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Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
How the Republican Party Blew itself Up
Great article in Rolling Stone about the destruction, dismantling, whatever you want to call it, of the Republican party. I'll post the highlights.
(See the whole article here.)
Requiem for a Maverick
John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time
Election night at the Biltmore in Arizona is a hilariously dismal scene, like a funeral for a family member nobody liked, who died owing everyone money. The rats here are already bailing off the ship with lightning speed, like L.A. Dodgers fans leaving a playoff game to catch the latest episode of Entourage. The exodus, in fact, begins about eight seconds into John McCain's concession speech, which incidentally starts off on the classiest of notes: with the remaining crowd cursing the name of the new president.
"A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama," McCain begins.
"Boooooo!" bellows the crowd. Outside the hotel, a wine-drunk young woman in a fluffy white ball gown probably last worn at a Liberty University frat mixer angrily flings a would-be celebratory pompom she has been clutching into my face. "I can't listen to this shit!" she yells, scooting away.
--
I ask [local Young Republicans] why they think McCain lost. Dori says a big reason is that "a lot of big movie stars came out for Obama." I ask her which ones.
"Um, Puff Daddy?" she says. "Although I don't know if Puff Daddy came out for Obama."
"There's Oprah," adds Emily.
"Yeah, Oprah," says Dori.
--
Obama, [a McCain supporter] assures me, is a "novelty" who will "go away within the next couple of years."
"Um," I say. "Go away?"
"I just don't think America's ready for a black president," she explains. "And I don't mean that in a racial way whatsoever."
---
The ironic thing is that the destruction of the Republican Party was a two-part process. Their president, George W. Bush, did most of the work by making virtually every mistake possible in his two terms, reducing the mightiest economy on Earth to the status of a beggar-debtor nation like Pakistan or Zambia.
---
McCain's shtick wasn't exactly that, but it was close. He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back.
Which made sense, right up until the moment when they stuck him with Pinochet in heels for a running mate. Sarah Palin would have been a brilliant choice as a presidential nominee — and she will be, in 2012, when she leads the inevitable Republican counter-revolution against Obama's presidency. She's a classic divide-and-conquer politician, an unapologetic Witch Hunter and True Believer with a gift for whipping up the mob against the infidel. In a way that even George W. Bush never was, she is Karl Rove's wet dream, the Osama bin Laden of soccer moms, crusading against germs, communism, atheism and other such unclean elements strictly banned by American law.
---
Like millions of Americans, I watched Barack Obama's victory on Election Night in a state of amazement. The only thing that gave me pause was the question of what kind of country this remarkable figure was now inheriting. Some of the luster of Obama's triumph would come off if the American presidency were no longer the Most Powerful Office in the World but simply the top job in a hopelessly broken nation suffering an irreversible decline.
Of all the problems facing this country by the end of the Bush years, the biggest is the absence of a unifying national idea. Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity. We tried being a "world policeman" in Somalia, which didn't work so well. We tried retaining our Cold War outlook by simply replacing communists with terrorists. We created two bubble economies that blew up in our faces, and headed into 2008 a struggling capitalist state with a massive trade deficit and an overtaxed military that suddenly had to ask itself: For the supposed world leader in the community of nations, what exactly is it that we're still good at? Who are we, and what do we represent to the peoples of the Earth here and now — not in 1775 Concord, or 1945 Paris, or 1969, from the surface of the moon?
When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.
For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.
[Issue 1066 — November 27, 2008]
(See the whole article here.)
Requiem for a Maverick
John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time
Election night at the Biltmore in Arizona is a hilariously dismal scene, like a funeral for a family member nobody liked, who died owing everyone money. The rats here are already bailing off the ship with lightning speed, like L.A. Dodgers fans leaving a playoff game to catch the latest episode of Entourage. The exodus, in fact, begins about eight seconds into John McCain's concession speech, which incidentally starts off on the classiest of notes: with the remaining crowd cursing the name of the new president.
"A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama," McCain begins.
"Boooooo!" bellows the crowd. Outside the hotel, a wine-drunk young woman in a fluffy white ball gown probably last worn at a Liberty University frat mixer angrily flings a would-be celebratory pompom she has been clutching into my face. "I can't listen to this shit!" she yells, scooting away.
--
I ask [local Young Republicans] why they think McCain lost. Dori says a big reason is that "a lot of big movie stars came out for Obama." I ask her which ones.
"Um, Puff Daddy?" she says. "Although I don't know if Puff Daddy came out for Obama."
"There's Oprah," adds Emily.
"Yeah, Oprah," says Dori.
--
Obama, [a McCain supporter] assures me, is a "novelty" who will "go away within the next couple of years."
"Um," I say. "Go away?"
"I just don't think America's ready for a black president," she explains. "And I don't mean that in a racial way whatsoever."
---
The ironic thing is that the destruction of the Republican Party was a two-part process. Their president, George W. Bush, did most of the work by making virtually every mistake possible in his two terms, reducing the mightiest economy on Earth to the status of a beggar-debtor nation like Pakistan or Zambia.
---
McCain's shtick wasn't exactly that, but it was close. He was a war hero who married an heiress to a beer distributorship and had been in the Senate since the Mesozoic Era. His greatest strength as a politician had up until this year been his ability to "reach across the aisle," a quality that in the modern Republican Party was normally about as popular as open bisexuality. His presence atop the ticket this year was evidence of profound anxiety within the party about its chances in the general election. After eight disastrous years of Bush, they thought they had lost the middle — so they picked a middling guy to get it back.
Which made sense, right up until the moment when they stuck him with Pinochet in heels for a running mate. Sarah Palin would have been a brilliant choice as a presidential nominee — and she will be, in 2012, when she leads the inevitable Republican counter-revolution against Obama's presidency. She's a classic divide-and-conquer politician, an unapologetic Witch Hunter and True Believer with a gift for whipping up the mob against the infidel. In a way that even George W. Bush never was, she is Karl Rove's wet dream, the Osama bin Laden of soccer moms, crusading against germs, communism, atheism and other such unclean elements strictly banned by American law.
---
Like millions of Americans, I watched Barack Obama's victory on Election Night in a state of amazement. The only thing that gave me pause was the question of what kind of country this remarkable figure was now inheriting. Some of the luster of Obama's triumph would come off if the American presidency were no longer the Most Powerful Office in the World but simply the top job in a hopelessly broken nation suffering an irreversible decline.
Of all the problems facing this country by the end of the Bush years, the biggest is the absence of a unifying national idea. Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity. We tried being a "world policeman" in Somalia, which didn't work so well. We tried retaining our Cold War outlook by simply replacing communists with terrorists. We created two bubble economies that blew up in our faces, and headed into 2008 a struggling capitalist state with a massive trade deficit and an overtaxed military that suddenly had to ask itself: For the supposed world leader in the community of nations, what exactly is it that we're still good at? Who are we, and what do we represent to the peoples of the Earth here and now — not in 1775 Concord, or 1945 Paris, or 1969, from the surface of the moon?
When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.
For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.
[Issue 1066 — November 27, 2008]
President Obama Addresses the American People--by YouTube!!
This is a definite first for a President: Sending out messages with YouTube! Good words from Mr. Obama.
How The Election Was Won - And What Now Mr. Obama?
(I wrote this just before Obama was elected to office).
November 3rd, 2008 5:45 p.m. Desk of Byron Shirley, Common U.S. Citizen.
By this time tomorrow, the American populace should have elected Barack Obama as the newest President of the United States. This is both shocking and extremely well-deserved, because of the way Obama and his strategists—I always wonder how much of the end-result is directly of the candidate’s doing: Is it 10%? 25%? 50% couldn’t be more than that! -- ran his election campaign. Barack Obama, back in the latter part of ’07 (Yes! This campaign has lasted one, even TWO years!!) and beginning of ’08 was not even considered the leading candidate for the Democratic Nomination. That was Senator Hillary Clinton. He wasn’t even considered the runner-up—that was Sen. John Edwards.
Yet somehow, Barack Obama (How many of us knew of his name back in ’06, as a percentage of the population? 10%, maybe? And now?) came out of a group of respected and very well-known “career” politicians and made a swift impact. What is it that drove so many people toward him? We always speak of his message of hope, his charisma, but part of it, I think, may be fear of the direction this country is taking. (This is kind of an obvious and easy assumption: According to RealClearPolitics, 84.2% of those polled say the country is headed “In the wrong direction”, and InTrade Political “securities” lists Obama’s chances of being elected as the next president at 91.5%. That sounds pretty conclusive who’s going to win, and why people where looking for “change”.) Americans tend to make fear-based decisions, decisions “from the heart, not necessarily from what they think, but how they feel. Right now, they feel undeniably Blue. And the fear is obvious: America just may not be the #1, best country on Earth anymore, and that reality scares us. We’re more disliked than almost at any time in our short history, and stronger economies are coming out like China and India and even Russia—gasp!!- --that will take over as the world’s leaders.
So perhaps Obama came at the right time, with his “boring”, completely steady demeanor, his complete inability to be really shaken, even after Hillary and then McCain and his pet pit-bull-with-a-lipstick decided to go for the low blows (it was Hillary’s people, no less, who started the whole “Obama is a Muslim, and he’s been associated with a known terrorist” gimmick.) Obama came out and conveyed his message of HOPE, and became a symbol for normalcy. (How would scared and pissed-off Americans have responded to Obama in 2001, when we were all out for blood? Likely, not as well.) The Little Senator That Could, under the “CHANGE” banner, built a powerful campaign based partly on old-school campaigning but also on a new trend of DIY campaigning, where thousands of individuals motivated just motivated enough could meet and organize on the internet, create a page at My.BarackObama.com (I created mine in 10 minutes…and raised $275.00 for Obama’s campaign http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/byronforobama). Howard Dean, one of the Democratic candidates in ’04 showed the promise of the most powerful medium of the new millennium, but with his website and the backing of the likes of MoveOn.org, Barack Obama really did harness the Internet to his advantage. He saw that people, if given the ability to do so, could organize for a common purpose, even if they were just simple folks. And all of a sudden, the election wasn’t all about raising as much cash through wealthy donors, although Obama did plenty of that, too. Barack Obama was able to run the first privately financed Presidential campaign in three decades, and he did it with many contributors giving $100or less. (For September’s record-setting $150 million haul was ONE-QUARTER of contributors giving $100 or less. See a review of the money raised by Obama’s campaign so far at http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?id=N00009638).
It is with this energy, all this “political capital” and goodwill from the American people that we are sending Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States of America, as the first Black President, no less. It is my hope that Obama will take his great, enthusiastic and calming personality and change this country into what it has been, can and should be: a beacon of fairness and equality, a country strong in values and one that recognizes to respect its people more than its corporations. Let’s invest in the Enterprise of People, for once, shall we?
Thank you Barack Obama, now it’s time to make true CHANGE happen.
-Byron Shirley
PS Yes, we will win tomorrow:
Bush Vs. John Kerry Chart, back in 2004: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/chart3way.html
And now, McCain Vs. Barack Obama, in 2008:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html#chart
Is this the face of Happiness or what?
I have had this on my desktop background since the day after Obama got in...makes me smile every time.
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