I'm in the Tank

I support Barack Obama for president.  It's not just that I'm completely wowed by everything he says.  I have substantive policy disagreements with him.    I used to think he was callow.  I still think its a bit of a leap of faith.  I can't completely disagree with the idea that I'm projecting my desires on him, that he is more about hope than about substance.  Yes, I agree that some of this is about a cult of personality.  Then again, that's a pretty time honored reason to vote for someone.

I'm pretty disgusted with the counter arguments for Obama: that people only vote for him because he's black, or because he's not a woman.  I think it's pretty clear that he appeals to a very broad spectrum.  He's transformational: a candidate for all of us, and if he is like the illustrated man, so be it.  I, for one, have been waiting for a symbol of America that is not so tired and so one dimensional.

If I have to pick a shallow reason for choosing Obama, it's because he's likely to be my only shot a voting for someone from my home town.  We share a common story.  We are both born and raised in Hawaii.  My class looked something like his:

I think I recognize some people in that photo - or maybe I know their brothers or sisters.  At any rate, growing up as a white kid in Hawaii in the 70's was pretty special.  And how many times am I going to have the opportunity to vote for another kid with any sort of a background that I have.  Call Hawaii what you want, it's corrupt politics, its racial problems, its closed economy - it is a place like no other.  As much as I love the city I now live in, and love it despite many similar problems, Hawaii remains the place I feel most comfortable.  I'll take rice over potato.

Take Barack: Hawaii born, American mother, Kenyan Father, father left when he was young, taken to be raised in Indonesia and back in Hawaii,, Punahou School, California and New York for college, an awakening and finding a place in Chicago.  Barack is a traveler, and he's had nothing if not a broad experience growing up.  I don't mind that many of my countrymen don't find commonality with his background.  But many Americans, like America, are sheltered by the coasts.  The heartland, our lebensraum, is far removed from the rest of the world, and America only confronts the outside at its edges.  There is something admirable in that removal, something that we can be proud of and which we should protect.  But it is also something that allows us to ignore the reality, that we have a larger place in world affairs.  We have a duty to ourselves and the world to confront and engage the world in more sophisticated terms.  Barack Obama gets that.

My place is in the City of Angels.

My story: Born in Hawaii to an American father and a Danish mother.  Until I was almost nine or ten my father sent us to live with my grandparents in Denmark every summer.  I left Hawaii at eighteen and travelled in Europe and in Australia/NZ.  I went to college in Oregon and found some place, but was not a huge fan of that place.  I went back to school in California and New York.  I now practice law in this city, a wonderful city.  I did not have to search as hard to find a home like Barack.  My dad's dad raised a family here and, well Hawaii kids have a tendency to move away if they want to make something of themselves.  I have heaps of childhood friends who live in this state with me.  I still call them friends.  I have family here.  But I do understand the need to get away to some place larger, a place where I can put myself to use.

BTW: I'm not tired of the Duke.  I think he's one of the greatest of Americans.  I just think the common regard for him is too simplistic.

Your Winnings Sir

From Reuters: 

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress on Thursday he is "shocked" at the breakdown in U.S. credit markets and said he was "partially" wrong to resist regulation of some securities.

Much has been made as to how this current crisis resembles the events of 1929.  Or could it be 1939?

How can you close me up? On what grounds?

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Your winnings, sir. 

Oh, thank you very much. [aloud] Everybody out at once! 

H/T Cardiogirl for the photo, (and yes, she truly does look lovely).

JSM Channels Chamberlain

There's an insightful article by Adam Gopnik on John Mill in this week's New Yorker. The point of the article is to say that Mill's views on Liberty, his fierce advocacy for freedom, were right (in the sense of he was correct).

Interestingly, there is a sense of let down - that freedom didn't, in the end, mean freedom in the sense that Mill had hoped for. I turn the keyboard over:

"Mill has a principle of liberty, but far more important is that he starts a practice of liberal thought. ... When he asks us to think about liberty, he doesn't want us to ask, Can this odd thing people are doing be deduced from some ethical axiom, that lets me call it "good," and permits them to go on doing it? He wants us to ask something simpler: Is this practice causing me any real harm? Not potential harm to my feelings, not social harm to my idea of right, not damage to the great precepts of religion or to my stuffy uncle's sense of propriety. Unless the speaker is actually about to cut your throat, you have to let him work his jaw."

And later

"Mill's theory of freedom does make an unwarranted assumption -- that people want a rich life where knowledge increases, new discoveries are made, and new ideas found, where art flourishes and science advances. If you don't want that kind of society, you don't want liberty, in Mill's sense. Part of what makes him as touching as he is great is that is scarcely occurred to him that anyone would not."

Mill seems to have too-late realized that conservative opposition to his ideas was due to the fact that there are things that liberty would demand, that many simply cannot tolerate.

"[Mill] became notorious for once having described the Conservatives as "necessarily the stupidest party." ... He meant that, since true conservatism is a complicated position, demanding a good deal of restraint when action is what seems to be wanted, and a long view of history when an immediate call to arms is about, it tends to break down into tribal nationalism, which is stupidity incarnate. For Mill, intelligence is defined by sufficient detachment from one's own case to consider it as one of many.... The tribal nationalist is stupid because he fails to recognize that, given a slight change of location and accident of birth, he would have embraced the position of his adversary. Put him in another's shoes and he would turn them into Army boots as well.

"There is a non-stupid conservative reproach to Mill. It is that his great success at changing minds has made a world in which there is not much of a role for people like him. Mill and Harriet, to a degree that they could hardly recognize, flourished within a whole set of social assumptions and shared beliefs. Respect for mind, space for argument, the dispersal of that respect throughout the population, even the existence of a rentier class who could spend their time with ideas - all of these things were possible in a society that was far more hierarchical and elitist than the society they dreamed of and helped to bring about."

"You can also fault Mill for the grasping something that a crazy reactionary like his friend Carlyle recognized: the depths of violence and rage and hatred beneath the thin shell of civilization. Mill is like a man who has spent his life on one of those moving walkways you find in airports. He takes the forward movement so much for granted that he never makes it his subject. "Most of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits," he wrote, a little too assuredly"

Okay, maybe the title of this post is inaccurate, I'd like to think Mill would have recognized the danger. Mr. Gopnik says there is something touching about Mills' naivete. Maybe that is so. What I find interesting is the way he at once so inspiring, maybe universally so, and at the same time so infuriating. I suspect most of us are really just stupid conservatives.

That line about conservatism being "complicated" is pretty funny too.

Simple Commands (or how the Mac didn't cut it)

I'm not sure why the Mac beanie key (the one with the Apple logo on it) was put where it is on my keyboard. It doesn't seem to do anything unless I use it with another key (like "Command" "C" to cut a selected block of text). It's not well placed to be able to use one hand to make multiple keystrokes. It would have been better placed elsewhere so that I could get my pinky to it.

Also, the battery in my Mac does not last six hours. I got to the fifth inning of last night's Dodger-Cubs game, watching the play by play on MLB and ESPN, went to get a beer and cam back and the thing was dead. Without warning too.

Why this is I do not know. Why did I buy a Mac?

My Avatar

Reading these comics as a kid was my introductory lesson to Disney - in Danish no less. I spent very lazy days working through stacks of them.

Sarah Palin Love Smacks

Have to give this broad her due. She did not tank last night, which is what I tuned in to watch. What a tough babe. What a dame. She has no brains and much confidence; she is as dangerous as remarkable.

Some highlights (Quotes from the NYTimes):

On the Financial Debacle: "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let's do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don't live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we're taking personal responsibility through all of this. It's not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of."

That's right - it was Wall Street's fault. But what are ya gonna do? Let's just chalk it up to experience.

On her party's stance on taxes:"And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also."

Also this one: "But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category." Right, the way to equitable taxation is to reduce the incidence of tax on small businesses. Some taxes are bad, so let's get rid of all taxes.

Aside: taxes aren't imposed on income, they are imposed on net income: income less deductions. There isn't a problem with taxing small businesses - a well run small business net's its taxable income to zero. And most small businesses are formed pass-through entities. If the tax paid by a small business is net of deductions - essentially on the taxable income of the owner - aren't you just giving a break to some forms of income at the expense of others? Lets jump-start the economy by eliminating employees in favor of creating owners of small business. You gotta have faith. Why should we drive the economy by favoring small business with tax breaks? Doesn't that just misallocate resources?

Another one for Ms. Palin: "Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper."

Straight Reagan - love it. We're gonna dump this tea!! At least she recognizes that government is sometimes the solution. Like in the next sentence: the government's gonna give tax breaks to spur health care: "He's proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. That's a smart thing to do. That's budget neutral. That doesn't cost the government anything as opposed to Barack Obama's plan to mandate health care coverage and have universal government run program and unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds. But a $5,000 health care credit through our income tax that's budget neutral. That's going to help."

"Gwen, I don't know where to start." Well, we could start with wondering why it's revenue neutral. Note that John McCain is gonna raise taxes by taxing our employer paid heath care premiums. I guess if JM does it, it's not so bad for the economy.

But she says it with such certainty and folksy charm ...

But we do need government help: "And the rescue plan has got to include that massive oversight that Americans are expecting and deserving."

Another does not compute gem: "We're circulating about $700 billion a year into foreign countries, some who do not like America -- they certainly don't have our best interests at heart -- instead of those dollars circulating here, creating tens of thousands of jobs and allowing domestic supplies of energy to be tapped into and start flowing into these very, very hungry markets. Energy independence is the key to this nation's future, to our economic future, and to our national security. So when we talk about energy plans, it's not just about who got a tax break and who didn't. And we're not giving oil companies tax breaks, but it's about a heck of a lot more than that. Energy independence is the key to America's future."

If we drill here- there is only enough proven oil in the US to buy us about one year at our current consumption rate. How much could we possibly extend that with new drilling?

Also: we need energy independence because that will support a greener earth: "We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for." Right China's oil production forces them to emit more greenhouse gasses. If we drill for oil, it is certain to reduce Chinese consumption.

Palin on the Bush Administration: "There have been huge blunders in the war. There have been huge blunders throughout this administration, as there are with every administration."

Regardless though, "Positive change is coming, though. Reform of government is coming. We'll learn from the past mistakes in this administration and other administrations. And we're going to forge ahead with putting government back on the side of the people and making sure that our country comes first, putting obsessive partisanship aside. That's what John McCain has been known for in all these years. He has been the maverick. He has ruffled feathers. But I know, Senator Biden, you have respected for them that, and I respect you for acknowledging that. But change is coming." Ahhh... hockey mom and maverick will ride into town and set things straight.

"The past is the prologue."

Thankfully, an M-P presidency wouldn't look back: "I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are." The Fourth Branch.

"Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position." Right, the founders left the VP slot an open question for future generations. This seems a pretty close reading of the C.

Another charmer: "You do that [create jobs] by lowering taxes on American workers and on our businesses. And you build up infrastructure, and you rein in government spending, and you make our -- our nation energy independent." The free market will work if we just let it.

Word stats: Maverick: 15 times
Main Street: 4

It's all coming into focus.

She is pretty hot though.