I was prompted to this thought by an email from a friend who sent me a link to a Joan Walsh piece on Salon. Walsh is more right than wrong in the article, though she misses (or deliberately overlooks) the use of institutional power within the Democratic Party to bring about the desired nomination outcome.
However, the big political question is not being asked, let alone answered, and that is why did Obama end up running for the presidency not against John McCain but against Sarah Palin?
I'm going to continue my blogging hiatus a little while longer, but that question has been nagging me since September.
Anglachel
Monday, December 29, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Clapper
Another great bit of cultural comedy, this courtesy of comic genious Mark Fiore:
The Clapper
Do watch it until the end for the punch line.
Other bits of market crashing fun:
The Clapper
Do watch it until the end for the punch line.
Other bits of market crashing fun:
Anglachel
Monday, December 08, 2008
Dignity of the Office
There are good discussions of the Favreau photo showing Obama's chief speechwriter and another Obama staffer performing lewd acts on a cutout photo of Hillary Clinton, with Favreau grabbing Sen. Clinton's breast while the other staffer grabs her hair and forces her to chug beer. See posts one, two and three on Alegre's Corner, and posts at one and two at Corrente, Feminist Law Professors, Historiann, Shakesville and TalkLeft. My opinion of Favreau himself is that he finds denegration through sexual molestation a neat-o thing, and I pity those who have to deal with him on a daily basis. I am a little unclear on when the photo was taken (Before June? Near the convention? Before the election? Within the last few weeks?) and I am also uncertain about his employment status (Is he currently chief speech writer? Applying for a job at State?), but these are subsidiary concerns, things that slightly increase or decrease the offensiveness of the image but do not change the political circumstances of the revelation of the image.
The question of Favreau himself (well discussed at the above linked blogs) may be getting most of the attention but that is not where the political issues lie. The political question remains: what will Obama do with this challenge to his authority? Does he have the political acumen and self-assurance to make a well-timed example of someone who has been important to the campaign?
The stance Obama takes towards Favreau will have repercussions. To say "Sorry, this behavior does not measure up to this administration's standards, can't have this around," would clearly communicate some serious expectations for executive staff performance and workplace environment. To fail to do so will damage the administration.
The reluctance to act upon the irreducible fact of this photo is paradigmatic of Obama's political behavior. He is loath to spend political capital to do the right thing if that thing involves an implicit (let alone explicit) criticism of himself. This is one of the reasons the Rev. Wright situation dragged on as long as it did. The desire to not be wrong overshadows the desire to do what is right, particularly if there is political advantage (real or imagined) to be wrung from the wrong. I compare this political tendency - wait out bad news and see if it will resolve itself - to the behavior of banks that have reaped a windfall from the Hanky Panky. They have capital but will not put it at any risk even when the long term danger for failing to do so dwarfs any immediate penalty. The Village snickers at Hillary's degradation, shills like Campbell Brown want HRC to act out their own private revenge fantasies instead of behave like a public figure of stature, and the public is distracted by the collapsing economy. It must be tempting to see if this situation can be toughed out.
What should be an opportunity to set a number of political expectations is being allowed to slide down the memory hole to defend the imagined hoard of capital.
But this isn't a campaign and we are talking serious, high-stakes politics. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not an electoral adversary, nor is she just another senator. By virtue of her appointment as Secretary of State, she is the representative of the United States to the world. She embodies American policy and reliability to other sovereign nations. To allow this image of her being treated with disrespect by a close associate of the president, someone who appears to be on track as a member of the administration, says two things to the nations and diplomats she will engage:
The question of Favreau himself (well discussed at the above linked blogs) may be getting most of the attention but that is not where the political issues lie. The political question remains: what will Obama do with this challenge to his authority? Does he have the political acumen and self-assurance to make a well-timed example of someone who has been important to the campaign?
The stance Obama takes towards Favreau will have repercussions. To say "Sorry, this behavior does not measure up to this administration's standards, can't have this around," would clearly communicate some serious expectations for executive staff performance and workplace environment. To fail to do so will damage the administration.
The reluctance to act upon the irreducible fact of this photo is paradigmatic of Obama's political behavior. He is loath to spend political capital to do the right thing if that thing involves an implicit (let alone explicit) criticism of himself. This is one of the reasons the Rev. Wright situation dragged on as long as it did. The desire to not be wrong overshadows the desire to do what is right, particularly if there is political advantage (real or imagined) to be wrung from the wrong. I compare this political tendency - wait out bad news and see if it will resolve itself - to the behavior of banks that have reaped a windfall from the Hanky Panky. They have capital but will not put it at any risk even when the long term danger for failing to do so dwarfs any immediate penalty. The Village snickers at Hillary's degradation, shills like Campbell Brown want HRC to act out their own private revenge fantasies instead of behave like a public figure of stature, and the public is distracted by the collapsing economy. It must be tempting to see if this situation can be toughed out.
What should be an opportunity to set a number of political expectations is being allowed to slide down the memory hole to defend the imagined hoard of capital.
But this isn't a campaign and we are talking serious, high-stakes politics. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not an electoral adversary, nor is she just another senator. By virtue of her appointment as Secretary of State, she is the representative of the United States to the world. She embodies American policy and reliability to other sovereign nations. To allow this image of her being treated with disrespect by a close associate of the president, someone who appears to be on track as a member of the administration, says two things to the nations and diplomats she will engage:
- Go ahead, piss on her. We do.
- We don't respect you enough to send someone we respect to treat with you.
Had this photo come out during the campaign, it could have been kept an individual matter, dimissed (however disingenuously) as the unfortunate side effect of a highly competitive contest. But now Hillary has been named Secretary of State and the revelation of the contempt under these circumstances carries a different meaning. This image is no longer about her. This is not a situation of her making. It is an act of denegration towards her. She cannot respond to it politically because, while it is a personal insult, it is not her political predicament.
It is about defending the dignity and authority of a cabinet officer, which is identical with defending the dignity and authority of the administration as such. It is about Obama's ability to maintain order and enforce discipline. In this case, the president is responsible for defending the nation, as represented by a member of his cabinet, from violation and degredation. That the acts were perfomed on a cardboard cutout should increase awareness of the symbolic import of an assault upon a representation of the country. People have mentioned (and even Photoshopped in) faces of other women, which misses the point. The correct reshuffling of that image would be to have foreign nationals in the place of the staffers. What is done to the Secretary of State is done to the nation.
As I mentioned above, it is not clear when the picture was taken but that is irrelevant. The repercussions of this demonstration of disrespect are happening now.
The dignity, efficacy and authority of the office is at stake.
Anglachel
Jet crash in San Diego
To all the emailers and commenters, thank you for your concern. I don't live anywhere near the crash area, nor do I work in the vicinity. The Spousal Unit saw smoke rising a few miles north of his office building, but nothing more than that.
National news says two people were killed in the house hit by the jet while local news says three. It could have been worse as there were people throughout the neighborhood and a large in-session high school a few hundred yards away.
Anglachel
National news says two people were killed in the house hit by the jet while local news says three. It could have been worse as there were people throughout the neighborhood and a large in-session high school a few hundred yards away.
Anglachel
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Undeserving
The LA Times has a business columnist, David Lazarus, who isn't much of a writer and he's far too committed to conventional economic wisdom for his own good, but in today's Sunday Times he hit one out of the park:
The people being forced to offer concessions here for a manufacturing base bailout are not members of Whole Foods Nation, the people who comprise the symbolic analyst elite that is having its collective butt covered by the economic Hanky Panky (thus far).
From my perspective, this is another sign of the fault line in the Democratic Party and is indicative of where and how the power elite is going to spend their political capital.
Anglachel
The poll that accompanies the article is over 77% in agreement that blue collar workers are being treated differently and unfairly compared to white collar workers. It's just an online poll so should be taken with a grain of salt, but it probably does register some fairly common popular sentiments that are not often represented in the media.Why were Wall Street workers not asked for concessions?
Say what you will about the role of the [UAW] in exacerbating Detroit's financial troubles, one thing stands out: Blue-collar workers are taking it in the shorts as part of their employers' efforts to secure some bailout bucks from Uncle Sam.
I don't recall white-collar workers on Wall Street stepping up with similar concessions in return for their companies' receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer cash. ...
That said, a bailout's a bailout, at least as far as taxpayers are concerned. So why are we holding blue-collar workers to a different standard than their white-collar kin?
Put another way, how many people can even list the terms of the recently announced multibillion-dollar bailout for financial colossus Citigroup Inc. and what the company agreed to do in return for our generosity? ...
The UAW, long criticized (unfairly, I believe) for being too powerful and too greedy, has done the stand-up thing in offering concessions to protect jobs at a perilous time for the auto industry.
White-collar workers on Wall Street, many of whom pull down hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary and bonuses, have shown no such spine or self-sacrifice as their employers pass the hat among taxpayers.
[Economist Robert] Reich is right: A bailout should require concessions from all stakeholders, not just the top brass and certainly not just the public.
By that standard, the auto industry has earned its piece of the pie, while Wall Street firms, silver spoons in hand, are enjoying their dessert on the house.
The people being forced to offer concessions here for a manufacturing base bailout are not members of Whole Foods Nation, the people who comprise the symbolic analyst elite that is having its collective butt covered by the economic Hanky Panky (thus far).
From my perspective, this is another sign of the fault line in the Democratic Party and is indicative of where and how the power elite is going to spend their political capital.
Anglachel
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar
Big Picture at Boston.com is doing a very fun picture show - a celestial "advent" calendar where a new Hubble telescope image is posted each day:
Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008
I love the Hubble images and my computer at work always has some beautiful vision of the galaxy, so this is a very fun online present to unwrap, so to speak.
Keep it bookmarked on your desktop and visit every morning.
Anglachel
Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008
I love the Hubble images and my computer at work always has some beautiful vision of the galaxy, so this is a very fun online present to unwrap, so to speak.
Keep it bookmarked on your desktop and visit every morning.
Anglachel
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
The Wisdom of Tanta
CR of Calculated Risk has composed a post that is a chronological list of Tanta's writings on the blog:
Compendium of Tanta's Posts
I'm linking that here to bring it to my readers' attention. I have also linked to that post under the Econoblog heading in the right-hand sidebar. For anyone who wants to understand the ins and outs of the mortgage industry from someone who can explain the arcana with intelligence, wit and no bullshit, you will not find a better teacher. If Paul Krugman can learn from Tanta, so can you.
As for the lack of my own posts lately, I've had various problems (family, head cold, basement) to attend to and that means less time to read up on events and compose posts. I anticipate slow posting through December. My one observation that I'm going to try to write up soon is on Kevin Drum's "hat eating" stunt. It says a great deal about the myopia of the blogospheric pundits and points to the self-defeating division of the left that these pundits reproduce day in and day out.
Anglachel
Compendium of Tanta's Posts
I'm linking that here to bring it to my readers' attention. I have also linked to that post under the Econoblog heading in the right-hand sidebar. For anyone who wants to understand the ins and outs of the mortgage industry from someone who can explain the arcana with intelligence, wit and no bullshit, you will not find a better teacher. If Paul Krugman can learn from Tanta, so can you.
As for the lack of my own posts lately, I've had various problems (family, head cold, basement) to attend to and that means less time to read up on events and compose posts. I anticipate slow posting through December. My one observation that I'm going to try to write up soon is on Kevin Drum's "hat eating" stunt. It says a great deal about the myopia of the blogospheric pundits and points to the self-defeating division of the left that these pundits reproduce day in and day out.
Anglachel
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tanta Has Passed Away
I am heartbroken. From Calculated Risk:
My dear friend and co-blogger Doris “Tanta” Dungey passed away early this morning. I would like to express my deepest condolences to her family and friends.
From David Streitfeld at the NY Times: Doris Dungey, Prescient Finance Blogger, Dies at 47
Tanta worked as a mortgage banker for 20 years, and we started chatting in early 2005 about the housing bubble and the changes in lending practices. In 2006, Tanta was diagnosed with late stage cancer, and she took an extended medical leave while undergoing treatment. At that time I approached her about writing for this blog, and she declined for a simple reason – her prognosis was grim and she didn’t expect to live very long. To her surprise, after aggressive treatment, her health started to improve and she accepted my invitation. When she chose an email address, it reflected her surprise: tanta_vive ... Tanta Lives!
Armed with a literary background and extensive knowledge of the mortgage industry, Tanta wrote about current events with deep insight and wit. Here is the introduction to one of her posts in 2006: Let Slip the Dogs of Hell
This is a very sad day and I know many of you are in shock. Tanta was our teacher. She generously shared her knowledge with all of us. I doubt she knew how many lives she touched; her insights, spirit and passion lives on in her writings – and in all of you.
Tanta Vive!
****
Tanta's UberNerd series remain linked in my sidebar.
Anglachel
My dear friend and co-blogger Doris “Tanta” Dungey passed away early this morning. I would like to express my deepest condolences to her family and friends.
From David Streitfeld at the NY Times: Doris Dungey, Prescient Finance Blogger, Dies at 47
From CR to Tanta’s many readers, fans and internet friends: Tanta enjoyed writing for you, chatting with many of you in the comments, and corresponding with you via email. She told me several times over the last few months how much she enjoyed discussing current events with you.The blogger Tanta, an influential voice on the mortgage collapse, died Sunday morning in Columbus, Ohio.
Tanta, who wrote for Calculated Risk, a finance and economics blog, was a pseudonym for Doris Dungey, 47, who until recently had lived in Upper Marlboro, Md. The cause of death was ovarian cancer, her sister, Cathy Stickelmaier, said....
Tanta used her extensive knowledge of the loan industry to comment, castigate and above all instruct. Her fans ranged from the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who cited her in his blog, to analysts at the Federal Reserve, who cited her in a paper on “Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit.”
She wrote under a pseudonym because she hoped some day to go back to work in the mortgage industry, and the increasing renown of Tanta in that world might have precluded that. Tanta was Ms. Dungey’s longtime family nickname, Ms. Stickelmaier said.
Tanta worked as a mortgage banker for 20 years, and we started chatting in early 2005 about the housing bubble and the changes in lending practices. In 2006, Tanta was diagnosed with late stage cancer, and she took an extended medical leave while undergoing treatment. At that time I approached her about writing for this blog, and she declined for a simple reason – her prognosis was grim and she didn’t expect to live very long. To her surprise, after aggressive treatment, her health started to improve and she accepted my invitation. When she chose an email address, it reflected her surprise: tanta_vive ... Tanta Lives!
Armed with a literary background and extensive knowledge of the mortgage industry, Tanta wrote about current events with deep insight and wit. Here is the introduction to one of her posts in 2006: Let Slip the Dogs of Hell
I still haven’t gotten over the fact that there’s a “capital management” group out there having named itself “Cerberus”. Those of you who were not asleep in Miss Buttkicker’s Intro to Western Civ will recognize Cerberus; the rest of you may have picked up the mythological fix from its reprise as “Fluffy” in the first Harry Potter novel. Wherever you get your culture, Cerberus is the three-headed dog who guards the gates of Hell. It takes three heads to do that of course, because it’s never clear, in theology or finance, whether the idea is to keep the righteous from falling into the pit or the demons from escaping out of it (the third head is busy meeting with the regulators).Tanta wrote a number of posts detailing the inner workings of the mortgage industry. These posts covered a wide range of topics, from mortgage servicing, to everything you want to know about mortgage backed securities (MBS), to reverse mortgages. She called these posts “The Compleat UberNerd” and in typical fashion she noted:
An “UberNerd” is someone who is compelled to understand how things work in grim detail, even if the things in question are tedious in the extreme …”Tanta liked to ferret out the details. She was inquisitive and had a passion for getting the story right. Sometimes she wouldn’t post for a few days, not because she wasn’t feeling well, but because she was reading through volumes of court rulings, or industry data, to get the facts correct. She respected her readers, and people noticed. Felix Salmon at Condé Nast Portfolio.com, wrote on Nov 7, 2007 wrote:
“Tanta is one of the best financial writers in the world, and explains complex ideas with wit and great clarity."Paul Krugman at the NY Times complemented Tanta several times, recently writing:
“The great thing about this age of blogs is the way people who really know something about a subject can quickly weigh in, without being filtered through Authority.”Even researchers at the Federal Reserve referenced Tanta’s work: From Adam Ashcraft and Til Schuermann: Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit, credit on page 13:
Several point raised in this section were first raised in a 20 February 2007 post on the blog http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/ entitled “Mortgage Servicing for Ubernerds.”Tanta was also extremely funny. She introduced the Muddled Metaphor Index (MMI) and Excel Art featuring the Mortgage Pig, and she was the originator of a number of phrases in use today, like “We’re all subprime now!”
This is a very sad day and I know many of you are in shock. Tanta was our teacher. She generously shared her knowledge with all of us. I doubt she knew how many lives she touched; her insights, spirit and passion lives on in her writings – and in all of you.
Tanta Vive!
****
Tanta's UberNerd series remain linked in my sidebar.
Anglachel
Focus of Attention
Hillary will be Secretary of State.
Something I find fascinating about that article is the URL. The name of the file is "01clinton.html". The article is about the "security" (note - not foreign policy) team that Obama has assembled, yet it is filed under Hillary's name. This makes me think about a few things.
The chattering class and their avid readers in Whole Foods Nation are still more obsessed with their internal demons than with the fate of the nation. Stanley Fish's article on calumny aimed at the Clintons is as relevant today as when it was first published, and this is a danger to liberal politics. The fault line within the Democratic Party remains.
Next, the Neocons have succeeded in getting international relations and foreign policy intrepreted as police actions. It's not a policy team, it's a security team. The parts of the article not drooling over the presumed battle against the evil Clintons plays up the toughness and hawkishness of the new team, with emphasis on terrorism rather than the true international danger, which is the world wide collapse of economies.
The problematic emphasis on the Bush-style use of terrorism (The bad guys are gunna git you if you don't give us what we want) that so many of the Very Serious People want to promulgate, as though the problem with Bush/Cheney was the mode of execution and not the foreign and domestic policy objectives, focuses on the guys caught on video camera in train stations and hotel lobbies, the viscerally menacing Other, all too like the raging shooters at schools and malls. This terrorism is photogenic, adapts well to endless video loops on CNN, and allows the talking heads to hyperventilate.
What we don't see is the struggle for power in Pakistan, where the military continues to defy the civilian government, and where decades old US-USSR cold war operations continue to generate blowback. The Vale of Kashmir may be the single most dangerous flashpoint on the planet at the moment. We have an incoming president who has repeatedly voiced critical and belligerant opinions about Pakistan. We now have a Secretary of State who has connections to the (note relative term) more democratic elements in the country. And this is just one of the foreign policy challenges facing the new administration.
It may send WKJM into apoplexy, but the worst job in the world has been put into very good hands.
Anglachel
Something I find fascinating about that article is the URL. The name of the file is "01clinton.html". The article is about the "security" (note - not foreign policy) team that Obama has assembled, yet it is filed under Hillary's name. This makes me think about a few things.
The chattering class and their avid readers in Whole Foods Nation are still more obsessed with their internal demons than with the fate of the nation. Stanley Fish's article on calumny aimed at the Clintons is as relevant today as when it was first published, and this is a danger to liberal politics. The fault line within the Democratic Party remains.
Next, the Neocons have succeeded in getting international relations and foreign policy intrepreted as police actions. It's not a policy team, it's a security team. The parts of the article not drooling over the presumed battle against the evil Clintons plays up the toughness and hawkishness of the new team, with emphasis on terrorism rather than the true international danger, which is the world wide collapse of economies.
The problematic emphasis on the Bush-style use of terrorism (The bad guys are gunna git you if you don't give us what we want) that so many of the Very Serious People want to promulgate, as though the problem with Bush/Cheney was the mode of execution and not the foreign and domestic policy objectives, focuses on the guys caught on video camera in train stations and hotel lobbies, the viscerally menacing Other, all too like the raging shooters at schools and malls. This terrorism is photogenic, adapts well to endless video loops on CNN, and allows the talking heads to hyperventilate.
What we don't see is the struggle for power in Pakistan, where the military continues to defy the civilian government, and where decades old US-USSR cold war operations continue to generate blowback. The Vale of Kashmir may be the single most dangerous flashpoint on the planet at the moment. We have an incoming president who has repeatedly voiced critical and belligerant opinions about Pakistan. We now have a Secretary of State who has connections to the (note relative term) more democratic elements in the country. And this is just one of the foreign policy challenges facing the new administration.
It may send WKJM into apoplexy, but the worst job in the world has been put into very good hands.
Anglachel
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monster Crash
This one goes with Ben Bernanke Please Send Me Some Green.
Monster Crash
h/t to Shainzona for bringing this to my attention.
Anglachel
Monster Crash
h/t to Shainzona for bringing this to my attention.
Anglachel
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Reasons to be Thankful
Good thing we weren't planning any big holiday celebration today.
We've had record breaking rain the last 24 hours around these parts which is fantastic for reducing wildfire dangers but sadly has turned the Casa Anglachel basement into a swimming pool. There's a leak in a wall and seepage in spots in the foundation. We knew we would have some long term issues when we bought the place. The house is more than 80 years old. We've been doing drainage work and it's better than last year.
I am thankful that the problems aren't worse, that we have a roof over our heads, food in the fridge and a furnace that works, and that we have some savings to get us through the rainy days.
Anglachel
We've had record breaking rain the last 24 hours around these parts which is fantastic for reducing wildfire dangers but sadly has turned the Casa Anglachel basement into a swimming pool. There's a leak in a wall and seepage in spots in the foundation. We knew we would have some long term issues when we bought the place. The house is more than 80 years old. We've been doing drainage work and it's better than last year.
I am thankful that the problems aren't worse, that we have a roof over our heads, food in the fridge and a furnace that works, and that we have some savings to get us through the rainy days.
Anglachel
Monday, November 24, 2008
Infrastructure Repairs
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I'm having difficulty getting my braining to run in a single direction the last few days and I think I'm coming down with something.
As someone who has had sewer line problems at my last three abodes and know just how wretched they are to deal with, I'd like to direct your attention to a sewer infrastructure problem plaguing Lambert of Corrente fame. If you have spare change rattling around in your PayPal account, please consider donating some of it. Do your part to stimulate the local economy and keep Lambert out of deep doo-doo!
Anglachel
As someone who has had sewer line problems at my last three abodes and know just how wretched they are to deal with, I'd like to direct your attention to a sewer infrastructure problem plaguing Lambert of Corrente fame. If you have spare change rattling around in your PayPal account, please consider donating some of it. Do your part to stimulate the local economy and keep Lambert out of deep doo-doo!
Anglachel
Friday, November 21, 2008
Pandora's Box
So the NYT is saying that Hillary will be Secretary of State. I am, of course, intrigued and pleased by the prospect, but note that I won't believe it until the official announcement. Indeed, I won't actually believe it until the confirmation hearings are completed and she takes the oath of office.
What I expect to see for the next week is mass hysteria among the Whole Foods Nation crowd who won't accept that this can be a legitimate appointment. The CDS will get worse, not better. They will do everything in their power to try to derail the nomination.
I don't have time for a longer post this moment. If you have not been reading Bob Somerby this week, go there right now (he's linked in the sidebar) and read very carefully what he has to say about CDS. The opposition to HRC as Secretary of State is rooted in the green light Obama himself gave to using irrational hatred as an acceptable political tool against other Democrats. (And this is why BTD is wrong about the conduct of the campaign.) Somerby appears to be the only critical analyst around who understands the implications of this.
Obama opened Pandora's box, allowing the pestilence of right-wing CDS to set up shop in the heart of left politics.
Anglachel
What I expect to see for the next week is mass hysteria among the Whole Foods Nation crowd who won't accept that this can be a legitimate appointment. The CDS will get worse, not better. They will do everything in their power to try to derail the nomination.
I don't have time for a longer post this moment. If you have not been reading Bob Somerby this week, go there right now (he's linked in the sidebar) and read very carefully what he has to say about CDS. The opposition to HRC as Secretary of State is rooted in the green light Obama himself gave to using irrational hatred as an acceptable political tool against other Democrats. (And this is why BTD is wrong about the conduct of the campaign.) Somerby appears to be the only critical analyst around who understands the implications of this.
Obama opened Pandora's box, allowing the pestilence of right-wing CDS to set up shop in the heart of left politics.
Anglachel
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Politics of States
Some are dismayed by the long time it is taking for the SOS decision process to come to a conclusion. I'm actually pleased to see what looks like some serious thinking going on about what role the Secretary of State is going to play in the next administration. Alegre has a great post, Open Thread: More SoS Chatter, talking about some new developments in the Senate including the promise of a subcommittee chair on health insurance.
My own opinion about the choice before Hillary is simply that she has no wrong decision in front of her. Both paths before her, Senate or State Department, have great rewards and great disappointments in store. They are different ways for her to do what she has always done, which is serve the public interest to the greatest extent of her talents and stamina. We as a country will benefit from her dedication, though the people of New York would clearly lose an effective and indefatigable congress critter should she chose the State Department.
I hope a little more that she will go with the SOS position mostly because we know what she'll do in the other role and because we have not had such a presence in that office for so long.
The yowling from The Village that She will just set up a parallel power center if not an actual shadow government is not entirely wrong, though not for the reasons they propose. They are the ones who have forgotten that "L'État, c'est moi," is not the law of the land, and that people who identify themselves as the emobodiment of the state rather than as the prime servant thereof are the ones at odds with the nation. To do so is to reduce the nation to an extension of a particular will, something that has no right and, indeed, no desire to resist the impulses of the prince. It is the politics of a social clique, not of states.
This is my point of push-back on both the professional Hillary haters and (more gently and with a lot more sympathy) on the Hillary supporters who are suspicious of Obama's intentions. We need to think about this appointment (whether or not Hillary decides to fill it) in terms of serious politics and effective promotion of US interests in the world. We need to consider the representation of the state to other states.
The office could be filled as it has been since at least Eisenhower as a high technocratic position, a place for someone who has not been in electoral politics, is often from a think-tank or academia, or else comes out of a civil service background. You have to go back to George Marshall to find someone who coming into office is a political figure in their own right. Dulles and Kissenger became such figures as a result of being SOS. Even Marshall is not really a good comparison as his political claim was his prominent military role under FDR, where he basically ran WWII. But he accepted the SOS post from Truman while better known and better liked than his boss. He took it up as an opportunity to do world-historic things. You know, the Marshall Plan, that little thing? Since then, all others have come from less illustrious backgrounds. In the case of Colin Powell, the office diminished him. Putting a technocrat into the post would be the safest political bet for the Obama administration and would reinforce the tendency towards an imperial Presidency. The Very Serious People would approve.
So what can it mean that the most prominent, attention getting politician in the country might accept the SOS role? It would be a political bargain and risk. It would mean betting that someone as capable and with the immense national and international authority Hillary commands is a net gain for your administration. To use someone of that stature, as Truman did Marshall, is to go all in on the policy side, because the selection of that individual becomes the touchstone for your policy. The expectation in return is that her prominence and ability will be an asset, more to your advantage than any real or imagined loss of power.
When the talking heads start foaming at the mouth about Hillary forming a parallel sytem, they recognize that power is something that is created, not granted, and that it will accrue to those who know how to use the tools at hand. The state department and foreign service is the most self-concious political class in DC, with the possible exception of the Pentagon. It is the part of our government that is most like the civil service found in other states. It is a veritable mandarinate. Under Powell and Rice, this group has been mocked and sidelined by Cheney and his dirty tricks crew. What could this department do if given a leader who will expect their best across a wide range of issues and events instead of subordinating them to a single-minded pursuit of coersive power? How will other governments respond to Hillary as SOS, particularly given her investment in human rights?
Thus, my curiosity and excitement over the possibilities.
Anglachel
My own opinion about the choice before Hillary is simply that she has no wrong decision in front of her. Both paths before her, Senate or State Department, have great rewards and great disappointments in store. They are different ways for her to do what she has always done, which is serve the public interest to the greatest extent of her talents and stamina. We as a country will benefit from her dedication, though the people of New York would clearly lose an effective and indefatigable congress critter should she chose the State Department.
I hope a little more that she will go with the SOS position mostly because we know what she'll do in the other role and because we have not had such a presence in that office for so long.
The yowling from The Village that She will just set up a parallel power center if not an actual shadow government is not entirely wrong, though not for the reasons they propose. They are the ones who have forgotten that "L'État, c'est moi," is not the law of the land, and that people who identify themselves as the emobodiment of the state rather than as the prime servant thereof are the ones at odds with the nation. To do so is to reduce the nation to an extension of a particular will, something that has no right and, indeed, no desire to resist the impulses of the prince. It is the politics of a social clique, not of states.
This is my point of push-back on both the professional Hillary haters and (more gently and with a lot more sympathy) on the Hillary supporters who are suspicious of Obama's intentions. We need to think about this appointment (whether or not Hillary decides to fill it) in terms of serious politics and effective promotion of US interests in the world. We need to consider the representation of the state to other states.
The office could be filled as it has been since at least Eisenhower as a high technocratic position, a place for someone who has not been in electoral politics, is often from a think-tank or academia, or else comes out of a civil service background. You have to go back to George Marshall to find someone who coming into office is a political figure in their own right. Dulles and Kissenger became such figures as a result of being SOS. Even Marshall is not really a good comparison as his political claim was his prominent military role under FDR, where he basically ran WWII. But he accepted the SOS post from Truman while better known and better liked than his boss. He took it up as an opportunity to do world-historic things. You know, the Marshall Plan, that little thing? Since then, all others have come from less illustrious backgrounds. In the case of Colin Powell, the office diminished him. Putting a technocrat into the post would be the safest political bet for the Obama administration and would reinforce the tendency towards an imperial Presidency. The Very Serious People would approve.
So what can it mean that the most prominent, attention getting politician in the country might accept the SOS role? It would be a political bargain and risk. It would mean betting that someone as capable and with the immense national and international authority Hillary commands is a net gain for your administration. To use someone of that stature, as Truman did Marshall, is to go all in on the policy side, because the selection of that individual becomes the touchstone for your policy. The expectation in return is that her prominence and ability will be an asset, more to your advantage than any real or imagined loss of power.
When the talking heads start foaming at the mouth about Hillary forming a parallel sytem, they recognize that power is something that is created, not granted, and that it will accrue to those who know how to use the tools at hand. The state department and foreign service is the most self-concious political class in DC, with the possible exception of the Pentagon. It is the part of our government that is most like the civil service found in other states. It is a veritable mandarinate. Under Powell and Rice, this group has been mocked and sidelined by Cheney and his dirty tricks crew. What could this department do if given a leader who will expect their best across a wide range of issues and events instead of subordinating them to a single-minded pursuit of coersive power? How will other governments respond to Hillary as SOS, particularly given her investment in human rights?
Thus, my curiosity and excitement over the possibilities.
Anglachel
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Chicks Dig Me
I was reading Historiann's account, Welcome to Historimann.com, a NASCAR and law enforcement blog by and for menz, of analyzing her blog with various online tools and got quite a giggle out of it. I decided to give the same analytical tools on my own site and see what came up.
Gender Analyzer says there's an 80% chance that this blog is written by a man. I even went back to my October posts which were full of feminist writing, and scored a 77% chance of the blog being written by a man. Given that the topics were clearly feminist, what does that say about the way language is perceived in the absence of biological signs of the speaker? It is amusing to note that I was considered male in the Tolkien fandom for several months because my screen name was a weapon (Anglachel) and not a feminine Elven or Hobbit style name. What interests me more is that linguistic combinations (Key words? Locution? Grammar? Obscenities?) are considered masculine or feminine, and that somehow it is important to identify the gender of the person on the other end of the keyboard.
Somehow, my blog is assigned a value of $84,681.00. I'm disappointed. I thought it would be worth at least $84,681.89. Most of this is measured by the number of links in and out of the blog, which indicates traffic levels, which indicates potential ad revenue. Technorati scores are also factored in. Um, I think I'll keep my day job.
Typeanalyzer may or may not be measuring something real, but it sure know show to appeal to my ego:
Gender Analyzer says there's an 80% chance that this blog is written by a man. I even went back to my October posts which were full of feminist writing, and scored a 77% chance of the blog being written by a man. Given that the topics were clearly feminist, what does that say about the way language is perceived in the absence of biological signs of the speaker? It is amusing to note that I was considered male in the Tolkien fandom for several months because my screen name was a weapon (Anglachel) and not a feminine Elven or Hobbit style name. What interests me more is that linguistic combinations (Key words? Locution? Grammar? Obscenities?) are considered masculine or feminine, and that somehow it is important to identify the gender of the person on the other end of the keyboard.
Somehow, my blog is assigned a value of $84,681.00. I'm disappointed. I thought it would be worth at least $84,681.89. Most of this is measured by the number of links in and out of the blog, which indicates traffic levels, which indicates potential ad revenue. Technorati scores are also factored in. Um, I think I'll keep my day job.
Typeanalyzer may or may not be measuring something real, but it sure know show to appeal to my ego:
INTP - The Thinkers
The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.
Yup, I know how to think. What I would be interested in knowing is whether "female" blogs get lower monetary scores and get categorized as the work of people who are "Feelers" rather than "Thinkers".
So, I went and tested the first chapter of my fanfiction novel, Hands of the King, on two differnt web sites. Same author as this blog, same story text, different information in the margins:
- Gender analyzer: We guess http://www.romenna.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?STID=129&SPOrdinal=1 is written by a man (59%), however it's quite gender neutral.
- Worth $0.00 dollars (Tell that to Peter Jackson)
- ENFP - The Inspirers: The curious and insightful type. They are especially attuned to possibilities that involves peoples potential. They usually have a lot of relations and are very perceptive and often unconventional. They enjoy working together with people and to make use of their enthusiasm. Lonely work and environments with many distractions make them scattered and often gloomy feeling overwhelmed withdraw further.
- Gender analyzer: We guess http://www.henneth-annun.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?stid=1073&SPOrdinal=1 is written by a man (53%), however it's quite gender neutral.
- Worth $0.00
- Typelyze: Detected language Filipino. The only supported languages are English and Swedish. But stay tuned, we are expanding. (There is no Filipino on the page)
Hmm.
Anglachel
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