Friday, March 28, 2008
A DREAM deferred (2:02 pm)
Brave New Films has started a campaign promoting the DREAM Act, a bill that really should be made into law. They have leverage too — McCain, Clinton and Obama are all co-sponsors. Here’s the first video.
posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Rummy wouldn’t last a DAY on the Biggest Loser campus (2:26 pm)
Hayes’ pontificating on the war and weight loss.
Anyone who’s been on a diet and then gained the weight back is familiar with the asymmetry of losing and gaining weight. Losing weight is difficult, sometimes painful, and takes a long time of sustained, careful attention to diet and a consistent exercise regimen. But gaining weight is easy: just start eating whenever you’re hungry and skip the gym.A friend emails with her suggestion on the best path forward.
As we hear of the violence breaking out in Iraq, I can’t help but think of the same asymmetry that exists between peace and stability on the one hand and violence and chaos on the other. Creating stability and order takes tremendous effort and coordinated agreement by a huge host of parties, all of which can be undone in a matter of days by some concerted acts of violence. That’s why all the whooping over the surge seemed premature. The long-terms structural factors in Iraq do not make one think that indefinite US occupation is a strategy that is capable of achieving peace and security. It’s just too tenuous.
If only they treated the Iraq war like a reality television show, à la The Biggest Loser…Brilliant.
Here’s my pitch: government officials compete to stabilize the region with their initiatives … and America votes by knocking off the person with the lowest approval rating. Transparency and drama, and maybe people will start paying attention to the war again. At least if that attractive Ali keeps hosting.
posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment
Keep this sucker going! (1:11 pm)
Dan Balz makes some solid points. While the Democratic primary needed to end yesterday, it hasn’t been without its advantages. For one, Democrats are registering lots of voters.
Figures released by Pennsylvania’s Department of State on Monday night showed that Democrats have topped 4 million registered voters, the first time either party in the state has crossed that threshold. Democrats have added 161,000 to their rolls, a gain of about 4 percent; Republican registration has dipped about 1 percent, to 3.2 million.As Brad Plumer reminds us, Kerry only won PA by 144,000 votes in ‘04, so these figures are nothing to shrug at. Also, running a statewide primary campaign is good practice.
But the Democratic race may be producing an even more valuable asset for the fall, particularly when compared with Republican John McCain’s campaign. By the time this race is over, Clinton and Obama will have competed in almost every state (Michigan and Florida being two potentially costly exceptions). The Democratic candidates have been forced to organize these states in the winter and spring. They have identified and trained legions of organizers. They will know which of their state coordinators are the best, and many of those staffers will already be familiar with some battleground states for the fall.Glass half full, eh?
posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion
Trouble in Basra (12:28 pm)
Sad, sad stuff going down in Basra, especially considering that the civil war is supposed to be over. Here are a few links that sort through the mess and explain why we’re getting involved. Suffice it to say that it is not pretty. And it probably involves bases.
posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion
Refinancing in B-More (11:59 am)
Great story in the Times today about an East Baltimore man whose taken it upon himself to ease the foreclosure crisis in his neighborhood through counseling.
But since those peak years, foreclosures have fallen by more than a third, a development that Thomas E. Perez, Maryland’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation, says can be largely credited to Mr. Miller’s group, the Belair-Edison Neighborhood Initiative, which uses public records and street level marketing to reach high-risk borrowers before they fall too far behind.If only some in positions of power were as thoughtful.
“People all too frequently hide, or get embarrassed, or put their heads in the sand, but delay is disastrous,” Mr. Perez said.
posted by Adam Doster | 2 comments
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Boss to endorse Obama? (11:49 am)
James Oliphant of the Chicago Tribune, in a short review of a recent Bruce Springsteen show in Ohio, speculates on The Boss’s candidate preference in the ongoing Democratic nomination battle. Springsteen has declined to “endorse” either candidate and is quoted by Oliphant saying, “there are two really good Democratic candidates for president. I admire and respect them both enough to wait and see what happens.” Despite Springsteen’s understandable neutrality part of me wonders if he’s trending towards Obama, even if he never openly casts his lot with O until the deal is done. The two are lyrical kin, committed to illuminating the story of the promise of America, to the romance in the nation’s founding and the struggles of its people. Obama’s line about beginning his career “in the shadow of a closed steel mill on the south side of Chicago” could be straight off Springsteen’s “Devils & Dust” or his earlier “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” And, of the powerful orator from Illinois, Springsteen has eloquently noted the value of the hope Obama galvanizes:
“I always look at my work as trying to measure the distance between American promise and American reality. And I think (Obama’s) inspired a lot of people with that idea: How do you make that distance shorter? How do we create a more humane society? We’ve lived through such ugly times that people want to have a romance with the idea of America again, and I think they need to.
“The hard realities and... read more
posted by Jarrett | 3 comments
Monday, March 24, 2008
Monday night links (4:37 pm)
1) Eric Alterman on the future of the American newspaper.
2) Big win for the Teamsters in LA.
3) Chris Bowers on 4,000 dead.
posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion
You’re Good Enough, You’re Smart Enough, and Gosh Darnit, You Can Ignore Those Gnawing Hunger Pangs (12:14 pm)
Just to piggyback on Adam’s post below, I think Spackerman’s piece on The Obama Doctrine is interesting as well, but unlike some others, I was pretty unmoved by all the talk about “dignity promotion.”
Maybe it’s because I’m an editor, but I prefer it when people call a spade “a spade,” or a massive increase in foreign aid, “a massive increase in foreign aid.” That’s what this “promotion” would entail, which is perfectly fine and good; I think it’s a smart, sane, necessary policy. But why try to sneak it in under the cover of a buzzwordy slogan like “dignity promotion”? That makes it sound like we’re going to send walking canes, monocles and top hats to the refugees in Darfur and the starving population of Gaza, rather than, say, massive amounts of food, medical supplies, and funding for public housing and education. And of course, there’s very little in the Ackerman piece as far as how an Obama administration would specifically go about promoting such dignity. Is he going to send Stuart Smalley—soon to be the Democratic Senator from Minnesota—on goodwill missions?
What worries me about this policy is what worries me about Obama in general: People are as anti-“dignity” as much as they are anti-“hope” (HRC apparently excepted). But these are generalities, abstractions, sentiments. Look deeper at how we might make these ideas concrete and one begins to fear that there’s not much there there.
posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion
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