always the professional

for your viewing pleasure

obama's 30-minute primetime spot. its good.

a flaw in the model

in a recent episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart mentioned Alan Greenspan's testimony before the House of Representatives that seemed interesting enough to check out. His speech was fairly uneventful - something about an economic tsunami, shock, dismay...you get the drift. what was most interesting was this interaction during the questioning:

Mr. Greenspan: I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the
critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to
speak

Chairman Waxman: In other words, you found that your view of the
world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.

Mr. Greenspan: Precisely. That's precisely the reason I was shocked,
because I had been going for 40 years or more with very considerable
evidence that it was working exceptionally well.

so now...if i'm understanding this correctly, Alan Greenspan just decided, because of this financial crisis, that free market economics as a concept is just wrong. granted, a lot of us have known that since we were like, 5, and he's 82. but still, this seems like a big deal.

i don't know, though. its a little bit of a let-down. when marx said capitalism was going to self-destruct, i kind of pictured fire, riots, and guerrilla warfare. not just an 82-year-old man getting in front of congress and saying "whoops."

oh well.

dear god

no words.

where there is life, there is hope.

you heard it from grover first.

term limits and protests

so city council voted today to extend term limits so king bloomberg can get a third term. feel free to ponder that, while you also ponder the following: as with any event, major or minor, this elicited a protest outside city hall. but whereas the past few days the park has been filled with black and brown people protesting for better schools and better health care, today was white professionals in suits, still working via blackberry while protesting term-limit legislation. fascinating.

battle for the earth: Hope vs Skepticism

How many times have i said or heard said among friends that this election really feels like an epic battle between good and evil? The "battle for the earth: heaven vs hell" metaphor seems to really be taking hold as people get more and more concerned about the state of the country, and as the two candidates personalities drift farther to their respective corners (recall tina fey's characterization of barack this week: "when he's talkin' it's like an angel whisperin' in your ear," and barack's joke at the Alfred E. Smith dinner that "contrary to the rumors that you've heard, I was not born in a manger..."). But I think in all the excitement about the battle for the earth, the possibly legitimate fear that john mccain is the modern-day anti-christ, and the overwhelming desire we all seem to have to throw ourselves into this election like it's the only thing that matters, we're accidentally or intentionally overlooking a quieter but in no way less important battle. This battle is also for the earth, but John McCain has nothing to do with it - it's the battle between two Obamas - the one we hope he is, and the one we fear he is.

I like to think of this as the battle between hope and skepticism, or perhaps the battle between great and just 'good.' This article by Mike Davis does a wonderful job summing it up from an economic standpoint, but it's more than just economics: the Barack actually standing in front of us on TV is significantly more conservative, more vague, and less powerful than the Barack we see in our dreams. He promises all of these wonderful things: universal health care, fighting climate change, and a better foreign policy, but we know in our hearts that he has yet to actually make a compelling case for HOW he's going to do these things. We also know in our hearts that he's intelligent, and I think that's the crux of this less thrilling but perhaps more important battle-for-the-earth. We HOPE (and we hope that Obama's message of 'hope' is a wink in our direction) that Obama is so intelligent that he's figured out the system - that his vagueness is his way of getting where he needs to go, and once there he will make the changes we want to see: changes that, if he said them out loud now, would cost him the election. We HOPE that with the possibility of a simultaneous Barack Obama presidency and an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we'll begin to see this country go in an amazing new direction "from day one." But we're also SKEPTICAL because wouldn't that just be too good to be true? We know how American politics work. No one's that good. If Obama's gotten this far, maybe he's not the man we hope he is. Or as Mike Davis put it in the article linked above,

"Am I unduly cynical? Perhaps, but I lived through the Lyndon Johnson years and watched the War on Poverty, the last true New Deal program, destroyed to pay for slaughter in Vietnam."

Is it even possible for Barack Obama to bring us the change he's asking us to hope for? Or are we gearing ourselves up for a slight shift in pace that will in no way actually turn us from the collision course we're currently on with our own demise? It may be impossible to know, but as with all battles for the earth, it's certainly worth thinking about...

colin powell endorses obama

a bit late in the game, yes, but still.



if you don't watch the whole video, please skip to around minute 4:30 - it makes me mad/sad that so few democrats have been willing to say what powell says here, and i'm glad he said it.

Sorry to interrupt Muppet day

But this AP report on the Roast that Barack Obama and John McCain attended was just too funny to not post. My favorite part comes from Obama:

"But to name my greatest strength I guess it would be my humility," he grinned.

"Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome."

friday is muppet day!

seriously. i think every friday should be muppet day on this blog. every other day of the week is rage, so friday should be complete and total joy.



...enjoy!

I Got a Crush on Obama

(Subtitle: John Mccain is a Punk-Ass Bitch)

I need to start seeing Barack Obama's therapist.

Seriously. I just finished watching tonight's debate, and of the three debates this one was certainly the most decisive. In the first two, Barack Obama held his own and promoted his policies. In this last one, he shone. My question is how he did that with all of the incredible garbage John Mccain was spewing his direction. If i were him, I would have chewed off my left arm somewhere around the halfway-mark. Even just watching from home, when Mccain started to talk about Roe v. Wade I got so angry my leg went numb. Yet cool-hand Barack never once even fell out of his chair. So yeah, I definitely need some of whatever he's having.

But enough about me. Let's talk about a couple of the more interesting points of the debate. I apologize in advance if at any point I get incoherent or profane.

First, a quick run-down of the candidates themselves:
Obama, as I've already mentioned, maintained his composure in the face of some shit that might have gotten a rise out of Gandhi. Aside from that incredible feat, he also made great eye contact with the camera, maintained at least a semblance of respect for John Mccain, and showed great restraint in refusing to go on the offensive on issues like negative campaigning, while simultaneously standing his ground very well. The result was that he appeared strong, but mature enough to pick his battles, leaving Mccain looking rather childish and petty.

Mccain, as I've just noted, looked childish and petty. He was rude, interrupted constantly, and seemed to be sneering quite a bit of the time. He also rambled on the issues that were really important, only seeming to have a coherent argument when he was on the offensive. The result was that he came off as desperate, and not completely in control. In short, he looked like a punk-ass bitch.

Ok, so on to the issues:

Taxing and Spending: I can only imagine what the comedy shows will be making of John Mccain's new argument in support of his spending freeze idea. Perhaps metaphors were never John Mccain's strong suit, but I've never actually seen a surgeon go in first with a hatchet, and then a scalpel. I'd imagine thats because the result would be instant yet gruesome death. which, incidentally, is probably what would happen to this country if Mccain got elected. But seriously, the Republican notion that taxes are bad, spending is bad, and everything is just going to work out on its own is getting old. Its never worked, no reason why it should start working now. I don't know, for example, how Mccain plans to "reform Head Start" during a spending freeze, but i'd be willing to bet about a million dollars he doesn't know either. Benefits cost money, and people benefit from...benefits. I'm not mad about paying taxes, if it means I get roads, education, social programs, and all that good stuff. And if it meant i got GOOD education, why I might even be willing to pay a little more.

Healthcare: John Mccain clearly practiced his burns before the debate. Most of them were so incredibly petty (I'm looking at you, 'I so admire Senator Obama's eloquence') that I'm surprised he didn't bring Barack's momma into the picture (I hear the only reason your momma graduated high school is ben bernanke said she was 'too big to fail.'*). A lot of those burns backfired. But his healthcare burn was the one that backfired the worst, I think.

"if you like that," he said of Obama's health care plan, "you'll love Canada and England."

Now maybe I'm missing something here, but it's pretty widely known that citizens of Canada and England have access to far superior health care than we do in the United States. So either Mccain doesn't know that, in which case he's even more of a dumbass than I originally thought, or he knows that, but thinks the American public is too dumb to know that. In which case i'm a bit peeved.


Education: McCain REALLY ended on a bad note here. After Obama (to his detriment, I believe) opted out of ripping McCain a new one re: education, and left him with a pretty easy out, McCain refused to take it, insisting on a final snide comment to the effect of (sarcastically) "oh so because there aren't enough vouchers, we shouldn't have a voucher system." ...yes. I think that IS the point, Senator McCain. providing vouchers to a few select people while failing to reform the education system itself is essentially condemning already struggling schools to fail, and with them condemning all the children who did not get vouchers to fail as well. Not really a winning plan. I can't even talk about it more without getting angry.


I know this is getting long, and is not even that terribly coherent, so let me skip over the tirades I was planning on going into re: human rights (and John McCain's newfound disdain for them) and racism (John Mccain's new best friend). I think Obama blew McCain out of the water on the whole "negative campaigning" issue, so I'll let it lie. I will, however, leave you with this thought to ponder:

People have, throughout this long campaign, raised the idea of a cult of personality around Obama more than once. Obama's supporters are referred to as "obamamaniacs," "obamaholics," and "obamacons." Obama himself is jokingly referred to as "the one" (or more recently, THAT one). And I just want to address that issue, because I think it's an interesting one. I think Obama does inspire devotion unlike any politician has in recent history. I found myself looking forward to his closing remarks tonight like a dog looks forward to "time for a walk." Every time he gets two or more uninterrupted minutes to speak, I start getting excited. I expect that his soaring rhetoric will make me weep with joy and longing for what could be. (With respect to that expectation, the closing comments were a bit lackluster, but i assume that's because he's saving the good stuff for his acceptance speech come November.) When he talks, I find myself listening like there is nothing else going on around me. I have a lot of friends who feel the same. But is that a cult of personality? Or rather if it is, what exactly does that mean? I think the truth is that it's so incredibly rare not only in this country but in this world for people to have the opportunity to rally behind someone in a position of power who is intelligent, articulate, and appears to have a basic respect for the intelligence and dignity of 'the common man,' that when such a person does come along, people lose their minds. I don't think anyone thinks Barack Obama is god. People are just legitimately excited by the possibility of a president they can be proud of, who legitimately values human rights, and who might even just have their best interests in mind. Its possible we need to stop thinking about cults of personality, and start thinking about the reasons behind the severe dearth of inspiring "personality" that has shaped our lives since before I can remember.

thats all for now.

*credit to my friend lizz for making up that zinger

another tidbit

if you haven't yet read frank rich's op-ed about the terrifying new twist the campaign trail has taken, please do. its one of the best op-eds i've read in a while, and simultaneously one of the most chilling.

Stuff White People Like: Gentrifying Harlem.

Take a look at this post on SWPL, focusing on a September article in the New York Times.  It's simultaneously hilarious and incredibly depressing (especially taken in context of the gentrification post Kaya made earlier).  An excerpt is below:

White Plans for Harlem

The article goes into some of the plans and hopes that white people have for the neighborhood, and they include the opening of Thai Restaurant, A wine shops, hair salon, and a place that serves gourmet burgers and microbrews (implied).

White people are also hoping to close down things that they do not like, specifically churches. With over 100 houses of worship in the area, white people are concerned. Though the article does not mention why white people are upset at so many churches, it can be implied that they would feel more comfortable if they were to be replaced with condominiums, yoga studios, and white people churches (also known as Whole Foods).

Yet in spite of all these desired changes, white people would still prefer it if other white people did not move into the neighborhood.

One of the new residents says: “Harlem does have a character. I don’t want Harlem to become Union Square any more than anyone else does.”

Conclusion

Harlem had a good run.

Click here to see the rest of the post.

a tiny point

i'm trying a new tactic: sprinkle in some short one-liners among the way-too-long posts. that way it looks like i'm updating all the time, but i don't have to think that much.

my point for today: how is it ok for mccain/palin to be using "we cant allow another holocaust" as a talking point? palin's said it twice now while i've been watching and mccain once. all of those were in reference to israel, not darfur (an ACTUAL genocide). comparing the conflict in the middle east to the holocaust is wrong both morally and factually.

and newsflash to the mccain team: you're not winning any special points for being anti-genocide. i'm pretty sure obama's not "pro."

Entitlement Gone Wild!!!

(subtitle: why I can’t live in Park Slope, and why no one should read online comments)

As promised, another blog post within literally days of the last one. Don’t get spoiled, though. You never know when I might get lazy again.

Anyways, let’s start out with some news/bragging: I recently moved out of park slope and into bed-stuy. And I literally couldn’t be happier about it. I’m sure I’m romanticizing the whole situation (it’s still new york, after all), but the fact remains that my first morning at my new place, I walked out the front gate and a passer-by said “good morning” to me. Shocking! Unheard-of! By the end of the week I had been introduced to not one, not two, but SIX of my neighbors. Who smile at me on the street, and sometimes talk to me on the subway. I’m in heaven. Which, of course, brings me to my current topic: hell. AKA park slope, Brooklyn.

I know what you’re going to say – hating on park slope is SO last season. But I say last season’s not all that long ago, and I don’t think the issue was properly addressed back then. Let’s quickly go over the typical reasons people might hate on park slope: it’s overpriced, over-gentrified, and full of self-righteous yuppie parents who want to turn the whole neighborhood into a playground for their entitled little children. It’s full of strollers, puppies, yuppies, and gays, all of whom will judge you on the street for not being one of them. True. But let’s “unpack” that, shall we?

There are a lot of reasons to hate park slope, some legitimate, some not. An example of “not” legitimate would be “I hate puppies.” No one hates puppies. Your argument doesn’t hold water. Similarly, no one hates good food. People do, however, hate overpriced good food. Which leads us to gentrification. The complaints about gentrification, and specifically the complaints about the attitude of park slope residents, get to the heart of the issue I want to discuss here: the false sense of entitlement that seems to permeate every aspect of white middle class culture these days (and not just in park slope. I guess this isn’t just about hating on park slope after all). Trust me, if anyone knows about the sense of entitlement today’s 30-somethings and soon-to-be 30-somethings seem to have, it’s a former Harvard student. I survived that, so now I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert, and in a fine place to talk about it on a larger scale: New York.

A recent Village Voice article prompted me to start thinking about this topic yet again. I of course recommend that you read the whole article (it’s very illuminating), but I’ll summarize it briefly here for your convenience: A well-off young Manhattan couple, with the help of some friends, purchased a building in prospect heights (just north of park slope, for you non-New Yorkers) at a price that was significantly under market value due to the fact that there were several rent-stabilized apartments in the building. They then began evicting, one by one, each of the rent-stabilized tenants (four families, to date) so that they could convert their own dwelling into a 20-room home. Only one of the rent-stabilized tenants remain, and the two parties are currently involved in a legal battle over her eviction. The current tenant, Evelyn Suarez, has been living in the apartment for 28 years and currently shares it with her boyfriend, her son, and two young nieces. She pays $402/mo for an apartment that most likely would rent for somewhere around $1800/mo if it was new to the market today. Various factors have been thrown around as arguments for one party or the other, including the fact that Ms. Suarez is unemployed, the fact that she has colon cancer, and the fact that the apartment is slated to be turned into storage space for the new owners.

Needless to say, the issue has blown up. There was a “block party” to raise awareness about it a while back, and something about a councilwoman speaking out against the landlords. Obviously there was a Village Voice article about it. More interesting, I think, is the reaction on the Brownstoner real estate blog (a blog heavy in park slope readership). I don’t want you to have to go through the painful process I did of reading every single comment, so I’ll just pick out some of the best ones for you (I’m sparing you the comments on the Village Voice website because, frankly, some are too racist to re-print):

“These renters could have purchased property but did not. Tough luck.”

“Why should folks who don't want to work be able to live off welfare in rent controlled privately owned housing? It's frigging nuts!”

“is it immoral to eat as much food as we eat in America while folks in Darfur starve?

everytime you go to grocery store to buy that big steak, the politicians should picket infront of the store so you feel guilty that someone who doesn't have the money to buy the steak can't have any.”

“I bought when I had no money, and did it as a single working class female by(1) saving every cent I otherwise would have paid in rent for eight years when I had a stabilized apt in Manhattan and (2) buying in a neighborhood that none of my friends would visit. I had to fight banks to get a mortgage, since the neighborhood was still redlined. It was called Clinton Hill. My parents wept and my friends said I'd be dead in a year.”

“This is retarded. The problem with long term rent control is it gets people used to living in areas they realistically cannot afford to. Another way of looking at it is rent control removes a major incentive to improve your lot in life through hard work and sacrifice: financial stress.

The guy who lived there for 17 years and didn't bother to learn English...gee, I wonder why he's not rolling in money right now? Must be the rich peoples' fault. They're so cold and heartless.

My view? Don't punish achievers (like the buyers) and don't coddle losers (like at least some of the tenants). Give the tenants their Section 8 housing and be done with it.”

And of course, my favorite:

“The sense of entitlement that is rampant throughout the city has no limits. Why are these people so special that they should prevent someone who has spent tons of hard earned money from using their own space exactly as they wish.

Rent stabilized units are an incredible perk that most of us will never enjoy. Be happy you enjoyed it while it lasted and respect people's rights to their own property!”

I’m going to resist the temptation to point out the myriad flaws in each of those posts individually, but I will point out that I think these posters and I have some disagreement over the meaning of the word “entitlement.” Because my argument is that at the end of the day, that’s exactly what this all comes down to. Entitlement, which dictionary.com unhelpfully defines as “the state of being entitled,” is a word I would define as “a belief that one is deserving of some benefit or advantage.” By definition, then, people who are DISadvantaged (aka people who can’t afford to pay market value for their apartment, perhaps) cannot really exhibit a “sense of entitlement.” People who do have certain social privileges and advantages, though (i.e. wealth), such as the type of person who might spend their free time reading a New York real estate blog, can and do exhibit a “sense of entitlement,” and nowhere is it more apparent than in their reactions to public outcry against injustice.

As you can see from the comments above, posters on the whole reacted in a number of fairly predictable ways, such as attributing all poverty to laziness rather than disadvantage; displaying indignance that anyone might want to deny the landlords the house of their dreams; decrying rent stabilization, welfare, and other forms of social programming as unfair to the hardworking middle class; painting themselves as ‘the victim’ by self-labelling as working class while simultaneously talking about working-class neighborhoods in a way that OBVIOUSLY indicates an unfamiliarity with them; and throwing up their hands with the argument that life is unfair, there’s nothing any individual rich person can do about it. In other words, entitlement. To acknowledge that not everyone has access to the resources necessary to lift themselves out of poverty, much less afford the down payment on a New York home, would be to acknowledge that you, as a New York homeowner, have in some way benefited from an advantage you did not earn. Which would mean you should be feeling guilty, which is not something you do feel/want to feel, so the whole thing must be bullshit. It’s the same reason people don’t like to talk about white privilege, male privilege, or any other types of privilege that generally seem to make our society uncomfortable. No one wants to be the bad guy.

The thing is, we live in a society with a whole long history of oppression, injustice, and general inequality. Which has, of course, led to an uneven distribution of resources and privileges. You can either deny that, and in so doing perpetuate it, or you can acknowledge it and try to change it. The reason I can’t move back to park slope: no one wants to acknowledge it. People who are well-off enough to be able to afford a neighborhood full of no one but their peers get a free pass to stop thinking critically about their place in society, and a sense that they’re entitled to all the comforts they desire, no matter the cost to people less fortunate than themselves. It’s that sense of living among people wholly unaware of their own privilege and content in that fact that makes me so uncomfortable in Park Slope, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, etc. It’s definitely not the puppies. I love puppies.

Dr. Dumbass, or How we Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hockey Mom

Alright, before I get into the post I recognize that I probably owe you some sort of “explanation” for my long absence from blogging. Its like this: as you may know, we started this blog because there’s a lot of really f*cked up shit happening in the world that makes us mad. Hence the tagline “we rage, so you don’t have to.” Blogging is actually a really great way of channeling some of that rage into slightly less negative energy, I’ve found. But recently, what with the presidential campaign heating up and the economy spiraling down the drain, there’s just been so much to rage about its hard to make a coherent sentence. So I’ve been reading a lot, writing…not so much.

BUT good news: I’m back. Time to channel all that rage into something productive again. If things go well, expect this to be the first in a series of blog posts that are NOT weeks apart from each other. And I apologize in advance: they may be lengthy. The topic of this one: well, the title says it all, I think.


Ok so down to business:

The remarkable and terrifying ascent of Sarah Palin to the national stage is so problematic in so many ways that I could probably write quite literally a hundred separate blog posts about it. There’s the sexism, the republicanism, the global warming, the foreign policy, the fucked up campaigning, the terrifying ambition, the cold heartless and oh-so-creepy way in which she responded to gwen iffil’s question about “what if the worst were to happen,” the accent that I think she may be exaggerating…seriously, the list goes on for miles. But today I’d like to focus on just one issue, and this is one that is not entirely Sarah Palin’s fault, although she’s surely not helping. I call it the war on intelligence.

This has been a common theme in politics for frankly as long as I can remember, but now that I’m old enough to care, I have to point out that it’s getting dangerous. The idea that it’s more important for a candidate to sell him/herself as likeable, and “average,” than it is to provide policy recommendations and prove him/herself knowledgeable in areas of domestic and foreign policy is deeply, deeply troubling, and nowhere is it more clear than in the Republican Party's marketing of Gov. Sarah Palin.

As Palin quite literally can’t seem to stop saying, she’s a “Washington outsider,” a “hockey mom,” and all those other run-of-the-mill, joe six-pack type terms that, when overused, can turn a vice presidential debate into a disastrous drinking game. Say it ain’t so, joe! Doggone it, she’s gone just a little overboard trying to be folksy and down-home. But my real problem with this is not how f*cking annoying she gets when she says “you betcha” for the ten millionth time, its that people actually LIKE this shit. People enjoy it when she replaces substance with fake authenticity. And yes, I realize that’s an oxymoron. at least i know what an oxymoron is.

As Barack Obama would say, “let’s be clear:” I understand why people want a president or vice president they can relate to. You want someone who you think you can trust to share your values. You want someone who appears to have respect for people like yourself, because if they don’t respect you, they may not have your best interests in mind. I get that. I agree with it. But that’s no longer what this is about. With Sarah Palin, you’re not getting a politician you can relate to, you’re getting a politician who IS you. And YOU are not qualified to run this country.

I think it was Maureen Dowd, shockingly enough, who verbalized it so well in a mock-conversation (god, she loves those) between Barack Obama and President Bartlett from The West Wing. Bartlett, in Dowd’s column, says, “Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence.” That’s just it. What in the name of all that is holy is everyone’s problem with excellence? Relatability is important, but more important, I want the person or persons I elect to office to be intelligent. I want someone capable. I want someone who understands economics better than I do, not someone whose confusion reminds me of my own and evokes my empathy. I want someone whose foreign policy plan would consist of something more than not second-guessing Israel. Sure, I want someone who reads the newspaper often enough to know which newspapers she reads, but that’s setting the bar a little low, no? I’d rather have someone who reads several newspapers and understands the nuance of what she reads. I’d rather have someone who not only understands economics better than I do (another seriously low bar), but understands economics well enough to handle the current crisis. I’d rather have someone excellent.

Running the country is a big job. Its one that I, after four years at an “elite” college, am in no way qualified to do. I would hope that the people who are actually campaigning for the job would have an interest in proving to me that they, in fact, know more than I do. But instead, the Republican Party seems intent on proving that they’re exactly like me. Worse, they seem intent on proving that I, with my Ivy League education, my love for arugula, and my newfound ability to pronounce Ahmadinejad, am “elite,” and that they are even more “average,” which in their twisted world means “better.” *I* recently injured myself trying to hang a picture on my wall. I like to dream that come January, our country will be led by people who pride themselves in being smarter than me.

To be honest, the really troubling part about all of this is the fact that I think we all know by now it’s not just the presidential election. The war on intelligence has permeated most aspects of American life. Being smart is just not cool. Our public education system is terrible, but being a champion of education will not get you terribly far politically. Creativity is excessively undervalued in this country, and, whether it is an accurate representation or not, the image of the “average American” that is being put forward by politicians is one of an unambitious, hard-working, not terribly bright, white man who likes beer and hunting, loves his family, and has no interest in politics outside his home town. My suspicion is that very few people actually relate to that characterization of the “average American.” The idea that white Americans living in small towns across the U.S. care about nothing other than working 9 to 5 and getting health care is frankly insulting: my suspicion, and by all means correct me if I’m wrong, is that people all over America have diverse interests beyond their basic human needs, and that given the opportunity to give their children a better education, no one would turn it down because it’s “elite.” So enough of this nonsense. I say we fight back and say “no” to mediocrity. And while we’re at it, dear god can we please say “no” to Sarah Palin?


Ok, I'll leave you for now, but here are just a few things I feel compelled to share with you, that I couldn't quite work into the post:

a great op-ed in salon on media reactions to palin

and this:



that's all, folks!