I know I am spending too much time at ONTD and its various iterations (ontd_startrek is my favorite, but it's usually down due to 6 million people posting Kirk/Tribble .gifs at once) because lately I even think in AOL kiddiespeak. By which I mean OMG U GUYZ SRSLY:
SAY IT! SAY MY NAME!
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We're going to have to invade England now because they have our stuff:
LONDON — British researchers have announced the discovery of a rare original copy of America's Declaration of Independence _ just in time for the Fourth of July.
Katrina McClintock, a spokeswoman at the National Archives, said Thursday that a researcher accidentally discovered the "Dunlap print," named after a printer, several months ago. The find was announced only after it could be properly catalogued.
Edward Hampshire, the National Archives' specialist in colonial materials, said the find was "incredibly exciting."
"It is likely that only around 200 of these were ever printed, so uncovering a new one nearly 250 years later is extremely rare, especially one in such good condition," he said.
He said the declaration is one of the most important documents in history because it marks the birth of the United States.
*Grabby hands*
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You know what was missing from Sanford's apology yesterday? "I apologize to all the loving same-sex couples out there — couples that I helped to demonize as a member of the party of bigotry and 'defending marriage' — for being a ginormous hypocritical asshole."
Via ONTD_Political.
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As noted here previously, the POTUS is not on my list of favorite people right now. I will say this, though: in yesterday's press briefing kerfuffle, I'm coming down on the side of Team Obama.
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I look forward to howls of Republican outrage over this:
Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.
CREW says it will file a lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.
You know, all along during arguments with wingnuts they kept assuming this was all Bush Derangement Syndrome, that the only reason anybody wanted to know anything was to mess with Bush. Well, now it's turned back around, because what we said then is coming true: these weren't just powers we didn't want Bush to have. They're powers we didn't want ANYBODY to have. Too bad it's going to take a Democrat screwing this up to get 'em on board with that idea.
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During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Grassley was asked to explain why he whacked Obama in a tweet during the president's recent trip to Paris.
"Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL," read Grassley's post.
Was that, host Chris Wallace wanted to know, "senatorial?"
"Very senatorial," replied Grassley. "Because you know why? We've had dialogue with this president since January 20 on a program to get a bill to the floor for July. And we're still on that timetable. And the president, to say that we ought to deliver it, made it look like Congress wasn't working, the very weekend that we were working Saturday and Sunday in Washington to keep on schedule while he was sightseeing. He didn't need to say that. It didn't contribute to it. It was a cheap shot."
You know, every time I hear that we need greater measures to protect children online, I think we also need the same protections for folks at the other end of the age spectrum. For every dumbass 15-year-old who posts sexy photos on her MySpace there's some older adult dipshit who gets a new toy and blows his hand off with it. A lot of the truly spectacular Internet fail lately has come from supposed grown-ups.
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My real problem with all the OH MY GOD YOU GUYS GOT SUCKERED NOW I BET YOU WISH YOU'D VOTED FOR HILLARY/MCCAIN/NADER/MCKINNEY/RONPAUL HUH that goes around every time somebody opines that Obama fucked something up is the presumption that everybody thought Obama would solve all our problems.
I remember people supporting him passionately but I do not, outside of psycho Kos diaries, remember a whole lot of "well, this is all it's gonna take and then we can go home." All these pieces seem to begin, "unlike all you other fuckers, I alone was smart and pure enough to realize that Obama would require shoving in leftward directions," and I don't know who the argument addresses. The psycho Kos diarists? People making Obama YouTubes? Diddy? Who are we lecturing here?
And no, giving the guy ten minutes after the inuaguration speech to get his briefcase and move into the house doesn't count as giving him a free pass. I had a lot of arguments with a lot of people during the primaries but during none of them was my position ever that Obama was perfect. My position was that Chris Dodd was perfect, so I guess I should be all BRB DODD FANFIC right now, but I learned a while back that screaming I TOLD YOU SO at people you're in a lifeboat with doesn't get you out of the lifeboat any faster.
As to Jane's point:
The Bush administration and their wars gave fuel to the progressive movement in this country, no doubt. I was personally at a loss during the primary battles -- from a movement perspective, I understood our job to be to hold fast to our principles and reward candidates for hewing to them and make them compete for our support.
The stuff you care about doesn't become any less the stuff you care about because a guy who doesn't make you ashamed to be a mammal is in the White House.
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So, that stack of bills that didn't get passed that I mentioned in my other post? It was a big stack and some of them were much-needed, like changes to Medicaid, solar energy incentives, Board of Education reform, controllling development in the Hill Country, and a whole lot more.
So, what happened? Voter ID, that's what. Changing the laws so that citizens would have to present a current driver's license, or two other forms of identification, in addition to their voter registration. Texas Republicans, like Republicans in numerous other states, have been pushing for voter ID for several sessions. Texas Democrats, like Democrats in those other states, have blocked such efforts, calling them what they really are: voter suppression aimed at intimidating minorities and seniors.
Democrats had been able to block previous Voter ID attempts because of the longstanding state rule requiring a two-thirds supermajority to bring legislation to the floor for a vote. So, right off the bat, early in this session, the Senate voted to suspend the two-thirds requirement and they passed Voter ID. You might remember the last time the two-thirds requirement was suspended...when the bill clearing the way for the Republicans gerrymandering redistricting of the state passed.
So, the Senate rammed through their shiny brand new voter suppression bill and sent it to the House. Then began the time-honored dance of strategically massaging the legislative calendar and agenda such that it favors legislation that the dominant party, the Lt. Governor, the Speaker, and the Governor (all Republicans) want to get passed. By backloading the calendar so that critical bills would be imperiled if the Democrat-heavy House decided to try and delay passage of Voter ID or water it down with amendments, the Republicans essentially were betting they could beat the Dems in brinksmanship, doubling down on the certainty that the Democrats would blink and back down.
But the Dems didn't blink.
After weeks of haggling in committee, Voter ID came up for a vote and the Democrats in the House began to chub. Chubbing is akin to filibustering, talking about minor bills and points of law and possible amendments while running down the clock until, at the last minute, everything has to get rearranged so that legislation that absolutely has to get passed becomes the priority.
And that's how the Texas House Democrats successfully killed Voter ID. Yes, there was undeniably high collateral damage, and yes the Republicans called them partisan obstructionists dependent on hordes of illegal brown voters to keep them in office, but they did something I sure haven't seen much of in the U.S. Congress: they acted like Democrats and killed a bill aimed at disenfranchising minorities, the poor, and the elderly. Like House minority leader Jim Dunnam said,
Monday was the last day of the 2009 session of the Texas Legislature, the day both the House and the Senate were supposed to adjourn sine die, having completed the business of the people of the state. It surprised no one that what happened instead more closely resembled chaos.
To begin with, there were stacks of bills that were not going to pass because time had run out before the necessary flnal measures could be taken. That much was known, and there was a reason for that (more on that reason later). Nonetheless, there were some important things that were supposed to get finished before sine die: the Democrats in the House were going to try and salvage an expansion of the state CHIP program that the governor didn't want and had vowed to veto, and both the House and the Senate needed to finalize safety net measures to keep five of the largest state agencies, including Transportation and Insurance, from shutting down before the next lege session. The House passed a resolution they felt adequate for this and adjourned abruptly, without the Dems saving the CHIP expansion, and without notifying the Senate. The Senate had an issue with the House resolution because it did not include 2 billion dollars in road-building bonds and construction projects. They sent it back but the House was already gone, no doubt partying down. So the Senate stayed in session late into the evening and tried to salvage the safety net but could not reach agreement, probably because so many Senators were busy collaring the milling-about journalists and newspeople and throwing down trashtalk about the House. So they adjourned without the safety net.
On Tuesday the Senate kept blaming the House, the House blamed the Senate, Democrats blamed Republicans, Republicans blamed Democrats, and Governor Goodhair called a news conference and admitted that he knew less about the situation than anyone else, again surprising no one.
"If I could tell you that I understood what happened last night, I would be an absolute genius," Perry said. "I thought I was watching an episode of Lost. I have no idea what they were thinking or why they did not want to pass that resolution that would give a safety net to those agencies."
Despite all that, Perry declared the session a success, and in true Republican fashion, happily bragged about magical tax cuts that would solve everything: "I bet
there's not a lot of states out there that have cut taxes during this
recession," Perry said last weekend. "California tried to raise a whole
bunch of them. And Michigan. We gave small businessmen and women a tax
cut." The session was about business and jobs, low taxes
and small government, he said – boldfacing his philosophy that economic
development fuels every other possibility in the state, from better
education to better roads. Because in Perry's world low taxes and small government are better than adding 80,000 deserving Texas kids to the state CHIP program, better than using stimulus money to expand the state's meager unemployment benefits, better than helping families send their kids to college by freezing climbing tuition rates, better than making sure that tens of thousands of state employees have a job in two years. These are the people that should feel lost on a desert island because in Perry's world, they might as well be.
Well, this should be fun for everybody.
If only John McCain was president and could just tell them to cut it the fuck out. I'm sure they'd listen.
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It's a good speech, but I think this was my favorite part:
I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to our shores in search of the promise that they offered. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn of their truth when I lived as a child in a foreign land. My own American journey was paved by generations of citizens who gave meaning to those simple words – “to form a more perfect union.” I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never – ever – turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.
I make this claim not simply as a matter of idealism. We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset – in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.
Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world.
It is the reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle, knowing they’d receive better treatment from America’s armed forces than from their own government.
It is the reason why America has benefited from strong alliances that amplified our power, and drawn a sharp and moral contrast with our adversaries.
It is the reason why we’ve been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism, outlast the iron curtain of communism, and enlist free nations and free people everywhere in common cause and common effort.
From Europe to the Pacific, we have been a nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology.
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Up for a van tomorrow night? It's been a while, we could haul it out, give it a good spring cleaning.
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[I decided I wanted to spend a couple or three posts over some Wednesdays focusing on one of my favorite books, the man who wrote that book, and the characters and setting. The Gay Place is a novel made up of three smaller novellas. It's mostly about politics and politicians, and most of the action occurs in 1950s Austin. I wanted to ruminate some on it here because it's got a lot to offer anyone addicted to that ol' political crack monkey and also because while it's widely regarded as a masterwork, it's still considered somewhat obscure. ]
Had he lasted till now instead of burning out three decades ago, Billy Lee Brammer would have been 80 years old yesterday. But Billy Lee didn't make it.
He died of a drug overdose in February, 1978, something that didn't seem to surprise anyone who knew him. The last few years of his life weren't kind, he'd run out of health and money, hadn't held a job since he'd lost a gig as a cook in the Driskill, and he'd lost that after a drug bust back in 1974:
So that was the beginning of the down-and-out end of Billy Lee Brammer, a man who'd once been the epitome of an insider's insider. He'd been a confidant so close to the Master of the Senate and future president that he even ghost-wrote LBJ's letters home to LadyBird and the girls. An intellectual who rubbed shoulders with everyone from Ann Richards to Eliot Janeway to Ken Kesey, Brammer also served as mentor and influence to a seemingly endless list of authors, journalists, editors, even musicians and actors.
Billy Lee Brammer was a short soft-spoken Texan who once, just once, wrote a book, The Gay Place.
That's right, just the one, and it wasn't just a good book, but a great one. No less than Gore Vidal called it "an American classic," Willie Morris said it was "the best novel about American Politics in our time."
Glowing as Halberstam's review may be, I'd argue that the book was not inspired by Lyndon Johnson, at least not originally. Those who are still invested in perceiving LBJ in only one dimension, the people who won't even deign to read the amazing Robert Caro Path to Power series, will likely also not care to read The Gay Place. In both instances, it's their loss if they really are interested in American political history, about how politics really works. Neither Caro's books or The Gay Place are truly "about" or inspired by the real or fictionalized LBJ. They're about power, about how someone with that much power thinks and operates and achieves or fails.
“The target is to those congressional members who are going to be putting their name on the ballot, filing for election here in less than eight months, the message is going to be to them, ‘Hey, brother congressman, sister congresswoman, hold on a minute. You’re doing some things, or you’re overseeing some things or you’re blessing some things in Washington, D.C. that are absolutely wrong and we’re not going to stand for it any more.”
In case you don't understand Goodhair-ese, what he said is: K-A-Y B-A-I-L-E-Y H-U-T-C-H-I-S-O-N.
Hutchison said she supported the bipartisan compromise in part because it will protect Texas from losing federal money. "The Finance Committee worked with me to not rob [Texas'] funds, so for that reason I'm inclined to support (the bill)," said Hutchison.
BTW, Goodhair will be guest of honor at various of the state's teabagstravaganzas today, including the one held at Austin's Lady Bird Lake, where
Well, that certainly sends a strong message...Empty boxes labeled with the name of the once heavily taxed beverage will be thrown into the water — and immediately retrieved by canoe. The protesters have even obtained the proper permits from city officials, event organizer Judy Holloway said.
Wow, being on the opposition for a change really seems to have exhilarated my esteemed US Senator, Big Bad John Cornyn lately, hasn't it?
" this change in rhetoric will not change the fact that radical Islamic fundamentalists seek to destroy our way of life and spend every waking moment devising new ways to spread their hate-filled ideology. It is my hope that President Obama would instead see the Global War On Terror for what it truly is – a critical effort to protect Americans and ensure that future generations will be able to live in freedom as well. Many of our military leaders refer to the effort as ‘the Long War,’ recognizing that it will not be won overnight, much like the Cold War took decades to win. It is my sincere hope that President Obama will reassess his priorities, abandon this rhetorical effort and outline his detailed strategy for fighting and winning the Global War On Terror.”
And Big Bad isn't stopping there with the prissy threats, either. He's also got his chaps in a twist about the Obama White House's slapdown last week when Republicans had to be reminded that Texas Dems now have skin in the game when it comes to the judicial selection process in the state.
For years, the state's Republican senators screened applicants for lifetime spots on the federal bench in Texas and for powerful U.S. attorney posts. As recently as last week, they refused to cede that prerogative and claimed the administration was behind them.
That left Texas Democrats – the third-largest delegation of Democrats on Capitol Hill – steamed enough to summon the president's top lawyer, Greg Craig, and insist on public reassurance that Democrats get to pick judges under a Democratic administration.
After he got an earful for 75 minutes Monday, his office issued a clarification.
"No federal judge, U.S. attorney or U.S. marshal will be nominated by the president ... unless that person has the confirmed support of the Texas Democratic delegation," the White House said Tuesday.
Thus ended a test of wills that has played out for two months in meetings between Craig and the dozen House Democrats from Texas, and between Craig and Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
The Cornyn/KBH response? Holding their breath till they get their way, apparently.
But see, it's all okay because his heart's in the right place: Cornyn stressed his vigilance was necessary to avoid the judicial selection process becoming "too partisan.""The day that we elect a Democrat to the United States Senate in Texas, they are entitled to function as they would with a Democratic president," he said Thursday. "I'm not going to delegate my responsibility to anybody else."
"Nobody needed to rattle any sabers, and that certainly that wasn't my goal," Cornyn told reporters a few hours later. "There's a little bit of a misunderstanding. ... I think you'll see a written clarification from the White House."
"There will be no further written clarification," he said. "We don't think there's any confusion."
Oh, snap.
(UPDATED: because "enervated" and "exhilarated" are different things. )
Asked who was responsible for the economic meltdown, 80 percent in the poll blamed banks, financial institutions and corporations. Some 70 percent also blamed consumers for taking on too much debt and the former Bush administration for lax regulation. Only 26 percent said the Obama administration was not doing enough to turn the situation around.
Two-thirds of respondents approve of the way Obama is handling the presidency, and 60 percent approve of the way he is handling the economy.
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And, to the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year's campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision.
I thought it was stupid when Obama and McCain yanked each other around about it, I think it's stupid now. Congressmen and Senators are SUPPOSED to go get money for things their constituents need. Including volcano monitoring, beaver management, and Nancy Pelosi's gay San Francisco terrorist mice. We spend tons of money on much more stupid shit than a boarding school for at-risk kids, and glasses for the blind. For example, David Vitter is still getting his health care paid for.
Nobody really cares about spending except when it fails to make their lives better. It may play well in focus groups and people may crab, but when you get right down to it, they want their roads fixed and their bridges built and their blind kids given glasses. You can't reconcile those two conflicting positions except by concluding that "Washington spends too much money" is a bullshit thing people say because it's what they always say. What they really mean is that nobody's spending the way I want money spent, so let's just all of us (including you, Mr. President) admit that's the case and stop fapping around pretending that denying somebody money for mice is going to fix the economy.
(And for those who want to throw the Bridge to Nowhere Sarah Palin bullshit in my face, the problem with that whole thing was the way she handled it, not the bridge itself. Get a bridge if you want one, but then don't run around telling everybody you didn't support it and wouldn't let anybody else have a bridge either. As the Crack Den pointed out this morning, everybody's stuff is important to them. Is this really that hard to understand?)
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On the eastern side of the quad, students who had been waiting for the group waved signs mocking the WBC’s trademark “God Hates Fags” poster. The signs bore slogans such as “God <3’s internet porn,” “God hates the new Facebook,” and “God hates dial-up.”
Across the street, the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity brothers lined their porch in bathrobes, awaiting the arrival of the protesters. When they appeared, the brothers stripped off their robes and began dancing to Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “I’m Coming Out,” Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” and the Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men.” The “Tiny Dancer” lyrics “Jesus freaks/out in the streets” elicited a loud cheer from the crowd on the other side of the street.
In general, the atmosphere was festive. Students laughed, joked, took pictures, and danced to Alpha Delt’s music.
“When we got down to the Seminary Co-Op and Alpha Delt was dancing around in their underwear, me and Rabbi Ruthie [Gelfarb] and this priest started dancing and we got like 30 people to come over and dance in front,” said third-year Iah Pillsbury. “It was like a celebration. It was really cool to see so many
people come out in support of diversity and doing whatever we want and
gay people...and religious freedom.”
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I remember when this episode aired, people were bitching about how unrealistic it was to have a Republican character so boneheaded tone deaf stupid as Gov. Richie. I don't think the optimists making those complaints in their wildest dreams imagined the GOP of Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal.
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Update: Van closed. Thanks to all for stopping by! Apologies for any technical difficulties that prevented me from sharing joy at the EPIC OBAMA WIN and EPIC JINDAL FAIL that ensued.
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Anybody up for a van? I should be home in time for the speech.
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We've moved on from killing journalism to killing politics. Take it away, Alexandra Pelosi:
I was hoping my film was going to be an artifact of a moment in time. There is a lot of talk about change. Even John McCain was talking about change. But change is always going to be harder for some than for others. And there's always going to be those who are not ready. And you see people in my film saying, "I'm not ready. Hey, I'm a redneck, I'm proud of it, I'm more backwards than the rest of you, and I'm just not ready. Not ready for a black president, not ready for change, I'm just not ready." In four years, in eight years, you may look back at this, and it may be something totally new. Like a Jewish president or a gay president or who knows? And this will all seem like nothing. I'm not giving an infomercial for Barack Obama's change. I'm just saying that this will be interesting in the future to see people who just weren't ready for this. They may be wrong, but they may be right.
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Drawback to being a nonprofessional blogger: Meatspace obligations trumping ability to Superman that ho Crack Van the presser or the Town Hall. In any case, TiVo'd it, watched it, and am still finding it hard to believe we have a president who can speak in complete sentences. That part of this ain't getting old anytime soon.
Obama appeared to do the job of opening up the can of PWNSAUCE the Republicans richly deserved, he answered each one-sentence halfwit question in 41 parts and iambic pentameter, etc, etc. It was fine. It's gonna take a while till I stop expecting to be outraged at presidential pressers and go back to being moderately annoyed. I was overjoyed he stuck up for FDR, amused at how easy the Republicans have made it for him to cast them as do-nothings, and then bugged because if the debate's this easy to win, why cave on anything at all?
That being said, fucking A-Rod? I'm sorry, I know I'm supposed to be off killing journalism, but it seems to be dying off just fine on its own, what with the EARTH CAVING IN and people wasting time on whether a dickhead took drugs or not. Don't get me wrong, my emotional state depends on the UW hockey team doing well and all, I'm not immune to the charms of our sporting life, but had someone stopped the whole damn shebang to ask what the President thought of the stunning whoopass the Badgers laid down on the Gophers this last weekend and his opinion on whether Connolly is a god or merely a superhero, my response would still be "... the fuck?"
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Seriously, where's my foam finger?
If I've had a thing on this blog from the start — and I was doing some thinking this week while I was traveling because it was that kind of trip, the kind where you start out trying to get warm for the first time in months and end up reassessing your entire life — it's that Democrats should stop apologizing for being Democrats and being liked and being elected and being supported and being popular. Quit screwing around, seriously. People put you in charge to do stuff. Power has a purpose and you either use it when you've got it or spend the rest of your life making up excuses why you didn't.
I watched the inauguration from Aruba, in the hallway of a restaurant run by an expat New Yorker who shut down the Belgian chocolate sales she had going and turned every TV to CNN so the Americans in the place (lots of us, more than I thought) could see the sights from home. Her name was Christine and all week long people had been coming through the place, buying treats and booze and congratulating her. As if she'd won the election. She felt like she had.
"I've heard from Russians, Germans, from people in France," she said, piling another stack of beers onto her little round tray and laughing as friends across the street waved to her. "Everyone is so happy. The whole world is rejoicing with us."
All week long I'd pick up the local papers, turn on CNN for a few minutes (just a few, I couldn't shut it off entirely) and there'd be some other entirely un-stunning display of competence and good sense. Appointing the experienced and intelligent to positions of influence. Repealing laws and directives that stifled the very objectives they were meant to aid. Saying to the world loud and clear with one voice that we will no longer tolerate a lawless prison on our consciences, that we may have fallen this far but we fall no farther.
But what kept striking me was how it was being done: With no hedging, no fauxpology, no "gosh I'm sorry we won't constrain poor women to bearing children at the dictates of the state," no "it's just so horrible how we have to stop torturing people and making up bullshit excuses about what is and isn't American soil." I won, you lost, I may listen to you but then you sit down and I do what I was elected to do. Kay? One thing after the other, so much that the GOP can't work up a head of outrage about any of it loud enough to drown out the next thing, and the collective reaction is sort of a sigh of relief, like, okay, at least we no longer have to worry quite so much about some nitwittery about nothing.
And the world, the world that hasn't been so wild about us for a while, is rejoicing right along with us.
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Who's hung over?
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Arright, peeps. Say goodbye to President Bush (punch3, grizzly, chainsaw) and hello to President Obama (applause, kitten, kids-yeah) in the van. Please be nonviolent. Virgo will be your guest driver for much of the day and I'll check in when I can.
Posts in the van belong to their posters, not to Jude, Scout, Athenae or the regular guests, who are not responsible for anything not said by them personally. Any leftover scotch will be fed to the ferrets. This time wipe up the messes before I get home.
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Hockey legend Gordie Howe spins a great yarn about being a pall bearer for Jack Adams. The long-time Detroit Red Wings GM died in 1968 after a reign of success that was predicated on a reign of terror. Adams was known for his tight-fisted approach to money and his draconian nature when it came to dealing with players.
Adams repeatedly told Howe he was the highest paid player in the league until Howe found out there were three guys on the team making more than he did. He also traded away Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay for attempting to form the NHL players union in the 1950s. Journalists often noted that Adams would walk around with train tickets sticking out of his shirt pocket, a clear indication that if you weren’t playing up to his standards, you were likely to be sent out of town on a rail. The stories of this variety were endless.
Howe was in a limousine heading to the cemetery when some of the other pall bearers, hockey players all, started telling the perfunctory “isn’t it a shame he’s gone” stories you would expect at a funeral. Finally, one player piped up:
“I played for him and he was a miserable son of a bitch,” the man noted. “Now, he’s a dead, miserable son of a bitch.”
I thought about that as I was gearing up for George W. Bush’s speech last night. After an eight-year reign as our leader, he walks away from a country decimated by unemployment, economic failure, social unrest and diminished world status. He set records with his disapproval ratings and yet his speech had the tone of an extended spoken-word version of “My Way.”
For the most part, people seem pretty much happy to get on with life without him. Still, I keep seeing analysis like this talking about how he wasn’t wrong on everything or columns like this saying we need a broader view before we can say for sure how he will be judged.
True, he wasn’t wrong on everything. In an eight-year span, you can’t be wrong about everything, or else you would have ended up catatonic after eating 53 pounds of fudge and chasing it with a glass of Drain-O on a dare. You would have gotten run over at least 90 times by speeding D.C. cabs after uttering the phrase, “C’mon, we can make it before the light changes.” You would have taken a leak on the third rail at the D.C. Metro and lit yourself up like a Christmas tree trying to disprove that electricity can flow upward. You would have been dead many times over after trying many stupid, stupid things, prefacing them with, “Well, if this doesn’t kill me, nothing will…” Not being wrong about everything is not the standard I’m looking for in the leader of my country.
False, you can judge him right now. How much broader of a view on him do we need to get? We’re worse off as a nation than at any point since the Great Depression. I remember spending late nights with my grandmother who would tell me stories of the Depression. There wasn’t anything Great about it. Handout programs that broke their spirit and hand-me-down shoes that nearly crippled her. Lost money due to lost banks and lost homes due to lost jobs. It was their worst nightmare realized, the one where you’re falling and you don’t know when or if you’ll ever hit the bottom. Sound familiar? I can’t imagine anyone in 40 years looking back and coming up with a positive spin on this, at least not one that someone will buy having lived through it.
It would be great to borrow Ford’s line here about our long national nightmare being over. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Although we’ve finally taken the keys away from our country’s worst drunk driver, we’re nowhere near done with the wreckage he hath wrought. It will likely take decades to get this fixed and that presupposes we as a country don’t do something stupid in 2012-2020 elections.
Only two logical reasons exist for pulling out the “Bush’s legacy might not be that bad” column. The first reason is that the people writing are like the folks who are filling time before a bad Super Bowl It’s very clear one team is going to bludgeon the other to death, but column inches must be filled and whipping out a “time will tell” column gives the writer the chance to say, “I was the only one who believed” if something truly ridiculous happens.
The second, and more reasonable, reason for this is that people see the end of the road and much like they do during a funeral, they feel the need to say something nice about the deceased. It’s decent and humane, but it’s far more than he gave to us over the past eight years.
He was a miserable son of a bitch. Now, he’s a departing miserable son of a bitch.
Now, let’s bury this administration and move on.
First, the motherfucking BATMOBILE.
Second, the trading cards. Doc's getting a set for his birthday.
Because I'm sorry, but after Cheney, and Bush, and ... I don't know, watching Freepi getting invited to White House picnics, I think we deserve a little silly fun.
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I tried to defend you, sir. I really did.
I'm no Republican; I'm quite liberal even by Democratic standards. Always have been. But during your first term--I was eleven when you were elected--I swallowed my protests and reasoned, "Well, he's our President now, I may as well support him." And I did. And then it all went to hell.
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Is that acceptable to say?
With the thoughts and promise and the hope that comes with finally ridding ourselves of potentially the worst president in American history (don’t know enough about some of the early 1800s guys to make that an absolute statement, plus I heard Buchanan was a major idiot…) , I guess I should be happier and more enthusiastic. I was in Blockbuster last night and saw this giant Obama poster with his speech from the Grant Park rally and I still got shivers. I’m looking forward to the next four (hopefully eight) years of what could be our country’s transcendent period. I still believe. I still have hope.
But I’m scared.
Every day, I see stories like this and this and this and I wonder what is going to happen next. I see more and more machines taking the places of more and more workers. I see more jobs going overseas. I see fewer companies weathering the storm.
The violent hacks and slashes that continue to take out newspaper jobs are now coming home to roost in the digital world as well. Yahoo and MicroSoft were the digital bastions of our future, expanding boldly while sidestepping whatever seemed to befall the ink-stained wretches. Now, their workers are grist for the mill as well. I somehow doubt that anyone goes to work these days and feels fat, happy and completely irreplaceable.
On a personal level, I worry that my upcoming tenure discussion will be less about my value to the university as a scholar and teacher and more about how many adjuncts they could buy with my salary if the canned me. I’m worried about the summer and the lack of revenue that comes with a 9-month appointment and the fallow field of grant money and summer courses available in this foundering economy. I’m worried that after 15 years of slogging toward a degree, my wife will find the job cupboard bare when she walks across the stage next year to get that exceptionally hard-earned diploma.
I’m scared.
I spent the day looking for a bit of inspiration, something that would tell me that everything will be OK. On a “Quote of the Day” site, FDR’s bold statement that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself popped up. I dug around and found the full transcript of the speech from which the quote originated. I often grouse that in this fast-food, quick-bit, sound-bite, blog-chunk world, we miss depth and meaning and substitute being glib for being right. Not wanting to fall victim to that myself, I went line-by-line through this 76-year-old speech and sought the context for the line we’ve all heard thousands of times.
The quote was part of Roosevelt's inaugural address. The core of the speech is powerful and could have been written about today. FDR combined an acute understanding of his time with a sense of Biblical history and the social ramifications of uncertainty. He saw how the greed of the times, the way in which people lived beyond their means and the collapse of the financial system contributed to what appeared to be the end of days for this country. He saw frozen credit markets, unemployed workers and the death of industry and knew everyone in his country was living in fear.
It would have been easy for Roosevelt to say what he probably was thinking: “I’m scared too and there are no guarantees we’ll ever pull out of this thing.” He could have told people to suck it up or drop dead or anything that lesser politicians have said in tough times. It would have been even easier to blame it on the last guy for whom the infamous Hoovervilles were named. “Hey, you all can SEE how screwed up this is! It’s almost impossible to fix this mess…”
Instead, he did the extraordinary. He stepped up to the microphone and on day one of his new job announced that you too will have a new job soon. He told his people that the stuff they had lost was just stuff and that it could be worse. He told them that we’re going to figure it out and that we’ll work on it together. He told them fear comes from the unknown, so let’s focus on the known and fix what we can see in front of us. I have no idea how this came off to the people who were starving and living in shanties in Central Park, but in retrospect, I must admit, it had the courage and vision this country needed at the time.
The speech was a practical miracle, to coin an oxymoron. It was a compact between president and people. It was a commitment to figuring this out together. It was a declaration that we were getting up off the mat and going one more round.
It was essentially a 1933 version of “Yes We Can.”
Let’s hope the end results are the same.
I'm going to be (I can't believe this) out of the country while this is going on, taking a long-planned trip that would have been a much-needed escape had the election gone the other way. However, I think with a guest driver or two, the Crack Van can be aired out and prepped for service so that you can all celebrate in style.
And wave goodbye to the Usurper as he flees the White House in disgrace.
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Best ever summation of how this tool got re-elected. Short answer is that the local GOP is Teh Suck:
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All we do now, under the terms of the education debate as dictated by Republicans and Republican surrogates, is talk about how teachers' unions are making outrageous pay demands and then sucking at teaching, or how parents in "some" communities don't value education and therefore that's why the schools fail, or how "some" kids don't want to learn, and there's nothing you can do about that, so ... shrug, huff, back to your fireplace and your brandy and your cigar, Daddy Fuckin' Warbucks, now you've given yourself an out, now you're excused from giving a shit. Go you. Schmuck.
I'm absolutely certain that each of the above statements can be proven true in examples in schools around the country. Absolutely certain there are teachers who suck, and kids who are little assholes who'd rather be playing video games than learning, and parents who could give a shit less if their kids remember the multiplication tables. Absolutely certain. You simply cannot pay me to give a tinker's damn is all, not when there's a hole in the wall and the boiler is broken and there are chains on the doors and grates on the windows and the kids are wearing parkas in the classroom.
I mean, I'm sorry, I suppose I should be a serious person and demand that we punish and humiliate poor people before we "give" them anything (not like they pay taxes, after all, we're the hard workers, they're the shiftless layabouts). I suppose I should be serious like that but oh my god until you can no longer point to a single school that doesn't look at least as nice or nicer than the average NFL practice facility I would like you to kindly shut the fuck up about what's going on inside said school because I have no intention of listening to you and you're just annoying the pets.
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Indicted. I should be excited, but I'm having a hard time coming up with any kind of a reaction other than "feh." What a monumental dumbass this guy is:
Blagojevich and Harris conspired to demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for editorials critical of Blagojevich in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.
Blagojevich and Harris, along with others, obtained and sought to gain financial benefits for the governor, members of his family and his campaign fund in exchange for appointments to state boards and commissions, state jobs and state contracts.
Archpundit has more background.
I've never been much of a Blagojevich fan, and you've got to understand something about Illinois politics. We have three parties here: City Dems, Downstate Dems, and Republicans. Downstate Dems would rather fuck with a City Dem than with a Republican, City Dems have more fun poking the Downstaters than they do the "opposition," Republicans are pleased to sit back and watch the catfight, so nothing gets done.
Blago has all the charm, charisma, political capital and popularity of a bedbug infestation and so after a number of years of near-total Dem control of politics in the state (mostly because the face of the Republican party here vs. Obama was Alan Keyes, so that tells you how together the Republicans are) we still have a school funding system that was a national disgrace when Jonathan Kozol wrote about it in Savage Inequalities, and now would be a farce if there was anything remotely funny about it at all. I am a near one-issue voter on the schools issue here because I've seen firsthand how the kids get hosed in towns "we" don't care about, and Blago has had the courage to do exactly dick about it even when people did like him.
I don't want to live under a Republican governor especially but I have to tell you, lately? Hard to find a way anybody could possibly make it worse. (I'm so gonna regret typing those words.) What you have to understand is we're pretty okay in Chicago with a guy running something shady if he's effective at his job, which is why everybody in streets and san has the same last name but Daley keeps getting elected and will until he too is indicted or dies or decides he's sick of putting up wrought iron and Disney stores everywhere. What gets us pissed off is when you're trying to take us and giving us exactly nothing back.
Beachwood's gonna have a lot (and has had a lot) on the intersections between the Blago and Obama operations. All else aside, doubtless this is going to be some kind of a Whitewater for the right's cottage industry. An early Christmas gift for Regnery and Fux. Yays.
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What's fun about it, of course, is that people are so gobsmacked. After eight years of "Mr. President, should we pray?" and little nicknames, I like that Obama's reaction to being asked about shit he doesn't care about is kind of "... the hell?" I'm sure there are people who see this as arrogant and condescending, but I'm honestly easier with arrogant and condescending than I am with jokey and trivial, from a guy in that chair.
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Something very interesting happened over on the Obama transition team's Change.gov site a week ago. It was the day before Thanksgiving, so it didn't make as big of a splash as it might otherwise have. An invitation was issued to Join the Discussion and tell the Obama team "What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?" Transition team members Dr. Dora Hughes and Lauren Aronson opened the discussion with a video request for feedback.
Making use of a system created by Intense Debate, the threaded discussion grew into 3,701 comments. Six days later, comments were closed, followed by an video response yesterday from Aaronson and HHS Secretary nominee Daschle.
I know I've done my share of Obama cheerleading but that's not what motivates me to find this chain of events pretty damned impressive. First, it'a a helluva change from what we're used to. As noted on techPresident.com
Second, I think it's fair to say that it signals that Obama and Co. want the electorate to believe they are serious about those campaign promises regarding enabling citizen access to the process of government via technology.
I'm optimistic but still a bit cynical, or at the very least cautious. I am fascinated at the prospect of an actual meaningful exchange, but I use the word "signal" deliberately. We obviously aren't yet able to take full measure of the true extent of the interactivity, from both sides. The Daschle response video was short and shallow, mostly intended to get the point across that "We're listening!"
The signal's been received, noted, and appreciated, but now what? What happens to that input? Having a forum makes a difference to the citizens but will it make a difference to the policy makers? How do we know and what will we see as proof of follow-through? There's a good argument made here that a more wiki-like approach would greatly enhance the conversation. It's also likely that some system of revision control/notice will have to be put in place to demonstrate transparency.
Change.gov took another encouraging step on 12/1 by switching the site's content over to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which in effect, says that the content on the site is free to the American public to take and use as they want. Imagine that...
We can assume that other issues will be opened to a forum on Change.gov. I think we can also count on the White House website morphing into something much more Change.gov-like after the transition of power. Ideally, if promises are kept, this will bring information access, interactivity, and greater transparency into the daily business of governance. And what about us? Will we respond accordingly and participate?
I cannot take the meta anymore. Via Shakesville, which:
Regular readers may recall that although I
supported Clinton's candidacy, I frequently said that I'd be more than
happy to vote for either of them. I wasn't just saying that to be nice,
nor was it a "any Democrat will do" kind of thing. It's because I (no
political expert to be sure) could see quite clearly that they're not that different.
I don't mean that there weren't policy differences between them
(although, really, there weren't many). What I mean is that despite the
ridiculously childish acrimony between their campaigns, they themselves
are obviously of similar character and temperament. In fact, I suspect
(although I have no proof of this) they get along great. I think she's had his back since she endorsed him, and I believe she'll be a loyal and effective member of his team.
How did all our clever liberal writers miss this?
Speaking only for me, and trust me, I'm sure I'm not included in "all our clever liberal writers," but ... my aspirations for an Obama presidency — for that matter, a Clinton one — were pretty basic. Try not to screw us too often or hard. End the war. Fix health care. I realize these are criminally low expectations to apply to our leadership but I personally don't think the choices were ever put to me as "new man made of moonbeams" versus "THE NEVERENDING SUCK." And while I'm sure there were clever liberal writers overwhelmed by the majesty of Obama or whatever, and I'm sure there were plenty of Obama supporters who were, there were plenty of others who said pretty much what I felt, which was that Obama's campaign was a sight to behold and that once in office he'd need constant shoving in the right directions.
I live in the state Obama worked in and he didn't transform it into a place where cotton candy grew on all the trees and unicorns nibbled from it at lunch. He did things that impressed me, and things that pissed me off, like any Democrat. Maybe this confusion at how I'm supposed to be enraged at how taken in I was is a consequence of my having spent the primary wars pissed off that all our clever liberal writers couldn't have given a damn about my candidate, the only one, by the by, with the balls to stand up for the rule of law in this country, not that anyone gave a shit anymore once he shook Joe Lieberman's dick off for him.
And by the by, being annoyed at Obama isn't a sign that progressives are over, or that he doesn't care, or that we were OMG DECEIVED and should go home and beat our breasts in apology for having gotten jacked up about the guy. It's a sign that he isn't doing everything we want. And we should ask for what we want. There's a whole form right here. Go fill it out instead of lifing the rest of the blogosphere about how YOU ALL GOT SUCKERED HA HA HA.
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A distressing number of that last group have called or written here to unburden themselves, some of them stunning in their narrow-minded fury.
It would serve no purpose to repeat any of the truly offensive diatribes - it's embarrassing enough just listening to them - but I'll let one of the gentler comments I heard represent them all: "I didn't order the Call & Post! Print a black paper for some other people to read . . . not me!"
Don't make me look at reality. Cousin of the critter that hated the AP for taking photos in Iraq and sending them back.
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President-elect Obama ordered his sandwich on rye bread with mustard.
What KIND of mustard, though? We need to know!
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Part of it's that there isn't an Obama presidency yet. Part of it's that there's so much speculation about who's gonna do what; part of it's that we're trying to figure out what we thought about Obama was true and what was some combination of adrenaline, alcohol and projection. Part of it's that unlike during the campaign, we're all just watching now. You can't go door-to-door to get Richardson made Secretary of Commerce. Well, you can, but people will stare at you funny.
Part of it, of though, is that we're simply not used to having a president whose intelligence and decisions we can trust. It's not about whether you trust Obama, it's not even about whether he's trustworthy. Opinions on that can differ and only time will tell. It's about whether you can be rewired to give anybody in this job the barest amount of the benefit of the doubt ever again.
I mean, for eight years we have basically had a president we were afraid was gonna sit on the button. We had this chewy little asshole who every time he opened his mouth caused an international incident, who couldn't pick up the phone without almost burning the place down. He and his people gave us absolutely no indication we could stop paying attention for a second because if this was the shit they did while we were watching, I mean, good God. It was like watching a guy juggle fire, and not well, and for eight years.
It's gonna take us a minute to stop jumping every time the phone rings.
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to First Draft
