I Write Letters

Hello there!  Been away for a while, under a great cloud of some pretty freakout inducing health issues, and just didn't have the creative spirit to, well, create.  THANK GOD for my misguided boyfriend Charles Krauthammer.  He obviously knew this and penned one of his obnoxious missives just for me.  Wasn't that sweet?

Chuck's argument against appointing Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's senate seat from the Washington Post:

Right idea, wrong argument. The problem with Caroline Kennedy's presumption to Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat is not lack of qualification or experience.  The Senate houses lots of inexperienced rookies -- wealthy businessmen, sports stars, even the occasional actor.

The problem is Kennedy's sense of entitlement. Given her rather modest achievements, she is trading entirely on pedigree.

I hate to be a good-government scold, but wasn't the American experiment a rather firm renunciation of government by pedigree?

I, of course, couldn't let this pass me by, health and ennui be damned:

This is lazy writing. Your premise of Caroline Kennedy's sense of entitlement is not supported by facts.  What are you basing this statement on?  What you have pointed out is others' and apparently your sense of Caroline Kennedy's entitlement.  You do this all the time.  You state what can only be in another's mind without proof to back it up.  Lazy and if I may say, entitled opinion reporting.  It's true if you say it? Gah!

It's not that I disagree with his idea that Kennedy should not get the senate seat on her name alone.  I think it's a bad idea for the government by pedigree reason that Chucky states.  What gets my goat about Chuck is his assumption of others' thoughts and beliefs and stating them as facts in The Washington Post.  Gah, indeed.

I'm Tryin' To Drive You To The Sto'

Something about this article written by Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post about the historic momentousness of Obama's election bugs me.  For those of you who are not aware, Kathleen Parker, southern white conservative, wrote an article in WaPo about how Gov. Palin was monumentally unprepared to be vice-president and was vilified by readers (who sent responses suggesting that her mother should have had an abortion).  Watching the right lose their minds that yet another conservative had "betrayed" the party by disagreeing and calling it how she saw it could not be more illuminating on how the Republican Party has devolved into lunatics.  (Note that the "lose their minds" link is from an article Parker wrote for Town Hall and I direct you to the comments.)

Yet and still, she is a southern white conservative.

But like many other Americans, especially Southerners, my life is inextricably intertwined with the African American experience. It isn't just a bit of thread or texture in life's tapestry, but is central to my emotional and psychological constitution.

Although a child during the civil rights era, I remember the protests, the sit-ins, the march from Selma. I remember the day Martin Luther King was shot -- and the following morning at school when all the black students stormed out of class, prompting my nervous English teacher to send for smelling salts.

Most important to me personally, I remember Dorothy, the woman who cared for me after my mother's death, and her two much-older children, Ronnie and Sylvia, who were an intimate part of my very young life.

I eventually learned that Dorothy was black, but to me, she was simply "Dot," the first person I was consciously aware of loving and the only mother I knew. My own was gone before I was able to discern that a mother is an entity separate from oneself.

She goes on to tell the story of how she spent her days in the "colored part of town" (she quotes this in her article) at Dot's mother's grocery store and how she couldn't go to the movies with Dot because the theater was segregated and the balcony was where blacks sat and how she saw the unfairness of this at four years old.

The article, I suppose, is touching.  She's plainly writing from her heart in remembrance of the only mother she knew.

Yet...

My grandmother was a domestic, cook mostly -- she could throw down in the kitchen.  But she also had been a maid and did other domestic chores for well-to-do white families on the Upper West Side.  One job she had was ironing the family's clothes.  This she did in the basement of the building in a cage.  Let me say that again.  In a cage.  I seem to remember witnessing an 8 year old dress down my grandmother ironing his family's clothes in her cage, about something I do not remember.

This picture came to mind as I read Parker's article, fairly or unfairly.  That is, as I see it, my issue.  Parker admits her privilege and though I have problems with the whole "magic negro" aspect of her recounting, I choose to believe she is probably sincere in her feelings.

Yet and still...

A commenter to Parker's article in the WaPo points out her article "The Bubba Vote" in the Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2008.  Referring to a voter's proclamation that he would not vote for Obama because he would be more comfortable with "someone who was full-blooded American who was president":

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

[snip]

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

[snip]

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

[snip]

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this...

During the campaign she trumpeted the Republic strategy of making Obama foreign and un-American, when in fact (and I believe she knew this), he was no more foreign and un-American than her beloved Dot.

I wonder how four year old Kathleen Parker would judge her own future actions.

What's To Be Done

Riffing off of David Ignatius' column in WaPo about negotiations with the Taliban, Spencer Ackerman brainstorms about what's to be done.  Addressing what the Taliban wants coming to the table, Spencer posits:

There are concerns about all of these, and, above all, a meta-concern about the Taliban's seriousness in negotiating. Since coming back from Afghanistan, I've been experimenting with a prospective policy: bolster U.S. forces and concentrate entirely on the east, where the U.S. command has the greatest and most direct influence, and where the first-order threat -- Taliban and al-Qaeda elements -- either are, or border, or infiltrate into. This involves essentially ignoring the rest of Afghanistan, which is the biggest flaw in my argument. But anyway -- COIN the hell out of the east, as much as specific conditions allow: my interviews with Afghans in Paktia and Khost suggest to me that there's a base of support for U.S. troops provided that they're seen as actively improving the security of the populace, and delivering results. Take that opportunity for the next one to three years. In Year One, intensify calls to Taliban and affiliated elements for reconciliation with the national government (Karzai or otherwise). That way, the choice posed to the insurgency is fairly clear -- you can fight and die, or you can have a piece of the action. And you publicly announce that the prize for a thoroughgoing reconciliation with the Afghan government -- judged by whatever mechanism can be created -- is a U.S. withdrawal. The flip side to that is if the Taliban doesn't come to the table, we stay and fight.

This is above my pay grade, but I think it's a good thing that there is more thought put into strategy in Afghanistan than Hulk Crush.  It didn't work in Iraq.

Chucky's Back In His Envy Wheelhouse--I think

I skimmed this article by my misguided boyfriend Charles Krauthammer and want to write about it but will have to do it this weekend.  I'm a wage slave and have to go to work.  Read it and tell me what you think.

I Write Letters

My misguided boyfriend Charles Krauthammer is at it again.  Coveting.

Charles opens with:

Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

Charles closes with:

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

Are he and Maureen having an imagery throw-down?

I, of course, could not turn away from my responsibility of pulling him back from the brink.  That's what a good girlfriend does when she sees her spinning guy sinking further in the quicksand.  I write in the WaPo comments section.

Oh, good lord, Mr. Krauthammer. I hate addressing this to you personally, but I can no longer watch this. It's like a train wreck. Please. Let this craven envy go. It'll lead you to no good end. Column after column of yours that I have read, you have methodically ignored Obama's clear expression of his policies, his ideas, his respect and love for the country, to proclaim him what he plainly is not. You don't have to like or agree with him, but for the love of all that is holy, please base your criticisms on what is there, not on what you believe you can conjure or transparently wish you possessed.

He won't listen.

I Write Letters

George Will in the Washington Post with what has become the talking point that Obama is winning but not winning by enough:

But polls taken since his trip abroad do not indicate that Obama succeeded in altering the oddest aspect of this presidential campaign: Measured against his party's surging strength in every region and at every level, he is dramatically underperforming. Surely this fact is related to anxieties about his thin résumé regarding national security matters, the thinnest of any major party nominee since Wendell Willkie in 1940. But the fact also might be related to fatigue from too much of Obama's eloquence, which is beginning to sound formulaic and perfunctory.

I'm not certain how "dramatically underperforming" Sen. Obama is based on how "thin" his resume is "regarding national security matters."  Assuming that is true, I believe this is a yardstick Will reserves only for Obama.  Try as I might, I cannot find anything referring to George W. Bush's national security expertise before he ran for presidential office in 2000.  (If anyone as a link, I'd appreciate it and will make a correction.)  And Obama's opponent?  When did he become the national security cipher and why wasn't he applying his superpowers during Katrina or doesn't national security apply to within as well as without.

But that national security expertise aside, why is it incumbent upon Obama to obliterate?  This is a country of many different people, beliefs and ideas.  Wouldn't it be expected that not everyone in the country feels that he is their preferred candidate?  I won't even go into the "yeah, he's winning but not by enough" trope I keep hearing.  That's a shifty talking point made to try and convince people that their belief in Obama is not wholly justified or acceptable.

The whole of Will's Op-Ed piece is complaining about Obama's ability to publicly speak in coherent sentences and inspirational themes.  No slacker in the using 10 words when 7 will do arena, I would think Will would pick on something else.  Is his bar set so very low by the mundane expression of the existing President that he considers Obama completing a thought high-minded?

And, again, I will refer to the underlying current of envy present in all of these conservative Messrs. Ed sent out to shore up Sen. McCain's candidacy by superficially criticizing Obama.

Will's final paragraph:

Swift and sweeping changes are almost always calamitous consequences of calamities -- often of wars, sometimes of people determined to "remake the world." Wise voters -- polls might be telling us that there are more of them than Obama imagines -- hanker for candidates whose principal promise is that they will do their best to muddle through without breaking too much crockery.

I cannot express how irritated I was by this paragraph.  So as evidenced by the past 8 years banality is best?  Mediocrity works?  Breaking crockery is a no no, but setting lives asunder with no clear design is okay?

Wild hair?  Up my ass wriggling like a Slinky.  I write:

What is most disheartening about this op-ed is the same thing that is depressing about all of the essays criticizing Sen. Obama's expressions of what he wishes to bring about. They try to make me feel guilty for believing my country can do better, much better, than it has done these last years. To suggest that any president elected merely must tread water to be successful is insulting not just to me as an American but to both candidates.

Doing just good enough is for pundits too entrenched in their own ideology to venture to excellence by using their craft to actually elevate the discussion instead of snarking with half-truths and obviously envious talking points. Doing just good enough leads countries to ill-advised wars with the military they have. Doing just good enough mires us all in mediocrity. Yet doing just good enough seems to be the course Mr. Will advises for the next president.

I think we can do much much better than that and none of us should expect anything less.

Look here. I'm sick to death of picking apart both candidates with shallow purpose. My support is evident and I feel my preferred candidate is up to the task. But so might be the other if he would stop listening to those who would advise that he be just good enough.

On an interesting note, as I wrote this letter I flashed back to my mother speaking about how if I only applied myself, I could get all A's in third grade.  Just doing good enough wasn't good enough, she implied.  Apparently, for George Will, it is.

I Write Letters

I don't just glurg up stuff here, y'all.  I also write letters to online newspapers when I read op-eds that put a bee in my bonnet.

In today's LA Times op-ed, John R. Bolton gave his Ming the Merciless criticism of Sen. Obama's speech in Berlin.  Yeah, that John Bolton, the U.N. hater who said:

There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.

So, with my bee firmly in my bonnet, I write to the LA Times:

Well, of course, Robert R. Bolton would bristle at Sen. Obama’s Berlin speech setting forth the concept of a world coalition. He and his PNAC colleagues have stated for all to know that they hold no quarter for any country, or indeed any of the US citizenry, unless it is in the service of US aggressive isolationist superiority.

In his criticism of Sen. Obama’s speech, he states:

“That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a ‘united’ world.”

This statement is also what is so patriotically maddening about Mr. Bolton and his ilk. This country by dint of its size, population, culture, spirit, technical and human resources could never be “just one more nation.” We are not now nor will we ever be a shrinking violet. Devising a worldwide interconnected policy for dealing with the problems that plague us all is not the weakness Mr. Bolton believes it to be, nor is it naïve. It is what is necessary when the policy of bludgeoning the world does not work.

For your information and something I didn't know until a friend sent to me the below-referenced publication, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), was a neoconservative think tank, which counts as directors or signatories (in addition to Bolton), Fox News blood-monger William Kristol, Dick "I Sneer Even When I Smile" Cheney, Donald "Army We Got" Rumsfeld, Charles "My Boyfriend" Krauthammer, and I. Lewis "Already Has A Ludicrous Nickname" Libby.  Quite a cabal.

In September of 2000, the PNAC published a white paper entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses:  Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century."  It is a 90 page how-to for building up the military for world domination based on the premise that the U.S. has vanquished communism and now has a responsibility to, well, dominate, as well as protect U.S. "interests" (read "oil") in the Gulf.  And oh, destroy Saddam Hussein; that too.  I would like to link to it so you could read it for yourself, but the PNAC site where it was housed, has been taken offline.  I am too cynical to believe that the Skull and Bones-esque organization has come to an end.

For the record, I believe that a strong military is never a bad thing, if only that it helps guarantee that it will never be used.  Walking softly carrying a big stick is a viable policy in my view.

The money quote from the September 2000 paper:

Further, the process of [military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

And just a year later...

The PNAC undoubtedly is old news to those who pay closer than the scant attention I have paid to politics in the past.  Of course I knew that President Bush and his administration were less than honorable, but just how dedicated to their proposition they were comes to me sadly; both for my ignorance and their venality.

Evil-doers indeed.