I wasn't planning to post anything today (yes, just hours of silence, punctuated by the uncomfortable sense that I've fallen off the face of the Earth), but Peter Goodman in the New York Times gave me an easy one: confirmation of yesterday's post that the economy is providing a reality check to the Obama budget.
The economy is spiraling down at an accelerating pace, threatening
to undermine the Obama administration’s spending plans, which
anticipate vigorous rates of growth in years to come.
A sense of disconnect between
the projections by the White House and the grim realities of everyday
American life was enhanced on Friday, as the Commerce Department gave a
harsher assessment for the last three months of 2008. In place of an
initial estimate that the economy contracted at an annualized rate of
3.8 percent — already abysmal — the government said that the pace of
decline was actually 6.2 percent, making it the worst quarter since
1982.
The amazing thing is how the ground has shifted: I think up until October of last year, any announcement of "ending the war in Iraq" would be the big news of the day (or week or year)... but our economic times don't just make the ending inevitable, they make it anti-climatic.
Sure, there's grumbling about the 18 month time frame for withdrawal (and even more pointed grumbling that 35-50,000 troops is a lot to "leave behind" on an open-ended commitment), but I think Obama's pretty much won the news cycle on this one... and he's guaranteed a political payoff: by timing the "end" of the war to the end of August next year... he's set up a midterm election where "we ended the war in Iraq" will be a campaign talking point in the midterm elections.
The Iraq War has never been, for me, quite the angry cause it has been for other liberal activists; as much as I don't think we should have gone in, and as much as I think we made a host of major mistakes, the only way to have prevented what happened, pretty much, was not to have put Bush in the White House to begin with. After that, it was all downhill.
And here we are, years later, an economy in tatters, international policies in ruins, and with a country that really can't (still) survive on its own. And here I am, writing myself back into that angry, Bush Legacy corner again. No matter what we do... some things just won't change.
Perhaps the clearest indication of the new financial reality isn't anything in Washington (which, counterintuitively, may be the one local economy experiencing growth), but the stock market: since January 1, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost more than 1,500 points.
What's remarkable is that the downward slide - which this week passed the floor we hit last November at the worst of the initial cliff dive - is how consistent it's been: whatever happens, no news is about the only good news to be had. Any other news... and the market slides some more.
Which is why a good way to understand the problems we face with the Obama budget go well beyond its good ideas and good intentions: pretty much from the moment it was revealed, the selloff began.
From falling home sales (and home prices) to a decline in homes for sale (as Dean Baker notes, a bizarre turn of events that suggests people have started pulling their homes from the market), to the failures of the car companies (not just Chrysler and GM, but internationally with almost every maker), to the generally dismal economic news (Bernanke's Fed revealed this week that 2009 is pretty much a lost cause... next up: downward revisions of 2010)... there's pretty much no reason to think we're not just not out of the woods... but that the forest is actually over there, somewhere, and we're still heading for it.
By the way... just to follow up on Jindal: isn't he really the anti-Sibelius? I mean, his failure to deliver, on the "national stage of Presidential Response" is akin to the fizzle that followed Kathleen Sibelius' nearly as strange, badly received response to President Bush last year after the State of the Union. Sibelius, while still taken seriously (and possibly headed to DC to HHS), pretty much scotched what had been, up to then, a pretty zooming career as "key Democratic rising star", particularly in being seriously floated as running mate material for Obama.
Jindal, of course, has similar "rising star" cred, and seems to have burned it just as thoroughly: yes, he'll still have a career, and he may well still have a run in 2012... but the sense of inevitability, even within the GOP, vanished last night, and I'd say pretty much as soon as he opened his mouth. It's remarkable to me how people whose careers rest on public speaking could be so ill suited - Sibelius' delivery was odd, and Jindal's... well, I guess I'd never paid attention to how he comes across before, which was really mostly just unfortunate.
All of which raises an interesting question, since you don't see people who wind up in key roles - like Obama, or Bill Clinton back before he was president, or Mrs. Clinton - taking on these "official response" segments. And in these days of harsh assessments first, ask questions later, perhaps the thanklessness of the task is itself a setup: even Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have never entirely recovered from their own dismal response to a Bush SOTU speech, either. The moment requires both an intimacy, and a sense of command, that few really have, and I think the bigger story here, maybe, is that the response is better seen as an indicator of how politics, still, is failing us: our politicians seem forever untethered from the lives we lead, the concerns we actually have. The sizzle that turns to fizzle is a fascinating dimension... but it's the artifical sizzle, to begin with, that we rarely question, and perhaps before we set our sights on a "rising star," we'd be better of asking... does that star really shine at all?
I'd love to say I have a strong feeling about anything Barack Obama said last night... but frankly, I don't think he said all that much: most of the ideas were vague, and mostly boilerplate rehashing of points he's made already, which, in the abstract, are basically left-wing notions about governing that we all pretty much agree on. Who doesn't want smarter, more efficiently run government (well, aside from Bobby Jindal... but let's get to that in a moment)? Who doesn't want major improvements to our health care systems? Better schools? What kept jumping out at me last night was... all the jumping up for standing ovations, the race to see who could applaud soonest, loudest, and longest. Yes, Republicans deliberately sat on their hands at moments... but those seemed fleeting compared to the times that everyone seemed to be enthusiastically supportive of the big ideas... like people need jobs. Or we need better schools and better healthcare. Or the military is great, and honorable. Anyone opposed?
I didn't think so.
Much of the speech was simply content-free; Ezra's been kind of spear-heading the "theater of healthcare nonspecifics as if they were substantive details" type of posting, but even Tim Foley over at Change.org fell into similar mode today, arguing that lack of substance and details was, you know, reassuring. I don't know what it is... I'd kind of have to have, you know, details or something, to make that out.
In general, it seems that Obama is likely to propose a universal insurance mandate, presumably on the Massachusetts model of a gradual imposition of fees (tied to tax returns) for people without coverage. That, in theory, means that some new form of individual insurance would be made available to people without coverage, probably the "Federal worker" option of allowing average citizens to buy into the same set of options offered to federal employees, in some form. There's almost no other way to achieve any kind of reasonable goal of universality otherwise.
Last night, a supportive friend helped me to figure out the obvious: I've been over-stretching myself for a while now, and the strains are starting not just to show, but to take a physical toll. Just admitting that I have too much on my plate, that I feel pulled in too many directions... allowed me to realize that I just feel exhausted. And I need to set some priorities.
I love to write; I've loved writing this blog, and other pieces, here and there. If you're expecting a "but" to follow that sentence, there isn't one. There's no implicit threat to stop blogging, or to take some sort of long break.
There is, though, a need for me to simplify. And I hope those of you who stop here - often or occasionally, or out of the blue - will bear with me while I try to sort it out. I've been pushing the envelope, taking it to the limit... just a little too often, lately. And I feel like I haven't had enough to give anyone - especially good and close friends... but also to this project you're reading, a project I love.
I try not to write a lot of personal, confessional... stuff, here on the intertubes; it's not my style, and it's not my taste; and frankly, it's not your problem. Tonight, I am going to finish this, and go to bed; and tomorrow... we'll see. Hopefully, I will start figuring out what the priorities are... and how to simplify. And I'll take it from there. And no more zero to sixty in nothing flat.
Thanks for reading; I'll be around... hope you'll hang around to see where this takes us.
... and the other one is more interesting: my Oscar predictions are up over at New Critics, and I will be out this evening to attend my much-loved Oscar watching party. I may get in one more before I go... or more tomorrow.
When I started my idea of an "Awesome Award", it was kind of a lark (and a way to celebrate a pal)... but I've actually kept an eye out for additional posts that meet my own, personalized, criteria for awesome posts that really sum up a particular issue. And I found one! Via Ezra (and a reminder that he tries to be one of the good guys), this, well, awesome post from Jessica at Feministing, taking on the whole idea of a "hookup culture" and pointing out that it's really just more "dirty girl" propaganda from the far right:
And these books are just the latest in a long line of
publications and reports - almost all put out by conservative
organizations (and I'll explain why that's important in a minute)
saying that hooking up is the most dire issue facing young American
women today.
A short publication - a little booklet meant for college women -
put out by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, for example, says
that the more sexual partners women have, the more depressed they are
and that young women who have sex are just going to end up sad, lonely
dropouts with HPV.
(I'm paraphrasing obviously, but this is in fact what was written in the publication.)
The booklet hinges so much on scare tactics that it goes as far as to wish STDs on fictional characters.
"It's easy to forget, but the characters on Grey's Anatomy and
Sex in the City are not real. In real life, Meredith and Carrie would
have warts or herpes. They'd likely be on Prozac or Zoloft."
Just as an aside, I think it's really telling that a lot of
anti-hook up books rely on anecdotes from TV or the movies - characters
that are totally fictional - because they often can't find real life
examples for their scare tactics.
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