This Day in History

 

 Proclaiming it was one thing, ensuring it something else. The North had to win the war first!

On June 19, 1865, that war finally having been won in the North's favor, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, took command of 2,000 federal troops in Texas, the last place in the former Confederate States of America where slavery still was practiced, and informed the people in that state that the practice was now over: 

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Idleness? Jeez, stereotypes start early, don't they? If they're as lazy as all that, what was the point in making them slaves in the first place? However, let's end this on an audaciously hopeful note with a quote by a man who was anything but idle:

Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do.

--Barack Obama

Quips and Quotations (Patriarchal Succession Edition)

 

I only remember my father for one month my whole life, when I was 10. And it wasn't until much later in life that I realized, like, he gave me my first basketball and it was shortly thereafter that I became this basketball fanatic. And he took me to my first jazz concert and it was sort of shortly thereafter that I became really interested in jazz and music. So what it makes you realize how much of an impact [even if it's only a month] that they have on you. But I think probably the most important thing was his absence I think contributed to me really wanting to be a good dad, you know? Because I think not having him there made me say to myself, "You know what? I want to make sure my girls feel like they've got somebody they can rely on."

--Barack Obama II, whose parents divorced when he was three, his father returning to his native Kenya, where he went on to become a government economist.   

Realpolitik Check

 Late last year, I wrote a post describing my frustrations with political writing, which once so dominated this blog. Before I reexamine that frustration, I'd like to give you two essays from that politically dominant era. The first is from 12/01/2008, less than a month after the election that put Barack Obama in the White House:

What's the Appoint?

 

I know it's been a foregone conclusion for about two weeks now that Hillary Clinton would be our next Secretary of State, but I wanted to be absolutely, positively, empirically, unquestionably, and pretty gosh darn sure before I posted this...Let me check again just to be sure. Be right back.

Yep, she's got the gig. All the talking heads think it's a great choice. She's smart. She's respected. She's experienced.

So why ain't she president?

I mean, wasn't that her main argument during the primary race, that she was more experienced than her main opponent, a one Barack Obama. But Obama, if you'll recall, had one great comeback. HILLARY HAD VOTED FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ! How could you possibly trust her judgement?

Apparently Obama can. Oh, well. What was that Jesus said again? Oh, yeah. Love your enemy. Especially after you've kicked his or her ass.

Maybe he'll appoint Bush to something next.

I probably should have used John McCain's name in that last sentence (we're back to 2013, incidentially), since he's the one whose ass was actually kicked, but that election seemed more like a refutation of George W. Bush. McCain just happened to be on the ballot. Other than that, I stand by the above post 100%. Hillary Clinton's been lauded as having been a great Secretary of State, though the only real accomplishment anyone can really point to is that she logged a lot of travel miles. She's now considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. Two-party omnipotence being what it is, I'll probably vote for her in the general election (as I would have in 2012 had she got that far), despite my misgivings. And those misgivings mean just as much to me now as they did then. I'm sorry, but I just can't forgive nor forget (but, um, can cast a ballot for) an accomplice to the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.

The next post, from 1/30/2009, I don't stand by 100--or any--%. Yet I'm not repudiating it , either. What I'm trying to do is make sense of it. When I re-read it a couple of days ago, I asked myself, "Why in the hell was I complaining about THAT?" But complain I did:

Are Van Helsing and Dracula Next?

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author who was dumped as a foreign policy advisor by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster", will soon be hired as a foreign policy advisor by now-President Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press.

Wait a second, it's not the victim who's supposed to rise from the grave.

Then again, Jamie Lee Curtis did star in at least two Halloween sequels.

How does the monster, er, Hillary Clinton, feel about all this? According to an official close to the transition, the two have decided to "bury the hatchet." As senior director of multilateral affairs (is there a director of single lateral affairs?) at the National Security Council, Power will have close contact, and maybe even travel with, Clinton, now Secretary of State. No word as to whether Power will bring along wolf bane and garlic, just in case.

You have to hand it to Obama. If nothing else, he knows how to bring about reconciliation within his own party. Of course, it was something of a surprise when, after all the insults traded between the two campaigns, Obama appointed Hillary to State in the first place. I remember the press conference he gave right after that announcement, in which he dismissed all that dissing back and forth as "just politics, heat of the campaign, you know."

Huh? They weren't serious?

IF YOU CAN'T TRUST POLITICIANS WHEN THEY'RE TRASH TALKING EACH OTHER, WHEN CAN YOU TRUST THEM?!

 

My beef in the above piece (it's over now; we're back to 2013) wasn't with Samantha Power, who I have no real strong opinions about.  If the name is unfamiliar to you, she's a former journalist and Harvard professor who wrote a highly regarded, and as I said in the above post, Pulitzer Prize-winning book  "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, which criticized the USA for standing by not-so-helplessly as various crimes against humanity were committed around the globe. This book was published in 2002. A few years later she was a foreign policy fellow in the office of then-Senator Barack Obama, and when he ran for president in 2008, became a senior foreign policy advisor, until she resigned after telling a journalist in what she naively hoped would be an off-the-record comment that Hillary Clinton was a "monster". Boning up on her for this post, I've found things to like and not like about her. She's probably more interventionist-minded than I'm comfortable with, but was against the intervention that was Iraq, which I see as a plus. Also, she doesn't see intervention strictly as a matter of planes, tanks, and guns (nor does she see any of that as a turn-off) but also "...a whole range of options—you can convene allies, impose economic sanctions, expel ambassadors, jam hate radio. There is always something you can do" At the National Security Council she's championed religious freedoms and the protection of religious minorities, human rights and democracy, women's rights, LGBT rights, curbs in human trafficking, and the protection of refugees. Hard to argue with any of that.

 

I think what was really going on when I wrote that post is, after rooting for Obama to stomp Hillary in the 2008 primaries, I finally realized that I didn't know where exactly he was coming from. How to separate the wheat from the chaff, the man from the myth, the principles from the politics, the convictions from the spin, the soul from the positions paper, and the beliefs from the bullshit? Even though I voted for him, I was determined to hold Obama's feet to the fire, to speak truth to power, even if four years later that truth reads like nitpicking.

 

Then the Tea Party happened. And the birthers. And obstructionists in Congress who were suddenly against things they've previously championed (such as health insurance mandates), and their willingness to bankrupt the country by refusing to raise the debt limit because they believed doing so would cause...bankruptcy. With the poor guy up against all that, I felt I should cut Obama some slack. But here was, and is, my dilemma: how to cut him slack without this blog sounding like a White House talking point?

 

I gradually retreating from writing about politics and instead turned toward pop culture, a subject that's always interested me. I did keep the phrase "political observations" in the description underneath the title Shadow of a Doubt, in case something of national interest should happen that piqued my interest.

As it turns out, a couple things this past week has piqued my interest. The first is Obama nominating Samantha Power as Ambassador to the United Nations, and appointing Susan Rice--the current UN ambassador--as National Security Advisor. Both seem to be relatively idealistic, with all the pluses and minuses that entails. If Power is approved by the Senate--which seems likely in spite of some opposition  from a few who feels she's not pro-Israel enough--she'll have become a mainstay of the Obama administration. He must like her. He also must like Rice, who got her start in the Clinton administration, where she was special assistant this or senior assistant that. Along with the rest of that particular White House, she was mum on the subject on the 1994 Rwanda Genocide until the worst had passed. She came to regret her silence, later saying: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." As such, she urged dramatic action--from recalling ambassadors to no-fly zones to multinational intervention--in the Sudan, Zaire, and Libya, none of which has caused her to go down in flames. What did almost cause that had a much smaller body count than the butcheries inflicted on the citizens of the aforementioned countries. These new bodies, though, were Americans, including Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens (who sez ambassadorships are plumb jobs?) during the attack on the Benghazi consulate last September. Afterwards, Rice went on several TV news shows and said the attacks appeared to be the result of spontaneous demonstrations sparked by an anti-Islam film. Hillary Clinton made similar statements. Both of these women were mistaken, as the attacks now said to have been pre-meditated (though by whom remains an open question.) Rice, who many believe was in line to replace Clinton as Secretary of State, withdrew her name from consideration because of the controversy. The job went instead to John Kerry, a decent man who, probably for political reasons like Hillary, voted for the Iraq war.   Lo, these many months later, what Susan Rice thought and said the week following the attack is still a matter of controversy for some. But not me. I have no strong feelings about Rice. As I understand it, she's respected by most of the other delegates to the UN. Cooler heads (not in Congress, obviously) feel she's more than qualified for the national security post, which doesn't require Senate approval anyway.

 

If I don't have strong feelings, pro or con, about either Power or Rice, why did their nominations/appointments pique my interest? Something I read online by Peter Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic. In a Daily Beast article titled "Obama Unbound", Beinart argues that with these second-term appointments (including Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense), the "true" Obama is emerging. The first time around he appointed people he didn't really want, such as Hillary, strictly because it was good politics to do so:

 

"The Democratic Party has finally freed itself from the long shadow of Vietnam. For decades after the end of that war, Democrats peered nervously over their shoulders at a public that considered them soft. That’s why in 1988 Michael Dukakis climbed goofily into a tank. It’s why in 2004 Democrats tried to convince America that the single most important thing about John Kerry was that he had served in uniform. It’s why Obama couldn’t close Guantánamo Bay.

"Now those anxieties are gone, first because George W. Bush destroyed the GOP’s foreign-policy brand, and second, because by ordering the military operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, Obama won himself all the tough-guy swagger he needed. Thus, last fall, when Mitt Romney tried to out-hawk him on Iran, Obama didn’t scramble to his right. To the contrary, in the foreign-policy debate he smacked Romney for being 'reckless' in his willingness to 'take premature military action.' It worked. According to virtually every poll, Americans said they trusted Obama more as commander in chief.

 "Since the election, it’s been more Obama unbound. He’s appointed a wildly controversial Defense secretary who has talked bluntly about his determination to keep America out of future wars. Then, late last month, he gave a speech vowing to close Guantánamo Bay and declaring the 'war on terror' over. Now he’s appointing Rice. It’s quite a change. In 2009, Obama chose a Defense secretary and a national-security adviser Washington Republicans loved. This year, he’s chosen a Defense secretary and a national-security adviser they hate. The reason: he no longer needs to care as much what they think."

 Beinart goes on to compare Obama to Bill Clinton, who behaved like a conservative in his first term so as to have the freedom to be liberal in the second. Or would have, had a stained black dress belonging to a White House intern not been a major distraction.

Beinart ends his piece this way:

"So what will Obama pursue? A comprehensive deal with Iran? A new initiative on climate change? A real effort at slashing nuclear stockpiles across the globe? One last presidential push for Mideast peace? He has laid the table for the kind of big, controversial foreign-policy initiative that would have been too risky in his first term. If Republicans are angry now, just wait. The real fun has yet to begin."

All well and good. Now to the second thing that piqued my interest, the following headline:



 NSA Monitoring All Verizon Calls in the US, Leaked Memo Says

Or was the leaked memo part at beginning of the headline? Anyway, you probably saw something similar. According to Obama, whose White House the super-secret agency answers to, all this has something to do with the War on Terror, the one that is supposed to be over, and is sanctioned by the Patriot Act. There's been a relative firestorm of relative controversy over all this. Notice I said "relative". That's because I don't think most Americans are bothered by this, least of all Verizon customers. There's been similar stories in the past 12 years, and only the ACLU seems to care. Oh, the party not in the White House--first the Democrats and now the Republicans tries to make the most political hay they can about it. But they soon back off. They know the public fears terrorism, a fear they've both helped fan. To be fair, they get other help from time to time from the likes of the Tsarnaev boys.

This could even help Obama politically. It could contribute to the Presidents tough guy swagger. Ensure even more confidence in him as our commander-in-chief. Shorten the shadow of Vietnam even more. These are my thoughts, not Beinart's, but it does fit in with his thesis. It's an argument that can be made, an excuse to be offered. Extremist politicking in the name of foreign policy idealism is no vice.

It also reminds me of the old Vulcan saying, "Only Nixon can go to China." Except first Obama has to become Nixon.

Or J. Edgar Hoover.

I'd prefer to think that we can get a comprehensive deal with Iran, a new initiative on climate change, slashed nuclear stockpiles across the globe, and Mideast peace without bringing Big Brother into it. Politically, it only makes sense.

In the meantime, I'm going to return to writing about old TV shows, movies, and comics. Pop culture may be no less compromised than politics, but at least I'm more comfortable making excuses for it.

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post-War, er, Post-Election Analysis

I'll try and make this brief. Barack Obama won last night. Those of you aware of my politics will know I see this as a good thing. But not too much of a good thing. The President will still have to contend with a divided Congress, a divided nation, a divided world, and, if the Hubble telescope ever detects life on another planet, probably a divided galaxy as well. Like Bill Clinton before him, Obama may just end up a lonely centurion on guard duty at the gates of Rome, nervously flailing his sword at the approaching barbarian hoards.

Maybe it's unfair of me to call them barbarians. They're just well-meaning folks who simply want to return this country to those halcyon days of yore when blacks were serfs, women were indentured bedmates who knew how to cook, gays were unimaginable, indigenous people were trespassers, Genesis was science, literacy was a luxury, arsenic cuisine was unregulated, soot was a precaution against sun stroke, windows were for dumping out chamber pots, and you didn't have all these meddlesome laws prohibiting four-year olds from earning an honest living working in iron smelting plants with a half-day off for Christmas. These are the people, some of them either in Congress or just financing it, that Obama has to contend with for the next four years. I don't know that he'll have time to do anything else. So, if you're expecting some sweeping changes in his second term that will transform this country into a fairer, more equatable place with justice and opportunity for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, or social status, then...

You must be a right-wing Republican. That's exactly what they're afraid will happen

Strange Change

"I love you, Obama!"

Remember that?

When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, someone always yelled that out to him in the middle of a speech. And he'd usually yell back,

"I love you, too!"

The night Obama reached 2118, the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, he even elaborated a bit:

"I love you, too. Oh, I really do!"

Obama was praised back then for his oratorical style. For his charisma. He could motivate people, especially young people. He could inspire them, like no politician had since JFK, whose daughter endorsed him.

Two years later, Obama's often referred to as "professorial", as "cold", as "arrogant", as someone who doesn't relate well with people. And that old nickname from his law school days is back: No Drama Obama.

There was plenty of drama in 2008. My God, people use to faint at his rallies. He was Elvis. Now he's John Tesh. Some feared in 2008 that a candidate with so much charisma might become a dictator. Given the shellacking (Obama's own words) his party just took in the mid-term elections, he's about as effective a dictator as a 94-year old substitute teacher trying to break up a reform school knife fight.

This isn't the change I wanted to believe in.

Maybe Obama is like Jimmy Carter by way of cartoonist Garry Trudeau. In a series of 1970s Doonesbury strips, Carter appoints Duane Delacourt as Secretary of Symbolism, who advises the President to wear a cardigan, walk instead of take a limo on inauguration day, and answer questions on a call-in radio show. A few years later, a disillusioned Delacourt leaves the administration and joins up with Jerry Brown (yes, my younger readers, Brown was also in the news way back when.) As Delacourt explains to reporter Rick Redfern, Carter has lost interest in symbolism and seems intent on addressing the issues. Substitute symbolism with charisma and you have Obama. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for him addressing the issues, but not at the expense of his own personal magnetism. Would it kill him to multi-task? C'mon, the man carries a Blackberry!

Obama is said to admire Lincoln, but he should move up some 70 years to FDR. I thinking of the Fireside Chats. I learned about those chats in school, but until recently never actually heard one. I grew up thinking they were just meant to comfort or soothe people during the Great Depression. I figured FDR said something like, "Don't you worry about the big, bad depression, Uncle Frank will take good care of it. Now just pull that newspaper up over you on that park bench and have a good night sleep." However, a couple of years ago I actually got a chance to hear one of those chats. Roosevelt didn't just comfort, he didn't just soothe, he explained, he educated.

In 1933, banks were failing right and left. This scared a good portion of the population, and they responded by withdrawing their money. This in turn caused banks to not only fail left and right but also up and down and in and out. To deal with the crises, Roosevelt declared a Bank Holiday, closing the savings institutions for a couple of days. He then want on the radio to explain to those who hadn't already had their radios repossessed why he did this. It's a lengthy speech, or chat. I just want to focus on one paragraph:

First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.

Roosevelt then goes on to explain that if everybody withdraws their money at once, which is exactly what was happening, even the healthiest banks would go under. The people listening accepted the new President's reasoning. They cut him some much needed slack, legislation was passed shoring up the system, and the banks soon reopened. FDR's stock soared.

Back to Obama. No, I'm not suggesting he declare a bank holiday. TARP, I guess, solved that problem. I'm thinking of the stimulus. Many economists warned him that the first one just wasn't big enough, and now they're saying we need another. Whether the new Republican majority in the House will let him have another is doubtful. But he still has the old Democratic majority for next couple of weeks. Can't they pass something?

Here's Obama's problem. The stimulus is based on the theories of the late John Maynard Keynes. He believed the government could lift an economy out of a depression or recession by injecting cash, often referred to as priming the pump, usually in the form of public projects. Where does the government get this money, since tax receipts are low during a downturn? By running a deficit. Unfortunately, for advocates of such an approach, spending money you don't have to solve a problem is counter-intuitive to most people, definitely not something you want to try at home.

This is why Obama needs to give a Fireside, or, if you want to update it a little, a Space Heater Chat. Explain the theory. Tell the folks that if you spend money to build a bridge, it's not just bridge builders themselves that profit, that with money in their pockets, they'll go out and buy things in stores, and the people who work in the stores will have more money, as will the people who work in the factories and warehouses that supplies the stores with goods. The economy will rebound, tax receipts will go up, and the deficit will take care of itself.

Would such a chat work? Couldn't hurt. And we have TV now. Obama could shine those pearly whites as he comforted, soothed, explained, and educated.

Maybe the President's confidence has just been shaken a bit. Perhaps he just needs some positive reinforcement.

Here's what I want all of you Obama supporters to do, even those who may be having second thoughts. At the count of the three, I want you all to join together, and, as loud as you can, give him a giant word of encouragement.

One...two..three:

WE LOVE YOU, OBAMA!!!

Let's hope it's not unrequited.

Race Carded

Harry Reid is prejudiced against white people.

Huh? What's that, you ask. Don't you mean the Senate Majority Leader is prejudiced against blacks? That's what's implied by a new book that's out about the 2008 presidential race called Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

"He (Reid) was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately".

Let's take each of these one by one, though not in order.

Reid seems to have gotten the most flack from white conservatives, and one notable black, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, for using the now-dated term Negro. It became dated sometime during the 1960s. Before that, both blacks and whites used the term. There's still a black organization called the United Negro College Fund. And the term is still used in a historic context, e.g., Before Satchel Paige joined the Cleveland Indians, he played for the Negro Leagues.

What was it exactly that made the anthropological-sounding Negro fall out of favor? My guess is it sounded a little too much like that other N word, the one that occasionally gets The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned from school libraries.

So, if Negro is, at best, passe, why does Harry Reid continue to use the word? Reid was born in 1939, so he would have been about 25 when the transition from Negro to Black occurred. OK, 25's not very old. You'd think he'd have kicked the Negro habit by now. The man's pushing 70! Yes, but it's those words and bywords and buzzwords and catch phrases we hear during out first couple of decades that sometimes stick with us. For instance, back when I worked in a distribution center, I was helping this girl about fifteen years younger than me ID some boxes. I asked her if she had a magic marker. She replied, "I have a marker, but I don't know if there's anything magic about it." She had never heard the term, yet it was common when I was a kid, and I can't help referring to such an item that way. Of course, a marker is unlikely to be offended by being called magic. If it could think, it might even take it as a compliment.

Another thing that got Reid in trouble was referring to Barack Obama as "light-skinned" and that this light skin would make him more palatable to the white electorate than an African-American with a darker hue. Since it's largely the Republican Party that's upset about what Reid said, perhaps they could run a darker-skinned candidate (Michael Steele, perhaps?) against Obama in 2012, and test this proposition. Put up or shut up. Of course, the white electorate may just ignore the color of skin altogether and focus, as Martin Luther King Jr once famously put it, on the content of character. Obama has an advantage there, too.

Finally, Reid said that Obama didn't talk with a Negro dialect unless by choice. I'll leave it to you folks to decide what exactly a Negro, or Black, or African-American dialect sounds like. I did watch quite a bit of C-SPAN during 2008, and I can tell you Obama sounded a little different, a little more southern, when speaking in a black church to an all-black audience. But then, so did Hillary Clinton.

The NAACP has stated it has no problem with Harry Reid's statements. Neither does Al Sharpton. What about President Obama? He's accepted Reid's apology, but then he also accepted Joe Biden's apology for calling him "clean" early in 2007. Whatever happened to Joe Biden, anyway?

So I really don't think Reid has a problem with black people. But I started this piece claiming it was white people he was prejudiced against. Why would I say that? Simple. Prejudice comes from the Latin word praejudicium, meaning, to prejudge. When Harry Reid said whites would prefer a light-skinned African-American to a dark-skinned one, and that these same whites would prefer one that spoke the King's English rather than Dixie, he was prejudging them. Ergo, Harry Reid is prejudiced against white people.

Given some of the stuff that comes out of white people's mouths, who can blame him?

Recommended Reading

Michael Moore wants Obama to pass on the Khyber.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

I've discovered that political commentary is a bit more problematic when the guy you voted for actually gets into office.

As someone who cast his ballot for Barack Obama last November, I really should give the guy the benefit, or--heh, heh--shadow, of a doubt. After all, the poor man's under siege by birthers, Third Reich health care scholars, and those who assert their First and Second amendment rights to peacefully assemble with peacemakers .

Lets start with the birthers. No matter how many copies of his birth certificate, or Hawiian birth announcements, he shows those folks, they're still not convinced. All counterfeit, they claim. And that his mother was a native born American doesn't seem to convince them, either. Was she counterfeit, too? A fembot, maybe? Or a Stepford wife?

And the guys who show up with guns at Obama events? Simple self-protection. You never know when those Secret Service men might do something rash. Like protect the President.

What must be most annoying are these folks who insist of disrupting the Town Hall health care meetings with their screaming and shouting. Ah, says the right-winger, left-wingers have a long history of disrupting meetings, hearings and speeches with screaming and shouting. Just look at Code Pink. Fair is fair. And the right-winger is correct. Left-wingers do have such a history. They also have a history of getting sprayed with tear gas, dragged by their hair, and dumped in the back of paddy wagons. None of which seems to be happening to the anti-health care protesters. Unfair is unfair. Some have accused the insurance lobby of sending those people to protest. If so, they're sending some of the most emotionally fragile, Prozac-deprived souls this side of Dr. Phil. On the news I saw one overwrought woman wearing glasses cry out:

"I don't recognize my own country!!"

I think she needs to go to LensCrafters and get a new prescription.

OK, so it's not a good time for President Obama, and I really shouldn't add to his troubles with my own criticisms. On the other hand, should I cut the oxygen to my brain all in the name of liberal solidarity? After all, I just want to criticize Obama from the Left. I'd think he'd find the change in direction refreshing.

I'm just afraid this is going to be the Clinton administration all over again. Liberals and progressives who won't admit to being liberal and progressives and, in fact, don't seem to be particularly liberal or progressive much of the time, but liberals and progressives are expected to support them anyway because there are people out there a lot worse at being neither liberal nor progressive. Truth be told, what followed Clinton was a lot worse. But maybe if Clinton had been a little more liberal and a little more progressive, Bush and friends would have had a more difficult time being otherwise. Yes, there was prosperity under Clinton, but he talked so much like a Republican at times that I think some voters thought there would be even more prosperity if they voted for someone who sounded even more like a Republican. Say, an actual Republican. But before any of that came about, liberals and progressives were expected to fight the good fight. And what exactly was that good fight in the 1990s? The right for a president to screw around behind his wife's back on the public dime and then lie about it under oath? He shall overcome. All over a black dress.

I don't expect Obama to cheat on his wife, and don't much care if he does as long as I'm not expected to cover for him. But he's getting more Republican by the day, even as the real Republicans sharpen their knives, or, as health care dominates the news, their scalpels. Like Clinton, he probably believes he, and only he, can keep the barbarians at bay, and, like Clinton, he may just end up at bottom of that bay tied to a rock, gurgling that it's all a right-wing conspiracy. Takes one to know one.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on Obama. He is pushing for health care reform. If we only knew which health care reform (I half-expect him one day to say lower prices is not the essential element of health reform.) He did say--after what, two, three weeks?--that there were no death panels and that he found such talk "objectionable." So's your old man!

Last year about this time, I heard Obama supporters mocked as fanantics who expected their candidate to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Let's just hope he doesn't turn the other cheek while being nailed to the cross.

Are Van Helsing and Dracula Next?

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author who was dumped as a foreign policy advisor by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster", will soon be hired as a foreign policy advisor by now-President Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press.

Wait a second, it's not the victim who's supposed to rise from the grave.

Then again, Jamie Lee Curtis did star in at least two Halloween sequels.

How does the monster, er, Hillary Clinton feel about all this? According to an official close to the transition, the two have decided to "bury the hatchet." As senior director of multilateral affairs (is there a director of single lateral affairs?) at the National Security Council, Power will have close contact, and maybe even travel with, Clinton, now Secretary of State. No word as to whether Power will bring along wolf bane and garlic, just in case.

You have to hand it to Obama. If nothing else, he knows how to bring about reconciliation within his own party. Of course, it was something of a surprise when, after all the insults traded between the two campaigns, Obama appointed Hillary to State in the first place. I remember the press conference he gave right after that announcement, in which he dismissed all that dissing back and forth as "just politics, heat of the campaign, you know."

Huh? They weren't serious?

IF YOU CAN'T TRUST POLITICIANS WHEN THEY'RE TRASH TALKING EACH OTHER, WHEN CAN YOU TRUST THEM?!

Quips and Quotations

"Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. It's power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crises has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control--and a nation cannot prosper long when it only favors the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross national product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart--not out of charity, but because that is the surest route to our common good.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers...our found fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideas still light the world, and we will not give them up for expediency's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, not does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

--President Barack Obama, inaugural address.

(Don't mistake this for a wholesale endorsement of Obama's speech. Much of it made me either yawn, sigh, or roll my eyes...but I did like this part--KJ)

Well, It's Not Exactly New York Harbour...

Got things to do today, so I'll have to catch Obama's speech tonight on C-span. They'll play it a couple of times, I'm sure. True, it's not the same as watching it live. But the live version's not necessarily live. There's a rumor on the Internet that Obama's inauguration speech is on a five-second tape delay. Networks execs are afraid a strong wind might knock over Dick Cheney's wheelchair, and the subsequent curse words will be caught on mike.

Even though I'm not watching the inauguration live, I will pass this along to you. Earlier this morning, I was in Berea, driving down Bagley through a mild snowstorm, when I suddenly see this guy on the side of the road dressed like the Statue of Liberty, and waving a cardboard torch! He certainly seemed to be in a good mood.

Something written by Emma Lazarus popped into my head.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp besides the golden door!"

Lamp? Golden door? Speaking for this wretched refuse, after eight years of Bush, I'd be willing to follow a Zippo lighter through the garage door entrance!