Middle Relief Picks a Side

I chose the post name just because it sounds sort of official.  You should know that although Matt J and I agree on many of the points I’m going to try to make, I think, I do not speak for him and you should not hold him responsible for anything I say.  Or do.  What do I care?

(Note: I just finished writing what follows.  It is not complete.  I do not intend to complete it at a later time.  I just want any reader to keep in mind as they read the many, many words that follow that this is not inclusive of all my thoughts on this campaign.  Also, as usual, I tend to ramble a tad, so I apologize in advance for that.)

It’s been difficult to watch this election unfold.  Each candidate and their running mate have said and done things of consequence that have been ignored by the mainstream media, and each candidate and their running mate have said and done things that are not of any consequence that have been blown up by the media.  Each side has attempted to exploit the other with “gotcha” moments that are truly petty and have no place in (what I like to think would be) a real election.  This is commonplace in elections, so why bring it up?  Both of these candidates pledged, at a time that seems like long, long ago, to keep this campaign season clean.  I can’t pinpoint who first violated their pledge, or when, but it doesn’t really matter.  The point is that I actually believed them; John McCain, the maverick, the bipartisan senator, the guy whose name I invoked many times in the past several years to describe my political affiliations, and Barack Obama, the fresh-faced young guy from Illinois who promises to lead us in a departure from politics as usual, the one who understands that Americans are largely sick of the status quo in Washington.  They both let me down.  And that was when the race between them was just beginning.  There have been many more letdowns since, but there have also been many reasons to be encouraged.  A summary of these events and my observations will, I hope, explain my decision regarding for whom I am going to vote tomorrow.

The following are in no particular order.

My first event is already violating my plan of looking at events since the race between McCain and Obama began, but it is still significant to me.  Back in April when Hillary was still in the race, the three candidates, who were the only ones remaining from the two major parties, all went public with their opinions on whether the government should give Americans a tax holiday on gasoline for the summer, whereby the federal tax on gasoline would be lifted, which at the time was about 18 cents a gallon.  Clinton and McCain both said that yes, this holiday should occur, and Obama said that it should not.  This was important to me because it told me something about the two who said yes: either a) they were shamelessly pandering to voters at the expense of our country’s lame current attempts at curing our dependency on oil (not just foreign oil, the distinction itself being an entirely separate issue), or b) they were acting in good faith, sincerely believing that the tax holiday would have been the best thing for the American people, which means that they entirely miss the bigger picture when it comes to our dependency on oil.  Both of these options are bad.

Obama critics attacked his stance by claiming that he, an Ivy League-educated, wealthy elitist did not understand or care about the economic concerns of the common person who was hurting at the pump.  These criticisms are petty and foolish.  Giving Americans a break at the pump is not going to solve any problems, it will make them worse.  I will not be the first to convey this sentiment and I will certainly not be the most articulate, but I believe the idea is very simple.  We use a lot of oil.  Without getting into the reasons why we need to cut back on oil, allow me to make the statement and assume you will agree that we need to cut back on how much oil we use.  The most visible way that most of us use oil is by putting it into the tanks of our cars in the form of gasoline.  This is the way that most of us can see how much each drop of oil we use hits our pocketbooks: you literally watch the digits that represent your dollars spin on the pump as the gas flows into your tank.  How high the number goes affects how willing people are to fill their tanks.  If the number goes up, people will get upset and act accordingly; before the price of crude oil went down recently due to the dips in global markets, public transportation use went up and cries for offshore drilling went up.  (I will return to this point in a minute.)  If the Clinton-McCain tax holiday had taken place, Americans would have been encouraged for a few more months to continue to think that their addiction to oil was probably bad but not really as bad as people made it out to be.  All the while, their gas would have simply been made cheaper at the expense of future generations, and they would not have been forced to react in the ways they did.

Taking more public transportation and calling on Congress to allow offshore drilling are two important reactions on the part of Americans.  The increase in public transportation use represented Americans’ willingness to change something in their daily lives in response to the higher prices, which is a good thing.  The demand for Congress to allow offshore drilling represented Americans’ awareness that the government needs to do its part to respond to the situation.  Let me emphasize that this point is relevant regardless of your views on offshore drilling; the point is that the people went to Congress demanding a solution.  Let me also emphasize that I do not believe that the government’s role is to solve all our problems; this just happens to be a problem in which the government does need to make itself heavily involved.  These two reactions would not have taken place at all and have in fact subsided since the price of gas went down.  It is important that they did take place because it’s an indication that Americans will be able to cope when they are forced to finally make real changes concerning their energy choices and consumption.  In fact, their impressive reactions are one of the reasons why I personally support a federal tax that would put into effect a price floor on gas, but the platform on which I would run for president is not at issue here.

I was largely unimpressed by the presidential debates, with several reasons unique to each candidate.  One reason that was common to both was the fact that they said things that were entirely unrealistic and most likely untrue.  I suppose that saying things that are unrealistic and likely untrue are designed to woo undecided voters with promises, but the effect on me was disenchantment.  Each candidate was asked directly by moderators on multiple occasions which of their proposed government programs would have to be suspended or reduced on account of the economy turning sour, and each candidate tiptoed around the question, not wanting to be the one to break the bad news to voters that (gasp!) some campaign promises were going to be broken.  This was a bit puzzling to me; not that the candidates were reluctant to admit that they would not be able to meet all of their goals, at least not right away, but that neither of them seized the somewhat unusual opportunity to have a legitimate excuse onto which they could blame their inability to fulfill all of their promises.  The debates would have been a good time to begin laying the groundwork for the inevitable excuse, and neither one did, instead insisting that they could save the world despite the sagging economy; and by the way, while offering generous tax cuts!  I’m not saying that excuses are a good thing, I’m saying that being unable to be honest or even realistic is a bad thing.  My final note on this point is that Obama came the closest to admitting that some of his plans may have to be delayed or cancelled, but that came only after numerous questions from multiple moderators, and he never fully answered the question.  But he came closer than McCain.

On one issue that Obama remains completely unrealistic is his review of the budget.  He has promised, as he did in his national TV spot that would have delayed the conclusion to Game 5 of the World Series had there been more than 3 innings to be played, to go through the federal budget “line by line”.  This is an out and out lie.  The federal budget for the 2007 fiscal year was about $2.4 trillion, which is another way of saying that it was many, many, many pages long.  He is not going to go through the budget line by line.  I doubt he would even go through it page by page.  He may have a very large team of people go through it and give him a nice little summary, and maybe that’s what he meant.  But that’s not what he said, and that bothers me.

I’m also bothered by his approach to redistributing wealth, particularly in national TV spot.  Please read carefully: my problem is not (entirely) with the fact that he wants to distribute wealth.  Rather, my problem is with the hypocrisy in the spot.  Part of his spot focused on the idea that many of us have parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who immigrated here and worked hard so that we, their future generations, could have a better life.  The point of the spot was to show that the government has been failing those hard-working ancestors by depriving us, their future generations, of quality education and healthcare.  What I took away from that was a terrible inconsistency which forced me, again, to wonder whether a candidate was simply oblivious to a disconnect between two important concepts, or if they are aware and are just hoping that Americans are too dumb to see the disconnect themselves.  The disconnect of course is that the immigrants who came here to forge a better life for them and their future generations were not lured by the idea that they could work hard to provide quality education and healthcare to others; they were lured by the idea that they could work hard and keep their money.  The “land of opportunity” gig meant that if you worked hard you could make a better life for your family, regardless of your current socioeconomic status.  The extent to which this was true is inconsequential; the point is that the two ideas don’t jive, and it makes me feel like Obama as trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

Hypocrisy, of course, does not have a political affiliation, and that’s not the point I’m trying to make.  McCain has had his own fair share of hypocritical statements and actions, that’s just not the problem that I have with him that I am choosing to highlight.  McCain’s never ending attacks on Obama’s position shifting is utterly ridiculous.  It stems from the idea that changing your mind is a faux pas.  Saying one thing and immediately turning around and doing another is what’s bad; changing your mind after conditions have changed is not.  Sticking to your guns is effective in certain situations, but being able to take new developments into account and changing your strategy to reflect changes is more effective in other situations.  McCain’s claim to being a maverick and his continuous pointing to his record as a measuring stick of consistency are inconsistent.  He says he is a maverick because he reaches across the aisle to Democrats on certain issues, and that he has to examine each issue in its own context, not according to the party line (the issue of whether or not he does this as consistently as he claims is a separate one).  He also says that he is consistent because he has always and will always vote to “finish the job in Iraq”, whatever that means.  That strategy is not one of a maverick, or of a person who will examine issues as contextual facts change and develop.  That strategy is one of a person who considers sticking to his guns more important than reacting to potentially very important developments, and that is a dangerous approach, not just to a war but to an economy, a volatile Congress, an approaching energy crisis, and so on.

A maverick also would not have chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate.  (I’m ignoring the pesky question, yet again, of whether the candidate really didn’t know what they were doing or if they were just trying to pull one over on voters.)  Palin being a woman or being from Alaska or being a hockey mom does not make either one of them a maverick.  By McCain’s own definition, a maverick politician is one who tries to reach across the aisle and work with the other side.  Selecting Palin in only a very small way represented McCain trying to reach out to undecided voters.  The only people who were swayed by Palin were people who are only interested in a woman occupying executive office, most likely embittered Hillary supporters.  I suspect that the number of people who were undecided or leaning towards but uncommitted to Obama that instead swung to the McCain camp by virtue of him selecting Palin was marginal.  Rather, Palin reinvigorated an otherwise dead conservative base.  The GOP had a great couple weeks thanks to her but then the buzz fizzled.  Her staunchest supporters remain people who were already going to vote Republican regardless of who was on the ticket.  At that point, as an undecided voter, I liked Palin as a gimmick but I was again disenchanted by McCain.  I’m the undecided voter! Aren’t I the one that you are trying to woo? How is this supposed to be appealing to me? It wasn’t, and it further tarnished McCain’s already heavily damaged maverick image in my mind.  Choosing a running mate who reinvigorates your base is not something a maverick would do.  A maverick would have chosen a Joe Biden, a Mike Bloomberg, or, in an alternate universe, a Hillary Clinton.

Full disclosure: I voted for Bush in 2004.  In 2004 it was no a secret that the “world” wanted someone who was not Bush to be elected, and that bothered me little.  This is because it is my impression that the world wanted Kerry for the same reason millions of Americans wanted Kerry, and that is not so much that he was John Kerry but that he was not George W. Bush.  While I did think that the Obama Europe Tour of this past summer was a little over the top, it also convinced me that the world truly wants Obama because he’s Obama, not only because he’s not McCain.  It’s important this time that we elect a guy that will get along with the rest of the world.  One of the president’s many hats is our head of state and it would help our image immensely if our head of state was well-received by not only somewhat obligated other heads of state but also by the people of other countries, who are not so obligated to feign friendliness towards an American president.  I am convinced that if Obama is elected that it will also reflect well on the American people.  The memories of non-Americans are similarly, pitifully, but also thankfully, as short as those of Americans; when an American travels to England or France or Japan or India now they are questioned about their feelings of Bush because the average non-American doesn’t understand the volume of votes against Bush and that the person they are speaking with didn’t necessarily vote for Bush.  If Obama is elected, they might assume that the visiting American voted for Obama, and they probably will be a little happier about it.  I’m in no way saying that people base their amount of hospitality towards Americans based on the visitor’s political affiliations but in my travels I have found that it does impact the hosts in a noticeable way.  Electing Obama will show the rest of the world (or at least, serve them the same delusion) that we’re on the right track and not just interested in war, which is a very generalized version of their perception of the choice we’re making in this election.  Showing the world that we’re interested in change is important.

Another hat the president wears is party leader.  If McCain is elected, he will likely be facing a very Democratic Congress.  There is potential for that to be a terrific situation; the maverick senator-cum-president who when faced with a strong opposition sees the situation as an opportunity to work together rather than a roadblock preventing partisan action.  However, I think that he will try to stick to those guns of his and fight the Democrats.  Nothing will continue to get done.  Partisan divides will continue to deepen and widen.  Fights will ensue in a nasty nomination process to replace Supreme Court justices.

Now is not the time for things to not get done.  Now is the time for serious reform of our national energy policy, which directly impacts the economy, both in the short and the long term, foreign policy, and national security.  Education and the economic impact of the baby boomers retiring also need serious attention.  In a worst case scenario, Obama is elected and the floodgates burst open with Democratic reform and Supreme Court nominations.  The Republicans are powerless to filibuster, much less vote down, borderline socialist legislation, and they instead hunker down to try to weather the storm until the midterm elections come to save the day.  But this is unlikely.  I’m not scared of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid dream team, precisely because of the first name on that list, the leader of the party.  Obama has swung back to the center just in time for the election, like a good candidate, whereas McCain has inexplicably swung hard to the right.  This gives me more faith in Obama.  I could be falling prey to yet more wool being pulled over my eyes, but I feel like with Obama I’m at least taking a chance on a good thing, whereas McCain, as he fought hard to convince me, is a sure thing; surely to be stagnant.

I’m drinking the Kool-Aid.  I think the constitutional law professor will appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will appropriately balance the political scales on the Court that they all claim to not be a part of.  I think that he will use the de facto mandate he has by virtue of his party’s majority in the Congress to seriously attack our self-damaging energy policy.  I think he will have the restraint to not abuse that de facto mandate.  He will not just reinvigorate his base to try to coax supporters out of the woodwork, but also reinvigorate international support for the United States and for Americans.

The saying goes that the evil that we know is better than the evil that we don’t know.  My take on that is that it’s only true if the evil you know is not so troubling and discouraging that you worry for the country’s future.  I think that in this election we need to bet on what we don’t know, and that’s Obama.  He may abuse his majority in Congress and he might blow it with Iran.  He may go soft on Russia and he might appoint some radical judges.  But those are just possibilities.  You could make up similar damning possibilities for any candidate who ever ran.  The difference in this case is that there is also the real possibility that Obama will be great.  I do not see that possibility for McCain.

Morning Quiche

My blogging has declined so sharply recently perhaps because I have been insulating myself from the high tide of political media coverage that I normally subject myself to (“political media coverage” of course refers to this foolish presidential election, because God knows that nothing else in the world is happening, otherwise the press would be covering that too, right? Hello? Is this thing on?). However, I did a little reading this morning and have some links to share, as well as an abridged version of my impressions of Sarah Palin’s shaky performance last night in her interview with Charlie Gibson.

First, the links.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote an article about why some members of the media are getting very frustrated with this election, then a blog wrote a response to Kurtz, which is mostly a continuation but there’s some criticism thrown in for good measure. Both good reads.

In this space I would normally link to Krauthammer but today he is disappointingly predictable and is barely worth reading. I do have a reason for mentioning an article barely worth reading, however, and that is that the article is symptomatic of the reason for my self-insulation: nothing much is going to happen between now and the debates. Yes, Palin had her interview last night, so today we get to dissect and analyze obsessively, just as we will whenever Joe Biden makes an innocent comment, probably a joke, about women that will get blown out of proportion by the Republicans and whenever Palin makes an innocent comment, probably just a motherly reaction, about her family that will be blown out of proportion by the Democrats. But nothing real will happen: no one is going to develop and propose any new policies or solutions (Congress most certainly isn’t, despite the fact that that’s their job, but that’s an entirely separate issue, I’m talking about the candidates here). The four are just going to pound, pound, pound the same old drivel into the people who have been paying attention all along and have heard it all before. Do they not realize that even speeches about change (I use the term loosely and only because they do) can become static, in both a metaphorical and a descriptive sense?

I read this morning that Palin was in her element when discussing with Charlie the topic of energy. That’s nice, because she absolutely bombed when he was asking her questions about foreign policy. She had apparently been hastily coached to answer with party rhetoric. She was horribly nervous. She reminded me of a kid who had been caught not having done all the homework from the night before but was trying to skate through a question by the teacher. She did a good job in avoiding questions but not in being slick about it. Charlie Gibson is no dummy. She apparently didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is. I could imagine, when Charlie asked about it, her handlers in the green room smacking themselves in the forehead, saying “Expletive! We didn’t cover that!”

This is where I’m going to the trigger the abridgement of my opinion on this whole mess, and will hopefully get to the fuller version later.

One final link here. There have been many articles written about how the world outside of the US (such a thing is rumored to exist) will be disappointed if Obama loses. I understand the sentiment and it plays in a little into my own decision-making, but that’s another point that I’ll get into later. But I’m already sick of the articles, they’re all the same. This one is not the same. It’s from the London Times and actually explains to Europeans why Obama might not get elected, not just how crazy the Americans would be for not electing him.

Not Blogging Night One of the DNC

A couple noteworthy columns from the past couple days include:

Dave Barry’s take on the DNC: “Sen. Clinton will either call on her supporters to unite behind Obama, or attempt to snatch the nomination and escape with it by helicopter to a secret mountain fortress.”

Tommy Friedman had a good article on Sunday examining what makes the US Olympic team different from the China Olympic team, and why the things that make them different contributed to each team winning so many medals.

Andrew Breitbart wrote a must-read article on the absurdity of the mud-flinging campaign coming from the left.

Baseball: I can’t believe that Hardball Times doesn’t advertise this better. I also can’t believe that I immediately spent an hour on this when I found it. Wait, I absolutely can. It’s a page where you rank baseball’s ethical scenarios, from religious imagery in scoreboards to umps asking fans for their opinions to pine tar to corking bats. The idea is that once enough people do it enough times, the people doing the study will come up with a master ranking of what were the least ethical transgressions in baseball history. Fascinating.

In the mean time, the Yankees are going to miss the playoffs and Carl Pavano won a Major League Baseball game. What’s going on here? More tomorrow.

Morning Quickie

I finally got around to reading this interview with former German Chancellor Schröder that Matt J passed along to me yesterday. The Chancellor talks about the Georgia-Russia fiasco, what it means for Russia, and what it means for the West. He seems pretty frank. I wonder if he was like that when he was still in office. That would be refreshing.

Major League Baseball cannot institute instant replay this season. If you start a season with the rules a certain way, you have to play the season out that way. And the fact that MLB seems more concerned with the instant replay rule than with shattering bats is a little absurd.

There’s a chance that Melky Cabrera may never re-emerge from the minors. I still like my T-shirt.

On ESPN, fans voted and elected the greatest player of all time for each team. I didn’t vote because I hate these things. Fans chose Jim Kelly for the Bills. He won very much with a mere plurality, getting only 37% of the vote, in front of Bruce Smith, O.J., Darryl Talley (!), and Thurman Thomas. I’m glad the vote was so close, but it’s obvious only a minority of the voters were over 30, otherwise O.J. would have gotten more votes. People forget how great he was. 2,003 yards in 14 games! Plus, I love Darryl Talley, but him getting more votes than Thurman Thomas is just plain wrong.

I assume Matt J will not object to the Original and the Only LT (a healthy 84%) beating out the likes of Michael Strahan, Phil Simms, Frank Gifford, and, uh…Carl Banks. No Eli! Where’s the outrage?

Obama’s pick for Veep reported to come early tomorrow. Obama’s keeping it quiet so his supporters who have signed up for this super-cool, super-neat, super-insider, clap-your-hands-because-you-get-a-text-message-from-Barack-and-can-show-your-friends-how-involved-you-are notification can find out before the media and the masses who he has chosen. My money is on Drudge getting it before any text message gets sent out.

I learned this morning that the incumbent party hosting their convention last is a tradition that has held steady since 1956, and is one that is steeped in history, a lot of which goes back to the 1864 and 1868 elections. Also, in 1868 the chairman of the Democratic convention was Horatio Seymour. There was a deadlock in the voting among other potential candidates. Suddenly, Seymour himself was being mentioned as a strong possibility to be the nominee. He got up in front of everyone and declared that they could not vote for him, and he wasn’t being humble. He really meant it: he didn't want it. They voted for him anyway, and he reluctantly went on to get crushed by Ulysses S. Grant, who remains the President with the coolest name. Anyway, can you imagine anyone in politics today saying “No, don’t vote for me”?

Quickie

Some real quick nuggets:

• Should have blogged the game last night. Joba went 6 with 3 runs and 5 Ks, which was good, but he also had 4 BBs, which was not so good, not to mention a wild pitch that let a run score and a slider that slid all the way behind Youkilis’ thigh. All in all not a bad outing.
• Rivera pitched two strong innings for the win while Papelbon got walked off by rookie Brett Gardner. He’s really fast.
• Jose Molina has made several perfect throws to take guys out at second and third this past week or so. He has an impressive throw out rate, about 50/50 on bases stolen/guys thrown out.
• A-Rod tied the Mick for career home runs.
• Boston lost its sixth straight one run game.
• Joe Morgan was at the top of his moronic, self-loving game. Or maybe I mean he was at the bottom. Whatever; he was notably unbearable, even for him. He and Jon Miller continue to impress by messing up players’ names, confusing them with managers, etc.
• You know the irrepressible fear that I get whenever Kyle Farnsworth comes in with a lead smaller than 12 runs? I get the feeling that Red Sox fans are starting to feel the same way about Hideki Okajima (the guy who, if you listen to Miller and Morgan’s hyperboles, never ever looks at the plate before he pitches. We’re talking from when he walks out of the bullpen to when he leaves. Never looks. Yes, he jerks his head in a funny way. We get it.)
• Why is A-Rod’s divorce first page news on ESPN? I love ESPN but I’m starting to lose faith in them.
• I know I’m picking on the Red Sox a lot in this post when there are equally annoying or bad things about the Yankees. I’ll get to them later.
• Did you hear about the kid at Purdue who got in trouble for bringing a book to work about the Ku Klux Klan? Not just any book, but one about how the students of Notre Dame battled the Klan in the 1920s; not a book glorifying the Klan! Just by bringing the book to work he was accused of “harassing behavior” towards his black co-workers. He was ordered to not bring the book to work anymore or he might get fired. By the way, he was working for Purdue. An American university punishing a student worker for reading a book they carry in their own library!
• The latest GOP plan to “trap” Obama into a flip-flopper role is symptomatic of the disease that is the electoral season. Obama is clearly a flip-flopper; we all know it and he’s shameless about it. But guess what: they all are! Democrats, Republicans, anyone who wants to get elected is! They do it every cycle! Do we learn nothing! McCain’s camp is trying to trap Obama into either a) admitting that he is going to ignore the realities on the ground Iraq and stick to his 16 month plan no matter what, which will expose him as being someone who ignores facts and is unable to change, or b) changing his position on his withdrawal plan so he can be labeled a flip-flopper. Obama and his cronies must be spending time figuring out how to avoid this trap. I wish them luck. The McCain cronies must have spent a bunch of time figuring out how to lay the trap. Is this really what these people are spending all their time on? This is how we win elections in this country?
• Senators are expending so many resources, using so many people who are supposed to be smart on their campaign. Senators themselves are, theoretically, also smart. We could have all these people using their collective brain juices on solving the real problems this country is having as opposed to creating problems for their counterpart blowhards. As such, upon declaring their candidacy for the presidency, senators should be forced to resign their positions in Congress. This will not only allow their constituents to retain a representative who is actually serving them, but it will also make certain senators (and congressmen and governors, for that matter) think twice about opening campaigns that everyone knows are doomed from the beginning but are just for the publicity (see: Huckabee, Mike and Paul, Ron). They can run again later if they want but for the duration their constituents need people who are paying attention to them and not personal endeavors.

Morning Links

►I didn’t plan on posting anything this early today, but reading Tom Friedman makes me want to literally jump from my desk and get out there and start saving the world. I can’t, because I have a lunch to go to at 11:45 and I don’t think I can save the world and be back in time to leave for lunch, so instead I will just link to his article, as usual. It scares me a little how riled I get by reading him; I’m afraid that he could convince me of anything. His writing is so clear and thinking so logical. I’m glad that Tom and I disagree on global warming, or else I’d truly be worried that I am not just agreeing with him because we think similarly but because I am unable to disagree with him.

►These guys also disagree with global warming as they are promoting Carbon Belch Day to “help Americans break free from the 'carbon footprint guilt' being imposed by Climate Alarmists.”

►Friedman quotes a Memorial Day essay by Tom Shriver of the Washington Post, which you can find here. I will pass along the same quote for you to read if you decide you don’t have time to read any of the articles in their entirety:

This weekend only, you can buy a new Dodge and the company will subsidize your gas costs for 3 years. So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. And on top of it, Dodge is willing to subsidize your purchase with borrowed dollars since the company is currently drowning in debt.

Imagine that happening during the Civil War. Imagine that happening during World War I or II. Imagine celebrating Memorial Day in those days with such limited attention to honoring the dead that companies would get away with ignoring the fundamental struggle in which they’re giving their lives. The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge. Imagine.

More later, time permitting.

It's a Facebook World

I was at first only going to link this article because it mentions Mason in the introduction, but there is more to be said.

I didn’t know that our generation has a new name. I’ve heard us referred to as Generation Y, Generation M, Generation Einstein, the Google Generation, (Tom Friendman’s label) Generation Q…according to this article, we are Millennials. For the record, that’s the worst name of the lot.

The article, while not claiming explicitly that a membership in an Obama Facebook group translates into an Obama vote, begins to suggest such a notion. I’m a member of a Facebook group that is collectively excited for a zombie apocalypse; another that claims that Natalie Portman is my girlfriend. Facebook groups are not meant to be taken seriously; sorry, not even political ones. Also, joining a Facebook group is a lot different than going to a polling place or, worse, painstakingly filling out an absentee ballot, god forbid! The media playing up the presence of Facebook is fine, but let’s not get unrealistic here. If that’s possible.

Overall the article paints a pretty picture of the current coming-of-age generation and projects a sunny future for our level of political involvement. It’s a nice idea, but they use statistics that I’m afraid, as usual, are little more than extrapolations of small sample sizes. Basically, the message is bordering on making me hopeful, which worries me.

It also paints most of “us” as being liberal even though it makes a politically correct point of saying that we are unable to be typecast, as a generation. As a friend recently related to me: he was liberal too, once; and then he grew up.

Speaking of political correctness, I hope that that is a fad that our generation casts by the wayside. I hope our generation has a sense of humor when we grow up: that will solve or at least clear the path to solve many problems, in the political realm and the media, and, in turn, their effects on one another, which at the moment are largely detrimental. And that’s something I think we can all agree upon, regardless of political personal views.

Good news: In a few months, SportsCenter will go live in the mornings. This is good news because I watch the 6 and 7 am editions and, often, the 11 pm or midnight ones as well and I’d like to not see repeats in the mornings.

Tasty: Watch LeBron James eat NBA Defensive Player of the Year Kevin Garnett for lunch at the end of this clip.

Horsefeathers

From an article on Hillary's appearance on "This Week":

An Obama supporter picked from the audience by Stephanopoulos to ask a question in the town hall meeting format of the show said she makes less than $25,000 a year, so the price of gas is not an academic issue for her.

“I really do feel pain at the pump,” said Kara Glennon. “However, I do feel pandered to when you talk about suspending the gas tax. I don’t think that it’s really a reasonable plan. Call me crazy, but I actually listen to economists because I think they know what they’ve studied.”

Glennon asked Clinton how the proposal squared with her concerns about energy independence and global warming as lowering the gas tax would not encourage people to save energy and drive less.

Clinton said that while suspending the gas tax would offer short-term relief, she’s also advocating long-term solutions to gas prices and energy independence, including making vehicles more fuel efficient and having the United States be a world leader on addressing global warming.

At a rally in Indianapolis Saturday night, Clinton used the gas tax issue as “just one more indication” that Obama is “not understanding what’s going on in so many people’s lives.”

She is more or less admitting to using the gas tax suspension as a means to getting to voters! She is acknowledging that the proposal is not a long-term solution and is in fact counterproductive! She should not be allowed to tout herself as a global warming fighter while this is happening! How do people get away with this? McCain too, for that matter! And not just the politicians; where is the responsibility of the journalists? I know Stephanopoulos is a former Clintonian, but why even fake it at this point? This is ludicrous. And that quote about Obama just makes me want to punch her in the face.

Peace & Justice in NYC...

Everyone is familiar with the Sean Bell / NYPD Detectives case by now.  For a refresher, about reaction to the outcome, click here.  For a review of the case itself, try clicking here.  CNN having an entire web page devoted to this story says something about the media's fixation on human tragedy, but more on that in a minute.  Finally, for Al Sharpton's response to this tragic event, try this link.

There are a myriad of tragedies flowing from this event.  A brother, future husband and son is dead.  A family has been torn apart.  Three police officers' lives (and in some ways, the entire  NYPD) are also ruined by the acrimony that has been created by this very public airing of all that is wrong in race relations in New York and the country.  Let's face it: if everyone involved in this situation was Caucasian and Harvard-educated, everyone's perceptions would be a lot different.  

Mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded New Yorkers after the verdict that there were no winners in this situation.  He is completely right.  

And yet, I can't help but think that there are many positive consequences that this could have.  First of all, there is an opportunity for community leaders to launch a constructive dialogue to find out how something like this could ever have happened.  Secondly, this can lead to a comprehensive review of NYPD procedures in a situation just like this.  And thirdly, maybe we can actually have a discussion about race in this country.  Not through the skewed prism of a presidential election that is getting more ridiculous each moment, by the way, but rather a discussion that reflects true problems: an inordinate (and unjust) amount of minorities are in jail and an inordinate amount of violent crimes are committed by minorities.  And quite frankly, if we're not willing to have painful, public discussions, then it's just a matter of time before the next Sean Bell.