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Dobson Hates Barack People!

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I'm liking John Edwards or Tom Daschle for Obama's VP right now. Obama said this week that he is looking for a partner who can be President, if necessary, and a great adviser. Chris Matthews points out that Obama also needs someone who doesn't make him look like the naive youngster. I think Edwards and Daschle meet all these criteria, particularly the third--even though both men are older than he, Edwards slightly and Daschle by about 13 years.

Though Daschle is very much a boomer, he's cool as hell and doesn't look like an old fogy next to Obama. Edwards, I believe, has the fortitude to implement a populous legislative agenda. Both men are extremely intelligent, can call it like they see it, yet are also team players. And both, I believe, would deliver key constituencies. What do you think?

Compassion-Fatigue

Parallel Public Funding—The Audacity of Nope!

If you have a moment, listen to or watch these before reading futher:

• "In a Strategic Shift, Obama Opts to Forgo Public Financing", NewsHour 6/19-08 (12 min)
  
• "Shields & Brooks Discuss Obama's Fundraising Shift", NewsHour 6/20-08 (first 6 min)
  
• "Obama forgoes public financing", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (8 min)
• "Does Obama’s financing opt-out raise doubts?", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (4 min)
  

We can't have a new kind of politics on the terms set by our old politics.

One of the old terms we have to change is the guarantee that political gamers count on: the public just WON'T THINK and CAN'T REASON and will continue to accepted whatever interpretation ideological pundits, politicians and commentators offer.

Another of the old terms of debate we have to abandon is the misconception that APPROPRIATE CHANGE (change necessary to transcend gridlock) will fit neatly into traditional liberal-conservative ideological constructs. It won't. It can't, if one believes Albert Einstein.

Obama's choice to not commit to federally- and party-managed public funding of his campaign is not a flip-flop. He made no unconditional pledge to do so. He said he would IF he and his Republican opponent made mutually iron-clad commitments to close the loop-holes that make our campaign finance laws nigh useless. Though he is now more than willing to throw stones, McCain did not join Obama in going this far.

Obama's choice is also not simply a matter of pragmatism as an overwhelmingly cynical--when not indiscriminately antagonistic--mass media have suggested. It wasn't just the opportunity to go after more money (i.e. political expediency) that compelled Obama. He has already out-raised McCain more than 5 to 1, and he could have used the money raised during the primaries up until the Democratic Convention 8 weeks from now, plus the $85m of federal public financing, plus money spent on his behalf from the DNC. If winning at all costs were Obama's impetus, he would have done just this. It would have been the politically expedient way to have his cake and eat it too. As it now stands, Obama will raise money (and can spend as much as he raises), but not in amounts so extraordinary so as to dwarf the aforementioned composite amount. The difference is that now Obama will be funded in small amounts (on average less than $100) by a self-organizing, broad, identifiable coalition of "we the people"—not by an anonymous fiction often appealed to by politicians as the "general public" or the "American people—not to overlook deep-pocketed, well entrenched corporate interests who regularly manipulate the current system of so-called "public financing". This was in no wise a money play.

The laws allowing for the public financing of presidential campaigns were written in 1976 after Watergate. They are 30 years old and do little (if they ever did much) to address the ways strategists game the system today. We've all watched with disgust at how toothless those laws have been in their ability to subdue the influence of money in the political process. Yet for reasons I don't understand, we've accepted politician's banal excuses as to why they just can't do anything substantive about it and let them off the hook for compromising reform efforts to the point of uselessness.

Matthew Dowd, Republican stratigist, on ABC's This Week said Obama has created a "brand issue" for himself—"he's tarnished his brand." This comment belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the Obama brand—at least the part that has capture the imagination of post-ideological progressives like myself. Obama's brand is safe with us if all you have on him is that Obama chose to take a transparent position parallel to a too easily exploitable so-called "public finance system" that has yet to limit the impact of big money in American politics. I'll take that brand of politics over the status quo any day.

Believe it or not, I'm not an Obama or bust guy. I'm certain he will disappoint me in some ways. But this isn't one of them. Like I tell kids who want to be mad at name-calling, we have to "consider the source." The push-back to this move is coming from all those who have a vested interest in our political system as it is. Obama is finding ways to subvert that system, and I'm glad for it. It gives me hope.

*Thanks to Stephen Colbert (or his writers) for the clever and insightful phrase "The Audacity of Nope"—I love it!

4 Thumbs Up, 2 Thumbs Way Down

If you like movies, here are a couple I've seen of late that I loved:





I collect live-action comic book flix, so I was especially pleased to see one done with such a well developed storyline and complex characters, as was the case with Iron Man.

It is for the same reason I HATED The Incredible Hulk. Saw it on Wednesday. It was awful! It's unpardonable sin was that it had no unifying plot. At best, it was a poor collection of character subplots, the most interesting of which belonged to someone other than David Banner. They tried to make Banner's quest to rid himself of the beast within the central storyline, but that's the underlying theme of all things Hulk (tritely justaposed with someone else's quest for power). It's equivolent to making a movie about how much Superman loves flying or how conflicted Batman is. These are quintessential elements of each character, not storylines!

I was disappointed again last night by the movie Jumpers. Bad for similar reasons. However, I will be eternally grateful from its preview. The director's visual interpretation of teleportation--which, before seeing the movie, I thought was time travel--was the recent inspiration for, my own favorite figment, Revelations' idiosyncratic habit of arbitrarily switching tenses when he's talking to someone. In the trailer, as a jumper moves through the 'space-time continuum' it looks as if he could accidently come out in the wrong place and time--past, present or future--if she were not careful. This got me thinking about rememberance, embodiment and anticipation as more than just states of mind. I wish the director had gone there with it. If he had, the movie might have kept me awake.

A Joke for Colored People

This seems to be the Year of Color in America—from ethnicities to rainbow coalitions.

Kevin Tan may be the first Chinese American to take the mat for USA gymnastics on the very year the Olympics go to Bejing. He's America's best hope in the rings.

The first American of East Indian descent, Raj Bhavsar, may finally make it on the USA Olympic team as well. Many gymnastics fans felt that by virtue of his performance at the last trials he should have made the 2004 team, but such is life (...in the West—sadly one can never be sure what dynamics are at play).

In order to understand the following comment, you'd have to know that my sister-in-law is of Indian descent as well.

While watching Raj today, I turned to my wife and said, "Quick, Leslie! Call Jocelyn and see if she knows him!"

*Update: Though 3rd best all around (separated from 2nd best by less than a tenth of a point) and the high scorer on the parallel bars, Raj was again denied and named 2nd alternate for the team—go figure.

Lexicon Artist!

Baracknophobia

The Assassination of Hillary... [and] Barack

Assuming the best (until evidence to the contrary surfaces), I think this is brilliant! Disturbing, yes—intentionally so (not for children)—but BRILLIANT...

www.theassassinationofhillaryclinton.com

www.theassassinationofbarackobama.com

Story by NY Times blogger Sewell Chan

"It's art....It's about character assassination—about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media."

-Yazmany Arboleda, 27-year-old Boston-born performance artist

Can We Say "Duped"

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California, D) clued me into this on CNN's Late Edition this afternoon.

Did anyone else know that ONLY 18%-20% of the US federal government annual budget goes to social spending? What are Republicans and Libertarians always complaining about? They've made social spending out to be the national bogeyman—the serial killer of America's hopes and dream.

Better than two-fifths is spent on Defense, but because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are funded as supplemental spending, their totals ARE NEVER added into official congressional Defense spending totals (though spending on them equals/exceeds the amount spent on social programs). This means—though we have known for 5 years that we will need the appropriations—Congress has never actually budgeted for either war, so spending for both automatically goes on the credit card (it gets charged to the Chinese). What the—?

THE WORD