Obama’s start

02 Apr 2009, Posted by Jeff Ditzler in Backpages, Jeff Ditzler, 0 Comments

A little over two months ago, President Barack Obama was inaugurated amid much fanfare and excitement. Since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, it has become customary for presidents to get their agenda started within the first 100 days of their administrations, a period that ends on April 30.  Your fearless columnist, though, will be too busy studying for his econ exam or, more likely, procrastinating then, so we’ll have to settle for a recap of the first 71 days:

• January 30: Intense debate breaks out among White House aides over whether to stimulate the economy of Applebee’s or TGI Friday’s during happy hour.
• February 2: Joe Biden walks out his front door and sees his shadow, signaling six more weeks of stimulus proposals.
• February 17: An attempt to introduce Obama’s hip-hop supporters to Washington’s power elite goes awry when Ludacris gets drunk and spends the entire evening hitting on Nancy Pelosi.
• February 21: The relationship between the Obama administration and the liberal wing of his party deteriorates after Michael Moore eats everything in the White House pantry.
• February 25: Attempting to bury the hatchet,  Obama sends Rush Limbaugh a box of peanut-butter sandwiches.
• March 6:  Obama’s political advisers become concerned when, for the first time, polls show his approval rating in Durham slipping below 90 percent.
• March 11: Embarrassed at his gaffe in sending the British Prime Minister a set of classic American movies on DVDs that don’t work in Europe, Obama attempts to rectify the matter by sending him an original print of the Declaration of Independence and a painting of the battle of Yorktown.  It doesn’t work.
• March 21: Concerned about an escalating bracket dispute, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend deploying troops to Gonzaga.
• March 23: An unexpected stock market rally broadens the Obama administration’s bipartisan support, leading Sarah Palin to declare that she can see 10,000 from her house.
• March 29:  Obama urges a calming of public outrage against AIG executives after realizing that given the amount of AIG’s assets the federal government bought, he is now, technically, an AIG executive.

Them haters, again (Or is it me?)

24 Mar 2009, Posted by Braden Hendricks in Backpages, Braden Hendricks, 0 Comments

What’s up with the Republicans?

No really, I’m kind of sick of all of them, from George W. Bush (a sentiment that will linger with me to the end of my days) to John McCain to all those goons on Fox News—already the divisions of bipartisanship threaten to eclipse the significance of President Barack Obama’s historic rise to the White House. Not yet three months into his term, Obama is faced with numerous detractors from both houses of Congress, destroying any semblance of a unified effort to combat this crisis. Such an effort seemed almost within sight, if not quite within reach, made possible by the tidal wave of history Obama rode into the Oval Office. It almost seemed for a few days there that maybe the Dems and the GOP might actually set aside their base differences and work towards the goal of keeping this nation from completely becoming derailed…

Psssh! Who am I kidding? That last paragraph sounds fit for a fairy tale, or perhaps straight out of diary of some political pundit who lost it and is now in the psychiatric ward. Let’s keep it real here.  If it were the other way around, say somehow a black Republican (I know, just hear me out) won the White House back in November, all of us Democrats would be chomping at the bit to tear him down too. It has always been this way in America; it has, in fact, always been this way in democracies. Don’t believe me? Take a gander at the political madness described by Thucydides in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. There was an “enlightened” civilization beset crisis, and look how those guys responded: by driving their city-state nigh onto ruin. What about Rome? Same thing. They had a crisis and gave Caesar dictatorial powers, resulting in the death of their republic.

Some people may ask: what’s this have to with America? We’ve had this sort of political strife since this country’s inception and we’re still going on strong. Really? Are we still going on strong? Athens and Rome were superpowers by their era’s standards for far longer than we have been, and their overall lifespans were a hell of a lot longer too. Both Athens enjoyed a reign of supremacy for some 250 years, and existed as an independent state nearly a thousand years. Rome was a superpower for 500 years, and lasted 1100 years in total.*

My point is this, America has a long way to go, and a lot of things to learn if it hopes to survive. Even when Obama speaks I’m skeptical now, with all his carefully picked emotive words about how America has survived far worse things than what’s facing us today, like the Civil War, and the Great Depression. Yes, when you look at it one way, that’s very true. But why then after we survive such ordeals as a nation do we always revert back to the same politics that led us to the brink in the first place? Will we never learn? Whether it’s divisions and pettiness among Congress, or corruption and negligence from the President, we always seem to take a good thing and screw it up, needlessly.

Even Obama, once my beacon of hope, is now leaving me with the familiar acrid aftertaste of standard Washington politics. I mean, couldn’t he find anyone who paid their taxes, for crying out loud? Couldn’t he find anyone who would actually take a minute to watch the actions of the greedy AIG execs who form the core of the group of people who helped lead us into this mess? Maybe I don’t know; maybe I can’t know, watching to far from the outside. But come on, can’t we do better than this? I want to believe we can do better, but I’m finding that harder and harder each day. Maybe that’s because we can’t, or maybe I’m just turning cynical. In a nation full of cynics, I guess it amounts to the same thing.

*The western half did, anyway. The eastern half of the empire survived a thousand years longer as the Byzantine empire, based out of Constantinople, or present day Istanbul, Turkey.

Why I’m not that mad

20 Mar 2009, Posted by Ade Sawyer in Ade Sawyer, Backpages, 2 Comments

If you turn on/read the news these days it seems like everybody’s mad about the economy.  Between this week’s widespread outrage over the AIG bonuses and Jon Stewarts’ channelling populist anger last week, it’s clear that nobody’s happy about the status quo and everybody’s looking for someone to blame.  The public blames the media, the media blames Wall Street executives, politicians blame each other along with anyone else that’s convenient for the moment.  But the only thing that’s abundantly clear is that, in the eloquent words of Stewart,”it’s not a f—ing game.”

It’s a good point, and people have every right to be upset.  I don’t think anyone could plausibly argue that it’s fair for executives at AIG to get bonuses when other people lose their jobs and homes due to their incompetence.  But with that said, it’s time for someone to start reining all the populist anger in.

Anyone who’s studied the French Revolution knows that populist rage can be a dangerous thing when it gets out of control.  I’m not saying we’re even in the same realm today, but it demonstrates the sort of irrationality that people can show when they’re angry and looking for a scapegoat. The tyranny of the mob is a crazy thing.  To me the oddest manifestation is the special tax that Congress passed yesterday to tax Wall Street bonuses.  It may have been good for quelling a little anger, but it won’t really help to solve the financial crisis and in that sense it was really just a diversion from the goal of making the economy viable again.

The administration has taken an interesting position in all of this.  Recognizing populist anger, President Barack Obama has expressed his anger as well.  Yet he has tried to play both sides of the fence by saying the anger has to be harnessed and that we should be looking forward rather than searching for a scapegoat.  I agree with the sentiment, but anger like that doesn’t lend itself to clear, rational thought.  Obama and friends may be whipping up a fire that they can’t control, if you ask me, getting angry won’t get us too far.

Ask Jeff

05 Mar 2009, Posted by Jeff Ditzler in Backpages, Jeff Ditzler, 1 Comments

Dear Jeff,

Right now, there’s a huge pro-McCain banner hanging from the KA section. Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?
—A. Liberal, Few quad

Dear Liberal,
You’re one to talk, considering that half of you liberals are still sporting Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers on your Priuses (or is it Prii?). At any rate, I’m not sure it’s as overtly political as you suggest. Considering that, so far, the stock market has reacted to the Obama administration in about the same way that my sinuses react to pollen in April, perhaps they’re just trying to extend an olive branch to all the future bankers out there.

Dear Jeff,
Why is there such a fuss over Obama being the first black president, but none over, say, Colin Powell being the first black secretary of state?
—Miffed Conservative

Dear Miffed,
Do you want to listen to Jay-Z rapping, “My secretary of state is black, but his secretary of state’s office is white”? I rest my case.

Dear Jeff,
Why did Duke and most of Durham close down due to a couple inches of snow this past Monday? When I was growing up in Massachusetts, we walked 20 miles through the snow to school, uphill both ways, and we liked it.
—Aggrieved Yankee

Dear Aggrieved,
This is a common misconception among Yankees. You are correct that the small amount of snow we got, by itself, did not justify the wave of cancellations. However, once combined with North Carolina drivers, even a little snow can become a catastrophe.

Dear Jeff,
What are your thoughts regarding the global economic crisis and its effect on the future of the European Union, especially the Scandinavian countries?
—Swedish Supermodel

Dear Supermodel,
The economic crisis is much too complicated to explain thoroughly in a forum like this blog. Why don’t you stop by my dorm some time, so we can talk about it in more detail?

‘Off the hook’ in the GOP

20 Feb 2009, Posted by Lisa Ma in Ade Sawyer, Backpages, 0 Comments

This post is printed in The Chronicle.

Something must have been wrong in his brain. Maybe a couple of neurons weren’t firing at the right moments. But whatever the reason, in an interview published yesterday in the Washington Times Michael Steele said that the GOP’s new public relations initiative would be “off the hook.” He used the phrase—which died at least seven years ago—to emphasize his upcoming focus on “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

I swear I’m not making this up.As pitiful as his attempt at vernacular was though, it highlights an important point: although it’s flailing right now, the GOP is not dead. Not by a long shot.

The signs of life generally aren’t as pitiful as Steele’s mental lapse. Anyone that has been paying attention to the stimulus bill knows that House and Senate Republicans put up spirited and vocal opposition to it at every level—even while governors in the party embraced it. They knew just as well as anyone that the bill would pass with or without them onboard. As we know, they chose the latter. And in the process they played the political game as well as we all knew they could. They crafted a narrative about government waste and inefficiency that was so compelling that it almost reminded me of the Clinton days. Granted, the stimulus had plenty of ripe targets in it but I can’t take anything away from them; they pounced on everything they saw.

In an all-too-familiar scene, the Democrats seemed to be back on their heels until President/hero/savior Barack Obama swooped in to the rescue. But it wasn’t before plenty of damage was done. It seemed like the Dems bought into their own post-inauguration hype and assumed that since their colleagues seemed tame after the elections that they would stay that way. They probably could’ve learned from that chimp attack if it had happened a little earlier.
Even before the stimulus, there was a shot across the bow when the most loved and despised shock jock in America: Rush Limbaugh, told his audience that he hoped Obama would fail as president. Some may have dismissed this as bluster or a media stunt, but I think people forgot that he may be the principal ideological voice of American conservatism. People are listening to him. And he’s far from dead.

Then there was a recent interview with Pete Sessions, a Republican House member from Texas, in which he said that his party would need to use insurgency-style tactics to compete with congressional democrats. He went on to reference the Taliban as an example of a good insurgency. Another brain fart, but the point stands. For Sessions—and probably other Republicans—it’s going to be important to cope with their minority position and use it for their political benefit. As Sessions put it, “to get [their] message out” and to “disrupt and change a person’s entire processes.” They’re good, and they’re far from dead.

The interesting piece of this, though, is that there’s so much talk is about spreading the message of Republicanism—particularly to young people and non-whites—when there isn’t really much to spread yet. And that, I believe, is the difference between a healthy Republican party and a fringe party of vocal contrarians. So far, in the Obama era (Yeah, era. Remember that I said it first) the GOP has been the party that says “no” and offers old ideas from the Reagan era. Frankly, I’d like to see better, because the current discourse isn’t helping anyone—including the GOP. It might not be dead but it is sick, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better quickly.

I guess if the “off the hook” tactics don’t work, they can’t try being “Off the Heezy Fo’ Sheezy in the GOPeezy.”