Adventures in Landlording
The house that Karen and I bought this year includes a one-bedroom cottage in the back of the property, and we inherited a tenant with it as well. I have a strict policy of non-engagement with her, largely because my last landlord was so boundaryless, and I have no intention of making E, our tenant, uncomfortable.
So really, we probably don't even chat weekly, but when we cross each others' paths, we always exchange pleasantries.
This morning, I was taking laundry down to the basement, which requires going outside and around the side of the house. E was leaving her cottage and heading for her car and she remarked that it is really a beautiful day. I noted that indeed it is, and lovely for doing things outside. She said, "Yeah, I'm off to a funeral."
What do you say to that? Nice day for it? Wow...
November 25, 2006
Iraqi Chaos
Does it appear to anyone else that Iraq has passed one of those invisible tipping points, tilting irrevocably towards accelerating violence and mayhem? I think Iraq has passed the point of no return, where civil war is strongly under way and won't be contained.
So the question remains: to what beach does the United States swim in this ocean of bad options? There isn't a choice out there that lacks incredible down sides: begin a full withdrawal, leaving these people we said we'd liberate to the predations of a spasm of violence with no end in sight; stay, and continue to count the death toll at icasualties.org; or some in-between triangulation that leaves our forces there but keeps them out of harm's way, which in some ways is the most morally cruel of the three.
November 22, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving
I spent some time this evening chatting with a friend I haven't spoken to for seven or eight years. I'm trying to remember when and why we lost touch, and I don't remember. So much was going wrong at that point in my life, the details have long since escaped me.
In the morning, Karen and I will pack the dogs into the car of a friend I don't see nearly often enough, and we'll all head over to Huntsville. Tomorrow night, after we eat with our respective families, she'll pick me and Karen up and we'll go and spend a few hours with friends from high school.
What am I thankful for? Time, and its willingness to let the bad stuff slide away and provide fresh vantage points from which to view yourself and all the people you love.
Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving too.
November 20, 2006
Slam Blogging
We had the Art Amok Poetry Slam on Saturday, which requires many more words than I will devote to this post, but I feel like I should log for my own memory that I pulled two tens in the scoring for my second piece. As far as I can recall, that's a first.
Music Worth Hearing
Karen picked up a copy of Julia Carroll's Migrating South last week, so I tucked it into my iPod and cannot stop listening to it.
It's largely acoustic, but seriously hard edged. Really good, complex lyrics and phrasing. Good stuff.
November 19, 2006
Travel and Performance Weekend
Sorry, was in Knoxville on Friday and then had Art Amok and poet houseguests through this morning. Fantastic weekend though. I'm sure news happened, but I've made a point of not bothering with such things.
November 15, 2006
Georgia's Last Congressional Seats Called
For Dems. Barrow and Marshall won.
In the 2006 election, the GOP did not field any candidates who will succeed a Democrat in the House, Senate, or state Governors' mansions. This circumstance has not happened in the post-war era, if ever in US history. The Democratic Party completely shut out the GOP.
Now, you have to govern. Do it right, or we'll throw you overboard too.
Some Denominations Redouble Effort Against Gays
Same old, same old, but I got a kick out of this line:
"In our day and time, no other sin marches so defiantly across our national landscape," Mark Harris, the head of the [North Carolina Baptist] committee that introduced the measure, told the 2,600 delegates, or "messengers," assembled at a convention hall in Greensboro, N.C.Let's review, shall we? The seven mortal sins within Catholic theology are Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth.
But it is homosexuality that marches most defiantly across our national landscape? More than greed, more than pride, more than lust, more than envy, more than gluttony, more than wrath, more than sloth?
These guys are a little misguided, don't you think?
November 14, 2006
Troubling Allegations on Murtha
Pay for play is one of those nasty tools that the GOP elevated to an art form as the majority party in Congress. One of the Dems' most compelling promises in the campaign was to clean up Washington.
Can Murtha be counted on to be on board with that? He'd better. If I were Stephen Colbert, I would definitely make it clear that Jack Murth is on notice.
November 13, 2006
What?
Now the question is whether a press corps that has been openly at odds with the president will hold the newly empowered Democrats to the same tough standards.Admittedly, the press has done a slightly better job in its watchdog role since the aftermath of Katrina made it clear that the public would support such a move, but only Howard Kurtz can look at the media since 9/11 and accuse it of holding the president to "tough standards".
My prediction: The press, ever fearful of charges of liberal bias, will eviscerate Democrats at every turn, but most especially when they're right. The critical thing for the GOP Think Tankers who have people like Howard Kurtz on speed dial is that the Democrats never be right on an issue. The more moderate the Dems are, the more viscious will be the criticism. The more realistic and achievable their policies are, the more the press will mock them for the attempts.
This is why the Netroots is critical in the next two years. Our obligation is not only to encourage sensible policy, but also to legitimately criticize when the Dems fail to provide that. I see an entirely moderate, big tent Democratic party that will arrive at policy prescriptions through discussion and debate, and legislate as narrowly as possible. These are usually considered good, even conservative notions. In a reasonable politics, this type of governance would be welcomed, but we have the politics of Rush Limbaugh to contend with.
For those hardy souls who regularly check in here, I can guarantee that I will criticize the Democrats when I think their policies are stupid, and I'll criticize them when I think they've played their hands badly. I watch politics because I love America, and if the Democrats become as threatening to American liberty as the GOP has become (we're all screwed) I'll be blistering in my criticism, right up until they ship me off to Gitmo.
I love America, so I welcome this change toward less government, fiscal sanity, and responsible international policy. These are the broad outlines I see from the election last week, and I intent to hold the Democratic Party accountable for following this path. For the time being, I believe they are worthy of a lot of trust in this, but should they let us down, I won't mince words.
Next RNC Head to Repudiate Southern Strategy?
Maryland's Michael Steele, who may well rise to head the RNC when Ken Mehlman departs in January, has apparently gone on the record opposing the GOP's Southern Strategy, whereby the party runs on divisive issues rooted to cultural prejudice (specifically, racism) in order to eek our bare majorities of ideologically pure partisans.
Okay, that might be a biased way of stating it. Here's how Chris Cillizza puts it: "The use of hot-button racial issues to lure southern white voters to the Republican Party."
Steele says, "It has been a continual process since 1992 of the breakdown of that southern strategy and what has to happen is our party, like the Democrat [sic] party, not only has to stand for ideas, it also has to stand on principle, and it has to put into action things that touch the people of this country in a real way," without seeming to recognize that if the GOP loses the south, it's got absolutely nowhere to go. It would spend a generation in the tiniest of minorities in the House and Senate.
Does Steele think it's feasible to recover a moderate wing after the last half decade of ideological battery? Movement Conservatives like Ann Coulter have written about moderate Republicans with at least as much venom as she reserves for Democrats (and, noticeably, more than she dishes out for terrorists and other actual enemies of America), so I have trouble seeing how, in the current environment, the GOP can even realistically court political moderates.
Good luck to them though. America needs two strong, inclusive parties, and right now the GOP is enormously weakened by its total captivity to rigid conservative ideologues.
November 11, 2006
DC Elite Furious At Dean For... Winning
Howard Dean raised a record-shattering $51 million for the Democratic Party for the 2006 cycle, a 20% increase over the 2002 midterm cycle. He put money into Virginia's off-year governor's race, which helped keep the seat in Democratic hands and arguably assisted the 2006 Democratic Senate nominee in that state, Jim Webb.
Howard Dean put boots on the ground in previously forfeited states like Indiana, which saw a pickup of no fewer than three House seats in the cycle.
At Salon, Joe Conason explains the 50-State Strategy shift this way:
What Dean and his organizers created, however, was an environment that allowed insurgents and outliers as well as the party's chosen challengers to ride the national wave of revulsion against conservative rule. That enterprise, in turn, surprised and overwhelmed the Republican capacity to respond. Faced with many more viable challenges than anticipated, the Republicans made mistakes in allocating resources -- and were forced to defend candidates in districts that are usually safe.And it played a real part in the historic shift of both the House and the Senate to Democratic hands, as well as a revitalized, intellectually diverse Democratic Party that can lead America in the 21st Century.
So how has the Democratic establishment responded to our historic sweep of the Congress and the nation's governor's mansions? By pushing for Dean to step down at DNC.
Is James Carville kidding? You get rid of coaches when the team is losing, James, not when the team is winning.
When the Military Commissions Act was passed by the Senate in September, I wrote this piece at Shakespeare's Sister, having ended my financial support of Democratic Party and calling for others to do so. Today, to show my support for Howard Dean, I renewed my Democracy Bond, a monthly payment to the DNC designed to reduce the influence of big money contributors and allow ordinary people like me (and you) to truly control politics in America.
I have also created a Democracy Bond fundraising page here. If you have not yet purchased a Democracy Bond, now is the time to do so. We know the type of dirty politics that Republicans revel in, and if we want a better politics for our country, we're going to have to buy it ourselves. Whether you can contribute $5 a month or $20, you'll know that you have become the financial underpinning of a politics of ideas.
And if the Democratic Party fails in that regard, you can revoke your support in a way that actually hurts them. Democracy Bonds give you the power to make change happen. I encourage you to become an ongoing supporter of Howard Dean's DNC.
November 10, 2006
Lieberman To Remain a Dem
We'll never know if he would have jumped ship had the Senate stayed GOP, but since it went Dem, so will Joe Lieberman.
November 09, 2006
Mehlman Out at End of Year
Oh Ken, we've had such fun together. You were going to lead a GOP that actively reached out to black evangelicals by pounding away at gay people. But somewhere between "macaca" and "Call me, Harold", that fell apart.
You were going to lead a GOP that brought Hispanics into its big tent. You didn't tell them that this was so Tom Tancredo of Colorado could bludgeon them with circus-sized hammers, but they seem to have gotten the point.
You ran Bush's 2004 race, skillfully courting rural evangelicals with a strange mix of faith-based chatter and fear the queer ballot initiatives. You, the bachelor who won't publicly acknowledge your heterosexuality.
We've had a good run of years together Ken. You demolished the historic wing of your own party known as "moderates", alienated the vast majority of Americans, and guided your party from being one of national aspirations to a merely regional party guided by the self interest of southern evangelicals. It's quite a track record.
I'd love to say I won't miss you, but the truth is I will. I'm one of the many political watchers out in the hinterlands who believes that you are a gay man, and I admit to having spent far too much time these last years wondering how it is that you could dance so close to both the corridors of power and the closet door, while knifing in the back so many people just like you.
Good luck Ken. I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for, and I hope it brings you joy in the end.
Massachusetts Legislature Mortally Wounds Gay Marriage Ban
Looks like there will be no amendment on the ballot and that legally married gay couples in Massachusetts are secure for now. Good news.
Digby's Right
The GOP is the Southern Party, and Southern interests are not the interests of the rest of the United States.
I've been wanting to write a post very much along the lines of Digby's, and hopefully will get around to it. What we're seeing is a Democratic party with a broad ideological spectrum that is capable of debating ideas and distilling solutions as narrowly or broadly as required, but one that will do so through the process of a conversation with many voices.
Read Digby. I've got to get to Cliterati. A Southern progressive's reaction to his post will be forthcoming this weekend.
I envy Digby both his writing ability and his ability to write lengthy, well-thought posts during the week.
Ann Coulter
Is anyone else delighting in watching the right wing pundits suffer? If so, you'll enjoy this from Ann Coulter. Her canny take on the election: "So however you cut it, this midterm proves that the Iraq war is at least more popular than Bill Clinton was."
More on His Out-of-Touchness
I consider to wonder who in the administration actually knows what's happening in the real world after Bush's insistence at his Wednesday presser that, as late as Tuesday, he believed the GOP would retain majorities in both houses of congress.
This New York Times piece has some excellent examples of post-election jockeying, but near the bottom, it offers this information:
Until the end, keeping in character and hewing to longstanding political strategy, Mr. Rove presented an optimistic front, telling anyone who would listen that the party would hold control of the House and the Senate. Now, his aides say they knew a month ago how much trouble they were in, at least in the House. Three weeks before the election, various efforts to crunch polling data and find a path toward success kept coming to the same best case result: the Democrats would take 17 seats.Did Rove decide not to burden the President with this news? What other information is the inner circle keeping from the President?
A Last Bit of Rubber Stamping Before They Go Home
Bush wants John Bolton confirmed as UN Ambassador by the lame duck Congress that was just overwhelmingly rejected by the American public, and he wants Robert Gates' confirmation hearing conducted by the same gang that can't shoot straight.
Don't do it guys. The new Congress was elected in large part to practice oversight. The new Congress should have the reins on the confirmation hearings.
This is why Bush pushed Rummy out instantly--so he could get Rumsfeld out of harm's way and his new guy in without too much scrutiny.
Makes sense to me
I guess everyone really is feeling better. I hope there's still enough left for George Allen.
November 08, 2006
The Senate Is Ours
The Democratic Party has wrested control of both houses of Congress.
Additionally, as far as I can tell, there is no Republican candidate for a federal office or a governorship in the United States who has succeeded a Democrat.
The American people have spoken. Karl Rove's politics has played out to its inescapable conclusion. We have divided government again. Thank God.
The Degree of His Out-of-Touchness
In his press conference today, Bush twice noted that even yesterday, election day, he thought Republican candidates would do fine and his Republican majorities would come through intact. This despite more than a year of polls illustrating the public's extreme dissatisfaction with his Republican majorities in Congress and, of course, with George Bush himself. He believed this despite months of consistent polling data showing, race by race, huge losses for Republicans. He believed this despite the counsel of numerous members of his own party.
I've been pondering his comments throughout the afternoon. I saw a comment in some news report from some Republican or another who said roughly, "We didn't figure out fast enough that Iraq was going downhill. We believed our talking points for too long." Meanwhile, the rest of America was watching the news.
And that's the difference, isn't it? There is a core group of Americans who have told themselves that anything in the media is a lie. George Bush and his inner circle are part of that. Look at how long it took them to figure out that New Orleans was in trouble. Look at how they praise an incredibly uncertain and challenging economy.
This is one of the key points of disconnect between Bush and his base and the rest of America. It's a fascinating comment, because it shows that--at least sometimes--Bush actually believes the sunny crap coming out of his mouth. Even at his press conference today he repeatedly deflected suggestions that voters were showing their displeasure with Iraq by talking about corruption and ethics. ("It wasn't just Iraq; it's also that we're a bunch of crooks!")
It's one thing to think that Bush is lying, because if he's lying then behind the lie he actually knows the truth. Something far more sinister is happening here, and it's unknowable how widespread it is in his inner circle. Bush isn't lying. Bush believed as late as yesterday that the voters support him and his policies and hate Democrats the way he hates Democrats and could never vote for them.
Bush doesn't know the truth. The President of the United States doesn't know basic truths about the world and the policies he has unleashed on it. Does Karl? Does Dick?
Who in this White House knows the truth? Anyone?
We're Gonna Win the Senate
I was wrong. Allen's trailing noticeably in Virginia's extremely close Senate race. The Senate is ours. I think this means Joe will continue to caucus with the Dems. What this means should (God forbid) Bush get to pick another SCOTUS nominee is anyone's guess. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
Wednesday Morning
The worst case scenario seems to put the Dems at 49 in the Senate (best case puts them at 51). I thought they'd get to 48. It's good to be wrong.
Dems Take House
I'm crying with a subdued joy, recognizing that a great evil--the Karl Rove strategy of politics--is being lifted from my country. Oh God. I hoped; I continue to hope, and I will be up for a while hoping for clarification on the Senate. I still think the Dems will fall short, but the win of the House is a big deal. Karl Rove's brand of base-only politics has failed. Thank God. Now, maybe now, we can hope again in America.
Speaker Pelosi. It already feels like a cool breeze on a hot day. The wind of change. Happy election day. It'll get better still.
November 07, 2006
The Iraq Midterm
Just in from a rainy night of voting. Happily, the polling place was packed out, and I'm hearing on the news that turnout here in Georgia has been better than expected. Even though we're going to continue to be headed by the GOP down here, I'm really thrilled that so many of all political stripes are participating.
I think at the end of the day, it's fair to say that I cast my ballot for someone who wasn't on it: Scott Love. Scott was a couple of years ahead of me in high school. I remember him as a warm, gregarious, mischievious guy. I remember that he was kind, and for whatever reason, I never expected kindness in high school.
My friend Jane had a huge crush on Scott our junior or senior year of high school. Much more clearly than I remember Scott himself, I remember going out one teenaged weekend night, across town to the "ghetto" section of Huntsville, Alabama, to attempt to steal the street sign for Love Drive. Lisa drove her car up over the curb in a public housing project and I, the tallest of the three of us, stood on the hood of her civic and learned that they really strap those signs on. We didn't get the Love Drive sign, and Scott drifted out of Jane's life while he pursued his own.
About a year ago, Jane told me that Scott had tracked her down on the internets and that they had been corresponding. He was in Kuwait, safe and sound, had married, had a kid, and gotten divorced. She was excited by this turn of events, and was cautiously anticipating his return home.
And then, on June 7, Scott was killed by an IED in Iraq.
I've seldom dealt with the death of a loved one in my life, and I count myself lucky for that. I often experience death the way astronomers seek planets orbiting distant suns: by watching the gravitational effects of the hidden body on the bright star.
It is hard to watch my lifelong friend wobble beneath of weight of events beyond my ability to control. So tonight, I cast my ballot for Scott, and for Jane, and for the mother, or sister, or girlfriend who will greet a uniformed military officer at her door in coming days. I cast my ballot for parents who shouldn't have to be handed a carefully folded American flag. I cast my ballot so that fewer families and friends will shoulder the weight of losing a loved one.
Jane isn't one to wobble. She started the website HelpStopTheWar.org. Check it out, and remember that one of the number in the upper right of the page is Scott Love, a graduate of Grissom High School in Huntsville, Alabama, whose smile persists in my memory all these years later.
November 06, 2006
Gay + Marriage
David Klinghoffer uses NRO to press the case that it's more moral for a gay man to marry a woman than it is for a gay man to live as an openly gay man.
Any straight women out there care to comment on this? Do you think it's your job to be a moral test for your husband, or a loving companion and wife to him?
November 03, 2006
My Favorite Race
It's now Friday afternoon, and no post-October surprise has been sprung. Well, okay, I'm not an evangelical and hadn't heard of the newest gay American until he was outed yesterday. I guess that counts as a November surprise for some.
So, as things go into the last crazy days and the few remaining undecided voters make up their minds whether to vote for more of the same or vote for change, I thought I'd highlight the race featuring the best-named candidates that I've seen this cycle:
Viriginia's 5th District takes the prize, where a Republican named Goode has been running ahead of a Democrat named Weed for the duration. That's right, it's the Goode-Weed race, my frivolously favorite contest of the 2006 election.
November 02, 2006
Rothenberg Predicts Big Democratic Wins
I think he's off by some in each category. I'm not a professional poll watcher, and I don't have his years of experience doing this, but when I look at the numbers I see some races tightening and anticipate much more modest gains in the House than Rothernberg. I'm still skeptical that the Dems will take the Senate.
Rothenberg says 6 Senate seats and 34-40 House seats.
Larry Sabato concurs on the 6 Senate pickups, but has a more modest 27 seat gain in mind for the House.
I don't know how they get to 6 in their Senate math. That is all.
Calling it Like It Is
Slate's Jacob Weisberg tells us "How Republicans Poisoned Politics" with the development of insanely vitriolic--and generally, broadly, willfully false--negative ads.
This dissection plays into my wider analysis that the Bush administration generally and the 2006 election specifically marks the end of politics as Americans have known it for a generation. The venerable "moderate Republicans" have folded to the right wing's extremist agenda over and over again, selling Americans out to fascist-era notions of executive power and fears about security. The Republican Party has been wholly captured by the always one-party South, and the interests and fetishes of the South isolate it again and again in the national discourse.
But it isn't only the GOP that is transformed by these events. Nature abhors a vacuum, and as the GOP's base of support has narrowed to include only evangelicals, the Democratic Party has broadened its recruitment efforts to a diverse array of ideological postures. 2006 is likely to see such varied Democratic wins as liberal Nancy Pelosi in California, conservatives Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana, and a number of moderates from places like... well, all over America if things go as they look to be going. In other words, the "moderate Republicans" are becoming extinct and a generation of "conservative Democrats" is beginning its tenure as the vanguard of the new Democratic Party.
What we have, even if next Tuesday ends up not being a wave election and Dem gains are modest, is a healthy, reinvigorated Democratic Party that is increasingly becoming the home of independents and moderates who used to lean Republican because of the leave-me-alone talk. Two strong political parties means that America wins.
Sabato: GOP Shutout Approaching
As I try to put my metrics together for next Tuesday's election, Larry Sabato has just added a new way to measure whether this year is the "wave" that pundits have been predicting:
...[A]t this moment, the Crystal Ball cannot identify a single election for Senate, House or Governor in which a Republican is likely to succeed a Democrat in office.I'll be putting together the Simianbrain Midterm Races to Watch Guide today and tomorrow, starting with Georgia and the Southeast, then moving more broadly into the competitive House and Senate races in places like New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. There are more, of course. But as Sabato points out, there are extremely few Democrats playing defense this year.
Sabato's November 2 predictions: Dems +6 in the Senate (I still can't quite believe they'll take the Senate, but the odds are better than they were when I wrote my two-week out predictions); Dems +27 in the House.
For what it's worth, because the only numbers that matter are the ones reported by elections officials next Tuesday.
November 01, 2006
"An odd point of view to say the least."
UNCoRRELATED
Typing loudly from Atlanta, GA, since 2003.
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Iraqi Chaos
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