact of living as a contrarian (and contain a number of brilliant, memorable lines to boot). The consistency Emerson is decrying is about the pressure to conform to the group, the refusal to strike out on one's own, march to a different drummer, stick to one's own ideas. Emerson says:

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Don't Rain On My Parade

I could, of course, be talking about the thunderstorms that dropped on yesterday's New York Pride Parade (which I missed by being indoors), but I'm thinking more, these days about the, um, "unity" run-up to the Democratic National Convention.

As you probably know, we're all 100% behind Barack Obama.

Or else.

Never mind the disgruntlement of "PUMAs", those Clinton supporters, like Riverdaughter, who intend to hold out as long as is necessary (which I can't, in good conscience, support myself); the last couple of weeks have brought forth all sorts of disquieting moments in what we're all supposed to see as an amazing show of unity:

Lower 9th Ward Photo Essay

I'd been wanting to write about LA's Gov. Bobby Jindal, who's been popping up around the intertubes lately as a possible VP candidate for McCain, a former biology major who's performed exorcisms, and the leader of the state that just passed by a landslide the teaching of intelligent design in local schools.  But honestly, you should just read this post at Firedoglake.  It's got all details of the horrendous, humorless, dangerous irony of Jindal's Reaganesque conservative rise against the backdrop of Katrina.

My contribution? A dear friend's work-in-progress photo essay of the "recovery" of the Lower 9th Ward, captured from January 2006 through August 2007 (and the second anniversary of the storm).  It will be updated next month.

I guess LA school children will be learning how God leveled New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina to punish those homosexuals after all. 

From McCain/Jindal '08, may G-d save us all. 

- Redstar
x-posted at The Redstar Perspective

In Obama's Speech on Cities, its 1996 Again

In his speech at the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting, Sen. Obama spoke of the need for a “new” approach to urban policy, but he failed to offer any. Instead, Obama embraced 1990s metropolitan rhetoric favored by centrist, neoliberal DC groups ($) such as the Brookings Institution. (In 1996, Brookings re-christened its urban policy group the Metropolitan Policy Program. )

Metropolitan policy, now the dominant mode of urban thought in DC, responds to the reality that poverty, an aging housing stock, and other traditionally “urban” problems are spreading out into “inner-ring” suburbs. Yet, metropolitan rhetoric sprung from persistent urban challenges such as concentrated poverty that reached record levels in the early 1990s. Policy solutions, in their efforts to make cities attractive to the tax-paying middle-class, sacrificed large numbers of urban households struggling to cope. Solutions included “de-concentrating” urban poor communities and “revitalizing” those areas by providing mixed-income housing and proximate amenities, and theoretically positively influencing the fewer remaining low-income residents with middle-class values and models.

Research on almost two decades of de-concentration has been mixed at best.  Residents who move out nonetheless remain in high poverty areas, many who are relocated are lost in the process so their outcomes are unknown, relocation is always disruptive, and it has a disproportionate negative impact on young boys. (Some research shows positive impacts for young girls, due to increased safety from physical and sexual violence.) No doubt, some programs can be done well.  The Seattle Housing Authority provided a one for one unit replacement when they redeveloped their projects, which is a good start. But HUD discourages this kind of expensive attempt at equity and since their HOPE VI mixed-income housing programs were launched in 1992, tens of thousands of deeply affordable units have been lost nationwide.

No wonder poverty is spreading to the suburbs.

Every Single Step Was Trouble For The Fool Who Stumbled On It

This is for J:

J, you asked me to think of reasons to oppose McCain and I found one, on the ride home, and it's kind of obvious. But let me start with what I heard.

On Fresh Aire tonight, they interviewed Philippe Sands, an international lawyer out of London who's written a couple of books on the Bush Administration and International Law.  The second one, just published is Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, and he was discussing his various findings.

I know it's sometimes easy on the left to say we've heard all of this but it bears repeating: the torture poicies of this Administration are unconscionable... as in no person of good conscience can possibly defend them, or allow them to continue. This is why Guantanamo Bay must be closed, why we must reverse Bush directives to use "coercive techniques" in interrogations, and reaffirm our commitments as a nation to the Geneva Conventions, not just in letter, but in spirit. It's why the recent Bomedienne decision by the Supreme Court is so important.

As Sands pointed out tonight, while John McCain has said that he would move to close Guantanamo Bay, his statements on torture and on Rule of Law have gotten progressively weaker as the campaign has gone on. As a Republican, he may well move to quash investigations of the past Administration, and attempts to flesh out the understanding of what happened and why... steps that are crucial to understanding how and when decisions were made, who, if anyone, should be prosecuted, and how to deal with the damage that's resulted.

Barack Obama will close Guantanamo Bay. It's clear that he will allow these investigations to go forward. He will reaffirm the Geneva Conventions and the Rule of Law. And he will, most likely, end the use of coercive techniques. Techniques which, no one seems to want to admit, are actually called Torture. McCain's history in Vietnam is not the only part of his story: as a trained Military man, his approach to the War on Terror - a poor choice of words all along - will perpetuate, not end, American policies that need to be stopped.

I have my issues with Obama, and this campaign... but on this point, let's be clear: The differences are stark, and important. John McCain is not the answer. And for now, that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama.

Anyway J, hope that helps.