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Obama Win Renews Feeling of Camelot

Sun, 10 Nov 2008 12:15:12 GMT

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If having your picture taken is any indication of how good of a president you are going to be then President-elect Obama is going to be a rock star! I realize shaking hands and kissing babies is what campaigns are all about, but this guy has been in front of more cameras than Britney Spears.

If you search Google images for “Barack Obama” you come up with get this, 17 million images! Compare that to just 2.2 million for President Bush. I even gave the current Prez help by including the search “President Bush”, which only garnered another 1.8 million images. There is no doubt the President-elect likes his picture taken and will have plenty of opportunity to be in front of the cameras during what I hope is two tours of duty as the Commander in chief.

But at some point the honeymoon will be over right? All the cameras and all the swooning will give way to getting down to the matter at hand; repairing this country and putting into action the plans of which half of this country disagreed.

But until the gloves come off enjoy the moment America, you have earned it. From hanging chads to the misery that is 9/11. From the war on terror to the wholesale abandonment of the American spirit and the nuclear holocaust that is the current U.S. economy, the United States needed this win and we needed a feel good story to raise us up by our bootstraps, to prove that with hard work, sweat, and determination anything is possible…literally anything!

There is a feeling that the Obama presidency has all the markings of being the Camelot of this century. This has to be how it must have felt during the Kennedy days. A young, vibrant, attractive couple taking their hard-fought place in the White House, the kids running through the halls of the West Wing, it all seems so surreal. It is a good feeling and I for one am going to enjoy it!

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Italy’s Prime Minister Makes Racial Remark Towards Obama

Thu, 7 Nov 2008 12:00:06 GMT

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Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s gaffe-prone Prime Minister, today found himself accused of racism after calling Barack Obama “suntanned”.

Speaking in Moscow at a joint news conference with President Medvedev, Mr Berlusconi said Mr Obama’s election had been “hailed by world public opinion as the arrival of a Messiah”.

He added: “I will try to help relations between Russia and the United States, where a new generation has come to power. I don’t see problems for Medvedev in establishing good relations with Obama, who is also handsome, young and suntanned”.

Mr Berlusconi said he had intended the remark as a compliment and those who failed to understand this were “imbeciles”.

Here we go, it took less than 24 hours for someone to poke fun at our guy, and the best part is that we are imbeciles if we don’t understand! But maybe we shouldn’t make too much out of it. I mean how many governments has Italy had in the last 50 years?

But this does bring up a point to ponder. Will Obama have a hard time negotiating with some of these Prime Ministers and other world leaders who prefer their presidents fat, old, and white? Would Hilary have just as much of a hurdle had she been elected?

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You’re killing me Ignatius

Sat, 18 May 2008 16:47:43 GMT

posted by usjamerica

David Ignatius’ column today is one-half adolescent love letter to John McCain, and well, another half adolescent love letter to John McCain, held together by a mixture of faulty assumptions and poor analysis. The column at least begins well, with a succinct summary of Obama’s core message and appeal:

One of the most appealing but untested promises of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is that he would break down the partisan divisions in America and govern across party lines. He has a chance to make this gauzy idea of consensus politics concrete in his choice of running mate.

But Ignatius is hardly out of the gate before he reflexively turns to Beltway conventional wisdom (which most of the time is pretty much wrong):

By reaching outside the Democratic Party for his vice presidential nominee — tapping Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, say, or independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg from New York — Obama would in an instant demonstrate that he truly means to change the divisive, lose-lose politics of Washington. It would offer a unity government for a country that seems to want one.

I don’t know if Ignatius has noticed, but President Bush and the Republican Party have historically low approval ratings, so much so, that last Tuesday, Republicans lost a safe seat in one of Mississippi’s whitest and most conservative districts, making that the third Republican defeat in a special election (one of which was former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat). If we can take that as any indication, it’s that voters aren’t terribly interested in a “unity government” so much as they are interested in kicking out the Republican bastards. But come on, who ever let silly things like “facts” get in the way of a good, old-fashioned ode to meaningless bipartisanship?

Next, Ignatius makes his case for why Obama should choose a moderate Republican for his vice president:

There are all sorts of practical arguments against such an unconventional choice — not least that it would upset many of Obama’s liberal Democratic supporters. But it would make a powerful statement that Obama really does want to govern in a different way. It would make “change we can believe in” more than a slogan. [...]

Moreover, Obama needs to counter the charge that he talks a better game about bipartisanship and change than he has actually delivered. His voting record in Illinois and Washington mostly has been that of a conventional liberal, and there are precious few examples of him taking political risks to work across party lines.
McCain, by contrast, has actually fought the kind of bipartisan battles that Obama talks about — from campaign finance to climate change to rules against torture — and he has the political scars to prove it. That’s why the Republican base is still so uneasy about him, because they know that McCain’s natural allies in recent years have been centrist Democrats. By picking a GOP running mate, Obama would outdo McCain — and in the process make some enemies in his own party. That would make him a more appealing candidate, I suspect.

Though McCain certainly deserves credit for moving the ball forward on campaign finance, his recent willingness to violate the spirit (if not the letter) of campaign finance laws signals that he doesn’t actually take his own rhetoric seriously. Now, to be fair, I have to give credit to McCain on climate change. His proposals - though far inferior to Obama’s and Clinton’s plans - are still a step in the right direction and a radical departure from President Bush’s foot-dragging. On torture however, John McCain is worse than a paper tiger. In recent months, he has - despite his sometimes strident rhetoric - emerged as a steadfast defender of President Bush’s torture regime. McCain isn’t principled, and doesn’t bear the “political scars” of anything. What he has is the glowing adulation of a thousand press hacks like Ignatius.

Ignatius’ “bipartisan” John McCain is a far cry from the right-wing, neo-imperialist John McCain currently running for president. And if by “centrist Democrats” he means “Joe Lieberman,” then he’s defining “centrism” as the uncritical embrace of neoconservative aggressive war (Lieberman votes Democratic on everything but national security).

It seems like that for Ignatius, “bipartisanship” means moving to the right and splitting the difference. Which in effect (as we’ve seen), does nothing more than strengthen the hand of the right-wing and put liberals at a disadvantage. I’m for bipartisanship, but only on liberal terms. Democrats should use their leverage to negotiate from a position of strength, and attract Republican support while maintaining Democratic principles. And there’s every indication that Obama is exceptionally skilled at that sort of bipartisanship.

Ignatius spends the rest of his column running through the reasons why Obama specifically should pick Michael Bloomberg (which is a really weird Beltway obsession) or Chuck Hagel (admittedly a decent guy), and he ends his column the same way he begins it, with a deeply flawed misreading of the public’s mood:

If Obama were to run on a unity ticket, it would be a sign that he thinks the nation is in such serious trouble, at home and abroad, that the normal political rules don’t apply. Obama could choose among many fine Democrats for his running mate, but none of them would send such a powerful message to America and the world that he means what he says about turning a page.

Again, Americans don’t want a “unity” ticket or a “bipartisan” administration, they want the Republican Party to leave the scene. I think that - finally - the Democratic Party leadership sees the political value in making clear contrasts and distancing themselves from President Bush and the GOP. With that said, here’s to hoping that they stick to their guns, and disregard everything which comes out of Ignatius’ - or any other outmoded Beltway prognosticator’s - mouth.

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Raw milk crusaders

Sat, 18 May 2008 02:11:49 GMT

posted by usjamerica

In Reason Magazine, Jacob Grier reports on the important but low profile struggle between federal regulators and raw milk farmers:

On May 1, Pennsylvania state troopers arrived at the home of Mennonite farmer Mark Nolt, seizing a reported $20,000 to 25,000 worth of farm equipment and placing Nolt under arrest. His crime? The illegal sale of unpasteurized milk and other dairy products. And Nolt isn’t alone. In February, federal investigators subpoenaed two employees of Mark McAfee’s Organic Pastures Dairy in California. Though the subpoenas do not indicate the purpose of the investigation, McAfee told me the feds were seeking evidence that his dairy was selling unpasteurized milk for human consumption across state lines.

These are just the latest skirmishes in the growing conflict over the right to sell unpasteurized, or “raw” milk. On one side of the fight is an odd coalition of whole foodists, dairy farmers, and libertarians who want the government to butt out of their milk-drinking decisions. On the other side are public health officials and assorted busybodies determined to tighten regulations.

Our regulatory environment is completely bereft of any acknowledgement of contingency or historical circumstance. Regulations are largely reactive measures; they are created in response to abuses with the aim of preventing any further abuses and they are usually crafted within the context of a very specific incident (regardless of how broad they are) or circumstance. This applies to agricultural regulations as much as it does to anything else. Most of our regulations were crafted within the context of large-scale industrial husbandry, where a combination of poor conditions and poor diet yield animals far more likely to develop illness and disease, and far more likely to produce products rife with dangerous bacteria (among other things). Under these conditions, it makes sense that regulators apply regulations vigorously and punish those who refuse to comply.

But every farm isn’t an industrial farm, and not every animal is confined to an industrial life. Even if unpasteurized milk contains a higher concentration of bacteria, it’s likely it is nowhere near as harmful as the bacteria present in industrial dairy, since “raw milk” cows live far healthier (and ecologically sound) lives. With that in mind, it doesn’t make any sense to apply standard regulations to raw dairy farms. Regulators however, oblivious to both history (”grass-eating cows have become so rare that, to California health officials, they seemed unnatural.”) and contingency (to them, what works for one must work for all), refuse to modify their to raw dairy farms (or for that matter, ecologically sustainable farms like Polyface in Virginia).

Now, one solution is for Congress to craft a new set of regulations - specific to small, local farms - allowing them to sell their products as they see fit, with a minimal set of standards to adhere to. And another is simply for Congress to carve out an exception to existing regulations for small, local farms. But both of those solutions would leave for the federal government a part in determining what these farmers can or cannot do with their product, and I’m inclined to say that’s unacceptable. We regulations for industrial farming and husbandry because the negative externalities - disease ridden lagoons of pig shit, for example - are so great as to almost require federal intervention. The same can’t be said for small, local farms. The consequences of small, local farming - whether from the farming itself or vis a vis the farmers and their customers - are so local and so personal as to make it impractical and, frankly, wrong for the federal government to intervene.

I understand the need to regulate certain transactions, but let’s keep things reasonable. There is no reason (outside of a pathological need to control) for preventing a farmer who trusts her product from selling it to a consenting adult aware of the consequences.

Coattails baby, coattails

Sat, 18 May 2008 22:28:42 GMT

posted by usjamerica

Come next January, the 111th Congress could begin its session absent my former “representative” Thelma Drake. And Barack Obama’s presence on the ticket might make that outcome a bit more likely:

Recent polling information has piqued interest in the race between Glenn Nye and Thelma Drake in Virginia’s Second Congressional District. A new poll that shows Drake extremely vulnerable and recent Democratic victories in the South have shown that voters are looking for candidates like Glenn Nye that have forward-looking, independent approaches to solving problems.
Recent Press:
Washington Post: Nye Says He’s Competitive With Drake
“Glenn Nye, a Democrat running in the 2nd Congressional District, released an internal poll today that shows he’s well positioned to unseat incumbent Thelma Drake (R-Va) this year, especially if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is his party’s nominee for president.”