A Story

Martin and his friends began to build a house. Years ago, others had poured the foundation, but the town in which they lived refused to allow completion of the home. Martin and his friends decided to build it anyway. Officials from the town arrested Martin more than once and threatened him and his friends. But they kept building, brick by brick, board by board, nail by nail. And the house began to take shape.

The town's opposition to the house became hysterical. People from the town carried out many of their threats, often beating and sometimes murdering builders. But Martin and his friends kept building. If you can have a house, Martin explained, so can we. In fact, the safety of your house depends on us being able to build ours. And you can hit us as hard as you want. We won't stop building, even to hit back. Especially to hit back, for that is what you want us to do. And Martin drove another nail into another board.

That night, people from the town murdered one of Martin's friends.

John from the county stopped by. He had heard about the house but hadn't thought too much about it until Martin's friend was killed. He looked at the house and turned to the town. If you can have a house, they can have a house, John said. It's only fair. The town screamed at John. You're from another part of the county. We do things our own way in this town. Martin's friends were happy to live without a roof over their heads until he came along. John looked back at them. Fair is fair, he said.

Martin and his friends kept building.

A few weeks later, Lyndon from the county stopped by the house. John was gone, he explained, but Lyndon agreed with John that fair was fair. Keep building the house, Lyndon told Martin. I'll take care of the county. And Lyndon was as good as his word: Despite the opposition of the town and a county official name Strom who said he would stop the county from doing anything at all if it helped Martin, building permits flowed and zoning restrictions eased.

Martin and his friends kept building.

As the house neared completion, Lyndon found that he needed help from Everett to get one last permit. Everett grumbled about helping. Were it up to him, there would be no house. But it was almost built and people were watching. They thought that fair was fair, too.

Everett agreed to issue the permit, but only if the house wasn't built quite as high as Martin and Lyndon wanted. To get the permit, Lyndon agreed to Everett's terms. Martin wasn't happy about this, but decided that he could add on to the house another day.

Martin and his friends finished that house, and Martin began work on another one in another town.

Years and years later, the house still stood, even if it needed new paint and a new roof. The descendants of Strom and Everett gazed upon it proudly. They didn't see the rotting timbers or the dilapidated porch or the holes in the roof. This house, they said, is as good as ever. It's as sturdy as the day that Strom and Everett built it. It is a shame, they said, that Strom and Everett do not get credit for building this house.

Martin and his friends should be more grateful to Strom and Everett, said Everett's descendants. What, after all, would they have done had Strom and Everett not given them a place to live?

You're right, said Strom's descendants. The history books give all the credit to Martin and Lyndon when it was really Strom and Everett who built the house. We have an idea.

What's your idea?, asked Everett's children.

Let's change history, said Strom's children. So that people will know who really built the house.

And they did...

Bob Herbert reminds us (and Dean Broder) of the real John Boner...

The great E. J. Dionne writes that Democratic candidates are using the new health care bill as a centerpiece of their campaigns...

Paul Krugman on Fox News, the Republican party, and Citizen Kane...

They're Really Very Good Boys, And You Shouldn't Be So Mean To Them

Barack Obama, it seems, is "viscerally antibusiness." Why? Well, it seems that he forced the CEO of General Motors to resign as part of the government takeover of the iconic company that successive CEO's had run into the ground. He prevented Wellpoint Insurance from evading provisions of the new health care law. He criticized as personally greedy the investment bankers who turned to government to avoid eviscerating the world's economy. And, of course, he exacted from BP the $20 billion escrow fund in large part because he and the American people doubted BP's sincerity in paying claims for damages.

For eight years, the boys got to play all by themselves without adult supervision; they delivered results that were more antibusiness than anything Barack Obama could come up with. Now a grownup has come along, called them on their shenanigans, and tried to impose a little discipline. So, the boys are fwowing tantwums. Well, Barack Obama didn't make GM design cars that no one wanted to buy, nor did he tell Wellpoint to pull a fast one. It wasn't him who constructed a financial version of the Ottoman Empire built on the shabby and barbarous foundation of predatory loans. And it's Tony Hayward who runs a $300 billion company that preferred to risk an entire ecosystem rather than use a half million dollar part (.00000167 per cent of the value of the company, in case anyone wants to know).

I spent a career in the corporate world. These frauds aren't getting half of what they deserve. Boys, you've made the world sick; the least you can do is take a little medicine...

Paul Krugman worries that it's 1937 all over again...

Slate's Michael Newman tries to give the devil his due in this oddly admiring account of Michael Corleone's Tony Hayward's testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I don't see what there is to admire: Clearly, BP's lawyers coached Hayward in advance; he followed their instructions with testimony that amounted to invoking the Fifth Amendment. He's hardly the first unwilling witness to take the route...

The GOP Way

Paul Krugman writes:

There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.

Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.

But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.

The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.

Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs.

But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.

How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?

The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.

The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand...

Nutria fashion...

Voices in the Wilderness: Tab Benoit and other musicians aim to save the Louisiana wetlands. To them it's a matter of survival:

"What we’re looking at here,” said Benoit, gesturing at the flat grassland stretching off into the horizon outside of the runway, “is the new Atlantis. Out there are the places where people lived that don’t exist anymore. Indian burial grounds that don’t exist anymore. I’ve watched the land I grew up on here in Houma literally disappear. Places where I used to go to camp out don’t exist anymore. The house where my grandma and grandpa lived in is underwater. You have to take a boat to see where it was. It’s like people take a boat out to see where Atlantis used to be, and that’s going to be us.”

Weekly Address: Sacrifice

On this Memorial Day weekend, President Obama calls on the American people to join him in paying tribute to America’s veterans, servicemen and women – particularly those who have made the ultimate sacrifice - and their families...

Health insurance companies: Can't live with 'em, can't die with 'em, and you certainly can't get sick with 'em. Paul Krugman writes:

That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.

More here...

The June 1 issue of The Nation has a series of excellent articles on the auto industry, including steps that can be taken toward its recovery...

Ten Things You Can Do To Fight World Hunger...

Sylvia From Over The Hill writes about denial and the real costs of war:

We are brutally and cold-bloodedly sacrificing the psychological well-being of these men and women, which should be a scandal. If these wars are so important to our national security, we should all be engaging in some form of serious sacrifice and many more of us should be serving.

More here...

Bob Herbert adds his voice:

I couldn’t have been less surprised to read last week that an American G.I. had been charged with gunning down five of his fellow service members in Iraq. The fact that this occurred at a mental health counseling center in the war zone just served to add an extra layer of poignancy and a chilling ironic element to the fundamental tragedy.

More here...

Read more about the tragedy to which Herbert refers here...

Don't forget about the Bonnie and Clyde Festival!...

The Sporting News asked "a panel of 100 Hall of Famers, major award winners and other baseball personalities" to choose the best fifty players in the game today. The results are here. Citizen K. doesn'y buy Derek Jeter at #8: He can still hit, but his range at short is severely diminished...

Rushbo Stupidism Of The Week: Mileage Standards Are Liberal Plot To Do Something Or Other. Tuesday was huge for Rushbo, so huge that I couldn't pick a clear winner. So, as a Memorial Day weekend special, Citizen K. presents two stupidisms from Tuesday's program:

Now, admittedly, I -- mostly, I run around with people who are simpatico with me. I run around with people who think and live life the same way I do -- think about issues and all that. I actually had a guy who's a little older than I am over the weekend say to me -- we were talking about all of these economic changes and all of the destruction and all the things that are happening: the banks, the automobile industry, Obama with his fuel standards and so forth, and the general wrecking ball that has been taken to capitalism here by the Obama administration. The guy actually said to me -- I thought he was joking at first, but he wasn't -- he said he's actually happy he's going to die before all of this crap finally settles in...

The DNA of the American human being is no different than the DNA of any human being anywhere in the world. We were not born with special God-given privileges that other people don't have. We were constituted and formed as a nation in ways that allowed the full spread and depth of human potential to flower and prosper. And it was the flowering and the prospering of that human potential, which led and created the greatest nation for people in the history of humanity. And now, it's being dismantled.

It's being dismantled by a man [President Obama] who has no appreciation for the greatness of the country; in fact, resents it. Blames this country for whatever evils and problems he sees around the world. And that's what 39 miles a gallon's all about. And that's what all these taxes and increased prices cost of living is. It's what it's all about. It's about chopping us down in size.

Weekly Address: Government Actions to Address the H1N1 Flu Virus

The good news is that the current strain of H1N1 can be defeated by a course of antiviral treatment that we already have on hand. We began this week with 50 million courses of this treatment in the Strategic National Stockpile. Over the course of the last few days, we have delivered one-quarter of that stockpile to states so that they are prepared to treat anyone who is infected with this virus. We then purchased an additional thirteen million treatments to refill our strategic stockpile.

Out of an abundance of caution, I have also asked Congress for $1.5 billion if it is needed to purchase additional antivirals, emergency equipment, and the development of a vaccine that can prevent this virus as we prepare for the next flu season in the fall.

The Recovery Act that Congress enacted in February also included expansions of community health centers, a dramatic increase in the training of health care workers and nurses, and $300 million for the development and deployment of vaccines – all of which will help us meet this threat.

Finally, thanks to the work that the last administration and Congress did to prepare for a possible avian flu pandemic in 2005, states and the federal government have fully operable influenza readiness plans and are better prepared to deal with such a challenge than ever before.

Transcript here...

The former Poet Laureate of the United States has a cool gig at the Audubon Park Zoo in New Orleans:

Over the next three years, I'll be working with the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans on a project sponsored by Poets' House. We'll be placing poems in installations around the zoo, as a way of centering attention on the relationship between human beings and the rest of the world.

Turnip roots at the Georgia House...

Paul Krugman explains that opponents of action on global warming practice junk economics. Taking action does create new costs, but they are minimal compared to the benefits, even the short term economic benefits:

To put it another way, a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short-to-medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation: It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity. And given the current state of the economy, that’s just what the doctor ordered...

Rushbo Stupidism of the Week: It was quite a week for Rushbo, casting racist aspersions on President Obama's grandfather, questioning the President's love of country because he didn't go along with torture, and accusing him of deliberately assaulting the economy. At the end of the day, though, I had to go with Rushbo's uproarious assessment of the next Supreme Court justice:

We need a teenage single mother who's gay, is a lesbian, who's dirt poor, African-American, and disabled. Or, if we can't find that person, we need a bigger Supreme Court. So, you're going to find -- I'm sure we can find in any blue city a poor, minority teenage mother who can barely get around -- disabled, lesbian, had the kid with surrogacy or artificial insemination. I'm sure we can find them. You know they're all over the place. We can find one. Whether they're qualified to be on the court doesn't matter, because their qualifications -- Obama just said what they are.

Potpourri

Paul Krugman writes that all the teabag parties prove is that the Republicans haven't changed one bit...

Semana santa...

Just A Song: Thea Gilmore wants an old soul...

Hey, man -- don't you know who I am? I'm a United States senator who consorts with some of the most expensive prostitutes in Washington, D. C. So drop everything, ignore security regulation, and let me on that damn plane...

Brussels in bloom (the city, not the sprouts)...

It would be easy to say that on Gulf Coast Highway, Eric Lindell sounds like Louisiana's answer to Delbert McClinton. Except that there's plenty of Felix Cavaliere there, too, not to mention the ghost of Doug Sahm on Lindell's cover of Willie and Waylon's "I Can Get Off On You." Listening to Lindell's blue-eyed R&B makes me yearn for summer more than usual...Speaking of the late great Mr. Sahm, The Krayolas channel Sir Douglas at top of his game in Long Leaf Pine (No Smack Gum). Improbably, Long Leaf Pine surpasses last year's La Conquistadora via terrific horn charts that show off San Antonio's rich musical heritage by blending R & B with the mariachi sounds of South Texas. The tragedy recounted in "Corrido Twelve Heads In A Bag" notwithstanding, Gulf Coast Highway and Long Leaf Pine make for some of the best driving and cruising music in years...

"I'm the grandmother of the kid who killed those cops." Sylvia From Over The Hill writes more about the gun culture that curses our country here...

Michele Bachman must make the people of Minnesota's Sixth District so proud. It isn't easy to make Dave Reichert look like John Locke, but she has pulled it off...

David Broder Is Not An Antiabecedarian

David "Dean" Broder, the Washington Post columnist widely regarded as the senior MSM American political analyst, published a column over the weekend that typifies the myopia and general cluelessness of the journalistic political establishment. In the column (here), Broder responds to President Obama's brilliant budget speech by calling the president a "gambler" "putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington."

"Is he naive?" wondered the Dean. "Does he not understand the political challenge he is inviting?" After all, the

House chamber was filled with veteran legislators who have spent decades wrestling with those issues. They know how maddeningly difficult it has been to cobble together a coalition large enough to pass a significant education, health care or energy bill.

"When we elected Obama," Broder concluded, "[W]e didn't know what a gambler we were getting."

Where to start? The Dean writes as if the country does not already face a dangerous future. Isn't Broder the naive one here? Articles openly speculate whether or not the country is in a depression. We are in a situation that calls for bold action, not timidity over the difficulty of passing legislation.

If there's one word that does not characterize Barack Obama, it is "naive." You don't come out of nowhere to defeat the Clinton and Rove machines in the same election without being able to tell a hawk from a handsaw. What Dean Broder characterizes as naivete is instead a capacity to grasp the historic quality of the moment we're in and the courage and smarts to act on it.

Beyond this, what has Obama done that surprises anyone outside of Dean Broder's claustrophobic office? He's acting on the campaign promises he made. He wants to settle the issues that people have worried over for years but that no one has done anything about: Obama is right to argue that we can't have a healthy economy without health care reform and energy independence.

Barack Obama is the right man at the right time. Without a leader of his boldness and intellect to guide the nation there, the future well-being of the country is at risk. It is anyway, but Obama is less of a gamble than a cautious Beltway politician who passes on the future to "cobble together" short-sighted legislation...

Paul Krugman thinks Obama's proposed budget is exactly right:

President Barack Obama's new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course...

Frank Rich disagrees, citing public anger over continued bank bailouts:

As Obama said, we can't move forward without a functioning financial system. But voters of both parties will demand that their congressmen reject another costly rescue of it. Americans still don't understand why many Wall Street malefactors remain in place or why the administration's dithering banking policy lacks the boldness and clarity of Obama's rhetoric...

Mothers and others: The evolutionary origin of mutual understanding...

Dark Roasted Blend explores the phantasmagorical art of New Orleans, focusing on the Antiabecedarian Movement:

Considering how surreal New Orlean's environment can be, is it any wonder that this "almost-reborn" city hosts some of the most absurd and interesting art scene to be found in the US...

What is an Antiabecedarian?

"Antiabecedarians" is a word from the Anna Livia passage of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Although Mr. Joyce's precise intent as to the definition of "antiabecedarian" is debated, we intend that Antiabecedarians imply those who are familiar with the rudiments and rules enough to turn them on their heads.

Here are a couple of the very impressive entries in this show, starting with this setup photo by Dana Sherwood:



Paint on wood by Taylor Lee Shepherd:


Note that the current first line is from Sir Walter Scott's Lochinvar, a poem every English schoolboy was once required to memorize. Today, it's proof that a compelling first line does not a great poem make...

Warriors

Conservatives love to pick at spending legislation, uncovering fiscally irrelevant pork and casting it as a typical example of liberal profligacy. Well, there's an expenditure of taxpayer dollars that not only wastes money, it's offensive. And conservatives love it. I'm talking about the "Warrior" video forced on moviegoers before every film:



According to this piece of arrant propaganda, joining the National Guard means that you are

• a rock star
• a NASCAR racer
• a social worker winning the hearts and minds of grateful street arabs
• a fireman (will the right wing never stop exploiting the 9/11 dead?)
• a star in your very own war movie in which no one is killed or maimed by an IED

You are definitely not

• killed or maimed by an IED
• hated as an occupier by the local population
• shooting civilians
• inadequately trained for police work
• poorly armored
• losing a civilian job to serve as a cats-paw for discredited neocon ideologues

BTW, Kid Rock -- you're 37 and the maximum for enlisting in the Army or Army Reserves is 42. If this is so heroic and such a great thing, why don't you sign up?...

GOP congressman may not like the recovery package, but their governors sure do...

Buckle up: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says that the economy is in for a long, hard ride...

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology has canceled its scheduled convention in New Orleans because of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, which permits public schools to teach alternatives to evolution:

The SCIB leadership could not support New Orleans as our meeting venue because of the official position of the state in weakening science education and specifically attacking evolution in science curriculum...

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river...

R.I.P., Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni, a.k.a Louie Bellson. Here's to the man Duke Ellington called "the world's greatest drummer":

"What A Country We Live In"

Were the Obamas on their game last night or what? Yes, the questions from 60 Minutes' Steve Croft were largely hanging curves (I can hear the yelping from the Palin apologists), but Barack and Michelle still had to swing the bat and hit them out of the park. Here's one home run, with Michelle Obama talking about when it all sunk in:



All in all, they came across as a devoted, loving couple who are comfortable with themselves, as dedicated family people, and as prepared for the new life in front of them as they can be...

Meanwhile, the Republicans begin to sort through the rubble. Did they depart from conservative principles by letting the budget get out of hand? Have they become too narrow, too defined by cultural issues? Does the problem have everything to do with the incompetence of the Bush administration and nothing to do with conservatism itself? I'll let them figure it out, but will point out one thing: The Republicans have become the party of anger, resentment, and victimization at a time when the American people want hope and practical solutions to the problems facing the country.

So here's a thought, Republicans: Whatever you do, put country first. When you disagree with President Obama (do I like the sound of that!), how about doing it respectfully and rationally? Search for compromise when you can, and when you can't find it, present your differences in a way that does not demonize the millions of fellow countrymen who happen to be Democrats. When you get right down to it, this approach to politics -- embodied by the likes of Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich -- ignited a civil war that had its Fort Sumter 20 years ago with the infamous Willie Horton ad. If nothing else, the failure of the Republican strategy to bring down Barack Obama by attacking his "association" with William Ayers signifies that the American people have tired of this approach and will reject it. The louder you shout, Rush, the less we'll listen...

Speaking of which, don't miss the Big Fat Idiot channeling Willie Stark (at 1:38):

We laugh (or cringe or spit nails), but Limbaugh speaks for a lot of people. Not that I lose sleep over it, but it's hard to see what the Republicans do when the most active part of their party lacks the temperament and intellect for objective self-examination. They've painted themselves into a very tight corner and don't even know it...

Bruce Springsteen's twenty favorite singers here. The guy's got taste, although I'm a little surprised to discover that only eight or nine of them would make my list...

Swimming Upstream, Eve Ensler's (The Vagina Monologues) new play chronicles the experiences of New Orleans women before, during and after Katrina with characters drawn from a wide cross-section of New Orleans society. Says Ensler, 

Usually, [women] are the people who don't create the wars or pick up the guns, or have a say in the structural realities of crisis, yet they are the ones who always end up picking up the community, repairing the community, because they are so resilient...

Finally, Paul Krugman slamdunks George Will:

Sorta like this:

The Wind Is In From Africa

Just A Little Green. Paul Krugman writes that President-elect Obama must learn from Franklin Roosevelt's errors as much his successes:

The economic lesson [of the New Deal] is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little...

Put On Some Silver. E. J. Dionne agrees that Obama must ignore the voices that claim America is still a "center-right" nation and act boldy: "Timidity is a far greater danger than overreaching, simply because it's quite easy to be cautious..." I don't think that the United States is defined by its political orientation so much as a preference for solutions, wherever they come from. If Obama and the Democrats get things turned around, the amount of people who describe themselves as "conservative" will drop until only the wingnuts remain...

My Old Man. Monday, Obama meets with John McCain to discuss issues on which they can cooperate. One thing you gotta say about our guy: He doesn't hold a grudge.

Fancy French Cologne. Meanwhile, world leaders have plenty of advice for the President-elect, who plays it cool...

We Don't Need No Piece Of Paper. The entire contents of The New Yorker election issue (see brilliant cover illustration above) are available free on-line. But since you can't display that cover on one of your kitchen cabinets without buying the news stand issue, you might want to pick up a copy of the 20th Century version. Especially worth reading is literary critic James Woods' assessment of Obama's victory speech, which unearths the speech's rhetorical roots in Lincoln and Martin Luther King...

All Romantics Meet The Same Fate Someday...Mark Illa explains how intellectual conservatism in effect turned on itself:

But their [intellectuals] 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...

...Cynical And Drunk And Boring. Harold Meyerson tells Fox News to keep on doin' what it's doin' -- things are working out just fine:

Your work remains dangerous and disintegrative to the nation. But it is also, more narrowly, tactically, for now, a great gift to liberals and Democrats. You ensure the ongoing Palinization and marginalization -- electorally, the terms are synonymous -- of the Republican Party. And to think that you're doing all this not on the Democratic National Committee's dime but on Rupert Murdoch's...

Blow This Damn Candle Out. "Our aim should not be more government, it should be smarter government." George Bush actually said this. Yesterday. Had he figured that out eight years ago, John McCain might be our next president...

Friday's Choice. Discerning readers of a certain age may have inferred that we've been listening to Blue, Joni Mitchell's 1971 classic. With a nod to John and Cindy, here's Joni singing "My Old Man" at a 1970 BBC session:

Come On Up For The Rising!

This is driving me nuts! Will the American people do the right thing, the necessary thing, and elect Barack Obama president tomorrow? Or will we shrink from our responsibility and vote in an aging war hero with no real grasp of the problems facing the country, much less what to do about them. All signs point to the former, but as a Red Sox fan and a Democrat, I won't be convinced until Obama takes the oath of office. And even then...

The Monday before the elections of 2000 and 2004 found me pessimistic. In 2000, I figured the election would come down to Florida and Ohio, and didn't like our chances in either. That night, when one of the networks actually called Florida for Al Gore, I began channel surfing to see if any of the others had. One of my kids asked me what I thought; I told him that if Gore had won Florida, I didn't see how he could lose. But I also told him that I didn't believe Florida yet. In the event, of course, Gore did win Florida only to be cheated out of it. A little remembered postscript from the 2000 election is that had Gore won New Hampshire, he would have survived the loss of Florida. I mention the Granite State result in particular because Bill Clinton won it twice and because Nader proved to be the difference there. Gore also lost Arkansas -- and I'll always think Clinton could have made a difference there had Gore asked him to intervene -- and his home state of Tennessee.

I never felt good about 2004, despite Bush's unpopularity and the failures in Iraq. John Kerry ran an uninspired campaign and never offered a viable alternative to Bush's conduct of the war. Kerry would not commit to ending it, instead flourishing a fig leaf about "getting the allies involved." He never explained why the allies would want to get involved in a mess that they had opposed since the beginning. I also wrote off Florida; it was obvious that Jeb Bush wasn't about to let his brother lose there. Kerry never seriously contested the Sunshine State anyway. Instead, he bet his chips on Ohio, which at the time was owned and operated by the Republican party. We know how that went.

But Barack Obama has run a completely different campaign. He's eschewed the 50% + 1 strategy that plays into Republican hands. He's organized a formidable ground game based on the assumption that it can attract enough new and first-time voters to put a number of red states in play. There's a risk inherent in that, but on the other hand the potential reward is a mandate-level win. I've always wondered what would happen if the Democrats gave up their addiction to TV ads and returned to their core strength of getting out the vote. We're about to find out, and as of this moment things look pretty damn good...

In one of the few times he's ever been a warm-up act, Bruce Springsteen opened for Obama before a crowd of 80,000 in Columbus, Ohio. "So I don't know about you, but I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back," said the Boss. He went on to say that

"I have spent my life as a musician measuring the distance between the American dream and reality.

"I look around and I see people who are losing their jobs or their retirement incomes or don't have health care. The distance between that dream and reality has grown greater and more painful than ever.

"I believe Senator Obama has taken a measure of that distance in his own life and in his own work. I believe he understands in his heart the cost of that distance in blood and suffering in the lives of Americans."

Speaking of suffering Americans, don't miss a new blog called Caterpillars And Butterflies, about the daily experiences of a nurse in an inner city health clinic. From her most recent entry:

I talk to a patient on the phone and she yells at me. I tell her if she doesn't stop yelling at me I will need to hang up the phone. She says, "I'm not yelling. Believe me, you'd know if I was yelling". I tell her I think she is yelling at me and she needs to stop. She calms down, and proceeds to tell me she will be at the clinic in a few minutes and has to be seen right away. I tell her there may be a 2 hour wait because she doesn't have an appointment. She hangs the phone up on me and comes to the clinic anyway. I bring her back to a clinic room and do my assessment. Her lip is swollen and she thinks she was bitten by a spider. She spent the last two nights in an abandoned van. She's African American. She has fake two inch purple fingernails. She tells me she must be out of the clinic in 20 minutes because she needs to pick up her 8 year old son who will be waiting for her outside the YMCA. I beg one of our doctors to see her ahead of other patients because her son will think he was abandoned. They are homeless.

If you haven't yet heard Sarah Palin get punked, here's your chance. How anyone could believe that it's the President of France on the line is beyond me. Much of it is excruciating. She actually listens seriously when told that the French equivalent of Joe The Plumber is Marcel With Bread Under His Armpits...

Win or lose tomorrow, Paul Krugman thinks that the Republicans are in for an internal Reign of Terror, led by the anti-intellectual know-nothings...

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By says that we are at a turning at that we know it: "I sense something new in the zeitgeist, a seriousness and urgency among the people. After eight years of the disastrous administration of George W. Bush that has bankrupted the country, killed thousands of our young people, decimated the military, transferred billions of dollars in wealth to corporations and one percent of the populace while impoverishing the middle class and gutting the Constitution, we are at a turning point."

E. J. Dionne writes that Obama is not just a good politician, he's a great one: "By creating a new social movement, new forms of political organization, and a sense of excitement and possibility not felt in politics for three decades, he bids to become one of the country's most consequential leaders."

Foxessa writes an insightful critique of Air America from the left. Despite misgivings about its current direction, she points out that "...the rank-and-file Air America crew has worked tirelessly and enthusiastically since its inception during the darkest days of the regime that seemed to be permenently installed as the single oligarchical ruling class, as the neoCONs blithely, publicly, declared was the Goal."

Hendrik Hetrtzberg likes W.: "These characters are cartoonish, but in a good way. They're political cartoons, not Disney cartoons (though there's a touch of Chuck Jones in the antics of Cheney and Rice). he movie reminded me that I learned a lot about the politics of the 1940s from David Low and the 1950s from Herblock."

Quote of the Day: "McCain is a gifted comedian, with perfect delivery skills..." From a comment on the blog Draft Sarah Palin For Vice President. I kid you not.

Sunday Funnies & So Much More

Joe Biden has never been my favorite Democrat -- like many of us, he talks too much, plus he blew the Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito hearings -- but nonetheless I think he'll make a good candidate for vice-president and a good veep. He has more stature than any available person in either party, he relish campaigning in the national spotlight, he's intelligent, and his presence addresses the perception of a so-called (and greatly overrated) experience gap between Obama and McCain...

Last night, Premium T. and I saw the Monsters of the Accordion (including our friend Amy Denio) at Fremont Abbey. Calling the place an "abbey" is a more than a little bit of a stretch, although T. was correct in pointing out that the floor felt like stone. Amy dedicated her song "Ballintubber Abbey" to us; she wrote it while staying at Carrowholly last winter. You can hear it here. After, we had dinner at Brad's Swingside Cafe, where Brad's wife, the County Mayo-born artist Helen O'Toole, stopped by our table for a chat. Brad's is one of those places where you feel like you're eating at someone's home. A home, that is, with an extensive wine list and medallions of organic lamb and venison fricasee for dinner...

Don't miss Sunday Election Issues at As Time Goes By. It provides links to elder blogger perspectives on the election, including this fascinating view from Germany. For example: "...the press would like to say that people came to hear Obama speak because they think he is a rock star. It just is not so. They are curious about his so-called rock star status, but they travelled from far and wide to hear him speak about history, politics, and his vision for America. Is it so hard to believe that hundreds of thousands of people are interested in such matters?" Maybe not in Germany...

Here's my idea of an abbey...

John McCain shows off his knowledge of technology and film history here...

Don't miss Bottle Shock, a delightful indie film about the events leading up to a 1976 blind wine tasting in which upstart California wines beat out established French vineyards. It's nothing that sports movies haven't been doing for years, but the wine country milieu adds a little extra something for the palate...

Good ol' Dick Cheney: Anything to help a pal...

Leonard Pitts writes movingly of the film Katrina's Children. It won't be coming to a theatre near you, but you can get it here. "We forget that children are in the room...We push our agendas and assign our blame and impose our narratives and forget that they are right there, taking it in. Yet, if some of them were failed by schools, community and family, all were failed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the mayor, the governor, the emergency-management director, and the president. And don't think they don't know"...

Rick Warren didn't understand his own question, writes Paul Krugman, who then explains the difference between Bill Gates rich, super rich, rich, and the middle class. He also points out that the Obama tax plan retains the middle class provisions of the Bush tax cuts...

Anna Quindlen explains who is really playing the "race card," although she finds "Caucasian card" to be a more apt descriptor. "The McCain forces have accused the Democrats of injecting race into the campaign. That's silly. The man [Obama] is black. His candidacy is indivisible from that fact, given the history and pathology of this country. When Obama said he did not look like the guys on our currency and that his opponents were likely to portray him as the Other, he was stating the obvious."

The Stupid Season

Is there anything more inane than this week's mini-flap over Obama's vacation to Hawaii? I mean, Hawaii is his home state, it is the home of his 85-year old grandmother whom he hasn't since 2006, and it is a state. Even Cokie Roberts admits that much:

Myrtle Beach? Myrtle Beach is in South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still on the the state capitol. Foreign and exotic? Hawaii is so foreign and exotic that 8 million Americans visit every year (source: Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism). I won't even get into the idiocy of Cokie Roberts telling the man who beat the Clintons how to run his campaign.

Here's a thought: If things are slow, why not talk about stuff that matters? Cokie, I realize that you don't have to worry about things like health care, your mortgage, or energy independence, but a great many people do and might appreciate some serious, thoughtful commentary on these subjects. I realize that that would mean educating yourself and not spouting off, but -- hey -- try it. You might even find some pride and self-respect...

Ever wonder how John McCain spends his down time? How about throwing a barbecue for the press on his ranch? This would be the ranch where he owns "several cabins" including one with Navaho rugs "worth a lot of money" (his words). I wonder if Cokie Roberts was there...

Paul Krugman of The New York Times is one pundit who manages to spend his time usefully. Here, he explains that not only is national health care necessary and affordable, it will be popular...

Did I say that Obama is from Hawaii? Turns out that he's Irish: