“Amigo! Amigo!” Mr. Bush called out cheerily in Spanish when he spotted the Italian prime minister. “How you doing, Silvio? Good to see you!”More from Matthew Yglesias and ThinkProgress via my brother.
Our beautiful America was built by a nation of strangers. From a hundred different places or more they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources--because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. And from this experience, almost unique in the history of nations, has come America's attitude toward the rest of the world. We, because of what we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up--a world where no country rules another and all countries can deal with the basic problems of human dignity and deal with those problems in their own way. Now, under the monument which has welcomed so many to our shores, the American Nation returns to the finest of its traditions today. The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung. When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history.
My brother's adorable pup, Mr. Bones, has his own blog. The latest Bones Blog entry documents Bonesdiggity's first and second run-in with a turtle. It's good stuff. Please welcome Bonesy to the World Wide Web!
We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical.
Outside Liberty Income Tax in Cleveland, Ohio yesterday. When my brother saw this shot he was reminded of this Statue of Liberation in Memphis, which tells a whole other story.
Let's call today's installment of "Go Obama!" The Backlash Edition. You know what I'm talking about -- the way the modifier "cultish" has become the new "unelectable" or "inexperienced" in NObama-speak. This ABC round-up observes TPM's Kathleen Geier "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters," Time magazine's Joe Klein finding "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" and MSNBC's Chris Matthews resorting to Biblical comparisons. But I liked Joel Stein's account of this phenomenon in the LA Times best:
Obamaphilia has gotten creepy. I couldn't figure out if the two canvassers who came to my door Sunday had taken Ecstasy or were just fantasizing about an Obama presidency, but I feared they were going to hug me. Scarlett Johansson called me twice, asking me to vote for him. She'd never even called me once about anything else. Not even to see "The Island."
The campaign dispatches of ex-Gawker man -- and Obama vote-caster -- Choire Sicha show a similar eye for the comedy of fanaticism ("They sure like to chant 'yes we can!' " he writes of one Obama drinking event). It has something to do with the issue of Obama's "coolness," summed up by the New York Times as a choice heavy with aesthetic/lifestyle connotations: "Is Obama A Mac And Clinton A PC?" The comparison is fun but worrisome -- not only is it "not clear that aligning with the trendy Mac aesthetic is good politics," those commericals are kind of annoying anyway.
"People want to vote for him because it feels like a dare," Sicha writes. "It feels like a treat. It’s just so crazy, they’re thinking! And why not? Everyone’s doing it!" Enthusiasm (and even a little pump-up music) is great -- if it's backed with substance. But there's a lot to be said for playing it cool, too. As Stein concludes:
... The best we Obamaphiles can do is to refrain from embarrassing ourselves. And I do believe that we can resist making more "We Are the World"-type videos. [BP: My brother calls the Will.i.am video "the kiss of death."] We can resist crying jags. We can resist, in every dinner argument and every e-mail, the word "inspiration." Yes, we can.
This is part two of a two part post. For those of you just joining us, Part One consisted of this scenario, which reached my brother's inbox. Here's his response, which I post with pride:
Let me see if I understand the analogy by stripping it to its bare essentials.
The owner of the bar is the United States government, the $100 bill symbolizes our taxes, the bar customers are the citizens, and the beer represents the services that are provided to the citizens by the government. At some point, the government reduces taxes by 20%, while still providing the same services. The grateful citizenry initially divides the reduction in proportion with the existing tax scheme. Then, the poorer citizens become upset with their actual savings in real dollars, demand an even larger share of the reduction, and eventually "beat up" the citizen in the highest income bracket-- engaging in class warfare, I suppose. The wealthy citizen then abandons the United States for another country. As a result, the remaining citizens of the United States no longer have enough money to pay for the services that had been provided before.
Then comes the punchline, or lesson: "The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction." As a statement of fact, this is an obvious point, in terms of real dollars. But if the argument is that it is somehow unfair or unjust for some of the poorer citizens to even make the claim that the richest citizen shoulder alarger share of the burden, then I simply don't agree.
Let's start with the sixth man. The example tells us that he pays $2 in taxes instead of $3 in taxes -- a 33% savings. But the example doesn't tell us anything else about the sixth man. So let me provide some other details about his life. He works in a lumber mill in Maine, and earns a total of $5/year. With the $3 he now has (instead of the $2 he previously had, thanks to the 20% tax reduction) he has to pay for the necessities of life -- food for his children, a roof over their heads, health insurance, gas/electricity bills, the costs of their education. After doing so, he has nothing left over. Sometimes he even has difficulty covering those basics.
Providing him a slightly greater benefit, in terms of real dollars, at the expense of the tenth man, would have a huge impact on his basic well-being, while only having a minimal impact on the overall well-being of the tenth man, who has a much larger disposable income. Now, I agree with the general principle that at some point excessive taxation of the tenth man will cause him to either a) stop working or b) move to a country with a reduced tax burden. The amount of taxation certainly should not be a disincentive to work. But the example doesn't tell us anything about how the tenth man earned his money-- or even whether he earned it at all! Did he work hard for it? Or did he simply inherit it? And if the tenth man did in fact earn it, did he do so in part as a result of the "beer" he himself enjoyed throughout his life -- the government services that he received, including safety and security, public schools, a system of transportation upon which to conduct his commerce, and a judicial system to protect his wealth and resolve disputes?
Simply put, the services that the government provides shouldn't be trivialized as merely "beer," something which we enjoy (but ultimately isn't necessary). Our taxes provide for the defense of the country, schools for our children, roads, levees (see New Orleans), bridges (see Minnesota), and dams. A failure to invest in these things can be catastrophic to all of us, from the first man through the tenth man. A failure to invest in our less fortunate fellow citizens (and to give them additional tax relief when the costs of doing so are relatively small and the benefits to them are relatively great) makes us all poorer. With a little bit of extra savings, that sixth man can lead a more productive life -- and perhaps raise children whose hard work, skills, and values enrich the rest of us -- both spiritually and economically. Our individual success and personal wealth (while derived in part from our own hard work, no doubt) also is derived from our collective work as a society and as a nation. In the end, the tenth man might not have the same good fortune "drinking over seas."
I guess you should count me among "those who do not understand."
