It's fucking 2008 people!

Cowards.

Pop culture ephemera

While I was so studiously not blogging, I was also engaged in soaking up all manner of popular culture. A sample of the sights and sounds of the casa de wobs:

• ms. wobs and I recently finished watching Band of Brothers. I am, admittedly, a sucker for a well-made WWII flick and had been keen on watching this series for years now, and I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed. It's a well-crafted epic, both narratively and visually. More importantly, there's a fine line between telling the truly incredible stories of those who were there and myth-making, and I think the series tacks towards the former the vast majority of the time. The filmmakers also manage to keep the film apolitical (save the obvious narratives about the justness of WWII and a general "war really is hell" sentiment) while not flinching from the political and moral ambiguities that were inherent in the conflict.
  
  A special shout-out to goes to Donnie Wahlberg as Sgt. Lipton. When you see a former New Kid on the Block in the cast, you tend to be a little dubious, but Wahlberg plays Lipton with an understated dignity that's perfect for the role, even if he's less than convincing as a West Virginian.
  
  The only serious misstep in the series was casting David Schwimmer in a small but important role. It's really hard to get into the episode when all you can think is, "You're such a fucking douchebag, Ross!" Aside from Schwimmer and the obligatory awkwardly paced exposition of the first episode and the less-than-satisfying (emotionally, at least) denoument of the last, Band of Brothers is breathtaking to watch, especially the emotional heart of the series centered around episodes based on the Battle of the Bulge. It really is some extraordinary visual storytelling.


• We also managed to watch Thank You for Smoking and Idiocracy. They're both funny - I wouldn't necessarily watch them over and over, but they're definitely worth a spot in your Netflix queue. They're both over-the-top in their moralizing (though Mike Judge uses the outlandishness to far better effect, especially in a meta sense) but have plenty of gags to make them more palatable. I'll especially recommend Idiocracy for the visual gags that are Judge's vision of a distant future ruled by morons. The "House of Representin'" alone is worth the rental price. Or check it out free from your public library.


• I thought I was done with REM. The only new album I've bought since Automatic for the People was Up, and only really for the first six songs. So when I heard some good things about Accelerate, I at least paid attention. Then I read that someone heard a track on a college radio station, and that pushed me over the edge. It's good! Peter Buck rediscovered his distortion pedal, Mike Mills rediscovered those sweet counter-melodies backing up Michael Stipe, and the whole band rediscovered the whole jangly* rock thing that made us love them back in the 80s. There's a few tracks on there that sound like they could've been outtakes from Life's Rich Pageant or Green. The music itself is enough to put a nostalgic smile on your face, but the sly self-referential lyrics definitely seal the deal. This new album makes an old fan happy.
  
  * A little known section of law stipulates that media discussing REM with more than 50 words must use some variation of "jangle" within their work. It's true. Look it up.


• The best dKos diary I've read in a long, long time.

Putting the war room to shame

You haven't read spin until you've read this.

Endgame

I don't begrudge HRC wanting to fight out the last few primaries. Hell, she's made it this far. In fact, I can even mentally envision certain circumstances in which it could be a positive, party-building campaign invigorated by big ideas rather than policy nit-picking. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen.

And perhaps more tragically, I don't think the seeming desperation of the HRC campaign will necessarily damage the Democratic Party so much as it will be the ignominious tailspin of someone who should return to the Senate and - freed from the constraints of presidential ambition - lead the legislative charge to enact at least some progressive policy reforms. She deserves a better legacy than what this campaign will bequeath her.

At any rate, to my friends back home, enjoy your turn as the last stand.

Shaping and molding young minds

Two tales of the emergent political consciousness of l'il wobs.

Tale One: L'il wobs is currently enrolled in a hippy-dippy kind of Christian Montessori school. The boy apparently enjoys the religious part of the curriculum, which is fine by us, albeit a little jarring at times (for instance, when he referred to our wine as "Jesus blood." The way we see it, he'll encounter Christianity at some point - better from people who are teaching him to love everyone than from, say... Baptists. Besides, how's he ever going to appreciate Milton if he doesn't get some Judeo-Christian learning?

At any rate, a few weeks ago, l'il wobs started talking about "Rock" Obama. I was curious to know what the lad knew about "Rock," so I asked him. We were told that Obama is very beautiful, that he was put in jail, and then they killed him.

We were obviously a little surprised by his answer. Either ms. wobs or I asked him if maybe he was talking about Jesus, and l'il wobs responded, "They're the same."

Tale Two: One of l'il wobs friends and his parents weren't able to make the baseball game today, so they offered their tickets to us. We trekked down to watch the Nationals take on the Pirates. All was going well until "Star-Spangled Banner" time. To add a little razzle-dazzle to the proceedings, fireworks are launched to punctuate the "rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air."

L'il wobs hates loud fireworks and immediately broke down and wanted to leave. We talked our way through it, and he eventually re-settled and started to have a good time, charming our seatmates and munching on (four fucking dollar) Cracker Jacks.

During the bottom of the fourth, however, an Aaron Boone shot to the patio in center field brought out another round of celebratory fireworks, upon which l'il wobs recommenced freaking out. He was talked back down again, but by the time the sixth inning rolled around, he was pretty adamant about going home.

At any rate, when l'il wobs grows up to detest America, you'll know who to blame.

And yet it's so much more

Demographers and health researchers are noticing a dramatic drop in women's life expectancy is some areas of the United States:

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.

It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.

[...]

"This is a story about smoking, blood pressure and obesity," said Majid Ezzati, of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, a co-author of the paper.

The drop in life expectancy is about those things, but it's about a helluva lot more too.

It's the story of a nation that has a dangerously broken for-profit insurance to provide health coverage for most of its citizens, while leaving some 47 million uninsured. The coverage that people do have isn't necessarily even adequate to actually obtain decent health care.

It's the story of a nation that doesn't have - has never had - any sort of cohesive public health policies.

It's a story about cheap, processed foods of marginal nutritional value and mass advertising.

It's a story about poverty, and the conditions which cause poverty.

Limiting the story to just smoking, blood pressure, and obesity limits the solutions to the problems which vex us when it comes to public health in this country. By focusing on these three items, the solutions come in the form of individual interventions, in a manner of speaking. Educate people to make good choices, the logic goes. It, of course, elides over the much more complicated, and in the long-run, more damaging, structural problems that underlie the proximate causes of the decline in life expectancy.

There needs to be a much more expansive conversation about public health in this country, and it's a conversation that should make some people feel very, very uncomfortable.

So that whole election thingy might not be necessary after all

So, uh... good luck with that...

Senator John McCain said Monday that he needed to convince the American people that the troop escalation in Iraq was working and that American casualties there would continue to decline. If he did not, he said, “I lose” the election.

“Is there any doubt?” Mr. McCain said to reporters on his campaign bus.

Absolutely none.

Daydream Nation*

I feel that I've come by my cynicism about politicians legitimately. Not politics, per se, but politicians. And so it's with some measure of shame that I must admit that I'm starting to buy into some of the "hope" and "change" that are being thrown around.

To be clear, that hope and change isn't necessarily emanating entirely from the top of the ticket. You don't get to the position of "Democratic Front-runner" by espousing the kinds of politics and policies that have my imprimatur. Rather, it's the level of organizing that's occurring downstream of this candidacy that rekindles my optimism. There's a palpable - yes, palpable - sense of this being a perfect storm: a charismatic leader teamed with a political movement that might just now be coming of age. Behind that lies a fervent organizing network - wholly independent of the campaign in many instances - that will only grow as the nomination becomes more certain (if that is what actually happens). The more I think about it, the more impressed I become.

There are obvious questions that arise. What happens to this sense of empowerment on Jan 20, 2009? How many stay engaged? But I'm even hopeful about that, in the long run.

On top of it all, I sometimes just stop and reflect on the fact that a black man is slowly solidifying his claim on front-runner status to be POTUS. And honestly, that is nothing short of amazing.

We are indeed cursed to be living in interesting times, and I must say - it's pretty fucking exciting.

* For those of you who were attracted by the title, here's your reward for bearing with me:

I believe the term you're looking for is 'blowback'

Pity poor David Horowitz as he attempts to stuff the escaped "Soros ♥ McCain" genies back into his Pandora's Box:

The Internet and cable TV have been rife with allegations that George Soros funds John McCain. One of the sources for this claim is a book I co-authored last year called The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. What we reported was that Soros made a contribution to McCain's political organization when McCain was devising the McCain-Feingold bill. If you oppose that bill as I did and do, that's the end of the story.

Ah yes, the end of a story that started in 2004 like this:

By pushing McCain-Feingold through Congress, Soros cut off the Democrats’ soft-money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, Soros offered the Democrats an alternate money spigot – one which he personally controlled. As a result the Democrats are heavily – perhaps even irretrievably – dependent on Soros. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that McCain-Feingold, from its very inception, was a Soros power play to gain control of the Democratic Party.

People who take Soros money are co-opted liberal drones. Got it. In 2005, David Horowitz's Shadow Party co-author chimed in with some alarming news:

Founded on June 26, 2001, McCain's Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues has long served as a nerve center for the so-called "campaign finance reform" movement – a movement which has done nothing to clean up campaign finance, but has done a great deal to empower federal judges and government bureaucrats to regulate political speech, in defiance of the Bill of Rights.

Now here's the kicker. The list of donors published on the Reform Institute's Web site reads like a veritable Who's Who of radical, leftwing foundations, including the Tides Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Proteus Fund and George Soros' Open Society Institute (hat tip, Winfield Myers).

Not surprisingly, in view of the above associations, Arianna Huffington serves on the Reform Institute's Advisory Board. Huffington has long acted as a front for George Soros' "campaign finance reform" efforts. In 2000, she organized the so-called Shadow Conventions which provided John McCain with a bully pulpit to stump for his now-infamous McCain-Feingold Act. George Soros shouldered about one third of the cost of the Shadow Conventions.

What's this? Some liberal people with some communist puppet-master's money are somehow in cahoots with John McCain? You don't think John McCain could... nah!

As Sen. John McCain assumes the GOP front-runner mantle, his long-standing, but little-noticed association with donors such as George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry is receiving new attention among his Republican critics.

In 2001, McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Institute and Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation and several other prominent non-profit organizations.

McCain used the institute to promote his political agenda and provide compensation to key campaign operatives between elections.

OMFG! McCain is totally pwned by Soros! Yikes, DHo! All that shit-stirring about Soros came to bite McCain in the ass when it came to convincing some of your nuttier comrades (OMFG, there's people nuttier than Horowitz!). How are you going to walk that one back into the barn?

Soros is an anti-American radical, who thinks George Bush is responsible for the war on terror and that Israel is the aggressor and genocidal armies like Hamas the victims.

In case that wasn't clear enough, Horowitz is saying that Soros is a Nazi.

On these critical issues of our time, John McCain has absolutely nothing in common with George Soros

John McCain is decidedly not a Nazi.

For Soros "American supremacy" is the greatest threat for world peace. For McCain, American military supremacy is the greatest guarantor of world peace. That's quite a difference.

McCain is, in fact, the anti-Nazi who will smite all the brown-skinned Nazis in the Middle East - or wherever they might reside. And McCain is such a savvy anti-Nazi, he's actually taking Soros' Nazi money and then using it to kick his ass. And that's pretty sweet.

I dunno. Given DHos red-diaper background, we have every reason to suspect his endorsement of McCain:

Presently, I am engaged in a nationwide campaign to get the Republican Party to champion the cause of poor people and minorities.

That spells RINO to me.

Surly

Have I mentioned how big a douchebag I think Mitt Romney is, and how glad I am that he got completely thrashed?

Iko Iko

To be sure, I had a fun time in New Orleans. Friday evening led to jazz on Bourbon Street (although the beer price there made DC prices look reasonable), and on Saturday I got to catch one of the Mardi Gras parades that will be snaking through the Quarter over the next few weeks - I got to watch it from a balcony, which was neat.

But all the fun in the Quarter was jarringly incongruous with everything else I saw and learned about the city during that time. To be blunt, I think that the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans is the most important (and least talked about) political issue facing the United States. Within the recovery effort are distilled - in their entirety - the problems facing the nation. The privatization of public infrastructure (including - and most germane to my own work - the privatization of public education). Our relationship with the environment (coastal restoration, climate change). Racism. Poverty. Our capacity to deal with disaster and the inevitable dislocations that follow. The erosion of democratic institutions and accountability. All of these conundrums are being stared down, simultaneously and in fast-forward, in the NOLA recovery efforts. I wish I could say that this reckoning was leading towards a positive resolution, but right now, it's an uphill battle.

I wonder what the culture of New Orleans will look like in 20 years - will the vibrancy of the jazz scene, nurtured in the poor neighborhoods, remain so vital? What happens when a city's cultural flower is cut off from its roots, when the people who are vital to cultural reproduction have been displaced, the vast majority of them with no means to return - or indeed, nothing to which to return? Bourbon Street has always seemed a caricature of the culture of the rest of the city, with its neon lights, hawkers trying to cajole you into the nearest strip club, throngs of college kids stumbling down the streets with their slushee cocktails. Bourbon Street will always be there, a kind of adult Disneyland. But what about the little clubs in the quieter sections of the Quarter, or in the rest of the city, for that matter? Will the city be able to sustain the talent necessary to keep these out of the way havens viable?

The post-Katrina recovery has been notably absent from our election year discourse. To my knowledge, John Edwards has been the only candidate to make an issue of New Orleans' revival, but the impact of that effort has been negligible. But it needs to be talked about. The issues faced by New Orleans are our issues, waiting for a storm, literal or otherwise, to force them to the surface. How the Crescent City deals with these issues will serve as a template, for good of for ill (and right now, for the ill), on how we grapple with these issues on a national scale. It deserves to be at the forefront of our own thoughts and of our political discussions.

No.

If you can't come right out and say "waterboarding is torture," as it has been for centuries, you have no business being the chief law enforcement official in this country. Period.

Scheduling their way into electoral irrelevance

The New Hampshire primary has been for far too long a far too big influence on presidential politics. If they want to have their primary in early December, I say let 'em. They can vote, the rest of us can go on opening our prezzies, drinking ourselves stupid on New Year's Eve, and forget about what a handful of white "presidential wine tasters" thought of the candidates.

And don't think I'm not looking in your direction, Iowa.

Courage

If you haven't seen this yet, watch it. In an age of unbridled cynicism and partisanship, it serves as a powerful and emotional reminder that those in power can search their souls and ultimately do the right thing. Thank you, Mayor Sanders, for having the courage to listen to your heart.

A few questions

Should I be pleased that the WaPo has dedicated a blog to fact-checking the statements of the 2008 candidates, or pissed that it took them this long to hit on the idea? And who wants to bet that the fact-checking will keep to trivial statements like "Americans are getting fatter and stupider?"

What I learned on the internets today

According to Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner, the votes of a handful of Republican Senators on a procedural matter that would move residents of DC a step closer to democratic representation in an institution in the nation where they are - allegedly - citizens are a "move to the left."

Well, at least he's honest about the GOP's take on democracy. It's leftist drivel.

Authenticity

I don't think there's any doubt that one of the driving tropes of presidential politics is the marketing of the candidate as "authentic." Someone like "us" who's able to understand "our" problems. Someone who you could sit down and hash things out over a beer.

I find this particular psychological need of the electorate to be somewhat absurd. The thought that any of the quasi-aristocracy who make up the top tier of candidates are like us is unbelievable to begin with, and the assumption that "authenticity" means that someone is capable of governing has proven to be disastrous. But that doesn't stop candidates and their consultants from trying to demonstrate it.

The top tier of Dems (again) seem to be lacking in any sort of authenticity. In fact, on the left, the only candidates who do seem genuine are Kucinich (an authentic New Age vegan liberal) and Gravel (an authentic cranky old coot). The top tier of the GOP doesn't fare much better - a mayor who seemed to hold his cool on one horrible day (but pretty much fucked everything else up), a governor whose positions have changed as he's re-focused his ambitions, and a former senator from down south who's, well... an actor.

Which leads us to Mike Huckabee, who, for the moment, seems to have had the media tag him with the authentic label. Now, not in a million years would I cast a vote for this guy, what with his social conservatism and advocacy for the harebrained f41r +@x. But I have to admit that after reading this, I like him as a person just a little bit more:

Former Arkansas governor and now presidential candidate Mike Huckabee sounded almost indignant last week describing how police in his home state charged Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards with reckless driving back in the 1970s. When Huckabee met Richards last year, he righted that perceived wrong by pardoning the rock star. Cynics accused Huckabee of giving the famous special treatment, saying he wouldn't pardon the average citizen. To which Huckabee responded: "No, I wouldn't. . . . But here's the deal: If you can play guitar like Keith Richards, I'd do it for you."

Should Huckabee shoot the moon and actually win, you can bet I'll be practicing my "Street Fighting Man" licks.

Stick to the sports

I'm watching the Tennessee v. California game (Go Vols!). Some of you may know that there's a tree-sit going on outside Memorial Stadium in Berkeley to prevent the University of California from cutting down a grove of oak trees to make way for a $125 million athletics center.

How does the crack ABC commentary team of Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit handle it? Aside from the predictable "only in Berkeley" yucks, Herbstreit is amazed that there are people actually living in trees! Meanwhile, Musburger goes on a vitriolic tirade about how the university has pledged to plant three trees for everyone they cut down, which should more than satisfy those aging hippie treehuggers, so stick that in your goddamned peace pipe and smoke it. And I'm almost quoting Musburger verbatim.

I'll politely request that the ESPN/ABC sports squads kindly refrain from the political commentary. You're kinda ruining my football game.

Conservatives on crack

In case you were curious as to why no one in their right mind (pun so-not-intended) would ever hire National Review blogger Kathryn Lopez as a political consultant:

I do think the veep is going to matter — and especially to conservatives. Early match-ups wouldn't be a bad idea. If Rudy had Bill Bennett or Rick Santorum running with him, he'd get a second look from pro-lifers who are sick over the prospect of a pro-choice nominee, for instance. A solidly conservative Dick Cheney like figure (is anyone Dick Cheney like though) could help Romney, to ease any concerns about this able guy folks feel like they just met....

To re-cap - for Rudy or Romney to solidify their potential GOP candidacy, the should consider for veep a) a moralistic scold/compulsive gambler, b) a Christianist former senator who was just tossed out on his ass by voters in an important swing state, or c) someone like the most unpopular vice president ever. And you're telling me no campaign is waiting to snap K-Lo up?

Meet the new boss

So Larry Craig is about to be kicked to the curb for the sin of pleading guilty to disorderly conduct when he shouldn't have. So what do we know about the man who appears to be waiting in the wings to replace him, Idaho Lt. Governor Jim Risch?

A year ago, Risch was the acting governor of Idaho. He told this newspaper's Oliver Burkeman how he viewed the victims of Katrina:

"Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn't whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That's the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water."

Ah, Idaho truly is the Gem State. People would have been at the stand-by ready to make a buck of the thirsting misfortune of others.

Of course, Risch's recollection of that dam break in 1976 is a little, erm... wrong:

The dam that broke in 1976 was the Teton dam, built on the Snake River just a few months earlier, at a cost of $100m. (That's worth almost $500m today.) Built not by entrepreneurs, but by the federal government's bureau of reclamation. It was built at the political insistence of a few millionaire ranchers and potato-growers, whose political allies had persuaded the government to build a series of dams that transformed a desert into some of the richest and wettest agricultural land in the country. And it was built despite predictions that it would fail.

And when it did fail, it was not the self-sufficient entrepreneurs of Idaho who "rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields." It was, once again, the federal government. According to the government's official history of the incident, federal agencies quickly rebuilt all the irrigation systems, and paid more than $850 million in claims to about 15,000 people who had lost property in the flood.

I suppose Risch's self-serving fiction is more politically acceptable than that of the totally not-gay soon-to-be-former Senator Craig.

BTW - is "kerb" really the preferred spelling in the Queen's English for "curb?"