100 days into a total eclipse.

Image from malacandra at Daily Kos.

Quote of the day.

“I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you, because I’ve been there. A few times. In fact, one of them was a bit of a nail-biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he’s probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government’s oversight capability, invade a country that you thought should not be invaded, but that’s not tyranny. That’s democracy. See, now you’re in the minority. It’s supposed to taste like a shit taco.”

from John Stewart.

Did Obama bow in Mexico too?

First he supposedly bowed to the Saudi king. Now, you tell me, but it sure looks like he bowed to Mexican President Calderon’s golden retriever. I’m probably a bad one to ask what the ultimate meaning of this is and if it means America is weak, as I bow to my golden retriever too.

Why we can take pride in being Americans.

From President Obama’s speech to the CIA earlier today. “We are on the better side of history.”

Obama and the Pirates–imagine if it had turned out differently.

From Joe Klein:

As it stands, our socialist, pacifist, crypto-Muslim President has bagged three terrorist in the most dramatic fashion and saved a Captain.

For a background, read this Daily Kos diary on how the GOP lost by betting against the US and President Obama.

Defining Obama.

Zadie Smith, a wonderful writer whose work I adore, tries to define the transcendent character of Barack Obama. It’s long but well worth reading for both her words and her message. Here’s a short excerpt.

It gives me a strange sensation to turn from Shaw’s melancholy Pygmalion story to another, infinitely more hopeful version, written by the new president of the United States of America. Of course, his ear isn’t half bad either. In Dreams from My Father, the new president displays an enviable facility for dialogue, and puts it to good use, animating a cast every bit as various as the one James Baldwin—an obvious influence—conjured for his own many-voiced novel Another Country. Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas, Kenyan elders, white Harvard nerds, black Columbia nerds, activist women, churchmen, security guards, bank tellers, and even a British man called Mr. Wilkerson, who on a starry night on safari says credibly British things like: “I believe that’s the Milky Way.” This new president doesn’t just speak for his people. He can speak them. It is a disorienting talent in a president; we’re so unused to it. I have to pinch myself to remember who wrote the following well-observed scene, seemingly plucked from a comic novel:

“Man, I’m not going to any more of these bullshit Punahou parties.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time….”

“I mean it this time…. These girls are A-1, USDA-certified racists. All of ‘em. White girls. Asian girls—shoot, these Asians worse than the whites. Think we got a disease or something.”

“Maybe they’re looking at that big butt of yours. Man, I thought you were in training.”

“Get your hands out of my fries. You ain’t my bitch, nigger…buy your own damn fries. Now what was I talking about?”

“Just ’cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her a racist.”

This is the voice of Obama at seventeen, as remembered by Obama. He’s still recognizably Obama; he already seeks to unpack and complicate apparently obvious things (“Just ’cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her a racist”); he’s already gently cynical about the impassioned dogma of other people (“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time”). And he has a sense of humor (“Maybe they’re looking at that big butt of yours”). Only the voice is different: he has made almost as large a leap as Eliza Doolittle. The conclusions Obama draws from his own Pygmalion experience, however, are subtler than Shaw’s. The tale he tells is not the old tragedy of gaining a new, false voice at the expense of a true one. The tale he tells is all about addition. His is the story of a genuinely many-voiced man. If it has a moral it is that each man must be true to his selves, plural.

Patience People!

The Old Fart’s Saturday Recommendations.

• Dick Cavett on the time (October 14, 1981) when, two of my favorite writers, John Updike and John Cheever paid him a visit on his talk show.
• A former religious right leader, Frank Schaeffer, writes an open letter to President Obama.
• Strange bedfellows, the religious right and the Christian left, join forces to provide advice to Obama on reducing poverty.  This is a good thing.
• What Hookers Do on Valentine’s Day.
• And, a bit of reading for the occasion, Money Can’t Buy You Love.

The Old Fart’s Wednesday Recommendations.

• Paul Begala on the GOP strategy of Denial, Delay and Do Nothing.
• “What Rocky Start” by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post.
• Even Senators have tax problems.  But who’s surprised?
• Former Whitney and SF MOMA Museum Director, David Ross, has some contemporary art recommendations for the Obama’s private White House quarters.  Interesting ones that I must say would make me exceedingly happy, especially my friend Laura Owens. I love it that the Obamas are considering having art by living American artists in the residence.  Another change I can believe in.
• And, then there is this January 2006 LA Times article which, thanks to the Internet, I just read this morning. Did you spot the reference to the old fart in a past life?

The Old Fart’s Tuesday Recommendations.

• I watched Obama’s prepared statement at his press conference and then listened to the Q&A as I was driving to LAX.  Forgetting the actual answers, I was amazed at what I was hearing as far as the language, complete sentences and fully thought out answers. Mark Nickolas has run Obama’s answer through Word’s readability scoring and compared them to Bush’s with a not very surprising result if you you’ve been paying attention.
• Anne Appelbaum on our only ticket out of Afghanistan, the Afghan army.
• Noam Scheiber on Obama’s mastery of the old “rope-a-dope.”
• When you hear the word “Christian,” what comes to mind? Is it love, compassion, service, humility and grace? Or is it more along the lines of anger, self-righteousness, judgmentalism and hypocrisy? Cathlene Falsani on, one of my pet issues, the need to re-brand Christianity and the documentary, “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.”

Deep thought.

Watching the talking heads this morning it is clear that:

“Obama is a failure because in 2 1/2 weeks he hasn’t fixed all that Bush screwed up in 8 years.”

Dear God, make them go away.

The Old Fart’s Sunday Recommendations.

• Randall Balmer on The Daily Show, about God in the White House. (Click on the Randall Balmer segment in the “Coming Up Next” box.
• Paul Krugman on the impact of the centrist cuts in the stimulus plan. 600,000 fewer employed Americans. DAMN! I could be one of them.
• I know this is not the point of this NY Times story, but I thought it was interesting (in a weird sort of way) that Mike Tyson was once married to the sister of Michael Steele, the new GOP head.
• SNL’s Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi press conference. Sometimes we have to laugh at ourselves. “Maybe if we spent more money on education and sex ed the next generations won’t have so many stupid people…”
• Brad Gooch on Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two artists whose work first got me interested in contemporary art.  In fact my first piece of real art I ever purchased was by Rauschenberg.
• And then there’s The Grammys tonight. I won’t watch but am always interested.

Are you suffering from postpartisan depression?

Diana Butler Bass explains the difference between “postpartisan” and “bipartisan.”

President Obama campaigned as a postpartisan candidate.  Postpartisan means that politics must move beyond the current party structure.  A postpartisan vision recognizes that there are many voices in the larger body politic–and that a good number of those voices have never been heard in the American process.  Thus, postpartisan, a sort of generational mantra for those under 40, is an attempt to create new relationships, draw diverse people and perspectives to a table, and develop innovative possibilities to address social and political issues.

In case no one in Washington has noticed, postpartisan does not mean bipartisan.  Yes, the root word–partisan–is the same, but the prefix is different.  “Post” means “after, beyond, or subsequent to;” “bi” means “two.”

An op-ed we can believe in.

In today’s Washington Post:

Every day, our economy gets sicker — and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now.

Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.

Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.

Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.

And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.

These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They’re patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide.

So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington’s bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn’t written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

The Old Fart’s Monday Recommendations.

• Cathleen Falsani’s interview with Former President Jimmy Carter.
• “If Obama were Pope.” Ruth Gledhill had the full English translation of Hans Kung’s article but had to take it down as the English rights were sold to a different source than the Times of London but you can read a bit and go back for the full link later.
• Financial issues have effected art museums throughout the US, most recently MOCA here in LA and now the Rose Museum at Brandeis University.  The question of who owns the art in museums is raised in this NY Times article.
• Senator Stormy? Prostitute frequenting Senator Vitter’s soon to be competion?

Obama — the Presider.

I love Andrew Sullivan’s take on the early days of the Obama presidency and its differences from the Bush era. Read it all here, but here are a few highlights.

One impression from Obama’s interactions with the Republicans and Democrats in Congress: Obama clearly sees the presidency as a different institution than his immediate predecessor. This is a good thing, it seems to me. Bush had imbibed a monarchical sense of the office from his father and his godfather (Cheney). The monarch decided. If you were lucky, you’d get an explanation later, usually dolled up in propaganda. But the president had one accountability moment – the election of 2004 – and the rest of the time he saw the presidency as a form of power that should be used with total boldness and declarative clarity.

[.....]
Now look at Obama. What the critics misread in his Inaugural was its classical structure. He was not running any more. He was presiding. His job was not to rally vast crowds, but to set the scene for the broader constitutional tableau to come to life. Hence the obvious shock of some Republican Congressman at debating with a president who seemed interested in actual conversation, as opposed to pure politics.

[.....]

If Bush was about the presidency as power, Obama is about the presidency as authority. It’s fascinating to watch this deep difference in understanding slowly but unmistakably realize itself in public actions. Somewhere the Founders are smiling. The system is correcting itself after one of the most unbalanced periods in American history. But it took the self-restraint of one man to do it.

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Flavors.

You may know that Ben & Jerry’s created an Obama flavor, “Yes Pecan,” to celebrate the inauguration.  My friend Chris sent this list (I suspect it’s been passed around the Internet) of suggestions from consumers on a name for a Bush flavor.

Grape Depression
The Housing Crunch
Abu Grape
Cluster Fudge
Nut’n Accomplished
Iraqi Road
Chock ‘n Awe
WireTapioca
Impeach Cobbler
Guantanmallow
imPeachmint
Heck of a Job, Brownie!
Neocon Politan
Rocky Road to Fascism
The Reese’s-cession
Cookie D’oh!
Nougalar Proliferation
Death by Chocolate… and Torture
Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
Credit Crunch
Mission Pecanplished
Country Pumpkin
Chunky Monkey in Chief
George Bush Doesn’t Care About Dark Chocolate
WMDelicious
Chocolate Chimp
Bloody Sundae
Caramel Preemptive Stripe
I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands…with nuts

The Old Fart’s Monday Recommendations.

Monday’s recommendations will again be few as I am off again to do my Monday cooking for the growing homeless population. Today, turkey ala king over rice for probably 150.

• Musician John Forte, whose sentence was commuted by former-President Bush after serving 7 years, writes about his first day out of prison.
• Cynthia Tuckers opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the role science should play and President Obama’s role.

I still can’t help myself. I love to say “President Obama” and “Former President Bush.” It warms the cockles of my heart.

The Old Fart’s Sunday Recommendations.

• What is the impact of engaging the people of Islam in virtual worlds? Bill Berkowitz has a though provoking analysis.
• The Sunday Times of London compares Michelle Obama to Lady Diana. “Not since Diana, Princess of Wales, has there been such a glamorous role model at the apex of society.”
• As a fan of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, I can’t wait to see Robert Downey, Jr. in the Holmes role.
• And for my Okie friends, Marianne and Ellie, who are definitely not typical of those people described in Denver Nicks story on “The Land That Obama Forgot.”

The Old Fart’s Saturday Recommendations.

• An interview with Steve Turner regarding Christians in the arts and how “Christ didn’t die to make us religious, but to make us human.”
• All those who have been quoting a CBO report to counter the President’s economic stimulus package need to read this.  It doesn’t exist.
• Bob Herbert on what we’ve watched this week, it’s called leadership. “Mr. Obama has been feeding the almost desperate hunger in this country for mature leadership, for someone who is not reckless and clownish, shortsighted and self-absorbed.”
• Newsweek on the obliteration of the Bush Legacy. And, it can’t come fast enough for me.