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The Tea Party Sags, Labor's Resurgent... But Anger Is Probably Still Not Enough.

On the eve of a possible federal shutdown, there's plenty of reason for liberals and lefties to feel confident - not least of which is the fact that Glenn Beck has apparently been canned by Fox.

Beck is going the way of John Gibson (who held his 5pm slot before Beck got it), and maybe Fox will realize that wild-eyed demagogues don't work long term... but I wouldn't bet on it. Either way, Glenn Beck's fall from (Nancy) grace, and high ratings built on easy controversies, is as good a place as any to start talking about the Tea Party's diminishment.

No TV personality rode the wave of Tea Party anger like Beck; even if all of Fox News benefitted from stiking the rage on the right, it was Beck who gave the right wing Tea Partiers the credibility of actually featuring them - and their ideas - prominently, and giving voice to the inchoate rage that defined the last election cycle.

However one slices the numbers - from Beck's 40% ratings decline this year to the shrinking Tea Party base of support - it's clear that much of the rage has dissipated on the right. In part, that's the natural result of winning so many Congressional elections, much the way the post-Obama election glow faded quickly as Obama attempted to govern; in our current phase of "winning is all" approach to political campaigns, once the victory glow fades, reality sets in, and the new guys turn out to be not much better, or different, from what's come before.

In the case of Tea Party victors, that's meant a return to the reality that Republicans, as a party, have been bereft of fresh ideas and a governing approach for some time; as much as Paul Ryan's lousy budget proposal was eagerly awaited and dressed up in impressive seriousness, Ryan's proposals amount to a compilation of contradictory, unpopular and likely to fail plans that cut vital services and finance further tax breaks for the well off.

And other than Ryan, the most bracing Republican plan across the nation is to eliminate the rights of unionized workers to collectively bargain.

And that's another story that's turned out to be a disaster for the GOP.

That Was Then, And This Is...

I have some end of year/beginning of new year thoughts to come on politics and the Presidency and all the Big Ideas... but I got sidetracked, just now, clearing up some e-mail from 2 years ago(!!!) and tripped over some old pro-Hillary posts of mine that led me round to old pro-Obama posts of Ezra's before he fled to WaPo and conventional wisdom stardom. Suffice to say... for now... What a long, strange trip it's been, for these two years. More on that later. But, for those who appreciate irony, let's reprint one of Ezra's better moments from the primary season, in its entirety:

I really, really hope the Democratic primary doesn't come down to superdelegates -- the privileged class of delegate that gets to vote however they want, and were created to ensure that party elites didn't lose too much control over the process. The Democrats have agreed to 796 superdelegates this yea, a group which includes every Democratic member of Congress, governor, and various other dignitaries besides. Some of these superdelegates, like California's Barbara Boxer, have pledged to go with the majority decision in their state. Others have already made their endorsements. Others are waiting to see what they'll be promised. But it would be a real shame if the end result of overwhelming voter participation and a contested primary was to throw the election to unaccountable party elites.

Apparently, any port in a storm.

As I look to the new year, checking back a bit on how we got here, I tend to think about what's been squandered. All those hopes and dreams of young Obama supporters who got mugged by reality and failed by a President they helped to elect who, as it turned out, was closer to his critics' assessments than his supporters'. Democrats may find a way to get back to voter popularity, and Barack Obama, still, looks like the likely bet for reelection in 2012, at least for now. But think back to all that singing and hand holding and crying back in 2008... I mean, even if you were on the other side and not all that into it... doesn't the fact that we're just so not there now seem a little, well, sad?

And to me sadder still, because, well, I thought they were getting their hopes up too high. And still, it sucks to have been on the clearer eyed side of things. I wouldn't mind having been proven wrong, either. But that was then, and this is... what we're stuck with. And, I'm just sayin'... it just all seems so... unnecessary.

Barack Obama And The Enigma Variations

I have to say the last few days have been a fascinating unraveling of the left; it's one thing to expect people to be dismayed at the way the tax cut story devolved, but another entirely to see Obama's remaining base more or less fall apart.

I don't think dwelling on the "Bush Tax Cut" story just now is worth the time; we'll see if "the deal" that was negotiated succeeds or not (my hunch is that Democratic fears of retribution for ending the Bush rates will trump the outrage), but I think the lasting effect of this week's events is to bring into the open the two realities that will define lefty politics in the comingmonths: the reality that Democrats lost in November in a significant way, and that tensions within the left are making it impossible to move forward towards a shared goal.

Lots of people are recasting familiar arguments about a two way divide in the left - "realists" or "pragmatists" versus "idealists" or "hardcore lefties", that sort of thing - but I think the divide is in threes and not about ideology per se. I think the three way divide comes down to this:

1. the vast number of Hillary Clinton supporters who never particularly came around to supporting Barack Obama.
2. the Clinton supporters and others who came around to supporting Obama, but were never especially convinced by the "hope/change" rhetoric or notions that Obama was especially exceptional.
3. the diehard Obama supporters who embraced the whole Obama Movement and used support for Obama as a litmus test for whether one was a "good Democrat."

Perhaps the biggest problem that the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration has faced is that they never - and still don't, in most ways - take seriously the fact that the first group has never supported Obama, disagrees with most of his policies, and is now actively looking for alternatives in future elections. That's the real seed of the divides that currently roil the party, and have everything to do with the failure , in 2008, of the Obama team to do the work of treally uniting the party not behind Barack Obama, but behind a notion of Democratic principles  that brought the party together around shared goals. The only goal, really, was electing Obama. And PUMA power was born.

Over time, the second group - never fully invested in the Obama storyline - has drifted away in various ways. Many were put off by the heathcare debate, whether over "public option" debates, the generally messy process, or, as I did, with a variety of specific objections to policy choices. Others were dismayed by environmental policy, or other issues. And the tax cut debate was, for many, a final straw... and one can't ignore that a variety of economic factors - the unemployment picture, the foreclosuremess, the continued poor performance of the economy overall - have also driven many away.

And so it is that Obama's remaining support comes, mainly, from the diehards - a mix of establishment bloggers and journalists close to the DC whirl, and the still dominant contingent of educated, elite, liberal professionals who made up the core of Obama support. Loyal to a fault, they have accepted every compromise, every muddled argument, every tetchy defense (hence the distinction, often, that they represent a "pragmatic" or "realistic" notion of politics).

It's odd, in some ways, that the Bush tax cut extension may, for many of these diehards, be a last straw. Of all the President's decisions and compromises, this is one where, all things considered, Obama probably is right that he had no choice: havingf made no argument for letting the cuts expire, and having no way to force Reoublicans to back an arbutrary line of $250,000, Obama made a deal that combined some preferred liberal options (unemployment benefits extension, a modest return to the estate tax) and a temporry extnsion of all the Bush rates, and decided to go with it. Frankly, it's not his worst moment.

But I think the "last straw" quality - underlined, no doubt, by yesterday's self-defeating press conference - comes from some diehard Obama supporters beginning to arrive at conclusions anti-Obama liberals and disaffected Democrats reached months ago: the problem with Obama has to do with unknowability. And what we don't know, and can't define... is ruining his Presidency.

Some call it the "what does he believe" argument; I'd say the problem is that President Obama is what he was all along: essentially unknowable, a lofty thinker unable to deal in specifics, who is little interested in the kind of personality driven politics that have come to define our modern age. It is a Presidency of abstractions lacking in focus.

The armchair psychologizing of Obama is striking not because it tells us anything about him, but because no one, really, knows where the real answers lie: he is considered imperious, superior, unwilling to be questioned. He is touted as a corporate apologist and an unrepentant socialist, a radical "community activist" and a shill for the interests of millionaires. Often all of these accusations are made at once. He is all of these things... and none of them.

Mostly, he is not especially well known, or understood.

I've given up on trying to figure him out; I have no use for speculation, no interest in piling on more speculative notions of what he might believe or what he might do. I honestly don't know what Obama's "Democratic ideals" are or what specific policies he envisions as way to achieve his goals. At this late date... I don't care, and knowing more won't change all that much. I think the Obama Presidency will be viewed, ultimately, as a one term mistake, proof that when the appeal of an unknown quantity lies in what you don't know, there's a problem.

The fallout of the failure of Obama's Presidency is hardest, of course, on those most invested in his success; aside from the pains his most ardent supporters are feeling, I suspect the lasting damage of the Obama Enigma will be, naturally, to the black community. That the first actually black President turned out to be mediocre at best, and bad news for African Americans on many levels will be enormously disconcerting. And in some ways, it will change the historic links between the Civil Rights era black and white activists who have, for a long time, shared a sense of a common liberal purpose.

I don't think it's at all surprising that we have reached such a moment of crisis for the left, driven by the combination of the Democratic Establishment's decisions to win at all costs coupled with Obama's essential unknowability. The sense of what it means to be a Democratic - to espouse specific plans and polices to achieve specific, concrete goals - has been utterly lost in pursuit of charismatic leaders and maintenance of a broken machine badly in need of fresh ideas and new blood. I don't know what Barack Obama can possibly do next to reverse the quickening downward spiral of his presidency.

But then, not knowing is really what this Presidency is all about.

Sarah, Plain And Popular

Now, about the Bristol Palin thing...

What is it about Sarah Palin? I mean, I get it: she's famous, she says stuff, there's a lot of drama around figuring out if she'll run for President or not... but I'm still mystified: is she really that fascinating? Really?

So far, Sarah Palin has been a small town Mayor, a failed Vice Presidential candidate, and served about half a term as Governor of Alaska. She wrote a book of memoirs that sold fairly well but apparently wasn't all that interesting. Now she appears on Fox News programs as a paid "analyst," and she's hosting a travel and reailty show on The Learning Channel... and, well, that's about it.

Are you fascinated? I know I'm not.

This week, a simmering scandal of sorts burst into the open: Palin's daughter Bristol, a contestant on this year's Dancing With the Stars (!), survived the semifinals by getting more audience votes than Brandy, the R&B singer/actress. She will now face Jennifer Grey in the finals.

Yes, that's about the extent of the scandal.

Palin the Younger's ability to outlast her DWTS competition has been the subject of considerable speculation, apparently; I didn't notice it... but then, I didn't realize the Finals were coming, either. The thing is, apparently, that Bristol gets, each week, a vast outpouring of support from conservative fans of Sarah Palin, despite the fact that, week after week, Bristol is hardly a great ballroom dancer, and others do better than she does. Or something.

Let's jump back for a minute and just take note of Dancing With the Stars overall, because the fact that people are getting excised about a celebrity ballroom dance competition, and what it might mean for our politics, is itself a good indication of the madness surrounding Sarah Palin.

Dancing With The Stars is a strange bird, even assuming one likes competitive ballroom dancing. Various has-been stars (the show itself is becoming a defining moment of "D List" for everyone who goes on it), of limited dancing ability generally, go on and pair up with a trained dancer, doing a variety of ballroom styles in front of the most neurotic, inane judges (which, in these reality show days, is saying something), except that the elimination decisions are then handled by telephone vote, like American Idol.

In this, apparently, people expect rationality and fairness.

Dancing With the Stars has shown, repeatedly, that actual ability to dance isn't the voting criteria by phone; it's a popularity contest, and each year, the eventual winner is a combination of sob story, a reasonably modest level of improvement from start to finish, and usually being kind of good looking in the revealing costumes. Each outcome has been disputed, and mostly the results are forgettable and embarrassing. If you're not reading US Magazine, you may have managed to avoid how Marie Osmond has remade herself thanks to her appearance a while back. And she's just one, sad, example.

I don't know why Bristol Palin is a "star"; I don't know why Sarah Palin still gets a lot of attention. These are the realities of our celebrity obssessed culture in this country, where fame is often disconnected from anything real. Bristol Palin has joined the circle of hellishness that produces self help book writers, diet advice spokesmodels, people who endorse dubious health remedies and dime store toilet water. None of this matters; and most of it can be easily avoided. I don't care who wins Dancing With The Stars, nor do I care who votes for Bristol, or why. In a sane world, yes, it would be fairly obvious that Jennifer Grey, a trained dancer from a family of trained dancers, would probably win. But then, in a sane world, there wouldn't be a ballroom dance competition on television featuring has been "celebrities." Start there, and then tell me, again, why this matters.

The point about Sarah Palin - and I do have one - is that all this irrational obssessing over the various moves that keep her and her family in the public eye is quite beside the point. There are reasons, perfectly reasonable ones, why Sarah Palin will not be President of the United States. They are the reasonable points about her incoherence, her lack of policy knowledge, her inability to organize a large scale campaign, and, most crucially, her interest in being famous over doing public service. Palin has skillfully used the levers of fame to provide a career as a "serious politician" as long as the whole thing winds up in quotes. She's not actually serious, nor, really, an actual politician.

Actual politicians are beginning, I think, to figure this out. That's why the real bad news for Palin was probably this week's other voting scandal - that Lisa Murkowski managed to win back her Senate seat over Palin's chosen irritant, proving that Alaska voters, who know her best, have no interest in ratifying her supposed political power, and will go to great lengths to prove it. Combine that with Karl Rove's apparent decision to undermine Palin and her power at every turn, and you have the makings of Palin's sidelining by the people who need to do it - Republicans who know all too well that a Presidential candidacy of hers would be disastrous, and embarrassing.

It's true, still, that too much of Palin hating is still wildly personal and unnecessarily harsh; and much of the resentment of her does betray a kind of ugly class sense of superiority most people, especially her harshest critics, would do well to examine and avoid. One doesn't have to disapprove of all that and wind up, somehow, making Palin more viable. There's nothing wrong with the kind of middlebrow fame seeking she and Bristol represent. It's just not the recipe for political success. And, well, Thank God - yours, mine, or theirs - for that.

Excuses, Excuses

Mom asked me to jump off my arguments against Nancy Pelosi, and, though I don't always defer, it seemed to me that the work was done: if the New York Times can see, plainly, just what I saw... at least I know I'm not crazy.

What's been interesting as the "Really... Nancy Pelosi? Really?" storyline has unfolded is the amount of excuse-making involved in trying to make the case for her. My friend Red ably noted that a number of the things I mentioned in my first post - her tenacity, her political savvy and exercise of power through fundraising - were probably things that could be seen as making her successful. I tend to agree. She wouldn't be where she is, or in a position to keep doing what she's done, if what she already did wasn't seen to work.

The excuse making on the left, though, is about the election: from a world-weary "the party in power always loses seats" to "the losses were all about the Democrats who were too conservative" or in more Republican-leaning districts... a large number of liberals, it seems, have found a way to deal with major losses in the House: they're not really losses... it's just inevitability.

Not that Repubicans are immune - I think they've spent the years since the 2006 losses in a similar dreamworld about just how bad their rejections were - but I don't think excuse making is any way to figure out how to win the next time around. The "new fatalism" among energetic liberals and progressives, in which the Democratic Party is either on a natural down cycle before the next upswing... or the more radicalized perspective of some further left types that the whole "Legacy Party" apparatus is falling apart... sort of obviates everyone from doing the work of coming up with the next big idea, or finding the next new leaders. We could... but, really, it will just end up the same, anyway. Or something.

What got me thinking about all this excuse making is, naturally, former President Bush. Just in time for the post election hangover, Mr. Bush's memoirs popped out to bookstores, and the President naturally embarked on the kind of things he likes to do least: interviews where people actually question his decisions, and having to justify a lot of what remains pretty indefensible.

Watching a few segments of the hourlong interview with Matt Lauer, I was struck, again, by how much of the kan's interviews turn into rounds of defensive "it's not my fault" type answers to questions that are hardly deep or probing; they can't be - neither his thinking, nor his speaking style, really lend themselves to developing deep insights. What you get is what you see... and what you get, most of the time, is "it wasn't my fault" or "I thought I was right then, and I still think I am." Self doubt... who needs it?

More than Iraq, more than 9/11, the place where this self-justification and excuse making just gets absurd is in the response to Hurricane Katrina. It's not that Bush won't admit to mistakes - even he seems to get, at this late date, that at least the appearance of things he was supposed to be handling looked bad - but even his admissions are tinged with a kind of "I couldn't do otherwise;" and if it looked bad... well, that's how the media works, isn't it?

It's not that I think Mr. Bush helped create, or more likely, sustain, a faith in never admitting mistakes and refusing to take responsibility for one's own failings... it's that I think the eight years of his disastrous Presidency, in addition to deeply lowering our expectations of nearly every leader we have, also made the self centered excuse making expected, hardly news. From Toyota to BP to all the various political leaders who've failed us in one way or another... it's fine to admit to mistakes. But after that, feel free to make all the excuses you want. We'd love to hear them. We probably won't believe them... but why would you expect anyone to do anything else?

There is such a thing as "inexcusable" and "indefensible"; more pointedly, there's a sense in which growing up and shouldering some responsibility for oneself is taking the excuse making off the table. It doesn't matter what the excuses for some things turn out to be - whether other people were mean, or no one understands you, or you did the best you could. Do better, don't worry about the others, and get back to work. No excuses. At least, don't expect a lot of things to change until we take the excuse making defenses off the table.

The Crying Game... And Chasing The "Progressive Presidency" Unicorn

The break from political writing that I took to do a play was helped in no small part by the stagnant realities of national politics. A month of generally keeping up with the news made clear to me, anyway, that nothing really has been changing, or making much progress.

Yet, the constant drip of stories and polls suggests considerable dissatisfaction with how things are, especialy politically. There's a lot of theorizing about why this is so, much of it centered on dissatisfaction with the President, or his Administration, or policies they've attempted or achieved.

As someone who's been sitting on the sidelines watching, I tend to share the general dissatisfaction... and the vagueness which surrounds it. Something's wrong... but just what it might be isn't exactly clear.

I've asked friends and listened to starngers, and what I've come down to is that much of the "dissatisfaction with Obama" isn't really about him or his Presidency so much as the general state of affairs (especially the economy) in the country and a question of leadership which is larger than Obama himself. And with that, I think, is also the continuing struggle to better define the politics of both left and right as demographics shift and parties are redefined.

And none of that, really, can be resolved anytime soon.

Let's Review The Meanings Of "Hollywood Elite", "Silicon Valley Millionaire", and "Upper West Sider" Again, Shall We?

I love Armando, The Big Tent Democrat, honest I do... but this is just dense:

Discussing why taxes on the rich have not been raised by this Democratic government, Kevin Drum writes:

Soaking the rich isn't the electoral loser I made it out to be. So then the question becomes: why is Congress unable to reform the estate tax, which affects only the very tippy top of the super rich? Why are negotiations over the carried interest loophole, which affects only zillionaire hedge fund managers, retreating from 100% repeal to 75% repeal to 65% repeal? The answer, of course, lies primarily in the ideology of the Republican Party, aided and abetted by the ideology of "centrist" Democrats, which is strong enough to overcome public sentiment. So then, how about this question instead: Americans apparently are sympathetic to higher taxes on the rich, but equally apparently, [. . . t]hey don't care enough, anyway, to sway their elected representatives much. How come?

My answer? Because progressives and moderates are too dependent on the Democratic Party to fight for policies they believe in. In terms of a progressive agenda, the Democratic Party is a failure. Activists and citizens must hold their distance from the Democratic Party and understand they are not your advocates or your friends. Yes, my old refrain.

Okay, one more time... why the assumption that "rich people" and "rich people's interests" are somehow the province of solely the GOP? Why has President Obama gone - twice - to Bay Area fundraisers for Barbara Boxer in the past 3 months? Why are so many agents and producers in Hollywood considered top Democratic donors? How, in the hell, do people think Carolyn Maloney - whose district covers Manhattan's East Side down to Wall Street - is getting so handily reelected that no one seriously believes Republicans (who used to command that seat) can take it back?

One more time, slowly, people: The Democratic Party is full of rich people from the Educated Elite Professional Class. Full of them. And their money. So put your romantic, progressive dreams away... and realize that everyone, in this scheme, is getting what they paid for. And you didn't.

Primary Night, Professional Niceness, And The Mary Landrieu Effect

Perhaps the best lesson I ever learned in retail work came when I moved to New York and began working side by side with experienced, professional saleswomen.

It was from these women that I learned, most of all, to be "professionally nice."

Call it "soft sell" or "turn on the charm" (you can make a regionalist case for calling it "the Southern Way", though there's a Northern, less syrup-y version as well)... but to succeed in retail, especially in goods like clothes and food and beauty, it pays to be as nice and "friendly" as you can be. And to know exactly how and when to turn that on. And off.

This sense of a friendly, professional cheerfulness, I think, goes a long way to describing a part of the "women and gay men" bond that exists, especially in the service professions, that then drifts over into our social lives. That loose network of shopgirls, hairdressers, small retail business on strip malls... I could on, but it's a digression. My main point is... the common thread, often, is a service-industry training to be nice in public, in a way that seems sincere, and unflappable.

In all the discussions of "why women won" yesterday - from Blanche Lincoln's comeback in Arkansas, to Nikki Haley's phoenix-'like rise to South Carolina  leader, to Meg Whitman's solid win in California - I think many "experts", and I mean mainly men, miss the quality that make women candidates successful. And in ways both good and bad, I think "professionally nice" is giving many women a competitive advantage that's hard to beat. And yes, as a feminist, I too am thrilled to see it work. But at the same time... I think this may be a "be careful what you wish for" moment; not every instance of success for "professionally nice" is necessarily a good thing.

But let's go back for a minute and talk about Mary Landrieu. And Hillary Clinton.

The Myth Of The Progressive Blogosphere, And How It Grew

The big news that rippled through the, er, blogosphere (I hate that word) late last week was, in its way, pretty seismic: The New York Times didn't just hire Nate Silver to do what he's been doing, so well, at 538.com - they went and bought the whole thing, installing it within the Times. By any measure, that certainly counts as hitting the Big Time, even now.

In general, I think the move says more about The Times and how they might, yet, survive the digital revolution and cross the (very real) digital divide. I think older publishers - the Washington Post and their dismal web moves are a prime example (along with, these days, trying to unload NewsweeK) - have shown a real knack for getting the digital age wrong, trying to create, in house, what really has to be accepted as organic; you can't just, suddenly, make your own blogs and expect instant success (or, really, any success), just based on size or traffic, or pandering to obvious demographics. And, I think, the model of importing already successful bloggers has yielded dubious blogs (Megan McArdle and Ezra Klein strike me as two examples) which certainly get eyes, but perhaps, not quite so much respect.

Buying Silver, and his website strikes me as something more: it's gaining not just content, but the credibility of understanding why the web is different, and why getting people who already know what to do with it, and do it well, is the real recipe for folding new approaches to content into existing frames.

Still, Silver's move is also an example of good, old fashioned selling out, cashing in when the moment's right, and more than a few bloggers took note of the change  suggesting that the move was a sign that blogging on one's own - though Silver, surely, hasn't been that kind of lonely operation in years - is being "left behind" in favor of a "professionalized" blogger/journalist class of already established names.

Pardon me if I take that a little personally.

Really, though, I don't; I think some of the moves towards professionalization amongst bloggers - clearly, some bloggers at a certain level, and in it for a longer time, have found success at making the whole thing pay off - are very real and even positive. It's just that, I think - and here it may seem personal, though again it's not - that some of this mythology around the "blogging class" is a waste of time and energy, an attempt to rewrite (heh heh) history in favor of the winners, or at least the winners as they appear right now.

More dangerously, I think the perpetuation of notions of a mythical "progressive blogosphere" - a chimerical creation of a set of lefty bloggers that largely self defines and reinforces - damages not only the work of many bloggers but is dangerous to our politics, narrowly defining the notion of what it is to be "on the left" and writing about politics, and creating false notions of our political life, just now and into the future, that in the long run do nothing to help real, progressive political ideas get the kind of traction they need to succeed.

Morning Morsels: Time To Clean The Metaphorical Fridge...

I keep a lot of tabs and windows open on Firefox; too many, really, which makes things often unstable and prone to crash. Many of them are pieces which I think, abstractly, woud make a good basis for a blog post... but never quite get done. So, since Firefox just crashed - again - this morning, let me try and clear the backlog out a bit:

• I've been interested in the developing narrative around the President, trying to sort out who he is, what makes him tick, and who he has around him. I'm not entirely persuaded that anyone's figured him out fully yet (fans or foes), but I think people are finding pieces of thngs that contribute to the picture. For instance, I think this John Judis piece in The New Republic from a while back, gets at the thing a number of us said all along: there's a class difference between Obama and working class voters that explains a lot. 
• Meanwhile, this, now old, Steve Clemons piece at HuffPo on the problems with Obama's core team of Chicago cronies as his key advisors tends to reflect my feeling about what's really wrong with the White House - too insular and too few people in the inner circle who all think alike. I don't, though, think this explanation really does enough to fully explain all the mistakes the White House has made thus far.
• Via Lambert at Corrente, I was brought to this Yves Smith piece that looks at the internal tensions in the Obama White House from a different angle, namely Lambert's view, shared by many, that the Obama folks are trying to marginalize progressives. It's not a view I share, but the Smith piece is interesting, if a bit baroque in its attmepts to tie all the storylines into one game of 11 dimensional chess.
• I've been fascinated by the still-simmering Ayn Rand revival that bubbles on the edges of our national discourse. While I was living in Boston and spending too much time at the nearby Barnes and Noble, I bought copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged... but didn't read them. I still mean to. This article by Jon Chait at TNR is an interesting examination of Rand, and Rand-ian politics on the right. I never figured out what piece I meant to write about it.
• In the last week or so, I've been a little interested - but only a little - in the unfolding discussion of the sales pitches for gold investing that mark a number of prominent advertisers on right wing TV and radio. Like many, I think the ads are kind of decpetive and for suckers... but then, that's advertising in a nutshell, if you ask me. Stephen Spruiell over at National Review tries to make excuses for the attacks being all about politics... but as this followup post at The Corner shows... even rightwing financial advisors tend to look askance at the gold sales.
• I tend to not read - and not write about - Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic; she's not very good, as a writer or an analyst, I find, and her points are usually kind of dopey. Still, knowing the residual anger that simmers over healthcare "reform" as passed by Congress and arguments about whether it will be ruled unconstitutional do generate some interesting discussions. McArdle's piece isn't one of them, but for a minute, I thought about wading in with a theory of my own - which is, mainly that I think the mandate is probably constitutional, but even if it isn't in the form they passed, it wilill be in some other form or fashion. But I can make that a sentence... not a full piece.
• This may be a little old, but I liked the points in this "10 things you don't know (or were misinformed) about the Goldman Sachs case." I knew most of them, and reached pretty much the same conclusion as the author. I also tend to think that Goldman will pay a fine and settle the case without admitting guilt... which will pave the way for further action.
• Jonah Goldberg, in his hacktastic way, makes a fair point from the right about critics of Obama being labeled "racist." I kept hoping for other, better examples to contrast him with... but never really found any worth pursuing, and the piece I would write, really, wouldn't say much more than "I wish we used 'racist' less, and 'predjudiced' more"... and there, I've said it.

Well, that should keep you busy for a while. Kept me busy for weeks. :)