Arkantsas

Big Ed can get on my nerves sometimes, working too hard to be Mr. I Shoot Things Folksy Not One of Those City Lefty Liberals, but he totally nails things here.

If nothing else, it's sort of fascinating to see how much the Obama White House can disappoint.

Can't Spell Disease without DC

Nod and point time. Steve Goldman is back at his blog Wholesome Reading, and not just busy at work at BP and Pinstriped Blog, so that means one more sharp cookie is on the political shelf. (OK, nowhere to go with that metaphor--it's kind of like health care reform, or HCR, as they like to call it, which, tellingly is an anagram of HRC or Hillary Rodham Clinton, a symbol for the last time the Dems started "reform" by selling out to the monied interests.) Here's part of how he kicked off his return, and proof you should be paying attention. He says exactly what I feel, so thanks for doing it so well, Mr. Goldman.

Beyond Obama and the ineptitude of an administration that would lead and won’t counter-punch, the paramount reason for my frustration is this: while there has been jockeying between political factions for the hearts of the voters virtually since day one of the Republic, there used to be more of a sense that election season was election season but in between you had to accept the results and get on with the business of running the country. That obviously didn’t mean 100 percent cooperation, but you picked your battles. The basic maintenance of the country wasn’t neglected to score political points. That has changed. On one side of the aisle, we have a party that only says no, which means its loyalty is to party first, country second, and of course the Constitution not at all. On the other side, the Democrats (in case you were confused as to who was who) are, in the words of Winston Churchill, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. Putting your trust in these guys is like rooting for the Kansas City Royals. Who would want to who didn’t have to?

So the country, and by extension us, is a priority for no one, and we’re reduced to being the audience for a kind of masturbatory reality show version of a government while Rome burns. The Democrats have won and haven’t shown that they have a plan. The Republicans will win in November on a nihilistic platform that won’t lead anywhere either. There’s nothing left to hope for. As such, I’ve found that even when I’ve had time to write something here, I’ve felt too discouraged to try. What use would it be, when we’ve given up as a country? Karl Marx wrote of history, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. I’m not sure which version of the fall of an empire we’re in here, but I’m leaning towards farce. Imagine the ad for the movie: “The United States is a zany romp!–Gene Shalit.”

Still, even if our leaders have quit on us, we can’t quit. I’m going to stick with it if you will. Let’s light a candle and curse the darkness. Who’s with me?

I have to admit I'm worried my matches are damp....

Do the Standing Still

Haven't pointed and nodded in Pierce's direction for awhile, partially, I have to sadly admit, because he seems of late mostly to cryptically cackle and link to his source of derision, but he nailed what I'm thinking about health care so well, I will quote him verbatim:

I'm sorry but while both Ezra KLEIN and Jon COHN have done great work on this issue, they are talking here about a country and a political system that no longer exist. And their responses to Marcia Angell's CRI DE COEUR are largely political, and not really to the point of her piece, which is that no substantive reform of the system is possible until the control that the insurance industry exercises over the practice of medicine is broken forever. The now-familiar argument is that the House bill--even if it had a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the Senate intact, which it doesn't--represents a good first step. When exactly was the last time our political system--to say nothing of the Congress--did anything in "steps"? We don't progress. We move a step ahead, and then there's an election, and then we move another step in the opposite direction. The idea that the current debate will produce a system that will somehow be immune to our febrile and idiotic politics is naive to the point of translucence. [emphasis mine] For this to have worked at all, it had to be so huge and transformative as to immunize itself thoroughly in the event that Congress or the White House--or both--change hands. It had to be so immense as to be unmovable so that it would be permanent enough for enough people out in the country to become invested in it that the political danger would be to monkey with it at all. (Which is pretty much the way things are in Canada now. Their system, for all its flaws, is politically sacrosanct.) It also had to be a big enough change to overcome the fact that one of our two parties will be completely off its head for the foreseeable future. Whatever comes out of this process is going to be far too fragile to survive the kind of boneheaded thinking that produced this NONSENSE this week. And Social Security has a more solid constituency than whatever the new healthcare plan will have.

Or, let's just rename the Democrats the Something Is Better than Nothing Party.

Only a True Friend Would Save You from Winning

I tend to ignore local politics as it's simply large scale politics with even bigger egos to make up for the less that's at stake. Everything gets hyper-parochial, where each and every individual backyard makes one NIMBY-enough to vote for a candidate despite all of his or her other positions with which one might not agree.

Things only get worse when comments start running like they have of late on FB, and I should know better sure. But here's how an exchange went recently, and let's see what you good people think.... As you might have seen, Craig Smith, ever on top of things, posted about a meeting between mayoral candidates Steve Cushman and Dale Francisco. He also linked a PDF of a letter that Cushman sent Francisco after the meeting, requesting that the only honorable thing Francisco could do would be to drop out of the race, for the good of Santa Barbara, of course. For nothing could be better for the good of Santa Barbara, then, uh, Steve Cushman. I mean, just ask him. (If you haven't read the letter, go do so at once to learn what a patronizing tone is.) A big part of that is if Francisco loses, then he's one lonely voice amidst the 7 council members and mayor, just as he is now. Of course, Cushman can't imagine (perhaps accurately, but still) that any of the more conservative council candidates might win and help support a Francisco agenda. But, at the same time, Cushman can imagine that if he's mayor and Francisco is still a councilman, their 28% share of the city power will move mountains. (Remember, this is a guy with a business background making this claim, not some dumb writer like me.)

But, separate from all that, there are direct points that drive me nuts in the Cushman letter that I have to assume reveals more of him than he would want revealed. For instance, when he writes "I want to stop the massive giveaway of our neighbors' tax dollars" it's instructive to remember that Cushman lives on the Riviera. So his neighbors probably aren't your neighbors. I doubt he considers the westside or lower eastside his neighbors.

But then there's this--Cushman's insistence that the biggest threat to Santa Barbara is employee unions. I guess that's what it means to be pro-business these days--to assume you can run one without any pesky workers. Or at least any that might think they need to band together to get a fair wage and good working conditions. But demonizing the unions is a simple, nay simplistic, solution--the kind someone as vapid (and only about her own money) as a Wendy McCaw might make. Is someone who is willing to scapegoat like that the person we want to be our mayor? (And that's leaving aside thinking the town would have a better way of life if the people who lived in it had crappier jobs. Uh, thanks, mayor.)

So, back to the FB worries. I posted a link to this letter on a FB friend's page who has been trying to run a forum on the election. I linked to the letter and said, "Anyone who wants to blame all of the city's woes on employee unions is blind to the complexity of running a city and going for the easy scapegoat." And then someone else posted this, and unless it's Harry Shearer or someone from The Onion making wise, I'm really really worried: "We precisely need someone who is blind to the complexities and end this 'we can't do anything about this mess' mentality."

Didn't 8 years of The Decider teach us anything? Are our only two choices thinking complexly or doing? Action and thought are not opposed, my friends. What we need is informed action.

Perfect Models of Muddled Major Mayors

There was a horrible wrong-way-driver crash on the 101 in Santa Barbara this morning, complete with fatalities, and therefore the highway, and soon every surface street, was choked. We became a wonderful parking lot of not moving, not getting to work. Puts stuff in perspective. Late to work is much better than late period. Sometimes we have to be shaken out of our rush hours.

And much more mundanely, there was this--I turned to local AM radio hoping to figure out what was going on, what route might be best. This merely put me in the path of local pols trying to make their cases for being mayor. This merely made me dislike the candidates I already disliked even more.

As regular readers (hiya, both of you) might expect, just a word or phrase can be enough to set me off, as I'm in the business of words. (Didn't say I was a good businessman, just want my vocation clear.) First up is an ad from Steve Cushman, who wants to be mayor. And along his way to trying to prove that in 60 seconds, he says, "Because Santa Barbara is the best city in the world" or something very much to that effect. Sorry, Steve, but even as a big SB booster--I mean I do that professionally too, as George is my name and PR is my game--that's just an asinine, sucking up, bullshit thing to say. Who the hell knows what's the best city in the world? I might take Paris, another San Francisco, someone Cheyenne where I've never been. It's a stupid contest and a stupid thing for someone who has to make smart decisions to say. It means you'll say anything to be elected--it's like pretending that the whole damn town is one big baby to be smooched.

Next up was Dale Francisco, who instead of smooching, choose to shat on whole groups of people. He said to vote for him to keep "political activists and the unions" from running Santa Barbara. First, I sort of missed the political activists running town--I wish folks like Dick and Mickey Flacks were running things, but I'm pretty sure they're not. This "political activists" charge is sort of like when the right complains about "activist judges"--they only mean the judges who do things they don't want done. When the court rules in favor of corporations, white folk, etc., that's just justice, dammit. Comes direct from the god I made in my image.

And then the poor unions. Don't people realize that unions are just a bunch of people who actually work for a living? Sure, many unions are now white collar, not blue, but that's mostly because we've got rid of so many blue collars jobs or are very good at snuffing out any unionizing attempts before they can give people hope for better work conditions or a living wage. But there will always be a segment of the world (led by people like Wendy McCaw--gee, a rich woman hates unions, who'd guess?) that say the word union like they've just bit into a dog poop and maggot sandwich on a leper's shoe leather bread.

So it seems pretty easy, now, to decide who not to vote for for mayor. Glad your ads did the trick, gentlemen.

Use Guys

It didn't take more than an hour for someone to start off a Facebook comment about the death of Ted Kennedy with the line: "All I hear is the screams of Mary Jo Kopechne rising from her grave near Larksville Mountain."

I can't put it simpler than this--the dead don't scream.

Unless we turn them into ventriloquist's dummies to do our talking for us, of course.

My point isn't to praise or blame Kennedy for his actions on July 18, 1969 since I wasn't there and I can't know and especially now it's as murky as Poucha Pond. It's just if you think Kennedy did this woman wrong, every time you use her to club him--probably because you don't like his politics in the first place--you use her too. You have made her no longer a woman but a dark mark on that damn commie Kennedy's reputation. Think about that.

And while I don't want to play the games about how much death how directly caused stains a soul how much, what of the Vietnamese dead and LBJ and Nixon, what of the African dead those years Reagan couldn't form his lips to say AIDS, what of the Iraqi dead that W. will have to account for.


(5 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

Take One (Oval Office) for the Team

A brilliant idea in a letter to Eric Alterman today from the aptly named Jim Wiseman:

While we're on the subject, whoever wins the Democratic nomination ought to take a page from Abe Lincoln's book, and unite the party by filling his cabinet with heavyweights. Furthermore, take an additional page from the British, and announce it in advance of the election. Thus for example, if Edwards/Obama was the ticket, publish a shadow cabinet of (say) Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Wesley Clark as Secretary of Defense, Bill Richardson as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of Labor, Bill Clinton as Ambassador to the UN, and as a cabinet level Energy Czar... who else but Al Gore. Gore might accept if he was given the funding, and a mandate to make the US the world leader in reducing greenhouse emissions.

In any case, such an approach might finally unite the party, and allow us to move forward from a position of strength -- so that the party ceased to be perceived as simply a catch -- all for everyone who doesn't like the far right agenda. But it would also be good government, as Lincoln proved. Why does personal loyalty to the President have to be the first prerequisite of a cabinet post?

I'm all for this--if only they all weren't politicians. (And it does seem a bit like a special episode of Batman in reverse....)