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The Next President

Finally, a presidential candidate who knows something about effective public speaking.

“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too.

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States.

We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

– Barack Obama in his Democratic National Convention Keynote Address.

It’s been a while

Once again I’ve fallen down on posting. I’ve been working extra hard as a new Board year for the Growers’ Market kicks into gear, working on my garden (see my wife’s site, with whom I share space on the internet, for a garden journal), and watching my son grow up. He’s 20 months old, and is extremely pretentious. He’s learning his letters, wants to read poetry with me (Robert Frost, T.S. Elliot, Pablo Neruda, and Saul Williams are his favorites), and generally understands the world better than his mother and I do. I’m not sure what to do with him, and I worry that if he doesn’t slow down he’s going to miss some of the important details that toddlers at this stage learn. On the other hand, I’m trying my hardest to remember that he knows what’s best for himself, and that he’ll be just fine. Taylor was a very early reader, and I was a very early talker. He seems to have picked up both from us, and that’s the way it goes for him.

We’re deep in the swing of getting the garden ready, planting and tilling and pushing earth. I built Arthur a sandbox in the back yard (it needs sand, but otherwise it’s ready to go). We have nine chickens, one a full on pullet and the rest emerging from chickhood into a sort of creepy dinosaur looking transitional phase. We inherited a very nice coop from some friends who were no longer using it, and have fenced in a nice big corner of our yard to be a chicken run. Big Chicken is already living outdoors, and the littles are living in a big watering trough in our laundry room. I’m ready for them to grow up and head outside, but it’ll be a while yet.

My father in law and his wife will be in town for the whole summer, out from the East coast, and we’re getting ready for a great summer of Grandparent time, festivals (Country Fair is less than two months away!), and harvesting. I’m hoping to have a pig roast, something we did last summer, and to brew up a batch of Lambic (which won’t be ready to drink for two years. Awesome).

I did some (not much) volunteering for Oregon’s primary, which took place last week. Our commitments to the food co-op continue to keep us busy, and our country fair meeting and planning is kicking into gear.

In terms of brewing, I’ve done two batches since I last posted and I may at some point share the recipes/techniques used here. For now, I’m going to let it be and go back to work.

Yell Obama

Hello everyone. It’s been a while, but you should all run out and buy my wicked cool tee shirt from Cafe Press. Wearing this shirt will tell all your friends and total strangers that you are in favor of both the U of O, and Barack Obama. It will also show off your wicked fashion sense, and it will make your mother proud. Go buy one today.

Pat Robertson

On the CNN live web stream following the Super Tuesday results, Pat Robertson just said that god told him that a Republican would not win the general election. That guy says the damnedest things.

Join my Fantasy Congress League!

Fantasy Congress is a fun and easy way to prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that you’re a giant geek. Here’s how it works;

You pick ten sitting members of Congress, two each from various levels of seniority starting with the most senior Senators and ending with the rookie Representatives. As the ’season’ progresses, you can make changes in your lineup. When these real people are successful at passing legislation or making news or doing other stuff that members of Congress do, you get points. Whomever has the most points at the end wins.

Here’s how to join; go to the Fantasy Congress website and set up an account using any username and password you like. Then, choose to Join a League. Search for ‘Pax Humana’ which is the name of my league. The password is 12345. It is a private league, but I’m pretty sure most of my readers here are friends anyway and I don’t mind a stranger or two. I just wanted to make sure that there are seats open for some specific people and making it a private league seemed the best way to do that.

Anyway, here’s my starting lineup. For this round, since I’m going to keep trying to recruit players after we’ve started playing, multiple teams can draft the same member. In future seasons, I’d like to experiment with closed drafts where you have to trade to get the members you want;

Hillary Clinton (D)
Peter DeFazio (D)
Jason Altmire (D)
Chris Carney (D)
Ron Paul (R)
Robert Wexler (D)
Harry Reid (D)
Barack Obama (D)
Ted Kennedy (D)
Charles Rangel (D)

How to Beat Up a War Hero

This post was predicated on this note from the Atlantic

The Clinton campaign has released a memo playing up her strength as the best candidate to beat John McCain because of her experience. I think she’s not only wrong; she is exactly wrong. She is the candidate most vulnerable to John McCain precisely because of her experience.

Let’s step back for a second and think about the implications of this year’s general election. If the Democrats can’t win in 2008, we can’t ever win. Republicans will control the White House for another 50 years at least and the ‘Reagan Revolution’ (Viva El Gipper?) will be complete. If we can’t take the presidency after the most unpopular President since Nixon, how can we ever expect to take it? We can’t, and so I say a loss in 2008 will make the next several decades a painful display of false populists looting the social safety net and giving a healthy share of the spoils to wealthy corporations in the form of tax loopholes and kickbacks. Let me be clear as mud; this is the most important election ever for the Democrats.

So, having said that, let’s really look at who is the candidate best positioned to beat John McCain. We all know that John has a lot of appeal with independents and swing voters. They love him, and they aren’t likely to stop loving him any time soon. We all know that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure. Democrats love her, but she carries a lot of baggage from her prior eight years in the White House. The Right Wing Smear Machine threw a lot of mud her way, and while almost none of it stuck for good Democrats, it’s still there in the back of many independent and swing voters’ minds. I’d be willing to bet that if someone did a survey where they read several words and asked people to name the first candidate from either party to pop into their mind, Hillary would win for ‘conniving’, ‘controlling’, and ‘manipulative’ whether or not people are even aware that they have this perception of her.

Okay, so we’ve established two things; independent voters love John McCain, and people have some very negative subconscious impressions about Hillary Clinton. So, how do people choose who to vote for? I would submit that people choose who to vote for based 1) on their own economic self interest, and 2) from their gut. I think that among independents, it’s pretty much a wash who wins on the economy. So who wins the gut check? Is it the ’straight talking war hero’ or the ‘conniving, controlling, manipulator’? I overstate my case for dramatic effect, but I think the point is there.

Some will argue, and not without cause, that when you put either Hillary or Barack up against John in head to head polls, they’re neck and neck with him 44 to 46 or so with the rest undecided (see some numbers here at Real Clear Politics). I would submit, however, that while Hillary seems to be even with Obama, she’s a known quantity while he’s still got the oportunity to make his case with the voters. What do I mean? Check out this stat from a CBS news story this morning;

“Polling and election results so far suggest that the more time Obama has to present himself to voters, the better he fares. In each of the first four states where voting was sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, Clinton maintained essentially level support in polls in the months leading up to the contests, while Obama saw a steady upward trajectory the more he campaigned. In Florida, by contrast, where the candidates did not campaign after the DNC punished the state for moving its primary to January, Clinton soundly defeated Obama, offering a rough gauge on how much the senator from Illinois relies on voter contact.”

So, if Obama has (as we know) a lot of support from independents and even Republicans, and has the opportunity to continue improving his standing with the electorate (remember that not everyone or even most people are even paying attention at this stage) and Clinton does not it stands to reason that Obama is the best choice to beat John McCain in November. A lot of people don’t know anything about Obama, whereas if you don’t have some preconceptions about Clinton you lived under a rock during the 90s.

Besides all that, the VP candidate is the attack dog in a traditional race while the main candidate keeps it positive. Clinton is, frankly, better at going on the offense than Obama whose real talent is as a motivational speaker.

I sincerely think that either candidate would do a remarkable job as President, but I think that if our choice is going to be about who will win in November, Democrats must rally behind Barack Obama. Disagree? Start an argument by hitting the ‘comment’ link. I’d love to get into this with someone.

More talk about identity politics

From an opinion piece in the NY Daily News;

…race is real in America. So is gender. Racism and gender bias are serious problems. Democrats have to find a way to talk about these issues in honest language - without either mouthing platitudes or breaking out in hives.

So true. But I’m not sure how to do it. Talking about race and gender sometimes feels like trying to walk barefoot on a tightrope made of razor wire. No matter what you say, someone is bound to be hurt. Because there is so much hurt around these issues; centuries of pain are wrapped up in the skin we wear or the plumbing we came with.

I think we might need a sacrificial lamb or two; some political personalities to cut open on the altar of public opinion in order to exorcise the demons of the past.

But who?

Retraction

It looks like the president can cry and get away with it so long as he’s crying about something really terrible. I think this is a wonderful development; the most powerful man in America cries in public. Maybe we’re getting more enlightened after all.

**Note**

The article that I linked to above used to say that president Bush cried, and that he said we should have bombed Auschwitz to stop the killing. The tone of the article changed in the five minutes from when I read it to when I clicked on the link to make sure it pointed to the right place. The new text is;

Also earlier, Bush became misty-eyed as he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The president, who first visited the memorial in 1998 when he was governor of Texas, was wearing a yarmulke as he rekindled an eternal flame and placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps.

The original text said;

President Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial Friday and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial’s chairman said.

Some editor showed up to work late this morning.

Race, Gender, Politics

I’ve been wondering how long it would take before the pundits started really making hay about race and gender in this campaign, and how those concepts are likely to impact electoral outcomes and media narratives. Now that the primaries have started, it seems to have begun in earnest.

Hillary Clinton recently cried a little during a campaign event in New Hampshire. I don’t know how well a male politician would do who cried publicly. I know that thirty years ago it ruined Ed Muskie, and I doubt that we’ve changed all that much in the intervening years. Maybe some tears in public wouldn’t be the death knoll for Barak Obama, John Edwards, or John McCain - but it would be the subject of intense scrutiny and ridicule. And rightfully so, perhaps; what happens if the President gets a little misty in a meeting with a foreign head of state? It seems the whole country would lose face. Part of being in a position of that much power is the ability to keep oneself very closely controlled.

But the real interesting question, I think, is; are we going to hold Senator Clinton to a different standard than we would one of her male counterparts? If we are, is it to her advantage or to her disadvantage? This is uncharted territory; Hillary is a woman smack in the middle of the most heinously male dominated sphere in the history of anything. Will we expect her to behave in traditionally masculine ways in order to get the job she’s interviewing for, or will we have different expectations of a female president? And the value question; should we? What’s right in this situation - should our basis of comparison change for a candidate who is a woman?

Another, related question is; what special challenges does Barack Obama face on account of his race? Will the electorate hold him to a different standard because he is a black man? Perhaps more insidious, will the electorate have special expectations of him because he carries a Muslim name? There have already been questions raised about Obama’s loyalty to America on the basis of his Grandfather possibly having been a Muslim. These accounts seem to focus mostly on his name; ‘Barack Hussein Obama’.

It disgusts me that these things are still issues in American life, but I fully believe that they are, and that these candidates will have to address them. Actually, the democratic primary is a fascinating election to get to watch. Race, Class, and Gender are at once front and center and pushed to the side. Barack, Hillary, and John; a black man, a woman, and a very wealthy man who’s running a campaign about poverty. How much closer to the core dysfunctionalities of the American psyche could we have cut?

I’m excited to watch the returns come in from New Hampshire tonight. I’m interested to learn whether the media blames a poor showing by Clinton on her recent display of emotion. It’s a long way from over yet.

Beer, The Holidays, and Election 2008

As much as I castigate myself, it seems that infrequent, omnibus updates are a fact of life.

The Chrisolstikwanukkah blitz is beginning to melt toward the New Year. The stats?

Nearly 15 gallons of homebrew have been consumed by family and friends since Thanksgiving.
Arthur has learned gobs of new words.
Taylor and I have begun an ongoing game of scrabble that may continue into the next decade and beyond.
Obama pulled ahead briefly in Iowa only to fall behind again in the most recent polls. He’s looking better in New Hampshire.
We read A Child’s Christmas in Wales on (and as we do every) Christmas night.

How was that for an introductory paragraph?

The Chest Check IIPA, which was our variation on the Punishment IIPA I linked to in this post turned out spectacular. Most of it is gone, but I laid down a twelve pack to age for a while in the “beer cellar” (actually the eaves of the house). We’ll check it out in a year and see how it’s come along.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an accurate judgment of what the % alcohol by volume turned out to be because I got a bad original gravity reading. What happened was, I left about a gallon’s worth of headroom at the top of the carboy when I went to shake it for aeration. Then I poured another gallon of clean water in, and without stirring took the gravity reading*. Of course, the reading was much lower than I expected because the water I had just poured in was floating on top of the extremely dense wort bellow. So I don’t know what the OG actually was.

The terminal gravity was in the 1.02 range, and the expected OG was going to be up around 1.095, which leads me to believe that the alcohol content was probably approaching 10% by volume.

According to the Beer Tools calculator, the beer should have around 300 IBUs, which seems more than my tastebuds were perceiving but it was certainly a lot. I think we proved what we set out to prove, which was that one truly can not have too many hops.

Not everyone agreed.

The next recipe to talk about is the Nasty Elf, which I gave in a prior post. It turned out well, even without a secondary fermentation which we elected to forgo in the interest of time. Next year, though, I think I’ll make it close to Halloween and let it sit a while and think about what it’s done before sticking it in bottles. Also, I think I’ll use Irish Moss next time. This batch just had too much sediment for me. Part of that was that I wasn’t as careful as I should have been when racking into the bottling bucket. Nothing was ruined, and the Nasty Elf was a favorite. Not as sweet as I’d expected, which was nice.

Sometime around the New Year we’re planning on brewing again. My intention is to design a recipe for a nut brown ale, and to use maple syrup for the priming sugar in hopes of making a maple flavored nut brown ale. I’m not sure whether I’ll add a small amount of Dextrose as well as well as the maple, I have to do some research as to how fermentable the sugars in maple syrup are.

As for the election, like I said in the introduction to this post it looks less and less like Mrs. Clinton is a sure thing for the Democratic nomination (which makes me happy as cake). I like John Edwards a lot. I like what he says about Poverty, and I like that he’s been willing to set definite goals and make clear promises about his priorities more than the other Democrats. He wants to withdraw troops from Iraq within 18 months. Neither of the other Democratic front runners has been as forthright about a timetable. He wants to raise fuel economy to 40 MPG by 2016. These specific numbers mean something. They are election year promises, which means that they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they are at least clear promises which is more than the other contenders are giving us.

The truth is that I like John Edwards, though, not so much for his particular issues or political identity. I like him because he looks like JFK and talks like FDR. To a Democrat with a sense of historical gravitas, there can be no more pious combination of traits. So the secret is out. I vote with my heuristic gut most of the time. I always think carefully and weigh the pros and cons, but in the end I come back to my gut and my gut says Edwards is my guy.

Anyway, by the time the primary train rolls out here the Democrats will have picked their winner anyway. My primary vote doesn’t amount to a hill of Iowa corn or New Hampshire maple syrup.

I think Oregon should hold our Primary for the 2012 election in April of 2010. That way we might have some impact.

That’s all (except for a footnote). Until the next time I find a few moments, I hope y’all internet people find yourselves warm and toasty. Happy New Year and all that cheer.

*what this means is that I sucked some of the wort out of the carboy with my trusty turkey baster and used an instrument called a hydrometer to measure the density of the liquid, which shows how much sugar is in suspension and therefore how much potential alcohol you might end up with.