Tag: Bush

July 25, 2008: BARACK OBAMA and BERLIN: WHAT WE SHOULD and CAN BE

 
First I got this email from a young friend:  "LOVED IT – Just brilliant and I am happy to vote again."  Then I watched The Speech again early this morning on C-SPAN and marveled at the reaction of 200,000 Berliners in a city that has been, in recent years, a tough room for American leaders.  We've spenta lot of time in Berlin, so I know the city; in my parents' lifetime it was the capital of the most racist country in the world but now it's urbane, cerebral and pretty sophisticated, with a stunning history and a development we've watched throughout the last ten years that is unparalleled.  War(and communist)-ruined buildings and just plain ugly ones have finally been replaced by gleaming new market and skyscraper squares, there's fabulous mass transit as well as renewed activity in its two opera houses and many theaters and ballet companies.  OH and enough museums to keep you busy for months.  Just the kind of place to be particularly hostile to a president like George Bush.

So what did Senator Obama bring that made the difference? David Brooks was pretty harsh in the NYTimes:  " Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney."  To be fair, I guess it can sound that way.  The reality, to me though, is that after eight years of a president of whom we could not be proud and whose policies, war, rhetoric and attitude shoved our allies far from our side, a bit of warmth and solidarity is a legitimate introduction.  Beyond that, the most profound thing about the speech, in my view, wasn't Obama but the response to him.  Sure, Europe is liberal and politically correct (except, often, about their own immigrants, unfortunately) and a black candidate (even half) for president in the US is attractive, but it's more than that.  It looked, at least to me, like Europeans have been longing for a United States they can believe in again; that perhaps part of the reason Europeans have been so angry at us is that beneath the rubble of the Bush years, we still represent a promise and ideal that Europe has been furious that we've abandoned. 

Of course, I could be projecting my own heartbreak over Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act and all the other profanities done in our name; at the horrific lack of inspired leadership both at home and abroad just after 9/11, at the war (How could it happen again – after Vietnam; the same lessons never learned, the same hubris?), at the craven attitude toward energy and life at the bottom end of our economic ladder – at all of it.  But I don't think so.  Rather, it seems that under all the anger Europeans have manifested toward the United States, they, like us, want an American leader they can believe in.  An America they can believe in.  And Barack Obama is about as close to that is you can get without moving to another dimension.

The foundation laid by that inspiration will get us, and our old friends newly re-engaged, through the terrible, tough days ahead.  Without a leadership of hope and belief, natural allies outside our borders will be lost to us, as they so sadly have been these past years.  And as Senator Obama reminded us, we can't afford that.  Not now.

Remember That Old Saying “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it?” Well, Look at Our Economy and Believe

Stock crash newspaper
OK here's my question.  Did you go to high school?  Didn't they teach us all that one of the major causes of the Great Depression was leveraging, buying "on margins": buying stock for a percentage and paying off the rest from sale of the stock at a higher rate, until price slides caused the crash?  AND didn't they teach us that we had rules and regulations now that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again?  And that our government kept an eye on all that sort of investment?  And that we were safe?

So what happened?  Wasn't the SEC supposed to regulate speculation?  Weren't banks, like stock investments, supposed to be monitored?  Weren't bank boards supposed to monitor housing loans?  How did we land here again?

I wish I understood better the deregulation that I know has been implemented over time.  I know that some of the housing regulatory let-up was designed to make it easier for less affluent Americans to buy homes and ended up making many of these same people vulnerable to predatory lenders.  I know that some people simply bought homes they couldn't afford, and banks let them do it.  I know that there have been stories about this for years, yet it continued.

I know that regulation has been substantially lifted from our entire market system.  I know that our crisis is infecting other countries and taking the global economy with it.  That the American consumer has kept our economy strong for years and that now, as consumers lock up their money and cancel their credit cards, that vital tool is fading.

As a US website, America.gov, explained in December:

Goods and services purchased by Americans make up
one-fifth of the global economy, but the third quarter of 2008 saw the
largest drop in consumer spending since 1980.

As the financial-market turbulence prompts U.S. households to cut back spending, economies around the globe feel repercussions.

Even after all this time, it's so hard to think about this – about how clear it is now that the deregulation and even the push for an arguably necessary but overdone easing of credit for housing purchases, how between politics and greed, banks lent to many who had no business entering into the debt that has rendered them homeless now. And that doesn't even begin to consider the careless greed of much of the financial community.
Nothing new here.

But I'll bet I'm not the only one whose anger continues to grow, whose frustration continues to grow, whose sadness overpowers. The futures of my honorable, hard-working children and their friends, and the younger ones who come after, are rendered fragile and discouraging. The future of the ideas and principles that were the Obama campaign are endangered by debt and the need to rescue the economy.  The debts of the Bush years have eliminated alternatives.  And as usual, when politics gets ugly and institutions become careless, the future of those who most rely on government support or protection, the weakest and less established among us, are hurt the most.

If I were my friends PunditMom Joanne or Jill, at Writes Like She Talks, I would have lots of policy citations to back all this up.  But this is a piece built more of mourning than reporting.  Some days recently, as I think about all this, I can literally feel myself in my seat in AP American History reading about the Great Depression and the checks put into place to prevent its recurrence.  I can literally feel myself listening to my parents describe their lives in the 1930's and the permanent scars those years left.  And in some ways, I can't believe it, can't believe that carelessness and greed and ignorance and an arrogance beyond describing has threatened us with those times once again. 

BARACK OBAMA, BERLIN, AND WHAT WE SHOULD AND CAN BE

First I got this email from a young friend:  "LOVED IT – Just brilliant and I am happy to vote again."  Then I watched The Speech again early this morning on C-SPAN and marveled at the reaction of 200,000 Berliners in a city that has been, in recent years, a tough room for American leaders.  We’ve spent a lot of time in Berlin, so I know the city; in my parents’ lifetime it was the capital of the most racist country in the world but now it’s urbane, cerebral and pretty sophisticated, with a stunning history and a development we’ve watched throughout the last ten years that is unparalleled.  War(and communist)-ruined buildings and just plain ugly ones have finally been replaced by gleaming new market and skyscraper squares, there’s fabulous mass transit as well as renewed activity in its two opera houses and many theaters and ballet companies.  OH and enough museums to keep you busy for months.  Just the kind of place to be particularly hostile to a president like George Bush.

So what did Senator Obama bring that made the difference?  David Brooks was pretty harsh in the NYTimes:  " Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney."  To be fair, I guess it can sound that way.  The reality, to me though, is that after eight years of a president of whom we could not be proud and whose policies, war, rhetoric and attitude shoved our allies far from our side, a bit of warmth and solidarity is a legitimate introduction.  Beyond that, the most profound thing about the speech, in my view, wasn’t Obama but the response to him.  Sure, Europe is liberal and politically correct (except, often, about their own immigrants, unfortunately) and a black candidate (even half) for president in the US is attractive, but it’s more than that.  It looked, at least to me, like Europeans have been longing for a United States they can believe in again; that perhaps part of the reason Europeans have been so angry at us is that beneath the rubble of the Bush years, we still represent a promise and ideal that Europe has been furious that we’ve abandoned. 

Of course, I could be projecting my own heartbreak over Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act and all the other profanities done in our name; at the horrific lack of inspired leadership both at home and abroad just after 9/11, at the war (How could it happen again – after Vietnam; the same lessons never learned, the same hubris?), at the craven attitude toward energy and life at the bottom end of our economic ladder – at all of it.  But I don’t think so.  Rather, it seems that under all the anger Europeans have manifested toward the United States, they, like us, want an American leader they can believe in.  An America they can believe in.  And Barack Obama is about as close to that is you can get without moving to another dimension.

The foundation laid by that inspiration will get us, and our old friends newly re-engaged, through the terrible, tough days ahead.  Without a leadership of hope and belief, natural allies outside our borders will be lost to us, as they so sadly have been these past years.  And as Senator Obama reminded us, we can’t afford that.  Not now.

DEMOCRACY AND THE DAILY SHOW

REPOSTED FROM VOX 8/09
We seem to have a DAILY SHOW thread going — not just here but across the web. My favorite is a piece on ALTERNET by the great writer and wonderful editor Jessica Clark, “Comedy, Like Reality, Has a Liberal Bias.” It debunks some of the complaints about current political satire — reminding us that there’s a basis in reality to much of the brilliant satire served up every night on Comedy Central. Beyond that, she reminds that — well read the piece. It’s worth the time and not very long anyway

To really understand the appeal of the program, however, go beyond the Bush-bashing to this.

The Daily Show

REPOSTED FROM VOX 8/08
OK so it’s almost midnight and Jon Stewart is going on about BP Oil, Condi Rice and Congress. There are those who think that Stewart is destroying youthful patriotism. Hardly.

To me, his satire is the only thing between many young people and total alienation. First of all, you have to know what it IS in order to laugh at it. Secondly, most polls show Americans who never heard of Comedy Central are as angry at Congress as the most tatooed, pierced or just plain pissed off kid.

Now there’s a commercial airing about Oliver Stone’s WORLD TRADE CENTER. I really want to see it but I’m afraid to go. Anyone else feel the same? Don’t know if I can got through this again — even for great cinema.