Just when you thought Kyle Boller couldn’t be a worse decision maker…

09Feb10

He marries Palin, Jr.


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On Blogging and Self-Efficacy

09Feb10

As those who previously followed it know, Poliology’s been dead for about a year now after a couple attempts to relaunch it. This happened for a couple reasons. One is simple: writer’s block. More on this in a minute. There were other factors—at the time, Obama had only been in office for a few months, the health care debate hadn’t really taken hold of the media, and in general news was slow. The problem with news being slow when you’re a blogger, specifically one concentrating on politics, is that you don’t have much to blog about, especially if the limited stories out there aren’t particularly interesting. Other problems with the blog were starting a new job, and the stresses that come with that, and I wasn’t really available during the day; the irony of that is Paul Levy, BIDMC’s CEO has his own blog, granted it’s about his job.

The most serious problem, from a creative point of view anyway, is that you begin to feel that you’re not adding anything to the discussion. I’ll admit right now that the number of sites I read regularly is somewhat limited. It’s something I try to work on, but I often find that the discussions are redundant; I tend to find someone I like, maybe click on a link they bring up every now and then, but otherwise it can be hard to branch out. I never got paid to blog, of course. This factor lessens the feeling of responsibility professional bloggers have. No one was pushing me but myself; those who know me know that I often need the deadline or other imperative to keep up my level of personal responsibility.

The problem with Poliology was that I was an amateur trying to do a professional’s job. I tried to almost exclusively stick to political blogging, so I was already limiting myself. As I said before, if there was a lack of stories, my inspiration fell. Considering my opinions are informed pretty much primarily by others in the blogosphere, this led to a frustrating redundancy; I was simply regurgitating a lot of what I read about popular stories. I don’t live in DC, so I couldn’t really do much independent reporting. I work business hours, so it’d be extremely difficult to set up serious interviews. One’s ego must be pretty huge for that to last long—I went on for almost a year that way, I don’t know what that says about me.

On the ego issue, I found myself writing to try to get as many views as possible. This was a flawed idea. See, I don’t go randomly searching wordpress for news, why should I expect other people to do that? I never thought I’d make a living on blogging, so why should I be concerned about something that primarily concerns advertisers? I don’t know why I didn’t originally see it that way. But what it boiled down to, the page views were simply a way to feed my ego; a quantifiable property that let me know how important my blog was.

There’s a contradiction there though. I basically never promoted my blog, and I cringed when other people did. Truthfully, a big reason I stopped playing guitar was that I no desire to promote myself. I had no desire to join a band and talk about how awesome I was even though my band sounded like thousands of others in whatever genre. For some reason, that form of egotism really bothered me, but the cheap satisfaction of seeing how many random people may have even accidentally clicked a link to my blog was ok. It didn’t make sense; and I’m coming around to seeing that there are people that promote their work, and then there’s assholes who promote their work. Just because the assholes promoting their work outnumber the non-assholes doesn’t mean the non-assholes can’t do their thing too. You just have to trust yourself not to be, well, an asshole about it.

Anyway, taking us up to where I am now, I’ve grown creatively frustrated without a real outlet. I’ve thought about starting to blog again for awhile now, but I didn’t know how to approach it. I thought to just do another blog focused on following English Football as an American. This was too limited though. I knew I didn’t want to go back to exactly what I was doing with Poliology because I didn’t want to announce again that I was coming back even though I wasn’t. Maybe my distaste for Brett Favre has something to do with that. As I’ve told some of you, I’ve been thinking of a career very far from politics. So initially, it made just about no sense to go back to Poliology.

But after thinking it over for a little while, I think giving Poliology one more shot is the way to go. It will not be like it was before, I’m going to try to not obsess over linking and embedding and blockquoting and adding snark and putting up as many posts as I can a day. It was counter-productive. But I do think that politics, or at the very least, the news, is something we all share. And one way I can stop myself from sounding like everyone else is simply to talk about what interests me at any given moment when I have time to write. The altruistic outlook about this approach is that maybe someone will read a story about why Rahm Emanuel should be fired (not for the r word, btw) and catch a story about how Real Madrid rose to their status thanks largely to dictator and “Guernica” inspiration Francisco Franco. Or maybe a reader will be able to inform me further on a certain subject rather than just hate me for being a liberal (which is what most of the comments were in regards to before).

So, here we go again. I know I said I wasn’t going to commit to anything, but I’ll probably have something up about the meeting the man I linked to last before Poliology went silent—Ta-Nehisi Coates. I hope you’ll read, comment, and enjoy. I’ll try to be better about posting links to new material on Facebook too.

-Dan


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The Best Reason to Go Drinking Before 11am Since Brunch

09Feb10

This is part of at least a two-part series I’ll be doing on my NYC trip this weekend. As those who know me will attest, I’ve been a Chelsea FC  fan for years now. However chances to properly support the club have come few and far between. This sadly, is just a fact of being an American fan. There’s no proper bars to watch a match in Baltimore, and the ones up here tend to be centered around the Brazilian game. Locally the only bar that is known for getting a good amount of fans out is the Phoenix Landing.  However, as you’ll notice from the comments on yelp, this place primarily home for the dreaded Scousers–Liverpool supporters.  Recent years have seen a bitter rivalry spark between the two clubs, mostly due to heated Champions’ League matches. Also due to the refusal of Liverpool fans to acknowledge they are in the 21st Century, and support a shitty club. It happens.

So when I go to New York, I always try to make a point of hitting Nevada’s. It’s a pretty neutral venue, but it’s popularity is widespread. Those football fans in the area have been known to call it church. Those non-football fans in the area know it as a bar that opens incredibly early and is packed with people watching a sport in a way most people would never dream of. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been to Nevada’s for a Chelsea match yet, though this weekend that would change. Chelsea played Arsenal in a match that would go a long way towards deciding the title.

I had gotten news via the internet that the New York Blues, a group of CFC supporters, would be at Nevada’s. This would mean I would have serious back up in case of any potential conflicts. I think most Americans have the impression that fans of European soccer are a riotous bunch. In truth, there are very few serious conflicts abroad now, and when there are, they are strongly condemned. Still, I never knew entirely what to expect.

And so it was that I left Brooklyn at around 10 to catch the train into Manhattan. It didn’t occur to me until long after the fact that this was the first time I’ve taken the NYC subway alone. To one who is used to the banal Boston T, it seems hopelessly confusing. But I made it there without a hitch.

It didn’t take long to find Nevada’s. I have a terrible sense of direction, so it was fortunate that I had some auditory help. Just as I was starting to think I went the wrong way down 3rd Ave, I heard a melodious roar:

We are the famous CFC, We don’t give a fuck, whoever you may be, because we are the famous CFC.

The familiar sound of Chelsea supporter’s, a song called “Carefree.” I looked around and started to see some Royal Blue shirts with “Samsung Mobile” or “Fly Emirates” on the front. Chelsea fans. And then there were more. I gave my ID to the doorman, and pushed past the curtain. I was greeted by a Blue army.

Apparently, the Arsenal fans didn’t care to turn out in droves. But the Chelsea fans had the place packed wall to wall. I heard the root of the songs somewhere about 25 feet in front of me, but it was impossible to make my way further in.  I poached a spot near the bar, ordered a Newcastle, and started watching.

It wasn’t long before Chelsea took the lead when embattled captain John Terry flicked a header to the far post, where Didier Drogba was there to finish past a helpless Manuel Almunia.

Tra-la-la-la, Didier Drogba, la-la-la-la Didier Drogba

That was the strangest part, as an American fan. There was a spontaneous unintelligible outburst as soon as the ball hit the back of the net. This reaction is normal to me, but I expected high fives and applause to follow. Instead, the fans rather quickly gathered themselves and started singing for Drogba, only to be quickly follow with Carefree again. This type of organization just did not exist in American sports, outside of maybe some NCAA Basketball (there’s one I’m thinking of in particular that this UNC fan cannot mention).

I stepped outside, had a chat with some of the supporters. I’m normally a pretty withdrawn guy, but a blue shirt basically gave you a pass around here. Mindless chat about tactics, who we wanted to sign in the next transfer window, what other sports we follow.

The second half saw Chelsea continue its dominance. Screwdrivers and pints fueled the singing during the goalless forty-five minutes. After the match I said goodbye to some of the fans I had talked to before, and headed out for lunch.

I rarely am with a group of people I just have something so automatically in common with. But beyond that, there was something here that was culturally important. There are thousands of Irish Pubs across this country that try, in vain, to capture a part of European culture. And yet, without the people, the experience is never quite the same. The New York Blues however, had pulled it off. They had watched their European counterparts, and taken down extensive notes. They spend their days reading UK newspapers to get what the people in the homeland were actually saying about league. They followed the foreign leagues to scout talent, and they’d comment on websites suggesting players to sign.

I’m not really able to get my head around how so many people had decided to attempt this replication. Considering the NY Blues were around long before the internet, it’s even harder to believe. But I did notice that a lot of people stopped by the bar just to try to figure out what was going on. It seemed that even if they had no idea what the fuck was going on in the match, they were entranced by spectacle. Indeed, I have to say I was once the same way.

I don’t know if the game is ever really going to catch on in America, but I was happy that have its place. Definitely check it out.


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Thanks for those comments, and passing along something…

31Mar09

Recently found some nice comments in my inbox, thanks guys. I’ve been struggling to find my voice; more and more I think I just see the world differently than most journalists. Either that or my lack of desire to make a living off of this currently affects me. Anyway, I’ve been obsessed with Ta-Nehisi Coates recently. Here he is on writing:

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/thinking_big.php


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AIG Frustration

16Mar09

First of all, this isn’t a rant about how awful AIG is. There’s enough coverage of that already, and besides, they sponsor Manchester United, so yours truly always knew something was up.

Instead of just being angry, it’s important to know why we are angry and why we aren’t doing anything about it. The first part of understanding why nothing is being done is because we don’t know what to do. Legally.

Lest we forget that we do live in a country that does try to seperate the private sector from the government as much as possible. We live in a country with rules, I know it’s been 8 years since that’s happened, but in it’s spirit, it always has remained the same. Part of our attempted guarentee of the pursuit of happiness means that government is often not supposed to get involved. That’s not my personal belief, it’s part of our Constitutional identity. In truth, we can’t tailor our constitution to this one specific problem.

Anyway, it was that philosophy that drove Republicans and friends of the banks to look the other way the past few years (the Republicans for longer), and the government looked away while AIG became perhaps ground zero for the economic rise and fall.  AIG grew too big to fail, and I don’t think people fully understand what that even means.

Here’s an example. Huffington Post provides just a snapshot of what AIG had to pay out as insurance against, essentially, economic catastrophe

Goldman Sachs at $12.9 billion, and three European banks — France’s Societe Generale at $11.9 billion, Germany’s Deutsche Bank at $11.8 billion, and Britain’s Barclays PLC at $8.5 billion. Merrill Lynch, which also is undergoing federal scrutiny of its bonus plans, received $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31.

AIG had grown, quite simply, bigger than the US, or rather the US economy. It capitalized itself with money that wasn’t quite fake, but rather, made-up. I’m probably not the best person to explain derivatives, but please feel free to explore the internet’s vast resources on what happened with that market.

That is why we have to keep bailing them out; the glodbal economy goes kablooie if we don’t.

So the question is, what do we do about the people at AIG who broke the letter or the intent of the law? There’s apparently a “populist explosion” over the fact that AIG is paying out 160million in bonuses last year. I don’t find myself particularly surprised or upset.

For years, leftish liberals have been talking about corporations being our downfall. First of all, can we admit they were right? They also happened to be right about global warming. In fact, can we also finally admit that an unregulated free market, at best, leads to instability and at worst catastrophe? Obama’s election was part of that solution, although his centrist tendencies do not allow the debate to be framed that way. Personally, I saw this coming and I wouldn’t have let it even affect my life if it weren’t for the ubiqitous news coverage. In fact, perhaps my greatest source of frustration during all of this isn’t that we didn’t see it coming, it’s that at no point, we wanted to see it coming.

The AIG problem has left even our greatest political minds grasping at straws. Bernanke claims of “slamming the phone a number of times,” Geithner’s “hands are tied” (and believe me, he’d do anything to raise his popularity, and the normally brilliant Marc Ambinder came up with this as his best shot:

As recounted below, there’s not so much that the executive branch can do — and should do — to prevent AIG from handing out loopy bonuses. But why can’t Congress pass a law requiring that bonuses granted by a company that has taken bailout money from the Federal Reserve or TARP be taxed at a very high rate? Obviously, Congress would have to find some way to distinguish between legitimate performance pay and illegitimate bonuses, but a one-year tax hike on all such bonuses might not be unpalatable. It’s a much saner alternative than to give the Treasury the instruction to root through contracts to find ways of breaking them.

It’s a cute idea, but it seems like an ex post facto law, and thus it won’t fly. It’s also an idea that the far left has been screaming about for years. But nevermind that; don’t you think Congress thought about this, Marc?

Sorry, I don’t mean to do the Olbermann/O’Reilly callout, but it’s an idea that just wreaks of naivety. Congress didn’t do anything when the auto bailout CEOs flew in on planes, and they didn’t see this coming?

There’s one of three ways to rationalize their behavior. I’ll be kinder to Ambinder and use one of his ideas first: Outrage. It’s why a steroid scandal was brought before Washington in a massive spectacle. Politicians love looking morally outraged; it helps in elections. The second way to see it is as biproduct of corruption. These banks were in the pockets of some of the most powerful people in Washington; Frank, Gramm, McCain, Waters, Dodd…on both sides, the banks have these politicians covered, so of course they won’t do anything. The third is political/legal: is it the governments role to step in stop bonuses from being paid? In a conservative world, no. In a liberal world, it’s something you should be afraid about implying for fear that a Republican will call you a communist/socialist.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry. We should, again, we have to understand why so it doesn’t happen again. Understanding that means some sad realities, namely that it will take a while for the economy to recover and that the economy won’t be as big as it was pre-2008. That’s something I fear Americans will never understand.


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Weird

04Mar09

From CNN:

I think I am developing a crush on America’s first lady. Michelle Obama is more compelling than her husband. He’s good, but she’s utterly fascinating.

Mrs. Obama has blown away the stale air in a White House musty from eight years of the Bushes. It’s like the sun came out and a fresh spring breeze began wafting through the open windows. -Jack Cafferty

So will is Barack willing to negotiate an ass-whoopin’ without pre-conditions? 

 


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Essential Reading to Understanding the Political Future

28Feb09

I got into many conflicts with one of politics professors last year, and I kept on wondering why Obama kept proving me right. I remember a different, far more intelligent, professor once confessing that she thought the Baby Boomers may have actually ruined liberalism. Ambinder provides some must read context in a brilliant article:

There is absolutely a generational component to the anxiety. Three generations of Democratic activists view the possibility of Obama’s election through different lenses; the first came of age in the 60s and 70s before the flowering of modern conservatism and the triumph of Nixonian resentment politics. The second rose to power with the election of Bill Clinton, and today, they approach politics with instincts as developed in the 1992 campaign and refined by Clintoncare, the government shutdown and the Monica Lewinsky affair — careful, wily, programmatic, triangulatish, risk-averse, incremental. The third generation rejects all of that, believing that such caution kicked the legs out from under the Democratic Party. This generation rejects baby steps in favor of bold, often populist action; they reject the notion that the default liberal ideology cannot be majoritarian.

Make no mistake, I’m clearly of the third generation, although that’s not to say nothing can be learned from the previous two. Also note, the third generation would have never come to believe what they believe had not George W. Bush screwed up so badly. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how far Bush would fall after the 2004.

The left also dominated the internet game from the beginning, setting the stage for what we see now. It’s a challenging fact that I have to acknowledge that I am one of thousands of liberal bloggers on the net today, and the whole effect can be that of mass mental masturbation (although opinions can build on each other nicely at times). I consciously make a decision to not be outraged as much as I possibly can; there’s too many outraged voices out there writing the same story. That being said, complete neutrality is dangerous. Ana Marie Cox explains better than I can:

When they give equal weight to opinions spouted on the left and the right, the media give opinions the appearance of facts and thus allow for the kind of wholesale mendacity that’s characterized the Bush years. I tend to think this is not a political calculation, but a practical one: The media is so paralyzed with fear of “bias” that they refuse to make a distinction between fact and opinion. That would, after all, require reporting, which is expensive—and, I might add, hard. And to weigh the benefits and costs of a conservative policy versus a liberal policy? That is expensive, difficult and, worst of all, boring.”

Unfortunately that type of centrist reporting is still very much alive in the Obama era; one needs only turn on their cable news network to find outraged Republicans practically screaming about the stimulus package, and now the budget. However, the interesting part is that Obama’ favorability is now at 67% percent; one must wonder if Americans will get tired of hearing outraged, illogical Republicans (believe it or not, I’ll decline to say that is all of them).

But if Obama’s favorability does hold even over 50%, then the fearless generation of Democrats will have won, where the previous generation failed. Obama’s budget actually lays out concrete plans for things that Bill Clinton compromised, and Jimmy Carter’s bad luck lost. His popularity suggests that they could even come into fruition. We will certainly have to examine if we are a “center-right country” as conservatives like to claim.

It is hard to blame the second generation for their approach. The Republican attack machine was far better, plus they never had such a dramatic failure for a president like George W. Bush.  There’s no doubt that the Republicans were harder to beat then. However, that second generation keeps rearing its head. It was almost encompassed in the Hillary Clinton campaign, probably culminating in the “obliterate Iran” comments and the gas tax holiday via windfall oil profit tax. These ideas are outdated and they have already lost out. The media has failed to catch up to a certain extent, still with “crossfire like” formats that assume the country was still at the political deadlock it was at in 2000. The Republicans certainly failed to grasp it perhaps more than anyone. It’s not just that Americans grew tired of the right’s ideas. It’s that the facts (remember, stubborn things) were, and are, overwhelmingly in the left’s favor.

Republicans’ failure to read the country pretty much explained the inevitably doomed Palin pick (although I still wonder what Kay Bailey Hutchinson could have done). The Clinton Dems were worried about her, even though few broke ranks. I remember one of the more heated arguments with that professor was over Sarah Palin. He thought her ability to whip crowds up into a frenzy would translate at the polls, and the Bradley effect would do the rest (he also famously worked for Bradley). I argued that America did look kindly upon some of racism, and at the very least, rampant neo-conservativism spouted by brainless idiots like Joe the Plumber. So who won that one? Well, clearly I did, but the margin brings me to quoting David Plouffe. He was asked what he thought Palin’s impact on the race was:

“She was our biggest fundraiser”


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Can’t Spell Twitter without Twit

27Feb09

Another alarm bell goes off on the Web 2.0 boom, this time, via a Bushie.

Via the Daily Beast:

Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion. It’s part of the web 2.0 nonsense that believes if you build anything, venture capitalists will throw money at it and then some old media dinosaur will buy you for a gazillion dollars. But, I suspect those days are over. -Mark McKinnon

He’s right, twitter have drastically screwed this up. There is a business there somewhere (they’ll have to hire me to tell them where), but as it stands now, it has even less potential to succeed long term than a free-of-cost Facebook.

There are some very sad attempts at rebuttals in the comments. Personal favorites:

McKinnon isn’t interested in any medium that he can’t manipulate or control and he isn’t keen on anything he can’t spin or where PR agents can’t frame the message. Bottom up communications is anathema to the spin-Nazi as we like to call him.- thair1

Twitter is a bit of waste if what you’re doing with it is simply saying “This is what I just did.” It’s banal and pointless at that level. Use it for “this is what I’m thinking” or “this is something you should know about”, and it’s telepathy of the best kind.- DoyceT

And a nice counter in the comments as well:

Twitter is for egomaniacs who crave attention and think what they have to say should be seen by EVERYONE!- Munodi


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Glenn Beck is Clearly Baked

27Feb09

This is incredible, I’ve never seen an interview like this before.


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Dear GOP, Thank You for Michael Steele

27Feb09

I’ve been tracking Michael Steele since he was my Lt. Governor way back in the days of living in Baltimore. At the time Steele was used brilliantly by Bob Ehrlich as an attack dog. He also helped Ehrlich in the black community, who previous Lt. Gov.-turned-candidate-Kathleen Kennedy Townsend alienated. Ehrlich was ousted after one reasonable term where he fought for slot machine legalization, and faced opposition from state Democrats who wanted to increase the sales tax. Ehrlich lost that battle, eventually crashing out to Former Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley. Ehrlich’s kinda disappeared, but Steele was an up and comer, rising through the ranks to eventually because the head of the RNC. He was elected with the hopes that he could bring in newer (i.e. black) constituents. Little did the GOP know, he’s pretty fucking crazy (Personal anecdote: He once got into a heated policy argument with an autistic kid while speaking at my school). Steele has pledged to make the GOP more “hip-hop” friendly. With what’s happened over the past couple days, all I have to say is thank you desperate GOP:

Mostly via Huffington Post:

According to CNN, Steele was then praised by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

As Steele concluded his remarks, Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann — the event’s moderator — told Steele he was “da man.”
“Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man,” she said.

You’ll remember Bachmann from trying to start McCarthyism again. Wait, there’s more:

Although he emphasized that the conservative movement must become a revolution and transform America, he conceded that the party had made mistakes: “We know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad. But we go forward in appreciation of the values that brought us to this point.”

His bad? Dude, you weren’t even making any decisions! How many times will you ever see the phrase “my bad” followed by “appreciatiation of the values?” How could Steele top that. Give it up to ya boy, B-Jind!

Via Politico:

SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that’s the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.

STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) … some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin’ awesome job in his state. He’s really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff … the easy stuff.

Let’s just ignore that on Jindal’s watch a decent chunk of the state turned into slums. Let’s ignore that Jindal isn’t even from India (his parents are) and he didn’t grow up in the poverty that the people of Mumbai did (though growing up non-white in Lousiana probably fucking sucked). But seriously, “friggin awesome?” Napoleon Dynamite is the GOP chairman?


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