Who is O continued?

---------- continued from previous, see, some people know how to keep promises, sometimes

It's hard for me to write about Election Day. I certainly felt that historic jubilance - something good that I thought I'd never see in my lifetime had happened - something that didn't mean everything was better but that some things could get better.
And I had a positive opinion of the man I'd voted for, the man who'd won. [I've never been able to decide if this private joke is racist, that Obama was such a good candidate I would have voted for him even if he was white.]
At the same time, I had a bad feeling... the country was in a bad place economically... he was a politician... would he do the right things, which seemed needing more than ever since the thirties... we needed another FDR, but O was a Democrat... would he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (this once a quip but now a trope about the Dems)?... would he fold?
I didn't join the celebration in the streets. I regret it somewhat, missing the unique, once in a lifetime and all that. But I had a nagging feeling that I was setting up for a disappointment, that O was no FDR, that no leader was that brave or desperate now, and that one day the memory of celebration would make me feel all more the fool....
When I think of all that I thought good about Obama, an image immediately comes to mind, of, I think, his first press conference as president. I was happy to see my country represented by the man who'd campaigned, quick and smart. The image that summons up all the good for me of Barack Obama is him standing at the presidential lectern, lightly gripping the sides, with one foot tilted up behind him and resting on its toe. Gracefulness married to intelligence - a Fred Astaire of the mind.
Where did this O go? What happened to him? When did he become so dumb?
I think it was the announcement that he had conferred with the pharmaceutical industry and taken their demands as given in health care reform that broke me on him. Somewhere around that time my friend Richard loaned me his copy of Dreams from My Father, and I returned it unread. I could tell from flicking through it that the prose was interesting and involving, but I just couldn't bear to be engaged with sympathy in this guy I had a feeling was going to be a terrible, terrible disappointment. I had already stopped watching his media appearances - too painful.
I swore I'd keep the faith until the fate of the public option was decided. And when it was, I gave up hope that this guy was anything like the leader I thought we needed now more urgently than ever.
Let me skip policy for the moment, and maybe for good.
This intelligent, graceful man, who I am convinced is neither evil nor traitorous nor foolish, has enemies. His enemies defame him, threaten him, lie about him, with no regard for previous standards of decency, courtesy or truthfulness. They have said that there is nothing more important to them than causing Barack Obama failure and turning him out of office after one term, if not sooner. They said it again today. Why does Barack Obama still declare and act as if constructive cooperation with these people is possible? Not desirable, but even possible? They would not applaud him even as he cut his own throat.
So who is this guy? I'm baffled. My next book up is David Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. I would just hope to get some idea of what the man is thinking.
It's a library copy. It happens that it has been bound with the jacket inverted and reversed from the body of the book. It raises an interesting problem. How shall I read this book during quiet times at work or on the bus? It will look to others as if I am very carefully reading the story of our President upside-down. I could make a paper cover, but what am I to say if somebody peers over my shoulder and wonders why I found it necessary to hide that I was reading the President's biography? I don't think this accident says anything about Barack Obama, but I do wonder if it says anything about me.

Who is O?

Our president, Barack Obama, baffles me.
My first impressions of Obama, before the NY primary in 2008, were general and positive. I remember reading about this Senator who had written an interesting autobiography, which I hadn't gotten around to reading, and now he was making a run for the Dem nom, which struck me as premature. He was a young guy with no national rep that I could detect, running against Hillary Clinton's powerful, moneyed, and long-prepared machine. Maybe in four or eight years....
(Good to keep in mind when you're trying to forecast 2012 that few people would have predicted an Obama run, much less a victory, at this time in 2006.)
By the time of the NY primary, I simply could not choose between O and HRC. I thought of Hillary as the more establishment, corporatist candidate, and the more hawkish. O seemed closer to my
[y'know, it's kind of interesting - it seems natural to refer to one candidate by her initials or her first name, yet the other by his full or abbreviated last name. Some of this has to do with choice of branding, informal and not-associated-with-her-husband-except-in-a-good-way for one candidate and professional and maybe-it's-not-Arab-maybe-it's-Irish for the other. Maybe not, maybe nit.]
Averaging out my impression of Barack's politics made them seem closer to my own than Clinton's, so I liked that, but there was no substantial thing I could point out that could convince a theoretical friend that he was the one to back instead of C. But I was still steamed at Hillary's backing Big Boy Bush's Iraq Adventure, and certain that she had already arrived at her detente with the corporate state... but O was in many ways an unknown...
I didn't vote in the primary. I couldn't find a dot of difference to throw the balance one way or another.
I was sorry soon after that I hadn't voted for O. I thought Hillary's post-NY campaign was disgusting and destructive, enough to feel squeamish about voting for her should she win the nom. And not only did Barack show notable grace in maintaining the high road, the manner in which the younger campaigner was out-organizing and out-maneuvering the Hillary Machine became the substantial difference I hadn't seen before the primary. By the time of the convention I was a Barry fan - not a Kool-Aid drinker, but an admirer of a strong, intelligent man who just maybe had the fortitude and skills necessary in what was becoming a desperate time. I knew he supported continuing the wars on Iraqis and Afghanis - I thought this was a mistake, but perhaps he would find a way to conclude them quickly (if he was wise enough to come to agree with me). Remember, too, he was campaigning for health care reform that included a public option. At last! Not like Hillary with her tender concern for the insurance-pharma-industrial complex....

---------- to be continued shortly, I swear, not like the Marina Abramovic or trimming the cat's claws

sublime, pixelated

What an interesting website Metafilter has directed me to. It's called greg.org, and it's written by Greg Allen. He's obviously deeply but unshowily conversant with 20th c. modern art, including a (little known, very small) art exhibition on the moon. 
He compares buildings pixelated out of the German version of Google Street View to Gerhard Richter's blurred paintings, an association I could have made but didn't, and to the work of Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica, an association I couldn't have made since I had never heard of him before. greg.org's prose is casual but precise yet hospitable to the worst of puns. Blurmany?

"A Bee" - today's found poem

A bee fell out of my mind.
What's a mind?



[found here]

free the music

I'm trying to spend more time exploring free, inexpensive, and pay-what-you-will media. Lifehacker recommends Creative Commons' multi-media multi-search engine, CC Search. Four letters -
j a z z - and Jamendo as the chosen engine led me to Bruce H. McCosar's Martian Winter, categorized as Progressive Jazz-Rock (which I hadn't realized was exactly what I felt like listening to).
McCosar plays all the instruments, including Telecaster leads and nifty synth and bass accompaniment. It reminds me of Bill Nelson and Phil Manzanera's solo work, in strengths as well as the possible flaw that the participation of other players would have introduced a little more challenge and variation. But I'm enjoying it more than anything I came across via traditional channels in 2010.

the big O, part 2

The first two years of the Obama administration have been a failure, and there's every reason to think things will be worse in the second half. I'm starting to think he may even be a one-term President.
In today's news: 4 million more Americans went without insurance in the first half of 2010 than in the first half of 2008. What was supposed to be a review of Iraq/Afghanistan War policy preparatory to withdrawal is backing off from previously set deadlines. The co-chairs of Obama's fiscal commission are recommending benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare!? (Where's an interrobang when you need one?) The third rail is finally grasped, by a Democratic administration?
I would have written "a nominally Democratic administration," but dese are our Dems. That's it. They're diluted Republicans. Their efficaciousness is homeopathic, and maybe not even that. (Apologies to the holistic, but belief in the effectiveness of homeopathy or Obama requires similar leaps of faith at this point.)
I don't think Barack Obama is a bad man. I wish I could really know what he was thinking when he campaigned and as he formulated plans for his administration. It seems so hallucinatory to believe that financiers could be shamed and noodged into honesty, that pharmaceutical and insurance companies would yield to the public weal, that political opponents who said over and over again that they hoped you would fail, crash and burn regardless of the consequences to the rest of the country would maybe give a little, take a little.
When does it stop being reasonable to expect people to be reasonable? When does it become senseless to hope people will be sensible?
So I think Obama has pursued a moderate course, according to his better nature, when a radical course, fiercely proposed and defended, is what was necessary. It was his mistake to make. But now he has suffered what he calls a "shellacking" at the polls, and has decided to change... nothing, that I can find. He still thinks he can reach compromise with his enemies, who are plain and sincere in their expression of desire to thwart him at every turn and deny him a second term.
These people, these Repugs and their Teahadists, are going to shame and disgrace him with every tool and rotten vegetable at hand. They are the worst forces in our society, and our President doesn't seem ready or able to oppose them. Barack Obama may end up being a one-term president, and unless he stops collaborating with people who wish him ill and the rest of us nothing that will impede their naked gluttony, it will be nobody's fault but his own.

the big O, part 1

If Barack Obama had done everything I'd hope he'd do in FDR-esque fashion this last two years, I'd be praising him to the skies. If he'd done half of it, I'd be optimistic and pulling for him/us. Regarding what he's actually done, I am more discouraged about American government and politics and pessimistic about the future than I was even during Dubya.
I guess it makes sense that no Repuglican could break my heart the way the Democratic administration has. The best I ever believed of a Republican administration during my lifetime was that at least Bush Senior probably wouldn't screw up so bad. And I think that's a fair assessment of him.
He sat around and watched, like the rest of us, as the Soviet Union broke into pieces, and avoided stepping on his own dick. He ginned up a war in Panama and imprisoned his/our former asset, Noriega, and most of the civilian damage was limited to the poor neighborhood of El Chorrillo. He sandbagged another old asset, Saddam Hussein, into invading Kuwait and then celebrated a great victory that included bulldozing under the dunes wounded and surrendering Iraqis - you know, the ones that the terrible dictator had forced into his army. He didn't screw up so bad.
Remember when the DEA lured a crack dealer ("In the old days, we called them a 'walking bird'") into selling them some rock in Lafayette Park, so Bush Sr. could hold it up during a TV address and announce truthfully that it was bought across from the White House? Gee, it's fun being old and remembering things.
Uh, I was going to write about the current Prez, wasn't I. The mind wanders, boats borne ceaselessly into the past, try again, fail better.