A few days ago in reference to Castro stepping down from absolute power in Cuba, John McCain said that he hoped Castro would soon meet Karl Marx. In other words, McCain publicly stated that he hoped Castro would die. Who says that? How can a guy running for president of the United States say that he hopes that another human, no matter who that person may be, should die? What does that say about our country and our values? Continue reading
I am often told by Spaniards, experts on all things American, that Americans only eat hamburgers and pizza (they obviously never heard of Taco Bell). I think that makes me un-American because I eat maybe one or two hamburgers a year (and have never been to Taco Bell before), but last night was one of those hamburgers. For no reason whatsoever, I felt for a good burger. Because even a decent burger is hard to come by in Spain, I opted for the only mediocre burger joint in town — Hard Rock Cafe. Hard Rock was a mistake: while my stomach still hurts from the over-sized burger, my head still aches from the annoyingly loud music.
The music was so loud, in fact, that I could barely hold a conversation, let a lone enjoy the joyless pseudo-rock lovers ambiance. As you can imagine, the place was plagued with American and British ex-pats and tourists looking for an overlit, obnoxious drinking den populated by chubby-legged short skirt wearing waitresses and mid-level students of the English language waiters.
Then out of all of the noise, distortion, E.S.O.L., rosy beer-bellied Brits and obese “Oh, my God” Americans, arose “Silent Lucidity“, the only commercially successful song by Queensrÿche. Perhaps it was the fact that I had just gone to see the high school film Juno or that “Silent Lucidity” came out in 1990, my first year of college, that I got to reflecting. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions
I was checking out some of the highlights from last night’s CNN/Univision debate in Austin, Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary said something that sounded awfully familiar,
Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about.
This sounded incredibly familiar to me, and I couldn’t remember from where. Then it hit — I could hear John Edward’s Southern accent with a head cold in my head. So I looked it up. And there you go, John Edwards talking in New Hampshire this November 2007:
To be perfectly honest about it, my life is going to be fine no matter what happens. So is Barack Obama’s. So is Hillary Clinton’s. Our life is going to be fine. On the other side, Mitt Romney is going to be fine. Giuliani is going to be fine … But [this election] should not be about any of us; it should be about the country we believe in. The democracy we want to change. Where the people who we all grew up with — your story — get heard.
Hillary may not have used each and every one of Edwards’ words, but if you want to get legal about plagiarism, the ideas are clearly not hers, have not been authorized for her to use, and do reference Edwards. Maybe, just maybe, Hillary should be more careful about her criticisms. Dave Scaggs at the Maryland Soccer School where I used to be a summer camp coach used to always tell us, “point your finger, and you’ll have three pointing right back at you.”
It is said that good advice is when someone tells you exactly what you want to hear. In the same vain, I suppose I find Eugene Robinson’s columns so on point because I essentially agree with what most of the things he has written about the primaries. For exampe, I have often described Hillary’s false readiness as reflected in her inability to run a coherent campaign. In his op-ed today, Robinson writes,
Most striking of all, to me, is that the campaign still can’t settle on what kind of candidate Hillary Clinton should be. Does she now have to go negative, or should she try to hitchhike on the hope express? Does she project steely resolve or reveal human vulnerability? The campaign wants to convince voters that they don’t know who Obama really is — yet also insists on fitting Clinton with a new persona every week.
Robinson also explains how if Obama were in Hillary’s predicament, people would be telling him to abandon the race for the good of the party. Continue reading
Kosovo has finally declared independence from Serbia. This didn’t seem like much of surprise or controversy to me, but frankly, I am simply not that informed about the pros and cons of an independent Kosovo.
As a matter of fact, it all seemed pretty logical. After the fall of communisim, death of Tito, and civil war in Yugoslavia, a series of new states were born: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYROM (or Macedonia), and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1999, NATO forces attacked Yugoslavian targets, without a U.N. Security Council resolution to do so, to protect the Albanian-Kosovars. In 2003, Montenegro gained its independence, thus ending the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and giving birth to two separate nations: Serbia and Montenegro. So why is accepting Kosovo’s independence so controversial? Continue reading
Filed under Essays
Yesterday I asked the question “how dumb are Americans“. A Washington Post op-ed piece had earlier claimed that Americans had lost their attention spans and were anti-intellectuals. Then today, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has written a counter argument. In some senses, I would agree with him. But, my original point was whether we’d let ourselves be dooped by the negative campaign tactics of Hillary. If you check the elections results of Wisconsin and Hawaii (that’s 10 consecutive Obama wins), it would seem that, for the time being, we aren’t as dumb as Hillary would have us believe.
Today the Nation’s article, “Clinton Takes the Low Road“, in explaining how Hillary has little left except to take cheap stabs at Obama, accurately highlights Hillary’s problem:
why can’t Clinton win on her own merits? Why can’t her campaign win caucuses, or highly educated voters, or compete competitively in red states? How have they failed to win a single contest since Super Tuesday?
Ruth Marcus also describes why voters aren’t stupid,
Voters aren’t foolish or naive; if anything, sometimes they are more cynical than is warranted about politics and politicians. Still, they are responding to Obama because of a yearning to believe in something. Telling them they’ve been chumps is not a winning message.
Yesterday I read an article in the Washington Post by Susan Jacoby called “The Dumbing of America“. The article argued that video, the Internet, the fact that people don’t read any more, and the culture of anti-rationalism have all (further) reduced the limited attention spans of Americans.
This got me thinking about how the candidates and the press treat us like we’re dumb and how we often fall into the trap. They tell us about themselves and about the other candidates, and we believe them — especially when they repeat the same stuff over and over again. Hillary is the perfect example of how using quick and repeated sounds bites work even though her words are empty of any real foundation in fact. And now that she sees herself as losing, she is getting even worse and even more sketchy.
Personally, I find her cheap attacks on Obama offensive to my intelligence. But the question is, just how dumb does she think Americans are, and just how dumb are we? Continue reading
In a bold and historic move, Fidel Castro has decided not to seek re-election. After only 49 years as president of Cuba and after discussions with his family and close friends, Castro resigns and will not seek a new term. Because elections in Cuba are typically highly contested and competitive, now its anyone’s guess as to who will be the island’s next commander-in-chief. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that Raul Castro is in the best position to take over.
As people go, Americans are incredibly uptight. We’re puritans and naive. We don’t want to hear bad words on TV or, God forbid, see a stray nipple. We want our politicians to be moral leaders, good Christians, good family men, and corruption free. Before the presidency became a reality show, Americans (and the press) simply ignored their presidents’ personal lives and pecadillos. Call it willful blindness if you like, but nobody was looking. Then came Nixon and Gary Hart and then . . . Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton seemed to have been born for scandal and scandal mongers — what the Clintons called the “vast right wing conspiracy” and “politics of personal destruction”. Although the Clintons bred the 90s culture war and Clinton-hate was probably a central factor in the development of the Christian right (aka the “Moral Majority”), Bill Clinton did play an incredibly important role in positively changing American innocence and how the country viewed its president on a “human” level. Continue reading
Last Friday I wrote about Hillary’s lack of a track record and how her campaign has been everything but impressive. As discussed yesterday on Meet the Press, this campaign is the biggest thing that any of the candidates — Hillary, Obama or McCain — have ever run. The three are senators and lack real “executive” experience. What’s nice about this election is that we are watching in real time how the three are executing their campaigns and showing their “day one” preparedness. Continue reading
Grave Error 