Straight form the source

The ads that the Bush campaign released today are such a disgusting play on tragedy I will not bother anyone with my own opinions. Instead, see those of American firefighters, http://daily.iaff.org.

Requiem for John Edwards

With the impending end of John Edwards' campaign tonight what had looked to be a wonderfully hard fought and substantive primary season just a few months ago now comes to an end with John Kerry having achieved one of the most lopsided victories in recent history. Before my better judgement (and every line towing dem out there) tells me to unite around Mr. Kerry, a closing pot shot. Howard Dean invigorated a large swath of America with his open and unflinching challenge to what the great Julian Bond has called "the Taliban wing of American politics." Edwards for his part, brought issues of job loss and work, capitalism and labor back into American political discussion, something largely missing from "mainstream," nationwide discourse the last few decades. While Edwards' populism was likely not much deeper than his skin, the fact that he consistently and eloquently spoke about the divide between rich and poor and the arrogance of business capital made him a welcome addition to American discussion. John Kerry, for his part, does neither of the things that made Dean and Edwards, if not ideal candidates, then at least a welcome change from decades of Clintons, Daschles, Harts, Carters, Liebermans, and, oh hell, 95% of nationally known Democrats. If the majority of Democrats out there honestly think Kerry has the best chance of beating Bush, so be it, this man has got to go. But let the punditry and the DLC be warned right now, when Kerry makes his inevitable move so far back to the right that he ends up in the Canary Islands (who was he kidding with this populist crap anyway) and if Bush gets the most votes counted for him next November, the fault will rest squarely on the shoulders of those people who argue that talking about class or expressing anger over fascistic policies is no way to win a presidency. Thank you Howard Dean and John Edwards, at least you brought a little hope to this long winter.

When all else fails, blame the poor

Okay, I'll admit, I really let David Brooks get to me too much. It's not his sophmoric ideas or slight of hand arguments, plenty of neo-conservatives, neo-liberals, post-structuralists, post-neo-paleo-moderate-Weberians exhibit just this tendency. It's not even his good-natured, upper tax bracket, only leaving the Upper East Side for St. Barts (and, no Mr. Brooks, that's not a synonym for Jewish), appeal to the "well-meaning rich," who really, really liked reading Foucault in their sophmore English class because they realized doing a bunch of coke and kissing someone of the same-sex at an Avenue B punk club made them a "true radical" (obviously, I have some pent up anger here). No, I'm starting to think its simply his anti-intellectualism. I realize its fun to blame the poor for everything, hell they did kill Kennedy, but when one starts claiming that talk about poverty and job loss is "crude, populist rhetoric," I get a little pissed off. Of the few "arguments," Mr. Brooks makes in his column today, not a single one stands up to any decent historical analysis. Argument #1-"poverty comes from cultural conditions not economic." While this claim tends to be both inherently racist and sexist (see the excellent historical scholarship of Daryl Michael Scott, Linda Gordon and Adolph Reed), I will choose to assume that Mr. Brooks, in his continuing attempt to convert the east coast wealthy (who disdain anything that smells of their fathers "cultural" sins) from neo-libaralism to neo-conservatism, is not engaging in the blatant examples of this argument obvious in the 'welfare mother' discourse of the 1990s or 'single-parent household' argument perfected by the Moynihan Report. So even if I choose to disregard all this garbage, this argument still comes face to face with the simple problem of jobs. According to Mr. Brooks, the poor's lack of"industriousness" (read, the opposite of the capitalist discipline buzzword: laziness), sobriety etc. comes from their continuing cycle of poverty. This formulation is problematic on two levels. On the one hand, the pseudo-social science that came up with the whole "culture of poverty" theory (okay, its been around longer than social science, but quoting Jeremy Bentham does not play to Mr. Brooks' audience) has rarely, if ever, used a control in their studies. While it may come as a shock to Mr. Brooks, on the whole, the non-poor tend to exhibit the same qualities of laziness, infidelity, and unpunctuality that the poor do. What's that you say, people who aren't poor cheat on their wives, get pregnant outside of wedlock, drink alcohol, are late to work, waste "valuable" company time playing video games and looking at pornography, why I never... The other problem (fine, there are thousands more, but, like the non-poor man I am, I have to get industrious again and stop wasting my labor time) is the simple fact of jobs. An anti-anti-intellectual understanding of the whoafully inept, insufficient and inefficient welfare program that lasted from the Great Society to the Clinton years would, maybe, take into account that the same period was coincident with the disappearance of the entire economic structure that allowed poverty to decline and the middle-class to expand for the longest sustained period in American history. I'm talking about the unionized manufacturing jobs that by and large, could allow a working-class family to buy a house and help their kids go to a state college (institutions that have also seen their funding steadily decrease). Do such jobs exist in America today, not really, but the fact that America has per capita millions fewer jobs that pay people a wage higher than the (antiquated) poverty level could never be a source of increased poverty, I mean come on, the poor are so different than the rest of us, it's got to be their fault, right? They live in the wrong neighborhoods and towns, they go to the wrong schools, they talk funny and (admit they) shop at wal-mart, I mean, their culture is so, so, POOR. Like the man said, "Two dollars and an industrious culture will get you on the subway."

Gavin Newsom: Political Genius

Lost in the shuffle of "activist judges," and "unbeholden" politicians has been the utter shrewdness of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Less than three months ago Newsom, while being anointed the new face of the California Democratic Party outside of San Francisco, came a few absentee ballots from watching Green Party upstart Matt Gonzalez send him back to his Marina District mansion and trust fund. After serving as a city supervisor and running a campaign that pretty much proved my father's adage, "with Democrats like these, who needs Republicans," February found Newsom making a Hubert Humphrey-esque move that combined political long-sightedness with a great dose of good old fashioned radical social change. Newsom, only three weeks ago the latte-drinking, homeless abusing, business pandering man that progressive San Francisco loved to hate has pretty much been given the title of "Mayor for Life" from this same constituency. While his granting of marriage licenses for thousands of gay and lesbian couples was certainly one of the most couragious moves seen on the American scene in quite some time, we should not lose sight of its expediency. More than likely, the very young Newsom is betting that in the long run, his move has both given him a masssive base to work from in San Francisco for as long he would like and, given the speed of the winds of change regarding queer civil rights in America (remember, a mere 17 years separate the embarrassing and discriminatory Bowers v. Hardwick decision from last summer's Lawrence ruling), hero status in the minds of Americans who ten to fifteen years from now, may look back on the furor surrounding gay marriage with embarassment. Newsom figures that when he gets around to running for statewide or even national office, he'll be looked back upon as the man willing to take a stand on an issue that most of America may shamefully remember as another moment when they sat idly by while justice was slowly achieved.