What’s going on with Barack Obama?

I much preferred Barack Obama to be President over John McCain. Obama now has a track record, and I find it highly disappointing. Frank Rich is also disappointed:

It’s this misplaced trust in elites both outside the White House and within it that seems to prevent Obama from realizing the moment that history has handed to him. Americans are still seething at the bonus-grabbing titans of the bubble and at the public and private institutions that failed to police them. But rather than embrace a unifying vision that could ignite his presidency, Obama shies away from connecting the dots as forcefully and relentlessly as the facts and Americans’ anger demand.
I think Frank Rich is being naive, however. I think that many of us who put so much effort into seeing Obama elected are naive. It's not that Obama is still feeling his way. It's not that he's trying to figure out what should be done about health care insurers, Wall Street or BP. When I see Obama these days, I see a President whose failures to speak up and rail at injustice are conspicuous by their absence, over and over. Truly, how long does it take to get angry about the way our military has treated highly competent gay soldiers? Where is any meaningful cost control component to health care reform (supposedly the main reason for health care reform)? Why isn't he forcefully arguing against too-big-to-fail banks and promoting the reenactment of Glass-Steagall? Why isn't he livid when Congress carves payday lenders out of the financial reform bills? When the financial sector floods Congress with 2,000 lobbyists, or when "78 former government employees registered as Comcast lobbyists in the final quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010" to push through it's proposed merger with MSNBC, why isn't President Obama visibly and audibly outraged? When I watch Barack Obama, I am watching a President who is not willing to stand up for the rights and needs of regular folks when those rights and needs conflict with the greed of huge well-monied corporations. He has shown us that he'd rather not take the bully pulpit and deliver a sustained message of condemnation, even when the need for such a tirade is palpable. Obama's absence of outrage demonstrates either that he has succumbed to the power of money to get himself re-elected (or to get his fellow-democrats re-elected), or he's being physically threatened. There's no other way to explain the sharp conflict between Obama's pre-election speeches and his post-election malaise. To the extent that there is yet any "Hope" to turn this Presidency around, Obama needs to make it his mission to tell the American People in every way possible, using every rhetorical skill he has, that our Democracy is utterly corrupted, and there is no use trying to govern this country until we take private money out of politics. Until then, we cannot have any honest debate on any issue and all "fixes" of any problem will be illusory.

Continue ReadingWhat’s going on with Barack Obama?

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Anonymity is driving the uncivil ways of the Internet, I believe. I'm proud to say that most of the people who publish at this site (both those who post and those who comment) do so in their real life names. I am convinced that this choice to disclose who we are facilitates conversation. It recently occurred to me that a good illustration of the corrupting power of anonymity comes from "The Wizard of Oz." Remember the rudeness of the Wizard while he was anonymous? "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Progress was possible only when the curtain was pulled back and the parties could work together face-to-face. Tom Tomorrow provides yet more insight into the corrosive power of Internet anonymity.

Continue ReadingPay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

More quotes

More quotes I've recently added to my growing collection ... Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951) [I]f by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." John F. Kennedy, 1960 “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall meekly behind them. . . The mantra ‘the best we can get’ is a recipe for corruption. We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences.” Howard Zinn It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Krishnamurti A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. Dean Acheson The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), Ecce Homo, Foreword [more . . . ]

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Gilligan and his Island friends return home

Today my wife surprised the family by renting a DVD of Gilligan's Island episodes from Netflix. I hadn't seen any of these shows for decades--they originally ran from 1964-1967 on CBS. Not that I forgot that the show was goofy. How long did it take to write one of those episodes, 30 minutes? Yet watching two of the episodes tonight did remind me that Gilligan's Island strongly imprinted its images upon the young version of me, perhaps more strongly than anything I remember from back then (I was 8 years old when it originally ran). The characters looked exactly how I remembered them, and the plots were embarrassingly predictable, just how I remembered them as a child. I'd like to say that viewing these episodes served as some sort of time travel, but I simply can't. And the series continues to live on in syndication and DVD rentals, with new generations being exposed to it. Gilligan's Island is a world-class meme, a meme that allowed millions of people to put up their feet to have a bit of mindless fun once each week. And today I was reassured that Mary Ann was as gorgeous as I remembered her. Yes, I far preferred Mary Ann over Ginger. I always did, even as a pre-pubescent viewer. And I was not alone in my preference. On several occasions over the years, I have found myself in discussions where someone raises the concern that too many of today's children waste valuable time that they should be spending exposing themselves to more intellectually rigorous activities. Inevitably, some high-accomplished person in the room then reminds the rest of us about the huge number of hours that most of us spent watching Gilligan's Island when we were children, the original runs and the re-runs. Yet many of us turned out OK. Or at least that is the argument.

Continue ReadingGilligan and his Island friends return home