Can't See the Forest for the Smog

Yesterday I just read a one-liner that went something along the lines of, "Obama rolls back smog regulations, capitulates to Republicans," and I thought: "Enough!"This morning I read this piece by Michael Tomasky which asks, basically, where did Obama go and will he come back in time to be taen seriously as a leader?

Ugh.

Taxes, the Debt and Republicans

Andrew Sullivan on what's so wrong with the Congressional Republicans' position on raising taxes (and stripping tax breaks from large corporations) and the debt.

The Trumpiator

On April 18th, David Brooks wrote in his New York Times column:
"But I do insist that Trump is no joke. He emerges from deep currents in our culture, and he is tapping into powerful sections of the national fantasy life. I would never vote for him, but I would never want to live in a country without people like him."

Well, AP reports this morning that Donald Trump said this:
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Of course, Barack Obama graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and was President of the Law Review. I wonder if Brooks is still feeling like he wouldn't want to live in a country without people like Donald Trump....

Michigan, Republicans & Democracy

Friday night on the Rachel Maddow show there was a segment about a high school in Michigan called Catherine Ferguson Academy. Dedicated to the education of teenager girls who are pregnant or already mothers, the school has been put on a list of schools to be closed and taken over by a for-profit charter company. This after an emergency manager was given almost total control over the public school system. The situation is enraging on so many levels and in so many directions I almost don't know where to start, so I won't. I'll just link to the Maddow segment and let it do the talking.

On the Budget Fight

I get an email every day from The Atlantic Wire with the "Five Best Columns of the Day." I'm not so sure if those columns are always the "best" but they're usually interesting. Today's email had a link to Michael Tomasky's column in The Guardian. He's writing about the budget fight, noticing that even if it's politically good for the Democrats, the terms of the whole discussion, he points out, have been set by the Republicans. It's not a new argument, but it's well made. Here's a quote:

The Tea Party argument that there's bloat and waste in Washington will always fall on receptive ears in America. But the counter-argument isn't to quibble about how much to cut. The counter-argument is to say we believe in a society where the wealthy pay their share, which they plainly have not been doing. A political loser? So, for Democrats, is the coming debate about whether to slash healthcare for the poor by $4tn in a decade or a little less than that. We're on our way to a radically shrunken society, and the Democrats are helping take us there."

The State of the Union?

The news in this post by Conor Friedersdorf (spell that ten times fast!) on Sullivan's blog isn't good, but it's worth reading.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

Last night I dreamed about election night 2008. It was so nice, even if I couldn't figure out why Barack Obama was driving a car without any secret service guys around. When I woke up this morning I told David about the dream, he told me that today is Michelle Obama's birthday.

Then we got to talking about getting new jobs, because Obama, of course, got a big new job in 2008, and then we started talking about how things probably weren't easy for the Obamas when Barack was an Illinois state senator in Springfield most of the time and Michelle was in Chicago working full time. David commented on how big a role Michelle Obama's mother played in their family life. And then I said this: "Imagine. If it weren't for Michelle Obama's mother, Barack Obama might not be president."

I think this might be true.

A million stars have to align for anyone to become president, whether he has a funny name or a plain one, whether you're a WASP or African American or whatever. But on some level, for Barack Obama to pursue a political career, his home life had to be in order. For his home life to be in order, Michelle Obama needed help. And because they lived in her home town where her mom still lived, and because Mrs. Robinson was and is able to play a very active role in their family, Michelle Obama could turn to her mom and her mom could help their lives go. And look where they went.

Even before I had kids I thought of birthdays as celebration days for moms, too. So happy birthday, Mrs. Obama. And, Mrs. Robinson, we owe a great big thank you to you.

This Morning

So, I admit it. Last night, in my zeal to knit, I completely forgot about the President's speech and caught up with the nice cooks on Top Chef. It happens. Once reminded about it in an email ("did you watch?") I read it and watched a little today. Here's a round-up of reactions from serious bloggers the Daily Dish. I'll just say what my husband did when he finished reading the speech (he forgot about it, too). "Speeches don't get much better."

Moving Forward with Obama

If you talk politics at all it's impossible to avoid the "Are you disappointed in Obama" question, which, for the record, I do not like. Of course I'd like for him to have moved ahead on Climate Change legislation. Of course I wish bankers had been called out on their colossal failure and real regulation had been put in place. Of course I'm overly forgiving of the political calculations that must drive some of the President's decision making on these fronts because I still believe he's not only the best we've got, he'd be pretty darn good in a field crowded with good picks. Given all that, I was glad to read this about Obama's presidency over on the Daily Dish. Here's a quote from the quote of the post by Andrew Sprung (so pomo, I know):

"He has laid foundations for universal healthcare and healthcare cost control (i.e., meaningful entitlement reform); educational improvement; and a reversal or at least slowing of the 30-year rise in income inequality (via healthcare reform, student loan reform, middle class tax cuts and tax hikes for the wealthy, the latter a work in progress). The stimulus also seeded a host of investments in infrastructure and alternative energy (as well as education) that will also take a long time to assess. With a little bit of economic luck, he will be the transformative president that he aims to be."

A Few Good Rules

With an election coming and the exuberance of the Tea Party, we're about to hear a lot about how government needs to stop taking so much of our money and doing so much nothing. It will be annoying to hear all this noise in the wake of catastrophic government withdrawal from the financial sector and the work of environmental protection.
Matt Steinglass (a link I got to via Sullivan) makes this point about the current stream of really big problems:

If the lesson of the catastrophes of the noughties is to pay attention to tail-end risk, then we should all be running around building nuclear fallout shelters and working out deflection strategies for massive asteroid strikes. And that’s not going to happen. (Though in the case of climate change, one of Leonhardt’s examples, it is useful: we should be paying more attention to the risk that global temperature rise by 2100 will be near the catastrophic 6-degree-celsius high-end estimate, not the merely awful 2-degree median estimate.) But I don’t think that is the main lesson. The main lesson is simpler and more concrete: government regulations need to be more restrictive, regulators need to be more aggressive, better-paid, and more powerful, and they need to stop people and corporations more often from doing things that may be profitable but pose unacceptable risks to the public. We had this theory for a while that economic self-interest would prove sufficient disincentive to foolish risk-taking. But now the Gulf of Mexico is on fire, so I’m afraid we need to go back to the old-fashioned system with the rules and the monitors carrying sticks. Sorry.

In Debt and It's No Tea Party

Greece has a big debt, and the US does, too. In today's New York Times, David Leonhardt explains:

"The United States will probably not face the same kind of crisis as Greece, for all sorts of reasons. But the basic problem is the same. Both countries have a bigger government than they’re paying for. And politicians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem.

We, the people, are.

We have not figured out the kind of government we want. We’re in favor of Medicare, Social Security, good schools, wide highways, a strong military — and low taxes. Dealing with this disconnect will be the central economic issue of the next decade, in Europe, Japan and this country.

Many people, including some who claim to be outraged by the deficit, still haven’t acknowledged the disconnect. Just last weekend, Tea Party members helped deny Senator Robert Bennett, the Utah Republican, his party’s nomination for his re-election campaign, in part because he had co-sponsored a health reform plan with a Democratic senator. Economists generally think the plan would have done more to reduce Medicare spending than the bill that passed. So, whatever its intentions, the Tea Party effectively punished Mr. Bennett for not being a big enough fan of big government."

I (Still) Heart the President

Here's another reason why.

Mr. Obama Goes to the Game

According to Politico, the President broke "years of protocol" yesterday by leaving the White House without a press pool so he could see one of his daughters play soccer. Attending a child's game is such a time-honored protocol of parenthood, it feels only right that it should trump the traditions of the White House Press Corps. The only thing that's really too bad is that we read about his trip to the soccer field at all. (Though, crassly, the story is still good for Obama's brand as a guy who does what he can to maintain some normalcy for his kids even as President.)

Michelle Obama's Message Discipline

On Jezebel there's a synopsis of interviews with Michelle Obama in Good Housekeeping and Conde Nast Traveller. In both excerpts, she's awesome.

For example from Good Housekeeping:

RE: But that wasn't a struggle for the two of you. Has there been something that was tough for you as a couple?

MO: No, not really. All the things that gave us trouble are - I don't want to say are resolved, but when you have so much support around you, and you have the time together as a family, you can take care of your kids, and you see them whole and happy - then everything else is just minor stuff of the day.

(This confirms something Rahm Emmanuel said a while back about the "family friendly" Obama White House. It went something along the lines of 'Sure it's family friendly here, if you're part of the first family.')

And from Conde Nast Traveler on the segregation of DC:

"Kids in Anacostia should be taking up the spots in the page program on Capitol Hill. They should be the ones who get to intern at the White House. They should have equal access as well as the folks with power from all over the country. I think as more and more kids have those experiences they start to expand their sense of who they can be in the world. And if we can do that for kids here in D.C., we can do that for kids around the world who are coming to visit and walking up to that fence by the South Lawn and looking in that house and seeing a family, a president who connects to them in a fundamental way."

I mean, she's so terrific, and I hope she's right.

The State of the Chin Music

I am dreading, dreading, tonight's State of the Union address. Even with our last President I would always watch it, feeling it to be part of my civic duty along with voting and complaining about Republicans. But this year, I just don't know if I can watch. First, there's the chin music that will follow -- the President did this well, the President should have done that, when will the President do the other thing -- not to mention the Republican response. Then there's this headline on the New York Times web site: "In Speech, Obama to Admit Missteps in First Year." Granted, I've yet to read the article, but why do Democrats always have to say we're sorry? Seriously, all the Republicans have to do after eight years of disaster is say, "No! No! No! No! NO!" like a psychotic two-year-old and Democrats have to be all, "Oooh, right, Sorry." Frustrating.

My Hair is Not On Fire

I'm not reading much about the Massachusetts Senate race. But I'd like to point out that there is still a Democratic majority in the Senate and this is not the end of the world.
Here are two links from yesterday on Andrew Sullivan's Blog.
This one is about the Angry White Male vote and this one is about the general state of the electorate and affairs.

If Not Her, Who?

I have yet to see By the People, the HBO documentary about the campaign, but thanks to Marjorie Ingall, I saw this clip from it yesterday on Jezebel. My favorite moment in the clip is the look on Michelle Obama's face after she says, "and now we're running for President." It's so perfect, rueful, amused, a little amazed -- life brings you places, right?

After watching the clip a couple of times, I still want to ask this: Was their kitchen in Chicago always that neat or did they just clean up for the film makers? Does Michelle have a junk mail pile? A bill pile? I bet Michelle Obama does not pile, I bet she files, without thinking twice about it. When she feels like she doesn't want to file anymore, she just sighs and finishes the filing, because it has to get done and before she moved to the White House, if she didn't do it, who would?

The Obama's Marriage

Was I the only who found Jodi Kantor's Sunday Times Magazine cover story on the Obama's marriage a bit of a snooze? I haven't poked around the web for commentary, and there were a few details that were, you know, interesting, but in general, meh. Maybe it was boring because even with rehashing their trouble spots (it was hard when Malia was born and Barack was away!), there was nothing all that surprising in it. Because I think the thing that's amazing about the Obamas as a couple in public life is they just might be exactly what they seem to be--two people who are genuinely interested in each other and committed to each other for the long haul, no matter what that might mean. The article didn't add anything to how I perceive them, it just made me tired of how the Times uses the word "brand" and glad for the family snapshots.

Global Warming and Hot Button Security

As terrifying as this article in the New York Times is, maybe it will inspire real action on climate change and energy consumption. Here's the kicker quote (and a kicker it is):

“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind.

“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”

A Regular President

It happened. At this last press conference it happened. I didn't even want to watch it or any of the after-chat, not only because the after chat was on at the same time as the Top Chef Masters I hadn't seen the week before but because I couldn't bear to hear what was coming, what I knew was unavoidable, inevitable even. The bloom, the blush, the glow around President Barack Obama, it all fell off. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. got arrested, the administration is making deals with insurance companies, and suddenly I find myself right back in America. The strangest thing is in this new America I find myself feeling something like admiration toward George W. Bush for not pardoning Scooter Libby. Strange what can happen.