Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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So Bush is pointing to ANWR again as a way for Congress to indicate its working to solve the problems of high gas prices. Never mind the fact that if Bush had worked for more stringent fuel standards for cars early ni his first term we'd be seven years further than we are now. Seven years: what a squandered opportunity. Instead, we know the energy policies which his Administration took. Conversation? Heck no, they were plotting the Iraqi invasion and smoking the hookah of free-flowing oil. "Nobody could have anticipated" how that excellent adventure was going to turn out. (Good time to remind, also, that while ignoring the munitions dumps we were essentially supplying the insurgents. Nice job, George: too bad you quit your day jobs to go into politics.)
In the land of negative equity... Must be a lot of that going on now in LA: home prices are down 19% vs. a year ago. Not everyone was buying to flip, you can be sure of that. Seat belts fastened, everyone? Did we all sock away six months' salary?
Eric Alterman's "Why We're Liberals." I'm almost through with it, so I now feel like I can write about it. I've always been a deliberative reader (if there was a Cliff's Notes of Johnson's Rambler essays, you could count me among those who would proudly reject). So here's where I am: I think it's a great book, it covers all its topics really well, but I think its title is a disservice to its content. The title makes it seem as if it should be a rallying call to the value of liberalism. But instead of being an offensive argument proclaiming the values of liberalism, a lot of it is defensive (in the sense of "here's why it's hypocritical of conservatives to claim this about liberals"), and then there are other portions which describe how we can redirect our liberalism in ways which are true to the tenets of liberalism while making the ideas more palatable for America. I want to be clear: neither of these points is a complaint about the book's content, it's more an acknowledgment about the marketing difficulty of coming up with a title. The structure of most of the book is a chapter-by-chapter discussion of each of the several charges of "what's wrong with liberals." In each of the chapters, Alterman brings together an impressive array of statistics and surveys to show just how empty all of these canards against liberals are. For instance, with respect to the concept of an "active" judiciary legislating from the bench, he cites studies that show that it's the "Republicans" on the SCOTUS which are more likely to try to overrule Congress, and that in terms of voting against the Executive branch, the Conservatives on the SCOTUS are more willing to overrule Democratic Administrations than Republican administrations, while the more liberal justices aren't any more likely to overrule Republican administrations than Democratic administrations. This factoid alone is worth the price of admission — and for those who haven't been paying attention, there are many more rewards along the way. But it is not an explanation of why we are liberals. Shortly after this chapter, Alterman presents a compelling case for abandoning the politically unpopular position of supporting affirmative action. There are considerable political costs to supporting affirmative action, he points out, and the benefits of affirmative action don't go deep enough into the African American community to merit the costs. It would be better, he cogently points out, to support efforts to lift up the structurally poor rather than focus on a race dimension. Focusing on the structurally poor doesn't bear the baggage of being race-based (and alienating whites who don't understand how many poor blacks there are, and how big a pay/opportunity differential exists), but works on the disadvantages of African Americans merely because such a high proportion of them are among the poor. A lot of what's in the book (and a fine book it is) will be familiar to the six or seven of you who read this page, and I've consciously avoided commentary on chapters which talk about Terri Shiavo, and so on. What I'm trying to say, here, is that in addition to the value of Alterman having aggregated compelling research results and delivering them in a cohesive narrative thread, he's gone further than the better informed among us would expect. And he's done it because he's gone beyond the title. A book which is merely about why we're liberals would be compelling, true, but it would be much shorter than this book. And it wouldn't offer as much to you. You already know about FDR and the New Deal and poverty. I think it's a bravura performance, well worth your attention. You can order it here.
Pennsylvania expectations. Tonight at the beginning of NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell gave voice to an opinion — unsourced — that yesterday Obama failed to show that he can deliver a "knock-out punch" and put Hillary Clinton away. Are pundits, spin-meisters, and so on really saying this? The reason I ask is because if my livelihood depended on people believing me, I wouldn't get in the habit of voicing opinions which are so easily dispensed with. Why, I have to ask, is it a sign of failure if Obama can't trounce Clinton? Or, the reverse for that matter? Don't they remember back to December when everyone was talking about how talented the Democratic field was? After the winnowing (thanks, of course, to a media which couldn't entertain the idea that there were more than two contenders and sought not just a historic election but a simpler campaign season at the same time), we are left with two very fine candidates for the Democratic nomination. Claiming that it's a sign of weakness on either candidate's part to leave the other in the dust is just patently ridiculous.
Anyone here remember the 1991 World Series between the Braves and the Twins? Remember how it went seven games? Remember how many of them were extra inning games? One run games? Decided during the final at-bat of the winning team? Remember how, in Game 7, Jack Morris pitched a ten-inning shut out to lead the Twins to the championship? Yeah, the Twins were weak because it took them all seven games to win, and never really did dominate the Braves.
Borrowing our way to oblivion. It's a good thing that Republicans are so good at fiscal responsibility and know how to pay for huge tax breaks and wars at the same time. Or rather, maybe it's just a good thing that America hasn't woken up yet to the latest deficit figures: $311 billion for the first half of 2008, almost twice that for 2007. Remember that Paul O'Neill book, where he quoted Cheney as claiming that the lesson of Reagan was that deficits don't matter? Sure they don't, completely disregard how much of your taxes go to debt servicing. Thank you very much, Mr. President: tax cuts and war at the same time. Brilliant.
A new form of foreclosure blight. Long-vacant homes often present problems to their neighborhoods, but in Lee County (FL) the issue is bees moving in. (Of course you know that it's tough enough to sell a house these days as it is, but a home that's infested with bees won't even get an agent near it.) Of course they bring the value down — and whatever bank holds the deed has an even more difficult-to-unload property on its hands. Ah, I just love that show "Flip This House."
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