Totally irate, again

If I seem to spend a lot of time attacking the presidential candidate I intend to vote for in November, it's because he keeps pissing me off. The latest, of course, is his support for the alleged "compromise" (read capitulation) on FISA.

Last Monday, Paul Krugman was wondering whether Obama was really a liberal or just another poll-driven, Clintonesque asshole. Okay, Krugman didn't say asshole -- that was me. (As Krugman noted, there are fates worse than Bill Clinton -- but that's not much to celebrate.)

The alternative, of course, is McCain -- and more supply side economics. If the media were a bit less corporate and if liberals invested anywhere near as much in think tanks as conservatives do, supply side would have been the victim of mercy killing years ago. America being Amerika, however, supply side economics marches on like a zombie in a B movie.

What would make any rational person think, at this particular historical moment, that tax cuts for the rich or the corporations lead to economic expansion? Give the rich more money and all they do is bid up the prices of the investments they and their friends already own. Give the corporations more money and all they do is distribute it, in the form of dividends, to the rich. Nothing new gets started that wouldn't have been started regardless. Entrepreneurs start new businesses because they think those businesses can turn a profit -- with or without tax cuts.

Granted, tax advantages always can make a business more profitable, but how often are those additional profits translated into jobs and benefits for workers in the affected industries? The answer: rarely, if ever.

So, yes, I'll vote for Obama -- how could I do otherwise? I just wish I had a better choice.

Change? Yeah, right!

You know, I think people would think better of politicians if they actually tried running their own campaigns, instead of hiring consultants to do their thinking for them. (At this point, I suspect Hillary Clinton wishes she'd run her own campaign -- she was very poorly served.)

Yes, I know the strategists advise presidential hopefuls to run to their bases -- liberals for Democrats, conservatives for Republicans -- during the primaries, and then move to the center for the general election. It's a sensible strategy except for one thing: it leaves the candidate sounding just like a, well... like a politician -- a self-serving, pandering hypocrite.

Barack Obama had me gagging recently when he commented on a couple of Supreme Court decisions. Yes, Barack, nobody likes child rapists -- but when you suggested that the Court was wrong to deny states the right to execute them, you were criticizing exactly the sort of Justices you've pledged to appoint. Oh, right, your consultants were afraid the Republican attack machine would portray you as in favor of raping children! Or perhaps you genuinely believe states should have the right to execute people who haven't taken a life, but whose behavior the public finds especially distasteful. Well, just how distasteful does an act have to be? If we give up the "life for a life" standard, a very wide range of behaviors could put a person on death row. Is that what you want?

Then, after you pandered to the "kill anyone I don't like" crowd, you pandered to the "pry my gun from my cold dead fingers" crowd when you appeared to support the Court's rejection of Washington's hand gun ban. Come to think of it, they're really pretty much the same crowd -- and I don't see too many of them voting for you anyway. Hell, their alternative is a macho white war hero!

Face it -- you're not going to convince anybody you're a secret conservative. You're just starting to look less and less like an "agent of change," and more and more like the same old empty suit.

To Barack Obama from an old white guy

A little while ago, I posted the video you can watch above to YouTube, as a response to a video from the Obama campaign which you can watch here. If you don't find my video in the "video responses" section, it means the Obama campaign didn't "accept" it -- that is, decided they'd rather not have it associated with their video.

If you didn't have the patience to listen to me go on for close to ten minutes, here's the gist of it -- I tell Obama that what I really want him to do is undo the Reagan Revolution. I tell him he should significantly raise taxation of the very rich, re-regulate a lot of what's been deregulated over the past quarter-century, and run a government that's actively pro-union. Beyond that, I want him to put government workers back on the payroll to do most of the work that's been contracted out, and I assert that the Iraq War was started specifically so the private sector could loot the Treasury.

Yes, it's one of my usual diatribes, and if it actually appears on YouTube as a response to Obama's video, I'll be flabbergasted -- but there's at least a chance that somebody in the Obama campaign will have looked at it.

The truth is that I don't expect Obama could accomplish what I think needs accomplishment even if he wanted to. The biggest problem I see with an Obama presidency has nothing to do with Obama. Rather, it has to do with the fractious nature of the Democratic Party. Will Democrats in Congress unite behind Obama if he wins? I'm guessing they'll give him all the stunning support they gave, say, Jimmy Carter. Thanks in part to Clinton pulling the party to the right, there are quite a few powerful Democrats who are quite conservative -- and the fact that Congress becomes more and more of a millionaire's club with each election cycle won't much help either.

By the way, I tried to make the video more visually interesting than just my talking head by adding a bunch of stills and animations, some of which are moderately amusing. If you haven't watched it yet, please give it a try.

Endorsing Hillary

Clearly, I was not happy when John Edwards tossed in the towel. It's not that often I have a vaguely viable candidate saying the things I want to hear. Paul Krugman tells me Edwards had a genuine impact on both the Clinton and Obama candidacies. I hope he got that right.

So, like a lot of Edwards supporters, I found myself trying to decide between what looked like the black Bill Clinton and the female Bill Clinton. (While I might have a certain admiration for John McCain as an independent thinker, I don't much care for where his independent thoughts might take us.)

I was really torn! Barack or Hillary? (Most often, those internal conflicts ended with, "Well, really, who gives a shit?") For reasons I couldn't put a finger on at the time, I found myself drifting towards Hillary. But why? (I don't easily let myself get away with emotionally based choices -- at least not without some analysis.)

Well, here's what I came up with: of the two remaining Democratic candidates, the one who reminds me more of Bill Clinton is Barack Obama. Since I really don't want another Clinton Administration of the 1990s variety, I'm supporting Hillary. Am I nuts? Maybe. Nevertheless, I believe that Hillary will be less like Bill than Barack -- less style, and more substance. I also think Hillary has the political skills to achieve genuine progressive goals by reaching out to specific Republicans on a bill by bill basis, not by reaching out to the Republican Party, which is still mired in its ideological tar pit.

Anyway, we boomers deserve at least one more presidency -- look how long we had to wait for the World War II crowd to get out of the way! My sincere hope is that somewhere inside Hillary's technocratic armor beats the heart of a sixties idealist; tempered by time and (yes) experience, but not willing to give up the fight.