Category Archives: Politics

Obama as an empty chair

Americana, Politics

The Obama that much of the right is against is invisible because he is not real.

Gingrich put it succinctly,  I think [Obama] worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true….He was authentically dishonest. Gingrich is saying that what Obama says he believes, and even what he actually does, are cover-ups for some secret agenda. Maybe it is Kenyan anti-colonial behavior, what ever the hell that is;  maybe he is hiding that he a Marxist, or a Socialist; maybe, as Romney inferred, Obama isn’t really an American.

As an aside, When Clint argued with Obama, what I found most surreal, was the imaginary Obama swearing. I want to be clear here, I like swearing, Fuck!, I even like to swear – I am not saying that swearing is evil, or bad – but I have never heard Obama swear. I have never even heard about Obama swearing. If Clint was arguing with Rahm Emanuel or Dick Chaney, it would make sense, but only Clint’s imaginary Obama swears. End aside.

I have never had anybody tell me – personally, face to face, in a conversation –  that Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist, but I have had several conversations where people have said that Obama is a Marxist or a Socialist. At first I thought they were saying this to be argumentative or saying that just to piss me off, but I have come to believe that they actually believe it. Not that they have really thought it out, not that they even want to think it out.

Sure, part of it is good old fashioned racism. But a racism that is powered not by Obama’s blackness but by the fact fact that, as a half white man, he has chosen to identify as black, to marry a black woman, to live in the black area of Chicago. He has chosen to be different, to be the other. It is xenophobia as much as racism. On this subject, atleast, many of Obama’s detractors are a little deranged.

And this derangement has led the Republicans to build the major theme of their Convention – with signs and chants – on Obama saying you didn’t build that. To take the reasonable – If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together – and simplifying it to the point of being a lie and then being outraged. Outraged at something Obama didn’t say, outraged at their projection on the invisible Obama.

Obama is punching back

Americana, Politics

When the world needs to do really big stuff, we need an American, Mitt Romney in his acceptance speech. What a snide comment! A passive- aggressive line said in a way that tries to leave no fingerprints. The kind of comment that Michael Dukakis, or Al Gore, or John Kerry, would have ignored  and then been punished for ignoring.

About six months ago, a conservative acquaintance said that this was going to be a dirty election. I don’t remember the details, but he said it in a way that clearly was saying that Obama is a dirty campaigner and would not wage a fair campaign. I agreed (in a way that tried to make it sound like he was talking about the Republican). And I do agree and I am happy about it. I am not particularly happy about the campaign turning negative, but I am very happy that Obama is willing to punch back. It is one of the things that I most like about Obama.

For all his cerebral detachment, his calmness, his – at times – distressing passivity, Obama is a fighter and he is willing to take Romney on.

Uncarina decaryi

Politics, Psychological Musings

We have had a Uncarina decaryi – I have no idea what it’s common name is or if it has one, but it is in the sesame family – growing next to a window, in a light corner of the house. We have had it for, about, ten years, keeping it warm, feeding it, and it has done nothing to earn its keep. This summer, we cut it back – it had become too fleshy and etiolated , and put it outside to fend on it’s own for a while. A couple of days ago, it bloomed in the strangest way. Now it has big yellow flowers peaking out from under the leaves. If that doesn’t make you want to be a Republican, nothing will.

 

Pedaliaceae or sesame family

Michele, my dad, and me at Lake Tahoe

California, Politics

Michele and I went to  Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point State park today. It was a longer drive than we wanted, but we were looking for a place to take a walk along the lake, and it is one of the ugly facts about Lake Tahoe that it is hard to take a long walk along the water. Along the shoreline, it is almost wall to wall private property.

Driving south on the lake-shore highway, we passed miles of private homes – most of them gated to keep us from getting to their private, backyard, waterfront – interspersed with resorts and small open spaces, usually private beaches, giving us views across the lake. Along California’s Coast, it is less troublesome to get to the water because of what some would call the Socialist Coastal Access Act but Tahoe doesn’t have an equivalent act leaving the shoreline pretty much access proof.

My dad had been Chairman of the California State Park Commission under Governor Pat Brown when the Isaias Hellman1 estate at Sugar Pine Point came on the market. It was a major stretch of private water front and, today, would be a prime candidate for an hyper-expensive, gated, still private, development (most likely based on a golf course….uggg!).  But the 60’s were a different time and the state bought it and turned it into a Sugar Pine Point State Park. Among other things, the park provided, for the first time, a long stretch of Tahoe shoreline accessible to regular people.

Thinking about that, as we drove down Highway 89, brought back memories of Daddy – as my sister and I still call him – and how influential he was in getting this property and how proud he was that the state did get it (and how much he enjoyed the perk of spending the night at the mansion including being entertained at a a special dinner in the dining room). It brought back memories of how much Daddy was a democrat – with a small “d” – as well as a Democrat. Memories that included the California of the 50’s and 60’s when Governor Pat Brown’s motto was Make no little plans and California was a boomtown – uh? boomstate? – with all the good and bad that involved.

When we got to the Park, the first thing I noticed was the entry Gatehouse built by the state 1n 1965. It was lovingly designed and built to match the existing mansion including diagonal muntins separating diamond shaped panes of glass over the double-hung windows and featured a native stone base.

I had forgotten Daddy’s love of architecture and how much he knew about it but, now, I remember his taking me to hear Frank Lloyd Wright give a lecture when I was eight (and, years later, while in the Army, making a special trip to see Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was a direct result of that lecture). I remembered how surprised I was, when first discovering the Farnsworth House in an architecture class, finding out that Daddy already knew about it.

We parked the car and walked by the public beach. Watching the people on the public beach – the people’s beach – enjoying the water and the sun, brought tears to my eyes. Tears of love and admiration mixed with the sorrow of how little I knew my father – how distant he was – and how much, on a day like this, here, I miss him.

(I also thought of how many of people enjoying the beach, with their boats tied up nearby, wouldn’t vote for a Democrat because they didn’t want “big” government.)

We had a picnic lunch under a gazebo with a view of the mansion which was designed by San Francisco architect, Walter Bliss, wandered around the outside of the building – both of us were most taken with the Sugar Pine porch columns with the bark still on and then we went for our long walk in the trees overlooking Lake Tahoe.

1. Isaias Hellman was a very interesting guy. (The following is from The Web, to save you the trouble.) A Jewish immigrant from Germany, he came to California when he was 16 in 1859. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into a modern metropolis. He became California’s premier financier of the late 19th and early 20th century by founding LA’s Farmers and Merchants Bank, LA’s first successful bank and then transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West’s biggest financial institutions. Hellman invested with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds to discover California’s huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times.  He controlled the California wine industry1.1 for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, Hellman calmed the financial markets alowing San Francisco . Oh, he also had exquisite taste in architecture.  

1.1 A group calling themselves Wine Beserkers recently tried a 1875 Cucamonga Vineyard Angelica Wine Isaias W. Hellman Private Stock saying Bricked medium cranberry red color with clear meniscus; fascinating, VA, coffee liqueur, chocolate, raisinette nose; tasty, rich, chocolate, orange, raspberry, coffee liqueur, raspberry syrup palate with good acidity; long finish (bottled from wood in 1921; reminiscent of both a mature Port, but with greater color — no doubt due to the 46 years in wood before bottling — and a mid-1800s vintage Madeira Bastardo, i.e., vintage Madeira from a red grape, with the acidity of a Terrantez or Verdelho) (97 pts.)