Speaks for Itself

Really, isn't it self-evident? Rich? Jonah? Anybody home?

Getting To Know You

Sarah Palin, who's been on the national scene for, "like five weeks" (her words), says we really don't know Barack Obama. Whereas that's no more laughable than most any of her other contradictions and non-sequiturs, it's particularly ripe when you think how John McCain lives in a persona created out of whole cloth and furthered by media who like his barbeques. This video, whatever else it may be, is based on personal accounts. As I said in my last post, the public is beginning to have unadorned glimpses of the real John McCain, the one that's been there all along. Pretty it is not. Scary it is.

Maver-Icky

In post-debate chatter, many talking heads and tapping fingers have noted that McCain didn't "take the opportunity" to attack Obama face to face over the now-prime issues of his campaign: that he sleeps with terrorists, hates America, and disrespects our troops. The righties say McPOW is too nice or he blew it, or some combination of the above; the lefties say he didn't have the guts.

I think the reason is very clear: he didn't want to give Obama an opportunity, on national television, to refute -- which McCain knows he could have done easily and eloquently -- those smears. He'd much rather be able to continue to use them.

His "failure" to raise the issues was nothing of the sort. It was part and parcel of his cynical, desperate, and extremely revealing campaign. The only amazing thing about it is that there are those, Broderites, who continue to argue that the "real" McCain, the decent hero, hates doing this, and that's why he seems so angry. Bullshit. The real McCain IS angry, all the time. The real McCain is the guy we see now, stripped of his carefully crafted and credulously continued (by the press) disguise. "Stealth candidate?" Now we know who.

Letter

Dear Governor Palin,

I'm happy to give you the benefit of the doubt, here. Ascending the political stairway in Alaska, you didn't have to consider certain things. In a state that's pretty much homogeneous (that's not a sexual reference, by the way), where money flows from the pipeline to its people, and from Washington in gushers, you've never had to wonder about tone and truth. It's not been much of a problem (although the gate is a little bit open) to use political power to personal advantage, and gaining that power didn't require turning people against one another. So I think it's quite possible -- understandable, even -- that you don't recognize the potential damage, the actual damage, of what you have now agreed to do in running a campaign of polarization. In Alaska, there are no parallels. Down here, in the lower forty-eight, your descent into smear and into the mongering of hate and fear threatens our existence. I'm not kidding. It's that serious.

Maybe you know how untrue is your statement that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists," and your implication that he is one himself. Perhaps you've even made an effort to understand (if you were to do so, you might even agree with) his statement, in context, that our strategy of focusing on bombing in Afghanistan was risking serious alienation of its citizens and is counterproductive. For the troops (for whose welfare, unlike John McCain, he voted in the form of the new GI bill) and for our cause there, which he has said from the beginning was abandoned prematurely. I suppose it doesn't really matter whether you know or not, other than what it says about you. What matters is how it inflames a certain part of our society, and how that sort of divisiveness has gotten us to where we are today, and how it threatens any real hope of finding our way back.

Coming from Alaska, a place pretty much free of the strains facing the rest of us, you may not understand the difficulties of finding common ground, nor even of the need. When you smile from your podium at the crowds before you, as they shout, derisive and vocal in their hatreds, naming Senator Obama a terrorist, treasonous, calling for his death, perhaps you find it exhilarating. Never, I'm sure, have your words fallen on and stirred so many. A far cry indeed from playing the flute in a beauty pageant.

Can you see how dangerous it is? Not just for Senator Obama: for our country. Does it occur to you that, as we head into a worldwide economic downturn the likes of which none of has seen, fomenting hatred will make helping each other that much harder? Isn't such behavior anathema to your faith, by golly; were your political aspirations, ever, at first, maybe, to lift people up and to help them? Granted, this much help was never needed in Wasilla or Juneau. But we're really hurting down here. Our country is in two wars, its military is stretched, our economy is crashing around us. People are losing homes. The world economy, thanks largely to the exporting of our unregulated financial instruments, is teetering along with ours. For the last eight years, the world already had a pretty low opinion of us. Now, our need for countries to wish us well is even greater. On top of all that, we're running out of oil, the ice is melting, health care is a mess, our education system doesn't measure up. Facing this, do you really, in your heart of hearts, have no compunction about dividing us against ourselves? Are you really so free of values and ideas of your own that it bothers you not at all to campaign in the way you are? Can't you see a need for something better?

Your time is valuable, and I'm going on too long here, Governor. But I'm physically ill over it (you said you were ill over the bailout, so I guess you can understand how outside events can affect a person.) Barack Obama has spoken not just eloquently but really thoughtfully about all of these problems. I'd bet the oil in ANWR that if you saw his words and didn't know the source, you'd really like a lot of it: most of it isn't partisan at all. It's about solutions, about the need to listen to each other, respectfully, finding common ways forward. And where you disagree, why not say so in positive ways? Now, facing problems the seriousness of which the world has never seen, aren't respect and open-mindedness exactly what we need? Must we not search among all of us to find the best ideas? The twisting of words, the fomenting of hatred in order to gain purely political advantage -- don't the times call for better?

Please. Think about what you are doing. Look at your crowds, listen to them as they spew hatred for liberals, for Senator Obama, for the press. For half the country!! For the foundations of its liberty!! Please. We can't take it. We literally may not survive it. Stop, think, reflect. This is real, it's serious. It's much bigger than a sports complex in Wasilla. There could well be no tomorrow. If you have ideas, let's hear them. If you get that a country in peril needs all of its citizens to look at one another and see themselves, say so. Or is it just about winning? And if so, to whose benefit, to what end? Have you ever really thought about that? In Alaska, such questions didn't matter. Now, they really do.

Thank you for your time.

Sid Schwab
Human-American

Obligatory Post-Debate Post

Sorta boring. No major fluffs. Obama silky, McCain clunky. "That one." "I know how to (insert here, choose among 1) catch bin Laden 2) win wars 3) fix the economy 4) solve problems." "My friends, my friends, my friends, my friends." "Freeze spending." "Spend three hundred billion on mortgages."

"Gentlemen, we worked really hard on these rules." "Green lights." "Red lights." "Arm wave."

Gimmicky format: town hall? Say what?

"You don't announce your intentions to your enemies." "Bomb bomb Iran."

Usual partisan spinners aside, the strong plurality of polls suggest an Obama win.

Are "undecideds" really undecided, or do they just figure (wrongly) it doesn't make any difference?

Scenario

"Okay, Sarah honey, hit that delete button in your head, we've got some new stuff to put in."

"I'm ready, Johnny. Hey, don't look like that. You said I could call you Johhny, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get on with it. So here's the next line. A while back the uppity prick called our troops killers. Got that? Skinny shithead says all they want to do is kill civilians."

"Really? Gee, I find that hard...."

"Zip it, baby. You find everything hard. Just listen up. Take notes if you have to. See, someone asked him why we needed more troops in Afganistan and he said so they can kill more children."

"Golly, I know he's a Bowling League guy, but..."

"Ivy League."

"....Whatever. Anyhoo, it still seems sorta harsh. Whatcha got on the cards?"

"He said, "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there." Arrogant sonovabitch."

"But Johnny, doncha think maybe he was saying, you know, air raids are sorta gross and they kill extra people, mainstreet folks? Like from the air. I mean when you were a pilot..."

"Jesus Christ you little c@@t! You're not here to think, you prettified.... If I wanted someone who could think I'da picked Kay Bailey Hutchinson."

"Now Johnny, don't get your coronaries in a bunch. I mean, if you do, I might be... Anyway, wasn't he just saying having troops on the ground would mean we could be more accurate? Ya know, not make so many people mad at us? I mean, really, what's so bad about that?"

"Listen, baby. You've already embarrassed the hell out of me, okay? Shut the fuck up and find a place in that empty head of yours for a few more facts, okay? Okay? Heh, heh, huh?"

"Well, Johnny, here's the thing. Ever since that Katie lady told me about newspapers, I've been doing a little reading. Even George Bush ... now Johnny don't make that face... said killing civilians there was giving us a bad name. Couldn't that be right? I mean, look, even that terrorist you told me lived with the black guy? I mean, geez, he sounds like he mighta got saved or something, got the witches out of him maybe, because he's like a teacher at a college or something and was on charity boards and advised the mayor and stuff like that when the black guy met him. I'm not so sure..."

"Sarah, I'll say this once, and I'll say it slowly so your dimpled little peanut brain can take it all in. If you want to ride this train, you do what I say and you say what I say like that good little girl I know you are. Don't get all Cindy on me. High ground, my ass."

"Gosh, Johnny, you're kinda ugly-looking there. I mean golly, there, doncha think we should be telling the truth? We're calling the guy a terrorist loving troop hating unAmerican. I mean gee doncha think there we could rile people up too much, make'em crazy? I thought we had good stuff to say. Ya know sometimes I'm wondering if this is the right thing we're doing here.... Johnny? Johnny? Hey, whyya looking like that? Whereya goin' Johnny? Don't go. Don't bring back that snowboard water thing. Johhny? Johnny? Please, don't send in Rick Davis. Don't send in Steve Schmidt. Please Johnny. I'll be good...."


[I acknowledge that the above gives too much credit to the moose hunter. I don't for a minute think she feels bad about what she's doing. And I'd bet my left one that she neither read what Obama said in the one instance, nor cares about the bigger picture of Wm. Ayers in the other. Nor spent any time considering the implications; no sleep lost whatsoever. And, as her words seem to be inciting really distressing hatred among her avid supporters, she shows no sign of moderation. "Kill him." "Treason." "Terrorist." This is the world she grooves in; easily, thoughtlessly. I'd say also cynically, but that implies a degree of self-awareness. I think she's too clueless really to understand the truth or implications of what she's doing, and that is certainly consistent with my little fantasy.]

Fair and Balanced

Couple of weeks ago, the Washington State Veterans for Obama officially opened its office in Seattle. Since I'm a member, I figured I'd go. The media were supposed to be there (they weren't); maybe I could get a little face time. (I'm in the above picture, absent face. Others include a two-star general, a state senator, people from veterans' outreach programs, generic vets, coupla flags, etc.)

I have no problem identifying as a liberal. As a Democrat, though, it's sometimes cringe-inducing.

The event was pleasant enough: mercifully short, less than an hour late, several satisfyingly brief speeches, one or two of them actually moving, maybe forty people (most of whom dutifully wandered over from other Democratic offices in the building, a decidedly run-down one, furnished like a dorm-room only cheaper) looking on. But for some reason it began with a Native American prayer. Burning some plants before the beginning (when I arrived I thought it was cigarettes, asked if I was at the "Smokers for Obama" convention. Not met with humor), waving some feathers in the direction of the four winds, turning and chanting in an unspecified native language, earnest, serious.

Don't misunderstand. I have no problem with Native Americans. Many of my patients were Native American. I operated on a couple of Chiefs, had in my hands the gallbladders of many tribal members (much higher incidence of gallstones in Native Americans than non-natives.) But why was that a part of the opening? Why not Hebrew prayers, or a little Hare Krishna? Or better still, why not none of the above? There's some sort of pseudo-sensitivity going on, an underlying assumption of something with which I don't agree. Not dissimilar to the menu police at the Denver convention: it's a sort of in-your-face (face theme, here) assertion that the values of some surely must be the values of all. Which is sort of strange, for the party of open-minded diversity.

Neither issue, nutrition or native, is anywhere close to turning me away. Silly, more than anything. And embarrassing. I squirmed when being subjected to feathers and fumes just as I squirmed during prayers in school. And where, pray tell, is the sense of proportion? Or, Coyote-Raven-Turtle forbid, the humor?

Doubling Down On Dumbing Down

Once again someone has said, much better than I, exactly what I've been thinking and trying to say, about elitism, about Sarah Palin, about the electorate that may well swing the election. This time, it's Sam Harris, in Newsweek. Dougie sent it to me.

And, if you want additional interesting reading, here is a short piece by Ron Susskind on the leadership of George Bush, to whose style of governance Sarah Palin's bears a disturbing similarity.

Double Negative

So McCain's brain trust (look up "oxymoron" and.... [whack!]) announces that for the rest of the campaign they'll be spending all their advertising money on attack ads. Actually announces it!! So they can, by their own description, be "turning the page" on the economy. Remember back in the beginning, when McPOW promised to run a respectful campaign, based on the issues? His wife, too.

Here's what I'd love to hear from Barack Obama:

John McCain has announced that the last month of this election will be full attack mode, nothing but. The politics of attack, distraction, distortion, and lies are exactly what has brought us to where we are: economy in shambles, an impending energy crisis, climate change unaddressed, staggering debt, two mismanaged wars, our place of respect in the world, gone. All because we keep electing politicians for the wrong reasons, baseless attacks and barbeques. Voting our fears, our hates, having been turned away from the important issues. We are where we are exactly because that kind of politics has always worked. It got us George Bush and Dick Cheney. Twice. It produces a Congress full of hyperpartisanship, people unwilling to find common ground with the other side. John McCain even ran an ad saying that because I agreed with him on some things, I wasn't fit to be president. What does that mean? That his ideas are so bad that agreeing with him at all, ever, means one isn't fit to lead? This is craziness that has to stop.

Now, at this time in the history of our country, when it may be literally true that if we don't solve our problems soon we may not survive as a nation, if we let the same old politics work, what hope is there? If now, of all times, we don't demand real discussions of real problems, if we think we can reduce discourse to ideas that fit on bumper stickers, if we are persuaded by winks and smiles and snarls, if we let politicians get away with lying and smearing as they always have, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. My entire political life has been based on the idea that change comes from the bottom up. And where it starts is once and for all, now, when nothing could be more important, a resounding rejection of politics as usual, politics of hate, politicians who want you to ignore problems rather than face them. It can happen. But only if now, finally, when it matters most, we rise up and say "Enough!!" We demand it. We are better than that. Now. There's no more time. Our leaders reflect who we are. Enough of talking down. Enough of memorizing talking points. Enough of fear and hate and simple-minded slogans. Enough of politicians with no new ideas, who want to bring us down to their level rather than us lift up. Enough. Enough. Enough!!!

And if he were really ballsy, he's say this:

I respect Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack is among my friends, among my family. America needs Joe Sixpack. Joe Sixpack built this county. But now is not the time to have Joe Sixpack on the presidential ticket.

I'd be okay without that last paragraph, though.

Shrinking the Violets

Now, for a little psychology. Or to put it more accurately, a wish I were able to look into their heads and understand how Rich Lowry and David Brooks, without a scintilla of self-consciousness, can expose so revealingly their unfulfilled adolescent fantasies, the disappointments they must have had in their pubescence.

Or is that it? Frankly, I have no idea. But there they are, two elitists (in the Republicanesque, ignorance-is-good, smart-is-bad meaning of the term) if ever there were such, fawning. Sarah Palin winked, they ejaculated. Probably simultaneously. Maybe they were talking to each other on the phone at the time. Seriously. How is it that guys whose style is to drop literary references like rose petals, who flash erudition like psychos in raincoats (the gent in the photo, by the way, was the mayor of my hometown, Bud C----, to whom my aunt, while on the city council, used to refer as "Bud Lite"), are gaga -- and by gaga I mean tongue-out, hyperhidrotic, pustulo-papular-squeezing-in-a-mirror -- over a woman who proudly frames herself as the opposite? Who ridicules, to the ecstatic cheers of her supporters, their very type? (Funny thing: they're not buying it in Alaska.) What's the dynamic, anyway? Is it some sort of BDSM thing?

Going out on a limb here, I'm guessing Rich and Dave were übergeeks in high school. Couldn't get the cute girls to look at them if they were bleeding on the floor. And whereas I consider both of them to be nearly clueless, reality-testing-wise (cheerleaders for the war, going in, as they both were), I sense they're both not below 100, IQ-wise. I bet they're able to recognize talking-points when they see them; I know they can tell when someone is parroting prepped phrases, free of understanding. Giving credit where credit is due, I'm certain they know Miss Sarah was bullshitting her way through the debate and that if the format had allowed followup questions, she'd have upped her baseline blithering to prodigious levels. So what gives?

Ping: they spend all their adult lives proving how brilliant they are, dripping sarcasm (sarcasm? what's that?) when talking about their perceived inferiors. Pong: they profess to love -- just moosie-love her to death -- her for her, well, her, uh, style. Her gen-u-wine genuineness, her rejection of everything they stand for. Socially.

"Serious people." Anyone who listens to or reads Brooks (my history of same now being officially over) knows how much he loves that phrase. Professes to admire those who think deeply about deep problems. So this goes beyond simple cynicism or despondent desperation. Something else is at work. Suppressed somewhere in his endorphinized, androgen-starved brain, subverted by some unspeakable and deeply personal need, there must be a dormant detector of dung. But he flushed it away, like a soiled (as it were) tissue.

I'm a liberal. I'm empathetic, I wish well for humanity and even for many of the people in it. So, for their sakes, I deeply hope Rich Lowry and David Brooks will surprise us all, redeem themselves, by waking up some day soon feeling really, really, really embarrassed. It'd be redemptive, if ever so slightly.

Brilliant, Comprehensive, Compelling. Perfect.

Yeah, well, I'm an elitist liberal. I went to an expensive college, I sip chardonnay. (Down it like lemonade, these days.) So, sure, I subscribe to, and read, The New Yorker magazine. (Sarah Palin has said, with regard to newspapers and magazines that she reads "all of 'em," so we have that much, evidently, in common.)

The most recent edition has a presidential endorsement. Unsurprisingly, it chooses Barack Obama. But what's news is that it's the most thorough, thoughtful, detailed and cogent exposition of the issues and contrasts that I've read. (It's also quite long, for such an editorial, which means it can't easily be summarized; and, of course, that few people other than subscribers, will read it.)

For those who'd like to see an extremely well-written and profoundly thoughtful discourse on the reasons to choose Barack Obama over John McCain, it can be found here. In far better language than I've been able to muster, it says exactly what I've been thinking and trying to say for months and months.

Comfort Food

Okay, I admit I wimped out. For mental health reasons, I decided watching the VP debate had too much downside: my brains already feel like they're ready to leak out of my ears. So my wife and I went out for Chinese during the broadcast.

By now I've read several online reviews, seen a few clips, looked at some insta-polls. Sounds like Sarah did well enough to satisfy those who wanted to like her, delivered her memorized lines adequately, did cute. She even announced (for obvious reasons) that she'd not be answering questions as asked, if she didn't feel like it. Gotta love it. Biden, by many accounts, was much more substantive and on that score, even according to some Republicans, won on points. Undecideds (how can they still exist???!!!) had higher opinions of J than S, numerically, but 70% still remain non-committal. (Really? Who are these people, and what the heck are they waiting for? Ferchrissake the world is coming apart before our eyes!! They need more information?? Maybe it's so they can still get on TV.)

So. Probably not a game-changer. Certain of my readers who are so inclined will find reason to love Sarah. Those of us who prefer substance that goes beyond memorized talking-points, will continue to love Joe. And the process continues.

I'm not sure I'll survive it.

[Update: well, numbed a bit by the above-described desensitization, I watched some re-runs. She winked, she smiled. When not talking, she boned up on her talking points. She proved she's trainable, if not educable. Roger Ebert had a great phrase: "In university terms, she was being asked to defend her doctoral thesis without having written it."

What's most pathetic, really, is that her side managed to force rules that allowed her nonsense and distortions and subject-changing to stand, unrebutted; nor to have had followups that would have required digging below the 3 x 5's. It is, once again, a clear indicator of the failure of our politics: that "cute" and "likable" and willingness to spend days learning someone else's points of view passes as some sort of discourse, as reasons to vote for someone. Beyond sad.]

Foundering

I guess the real question is, can our system -- so brilliantly set forth by our founders -- handle problems as complex as the ones we now face? Clearly Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Washington, Franklin... understood the frailties of the human mind, else they'd not have seen the need for so many checks and balances in the government they created. Nor must they have had complete faith in the corrective power of the electorate, given the barriers to immediacy they established. Still, I'd guess they'd be appalled -- every last one of them -- at the spectacle we now witness, magnified by but in no way limited to the response of all the actors to the current economic crisis.

The Seventy-Sixers were about deliberation, suffused with knowledge of what came before and with thoughtful concern about what might follow. They were educated men, and while they weren't above a little yelling now and then, nor free from self-interest, in the end it seems they were able to find common paths forward. To me, it shows the value of fact-based thinking.

Far be it from me to turn this into some sort of screed about creationism, but I think it DOES matter when we elect leaders who simply reject data when it contradicts their preferred beliefs; and that applies whether it's about the age of the Earth, or about economics. Teach the controversy? Like this? Were I the sort, this might be a time to mention that, like George Bush, Sarah Palin -- our potential president -- believes dinosaurs shared the sidewalks with people. But why bother?

For a minute there, when oil was at $140 a barrel, it seemed people might be ready to be serious. What happened? "Drill here, drill now." Well, it is catchy. And easy. Fits right there on the bumper, next to the yellow ribbon. Crisis creates credulity.

For years, people have been warning about the effects of the housing bubble. From the right, of course, there was denial, in their preferred form: derision. So now it seems we're in full crisis mode. Surely people will leave personal politics, gotchas, party-first behind, right?

So I used to think.

We've been fed the politics of hate, of diversion, of lying. And, because it's so easy, we've bought it. We've elected and reëlected people based on fear, on unwillingness to admit there are problems, on taking the easy way out. People who reinforce our prejudices rather than challenge them. Sarah Palin actually claimed the mantle of Joe Six-pack!! And people love it. They wave lipsticks and cheer themselves to tears. Have a beer! She's just like me! And me would be a great president!!!

In the past few days we've had to stomach the circus of politicians on both sides, posturing, claiming credit, placing blame, maneuvering for their political fortunes; sabotaging, backstabbing. Lying, ignoring. While our president flaps around helplessly, impotently. And while a candidate who supports every policy that got us here (or has until the lights came on, but still really does as long as you think he doesn't) looks still to have a damn good chance of being elected.

We can only blame the politicians for so much. We elected them. Happily. And now, while it's falling down all around us, we have a choice of, on the one hand, two people with coherence and intelligence and desire to enunciate problems in all their width and breadth, to listen to options, even give credit to the other side (which, according to the other side, is a BAD THING!!!) And the other two. One of whom brags about knowing nothing and proudly rejects science, and the other of whom, in this crisis, has been going off like the old ping-pong balls on mousetraps thingy. And millions of us love it, are in ecstasy over it, weep for the simplicity of it all. Slap on a magnet and wait for the rapture. God has a plan for us all.

Maybe it matters not for whom we vote any more. Neither our government nor the people who elect them have enough thoughtful folks among them to turn the tied. When the going gets tough, the tough are outnumbered. Ladies and gentlemen -- and I mean this in all sincerity, and only in the best and nicest possible way: we're fucked.

Take Your Daughter to Work Day

Mad Cow

I type, or I scream. Really. It's beyond containment within even a marginally sane head. They're like a pin-ball machine; blindfolded kids swinging wildly at a piñata, poking the tail on a donkey. Reeling around like drunken idiots. Or, maybe, like senile old men. And by "they," I mean John McCain and his team.

The economy locks up. The White House comes out with a plan. It gets modifed. McCain takes personal credit. Brags about his role in the passage, derides Obama., popping off a little prematurely. It doesn't pass. McCain's side, who voted 67% against the bill, blames Obama's side, who voted 60% in favor, for the failure. Claiming he politicized the process.

I'm sure it makes sense to someone.

Not satisfied, yesterday morning the Republicans came out with and ad blaming the bill itself on Obama. While McCain said it's no time for placing blame.

This says it all, if you can stand to stay to the end.

I've seen politicians accuse others and deny they did what it is they decry. I don't recall anyone doing A and castigating B, then doing B and denying A within the space of twenty four hours. Repeatedly. For weeks on end, bald-faced and breathtaking, like McCain and his handlers.

Insanity is the kindest explanation.


Update: Of course, Jon Stewart says it much better.