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Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

Like A Solar Panel... Or A Houseplant

...apparently I need to be placed in direct sunlight. Today is the first day of my actual vacation, a real trip and everything (I even packed for it), in months. I was kind of hoping to keep blogging at regular intervals... but now I've thought better of that and decided to actually rest and actually recharge... and even reassess. Officially, no plans to be back online until a week from today (Sunday the 19th).  Until then, relax. See ya later.

Morning Morsels: Come Sail Away With Me, Lad

As I get set to cruise away on vacation... and the nation drifts away from any connection to reality

• Pirates are the new unicorns. Nice point over at My DD about how the right's new fetish about "stopping piracy" is kind of absurd. I think they're just mad because they were sure they had Obama's Hostage Crisis (TM) all set up... but then the crew overpowered the pirates and the Navy showed up.
• PS another lesson here is that conservatives get really hot for the Army and the Marines... but the Navy, not so much (ever notice how they complain about gay "soldiers" in the foxhole but not gay sailors on the boats?). Everybody gets hot for the Air Force. Remember Top Gun? (Okay, they were Navy pilots... but still.)
• I'm struck, re-acquainting myself with the cable news channels... about how little news there actually is. I think in many ways, progressives expected Obama - or the 2008 elections, if you don't like to make it specific to one guy - to make lefty ideas sexy, and he has... if you find meetings, negotiations and policy papers sexy. Unfortunately, most of us don't. And despite what you think... me included.
• You might, however, find my thoughts on the new kind of poverty interesting. And sexy.
• Meanwhile, with all the positive developments on the gay marriage front, the National Organization for Marriage (the "marriage is a man and a woman" crowd) launched a silly ad, and a new tagline - 2 Million For Marriage, or 2M4M... which as any M4M dating guy knows is about as gay lingo as it gets... so a couple of gay guys launched a website for it. Angry and witty... it's our best asset.
• And still more on the "gay lingo" front and cable news reaching new levels of absurdity... Rachel Maddow's droll assessment of the silly "teabagging" protests really works best when you have some awareness of "teabagging" as an act. I won't tell... you'll have to look it up.

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Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

I Know Something You Don't Know... And Some Things I Don't Know Either

I've been marinating on this for a while, ever since Red asked me this in a comment a while back:

 I think you and I sit at different places in that process - that's really the conclusion I've come to in our debates.  And I guess I've been wondering who exactly is your audience.  It's not activists.  Is it the general public?  Policy wonks?  Bureaucrats?  This would help me, as one of your most loyal and steadfast readers.

I've been thinking a lot about this - partly because I think it's a good question for anyone serious about blogging - which, ultimately is what publishing is about: finding an audience for your work.

In any case, shortly after Red's question, I saw this from Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones:

This is apropos of nothing in particular, but I'd just like to mention that the past year has been an intellectually humbling one for me.  As a general purpose blogger I'm accustomed to spouting off on topics I know only a little bit about, but all that spouting has become more difficult lately.  There's just too much stuff I'm really not sure what to think about.  For example: I don't know if we should send more troops to Afghanistan.  I don't know if fiscal stimulus will work.  I don't know what to do about Pakistan.  I don't who or what is really responsible for our financial meltdown.  I don't know if we need to nationalize some banks.  I don't know the best way to handle detainees at Guantanamo.  I don't know whether it's a good idea to bail out Detroit.  I don't have even the slightest clue how to pursue peace in the Middle East.

...and all I could think was... well, I know the answers to those things. And a lot of other things. And it's brought me to an alternative way of thinking about Red's question... because I think the question of what I do and who it's for goes to... just what do we know, what can we know... and who can claim to know it?

See, the thing is... as much as I think finding an audience is important, ultimately writing about the things I write is an exercise for me in thinking about the things I care about, and sharing what I know. An audience for that... well, I don't know who it is, exactly... but I believe they're there. My dilemma, though, is one of authority... who claims to know stuff... and what, really, do we know?

...But That Was When I Ruled The World (With My Big Stick)

Is there anything more hilarious and sad than the right wing hysteria on Obama's foreign policy?

Sure, the "socialist economic policies" diatribes are amusingly off point... but conservatives have been so wrong on economic issues for so long that even they seem well aware that they can only stamp their feet while the parade passes them by. But on foreign policy... well, gosh darn it, they're serious... and they know stuff.

Of course, much - okay, most - of what passes for "deep thought" on foreign policy from the right comes down to the "big stick" theory of defense policy. If you can shoot it, hit it, or run a tank over it... well, I got your foreign policy, right here.

I'm even sympathetic, a little - in the Bush years, as everything about conservatism was reduced to caricature, the last thing to prop up a failing sense of right wing dominance was... well, that big stick.

Any guy will tell you... it's a sad day when you can't get it up anymore.

Midday Morsels - Captain Obvious And All The Sad Young Men

Because I can't write another post about another shooting...

• What happened in Binghamton was awful... the question is, was it preventable? We won't know that until someone, yet again, wakes up to the real common thread here: episodes of mass violence stem, usually, from a failure to deal with mental illness. If we could start there... and do something about it... we might finally make a dent in stopping them.
• And yeah, I don't think angry conservative populists are helping... but neither are the lefty ones, either.
• Guess what else - higher unemployment means more people without health insurance.
• Iowa judges say it's wrong to discriminate against gay people. As if we didn't know.
• Wil Wilkinson smokes pot, enjoys it... and thinks you will too. And that may be why you really haven't heard of Wil Wilkinson up to now.
• And one sad old man in the Hollywood Minute: Jay Leno's already causing an affiliate revolt... and he's just getting started.

Deserts... Oases... And Other Fantastic Lands

I finally bit the bullet this week and registered over at Change.org; I encourage you to do the same (though a certain regular reader/writer got there well before me). As a result, I've been, er, exposed to a lot of new ideas, people, and discussions, now that I can comment to my little heart's content (plus, I need a new conversation place... Ezra's just not doing it like he used to).

One of Red's fellow guest posters, Greg Plotkin, has been taking up the topic of food and poverty. In a fairly provocative post, he recently suggested that, despite serious misgivings, it might be worth considering that Wal Mart's foray into the Chicago city market might not be a bad thing, given the problem with "food deserts" in an urban area like Chicago, where access to fresh groceries is very limited.

This has led to an interesting discussion of the various ways to look at Wal Mart... but it got me wondering... just what are we dealing with in this notion of food deserts? I said as much to Greg:

I also have to be honest: I'm skeptical of the "food desert" issue; while I've seen some indication of challenges finding groceries in some neighborhoods, when I lived in New York, I also find it overstated - Manhattan lacks large grocery stores all over, because of space limitations; only in the past 15 years or so did I see new building construction really adapt to the need for groceries anywhere. In Harlem, much as anywhere, there are places to get groceries. They're not all great, they're not all great on price... but they are there. And they were there.

Greg replied:

Weboy, if you want to read the whole Chicago "food desert" report you can find it here:  http://www.marigallagher.com/projects/

So I went... and that led to some interesting avenues.

Friday Evening Floralude

 

jinb

When The Only Thing "Public" Is The Name...

Over at Change.org, I'm back with a guest post (and I'm a noisy, difficult guest, I promise you) on Red's Poverty blog, talking about the latest development, in discussions at least, on the healthcare front: the need for a "public plan" as part of a "universal mandate" for health insurance, which appears to be the general direction of talks in Congress.

Over there, I go on - at some length, though less than I intended - about the general overview of how we got here, and why such a plan may be beneficial to workers at or near the poverty line; over here, I'd like to get a little more into the problems of our "healthcare debate," such as it is, and why a "public plan" is simply the latest in a series of non-newsy tidbits that don't, really, tell us much of anything about solving the broader healthcare crisis we face... and why our current financial crisis may make much of what we're discussing moot, anyway.

Much of the problem with the healthcare is, simply... we're not having one. Still. A lot of the problem, I think, is that the problem is complicated, and a lot of what passes for "debate" is little more than part of the current fashion for a kind of anger that complains about what we have, without necessarily offering a lot of solutions. In healthcare, that means a lot of raging about the bad acts of big health insurers... but not discussing the complexities of, say, reimbursements for services, where insurers are not necessarily the main culprit.