So, how gullible are we?

Why I believe Obama will win

Some people ask if I really believe Obama can win. Maybe they're worried about entrenched racism being too much to overcome. Or perhaps they bought into the Hillary line about him not being able to win the swing states. Either way, I feel very confident (though that's happened before).

There are two reasons I believe in Obama's potential - substantive and situational.

Substantively, Obama has made the right decision to stop running away from Republicans on 'Republican Issues'. Since the late 60s, Republicans have won on foreign issues, while Dems have dominated on domestic issues. Democrats so internalized this divide that a generation of Democrats have been ashamed to speak their mind on foreign policy. Hillary exemplified this by voting for the war in Iraq and attempting to prove her Commander in Chief qualifications by tying herself to John McCain. She would constantly cede the foreign policy ground and attempt to change the subject to domestic policies. However, times have changed and Americans have realized how the republicans have done us poorly in their neo-imperialistic posture. Obama recognizes this and will run on principles. The principle that Republicans royally screwed up in Iraq (from hype, to concept to execution). The principle that being afraid to speak to adversaries will lead us to more wars. Obama has never been afraid to challenge McCain on this, so he is now forcing the media to question their assumptions here as well. Of course, we still dominate on domestic policy (even if Obama has shown weakness in articulating his economic policies). I believe the American public is ready to have a sustained discussion about our role in the world, and by addressing the Republicans assumptions, he can show a Democratic spine - something that's been missing.

Situationally, this country is trending Democratic after a sustained conservative strength starting with Reagan's election. There are several pockets across the country that Obama has the power to flip. Virginia and (to a lesser extent) North Carolina both have a large creative class as well as a large blue collar workforce relocated from the Northeast. In the mountain West, the Republicans have disappointed a lot of libertarian small government conservatives and (at the least) Obama can make those states closer (for example, Montana's governor and both Senators are now Dems). Additionally, there is the liberal small government West (New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado - as well as Arizona if McCain weren't running). These states are highly energized by his campaign and may also shift Democratic this time around.

So yes, Obama may have problems in Florida and Appalachia, but the new parts of the country that he has opened up give the Democrats to build a new majority, not a temporary reprieve by being Republican Lite. This is exciting and why I think he will prevail.

Obama Needed To Get The Dirt Off His Shoulder After the ABC Farce

ABC 'Debate'

45 minutes, and not one policy question. What a joke.

McCain

Can we be honest for a second…Why would anybody who reads this blog possibly consider voting for John McCain?

Seriously.

Because he’s a nice guy? So’s the old guy who lives downstairs from me. And he’s a war veteran too! Seriously.

There’s a myth around McCain of the straight shooter. Since losing in 2000, he has consistently pandered to the far right (tax policy, religious extremists, compromising on torture), yet people seem to downplay this behavior. Almost as if we should believe that he is unchanged from the straight shooter of 2000. As if he was a straight shooter then when he believed the same stuff as the mainstream media, and now that his actions betray the previous words, they’re gonna choose to believe his older words, not the past 8 years of actions.

Let’s understand for a second who John McCain is. During the Keating 5 scandal of the mid-80s, McCain had major ties to Keating and decided that the best way to avoid being marred by association was to be completely open with the press. To his credit, he has been. However, the press gives him way too much credit for talking to them and so act as editors and collaborators in defining him as someone who does no wrong.

Let’s look at what he has said about the major current policy discussions:

On Iraq: he has multiple times said he has no problem being there for 100 years. Of course, he explains that he can see staying there 100 years if there are no American casualties, yet we need to stay until we’ve made sure that there are no American casualties. Head spinning yet? I’ll simplify. We’re going to stay there until the big serious men in DC decide its time to come home, because they have expertise. The same expertise that got us into this mess, but let’s not pay attention to that problem.

On the economy: His chief advisor on the economy is Phil Gramm, the same person who pushed much of the deregulation of derivatives that got us into the current meltdown. A month ago he said that he didn’t believe in bailing out individuals (just the multi-billion brokerage houses). Fine, if that’s what he believes then we know. But wait, two weeks ago he came forward to say that some bad mortgages the government will help. Not out of principal mind you, but the grand panderer is at it again. Then today, he seems to have said something about citizens getting 30-year fixed rate mortgages through a simple form at the post office. I think this is what he said, but it seems so nonsensical that out of any other candidate I’d assume I misunderstood it. (And I’m leaving aside his plans to extend the Bush tax cuts).

Then again, this is the man who recently said he doesn’t know much about the economy, so he was reading Alan Greenspan’s book. I don’t know about you, but my faith in Greenspan has been shaken a bit.

I understand this won’t convince some people, but I really am speechless that there are Democrats who would consider voting for this man. Sure, he seems nice enough, and yes, he was a war hero, but this is your fucking future people. Wake up!!!

My Ideology

Over dinner the other night with my father, we started talking about suicide bombers, terrorists, and general distaste for the US across the globe. It made me start thinking about how hard it is to get my entire worldview across in any one discussion. It makes it difficult for me to actually be aware of my own ideology, so this is my attempt to explain it. If you disagree with some of my logic, I welcome the feedback, because I think it is very hard to conceptualize one's own ideology and perhaps someone else can highlight flaws in my thinking.

A philosopher I'm very partial to, Louis Althusser, wrote that ideology is a false understanding of the relationship between one's self and their society. What that means is that ideology is the way we think things are in order to make sense of what we do within that societal structure. This is inherently a false understanding because we can't objectively see our role in a larger society. Hence, here's my false understanding of my reality:

Generally, whatever god there is, she is clearly a hands off force (or being) as there is no provable divine intervention. If she were actively engaged in our affairs, then I don't think she would have quit meddling after Moses (or Jesus, or Mohammed). Since god is not actively engaged in the affairs of earth, our jobs as humans has been to better organize the earth over the generations to better ensure our survival.

This is where governments arose. They provided for the things that are needed to make societal life more stable. Traditionally, their main functions would have been mainly to serve the leadership (at least in Western tradition). To this end, they imposed stability through law enforcement and military defense. Law enforcement and military defense were the chief concerns of the moneyed elite, who had the resources to personally survive any other instabilities (without a revolt, they had the resources to personally survive famine, inclement weather, etc.).

However, over time power has generally become more distributed as technology advanced (again, at least in the West, but in a lot of nondemocratic countries as well). Distributed power meant that the common people gained rights. This often happened in phases (by race, by sex, by religion), but generally, over the history of time, we have become more pluralistic. Pluralistic societies provide valuable stability to many more people as they now have input into the function of the government.

So I have two foundations to my beliefs here:

1) Government exists to help ensure our survival (individually and as a society)

2) The extent to which Government is expected to provide for its citizens is tied to their involvement in the government

So that leaves the question of what our society needs to do to survive in the short, mid and long term.

Short term: To my way of thinking, when we see marvels of the modern age such as science and technology there is no way to think that any one entity deserves sole credit for that product. That product is a direct offshoot of the infrastructure and society that government has enabled to flourish. For that reason, it is understandable that the government should a) collect taxes on these items and b) want to provide some of these technologies back to the less privileged in our society. For example, I think that it is okay for the owners of say Johnson & Johnson to pay decently high taxes that help ensure that the destitute and struggling among us are able to afford basic healthcare that J&J got rich on. J&J would never have earned their riches without our roads, utilities and citizens. (This is actually a rich example because Woody Johnson was a big Bush supporter and ostensibly opposed to paying taxes )

There are many examples like this, but bottom line - people who complain about their taxes must fail to see how good we have it. This is the most advanced society in the history of the planet and taxes played a major role in this (WPA, Eisenhower Interstate, NASA, DARPA, etc). Our aversion to taxes have gotten us into a horrible financial hole because we don't always raise taxes to make up budget shortfalls. As such, Bush cut taxes at the same time as launching a $3 Trillion war in Iraq. We are fighting this war on debt and it has destabilized our entire society. This has largely happened because conservatives are so deeply invested in the myth that lower taxes increase tax revenue (the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard). Bottom line, our society has developed an unhealthy relationship with our government where we don't recognize the value we receive from it and so fall for the hucksters who convince us that we overpay for our government. Now we've underfunded it for about a generation (MY GENERATION to be exact) and there are serious financial repercussions that are developing.

The point being, there will be income tax increases and those are not bad things. A rich person has much more to gain from a stable society as they live the life of luxury during stability but have more to lose from disasters. Having a working health care system will make us all healthier as there will be less diseases spread. Having paved roads will make us all richer because it will be easier to travel and transport goods. Having educated children will make us all richer as we will have a more valuable workforce. We all benefit from providing for the weakest among us rather than overvaluing the value of property (be it financial, physical, or intellectual). Government's job is to keep this in balance. Unfortunately, since the Reagan Revolution we have undervalued the role of government in our lives and our government has been made unstable because of this.

We need to put our government back together because the world we live in was built by a central government and will fall apart without a solid one.

Mid Term: (Check back later, but this is my environmentalist/global culture rant)

Long Term: (This is my build spaceships rant)

Thank you, DNC!

As we hear the petty posturing by the Clinton and Obama campaigns, reconciling the realities of politics with the media's love for false outrage, it is good for us to remember the big picture here. John McCain is a disciple of President Bush. Just because someone is willing to look you in the eye while they damage the future of this country with outdated, disproved theories of governance doesn't mean they're a good person. A politician who thinks the proper way to deal with our enemies is to bomb, bomb, bomb them is naive and destructive in the modern interconnected world.

McCain is Bush's protege, and his theory of leadership is bankrupt.

Me thinks the Automaton Doth Protest Too Much

You know someone is full of crap when they frequently remind you of their frankness.

To wit, the presumptive GOP nominee in 2012, (no, not Jeb Bush) Mitt Romney, withdrew from the race today. Stating:

"If I fight on in my campaign all the way to the convention, I want you to know I've given this a lot of thought, I forstall the launch of the rest of the campaign and frankly I'd be making it easier for Sen. Clinton and Obama to win," Romney said. "Frankly in this time of war I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

There's never been a frank word out of this conman's mouth.

I'm just disappointed that I wasted $20 registering the domain ceosforromney.org.