Don't Want To Be An American Idiot

My friend Mark Kleiman is a smart guy and a fantastic blogger. His take on the SOTU speech is so good that I've included this whole post:

Sometimes your opponents can see what you’re doing more clearly than your friends can. Some progressives were put off by the rather Reaganesque rhetoric of the State of the Union address, but Mark Thiessen of AEI recognized it for what it was: an attempt to harness “American exceptionalism” to pull the plough of activist government. When Wes Clark tried the same thing either Andy Sabl or I called it “the liberalism of national greatness.” I thought it was a winner then, and I think it’s a winner now.

And – contrary to the more conventional Reaganite rhetoric – Obama’s message is fully consistent with one strand of the Founding. One of the striking features of The Audacity of Hope was Obama’s identification with the thought of Hamilton, carried into the second generation as Henry Clay’s American Plan. From the Louisian Purchase, the Erie Canal, and the transcontinental railroad to land-grant colleges, homesteading, rural electrification, the GI Bill, interstate highways, and the Internet, the Federal government has again and again been the agent of crucial economic innovation. The Springfield Armory was turning out mass-produced rifles when Henry Ford was still in diapers.

Of course the feds have also sponsored boondoggles from manned spaceflight and coal gasification to the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and corn ethanol. If you take risks, you sometimes fail, and if you make stupid decisions under political pressure you’re that much more likely to fail. But the notion that the gummint ought to keep its nose out of the economy – or, for that matter, that a monopoly granted by a patent is somehow not a governmental intervention in the market – accords with neither logic nor history.

Indeed. Thiessen is usually awful, as are most at the American Enterprise Institute, and tries to spin his conclusion in a predictable right-wing manner. But Kleiman gets it exactly right, IMHO.

When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?

(Sarah Palin meets Fargo)

Roger Ebert, while still not back on his teevee show, has something to say about the Palin Show we watched last night:

So she was understandably nervous, and you could tell that by her rapid speech, faster than what we've heard from her before . Listening to her voice, you could also sense when she felt she'd survived the deep waters of improvisation and was climbing onto the shore of talking points. When she was on familiar ground, she perked up, winked at the audience two or three times, and settled with relief into the folksiness that reminds me strangely of the characters in "Fargo."

. . . One thing a critic of a live performance is sensitive to is any unanticipated moment. There was a famous moment at the National Theater in London when an actor pulled out an automatic pencil to make some notes. It contained no lead. He should have pretended it did. Instead, he said, "There is no lead in my pencil." Then, fatally, he paused to listen to what he had said, and the audience roared with laughter when they were certainly not intended to.

A very different sort of unanticipated moment took place during the debate. Biden said, "I know what it's like to be a single parent raising two children." He did not know if his sons would survive the auto accident that took his wife and daughter. For a moment, he lost his composure. Looking at the moment again, I believe, as I did at the time, that it was genuine emotion, and not stagecraft.

It could not have been anticipated by Palin. The next camera angle was above and behind her. She paused. The silence seemed to anticipate words of sympathy and identification from her. But Biden had ended in a sentence using the word "change," and her response, reflecting no emotion at all, cued off that word and became a talking point about McCain. This felt to me, at worst, insensitive and callous. At best, that she had not fully heard Biden. In either event, her response troubled me. If a man had responded in that way to such a statement from a women, he would be called a heartless brute. [See link below]

Sometimes during a live performance you can hear an actor "going up." That's actor-speak for forgetting the lines. Laurence Olivier went up on an Oscarcast, after he was awarded an honorary Oscar. Whatever he said (the transcript shows it made no sense), the speech made an enormous impression. In an audience reaction shot, you could lip-read Jon Voight: "Wow." The next morning I went to interview Michael Caine. "Larry called me last night," he said. "He asked what I thought of his speech. I said it was wonderful, but I didn't have the slightest idea what he had said. He said I was exactly right: 'It's like during Shakespeare, when you go up and start blathering about being off to Salisbury on the morn.'"

I sensed that happening during Palin's response to the question about same-sex marriage and civil contracts. She was clear that she opposed same-sex marriage. So was Biden. I have no idea what she said about civil contracts. Neither did Gwen Ifil, apparently, because she concluded that Biden and Palin were in agreement. I knew what McCain (and supposedly Palin) really thought about the subject. I sensed that Palin had gone off to Salisbury.

Indeed. This person is supposed to be ready to take command at a moment's notice. Total farce, total fraud.

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all the soldiers gone?
They've gone to graveyards, every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Feel the hollowness inside of your heart, And it's all right where it belongs

Update: Thanks to everyone stopping by from Crooks & Liars. Please click on the "Home" button at the bottom to read other posts here.


(The whole thing)

In re: Rev. Wright (nifty alliteration, eh?), I remain ambivalent, as in, having two faces.

In pure political terms, Wright seems to have callously tried to embarrass Obama with his National Press Club visit. Darkblack suggested to me that perhaps it was a coordinated effort (by Wright and the Obama campaign) to allow Wright to fall on his sword thus allowing Obama to distance himself once again; I'm not sure.

And regardless, it's all fodder for the Vast Right-Wing News Machine™, ranging from Limbaugh to Matthews. Meanwhile, McCain's BFF Hagee escapes scrutiny.

Yet my liberal side pretty much agrees with the great Charles Pierce, writing at Altercation (scroll down):

It's hard to know where to go with the Jeremiah Wright story, what with the law firm of Briggs, Stratton, and Husqvarna looking over my shoulder and all. What I do know is that some folks seem to have the thing backwards. He doesn't owe Obama anything. He was a minister, Obama was his congregant. He could have happily gone on doing the good works he'd done for three decades, and giving his sermons the way he had been giving them, nutty or not. Then Obama decided to run for president. AT THAT MOMENT, because of the campaign, and because of the combination of bad faith and puerility that is the hallmark of modern American political journalism, Wright became an "issue." (And don't be fooled. You could see it coming a mile off. Sean Hannity was frothing about this subject almost a year ago.) Since when does a guy's entire career go up for grabs just because one of his congregation decides to run for president? What's his affirmative obligation to a campaign narrative of which he did not ask to be a part? (I wait in vain for someone to explain to me how what Wright says bears in any way on whether or not Barack Obama should be president of the United States. All answers meeping vaguely about "judgment" are automatically disqualified.) He's not John Hagee, blobbing around on stage with John McCain, who'd flagellate himself to get Hagee's blessing. The narrative went out and found Wright, chewed him up, made the candidate perform in the traditional Kabuki theater of televised outrage, and otherwise made a dog's breakfast out of a 30-year ministry that by all accounts served its community well and faithfully. So, finally, Wright shows up in Washington and tells the nation's media to Cheney itself, and does so in a manner so indecorous that he sounded like John McCain talking to Rick Renzi, and people pronounce themselves shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that he would do so. He's entitled to defend himself, his life, and his ministry, as vigorously as he deems necessary. That right is absolute. He's under no obligation to consider the political ramifications of that defense at all. If it were me, I'd have shown up at the National Press Club with a firehose.

Indeed. So while I applaud Rev. Wright's pugnacity on the one hand, on the other I
understand the need for Obama to disavow, disdain, disrespect, whatever, Wright's earlier comments. That said comments were largely spot on doesn't matter, since this isn't truth, but politics.

Too many people in this country, especially on the Right and in the media have trouble with compound sentences and complex thoughts. For them, anything more challenging than "see Spot run" is too hard. So for them, we'll keep it easy: The bad stuff that bad man said can't hurt you anymore.

Tell me sweet little lies

It was absolutely hysterical watching Anderson Cooper 360 tonight. Larry Elder and Glenn Beck were in full "I'm a real conservative and I hate John McCain" mode:

BECK: So, that says a lot.

But my thinking is, the Republican Party has not had their pivot point. They had not had their moment of, I can't live this way anymore. They have got to find their values. And they're never going to do it if we keep enabling them to throw in these -- these candidates that are not real, true conservatives. I personally think the Republican Party needs to bottom out.

COOPER: And, so, you're saying bottoming out is -- is Hillary Clinton in office, and that will teach conservatives a lesson?

BECK: No, not teach conservatives a lesson, as much as let them know that -- I, as a conservative, will not pull the lever for John McCain. The guy has betrayed us over and over again, as conservatives.

And you know what? I was willing to give people the benefit of the doubt before George Bush. But then he started being big government, big spending. And I thought, wait a minute. This guy isn't who he -- who he said he was. He's betrayed conservative values.

. . .

LARRY ELDER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I don't know about Glenn, but Bill Kristol nailed it.

If you believe in the war, if you believe that what Bush did was the right thing, and you want the war to be prosecuted to a successful conclusion, and if you believe, as I do, that, very likely, another 9/11 was staved off, how can you, in good conscience, whether you're a Republican or just a -- an American, want a commander in chief Barack Obama or a commander in chief Hillary Rodham Clinton?

BECK: Oh, I -- I...

ELDER: If you are concerned about the economy, how can you want somebody who wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts and do nationalized health care? It makes no sense.

BECK: Yes. Well, I...

(CROSSTALK)

ELDER: And if you are concerned about the Supreme Court, how can you want somebody like Ruth Bader Ginsburg...

BECK: I don't.

ELDER: ... vs. Roberts or Alito or Scalia or Thomas?

I -- I think those three issues alone answer the question.

BECK: OK.

I -- I don't want any of those things. However, I don't believe that John McCain understands the economy. He has been against the Bush tax cuts. No matter what he says, he's been against the Bush tax cuts from the very beginning. He doesn't understand the basic principles of tax cuts.

And here's the problem. We are facing a perfect storm. We have got the economy. We have got the war. We have got Islamic extremism. We have the border. He's wrong on most of these. He's wrong.

. . .

COOPER: Is there ever a perfect candidate, Glenn?

BECK: No, no, there's never a perfect candidate. But here's the thing, Anderson. To me right now, the economy is -- is so important. If you look at what is coming down the road, it is crushing economy. And we've got to have somebody to understand that. You will not be able to execute a war. You won't be able to do it because you won't be able to afford

So the Bush tax cuts, that McCain doesn't understand, are a really good thing that have had no negative effects on the economy. And that little war has had no effect on popular opinion of the Republican Party.

John McCain, who wants a 100 year war, isn't conservative enough for these folks.

John McCain, who:

will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent

isn't conservative enough for these folks.

John McCain, who wants to reform Social Security:

Promises made to previous and current generations have placed the United States on an unsustainable budget pathway. Unchecked, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare obligations will grow as large as the entire federal budget is now in just a few decades.

isn't conservative enough for these folks.

Who are these folks? Soldiers of the Right wing conservative movement. The same Right-wing movement that has ruled America with an iron fist since 1994, regardless of who was in the White House. The same bastards who have promoted government expansion and international intervention, while promising limited government and modest foreign policy.

They're lying bastards, hungry for power, corporate greed and growth, and power to control and rule the lives of ordinary Americans.

Yet these tools on the radio and TV, folks like Beck and Elder, still bow down and worship even unto the lying bastards that have promised them rain, while pissing down their backs.

They deserve what they get.