Josh Marshall Way Off Base on Chinese Paper Tiger

Josh Marshall of TPM is following the standard foreign policy cliches about China:

If you remember, not long after President Bush became president, we had that incident with the US spy plane hugging Chinese airspace, which was bumped by a Chinese jet intercepter and forced to make an emergency landing on Chinese territory. Then just days ago we had a strangely similar incident at sea. Again, just a few months into the tenure of a new president.

Now we have Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao publicly worrying about the safety of the almost $1 trillion of US Treasuries China owns. That they'd have some concern isn't surprising. But having the head of government sound the warning bell is hardly the best approach to preserving confidence in US debt.

This strikes me as all of a piece, pretty unsubtle signaling of a shifting balance of power.

The media and the foreign policy establishment have invested a lot of credibility in building up China as a real American rival, but the Chinese are almost all paper and no tiger. China is a fragile society whose main hold on stability is economic growth at a time when the prospects for global economic growth are poor. China isn't on the same kind of precipice as Pakistan yet but the Chinese government has to constantly and furiously work the levers of power to avoid that kind of instability. The balance of power isn't shifting toward China. It's shifting more toward the American side as other countries develop even more severe problems than the United States.

The Chinese would like global elites to believe that they're a rising power that will eventually become competitive with the United States. But the current balance of power is so much in favor of America that we can maintain a heavy-duty naval patrol just off their coast. If the Chinese had much power, they would be able to make the U. S. back off.

But they don't have the power to make us back off. If they did, the Chinese wouldn't have to pull off "North Korea-type" stunts with our ships and publicly muse about the stability of our economy.

The Ultimate Meaning of Stewart/Cramer

It's very easy to get to the bottom line of the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer war and that's the fact that neither Rick Santelli nor anyone else on CNBC is going to do any more big rants against President Obama.

CNBC is a right-wing, anti-Obama network--a version of Rush Limbaugh directed specifically at investors. As Salon observed, practically all of the pundits on CNBC blame the recession on Obama. Santelli pushed extremely hard against Obama on behalf of CNBC's audience.

But NBC, CNBC, Santelli, Cramer, and their whole target audience found out that the left-wing media represented by Jon Stewart could push back . . . and push back hard.

And they found out quickly.

Santelli himself stood down on his comments within days.

Jim Cramer also gave up after an initial effort to defend himself. After Stewart hammered Cramer for appearances on The Today Show and Morning Joe, he hammered Cramer again for that day's appearance on convicted felon Martha Stewart's program. Finally, Cramer just gave up and pulled out the white flag almost as soon as Stewart started to question him.

Not that it helped him much. He was still "eviscerated" by Jon Stewart. But surrendering probably does mean that Jim Cramer and CNBC are out of the daily news cycle, off the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and off the radar of the left-wing media in general.

Given that CNBC will want out of the cross-hairs of the left media, it is highly likely that none of their personalities will be trying to rally opinion against Barack Obama again.

It's unfortunate that the bottom line is the fact that the left-wing media is now more powerful and influential than CNBC.

Because Jon Stewart had some interesting things to say. He was especially effective at juxtaposing the naive confidence of middle and upper-middle class people in the integrity of the markets with the greedy cynicism of market insiders like Cramer. The 401k plans and pensions of the middle class lost heavily as Wall Stret insiders played games with enormous amounts of money and Stewart accused the whole financial world of gratuitously destroying the hard-earned wealth of the American middle-class.

It’s very easy to get on this after the fact. The measure of the network, and the measure of mess. CNBC could act as—No one is asking them to be a regulatory agency, but can’t—but whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day for short term. These guys companies were on a Sherman’s March through their companies financed by our 401ks and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the f---ing house down with our money and walked away rich as hell and you guys knew that that was going on.

It was helpful information and great entertainment and Jim Cramer had no answer.

Is Ross Douthat News?

I don't particularly like living in a world where a New York Times announcement concerning the hiring of a right-wing columnist is news. Too bad there isn't more discussion of how the credibility of the New York Times was undermined by the Iraq War.

Michael Steele's Clock Running Out

It looks like Michael Steele's moment in the political sun as chair of the Republican National Committee might be coming to an end. There's a story from GQ that Steele views abortion as a "personal choice."

L: How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your catholic faith, but by the fact that you were adopted?
M: Oh, a lot.
Absolutely. I see the power of life in that. I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it, uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.
L: Explain that.
M: The choice issue cuts two ways.
You can choose life or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.
L: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
M: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.
L: You do?
M: Yeah. Absolutely.

Given that the preferred term for abortion among conservatives is "mass murder," I wouldn't be surprised if the religious right sought to have Steele removed.

It was fun while it lasted.

Stewart/Cramer: A Really Big Deal

The Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer feud is a huge deal as an example of the left media expanding its offensive against the various little pockets of conservative commentary. It used to be claimed that liberals have "no sense of humor," but that's one cliche that has faded into the night as liberal humorists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert became more prominent. Sarah Palin was taken down almost single handed by Tina Fey and Saturday Night Live.

Since the election of Barack Obama, the liberal media has begun to focus on ridiculing Obama's conservative critics ranging from Michael Steele to Rush Limbaugh to the absurd "Going Galt" movement among right-wing bloggers. Following in the wake of CNBC's Rick Santelli's rant against Barack Obama the other week, Jon Stewart's attack on CNBC and Jim Cramer takes the liberal media offensive up another notch. Like the military sector, business reporting has been a fortress of conservative views for decades and Jim Cramer is a business media star at CNBC ("In Cramer We Trust"). In ridiculing Cramer's crummy advice during the Wall Street collapse, Jon Stewart is opening the whole can of worms associated with the business media--the craven CEO worship, the focus on short-term profits, pumping for leveraged buy-outs, cram downs of pension cuts on employees, and anti-union perspectives.

In other words, liberal ridicule is probably the best thing that ever happened to the business media.

The Alabama Mess

The mass killing in South Alabama is starting to sound like a lot of other mass killings--the combination of rage, guns, and the countless examples of mass murder always seems ready to go off.

A couple of my Morehead friends grew up in that area.

Hopefully, nobody they knew was involved.

Conservatives Start Using the "S" Word

You know it had to happen. Some conservative had to start using the "S" word for secession and Chuck Norris (of martial arts fame) did it. He talked about the possibility of Texas seceding from the United States in an appearance with Glenn Beck.

On Glenn Beck's radio show last week, I quipped, in response to our wayward federal government, "I may run for president of Texas." That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not I, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star State, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state. From the East Coast to the "Left Coast," America seems to be moving farther and farther from its Founders' vision and government.

The right has been edging toward secession talk ever since Obama was elected. The problem for conservatives--and Norris gets at it here--is that Obama isn't a fluke. A big majority of Americans wanted government to act boldly in response to the recession, address environmental issues, enact health care reform, and get out of Iraq. Obama only won 53% of the popular vote but more than 2/3rds of the public approves of the way he's handled himself in office and more than 90% either approved or somewhat approved of the big budget speech in which Obama layed out his big reform agenda.

Those are extremely bad numbers for conservatives.

For a wingnut like Norris, "Americas seem to be moving farther and farther from its Founders' vision and government." Conservatives have been thinking about Texas for some time in relation to the question of secession. I remember listening to Walter Williams talk up the idea of making Texas into a "free market, laissez-faire" nation once while he was subbing for Limbaugh. Given that Texas was once an independent country, conservatives reason that it could "choose" to forswear its connection to the United States and become independent again.

Of course, the right better move quickly. Texas may already be slipping. McCain only won Texas by 55-44 and a significant chunk 0f that 55% had to be country club Republicans who don't have the loathing of the United States needed to contemplate secession.

That's what it gets down to for conservatives--loathing America. Glenn Beck talks about civil war and chaos as though he were anxious to bring it on. Loathing America is also an underlying current in the "going Galt" idea of "high achieving" conservatives going on a "performance strike" and depriving the country of their talents. Likewise, it's part of the reason why Rush Limbaugh's statements about wanting Obama to fail continue to strike a nerve. There's a sense that Limbaugh wants America as a whole to fail if we choose Obama's approach and most of the country would like to see Limbaugh and conservatives back down.

But I think it will be awhile before conservatives begin to back down. By the end of the George W. administration, the right had become highly committed to extremely aggressive, in-your-face, bullying personal styles. Therefore, it's unlikely that the first couple waves of failure will have much impact on reconciling them to their minority status in American life.

But it's pretty likely that conservatives are facing an extended education in political failure and talking about "Going Galt" or secession doesn't help them. Maybe they'll eventually see the light.

The Lost Magic of the "L" Word

I've been looking for opportunities to use my research on the Workingmen's movement of the 1820's and 1830's to reflect on contemporary politics and it looks like I've found something.

The issue is political names.

The Philadelphia Mechanics Free Press reprinted an 1830 article from the New York Workingmen's Advocate on the contest of names between political parties.

There is no mode, perhaps, in which the people are more imposed upon, than in the adroit use which demagogues and intriguing politicians make of party names. A number of aspiring men are seeking for influence, for office, and for power. They cannot all obtain their ends; they therefore become divided, and separately combined. Now commences the contest of hard names, between the two cabals. If one can dub the other with an odious name, and by any means so manage it, as to cause the name to take (emphasis in text) with the people, an important advantage is gained; there is a prospect then of deterring the people from supporting those who have been decried, and rendered suspicious "by the magic of a name."

In contemporary terms, the application of "odious names" to an opponent is an element of wedge politics designed to deter "the people who have been decried, and rendered suspicious "by the magic of a name."

One of the extremely interesting developments in contemporary politics is that the right can no longer employ the term "liberal" as a magically odious term for the Democrats. Limbaugh and some of the talk radio types still use the "L" word and it still gets a rise out of his loyal listeners. But referring to the Democrats as liberals no longer serves as a tool for "deterring the people from supporting" the Democratic Party or the Obama administration. In fact, Republican politicians seem to have refrained from using the L word as a criticism of Obama or his policies. The Republicans talked about the stimulus package as a "spending program" and "generational theft." Likewise, they analogized the stimulus package to Jesus and criticized the lack of debate in passing the legislation.

But the GOP either didn't try very hard to deride the stimulus package as a liberal program or avoided the name altogether.

But why?

Of course, Republican use of the "L" word was itself a complex phenomenon. So, the lost magic of the L word is also complex. From the late 70's onward, the Republican Party was able to project a strongly unified message through its officeholders, political operatives, the conservative media apparatus, and sympathetic figures in the mainstream media. But the Republicans have lost that unified capacity to promote "hard names" in the post-Bush era (more attention needs to be paid to the difficulties for the GOP that have been posed by the end of George Bush's second term).

There's also the matter of audience. The Republicans were able to attach the "L word" to the Democrats partly because of the residue of resentment over civil rights, the anti-war activism, feminism, gay rights, and other causes from the 1960's and 1970's. The "L word" was short-hand for the Democratic Party's association with "them" and it hurt the Democrats.

But the groups that used to be "them" have become "us" as well as them. That's especially the case with the election of the first African-American president, the tenacious campaign of Hillary Clinton as the first "feminist" candidate for the highest office, and the growing acceptance of gay rights among all segments of the American population but especially the young.

In this context, conservative use of the "L-word" became vaguely associated with "bigotry" and the magic of the word started working against the right rather than the left.

Moreover, the rise of liberal media outlets like DailyKos, HuffPost, the Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert enabled the left to rebrand themselves as "progressives" and they've been able to make it stick.

Now, it's the liberal/left that has a unified message and has been able to create some magic for names like "incompetent," "bigot," "idiot," and "delusional" that we like to apply to the right. I'd like to see "freak show" applied to the conservative movement, but haven't had any luck in getting it accepted.

It's a sign of how far the Republicans and the right have fallen that they can't even name themselves let alone the Democrats.

Terrel Owens: Not Quite Unemployable

Geez, it only took Terrell Owens 48 hours to find a new job with the Buffalo Bills that pays $6.5 million a year.

Being a "cancer" must be tough.

Ghoul Conservatism and the Upcoming "Limbaugh for President" Campaign?

A long time ago, my car irresponsibly broke it's radio antenna and I don't get much radio reception. As a result, I missed Rush Limbaugh announcing that "Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes" and that "before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill."

Just like there's "zombie banks" that are still stumbling around the terrain even though they're really dead, there's now "ghoul conservatives" like Limbaugh who are costing Republicans votes through the crass little deathwatches they start for figures Ted Kennedy. Here in Kentucky, Jim Bunning's already heard his re-election efforts with his "ghoul-like" comments about Rush Bader Ginsburg's cancer. Likewise, now that progressive media outlets are reporting on Limbaugh almost everyday, it's hard not too imagine his over-the-top statements being a continual drain on Republican votes as moderate and independent voters harden in their disdain for the GOP.

What's the outcome of all this mainstreaming of Rush Limbaugh which is ratings gold for Limbaugh even as it does harm to the Republican Party?

It might be that Rush Limbaugh launches a "front porch" campaign for the presidency from his radio studio. That way, Limbaugh could heighten his political prominence while maximizing the (short-term) ratings benefits and adding a lot of money to his own pocket.

Of course, that assumes that Limbaugh's not "Going Galt" and refusing to make more than $250,000 a year. But that's a safe assumption.

Limbaugh could run for the Republican nomination or mount an independent campaign.

Or do both. It doesn't really matter. The key is that running for President is now part of the business logic of Rush Limbaugh's radio program. He would be the first major presidential candidate whose candidacy would be a (not insignicant) money-making operation.

And a Limbaugh campaign would have certain advantages. By campaigning for president for three hours every day in his radio station, Limbaugh could run a "pure" campaign without campaign contributions, disdain the "crass showmanship" of campaigning, and still get into the national media almost every day.

Another advantage is that it would probably kill the Republican Party and force conservatives to find another vehicle for their political aspirations.

Guess Who's Going to Have Karl Rove for Dinner

According to Karl Rove, "some Democrats would love to have me barbecued" when Rove gives testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

Maybe, but it's more likely that the Democrats are thinking in terms of nibbling around Rove's carcass until he commits perjury.

Then, they'll let a federal prosecutor eat him.

The Michael Steele "Don't Vote for Us" Tour

Today's Michael Steele pronouncement is that "I'm in the business of ticking people off." But that's pretty much a given. "Ticking people off" is what the Republicans are all about these days. Outraging liberals is Job #1 for Limbaugh, Hannity, Ann Coulter, and the whole talk radio freak show? Why shouldn't Michael Steele join in the fun.

Worry warts might object that the rest of America interprets "I'm in the business of ticking people off" as "don't vote for us."

But the Republicans don't seem to care. Why should we?

Limbaugh Debating Obama

If Rush Limbaugh wants to debate President Obama, he should run for president in 2012. If Rush was fortunate enough to win the nomination, he'd get to have two or three debates with the President.

That would be fun.

Limbaugh Notes: The Man in Black

I spent last night and this morning absorbing Rush Limbaugh's CPAC speech last week. Unlike most people on the left, I believe that Limbaugh should be viewed as a sympathetic figure. By "sympathetic," I don't mean an "I feel sorrry for you" kind of sympathy. Instead, Limbaugh should be seen as a powerful and skilful opponent whose abilities we respect and whose success we need to understand.

The Man in Black. Rush Limbaugh doesn't do a lot of public speaking and doesn't seem to leave his South Florida estate (from which he does his radio program) much more often than Sarah Palin gets out of Wasilla, Alaska. His speech to CPAC was thus a huge event for him both because because he had traveled to make it and because it was broadcast nationally by Fox, CNN, and C-Span. Limbaugh kept going back to the speech as his "first national address" in a way that made me think that he considered it a kind of "presidential moment." He tried to be ironical and witty about it, but Limbaugh was still deeply impressed with himself.

For the big CPAC speech, Limbaugh wore an all-black ensemble meant to evoke Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, or Clint Eastwood in Hang 'em High--the kind of figures who project a kind of "power aloofness" that disdains speech. But Limbaugh himself completely undermines that kind of effect. At the age of 58, Limbaugh still looks like he's 60 or 70 pounds overweight and still has a "fat boy" air about him when he breaks into that little bucked-tooth smile of his. Limbaugh projects about as much machismo as Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneris, or any other performer who's looking to ingratiate themselves with an audience.

This isn't meant to be belittling. It's not like I'm chiseled out of granite either. But Limbaugh makes himself look absurd by posing himself through a hyper-macho image that's almost the polar opposite of what he actually is. This is pretty much a pattern on Limbaugh's part. Even though "The Man in Black" image is all over Limbaugh's web site, he undermines the whole image by being his awkward, ingratiating, uncoordinated self. Limbaugh studiously constructs an image with himself on top, but can't help constantly deconstruct that image to manifest the weenie within.

Bobby Lied But Nobody Died Except Maybe Jindal

It appears that Bobby Jindal made up his key anecdote about how he and the New Orleans sheriff stood up to rigid federal bureaucrats during Katrina.

For those who don't have photographic memories, here's the anecdote.

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: "Well, I'm the sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!" I asked him: "Sheriff, what's got you so mad?" He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go -- when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, "Sheriff, that's ridiculous." And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: "Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!" Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

After Jindal's altogether disastrous speech, Daily Kos and TPM--God bless the left-wing media--started questioning whether this key story. Specifically, they started questioning whether Jindal could have been at the Sheriff's "make-shift office" at that particular time because "no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue."

And it turned out that Bobby Jindal wasn't there at all. Now Jindal's office is claiming that he overheard Sheriff Lee tell this story over the phone "days later."

I wouldn't be surprised if that line didn't pan out either.

Unlike the case of Bush and Cheney, Bobby Jindal's lying didn't result in more than 100,000 deaths. But it's hard to imagine him as the candidate of a national political party anytime soon.

Maybe Jindal should run on the Ayn Rand ticket instead.

Talking About Life with Miss Teen RSI

Someday, I'll be smart enough to realize that spending so much time carting around my daughters is the best thing about being a father.

That's because we get a chance to talk about life.

Today's topics while I was driving my older daughter--Miss Teen RSI-- back to school were piano, getting old, and race. It's a twenty minutes drove to the county school in rural Kentucky. During these kinds of time, I tell her what I think and observe and she measures my "wisdom" against her own experiences and observations.

Today, the bottom line was race and I learned as much from the conversation as Miss Teen. As we stopped in the BP convenience store for some gum (for her) and candy (for me), I realized that African-Americans had a particular interpretation problem--how to deal with white people who are as nice as they can be but also extremely racist. The issue came up when I was telling Miss Teen RSI about a retired colleague and neighbor who is extremely gracious and friendly but also a determined racist and misogynist. I emphasized to Miss Teen RSI that this guy's general friendliness made it necessary for me to keep reminding myself of his poisonous bigotry.

That's when I stopped to think that this must be a big problem for African-Americans for whom determined racists pose much more severe difficulties than they create for a white guy like me. How do black guys and women deal with white people who are overtly very friendly but also might be racial bigots. What about figuring out how genuine friendliness, unthinking racial stereotypes, and determined racism might be mixed together in the white people they meet?

I certainly don't know the answers to these questions and it's not like I'm going to come up with good answers in a 98% white town like Morehead, KY. But this is the general thread of what I want to import--an interest in the conundrums that people face in life and what they choose to think and do about them.

Now if I can only get her to be nicer to her sister.

Rick Santelli Stands Down

It looks like Rick Santelli has decided that he didn't like the heat that came with his 15 minutes of fame. After ranting up a storm at the Chicago Board of Trade and accusing Robert Gibbs of "threatening" him, Santelli slowly but completely surrendered to Matt Lauer on today's Today Show.

It was funny to see. First, Santelli retreated from the idea that Gibbs threatened him but only retreated to an idea that his wife felt threatened. But that didn't work. Who hides behinds their wife's skirts in our hyper-macho era anyway.

Certainly Matt Lauer didn't take it seriously and kept attacking on the point that Santelli didn't really feel threatened at all.

So, Rick Santelli tried another tack. Instead of saying that Gibbs threatened him, the CNBC broadcaster tried to argue that Gibbs was going off the reservation because he referred to Santelli by name than "the media" in general.

Well, listen, I’m not saying threatening. And just to be pinpointed specifically, I find very unusual, and I think that it’s more of a decision for you as the press or all the people on the lawn that giggled at the joke about caffeine — and it was funny — but how would they like to be pinpointed specifically? I think that’s the issue at hand. I don’t want to make more out of this. You know, here I am, and I want to continue to do what I’ve always done, and that is, question motivation, whether it’s the Fed chairman, and we know–

Unfortunately for Santelli, Lauer wasn't any more impressed with Santelli saying he was persecuted than he was with Santelli saying he was threated. At this point, Santelli just gave up trying to advance his position and decided to try "patriotic lying" as a way to worm his way out of the situation.

Everybody that’s talking right now, we want all of this to succeed. We just want to make sure that as we spend the money we don’t have, we’re getting a return and people have a chance to look at it and understand where it’s going

Talk about total nonsense. Santelli doesn't want Obama to succeed any more than Limbaugh wants Obama to succeed.

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, he gets this interview wrong. Limbaugh's idea is that the Obama administration "got to Matt Lauer" and made Lauer adopt the Today version of an Elliot Ness personality while interviewing Santelli.

"Matt Lauer sounds like Robert Gibbs' 'butt boy,'" Robert Gibbs and Barack Obama's butt boy. Matt, you do. In the sound bite you sounded like a butt boy. You sounded like somebody carrying out orders. You sounded like somebody defending the realm against one of your own colleagues, against one of your own colleagues who's out there simply asking a question about, what the hell are we doing having to pay for people who aren't going to pay their mortgages? It strikes me as much more likely that Matt Lauer and other media heavyweights have decided that the Obama administration represents "the moderate consensus" that the media views as the political ideal. If guys like Santelli are going to take right-wing positions, they're going to have to work extremely hard to justify their "extremism" against the media consensus.

That's not much of a surprise. Matt Lauer and the people at the Today Show can read the polls and their audience response as well as anyone. But it's very bad news for the right-wing. It means they've completely lost the "benefit of the doubt" in relation to the Obama administration and that they're going to have to swim against a very strong media current for a forseeable future that could last more than a decade.

That's no problem for Rush Limbaugh. Bucking the Obama tide probably increases his ratings and puts money in his pocket.

But Rick Santelli had a vision of his career going down the toilet. So he decided to just surrender.

The Treasury Department Isn't Alone

Paul Volcker is worried about the understaffing of the Treasury Department in a time of crisis.

"The Secretary of the Treasury is sitting there without a deputy, without any undersecretaries, without any, as far as I know, assistant secretaries responsible in substantive areas at a time of very severe crisis. He shouldn't be sitting there alone."

Volcker is a former Federal Reserve chair under Carter and Reagan who is now working in the Obama administration as chair of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. So, he would have a special interest in the Treasury Department.

But there's little doubt that the Treasury Department is not the only department that was significantly weakened during the Bush years.

The Republicans and "Freak Show" Racism

One dimension of Republican politics that needs to be canvassed is "freak show racism." It's important to emphasize that racism is far from freakish in many ways. For a not insignificant percentage of white people, racism is still the norm. Blacks are viewed through the prism of racial stereotypes, white people occupy a fair amount of their time exchanging racial jokes, and e-mails, and acknowledgement of the worth of black political figures like Martin Luther King or Barack Obama is either non-existent or grudging in the extreme. In these kinds of environments, it's any kind of overt opposition to racism that is stigmatized as snobbish, unusual, weird, obnoxiously self-righteous, or "politically correct" in the pejorative sense of the word.

Just to give a couple of examples of "racist normality," George Packer reported in The New Yorker before the Democratic primary last year that racism was pretty much the norm in rural Martin County in Kentucky. In my town of Morehead, KY there's a strong undertow of "normal" racism. Blacks refer to Morehead as one of the worst places for African-Americans to drive. Somebody burst into a convenience store and announced that "we've elected a monkey for president" the night Obama won. Just today, there was a group of Confederate re-enactors with Rebel flags waving at my university. To be fair, there aren't as many Confederate flags (Confederate flaggers are all racists!) as there used to be, but the battle flags are still all over the place.

One of the things that's happening now is that the "normal" white racism of figures like Rush Limbaugh or places like Martin County, KY is being brought into the mainstream media as part of an on-going conservative "freak show."

What I mean by "freak show" is that the manifestations of racism are being brought into the mainstream media as examples of the "bizarreness" and "strangeness" of the Republican Party in general and conservatives in particular. Unlike the Glenn Beck and Alan Keyes dimensions of "freak show" politics that emerge from the conservative movement itself, "freak show racism" is pulled into the public arena by African-American political figures, African-American bloggers and the progressive media for a variety of reasons. Whether it's protesting racism, scoring points against the Republicans, or entertaining liberal audiences with bizarre examples of racism, reports on the "freak show racism" of Republicans and conservatives are becoming a standard element in the repertoire of the progressive and mainstream medias.

This is certainly the case with the "watermelon" card sent out by the Republican mayor of Los Alamitos, CA to an audience that included an African-American businesswoman. For the mayor, Dean Grose, this kind of card is evidently part of his "normal" run of racist comments and jokes and he doesn't see anything wrong with it.

Grose confirmed to the AP that he sent the e-mail to Price and said he didn't mean to offend her. He said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.

He said he and Price are friends and serve together on a community youth board.
"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did," Grose told the AP. "I'm sorry. It wasn't sent to offend her personally - or anyone - from the standpoint of the African-American race."

Yeah, right. I bet Grose wasn't aware of the relevant racial stereotypes. But seriously, the key thing here is Grose saying that "we laugh at things" which I take to mean that he and his buddies laugh at this kind of racial humor all the time.

But times have changed and what's funny to Republican mayors like Dean Grose and his buddies is morally objectionable, strange, and bizarre to the rest of the country. Somebody reported Grose's e-mail to the Orange County Register, the report was picked up by Huffington Post, and now it's all over the African-American blogosphere (here and here), the liberal blogosphere, Yahoo, and CBS as Dean Grose becomes yet another exhibit in the on-going freak show that's become the Republican Party.

Bobby Jindal and Freak-Show Politics

The Jindal Problematic. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP needs to expand its appeal beyond hard-core conservatives and the South. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. What the Republicans need to do is stop their spiraling decline into freak-show status. They really need to get Republican politicians back in charge of the Republican message and draw public attention off Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Alan Keyes, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and other hard-right media freaks. All of these figures attract attention by being "strange" and "bizarre," and the fact that they become the best known spokespeople for the Republican Party makes the Republicans into the party of outlandish spectacles--in other words, a "freak show." If the Republicans don't watch it, they'll sink into Ross Perot, American Independent Party, or Dixiecrat numbers as they go the way of the Whigs.

The conventional wisdom was also wrong about Bobby Jindal. Both the Republicans and the mainstream media have represented Jindal as the Republican "competition" to Barack Obama. But the Republicans really need to become credible as a serious political party once more before they can become genuinely competitive with the Democrats.

This is seemingly what Jindal seemingly promised, a re-assertion of GOP credibility. Being a Fulbright Scholar and a policy-wonk, Jindal was supposed to be an ideas guy, a guy who could present conservative views in a sophisticated way, somebody who could be taken seriously. This is the kind of thing that Republicans need to get out of the rut of over-reliance on conservative spectacle, appeals to racism, misogyny, and homophobia, and the rejection of science, education, and culture.

The Jindal Failure. This is why the grotesquely entertaining failure of Jindal's response was highly significant. Chris Matthews sniffed out a plantation atmospheric in Jindal's self-presentation even before Jindal began speaking and Jindal goofed up right away by referring to Barack Obama right off the bat as "our first African-American president" and thus racializing Obama. Obviously, Jindal is just as tone-deaf on race as other Republicans and seems to think that Obama won because of "white guilt" (bias alert: I supported Hillary during the primaries).
In fact, Jindal was tone deaf on everything. The sing-song unctuousness in his voice, his rejection of a government role in Katrina, the demagoguing of high-speed rail and volcano research--it was all terrible. David Bro0ks hit the nail on the head when he referred to Jindal's speech as a form of "nihilism" in which Jindal seemed to reject any effort to deal with the financial crisis. But Brooks forgot to mention that there's a nihilism in everything the Republicans are doing these days. In the final analysis, that nihilism is the core value of the Republican freak show, a reveling in the prospect of failure and disaster.

Conclusion. Both Barack Obama and Bobby Jindal achieved something like bi-partisan consensus last night. Obama's speech was viewed positively or somewhat positively by 92% of the audience while Jindal's response was panned by all sides of the political spectrum. It's been a long time since public opinion has been that unanimous on anything.

Interestingly enough, the only significant voice defending Jindal was uber-freakmeister Rush Limbaugh himself.

But that comes as no surprise.

How Bad Was Bobby Jindal?

Bring back Rush, Sean, Alan Keyes, and freak show Republicans like my Senator Jim Bunning.

Bobby Jindal is unbelievably awful. What were the Republicans thinking when they assigned him the response?

I can't believe that Jindal is using Katrina as a salutory lesson for dealing with the current fiscal crisis. How dumb can you get?

Jindal sounds like he's talking down to people and reads the teleprompter in a very mechanical manner. Jindal also has this flat accent like he's trying to avoid sounding like he has an accent.

It's very disconcerting.

Overall, Jindal sounds just as bad as John McCain did in his "green background" speech when Obama clinched the Democratic nomination.

Finally, Jindal ends with a version of the Galaxy Quest anthem--Never Give Up/ Never Surrender.

What a flop.

Something tells me that Obama's not going to lose any sleep over the prospect of running against Jindal in 2012.

Maybe the Republicans should nominate Sarah Palin.

Live-blogging the Obama Speech

Ok, Obama's going to come on soon.

Let's see if I can make this fun as well as insightful.

CNN is showing some Republicans. I caught Susan Collins first. She was a year ahead of me at St. Lawrence in the frozen tundra of northern New York. She probably moved to Maine for the weather.

There's turncoat squared Judd Gregg-- betrayed the Republicans, then betrayed Obama to rejoin the Republicans.

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are on. They look like Oscar presenters. Politics isn't "Hollywood for Ugly People" like Jay Leno says. It's more like Hollywood for "Not Unbelievably Pretty People."

There's nothing quite as boring as the pomp and circumstance for presidential speeches to Congress. The Sergeant at Arms introduces the diplomatic corps, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet. Eric Holder stayed behind. It's all a tremendous bore.

One interesting point is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg shook the hand of my tactless Senator Jim Bunning. Bunning's a mega-embarrassment.

But yeah! The nation really wants to see Rahm Emmanuel shake hands with the rest of the political class.

Whoa, Hilda Solis is tiny--Solid handshake though.

So what's Obama going to say? I think they've released the text of the speech but I didn't get a chance to read it.

But first, he's got to come in and show off his handshake.

Madame Speaker, The President of the United States!

Yep, there's President Obama enjoying a moment of s0lidarity with the political class--shaking hands, asking people how they're doing, hugging guys. He seems pretty at ease. Everybody wants to touch.

The speech is for us, but it's also important to understand that Obama is the political establishment's official representative to the nation.

Obama finally gets to the podium. The majesty of the moment is interrupted by an argument between my daughters. After losing Obama's opening lines in the hubbub, I had to help the family get back on track.

Obama starts off by reassuring the country--we've still got the mojo but we need to confront the crisis and be responsible.

Now, all the sins we've committed and challenges we haven't met--the focus on short-term gain, energy, health care, and debt.

Addresses jobs first-lauds stimulus package.

Teachers and police officers able to keep jobs because of stimulus package. If teachers and police lose jobs on a mass basis, we're really sunk.

My daughter says John McCain looks high. I think he's high on life.

Now Obama's talking about accountability in spending the stimulus money.

Onto the credit crisis.

Somebody's nodding off--that makes me feel better about people nodding off during my lectures as a college professor.

Speaking of college professors, Obama sounds like one now.

Creating new "lending fund" for consumer loans

Part II of Obama's speech to Congress
Now Obama is on to banking--sounds like a pretty comprehensive approach to the credit crunch.

Wants to hold banks accountable for increasing their lending--finally. Emphasizes the end of CEO abuses--Take that John Thain.

Pres. Obama holds up the prospect of a decade of economic sputtering if nothing is done.

He gets it on the unpopularity of banks, but emphasizes need to solve the problem, and govern "with a sense of responsibility."

"It's not about helping banks; it's about heloping people." Hey, Pat Leahy is happy about that line. I wonder what Bristol Palin is thinking.

Obama lays out the line to returning confidence and recovery.

Then Obama moves on to calling for regulatory overhaul and long-term investments on alternative energy, health care, oil, and public debt.

Obama's budget is going to be a vision. That's great but everybody in education is suspicious of "vision" these days. But Obama's not listening to me. He wants bold visions and big ideas.

Actually, I think the GI Bill was a good idea.

Obama wants to catalyze private enterprise through investments in energy, health care, and education.

Time for American to lead again on energy technology--Standing "O" for that one.
More power lines? Maybe they'll be "green power lines."

Nancy Pelosi stood very quickly at the end of that line.

Now for the big downer--the auto industry and health care.

Obama's committed to a re-tooled and re-invented automobile industry but he doesn't say how he's going to do that.

I sure as hell hope Obama can get health care reform. I'm okay with curing cancer, advancing technology, and preventive medicine.

But I want to hear about legislating universal health insurance.

Health care reform can not wait, must not wait, and will not wait another year.

This speech is pretty easy on the ears even though it's 45 minutes long.

Onto education.

Cradle to college diploma education? I like cradle to grave better.

Schools need more resources and more reform--investing in improved teacher performance, and charter schools.

This is interesting. He wants everybody to commit to one year of education beyond high school as a form of patriotism.

Obama wants the U. S. to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

Gives a little tribute to Orrin Hatch, Teddy Kennedy, and responsible parenting. How many politicians actually put their children first . . . or second . . . or third.

As soon as Obama starts saving money, he talks about agribusiness and defense--the two big sources of waste in federal government spending.

Now Obama addresses taxes. He's going to let taxes increase on two of my younger brothers who earn more than $250,000. But my taxes are going down even though my family's income is over $100,000.

Sorry little brothers.

Ooh. Obama is going to put war on the budget. The Bush administration seemed to be committed to "maximum possible dishonesty." Change for the better isn't too difficult on this issue.

I can't remember Obama shouting out to any special guests. Pelosi did though.

I have to admit that Obama has more endurance as a speaker than I have as a blogger. I'll keep slogging though.

The military. There's expanded health care for veterans, closing Guantanamo Bay, and foregoing the temptation to torture. But will he admit that the Bush administration tortured?
Obama also wants a foreign policy that engages the world instead of giving everyone else the finger.

Ok. Obama is now shouting out to a Miami banker who distributed cash to employees and former employees of his bank--a guy who didn't feel right keeping his profits himself.

Not a popular guy among bankers right now though.

Now Obama's telling a story about a student from an extremely poor school in South Carolina who wrote to him for help. "We are not quitters," the student said.

That's great politics because it shows up South Carolina's "neo-nullification" governor Mark Sanford.

Nice speech.

Nothing really momentous though. Obama's just going to carry through on the vast majority of his campaign promises. That's what he needs to do.

Freak Show Republicans

That was my impression as I watched a Glenn Beck segment on the "coming civil war."

How I Became An Alpha Cat

It's true, I'm the alpha cat of our Kentucky home. God knows, I never wanted to be an "alpha cat." But here I am. "Big B" has looked toward me for meals ever since he changed from "outdoor" to "indoor" status last year. Now, he's also greeting me in the morning and laying at my feet while I'm reading on the couch. Isn't laying at the owner's feet a dog thing. I wouldn't say "Big B" is giving me love. It's more like he's giving me respect and looking to me for leadership . . . especially in the area of feeding him.

So what have I done to induce "Big B" to treat me as the Alpha Cat in our household. Personally, I think it's my gibberish that he respects. From "Big B's" perspective, I have the magical capacity to induce other people to feed him. The basic scenario is that "Big B" will approach me, he'll hear me talk some sort of human gibberish, and then somebody--usually one of my daughters--will feed him. It's like I have the magic capacity of turning gibberish into action.

If only the other humans I know had so much respect for gibberish.

Kate Winslet Wins!

I was glad to see Kate Winslet win an Oscar. She's certainly deserving. I was just as glad not to see any of the nasty fashion commentary from the likes of the disgusting Kay Giantis.

Mark Sanford's Fringe

The problems for the Republican Party and the conservative movement keep getting deeper as more people come to view "mainstream Republicans" as "wackos."

That problem was on display yesterday as Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Washington characterized opposition to the stimulus among Republican governors as a "fringe" phenomena.

"All of us are committed to working with President Obama to pull our nation's economy out of the ditch that George W. Bush ran it into," O'Malley said. "If some of the fringe governors don't want to do that, they need to step aside and not stand in the way of the nation's interests."

This is where it's interesting. The governors most critical of the stimulus package--Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina--are three of the most prominent Republican governors not named Schwarzennegger. So, it's not like the governors are fringe people.

But their wholesale rejection of the stimulus does put the governors in the same league as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, ("depression and revolution") Glenn Beck, ("civil war") Alan Keyes, and other fringe figures. It's not just liberals who are dismissing them, Arnold Schwarzennegger himself mocks the "neo-nullification" governors by telling them to send money to California.

Sanford recognizes the imputation and makes a fringe kind of comment in response:

"I think in this instance I would humbly suggest that the real fringe are those that are supporting the stimulus," Sanford said. "It is not at all in keeping with the principles that made this country great, not at all in keeping with economic reality, not in keeping with a stable dollar, and not in keeping with the sentiments of most of this country."

In fact, Sanford's delusional. The stimulus package represents the kind of Keynesian counter-cyclical economic thinking that's been government orthodoxy in both Republican and Democratic administrations since the New Deal. Likewise, more than 50% of the public supports the stimulus package.

Of course, people on the fringe right don't have a lot of contact with the rest of the country.

That's part of life on the fringe.

Could Bunning Get a Job as a WalMart Greeter?

Here's Jim Bunning making some classy comments about Ruth Bader Ginsberg's cancer at a dinner in Elizabethtown:

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning predicted over the weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months.

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg ... has cancer."

"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody
would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

In the "comments" section on the Louisville Courier-Journal story, kywildcatfan71 raised the question about whether Bunning would have the personal skills to land a job as a Walmart greeter if he wasn't in the Senate.

That's a very good question.

Broder and Ifill: Cliches "Stacked Like Cordwood"

I hope Gwen Ifill's book on Obama is better than David Broder's praise of her in today's Washington Post.

But I doubt it.

Like Broder, Ifill stacks up her cliches "like cordwood" anytime she's in front of a camera.

Glenn Beck Denies

that he's organizing a militia even though he's forecasting "depression and revolution."

Obama's Budget--A Sliver of Progressive Taxation

It looks like taxation is going to be a little more progressive under President Obama.

While the budget would keep the breaks that benefit middle-income families, it would eliminate them for wealthy taxpayers, defined as families earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule in 2011. That means the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, the tax on capital gains would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent for wealthy filers and the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million would be maintained at the current rate of 45 percent.

Fortunately, there aren't any wealthy people left to pay these top tax rates--at least according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

The American Right: Back To Terrorism?

Today, firebrand Alan Keyes was calling Barack Obama a "radical communist," claiming Obama had "usurped the presidency," and holding up the specter of "chaos, confusion and civil war."

Does this mean that the right is going back to forming militias, fighting it out with the FBI, and bombing federal buildings a la Timothy McVeigh?

In other words, are the right going back to terrorism?

White Supremacy Made Jefferson Davis Stupid

There's never been much comment on the stupidity of white racism--how white supremacy leads racists to see nothing but stereotypes when they encounter African-Americans, how racists are willfully blind to the complex humanity of others.

One example of racist stupidity was Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. Viewing his slave coachman, William Jackson, as "a piece of furniture," Davis apparently thought nothing of talking about Confederate plans in Jackson's presence.

"Because of his role as a menial servant, he simply was ignored . . . So Jefferson Davis would hold conversations with military and Confederate civilian officials in his presence.

[Ken] Dagler has written extensively on the issue for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence .

In late 1861, Jackson fled across enemy lines and was immediately debriefed by Union soldiers. Dagler said Jackson provided information about supply routes and military strategy.

"In Jackson's case, what he did was ... present some of the current issues that were affecting the Confederacy that you could not read about in the local press that was being passed back and forth across local lines. He actually had some feel for the issues of supply problems," Dagler said.

Dagler goes on to comment on the often prodigious memories of the African-Americans who spied for the Union during the Civil War.

If they had been smart enough to recognize the intelligence of the black people around them, the Confederates might have done better.

Of course, if they had been smart enough not to be such determined racists, the Confederates wouldn't have seceded in the first place.

Bank Nationalization Might Be Looming

In a series of posts, Talking Points Media reports that sentiment is shifting toward nationalization banks like Citibank and Bank of America.

Perhaps, but I beg to differ on one point.

Josh Marshall is convinced that any bank nationalization by the Obama administration would be short and sweet like Sweden.

But, right now there is no private sector roadmap for financing the $14 trillion dollar economy in the U.S. Before last September, private sector financing of the economy was built at least partly out of leveraged buy outs, CDO's, and the market for credit default swaps.

It's largely agreed that these approaches to private sector financial operations have failed disastrously.

The question is whether the private sector can develop viable alternatives.

And nobody knows the answer to that yet.

If the NY Post Doesn't Like Al Sharpton,

they shouldn't run racist depictions of black people. In the case of the now famous cartoon of the cops shooting the maniac chimp and commenting about rewriting the stimulus package, the cartoon is racist on two grounds. First, it associates Barack Obama with the pervasive stereotype of black people as "monkeys" or "chimps." Second, it represents blacks as targets of official violence and conveys a sense of being "shot by the police" as something natural for black people.

What does this have to do with Al Sharpton?

Since he acquitted himself well in his two presidential campaigns, Al Sharpton has become a go-to person and media arbiter on issues of racism. Sharpton himself had a highly questionable involvement in the Tawana Brawley case, but his strong media presence, articulateness, and smarts and definiteness about racism all combine to make him an ideally "controversial" spokesperson from the media point of view for the "black" or the "politically correct" side of the Don Imus, NY Post, and other controversies.

What makes Sharpton ideal from the mainstream media point of view is that he just oozes sleaze into the television screen and thus allows the media to project a prejudicial view of black people while representing the "black side."

But Sharpton also acts to overcome the effect of that prejudicial projection by representing the "black side" in a smart and articulate that drives the point home about racism.

Conservatives univerally despise Sharpton and conservative outlets like the NY Post consider him to be an enemy. But the best thing the NY Post can do to end Sharpton's career as a "racism arbiter" is to stop being putting out racist stuff like the chimp cartoon.

It's that simple.

Some Honest Discussion of Race

Eric Holder wants some honest talk about race. So, I thought I'd offer up up some comments about my perspective on race in the United States.

In my case, talking honestly means have the courage of my optimism and idealism.

I believe that the fundamental racial issue in the United States is the need for people to "embrace" each other across racial lines.

It's not enough to "tolerate" other people. The political theorist Wendy Brown is very much correct in arguing that toleration is just the willingness to be around people that you can still stigmatize as the "other," the "inferior," the "sick people," or the "oppressor." What is needed is for people to value, enjoy, and be interested in the people "across the lines." I'm a white, rural, heterosexual, and middle-aged guy. I should be able to reletavize my own whiteness and enjoy the whiteness, blackness, hispanicness, gayness, and heterosexuality of others.

And I try to do so.

I should also follow the example of Gandhi and seek to recognize the blackness, hispanicness, gayness within myself.

People internalize other cultures as they come into contact with them and we should embrace that internalization. In the United States, white people and black people have internalized a great deal of each other's patterns even as they've stigmatized each other.

We should embrace the "other within" as well as without.

That is precisely what I've internalized from my reading in African-American thought over the last fifteen years--the writing of Boston King, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, and others.

And I couldn't understand my own identity is I didn't understand that these authors are not only the African-American heritage. They're also part of my heritage.

The America Harvard Didn't Ruin

Kevin Hassett argues in a fun article for Bloomberg that "Harvard Narcissists with MBA's" killed Wall Street.

When Wall Street was run by people randomly selected from the population, it was able to survive everything. After the best and brightest took over, it died the first time real-estate prices dropped 20 percent. Are the two facts related? In other words, did Harvard kill Wall Street?

Well, there was plenty of Harvard and other Ivy Leaguers.

The statistics are striking. Back in the 1970s, it was typical for about 5 percent of Harvard graduates to work in the financial sector, according to a recent study by Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz. By the 1990s, that number was 15 percent. It probably climbed since then.

And the narcissism of the MBA types was plenty destructive.

What do you get from an MBA? One recent study found that MBAs acquire an enormous amount of self-confidence during their graduate education. They learn to believe that they are the best and the brightest.

This narcissism has a real career impact. Psychologists at Ohio State University studied the behavior of 153 MBA students, who were put in groups of four and asked to orchestrate a large financial transaction on behalf of an imaginary company. The psychologists observed that the students who had the strongest narcissistic traits were most likely to emerge as leaders.

According to Amy Brunell, the lead author, the results of the study had large implications for real-world settings, because “narcissistic leaders tend to have volatile and risky decision- making performance and can be ineffective and potentially destructive leaders.”

But if "Harvard narcissists with MBA's" were ruining Wall Street, that means they weren't ruining the rest of society.

If Hassett is right about the destructive narcissism emanating from Harvard, there were dozens of fields that did better because the Ivy's weren't so involved. Politics, education, the arts, medicine, engineering, architecture, urban planning, international organization, and diplomacy would have all been better off because the "best and the brightest" weren't that involved.

Wall Street might be dead, but American society as a whole would have been a gainer.

Maybe it's a good thing the Ivy's are so hostile to the military.

Kristen's Guns

What's Sen. Kristen Gillibrand going to do with the guns she was keeping under her bed--shoot the monsters lurking in her closet.

Wait a minute!

Gillibrand put the guns somewhere else "for security purposes" now the big secret of their location has been revealed.

Now Gillibrand's monsters can return to their natural habitat.

Talking About Chris Brown

As the father of two daughters, I would say without hesitation that Chris Brown is at the dead bottom of the my vision of the human scumpile--worse than Dick Cheney and George Bush, al-Qaida in Iraq, or even the Blackwater (Oops, I mean Xe) mercenaries.

That's what Brown gets after biting, choking, and threatening to kill his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna. Talk about role modeling, Brown's a pop star himself and you have to wonder what kind of example he's setting for Kentucky guys desperate to prove their manhood

In other words, the kind of guys who could end up dating my daughters.

Asshole.

I did take the opportunity to talk with Miss Teen RSI about the fact that the guys who pose the most dangers to women are husbands, boyfriends, friends, and acquaintances.

But it makes me all the more disgusted with assholes like Chris Brown that I have to talk with my daughters about the dangers of being beaten and sexually assaulted.

Which reminds me--who's going to be the first commentator to say it was "her fault."

Stimulus Battle Over Despite Sniping

According to HuffPost, the battle over the stimulus package is in John Paul Jones territory. The politicians have "not yet begun to fight" as the Obama administration and the Republicans line up to fight over the impact of the stimulus legislation.

President Obama's advisers are betting that the historic legislation he will sign tomorrow will bear fruit quickly, and they plan to do everything they can to highlight evidence of it creating the jobs he has promised. That public relations effort kicks off tomorrow as a two-day swing through the West begins.

But the Republican Party has made its own bet: that the stimulus package that Democrats rushed through Congress will have been deemed a failure by the time the 2010 elections arrive, leading voters to rebuke Obama and reward the GOP with much-needed victories.

Of course, the parties will keep fighting. That's what the Republicans and the Democrats do and there's actually no way they can stop fighting with 24 hour news reporting, partisan blogs like this one, and more than 16 years of the permanent campaign under their belts.

But Obama has already won the battle. What lies ahead is only the usual sniping.

The idea that the stimulus package has to be a big success or the Dems will lose in 2010 is mistaken. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is on a long leash with the public and is given considerable benefit of the doubt. The bottom line is that a majority trusts Barack Obama as the best leader for the current economic crisis and President Obama confirmed that trust through his conduct during the battle over the stimulus legislation.

Obama needed to prove that he could "get things done." After the election, Obama and his people kept saying that they needed a $750 billion economic stimulus package.

They ended up with a $789 billion package. That's "getting things done."

Obama needed to show that he wasn't engaged in the same old partisan bickering. And that's exactly what he did. In meeting with conservative columnists, going to Capital Hill to listen with Republican lawmakers, and adjusting the package to meet Republican demands over spending on things like contraception, Obama "changed the tone." That's why 81% of voters viewed Obama as acting in a bipartisan way in a CBS poll.

The fact that Republicans did not accept the gesture was seen as their problem and that's why "disapproval" ratings for the Republican leadership are between 50% and 62%.

Most important of all, Obama needed to prove that he's a "strong leader." Here, he has the GOP Republicans to thank. By pushing so hard against the stimulus package, the Republicans teed up an opportunity for Obama to get tough with them and that's exactly what Obama did when he denounced the "same tired ideas and worn ideas" in his speech to the House Democrats.

The outcome of the stimulus battle was a clear victory for President Obama. He emerged as a "strong leader" who "gets things done" while carrying through on his promises of "reaching out to Republicans." The public had considerable confidence in Obama's leadership ability with 3/4ths of voters rating him as a strong and decisive leader back in December. In this context, Obama's performance during the stimulus battle "justified their trust."

Obama and the Democrats were already in a strong position to make further gains in 2010 and the stimulus battle showed that they could play a strong hand well. If the Republicans want to keep up, they'll have to do more than play to their shrinking base.

Needed: Space Trash Entrepreneurs

In today's column, Thomas Friedman gets all gushy about a couple of American women--Caroline Howe and Alexis Ringwald--he met at a conference in New Delhi who were driving a solar-powered car around India.

Howe and Ringwald thought the best way to do that might be a climate solutions road tour, using modified electric cars from India’s Reva Electric Car Company, whose C.E.O. Ringwald knew. Between Jan. 1 and Feb. 5, they drove the cars on a 2,100-mile trip from Chennai to New Delhi, stopping in 15 cities and dozens of villages, training Indian students to start their own climate action programs and filming 20 videos of India’s top home-grown energy innovations. They also brought along a solar-powered band, plus a luggage truck that ran on plant oil extracted from catropha and pongamia, plants locally grown on wasteland. A Bollywood dance group joined at different stops and a Czech who learned about their trip on YouTube hopped on with his truck that ran on vegetable-oil waste.

Good for Howe and Ringwald.

And cudos to Friedman for writing about the conference instead of basing his entire column on the cab ride from the airport.

Now Friedman can turn his attention to the 12,000 pieces of space junk--old satellites and other man-made space refuse--circling the earth.

There must be an entrepreneur out there somewhere with an idea for cleaning it up.

The Workingmen's Movement.--No. 1

As some readers might know, I'm currently working on the chapter on the Workingmen's movement for my manuscript on the cultural change in Philadelphia between 1785 and 1850. I thought I would occasionally quote some material from the Mechanics Free Press that bears on contemporary political debates.

Aug 29, 1829.

From an "Address" by the Standing Committee of the Republican Political Association of Working Men of the City of Philadelphia

"To promote the happiness of the laboring man, to secure to him the possession of that wealth he so abundantly creates, has been no more the object of our legislators, than it has of the legislators of China, of Russia, or of England.”

Into Deep Red Territory

There's a lot of talk about the Republican Party becoming a regional party based in the South.

But it's actually worse than that.

The Republicans don't dominate any region the way that the Democrats dominate New England, the Middle Atlantic States, or the industrial Midwest. The GOP is strong in the Great Plains wheat belt where it's tough to see a Democratic presidential candidate doing well in Oklahoma, Kansas, or South Dakota. But McCain lost the Omaha electoral vote in Nebraska and came close to losing North Dakota. The Republicans are also losing ground in the Mountain States where Idaho and Utah are still safe states, but Colorado and Montana went for Obama.

The Republicans are strongest in the Old Confederate states, but are far from being dominant over the whole South. Obama won Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, and Georgia was in toss-up status almost until the end. That means that South Carolina was the only safe state for the Republicans in what might be called the "Atlantic South."

Where the Republicans really dominate is in the "Deep, Deep" Southern sub-region of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana where the hangover from the segregation era is still strong.

Perhaps one idea of the strength of the "segregation hangover" comes from reports (via the African-American Political Pundit) on the death of Billey Joe Johnson, a highly recruited football player.

Johnson, age 17, died from a shotgun wound at a traffic stop by local police officers outside the town of Lucedale in George County, Mississippi on Dec. 8, 2008. The police claim that Johnson shot himself while the police officer was returning to his car to run a license check.

The George County Sheriff’s Department claims that on that fateful morning, Billey Joe attempted to break into the home of an on-again, off-again girlfriend in the nearby city of Lucedale. According to the sheriff’s department, he left the scene and ran a red light at 5:34 a.m. After a 1½-mile pursuit, Billey Joe got out of his truck, met sheriff’s deputy Joe Sullivan and handed over his license. Then Billey Joe returned to his truck, put a 12-gauge shotgun he used to target deer to his head and committed suicide. It was 5:40 a.m.

Perhaps the police story will eventually pan out after all the investigations. But it doesn't look like there's any more chance of Billey Joe Johnson committing suicide than there was of Steve Biko bashing his head against the wall in his prison cell in South Africa.

Certainly Johnson's father doesn't buy the story and he's keeping the truck his son was driving in the hope that it will provide evidence--“They must have tortured my baby,” he says.

Neither is the NAACP which claims to have determined that the death was not suicide.

Oh yeah, Johnson's girlfriend was white.

According to one of Johnson's friends, there was some racial hostility over Johnson's relationship.

“It’s George County, it’s a little Southern town,” said Bradley, who is white. “You’ve got a bunch of racist people down here. You have people who hated on them because it was black and white.”

It's not just that George County is racist, it's the likelihood of that racism exploding into official murder when a young black man crosses many of the lines bounding in his behavior within a white supremacist community.

This is the kind of place where the Republicans domination has retreated as the Republicans are increasingly driven out of the cities and suburbs. McCain beat Obama 82.5 to 16.4 in George County. McCain had huge margins in nearby counties as well.

In "Deep, Deep South" areas like George County, Republican politics is closely connected to racial oppression. One of my brothers-in-law lives in Breau Bridge, LA along the Gulf Coast and claimed that whites there maintained such a climate of fear that there wasn't a single Obama sign in town even though almost half the population was black.

It will be interesting to see if anything comes up in the state investigations.

Bonus Limits Good for Wall Street

Congratulations to Chris Dodd for sneaking a provision limiting Wall Street and big bank bonuses into the final language of the stimulus package. According to the New York Times:

The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay. Any bonus would have to be in the form of long-term incentives, like restricted stock, which could not be cashed out until the TARP money was repaid in full . . .

The decisions of certain Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously undermined public confidence,” Mr. Dodd said Friday. “These tough new rules will help ensure that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses.”

Dodd's bonus restrictions and the Obama administration's salary restrictions ($500,000) will both contribute to restoring the financial industry to health. It's unfortunate that Dodd posed his bonus restictions in terms of public anger over companies using government money for enormous bonuses (i. e.. "public confidence"). Bonus payments of millions and tens of millions were a big part of the self-destructive dynamic with Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. The possibility of landing such high bonuses was a huge incentive for Wall Street executives to inflate the CDO and credit default swap bubbles that created the crisis. If the market is going to be re-established on a healthy basis, the huge bonuses have to go.

Restricting Wall Street salaries and bonuses is not only just, it gives financial companies an opportunity to reestablish themselves on a firmer foundation.

My Real Opinion of that Tina Fey Impersonator

A commenter on my last post challenged me to give my "real" opinion of Sarah Palin:

Go ahead and admit it, you think Sarah is kinda hot, in a wolf killin you betcha kind of way.

Actually, I think Sarah Palin is about as cold a cold fish as you can get. Still, I have to admit that I feel sorry for Palin now that she has to go through the rest of her life as a Tiny Fey impersonator.

Sarah Palin: Agent of Liberalism?

According to campaign manager David Plouffe, Sarah Palin was a dream come true for the Obama campaign.

Here is Plouffe on Gov. Sarah Palin: "Vice presidential picks rarely but sometimes make an electoral difference. Our view was it probably wasn't going to matter that much . . . . This was the one exception to that. It did have an effect."

"She was our best fundraiser and organizer in the fall."

Given that Sarah Palin was as an inspiration for the Democrats, it may turn out that she was a double-agent all along. In other words, Democratic leaders might have surrepticiously promoted Sarah Palin for the vice-presidential nomination and steered her toward the worst sort of "red-meat" conservatism as a way to motivate Democratic voters.

If they did, it was brilliant. Sarah Palin was Obama's biggest asset over the final six weeks of the campaign.

Obama vs the Root Canal Party

The 789 billion dollar stimulus package passed the House and Senate today.

Basically a victory for the Obama administration. They haven't been in office a month, but they've passed a major piece of legislation to go with S-CHIP.

That's getting things done and that's why Obama's approval ratings are high and Congressional approval is rising.

Obama also got credit for reaching out to the Republicans.

Republican spinners like Karl Rove claim that the GOP was able to seize the narrative. The Republicans exercised enough influence over the process to turn the whole process into the political version of a root-canal.

And that's pretty much where the Republicans are right now. They aren't going to be able to win much, but they can take all of the fun out of winning for the Democrats.

In other words, the Republicans have become the Root-Canal Party.

More Right-Wing Wars

I don't know why the right gets upset when people call them "war-mongers." After all, they're currently waging war on the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. There's also the various on-going wars against liberals, immigrants, gay people, and racial minorities.

And that's not to mention that the wars against popular culture and science.

Maybe the right should "bundle" all their wars together and just call it the "Eighty Percent War," or the war against non-conservative America.

Oh yeah, Bill O'Reilly just declared war against the New York Times for referring to him as a white supremacist.

Hard to see where the Times came up with that.

The Republican Party's Long War

Andrew Sullivan is somewhat surprised that the GOP has launched "total war" against the Obama administration.

I don't know why.

The Republican Party has been waging total war against the Democrats ever since Newt Gingrich first announced that "politics is war by other means."

Of course, it should be mentioned that the Republicans are losing the war.

Killing The Favre Legacy Project

Don Banks of SI.com wonders in Brett Favre's one year jaunt with the New York Jets was worth it.

The answer is Yes! Yes! Yes!---a thousand times yes.

Thanks to Brett's end of the year melt down with the Jets, there will be a lot less Favre idolizing among football writers.

And that will be a major blessing for sports fans.

Gates and Lincoln: The Pictures Tell the Tale

The 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth is this Thursday. I'm not nearly as big a fan of Abraham Lincoln as Barack Obama. Presidents and big-time political leaders are much less interesting and important to me than the people I see in the street, meet in the store, or have contact with on the internet. My students and the people I encounter on the internet are a lot more interesting than either George Bush or Barack Obama. The same's the case with historical figure. I'm far more fascinated with the workshop drinking, street scenes, and volunteer fire companies of 19th century Philadelphia than I am with Lincoln or any of the political figures of the time.

But although I'm not super-fascinated by either Obama or Lincoln, I have to admit that I am interested in Obama's fascination with Lincoln. That's especially the case in relation to the questioning of Lincoln's image as "the Great Emancipator" that has come up in relation to Obama. Henry Louis Gates, jr. argues (via the African-American Political Pundit) that Lincoln is a more complex figure than was indicated by the popular black idolatry that he saw toward Lincoln as a youth in West Virginia.

I first encountered Abraham Lincoln in Piedmont, W.Va. When I was growing up, his picture was in nearly every black home I can recall, the only white man, other than Jesus himself, to grace black family walls. Lincoln was a hero to us.

Gates goes through several vignettes showing Lincoln's evolution from the white supremacy of his 1858 Senate campaign to the 1865 speech in which he suggested that black soldiers and other exemplary African-Americans should be able to vote.

That was the speech that spurred John Wilkes Booth to murder Lincoln three days later.

For Gates, as for Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. DuBois, much of Lincoln's greatness lay in his ability to wrestle with his white supremacy and come to view support for the African-American cause as the right thing to do. As a result, Gates believes that Lincoln is more interesting than the idolizing pictures on the walls of black homes suggest.

I'd like to suggest that it's really the pictures on the walls of those black homes that are the important thing in considering Lincoln and that Gates should have paid more attention to them.

What the pictures of Lincoln in those black homes accomplish is to conquer Abraham Lincoln on behalf of black history. In those pictures--"the only white man other than Jesus"--the black families of Piedmont, WV represent Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. Whether Lincoln himself knew it or liked it, he ended up allied in the great cause of abolition with David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and William Lloyd Garrison. Moreover, the pictures on those walls portray the Emancipation Proclamation as the most significant dimension of Lincoln's career and prioritize the ending of slavery as the most important issue face by Lincoln or any politician of the time.

It's also important to understand that the pictures Gates saw were also contemporary to the African-American families who put them on their walls. Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves in the past was part of the contemporary struggle against segregation. Just as the pictures portrayed Lincoln's past in terms of Walker, Garrison, Douglass, and Truth, they portrayed Lincoln's post-humous future in terms of W.E. B Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. From the perspective of the pictures, Lincoln was a crucial figure in the history of the African-American struggle for racial justice and the African-American struggle was the most important thing about Lincoln.

Why is this a conquest? Lincoln himself might have thought of "preserving the union" as his primary task. Others might view Lincoln in terms of his efforts to conciliate the white South or in terms of his leadership of the war effort. But the theme of Lincoln as the Emancipator won out as the primary focus of our nation's questions concerning Abraham Lincoln. For more than a century, Lincoln's role as Emancipator was more black history than anything else, but the black historical interpretation of Lincoln has become the dominant interpretation. The pictures Gates saw on those walls have conquered.

Gates sees a little bit of this when he emphasizes the need to "hear Lincoln’s words through the echo of the rhetoric of the modern civil rights movement, especially the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King Jr."

But if Gates had understood that the modern civil rights movement is the primary lens through which we now understand the historical significance of Abraham Lincoln, he might have had more appreciation for the pictures he saw as a kid.

Contra Bill Clinton--Victory Not Yet Here in Culture Wars

One of the questions that has arisen concerning the election of Barack Obama is just how far the U. S. has come on all the issues connected with the culture war that's been going on from the late 1960's to the present.

According to Bill Clinton, victory has arrived:

Former President Bill Clinton told Virginia Democrats Saturday that the party has won America's long-running culture war but has to make sure not to squander
it with partisanship.

Clinton told more than 3,000 people at a party fundraiser that the nation's natural political base shifted back to Democrats for the first time since 1968, thanks to protracted Republican mistakes and the belief that President Barack Obama represented the solution.

He said Obama's election shows Americans at last are welcoming diversity and accepting differences, the opposite of the political dynamic he said Richard Nixon first used in 1968 to lock in a white, conservative voting bloc that kept Virginia and
the South reliably Republican for two generations.

My own thought is that we actually haven't come that far.

Yes, Obama was elected but what exactly did that mean in terms of race relations. My guess is that white supremacy has thawed enough that a Magic Johnson/Colin Powell type black guy could get elected president at a time when white elites were thoroughly discredited (even in their own eyes).

It also means that there's a larger middle-class pool of African-Americans out of which leaders like Obama can emerge.

That's certainly something, but Obama's election doesn't mean that African-Americans still aren't stereotyped or subject to police violence and arbitrary arrest. It doesn't mean that larger parts of the African-American population are no longer isolated in urban ghettos or racist areas like the rural South. It also doesn't mean that African-Americans are no longer followed in stores or discriminated against in hiring or promotion either.

The election of Obama is important, but the "race war" isn't going to be won until African-Americans enjoy the full benefits of American society.

The same could be said in relation to gender and sexual orientation. Gay people have made a lot of progress over the last 40 years, but the culture war over homosexuality won't end until lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transexuals have full marriage rights and are fully mainstreamed into American society. In relation to gender, the situation is probably worse in 2008 than it was in 1988. Women have more opportunity but the religious right, the porn industry, and sexual violence seem to have grown faster than the opportunities.

It's fair to say that progress has been made in the various culture wars, but "victory" is a lot further off than Bill Clinton's comments would indicate.

The Traitor Republicans

HuffPO has a "GOP Senators Face Party's Wrath For Supporting Stimulus Bill" headline for the three Senate Republicans lining up behind the stimulus package. They would be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

But I don't see a lot of wrath yet.

Ron Paul spoke against the Republicans "caving" and Fox ran an interview with Collins in which she indicated that Republicans might be unhappy with her.

But I don't imagine that there will be a whole lot of talk about "treason" from offical Republican circles.

After all, Collins and Snowe could just as well declare themselves independents.

Snowball Effects in Houston

How does the recession squeeze? In Houston, the bankruptcy of the LyondellBasell Chemical company means that the company can't pay property taxes to local school districts. The San Jacinto College district could lose up to 4% of its budget for example.

But that's not the only source of pressure on school budgets.

Also facing pressure from the state to cut spending, district officials are looking at ways to trim the budget without affecting students. Among the possibilities are eliminating vacancies in noncritical positions and curtailing travel and professional development, Lynn said.

The affected Houston school districts aren't in a "state of crisis," but the recession pushes schools in that direction by multiplying the financial pressures on them.