Posts Tagged Under ‘U.S.’

Dudes, Why So Much Debt?

The Wife and I had a good discussion today sparked by Sunday’s first piece in the New York Times series on debt in America. (And thanks to J Frog for sending me that way today.)

I did learn a nice history of the lending industry from the article, in particular the industry’s shift in focus from demanding repayment to collecting fee-based income off of ever-rolling debt. While the credit-card industry, and certainly the mortgage industry of the past few years, often embodies the term “predatory capitalism”, it does seem that the article shifted too much of the onus for America’s debt problem away from the public. This is similar to media outlets who generally avoid putting any blame on the voting public for America’s political messes, for obvious business reasons. (What audience wants to be told that it’s the proverbial box of dull tacks? I prefer my mental tack sharp, thanks.)

Maybe I’m too harsh, though, because the writers and editors might have been making a point on the sly about the general public by choosing the subject that they did. Ms. McLeod — no relation to Connor, who has a far better repayment cycle with which to work — really makes one unfortunate (read: not well-thought-out) decision after another. From spending her already debt-addled medical recovery cruising QVC, to adding her 20-year-old son onto her second home-refinancing and ruining his credit too, I really don’t understand what made her do what she did.

So that raises the question: What really has made debt-laden ‘Mercans turn away from the admirable saving habits of back in the not-that-far-off day? Why is “I gotta have it” such a seemingly more powerful motivator across society now than it was then? This was the topic of conversation between The Wife and me. We came to one important conclusion that’s both seemingly unrelated but not that surprising: television.

The modern debt cycle really started to germinate at about the time the TV-raised Boomer generation was earning enough money to buy homes, sign up for credit cards and pop out Millennials like your gracious host. Boomers had grown up with TV, which based on its sheer volume of audio and visual stimulation was inevitably packed full of product pitches and brand names. Sure, their parents — the Greatests — were watching TV too, but the Depression experience burned the saving ethic into their parents’ heads for life. Greatests learned back then to do things like wearing the same six velour jumpsuits for 30 years. (Which is smart — over time this actually becomes cool, what with the roundabout cycle of retro hipness.)

Boomers weren’t about to wear velour jumpsuits; velour is too hot in summer, and after a childhood of American prosperity and the enveloping nature of TV advertising, they had to get that fine narrow-lapel suit to go with the Commodore 64 for the kids. Advertisers, too, were well-aware of just how good a job TV had done to implant the “buy stuff” message into America’s collective mind. Over time they shifted from making their products attractive to making access to their products a moral right — “You deserve a break today” and “Live richly”, not just “Our McNuggets taste totally rad” and “Hey, peep out this low interest rate.” This newly created sense of entitlement grew strong until too many people didn’t bother to use their better instincts, and the things they felt they needed encompassed even luxury goods that were previously — and still probably should be — considered impractical on the average income. Cue up many of my generational peeps growing up in this environment, who should nonetheless know better than to spend that percentage allotted for savings on Manhattan rent and cosmopolitans, and the cycle continues. (Also, thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me how to save cash and how to avoid becoming a spoiled jagoff.)

In conclusion, if we didn’t have TV, we might not have a subprime mortgage crisis and government bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The end.

Obama’s Biggest Trip Gain: Quality Stock Footage for Fall

“Does this make me look West Wing?”

The hot-spot, Central Command phase of Barack Obama’s foreign-policy tour is winding down, and so far he seems to have hit all the right political notes. Hooping it up was a particularly swift move, but even more fortunate was the fact that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki came right out and supported a timetable for withdrawal nearly in line with Obama’s 16-month plan. There’s plenty to the argument against a timetable and the realpolitik strategic importance of Iraq over Afghanistan, particularly the fact that the Iraqi Sunnis don’t support a timetable, but from a political point-scoring perspective that’s a little irrelevant. Arguments from McCain or Bush against an American-favored Iraqi leader’s statements about what’s best for his own country are now going to face criticisms of tone-deafness and arrogance.

I don’t envy anyone making the Israel / Palestinian political trip, but I think the best Obama can hope for is to play perhaps the only role that America can play towards Israel to improve the situation: that of the friend who takes the keys when someone’s too wasted to realize he’s going to mess himself up if he keeps going.

But to bring things back to the title: it’s still summertime, the public and the media have long since put the blinders on for Iraq and Afghanistan, and most voters are on a break until the real campaign starts with the fall. Obama managed to score himself plenty of presidential-looking video filler for newscasts about his foreign-policy experience this fall, and that likely counts for more with the TV-influenced voting public than anything else on this trip.

Pointing Out David Addington

John Yoo got the bulk of the negative publicity for his torture memo, but I’ve read many times that David Addington has been the real advocate for scrapping the rule of law in the Bush Administration. This Bob Herbert column on Addington makes that point better than I can.

New McCain Ad: “Love”

Maybe it’s a Pennsylvania thing, but I’ve started to see presidential campaign commercials back here in Pittsburgh. This one has a funny subtext:

“John McCain was a war hero. But there was something even more important than that: John McCain was not a hippie.”

“Cut His Nuts Off”

I’m picking up a hint of jealousy here.

You’d think a guy who did so much to allow this nomination to happen would have saved the personal stuff for the ride home.

Why Obama Is Breaking Right

This Frank Rich piece from the NY Times makes a good point about the listlessness that seems to have infected the Presidential campaign in the past month or so. Most of that is attributable to the summer vacations drawing away the attention of both the press and the media audience, but it’s true that there hasn’t been a lot of substance recently. So why though does the Obama campaign move away from all that fun audacity of hope stuff?

Thing is, Obama and his campaign have the calculation down: he isn’t going to win the election by appealing to Frank Rich, and no matter how much his changed policies on Iraq and public-campaign financing make his original fans angry, they aren’t going to matter much to the rest of the electorate that has tuned things out until the fall and didn’t agree with the lefty positions on those issues in the first place. He can also save the exciting rhetoric for the time that the spotlight’s turned back on. It’s cynical, but Obama surely won’t lose left-leaning voters in the general election — they’re going to sit this one out after what happened in 2000 and 2004? — and can only potentially gain middle-ground voters by moving that way. Sure, it’s inconsistent, but sometimes you gotta know who you can afford to piss off, and that’s usually the party base.

Happy 232nd

Here’s to January 20, 2009.

Reading Recs

I recently read and enjoyed the following, so feel free to hook that up for yourself:

• This UK Daily Mail profile of John McCain’s first wife. I had always heard about his first marriage, but knew next to nothing about it. Definitely a sensationalist source, but an unflattering new look.
• An article on the prevalence of skulls by Stephen Marche in Esquire. There’s no link to it on their site, so you can just read this other description of it. Who doesn’t like a memento mori?
• This inspiring article from the Chicago Tribune magazine about a woman in Roseland (a nasty part of Chicago) who started her own anti-violence group for the teens in the neighborhood.

Good on ya.

Congrats to Obama. So Now What?

Quick hits:

• Clinton might not have won, but she certainly gets to play kingmaker. She set the pattern for the fall: black people and people under 40 for the O-man, and everybody else for her. Once you add in the masses of lily-white crotchety Republicans and extrapolate that same pattern, it looks like Obama loses by a lot. But if Hillary decides to swing her weight behind him, then that could change things.
• Does Hillary really want the vice-president slot? I don’t know that she does. From a purely self-interested perspective, things might work out better for her if she sits this year out and then makes a comeback in 2012. By then we’ll either have a McCain presidency and she can argue that the Democrats should have picked her in 2008 and certainly should in 2012, or she can find enough Obama mistakes from four years in office to drop in like Reagan in 1976 or Ted Kennedy in 1980.
• Unfortunately for her in that latter scenario, the Republicans lost the general election in 1976 and the Democrats lost it in 1980. Whoops.
• Back to the first point, your man McCain is no political slouch: he sees what I just pointed out and is trying to win over Team Hillary. Under what other circumstances would a Republican ever dare to say something nice about Hillary Clinton? His best option is for her to sit on the sidelines and be pissed, because if she does, that’s just what her supporters will do too.
• It is weird how the fact that a black man is the major-party nominee for President of the United States isn’t being played up a lot more. But then that tends to happen with all significant moments: no matter how big something seems in your own life, the world won’t bother stopping to congratulate you. There’s always more to be done, so the sooner you get down to brass tacks and do it, the better.

So Long, D.C.

What I’ll Miss Least: The transient nature of the city–at least the whitey part of the city. (NW, plus Capitol Hill SE and NE where we live.) I can’t shake the feeling that most people are here just to soon go somewhere else, and thus it’s harder to feel settled here than it has been in other mobile, creative neighborhoods of cities where I’ve lived. With NYC abuzz 24-7, settled was a relative term, but at least it makes everyone feel like one of the bees in the hive.

First runner up: The summer heat and humidity. Like swimming without a pool!

Also placed: Our old-ass apartment with its lack of air circulation and power outlets; confusing and poorly labeled road system; not enough going-out neighborhoods and the tiny size of the ones that exist; Metro delays, large areas of the city unserved by Metro trains and the lack of conductors who don’t pronounce “Judiciary Square” as “Ju-dish-u-ary”.

What I’ll Miss Most: Being in the political heart of the U.S. and everything that comes with it. In no other town in the U.S. can you to walk up to a random person in a bar and find out they work as a State Department liaison to Pakistan, or as an assistant for Ted Kennedy, or as a journalist working on an in-depth book about the failure of the Bush presidency. (And there’s never a shortage of the latter.) With the government comes the media swarm in which I work and the lobbyists, consultants and hangers-on that are part of how the country runs. Most people would probably find this group to be disgusting, and it often is. But if you want to be a part of the national conversation at the top level, this is where to bring the microphone.

First runner up: The great places to do some roadwork. My default running spot was the National Mall and surrounding area, and that was just as cool as it sounds.

Also placed: The cherry milkshake from Ben’s Chili Bowl; hot female Hill staffers walking around my hood; Eastern Market; the beautiful neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park; the fact that while it was still old-ass (see above), you could walk out the door of our building and see the Capitol dome and the Supreme Court; being only four hours from Pittsburgh; the fish-taco combo at California Tortilla; cherry blossoms and the other spring blooms; free museums.

Wish us luck on the move tomorrow; nothing cheers the soul quite like loading, driving 900 miles and unloading a UHaul 17-foot truck full of all your earthly goods.

Chicago buds, see you soon.

Gay Marriage and the 2008 Campaign

I didn’t think this one would be back again as a campaign issue, but it seems that it will be.

There are a few differences this time around. First, if campaigning were a video game, the G.O.P. already used the one-time, battleground-state-gay-marriage-ballot supermove to defeat the 2004 Democrats, leaving them without the ability to use it again. You can’t write the same amendment to a state constitution twice, so that’s out of the question in important electoral states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri and Kentucky It thus can’t be used to quite the same right-wing-voter motivation effect.

Second, Barack Obama doesn’t even support gay marriage. I had no idea that this was the case until I read it tonight. Liberal groups are apparently so excited that a liberal has a decent shot at the presidency that they have swept this normally liberal-upsetting factoid under the rug. (How mature of my fellow bleeding hearts to accept political nuance for a change.) Though Obama has an otherwise pro-gay-rights voting record, he is on the record against gay marriage. So it’s not really something that can be used against him the same way it could against John Kerry, who was more vague on everything.

I do, however, say that even as people continue to buy the Muslim rumor even after weeks of high-decibel tongue-clucking over Obama’s Christian pastor, so figuring out which smears will stick isn’t much of a logical pursuit.

Third, McCain is the candidate who is potentially the most impacted by this. Does McCain come out strongly against the California court in a bid for more religious-conservative support? Or does he stick to his relatively libertarian past talk on gay issues, in which he said he didn’t support a federal amendment banning gay marriage? (That’s libertarian by moralistic-Republican standards; he still opposes gay marriage on moral grounds and supports “don’t ask, don’t tell”.) I don’t think he’ll do anything beyond reiterating the “Marriage is between a man and a woman” boilerplate b.s.

Meanwhile, Godwin’s law has already come into play in this campaign—by the President himself!—and we’re still five months out from the election. While Bush technically compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain, I’m going to say that it still counts because Nazis were explicitly mentioned.

More From Slate: Political Ringtones

I’ll tout another piece of the site on which I recently worked, the new political ringtones we launched this week. We don’t yet have Verizon support–annoying for me since I have Verizon service–but anyone else can download these and annoy your friends with the Hillary laugh:

It’s 3 a.m. What’s Your Ringtone?

Hillary, Penguins, Romantic Comedies, Fruit, Moving

It’s been a while since something substantive. So here you go:

• Hillary’s defeat in Indiana and North Carolina is, as previously mentioned, a Pyrrhic victory for the Obama camp. I can’t predict if she’ll quit early–I personally think she won’t, and will ride it out to the convention’s bitter end–but it almost doesn’t matter. Things that happen early in the campaign are dug up and kept around until the end–anyone remember “I voted for it before I voted against it?”–and Hillary has beaten up enough on Obama already that there’s little left unsaid. I do think McCain’s proxies will bring back the secret-Muslim thing because it’ll play a lot better with Republicans in the sticks than it has so far with Democrats. Despite Hillary’s “He’s not a Muslim, as far as I know,” statement, the Indonesian childhood and Kenya photo really haven’t been hammered too much. The funny thing about that will be that Obama’s taken so much flack for being too close to a Christian pastor, and now he’s about to be hit for not even being Christian. The fun of election season!
• I think Hillary’s surprise effect on Obama was that he came into the race expecting the negative stuff to come out only in the general-election phase, and that he could actually use the negativity against the Republicans. (”Same old G.O.P. character-assassination shit while they let the country die,” etc. etc.) But then when Hillary started throwing kitchen sinks, he couldn’t very well take the line that, “This party is no good for you; look how negative they are.”
• For people who liked my Crosby piece, or people who didn’t, here’s what I think about the series:
  1. I like the offense’s chances against Biron. Biron has faced significantly more shots–an average of 32.91 shots per game in the playoffs, vs. Fleury’s 28.44 average–but he hasn’t played against a team with as much line depth as the Pens. Washington and Montreal both have great players, but not as much consistency across multiple lines. Eventually a goalie is going to get weary of being sprayed with pucks, and after two rounds that might be now.
  2. Kris Letang, Georges Laraque and Brooks Orpik are going to be the big factor in beating up (perhaps literally) Derian Hatcher and protecting Crosby and Malkin. I think the Flyers might have things in toughness, though definitely not in talent. (Though I would take Briere on Pittsburgh anyday.) Big Georges (that’s singular), you are the man, but please tell your web guy that your site needs an update reflecting the six years since the 2001-02 season.
  3. I thought about buying tickets to a game in Philly, being that it’s so close, but then I do value my life. Seriously, Philadelphians: I have never not picked up an incredibly angry vibe while traveling through your town. You don’t have to be stuck on how you became a has-been town once the 1770s ended. People call Pittsburgh a has-been town all the time, but you don’t see us throwing batteries and snowballs. (Except at Dave Parker.) For real: it’s time to find a new, friendlier identity.

• Today the Mrs. went to see Made of Honor, starring Lucius Vorenus and Dr. Octagon of “Grey’s Anatomy”. Fortunately I had to work, so I was spared the trip. I was later informed that the movie was a great example of what I hate most about romantic comedies: the innocent victim.

  The innocent victim is exactly what he (usually a he) sounds like: somebody who does absolutely nothing wrong, but gets dumped (often at the altar!) simply because he’s not the star. Lucius Vorenus’ character was apparently smart, handsome, successful, athletic and considerate, yet he still got dumped right in the middle of his vows so some reluctant lurker could come along and steal the show. Then the movie ends, and we’re supposed to be happy that some homewrecker ran roughshod over the type of dependable dude who keeps this great nation running. (This MSNBC article does a good job of illustrating this.) “But he just wasn’t right for her,” the ladies are saying. So? How do you know he realized that? Even Patrick Dempsey himself played this role, in Sweet Home Alabama (ugh). Other famous examples are Bill Paxton in Sleepless in Seattle and that other “Grey’s Anatomy” dude playing a weird Italian guy in The Wedding Planner (a really, really, really awful movie). Life is unfair, but these movies want us to cheer when this is demonstrated to us yet again. F that.

• And to any dudes who won’t accompany the ladies to these movies because it’s “gay”: have fun dying alone.
• Fruits, in descending order of great-tastingness:
  1. Watermelon
  2. Cherry
  3. Blueberry
  4. Grape
  5. Apple
  6. Pear
  7. Orange
• Finally, I’ve buried the lede here, but we’re moving to Chicago in two weeks. I’ll be there this summer before Michigan, then plan to find a job there again in 2010 after graduation. I forgot to inform the readership that I will once again be based in the land of Vienna Beef and US Cellular Field. Word to Sean Connery in The Untouchables.

And For More Pyrrhic Victory Analysis

There’s this from The Root:

The Democratic Party’s Nightmare

A Winner Is Clinton

Whiskey-drinking beat gutterball-bowling today in my home state’s leisure-activity primary, proving that the Canadian distilled-spirits industry packs an electoral punch that can’t be beat.

I’m pretty surprised by the results in this Pennsylvania primary-results graphic from NYTimes.com, in that I figured Hillary would probably win, but not by this much. She crushed Obama in all the whitey parts of central PA that will vote Republican anyway, but she also won Allegheny County. (Pitt students: as a large body of the young people who are supposed to be all “Obama is my life,” where were you on that one? Did everybody skip the primary today to drink 40s at the O?) Admittedly Allegheny was closer than the boonie counties, but then a 10% margin of victory (55-45) is pretty significant.

Six quick summations to end:

1. I’m not at all surprised by Hillary’s win;
2. I am surprised by her margin of victory;
3. Throwing the kitchen sink at your opponent works a lot better than political optimists would like to admit;
4. Hillary can kiss the black and youth vote goodbye if she wins the nomination;
5. Barack is just going to be a “meh” candidate for the huge working-class Democratic segment if he wins;
6. Winning the Democratic nomination is becoming more of a Pyrrhic victory each day.