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Sport-O-Matic: This Week’s Top Headlines in Sports (A Guest Post!)

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A Guest Post by Official Emerald/Orange Sports Reporters Greenwood Red, Ryan, Chad, and Steve: The Top 5 Sports Stories This Week.

1.) North Carolina’s Kendall Marshall injured, ruining North Carolina’s chances for the NCAA championship. “I don’t know how you play with a broken wrist.” (Insert joke with “Giggity” here.)

2.) Peyton Manning is now a Bucking Bronco. (Greenwood Red pauses to recover his voice.) Peyton is now to be known as “Mile High Manning” (insert joke with “Giggity” here).

3.)  Tim Tebow is now a Jet (and when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all your life). Quarterbacking in New York is now to be known as “Te-toe-ing”. When foot fetish meets John 3:16 (insert joke with “Giggity” here).

4.) The New Orleans Saints’ head coach is suspended due to bounty-hunting practices (insert Hurricane Goodell joke here with qualifier “what, too soon?”). Sean Payton is predicted to receive the largest unemployment check in the country’s history.

5.)  Goliath’s Second Chance: Friday’s rematch between Indiana University and the University of Kentucky. (Pause here for extended debate re: Apollo and Rocky, red vs. blue, and who wore which. And potential fist-fight over the fact that I.U. is so too also Rocky.) Greenwood Red looks for an I.U. win, despite the 9 and ½ point advantage for U.K. going in to the game.

You can follow @greenwoodred on Twitter, where he is normally lucid. You can also follow guest contributors and sports fans @southside_ry and @chadb2113. If you like sports, you should do so, posthaste. 

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American Foreign Policy after Iraq and Afghanistan: Notes from Lee Hamilton’s March 1st Lecture

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The following are my notes from the 2012 Israel Lecture in U.S. Public Policy given by Lee Hamilton at the Lilly Performance Hall, University of Indianapolis, March 1, 2012. I tweeted afterwards that Mr. Hamilton was brilliant and surprisingly, wonderfully funny. The humor won’t come through here, but hopefully the gist of his speech will. Happy Reading.

American Foreign Policy after Iraq and Afghanistan, The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton

There are four central realities facing the U.S. as era of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end.

(1.) Preeminence of American Power: The U.S. is still the central player on the global stage; it is the only one with a global reach, but it is hobbled by obstacles and it is not an unchallenged power. (2.) Shifting Alignment/Alliances of Great Powers and the Rise of New Powers: New nature of international relationships is defined by fluidity, both in identity of greater/lesser powers and the dynamics between them. Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia are waxing while the old European power is facing political, financial, and social decline. Europe and the West are weakening; Asia rising. The balance is now multi-polar but eastward looking. President Obama recently said “Can’t put U.S. back to work unless Asia is successful.” (Note that among multi-polar world, the balance could really rest with a bipolar world: U.S. and China.) The U.S. for now is still the preeminent power, but the lead is shrinking. (3.) Globalization: The megatrend is globalization, our “hyperconnectedness” is the single most important reality; refers to economics/trade/currency and information. Interdependence. Powerful tool for prosperity but not always good for progressive goals and is often met with resistance in U.S.(outsourcing and employment rates; low growth). Too often, globalization not global: there are winners and losers. Raises living standards but unevenly and causes disruptions and downturns. Double-edged sword: both good and bad; opportunities and crises alike. (4.) Turmoil and Insecurity: Economic, political, environmental, and health. Example of ca. 10 million deaths in Africa over past couple years due to these forces. (Why wasn’t it on the front page of the paper, the evening news?) Enormous ramifications for all of us, whether or not we are paying attention. Recent Pentagon briefing included key phrase “in a period of persistent conflict.” Chaos and conflict are and will be constant realities.

The seven key challenges to the U.S. in this era are:

(1.) Nuclear Proliferation: Nuclear attack not the most likely risk to us, but the most consequential and very unpredictable (N. Korea, Iran, and ???) We have sanctions and certain safeguards but risk is still there; must curb growth of arms and armsholders. (2.) Managing Global Economy: Characterized by low/declining growth and imbalances generated by trade deficits and poverty. Fragility is the challenge. Somehow we must support responsible globalization: one which includes and manages growth while protecting the weak and preventing inflation. Which model will the world use to achieve growth. The U.S. is confident in market capitalism but the world is not convinced (e.g. China’s growth has been 9-10% annually for past decade while ours has been struggling to find 1-2%). China’s growth will slow, but still, many in the world will not take our word for it that our way/the free market is most efficacious. The preferred model is not obvious and this debate will be a bigger one in world affairs than the U.S. realizes. (As a sidenote, the U.S. cannot be a world leader, preeminent if it fails to get its economy in order. The U.S. must solve its shortage of demand/lack of growth and its debt. Problem is: solving one is bad for the other.) (3.) Energy: How do we power the future? This is the great failure of U.S. policy in the past 3-4 decades, our failure to reduce our need for foreign oil. While it’s improving, it’s still too far from being resolved. “We’re very slow learners.” Favors an all of the above approach, expanding supply, efficiency, and alternative sources. Can’t continue to be slow on this. (4.) China: Most important bilateral relationship in the world, between China and U.S; China is our only peer/competitor. Could become formidable problem or rival. The U.S. cannot solve any of the major problems without Chinese cooperation. Dismisses view that China is belligerent towards us but acknowledges their wariness and self-protectiveness. Must keep dialogues and diplomacy with China open and be persistent with communication. Many of the big foreign policy questions in years ahead involve China. (5.) Cybersecurity: Key challenge because critical infrastructure (financial, electrical, water) is online and much of it is privatized. Companies do not have capacity to fend off a cyberattack. Federal government might, but companies rightfully have concerns about government involvement in their businesses. Need better communication between public/private. The risk is great (potential damage + speed of attack + anonymity of and difficulty tracing/apprehending attackers. Attackers can be a teen with a laptop or a government. Damage would be difficult to manage either way.) (6.) Terrorism: This is not an existential threat, but it does still exist. (7.) Turmoil: Toughest question facing us on this front is asking when we intervene (e.g. Syria). “You’ve got to be careful when you start supplying arms to people.” E.g. Afghanistan, only to have our gifted weapons turned against us by those we had previously armed. Unintended consequences of intervention can be devastating and long-lived. How do we/the President decide when to intervene and in which way?

Conclusion: With these realities and challenges in mind, should U.S. be optimistic or pessimistic about foreign relations in the future? “What difference does it make?” More important than what we think about the future is what we do. Best thing citizens can do is to make our own spots better and stronger. The U.S. is always striving. Good outcomes are possible but not inevitable. Could be prosperity or it could be chaos; but either way, American leadership will be needed.

(There were three questions asked in the discussion following the lecture. My intention is to post the notes from those in the Comments for this post soonish.)

By the Numbers, Florida Tuesday Edition

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18 Number of states with a higher minimum wage than that of the federal government. The  District of Columbia also has a higher minimum wage. 4 states have a lower minimum wage and 5 states have no minimum wage requirement at all. (U.S. Department of Labor)

42 Percent of U.S. men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes who stay in the bottom fifth as adults. In Denmark, this percentage is 25; in the U.K. the number is 30. (On Point with Tom Ashbrook, WBUR Boston, NPR)

59 Countries holding elections in 2012. This represents one-third of all nations. 26 of these elections will change leadership at the national level (heads of state). One half of the world’s GDP is represented and affected by these elections. (CNN, Fareed Zakaria GPS 1 January 2012)

171 Detainees remaining at Guantanamo Bay. 36 of these are currently awaiting military tribunals or war crimes charges. (PBS NewsHour)

34,000 Amount in dollars earned per household annually to be counted among the world’s richest one percent. (CNN)

170,000 Jobs added in the American auto industry since June 2009. (Bureau of Labor statistics; White House Twitter account 10 January 2012 @whitehouse)

374,000 Amount in dollars earned by Mitt Romney in speaking fees in 2010. Or, as he refers to it “not very much.” (MSNBC; CNN; PBS: NPR)

E-Quipped (Quotes from the News)

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“Well, Iran has this schizophrenia because it simultaneously has delusions of grandeur and profound insecurity. You could call it the Sarah Palin of nations.” Karim Sadjapour

“…[W]hat Erskine and I have done in 67 pages has effectively PO’d everyone in America, especially the powerful…groups like the AARP, Grover Norquist…Man, oh man, it’s been fun.” Alan Simpson

“Well, Republicans give each other the saliva test of purity. They like to give the saliva test of purity and then they lose, and then they just bitch for four years. It’s an amazing party.” Alan Simpson

“In reality what we need is an honest debate about what role government should play to benefit whom in what ways and what are the costs of doing that. Unfortunately our politicians are a bunch of children and they think we’re a bunch of children and they play exaggerated, caricatured stereotypes for our benefit and so you get a lot of heat but no light on…things.” Gideon Rose

“…[I]t’s not at all true that all of European socialism or social democracy is a giant sump heap of human despair and economic stagnation. In fact, if you had to pick a model around the world outside of U.S. politics that is considered very successful these days and is very attractive, the Scandinavian model, which has essentially a lot of government intervention in the economy but intervention designed to create a nice, healthy, equal society in which capitalism can proceed, a lot of people would take that in a second.” Gideon Rose

“You know, I’m in the top one percent and I’m trying to make every extra dollar I can, even though I’m at the top marginal tax rate. I can’t imagine saying ‘no, I’m not going to take this opportunity to make more money because I’m going to have to pay 35 percent of it to the federal government.’” David Kay Johnson

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Obama and the Court of Public Opinion

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John McCain, following the third presidential debate in October, 2008. Photo: Jim Bourg, Reuters. Image: politicalhumor.about.com

Famous photo from the third presidential debate, October, 2008. Photographer: Jim Bourg, Reuters. Image: politicalhumor.about.com

In days of yore, namely 2008, back when Senator McCain (R-AZ) was behaving visibly irrationally, sticking his tongue out at then-candidate Obama in presidential debates, a pundit whose name I heartily wish I remember said of McCain “I don’t know why he gets so angry. There seems to be something about Obama personally. It’s like his whippersnapperiness just makes him mad.” And there still seems to be a certain je ne sais quoi about the President that appears to make some people mad.

The patently Red and Right will cite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the repeal of DADT, and the end of the war in Iraq to explain their disapproval of President Obama. More frequently though, their dislike is pinned to a litany of unsupported and/or unsupportable generalities: the President has socialist policies; the President is anti-American; the President is destroying or has destroyed America and our way of life.

Yet the ACA is built mainly on past Republicans’ policy proposals and it leaves a wide berth for the states to self-determine how the goals of the law is enacted within their jurisdictions—more states’ rights than federal takeover—and in 2014, it instantly adds 50 million consumers to the free market of insurance providers. Presto change-o, that’s more money for the capitalists. And while DADT was repealed (with the approval and support of many high-ranking members at the Pentagon), the Defense of Marriage Act remains unenforced but intact and the President still won’t step any further on the subject of LGBT rights than to suggest that civil unions might be acceptable in the future. As for the war in Iraq, the troops would most likely have been leaving at the end of 2010 without any decisive action on the part of the Obama administration as a result of the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement unless President Talabani had expressly invited them to remain. And, finally, on the charge of anti-American sentiment, President Obama has obviously learned the Lesson of the Flag Pin (check his lapels). He has released his American birth certificate, even making it available for purchase in coffee mug form. He ends all his speeches with “God bless you and God bless the United States of America.” Sure, one could argue that he’s just saying it because he has to but this is an argument that is based in suspicion, bias, and opinion. It can never be proven or disproven and can never stand as fact.

The Progressives, the Liberal, and the Blue didn’t share the same initial general opposition to and suspicion of the President as, say, the Tea Party. In 2008 and early 2009, there were jokes about President Obama being carried to the inauguration by a chariot of singing angels. There was a general impression that, like the JibJab video, life in America under President Obama would be all rainbows and unicorns in an exuberant, optimistic, candy-colored fantasy. But mostly there was real hope, real jubilance, and real affection. As the results came in late on that November election night and the crowds gathered in Grant Park, the moment seemed electric.

But with time, the surge in Afghanistan happened and cap and trade didn’t. The economy stayed low, housing values sank lower and so did American spirits. Wall Streeters weren’t prosecuted but undocumented immigrants were, deported since 2009 in record numbers. Guantánamo Bay remained open. Throughout it all, unmanned drones flew overhead across the globe: sometimes acting lethally but always watching. Then came the election of 2010 and to some it seemed the President’s only response was an inadequate “We took a real shellacking.”

For my part, the perception of President Obama doesn’t vary much from my impression of candidate Obama. I saw in 2008 a measured, rational, thoughtful person who would approach a problem from every conceivable angle, weighing costs and benefits in the short and long terms, consider what was politically achievable, and consult every resource available to him before he acted. In short, I saw a sober and temperate Moderate. I think in 2011, this is still what I see in the President. I think I’ve gotten the pragmatist president I expected, for the most part.

In any case, in the pundit class, in the 2012 race lead-off, in friendly conversations at my neighborhood haunts; in call-in public radio shows, on the back of pick-up trucks, and mostly definitely on the internet, there seem to be two distinct and rather vocal groups of people among those who are not true blue Obama supporters: those who “like” the President personally but disapprove of the direction the country is taking and/or Mr. Obama’s job performance anyway and those who, frankly, seem to detest him and vehemently oppose his re-election and, for that matter, his ever-election.

And I can’t explain it. More troublingly, neither can many of them. When delving in specifics of policy, they list the aforementioned ACA, not by name but as a socialist takeover of medicine, and their consequent inability to choose their own doctor, contrary to the facts of the actual ACA. They rail against Obama’s “bankrupting” of the country despite the wars, financial crisis, Bush tax cuts, and the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) which pre-dated his term in office. And then, Janus-like, they will contradict their own arguments and say the President “just hasn’t done anything.” This despite the ACA, the stimulus, the Consumer Financial Protection Act; despite the assassination of Osama bin Laden, despite the drones, despite deportations. So, sure the President has done nothing, other than manage crises at home (the economy, Tucson, violent weather, an historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, more problems with the economy and unemployment, and returning and sick veterans) and crises abroad (the Euro crisis, Arab Spring, the ongoing threat of international terrorism, a shake-up in North Korea, increasing danger signals from an aspirationally nuclear Iran, and relief efforts in response to floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis). I guess he did take some time off to gallivant over to Oslo to pick up some vanity award like the Nobel Peace Prize or something but I don’t share the view that this one eurotrip constitutes an entire term of dormancy.

So going into the election of 2012, the key word in the court of public opinion in the case of President Obama seems to be “despite.” I’m not saying or implying that people’s objections and grievances aren’t legitimate or real. I do contend that too frequently the arguments they give to support them are not. Too often it just seems to come down to actual but ultimately unreasoned and inchoate spite despite their best explanatory efforts. President Obama’s very whippersnapperiness just seems to make them mad.

Two Days Conversant

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28 January 2010: There are Serious People out there. And they’re not talking.

Listening to Meet the Press today from January 24th: the first full thirty minutes equaled unparalleled asshattery. Valerie Jarrett, whom I admire, forgot to bring her brain. Maybe she thought since it was television, that would be okay. Talking points are one thing, but honest to God, why bother to make an argument if you’re not going to support it? Give numbers, data, proof. How about a little information to follow the well-rehearsed sound bite? Ms. Jarrett (and, oh, how they all do this) was pandering to everyone—so many words (sound, no fury) signifying nothing. Following Jarrett, there was Senator McConnell (R-KY), who had the nerve to talk about being ready for bipartisanship, wondering why the administration didn’t bother to show for it, speaking about the government’s duty to create jobs (although when/if the government does through stimulus, infrastructure, or what have you, well, “government doesn’t create jobs. The free market creates jobs.”). Senator McConnell, talking incessantly about the “ordinary American” as if he has ever bothered to really listen to one while he’s out shilling for votes. But most of all, Mitch McConnell, just being a Republican instead of a senator.

And then, there was the panel, striving valiantly to match the asshattery of the first half of the program. (Peggy Noonan, stop it.) The phrase “ordinary American” needs to be eliminated from the pundit vocabulary. It’s condescending and ignorant of the fact that “ordinary Americans” either don’t exist or have the most flexible of identities, interests and desires. And Ms. Noonan in particular is really good at using the expression to justify not making an argument: because “the ordinary American doesn’t care about” that, they care about jobs; they care only about what the government will do for them personally. And actually, while in general I rather like E.J. Dionne and Chuck Todd and the panel format on Meet the Press, why were they performing a post-mortem on the entire administration before the first official State of the Union address? Why reduce governance to politics and elections alone? And why assume that one state (MA) in one moment (last week’s election of Scott Brown) is realistically analogous to the entire country in the mid-terms of 2010 and the Big One in 2012? Instead of an informed discussion about stuff that matters, which they all are capable of, they spent the morning in fantasy football and assessing the contest for prom queen.

15 January 2011 Responds

Nearly a year later and the phrase “ordinary American” is still thick in the air, spouted liberally and equally by pundits and politicians, Left, Right, and Center. Regardless of media source or speaker, far too many important discussions devolve into the statement that the public cares only about jobs. And, yes, the public cares about jobs. That’s basic. But we care about everything else, too. And even if we didn’t, working toward job growth and creation (or just talking about it), doesn’t grant permission to stop working on or informing us about everything else—and there is so much else. It’s becoming the lazy man’s way to win an argument or evade an uncomfortable question. Just say “American,” then say “jobs.”

Besides, I still believe firmly that there is no such thing as an “ordinary American.” Most importantly, the whole assumption that underlies that carries the corollaries of “and they don’t know any better” and “they’re not part of this.” Yes, the government is supposed to serve the public, but I truly believe the government (and media) should never forget that they also are the public. They are we and we are they. And all of us, self included (I was clearly irritable on 28 January 2010), should speak temperately and use “Us/Them” divisions with greater care. While there seems to be a concentrated focus on the growing divisiveness in the country, rightfully, between parties and ideologies, it seems to me that the less frequently mentioned divide between government and public is just as harmful.

And I still think we all spend too much time on the political equivalences of fantasy football and prom queen elections instead of the stuff that matters.

28 January 2010: Domestic Appeasement

So, with a faux spending freeze, a faux and unpassable health bill, with every public utterance, the Democratic majority is practicing appeasement with the Republicans. And the punditry is exhorting the administration to do a better job of “feeling the pain of the people” or “communicating” with and “educating” them; exhorting the administration not to do the big, important stuff because the “ordinary American” wants to know “what you’re going to do for them.”  And the pandering to the minority Republicans and the pandering to the citizens just amounts to Domestic Appeasement. If it’s really a popularity contest instead of a government, fine. Give us ordinary citizens bread and circuses; give us huge tax refunds, with or without (preferably without) the sound bites and the pretense of actually, say, governing. Although, frankly, I’d really rather you just did your job. I’d really rather you stop “fighting” by saying that’s what you’re doing and just rolled up your sleeves and got to work. All of you. Domestic Appeasement is just evasion. It’s the Lowest Common Denominator triumphing over the Common Good. Is that really the point?

15 January 2011 Responds

Health care reform passed!

It did not include a public option. It does not come fully in effect until 2014. And, despite the current Republican desire to repeal it, it is, basically, a Republican and conservative piece of legislation (think back on the days of Hillary-care and remember the plans offered to counter it; think, too, of Romney’s Massachusetts health reform). It remains to be seen if it is as “faux” as I feared, if the subsidies will be enough to cover the millions of Americans who just can’t afford coverage. (And I still think focusing on coverage instead of access to actual care is probably the long way, the wrong way, but Middle Men need jobs, too, I suppose.) Still, it passed, and while I still see it as appeasement in some ways, it (a.) was the result of rolled-up sleeves and hard work and (b.) makes some things better. And that can’t be discounted.

And we got tax refunds, too, for everybody, as it turned out. (Which was a surprise, actually, and I’d sort of like to rescind that whole “bread-and-circuses” thing, as I’ve not room for an elephant and I’m not overly fond of clowns. I am, however, very fond of pumpernickel.) But that bit of Domestic Appeasement will contribute $700 billion to the deficit. Though, maybe it will, as Charles Krauthammer has said, end up being a “rather large stealth stimulus package.”

This year, post-Midterm election, I am less concerned with the administration appeasing recalcitrant senators. The power balance has shifted and things will have to get done. More responsibility for the Red team results in less need for pandering concessions on the part of the Democrats to get things through. But still, the appeasement of the public seems to me a concern. Case in point: focusing on the elimination of earmarks, which are unpopular but also a quirky way of getting some real things done in the U.S. (concrete, visible, needed things: school improvements, libraries, upgrades to infrastructure). No one likes ‘em, but they’re one method of allocating already budgeted resources. But because earmarks sound so toxic and so wasteful, they’re easy to use as popularity enhancers, never mind the practical need for them, or their paltry $15 billion price tag (again, of already budgeted money, so the earmarks themselves didn’t really cost anything); never mind that too often the loudest voices against earmarks are the same legislators who were responsible for the 16 billion dollar peak in earmarks in 2005.* Earmarks: an example of Domestic Appeasement replacing a politically disadvantageous “real” act.

Two more cases: Speaker Boehner’s speech opening the 112th Congress.  (See Ruth Marcus’s article, “Heavy on Platitudes”) And the reading of the Constitution as the first act of business for the 112th. While there’s a lot to be said positively for that act (though, seriously, if you’re going to do that, you have to read the whole thing, even the parts that have been superseded. Honestly, it’s just not that long, and if you’re going to do the whole symbolism thing, do it up right.) But while it’s a “charming little exercise,” it doesn’t “genuinely address the needs of growth, capital formation, and resuscitating the core of the American economy.”* It’s an act, not an action; politics instead of policy: Domestic Appeasement.

28 January 2010: And about the Lowest Common Denominator

Every time the phrase “ordinary American” is used by someone in power, it is clear that that is what they think of everyone who isn’t them. And every time a private citizen calls in to a talk show and asks when the government is going to save them personally from outsourcing (never mind that American labor for some commodities would result in thirty dollar pairs of socks and the like), from poor money management, from cancer, from the terrorists, it’s the lowest common denominator at work. And I am empathetic to all of it—the fear, the trepidation over the future, the environment, health care, college, security, employment. It’s scary. It’s too often sad. And the government should absolutely choose policies that make the best outcomes for the greatest number of people on all these fronts. But the government really should not pretend to provide, and nor should people expect it to provide, personal salvation. Think Bigger. Think of Others. In fact, just think.

The Lowest Common Denominator is everywhere. And I’m bone-weary in the most Kierkegaardian of ways about it. Tired of the people with degrees who neglected to get an education to go with it; tired of the false dichotomies; tired of the failures to admit or grapple with the realities of nuance and detail; tired of the assumptions and the failures on all sides. Tired of the name-calling and the snide comments. So tired of smart people settling for, contributing to, and encouraging the Lowest Common Denominator instead of making the most of the actual opportunity (which many people never get) to Do Something Real. To Do Something Good. Or at the very least, to do something just a bit Greater than the Lowest.

15 January Responds

It’s funny to me how, a year later, these notes have stuck in my head. “Ordinary American” and “Domestic Appeasement” are The Lowest Common Denominator at work. And, so, the L.C.D. is filling the ether of my world, all of our world. Sometimes, it’s the failure of people with power to do the hard things, the necessary things, even incrementally, to advance the greater good. Other times, it’s the failure of us—all of us—to do the small, easy things: it’s my own tendency to snark via Twitter, it’s the House Republicans getting rid of biodegradable forks because they break too easily, it’s the American people’s unwillingness to tolerate the noise level of the biodegradable Sun Chip bag, so now we have the wasteful non-biodegradable bag again. It’s any obvious failure to make the better choice, no matter how inane the decision at hand, or any obvious failure to be as smart or as kind as we actually are, as individuals, as businesses, as a culture, as media, as government.

But there is also a Greater Common Denominator. And it’s around, too. It’s George Clooney, working as a private citizen to prevent genocide in South Sudan. It’s Wikileaks revealing, along with everything else, that “the U.S. government, by and large, was doing in secret what it said it was doing in public.”* It’s Daniel Hernandez cradling Gabrielle Giffords in a Safeway parking lot.

I’m going to do better about remembering that.

*FactCheck.org

*Eliot Spitzer, Fareed Zakaria GPS, 12 January 2011

*David Sanger, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 9 December 2010

Four Billion Dollars Later: Belated Commentary on Decision 2010

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Before the midterms, common wisdom held this would be a helluva year, a wave election. “If ’08 was about change, this year’s about upheaval” (Nicole Murphy). The expectation seemed to be that all incumbents were out and all Tea Party Republicans were in and the whole shebang would be one big referendum on Obama.

It wasn’t that bad, really. (Or good, depending).

House went Red, Senate lost the 60 but stayed Blue. In fact, Senate may be a little truer in hue after losing some rather purplish Blue Dogs. While Rand Paul did make it in for Kentucky, most of the audaciously unserious candidates were dismissed by voters. So long, Ms. O’Donnell. Farewell, Sharron Angle. Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Buck. And I think this speaks well for the Ordinary Americans: (a) smarter than we look and (b) not yet quite that mad or desperate.  And happily, though four billion dollars were spent on the midterms (and seriously, four billion? People are starving, but whatever…), money can’t quite buy an office against the will of the people, which is maybe surprising and definitely encouraging. Or something.

But still, if you’re a left-leaning Independent, a Progressive, or a Democrat, this felt like a loss. Biggest loss of seats in the House since 1948 and all. And whether it’s true or just sounds more exciting to talk about a defeat, the Fourth Estate and the punditry have been every bit as hyped as they were before the elections and speaking of Obama’s devastation and what will this mean and, well, the usual drama. The post-mortems for the Democrats, according to the media: They lost because they lacked a strong single message. (I say anyone with a marginal grasp on the big picture who can condense it down to one message is hopelessly out of sync with reality or not being honest. Frankly, I am totally uninterested in any candidate who can pull a singular out of a complex ever-changing web of simultaneous pluralities.) Or: they lost because the best they could say was “It could have been worse.” (To which I reply, “Yep. True.” It could have been worse. It wasn’t. And there again, anyone who expected more than that is not being frank about the realities or the possibilities.) Or: they lost because it’s the economy, stupid, and President Obama frittered his time away with health care, Afghanistan, Iraq, education, financial reform, Supreme Court appointments and winning a Peace Prize.   (Only: Obama worked on long-term issues while dealing with short-term crises. There is no solution for the economy or the future if the long-term issues aren’t addressed and he did the adult thing in not only acknowledging the big picture but trying to deal with it responsibly. But in 24-minute news cycle world when 10% are unemployed, these things aren’t popular. And that’s too bad because incremental actual change plus the capacity to notice the fullness and complexity of the real situation seem like positives. The economy is a negative, god help us, but reference again: It could have been worse.) In the end, though, win or loss, the midterms may result in more action. The Republicans in charge of the House will surely have to be a little compromising and active now that they officially have day jobs. And, an opposing party House worked out alright for Clinton.

As for the Republican Post-Mortem: (1.) John Boehner. I don’t know what to make of him. The people who know say that he is a deal-maker with a record of compromise and of action. He publicly says differently. Though maybe that is necessary in a time of Tea Parties and hard-line vocal Conservatism; in a time when people are saying “if ballots don’t work, bullets will” (Joyce Kaufman, Allen West’s no-longer chief of staff); in a time of apparent desperation to Go Red. So we’ll go Orange with Boehner and see where that leads and whether the John of pundits or the John of the public is more accurate. The truth will out. (2.) Curious that so many members of Team GOP claim to be Constitutional Fundamentalists but are wishing to revoke amendments and add new (to permanently, constitutionally require an annually balanced federal budget. Which is good if the federal government is Joe the Plumber paying a mortgage and bad if it is the prime mover of a country: balanced budget restrictions haven’t worked out so well for the states. See: California.) Wonder how those who speak of the sacrosanct nature of the Constitution work out the inherent inconsistency when they demand to alter it. Too, how do they decide to which Constitution they and we should adhere? The 1789 version or the 1864? The 1925 or the 1970?* (3.) And how will they fulfill promises to both cut taxes and reduce the deficit? Those two can’t belong together. As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out, “this isn’t politics. This is math.” It would require magic. Perhaps the Red Team should have pulled harder for Christine O’Donnell after all.

And on to 2012. Perhaps some accidental governing can occur before we saddle up for the next election. Though I’m betting that would require magic, too.

Hoosier, Baby (Briefly)

(1.) Question One on the ballot: Hoping with all my might that those who voted yes to amend the constitution to permanently cap property taxes are not the same people who will ever kvetch about cuts in education, since Indiana education is, oh yeah, funded by property taxes. Similarly, hoping that no one who voted yes to question one expresses astonishment when local, state, or sales taxes rise.

(2.) In my little corner of the world, eight offices were uncontested. Why?

* This point about the Constitution articulated better and more fully in Andrew Romano’s article “America’s Holy Writ: Tea Party Evangelists Claim the Constitution as Their Sacred Text. Why That’s Wrong.” Newsweek. October 25, 2010.

International Day of Snow

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So: here it is, then, the topsy-turvy world I vaguely remember from Brave New World. A world where the absurdity is so great that it frequently occasionally feels as though the world has flipped absolutely over and up has become down and everything has changed so rapidly, so unalterably, and so inexplicably that nothing really makes sense.

For example, Chilean coal miners will have to live in a hole underground for three to four months, BP oil spills in the Gulf and we add chemicals on top of it and scientists admit that no one knows what any of it on that scale will mean in the long term. We routinely blast the tops from mountains and push the peaks into the rivers below, so we destroy two things simultaneously and we barely even shrug. We invent nuclear power. We expand its use,  even though we’re still not sure what to do with the spent rods when they can’t be recycled any longer. So we bury them: radioactive bones hidden by the dog-people.  We frack. And all of it, for what? So there can be a light in the refrigerator. So that even our closets can be air-conditioned. And things like that seem absurdly frivolous to exchange human lives and the earth for.

We feed grass-eating animals corn. And then we supplement the corn with soybeans. And then we supplement that with meat by-product. So we have cows eating cows and corn and soybeans and chickens unwittingly cannibalizing chickens. And then, because they seem so unhealthy, we hop them up on antibiotics. And then we decide that, with chickens especially, they’re really just too, well, chicken-like and so we genetically modify them. All of which seems less than humane. And why? So McDonald’s can give us nuggets for a quarter apiece on Thursdays and so kids will have an excuse to eat more ketchup. And that seems a bit strange, too.

And there’s the sex life of frogs to consider. You know, the frogs with three legs or six eyes or what have you. The ones with rapidly diminishing male populations because the assorted melange of Prozac, hormone replacements, Rogaine, pesticide, and road salt in the waterways seems to affect hormone production and encourage strange genetic mutations. Endocrine disruption from microscopic amounts of chemicals that can’t quite be filtered out or eradicated. And it seems to have hit certain amphibious species first, which really sucks if you’re a frog, but will eventually get to us, too. (And in some research, it already has: American male youths have lower levels of testosterone; the birth rate for males is actually decreasing, and there’s still the question of what’s causing all the ADHD, autism, depression, and cancers). And for all the unambiguous gains due to the use of chemicals, when the water contains trace amounts of every single thing we put on or in ourselves or our land and you’re contemplating genderless or mutated frogs incapable of reproducing, it’s a little difficult not to feel that something eerie and peculiar and upside-down is happening.

And there are the conflicts and the wars and the pretexts. And people shooting because that’s what they were once ordered to do. Then the other team has to shoot back. And so on. Sometimes there’s a reason. Sometimes we only say there is. And sometimes, in some places, even those fighting admit that they don’t know why: that’s just what they’ve always done. And how in Africa (of course it is Africa; these stories are always in Africa), just over the weekend in Congo, an entire village was gang-raped: all the women, including grandmothers, and many of the children. And in other villages, the children are simply kidnapped, handed weapons, told to kill their families, and to kill or be killed. They are turned into soldiers for a non-army in a non-war. They are fighting because that’s what they’ve always done and no one stopped to ask “what for?” and besides, the government (such as it is) is following them and they’d be in trouble if they stopped. And so they go on.

And even in small, trivial matters, it all seems a bit bizarre, if I think about it much. Here, where there’s the gift of peace and occasional leisure, we have a steady diet of reality shows which ostensibly are about design or art or food. And they can be fun to watch. But the whole point seems really to be not celebrating human ingenuity or creativity, but participating vicariously in the subtle thrills of back-biting, back-stabbling, and other assorted methods of carping, sniping, and judging. The most vicious, catty comment is the highlight. The tearing down of another person, if wittily done, is the most entertaining. Only: we as people have declared bear-baiting inhumane. We no longer gather at arenas to watch people in shackles try to outrun big game cats. We like to think we are more modern and enlightened than that. But what is all the snark if not just another bloodsport, really?

It just seems to me that we all arrive in this world and we learn it and accept it. And when we grow up, we are just too busy, too threatened, too inundated and distracted by the living of life that we never have the opportunity to look at it long enough to ask ourselves if it’s really the one we want. If this life, this world, is the one we wanted or the best we can do. And maybe it is. And that would be fine, too. But I wonder sometimes if what we really need is just to halt everything for one day. To close all the non-essential things (and some of the “essential” ones, too) so that everybody could just stop for one second and look. Daydream. Think. Question. Or just breathe.

I need a snow day. And, judging from the looks of things, the entire world needs one, too.

Mashed Quotations

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“Everything is a miracle. It’s a miracle not to melt in the bathtub like a lump of sugar.” Pablo Picasso

“I’m not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Barack Obama

“Art is man’s expression of his joy in labour.” William Morris

“You know what happens when a wind turbine falls in the ocean? A splash.” Bill Maher

“It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future.” Sarah Palin

“And, lastly, there are some who wish to learn that they may be themselves edified; and that is prudence.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux

“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” William Faulkner

35 Minutes of Thought Fragments

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Okay, so you might have: signed an executive order forbidding the use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. Or signed an executive order establishing a central command to coordinate the 13 flavors of bureaucratic organizations, BP, Coast Guard, and NGO’s trying to do something down there. The kitchen needs a chef, not ten of them.

Edison, Gates, Jobs, Curie or Salk Wanted: Where is the next inventor? We need her/him. Badly. Because while we’re waiting on the new energy mix to become available and while in a dream world, petroleum would not be needed, we have to use it for the time being. And hybrids, ethanol, etc. are imperfect at the moment, so until we can grow algae to replace it, can we please, pretty please find some chemical genius to create Frankenfuel? Some synthetic/petroleum combo that contains petroleum as the base but stretches it so it can do three or four hundred times as much per unit as it presently can? If my laundry detergent can cram 30+ loads (more, with dilution) into a bottle the size of my Diet Coke, then surely to God, there is someone who can make 1 gallon of actual gas combine with 9 gallons of something else to run my car for 400 miles.  

And about the true cost: Americans have never paid the true cost of either the energy or fuel that they consume. Not ever. And it’s been nice but it is absolutely time to start manning up and paying what we truly owe. But one thing about us, we won’t pay it until someone asks us to. That’s just the way we are. We’re a little lazy and we’re all about getting more for less. But the human, environmental, and fiscal costs are growing dearer and dearer and frankly, I’m starting to feel more than a little guilty about it. So. Will someone in a position of power get over the polls, the quest to be eternal prom royalty, and grow a set, already? Ask us to be the people we say we are. Ask us to be responsible. Ask us to pay a small per gallon fuel tax. Ask us to pay a carbon energy surcharge. Ask us to do the right thing. Start small. Don’t do it all at once. But do a little now. Like right this minute while the pictures on TV are reminding us why. We have the lowest fuel prices in the developed Western world. It isn’t fair. If we’re honest about it, it isn’t right. So fix it already. Yeah, people will gripe. Then they’ll adjust and go on with their lives. And, Mr. Person in Power, even if you lost your office over it, you would do the same, too. Maybe with a Nobel on the mantel and the future gratitude of a couple generations of people.

Too Big to Fail: Oh, you, you who fret about the immense size of our government. We are the government, in theory, so yeah, 308 million people make for a rather cumbersome entity. Oh? You didn’t mean we, the people, you meant The Feds? They’re trying to accommodate 308 million people: We’re a ridiculously large country, a correspondingly ridiculously large government is probably necessary. At the very least, it’s not surprising. It’s messy and error-riddled and wasteful and complicated and full of selfishness and stupidity and nonsense. Just Like Us. We the country grew. We grew fast. We had two documents to start the experiment. And we made up the rest as we went. Of course it isn’t perfect. Of course it’s a monstrosity. But it’s our monstrosity. It lives. We can make it smarter. We can try to skim off the imperfections. We should try. But cutting it down to a bite-size government won’t work for a super-size country. And that’s even if making it a small government were practically feasible without the kind of revolutionary blood coup that we should hope we never have to experience. (And, as a side note, why do so many of you want to join the leviathan? Why are so many of you part of the leviathan? I say practice what you preach: Help shrink the beast; stay or go home.)