From the Office of the President-Elect

I may be a little late catching on here, but putting his weekly addresses to the nation on YouTube is such a smart move by Obama. Based on what he says here, it sounds like he's going to do his best to drag this country kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, and after using texts and emails to such great effect during his campaign, this seems like a natural next step.

The Art of Politics

One of the most impressive things about Barack Obama’s campaign has been the level of inspiration he brought out in his supporters. We saw the results of that yesterday in the turnout at the polls, but another area where I’ve been equally impressed is in his effect on the artistic community. Obama supporters have produced some amazing images over the past 9 months, starting first and foremost with underground artist Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous “Hope” and “Progress” posters, which were originally produced as an independent guerrilla project, but were soon assimilated as official by the Obama campaign. This iconic image spawned numerous alterations, knockoffs and parodies (including a DNC-specific variation by Fairey himself, created for a certain Denver magazine), but one of my favorite remixes combines Obama and David Bowie circa “Aladdin Sane”.


While Fairey’s image was definitely the highest-profile of the campaign, there’s been plenty of creativity to spread around. A huge amount of original artwork was displayed in Denver during the DNC, but this image, produced recently by illustrator Patrick Moberg in honor of President-Elect Obama’s historic victory, is by far my favorite. Simple, yet effective, it truly embodies the old line about a picture being worth 1,000 words.

I, for one, hope that this creative explosion continues throughout President Obama’s entire term, and that he can continue to inspire all Americans, not just the artists, for years to come. (Clearly, my post-election afterglow hasn’t worn off yet. Hope, baby, hope...)

Change

Thank you, America, for returning to your senses.

Please vote responsibly

If you haven't made it to the voting booth just yet, here’s a little something to help your decision. One heartbeat from the presidency, folks...

Ranting and Raving

Not surprisingly, The New Yorker has endorsed Obama. Also not surprisingly, they give an excellent, clear, carefully considered, and factually-based argument in favor of Obama.

Sadly, I’m afraid this kind of endorsement won’t be enough. If this election was going to be decided simply on cold hard facts and rational thinking about who is going to be the best leader for this country in crisis, Obama could schedule his inauguration right now. Unfortunately, we live in Reality TV Nation, where the presidential election has become nothing more than a popularity contest in which the future of our country hinges on who can come up with the best sound bite. Maybe I have too little faith in the American public, but I have a feeling there are a lot of fairly intelligent but lazy people (along with a whole mess of total idiots) in this country who have been sucked in by the Republican misdirection, and are going to base their vote in the most important election in half a century entirely on the image of a pitbull with lipstick. Look over here, public. Watch the pretty lady, don’t think about that stuff that hurts your brain like the economy (which, by the way, we have no solutions for, because we don’t actually want to fix it). Call me a pessimist, but I fear for the next four years.

On the other hand, if McCain wins, maybe California and New England will secede from the U.S., and I can move back near a beach.

P.S. Have our standards really become that low for our leaders that anyone can crow about how well someone did in a debate just because she didn’t screw up? The whole VP show was pretty disappointing anyway. Trading 30-second sound bites doesn’t really qualify as much of a “debate”.

UPDATE: Happily, I was wrong, and the American public exceeded my expectations for once.

Thinking Clearly

I promise to keep the political posts to a minimum this year (unless McCain wins and that flip-flopping nutjob Palin ends up a heartbeat away from the presidency — then I’ll probably be firing off political posts left and right from Barcelona or Berlin), but I finally got a forwarded email that was worth repeating. It does such a great job of showing how ridiculous the Republican hype machine really is when you break their arguments down. Here it is:

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.” Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack, you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience. If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don't represent America’s. If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Sadly, half of America would read this and completely miss the sarcasm. And that’s why the pessimist in me has this sinking feeling that Obama is going to lose.

McCain image by Steve Sedam/XL Industries.

All About the Benjamins

As if they didn't have enough of a rep as a bunch of money-grubbing fat cats who could care less about the environment, today comes a report that over the past 7 years, ExxonMobil apparently paid a variety of groups nearly $16 million to discredit global warming in different ways. Do they realize no one's forgotten the Valdez spill? The cleanup is still ongoing. So much for my wish for better news in '07.

It's disgusting what greed will do to people (although, a little protection and special treatment from your buddy in the White House usually helps make you feel invincible). Instead of learning a lesson from the Valdez and spending that $16 million to help the environment, EM spends it on trying to fool the public into thinking there's no such thing as global warming, and that we can just go right on using fossil fuels and filling their pockets. Preserve the bottom line at all costs. I guess there's some truth to that "root of all evil" thing. If there's any justice in the world, the next time their board of directors tour one of their refinieries, they'll all fall into a tank of crude and drown. At any rate, as the article says, this isn't the first time EM has been accused of this type of behavior, and two strikes is enough for me. I'll never buy gas from one of Exxon's subsidiaries again (thank you, Good magazine). I know a one-man boycott won't make any kind of dent in their bottom line, but it will make me feel a lot better.

Voice Of Dissent

It's been a while since I've posted anything political, mainly because even talking about Bush gets me so fucking angry, but I read something today that I felt needed to be shared. Somehow, I ended up on John Kerry's email list, and every week or so I'll get an email asking for money to help stop the Republicans from trampling another Constitutional Amendment, exposing another CIA agent, starting another misguided war, or whatever new form of deviousness they've come up with this week. Usually, I skim and delete. But today, I got an email about a speech that Kerry made recently in Boston. There was a link to the text of his speech, so I took a few minutes to read it, and I'm glad I did. It turned out to be the most eloquent, well-thought out, and cohesive condemnation of the Bush administration and the Iraq war that I've seen from anyone, and it made me glad to see that the Democrats might be starting to get their act together and present a viable alternative in 2008. If only they could have done that two years ago, we could have been saved a whole lot of grief. You can bet your ass if Clinton had approved exposing a CIA agent out of vindictiveness and spite, the Republicans would have impeached ol' Bill and had him tarred and feathered and on his way out of Washington faster than you can say "Tom DeLay". But for far too long after 9/11, Democrats have handled speaking out against the President with kid gloves for fear of appearing "unpatriotic", which is complete and utter bullshit. Keeping your mouth shut when a figure of authority is doing something wrong is a lot more unpatriotic than following your leaders blindly, and that's one of the subjects of Kerry's speech. Here's a sample:

America has always rejected war as an instrument of raw power or naked self-interest. We fought when we had to in order to repel grave threats or advance freedom and self-determination in concert with like-minded people everywhere. But our current leadership, for all its rhetoric of freedom and democracy, behaves as though might does make right, enabling us to discard the alliances and institutions that served us so well in the past as nothing more now than impediments to the exercise of unilateral power.

America has always been stronger when we have not only proclaimed free speech, but listened to it. Yes, in every war, there have been those who demand suppression and silencing. And although no one is being jailed today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently running our country.

Dismissing dissent is not only wrong, but dangerous when America's leadership is unwilling to admit mistakes, unwilling to engage in honest discussion of the nation's direction, and unwilling to hold itself accountable for the consequences of decisions made without genuine disclosure, or genuine debate.

Click here for the rest of the speech, entitled "Dissent". This speech really hit home for me, since I've always been bothered by people who think that if you're against the war, you don't "support the troops". Sorry, but to me, supporting the troops means not wanting them to be unneccessarily placed in harm's way with an unclear mission while dozens of them are being killed every day. But I guess that's unpatriotic.

I finally got around to posting the Chicago photos. Check them out.

IMAGES
Howl's Moving Castle

Insomnia

Dear idio... uh, Gov. Mitch Daniels,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you so much for fucking up my sleep cycle. You had a chance to do things right. Pushing to move Indiana into the 20th century by putting the state on Daylight Saving Time was the right idea. Unfortunately, you blew it, pissing away any points you had earned when you picked the wrong time zone. Thanks to your genius (and I'm sure the considerable influence of your businessmen friends), Indiana just had to be on the same time as New York City... 700 miles to the east. Central time just wasn't good enough, even though Chicago, located right on the Indiana border, doesn't have any problems doing business with New York. "But wait," you said, "think of the extra hour of sunlight that golf courses can stay open! Kids' baseball games can be played later! Businesses will make more money because people will stay out in the light." Well, I have some bad news for you. I (and just about everyone else in this state) wake up in the dark every morning. I'm already in the hole, because I start the day tired, and that sure as hell doesn't make me want to stay out later at night. As if it wasn't already hard enough getting out of bed since businesses here are still living on farm time and want their employees get to work at the crack of dawn. Not to mention, DST has barely started, and it's already staying light until almost 9 pm, right around the time most businesses are closing. What's it going to be like in July when it stays light until 11:00? Remember that movie with Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Alaska, where Pacino can't get any sleep because it's light all the time? Now imagine an entire state of people like that. Meet your constituents. Going to bed when it's light is not a prescription for a good night's sleep. People are hardwired to go to bed in the dark and get up when it's light, not the other way around. An exhausted workforce is not a productive workforce. So all that extra money you're planning on making? Good luck with that. Putting the state on DST was the right decision; there's nothing wrong with an extra hour of sun each day. But you managed to put that hour at the wrong end of the day, and when the government can't even get something as simple as DST right, I don't have a whole lot of faith in their ability to do the rest of their job. Unfortunately, this is Indiana, and it's doubtful that the Democrats are going to take over anytime soon. So Mitch, don't be surprised when all that's left in Indiana are a bunch of farmers and old people who get up in the dark anyway. The rest of us will be moving to states that recognize the value of waking up with the sun.

(Hey, if Katie Couric can make career decisions based on the fact that she doesn't want to get up in the dark anymore, then so can I. Because I like to take all my life cues from celebrities, especially ones I can't stand.) Now that my grumpy old man rant is taken care of, on to the good stuff:

DC United got its first win of the season yesterday over Chivas. DC struggled to find a rhythm in this game and looked pretty lost, but they still managed to win (thanks in part to a non-call on a Chivas free kick that bounced on the goal line and probably should have been a goal).

Watched The Brothers Grimm last night. No wonder it bombed in theaters. It took about an hour to get going, and as soon as it looked like it was going to go somewhere, it ran out of steam. That, coupled with the fact that the gorgeous Monica Bellucci was criminally underused, made it a very disappointing experience.

I stopped by Luna Music while out enjoying the weather yesterday. See below for a list of the CDs I bought. Stupid listening stations.

SOUNDS
The Back Room, Editors
TUM, The Impossible Shapes
Putumayo Presents Turkish Groove, Various Artists

IMAGES
The Brothers Grimm