Because, now that everything's perfect and all, we have nothing to argue about. Anyone who posts in here hates America.

I was thinking this morning I've never been more proud of a vote I cast.

The sad thing is that on the Presidential level, Mondale is next. And I only felt that way when I learned more about Mondale.

My political thought of the day (and yeah, for the two or three of you who saw it on my blog, this is recycled/expanded upon):

The country was never really a "50-50" polity. Probably more like 10-70-20 (give or take a point or two; maybe it's really 12-70-18...)when it comes to ideology, with some chunk of the 10 percent that are hardcore lefties and the 20 percent that are hardcore righties considerably more likely to vote third-party in their respective directions than to cross the aisle for the other major party. (Think PtK to the left, any of the true right-wing psychos on the other board to the right.)

At different times, both major parties have disqualified themselves among majorities of that persuadable 70 percent because of either demonstrated incompetence or terminal silliness: the Republicans quickly during the Hoover years, the Democrats gradually between 1968 and 1984. The Bush Republicans did this during his second term, proving themselves both incompetent and silly ("irrelevant" is probably a better word).

So the Democrats have a chance to cement something here, but it probably depends on whether Obama is more like FDR than Jimmy Carter, and whether the Dems in Congress decide to get in line like 1933, or get in the way like 1993.

So yeah, I really don't want Tim Geithner to get the Treasury post. Volcker or Summers please.

FTN wrote:So yeah, I really don't want Tim Geithner to get the Treasury post. Volcker or Summers please.

I know nothing about Geithner. What's the objection?

The only thing I've really read about this "race" is that Summers, between his evidently awful people skills and his complicity in the late-'90s deregulation mania, has some big knocks against him and a lot of people determined not to see him back in the job.

Volcker seems like he'd be a good choice.

Geithner is the head of the New York Fed. And apparently was the point man in deciding that Lehman should be allowed to fail. I basically don't want anyone who was a part of the last few years to be carried over into the new regime. Especially someone who may have helped trigger this collapse. Summers lacks people skills. He says dumb things when he opens his mouth. I know he has lots of experience in labor economics and is a good macro guy, which I think is what we need right now, and hes worked in Treasury before, so there won't be a massive adjustment period while he learns the ropes.

dajafi wrote:My political thought of the day (and yeah, for the two or three of you who saw it on my blog, this is recycled/expanded upon):

The country was never really a "50-50" polity. Probably more like 10-70-20 (give or take a point or two; maybe it's really 12-70-18...)when it comes to ideology, with some chunk of the 10 percent that are hardcore lefties and the 20 percent that are hardcore righties considerably more likely to vote third-party in their respective directions than to cross the aisle for the other major party. (Think PtK to the left, any of the true right-wing psychos on the other board to the right.)

At different times, both major parties have disqualified themselves among majorities of that persuadable 70 percent because of either demonstrated incompetence or terminal silliness: the Republicans quickly during the Hoover years, the Democrats gradually between 1968 and 1984. The Bush Republicans did this during his second term, proving themselves both incompetent and silly ("irrelevant" is probably a better word).

So the Democrats have a chance to cement something here, but it probably depends on whether Obama is more like FDR than Jimmy Carter, and whether the Dems in Congress decide to get in line like 1933, or get in the way like 1993.

Nice commentary -- especially the choice between 33 and 93 -- which is a huge one! Right now, I expect 93 or worse, but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised -- and to have more credence given to those who see it as a pendulum that swings back and forth over 25-30 year periods.

I would qualify a couple things about your percentages, my view of the hard core left --and me in specific...

Just like the "Red Blue" paradigm, is very limiting in some ways, the 10-70-20 may also be. I contend, that if certain FACTS just the facts -- not a spin on those facts, just the raw information was served -- that there are a LOT of areas specific issues and policy areas that would get alot more jumbled up than the clean left center right dimensions.

I would say that for me, when we have broad abstract discussion about how to move humanity, society and self-organization -- I come down very left. Then there is the practicality of my day-to-day life. There are many things I'm not willing to give up, or sacrafice personally without a larger segment of humanity moving in the same direction. To some, this might make me seem like a hypocrite or talk the talk but don't walk the walk. What eats away at me in the political landscape is all the dishonesty. Of using decorum and position to manipulate the truth. And the vast inequities. It just bugs me. I'd rather someone just tell the truth, "I have power, I want to keep it, I ahve wealth, I plan to keep that too, and your interests are irrelevant and I'll use laws and platitdues of the founding fathers only to keep you at bay or when it serves my interest..."

I do have the instinct often to support 3rd party candidates, not beause I agree with everythign or think they are perfect, but more because I think it would be an excellent circumstance to have a viable 3rd party or 4th party just to enhance discussion. So many things are off the table with the Dems or the Republicans. I also think that proportional represenation would be a good thing, more voices means more debate and more balance. When both parties tell the same lies and go along with the same stuff -- (like invading Iraq) and there isn't even a 7% minority that gets any time in the congress or on air-waves. Nader is old, 78, and says things that are inappropriate and alienate people -- but I'd really like to hear on the debates because it would force the other two to speak in different terms. I find that a GOOD thing.

I'm not a contrarian just to be so. I just hate all the hiding out behind rhetoric. Obama-mania has been in full force this week, and its alla round me where I live. And if I point out that he mostly talks in platitudes, "we need to..." "we have to ..." But doesn't get specific. Look at who he surrounds himself with, and follow the money and you will know largely what he will do, once in office.

Here's a short list of things that happened under Cheney-with-hand-up-W's-a** that I'd like to see reversed that won't even be discussed:

*no more rendition
*no more abuse of Executive orders
*no more torture and abuse of the classification "enemy compatant"
*repeal of Patriot Act
*expansion of Black Water and other private security/para-military firms
*no fly lists shrouded in secrecy
*military spending and campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan

Here are some other issues I'd like to see addressed that won't be:

*billions given to Israel
*lack of regulations on Wall St
*lack of regulations on corporate polluting
*massive push for Solar and Wind with big reigning in of oil, nuke, natural gas and coal
*reigning in the pharmaceutical industry
*reigning in the health insurance industry
*lack of signing nuke and environmental treaties that most of the world is on-board with

What I expect from Obama, are more platitudes, generalities, 'we'lre looking at it, we need to do something about it...' and not much in the extreme on corporate sector to in any wa impede them. "our economy can't thrive if we handcuff the corporate" it will still be trickle down for the most part.

We'll see some nice PR and photo opps with kids and inner city schools, a couple rural things, maybe some package for elderly prescription (that big Pharma approved of), and a handful of gestures internationally to look like W is behind...

But seriously, I expect not substanitive change at all. So m aybe I'm the 10% lefty fringe in my real values -- but I'd just like to see things improve and the system with its massive corruption, propoganda and hypocrisy -- get a little cleaned up.

Clinton did not undo most of the damage of 12 years of Reagan and Bush I, and Obama will not undo 8 years of Cheney-W. The good mood, feel good, historical moment stuff only lasts so long -- and when the new, young, poor and marginal -- see that now that their efforts are no longer needed, they will get less attention. Obama is not a liberal, not a populist. He's a bright, well spoken, well educated guy -- who has now been shaped and funded by the machine. The machine that says -- we need stability and business needs to run smoothly.

The biggest reason I voted Obama, was because of the chance to appt Supreme Court and Federal District judges... on most foreign and domestic policy, on reigning in big business, corruption, the propoganda of the media, or directly reversing specific things Cheney-W did, i expect very very little.

I think Obama will pleasantly surprise you on at least a few of the items on the two lists. His background as a constitutional law professor gives me hope in these areas, and I think--certainly I hope--that his personal and governing values are such that torture, rendition, and "signing statements" will join Cheney himself on the ash heap of history.

On defense spending, I reiterate my longstanding wish that federal budgeters looked at those expenses with the exact same perspective they take when considering social service funding. Not gonna happen, of course, but it's a wish and a goal. Perhaps one day the wish not to see the Pentagon literally lose billions of dollars won't be so easily conflated with a "defeatist" outlook or "wanting the terrorists to win." Crazy, I know...

As for the second list, I think the calculus around questions of financial regulations, polluting for profit, environmental/energy policy and health care has shifted to the point that progress might be possible. It's no longer as clearly in the best parochial interest of elected officials to look the other way when abuses surface; this is the big potential long-term advantage of Obama (and others) getting their campaign financing primarily from politically engaged individuals contributing relatively small dollar amounts rather than the soft-money donors of years past. (John McCain might save us yet...)

More, the negative externalities of "bad" corporate behavior, from manufacturers that legally pollute to health insurance companies that legally deny care to people with "pre-existing conditions" are now creeping into public budgets. And to the extent that Obama campaigned against some of those problems, he almost has to try and solve them for his own political survival. Which of course is how the system is supposed to work.

Great WSJ op-ed--by a liberal guest contributor, I think--about the dumbing-down of the Right over the last quarter-century:

Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

Back in the '70s, conservative intellectuals loved to talk about "radical chic," the well-known tendency of educated, often wealthy liberals to project their political fantasies onto brutal revolutionaries and street thugs, and romanticize their "struggles." But "populist chic" is just the inversion of "radical chic," and is no less absurd, comical or ominous. Traditional conservatives were always suspicious of populism, and they were right to be. They saw elites as a fact of political life, even of democratic life. What matters in democracy is that those elites acquire their positions through talent and experience, and that they be educated to serve the public good. But it also matters that they own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites. They must be friends of democracy while protecting it, and themselves, from the leveling and vulgarization all democracy tends toward.

This guy concludes that "the conservative intellectual tradition" is dead. I don't agree with that at all, but it's certainly not very evident at the moment. Get well soon, guys.

On defense spending--what no one remembers was that Rumsfeld orignally was brought on as Secdef in order to streamline the military. In fact, the proposed restructuring of the military--indeed, I recall that they were going to do away with the notion of divisions as the primary unit. Furthermore, technology, air power, and special ops were going to be emphasized over infantry. The Iraq invasion rendered all that moot.

There's no question that much military spending is wasted, and that many programs can be cut without doing any real damage to military readiness.

An obvious target would be the Navy--a bloated branch that serves little strategic or tactical purpose. You could probably do with fewer than 11 carrier groups. You need the nuclear submarines, but the rest of it, you could dump. The Navy doesn't serve a transportation function anymore.

dajafi wrote:Great WSJ op-ed--by a liberal guest contributor, I think--about the dumbing-down of the Right over the last quarter-century:

Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

Back in the '70s, conservative intellectuals loved to talk about "radical chic," the well-known tendency of educated, often wealthy liberals to project their political fantasies onto brutal revolutionaries and street thugs, and romanticize their "struggles." But "populist chic" is just the inversion of "radical chic," and is no less absurd, comical or ominous. Traditional conservatives were always suspicious of populism, and they were right to be. They saw elites as a fact of political life, even of democratic life. What matters in democracy is that those elites acquire their positions through talent and experience, and that they be educated to serve the public good. But it also matters that they own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites. They must be friends of democracy while protecting it, and themselves, from the leveling and vulgarization all democracy tends toward.

This guy concludes that "the conservative intellectual tradition" is dead. I don't agree with that at all, but it's certainly not very evident at the moment. Get well soon, guys.

It's not what it was, that's for sure.

Lilla isn't a liberal. He's an anti-perfectionist to be sure, probably a pluralist like Isaiah Berlin. But he studied with the Straussian Harvey Mansfield, and probably has found the work of contemporary conservative intellectuals far more compelling than the turgid pretentious continental post-modernism produced by the left.

Lilla is definitely someone worth reading.

Seriously, everyone needs to see the Andy Griffin movie A Face in the Crowd. And then they need to remember that to be a conservative is to be an elitist. Woohoo! Paleo Tory, that's me!

"You know who I blame? The Large Hadron Collider. It is the world's largest and highest particle accelerator. You may remember we were warned that it could create a black hole and destroy the Earth. Consider this: it launched in mid-September, when John McCain was leading in the polls. I believe it jolted us into a parallel universe that was exactly like our own, only Barack Obama is president and the Phillies are world champions."
---Stephen Colbert

Now Franken is down by 211 and it looks like the undercounts might favor Franken in a manual re-count.

Well yeah most of the ballots that are undervotes were in counties that Obama won. He won the state by 10 points.

They single out Hennepin (Minneapolis), Ramsey (St. Paul) and St. Louis (Duluth) counties as having about 40% of the undervotes. Well they cast 37% of the ballots in the election statewide.

Obviously this is something that is super close and that small difference might make a difference, but I really get frustrated at the lack of basic math skills demonstrated by people on a day to day basis. Would have been nice if the AP writer even tried.

jerseyhoya wrote:Well yeah most of the ballots that are undervotes were in counties that Obama won. He won the state by 10 points.

They single out Hennepin (Minneapolis), Ramsey (St. Paul) and St. Louis (Duluth) counties as having about 40% of the undervotes. Well they cast 37% of the ballots in the election statewide.

Obviously this is something that is super close and that small difference might make a difference, but I really get frustrated at the lack of basic math skills demonstrated by people on a day to day basis. Would have been nice if the AP writer even tried.

When you consider that most of these people studied journalism, not politics, it shouldn't be all that surprising.

Sometimes, Americans abroad felt embarrassed by George W. Bush. But really, the people who should be embarrassed by their national leader are the Italians. Not only is Berlusconi worse than Bush by just about every measure, they elected him 3 times!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/politics/09memo.html?hp

This article is so obnoxious. How dare Republicans be gracious losers and say nice things about Obama?! Swear to God, we could enact world peace and the NYT would be able to make Republicans look like villains.

I have no problem with Geithner - nor does the Economist for what that's worth. I definitely don't think "he triggered the financial collapse". I'm still not clear that not bailing out Lehman was a bad idea. It seems like doing so might just have delayed the inevitable (at best), or continued the idea that taking big risks was okay and causing a crisis that no amount of government intervention could have solved (at worst).

jerseyhoya wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/politics/09memo.html?hp

This article is so obnoxious. How dare Republicans be gracious losers and say nice things about Obama?! Swear to God, we could enact world peace and the NYT would be able to make Republicans look like villains.

I read that article. No mention of the fact that you know, Republicans live in America too, and probably would like to avoid a financial collapse.

Or the fact that the Clinton people were rather inhospitable to the incoming Bush administration.

OOoh, since Louisiana has that messed up electoral system, we still get to watch political ads!