Just walk away?

Facing Default, Some Walk Out on New Homes - New York Times. OK, so I see the short term logic of jingle mail. You're upside down, so you walk, take the hit to your credit history, and rent at a lower payment than your mortgage. There isn't much dignity to a decision like that. There's no "tough it out spirit of the greatest generation" flavor. It's a morally suspect tactical move. Then again, whoever really believed that Americans were paragons of virtue? It's fitting behavior for Bush country.

Here's the economic reality check, though. You don't think those tarnished credit records are going to plague the jingle jangle crowd? The banks and mortgage companies are fighting for their lives too. And they will find ways to get their pound of flesh.

But what I'm really thinking about are those home rentals. We have on the one hand a multitude of homeowners bailing out on their mortages, flooding into the rental market. We have on the other hand a multitude of distressed homeowners (including banks) who can't sell their cliff diving properties and will be forced to rent out the homes they cannot sell. As the demand for rental homes rises (jingle jingle), there should be supply to fill the void (all those unsellable houses), but here's the catch: there is financial incentive to prop up the rents to keep pace with the mortgage payments so those properties don't get foreclosed. Banks need to preserve capital to stay solvent. I do not see any incentive for them to drive rents lower. I see every incentive to push rents higher, and if demand for house rentals stay high, our genius jingle mailers are going to be paying higher and higher rents, probably approaching what they would have been paying had they never walked away. There is no escaping the undertow. This whole housing crash reminds me of a musical chairs game. Somebody's going to be left without a chair to sit in.

Let's say housing bottoms out and home prices become reasonably affordable again. Those with shattered credit histories are not going to get the mortgages so easily. Banks will remember who left them holding the bag. Instead, the ones who walked away may be stuck in rental purgatory for a long time.

Is my reasoning flawed? If so, edify me.

Robert Creeley at PennSound

Awesome sound archive of Robert Creeley readings and lectures.

Prologue to Demian

This quote from the prologue of Hermann Hesse's Demian is truer today than the year it was written (1919):

“To be sure, people today have less of an idea than ever before what a really living person is; in fact, human beings, each one of whom is a priceless, unique experiment of nature, are being shot to death in carloads. If we weren’t something more than unique individuals, if we could really be totally dispatched from the world by a bullet, it would no longer make sense to tell stories. But each person is not only himself, he is also the unique, very special point, important and noteworthy in every instance, where the phenomena of the world meet, once only and never again in the same way. And so every person’s story is important, eternal, divine; and so every person, to the extent that he lives and fulfills nature’s will, is wondrous and deserving of full attention. In each of us spirit has become form, in each of us the created being suffers, in each of us a redeemer is crucified.”

Life is cheap. We're all fodder for roadside bombs and crumbling buildings. We're accident statistics in actuarial tables, line items in company spreadsheets. But Hesse insists we are, we have to be more than that. If the human race is going to survive, we have to recognize that a unique, valuable, potentially vital world can exist in anybody. But individuality is not conferred upon birth. You're going to have to earn it by developing the latent forces of humanity inside you.

“Every person’s life is a journey toward himself, the attempt at a journey, the intimation of a path. No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant. Many a one is a human being above and a fish below. But each one is a gamble of Nature, a hopeful attempt at forming a human being. We all have a common origin, the Mothers, we all come out of the same abyss; but each of us, a trial throw of the dice from the depths, strives toward his own goal. We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.”

I know Hesse's books aren't as popular as they were in the 60's and 70's, and I fear that this message of human potentiality is out of step with the hyper-mediated times in which we live. Nowadays, life is shaped and beamed into you. All you need to do is login, watch, listen, and be assimilated.

Classic Hermann Hesse book covers

Whoever designed these covers...thank you!

One in 10 home loans upside-down

In a Reuters story, we learn that 10% of American homeowners are upside-down on their mortgages, according to Economy.com. So what I wonder is this: what is going to happen when the recession kicks into high gear? We are likely to see major waves of layoffs. Now imagine you are one of the many thousands soon to be without a job. You may have to move to gain new employment. You're going to need to sell your home fast. Will anybody be buying? This will surely drive prices down dramatically, and it will further increase the mushrooming number of foreclosures. This is getting really nasty, and I don't think we're close to a bottom. For pete's sake, the recession isn't even official yet.

Slumming in the Suburbs

The housing crash may be heralding a larger shift in the housing market: the rise of fringe suburban slums. The Atlantic's Christopher B. Leinberger explains.

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Frank Rich pretty much nails it. We don't want to get too far ahead of the story, because the Clintonistas have this reputation of being the zombies that wouldn't die. That being said, you have to admit that the inevitable, ascendant jet made of teflon, call it ClintonBus, is in a tailspin:

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

Rage rage against the dying of the light!

Uh.... so, OK. All that stuff about being absolutely honored to be on stage with Senator Obama... that was so yesterday, so yesterday.

Today's theme a la carte: revenge of the angry assistant principal!! Shame on you Barack Obama. For winning. 11 in a row.

This manufactured ire proves to me that you, maam, are the loser you've been waiting for.

Pathetic.

No VP for you. Get to the back of the line.

Stephen Bur on Robert Creeley

LRB piece on the collected poems of Robert Creeley, who died in 2005. Here's perhaps his most famous poem, "I Know a Man":

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, – John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

How McCain Lobbied the FCC on Behalf of Paxson Communications

Informative process piece from Democracy Now!, posted at Free Press. In this interview with Angela Campbell, the attorney for Pittsburgh community groups opposing the takeover of a public TV license, we discover the extraordinary lengths John McCain went to carry water for Paxson Communications, represented by his friend the lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Iseman confirmed to the Times she sent McCain staffers information that would later form the basis of two letters in which McCain urged the FCC to reach a decision. The letters were deemed so unusual that the FCC chair at the time, William Kennard, accused McCain of interference. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain would apparently be in violation of ex parte rules barring outside pressure on FCC decisions.

According to Campbell:

[M]y clients were very opposed to this. They felt that, you know, this was a public resource, should be serving the public, and they wanted to improve the service on the station and help the public broadcasters be more responsive to the community, rather than allow it to be sold. So they opposed the de-reservation of the station. And the FCC agreed with my clients that it would not be in the public interest to turn this into a commercial station.

Then, what happened was, the FCC — the public broadcaster had what they called a “Plan B.” It was sort of complicated, so let me explain — take a few minutes to explain it. There was another station in the market, a channel 40, that was a religious station, but it was not a reserved station. It was a commercial station, and the operator of that station was Cornerstone. So they had a deal where, if the FCC disapproved their first plan, they would swap the station with Cornerstone so that Cornerstone would end up operating on the noncommercial station, and then WQED would have a commercial station that they would then sell to Paxson. And so, my clients challenged that whole deal at the Federal Communications Commission by filing what was called a petition to deny. That’s something that any citizens in the community can file if there’s a transfer of a license that they think would not serve the public interest.

And McCain pressured the agency to expedite the deal. So what we have here is a U.S. Senator helping to further privatize the airwaves. Johnny's a good little Republican after all. This story is much more than a tawdry little sex scandal. It's about McCain being in bed with lobbyists and abusing his authority, doing whatever the f*ck he feels like doing, while he pretends to be all mavericky and truthy. And he thinks he can get away with it because he's all schmoozy with the press.

Well it looks like the press isn't about to roll over and play dead just yet. Maybe they don't like being smeared by the right wing noise machine. In today's New York Times, we have a hard hitting followup piece on how McCain threatened to overhaul the FCC if it dared to close a loophole in broadcast ownership rules.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

But wait, there's more...

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

Over the years, Mr. McCain has taken varying positions on broadcast ownership issues. He has supported the relaxation of the ownership rules, but he has also been sharply critical of rules that permit too much concentration of ownership in a single market.

By November 1998, the F.C.C. was planning to strike down broadcasting marketing agreements, a potentially ruinous development for Glencairn. But after receiving Mr. McCain’s Dec. 1 letter, it put off consideration of the issue.

“To the extent the F.C.C. shows itself incapable of following Congressional intent,” the letter said, “these issues will become part of our overall review of the commission’s functions and structure during the next session of Congress.”

And this...

It was the only letter that contained a suggestion that a failure to act would result in the possible overhaul of the agency.

The letter said that “as a leading participant in the passage of the 1996 Act, I have a very clear understanding” of the law’s intent and why it required the ownership loophole to be preserved. Mr. McCain was one of five senators — and the only Republican — to vote against the act. He has also been an outspoken critic of it.

While other companies also complained to Congress about the plan to close the loophole, the issue was particularly important to Sinclair because it had more marketing agreements than any in the nation. For its part, Glencairn appeared to have been getting little support in Congress until it retained Ms. Iseman in 1998.

And how tight was the Iseman connection?

While the campaign said Thursday that Mr. McCain never spoke to anyone from Paxson or Ms. Iseman’s lobbying firm before sending those letters to the commission, an article posted Friday on Newsweek’s Web site said Mr. McCain had previously acknowledged first speaking to Mr. Paxson. Recounting that conversation, Mr. McCain testified in the deposition, “I said I would be glad to write a letter asking them to act.”

The Washington Post reported Friday on its Web site that Mr. Paxson acknowledged in an interview that he had met with Mr. McCain to discuss the letters before they were sent and that Ms. Iseman was probably at the meeting.

In three interviews with The Times since December, Mr. Paxson has provided varying accounts about the letters. In the first, he said Ms. Iseman was involved in the drafting of them and had lobbied Mr. McCain. He later said he could not recall who had been involved.

Attention Washington lobbyists... all aboard the Straight Talk Express, my friends! Choo-choo!

March 4 primary calculations

Barring any unforseen bomb blasts, scandals, or tsunamis, I think it's likely that Obama wins Texas and/or Ohio. If they are double-digit blow outs, and Obama runs the table again, here's what's going to happen: the outlying uncommitted big fish in the party will line up behind Obama. When you see people like Edwards, Biden, Richardson, Dodd, and others endorsing him, the pressure on Clinton to fold will be insurmountable. This will be her exit cue. She'll know the superdelegtes can't be bought off.

Should Clinton eek out a win in one of the states, what then? Count the delegates. If Obama substantially builds on his pledged delegate lead anyway, the endorsement dominoes might fall anyway in his favor. The party insiders are not going to want a protracted primary battle deep into the spring. That's why I got the vibe in the debate that Clinton may be jonesing for a VP invite. And I'm starting to think it might be a good ticket. It would unify the party. Clinton is a disciplined campaigner. She's good at staying on message, and it would be a history-making ticket for anyone seeking tangible change. If Clinton does indeed lose Texas and Ohio, look for stories about backchannel negotiations on the VP question. She still has bargaining power, and she can say to Obama, look, you want me out of the race? Here's my price.....

Detroit school book depository

Awesome display of urban ruin: sweet juniper's slideshow on Flickr.

Silly season

Despite a strong finish, Hillary Clinton didn't knock down Barack Obama last night in the Texas throw down. She didn't go as negative as I had anticipated, and when she did, she stumbled. The worst line of the night occurred when sparring over the plagiarism charge. Her first response was mildly effective, ending with the line "actions speak louder than words." Barack's rebuttal was better.

Well, look, the -- first of all, it's not a lot of speeches. There are two lines in speeches that I've been giving over the last couple of weeks. I've been campaigning now for the last two years. Deval is a national co-chairman of my campaign and suggested an argument that I share, that words are important, words matter, and the implication that they don't, I think, diminishes how important it is to speak to the American people directly about making America as good as its promise. And Barbara Jordan understood this as well as anybody.

Now, the notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who's one of my national co-chairs -- (laughter) -- who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think is silly. (Cheers, applause.)

And -- you know, but -- but -- but this is where we start getting into silly season in politics, and I think people start getting discouraged about it. (Cheers, applause.) They don't want -- what they want is, how are we going to create good jobs at good wages? How are we going to provide health care to the American people? How are we going to make sure that college is affordable?

So what I have been talking about in these speeches -- and I got to admit, some of them are pretty good -- (laughter, cheers, applause) -- what I've been talking about is not just hope and not just inspiration; it's a $4,000 tuition credit for every student every year -- (cheers, applause) -- in exchange for national service so that college becomes more affordable. I've been talking about making sure that we change our tax code so that working families actually get relief. I have been talking about making sure that we bring an end to this war in Iraq so that we can start bringing our troops home and invest money here in the United States. (Applause.)

And so just to finish up, these are very specific, concrete, detailed proposals, many of them which I've been working on for years now. Senator Clinton has a fine record.

So do I. And I'm happy to have a debate on the issues, but what we shouldn't be spending time doing is tearing each other down. We should be spending time lifting the country up. (Cheers, applause.)

That should have laid the issue to rest, but Clinton couldn't help herself.

Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That's, I think, a very simple proposition. (Applause.) And you know -- you know, lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in; it's change you can Xerox.

Oi! The line garnered boos in the audience. It was also tone deaf. Xerox? Who the fuck says xerox anymore? Do most people under 40 even know what it means to xerox? The line has the additional liability of being memorable. For all its hokeyness, it is catchy. It will circulate through the press today. It will be the takeaway line that every potty mouthed blogger and vomitous pundit will discuss ceaselessly, until the next distraction is dispensed from archangel drudge and his minions of noisemakers. And people all across America will cringe. You could tell when she said it that she wanted to take it back. Poor calculation on her part. Let's face it; she's not very good at going negative. It doesn't make her look good. It drags her down more than it hurts him.

The ultimate irony, though, came at the end of the debate, arguably Clinton's grandest moment. In response to a question about how you responded to crisis in your life, Clinton (who answered second and had time to formulate a good answer) made a graceful allusion to BlowJobGate:

Well, I think everybody here knows I have lived through some crises and some challenging -- (laughter) -- moments in my life, and -- (interrupted by cheers, applause).

And I am grateful for the support and the prayers of countless Americans. But people often ask me, how do you do it, you know, how do you keep going, and I just have to shake my head in wonderment because with all of the challenges that I've had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.

She's at her best when she turns the charm on. She was also dialing up a New Hampshire moment. You could FEEL the tears being summoned on cue:

You know, a few months ago I was honored to be asked, along with Senator McCain, as the only two elected officials to speak at the opening of the Intrepid Center at Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, a center designed to take care of and provide rehabilitation for our brave young men and women who have been injured in war. And I remember sitting up there and watching them come in: those who could walk were walking; those who had lost limbs were trying with great courage to get themselves in without the help of others; some were in wheelchairs and some were on gurneys. And the speaker representing these wounded warriors had had most of his face disfigured by the results of fire from a roadside bomb.

You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country. And I resolved at a very young age that I'd been blessed, and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted. That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what motivates me in this campaign. (Cheers, applause.) And -- and you know, no matter what happens in this contest -- and I am honored. I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored. (Cheers, applause.)

It was her finest riff in the debate, and the gesture towards Obama, reaching out to shake his hand, felt true, and you felt that something bigger than a conjured emotional moment was happening. It almost felt like a recognition that she knows that the good ship Billary is taking on water, that she's being outshone by a better candidate, and that maybe, just maybe she'll stand down with grace. Barack Obama held his own. He didn't flub, he looked presidential, he had a command of the issues. At times, yes, he looked disinterested, plodding through certain answers, being extra concerned about getting the words right instead of pitching rhetorical zingers. It was a smart calculation on his part: don't fuck up. He didn't. Clinton seemed to recognize this. Her final remarks had, to my ears, extra significance:

SEN. CLINTON: And you know, whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about. Thanks. (Cheers, applause.)

The subtext of these lines trumped their political significance (a well wrought rehash of her Granite state meltdown); what they said was this: if I lose, I'll bow out gracefully. The telepathic message might also have been, please consider me as your next vice president.

Here's what made the finish ironic, though. It wasn't quite her own words:



Error message from the Clinton copy center: out of toner!

The Iseman Cometh?

Soon to be household name Vicki Iseman: who is she? The Huffington Post explores. Ultimately, the name, the face, the bio don't matter. What matters is the game. One commenter named PlanetKansas cuts in with laser powered precision:

I used to work with lobbyists.

Every year, the lobbyists would hire a new crop of hotties out of college and set them loose on the Legislature. Short, short skirts, and four inch heals were the uniform, and they would all line up in the front row of every committee meeting, and cross their legs for all to see. Their job was simple, score a date for lunch/dinner/drinks then ambush them with 3 suits from the lobby firm for the hard sell.

Half of them never came back the next year, in tears over the disrespect they felt, the other half thrived on the power and attention, and became quite good at the game. Maybe 10% would sleep with the client, but most of the game is about the tease.

Ms. Iseman fits the stereotype perfectly, dressed as a plaything for power, and the ploy really does work. Men are not that complicated, power corrupts, and there is no fool like an old fool.

Always be closing, ladies!

Debate advice to Obama: work the counterpunch

It's safe to assume that this week's Democratic debate will not be a love-in. Hillary Clinton has to go on the offensive. She's going to be hurling the sucker punches, jabs, right crosses, body blows and left hooks. It is likely she will score some. The key for Obama is to stay poised, play smart defense, and work the counterpunch. He shouldn't be dismissive, nasty or smug. But he does have to counterpunch sharply in order to nullify her onslaught. There was evidence that he can do this, as seen a couple debates ago when Clinton went after him on his ties to the Chicago slumlord. He launched an effective jab back at her, tagging Clinton as the corporate lackey for Walmart. He better have an arsenal of lines like this at his disposal tonight. He'll also need to trot out his policy talking points to show substance and negate the "all hat, no cattle" allegations. By no means should he initiate attacks, but he damn well better be willing to retaliate. When Clinton goes over the top, he can always sit back, throw up his hands, and say, see, I told you she's say anything to get elected...is this the kind of politics you want? The danger for Clinton is that she might be leading herself into a trap, a dramatic spotlight moment: a "have you no shame, Mrs. Clinton" epiphany.

Interview with Mish

Dr. Housing Bubble interviews financial blogger Mish on gloom and doom themes: Global Economic Trend Analysis: Deflation, Housing, the Credit Bubble, and Bond Insurers. Let's put it this way, Mish does not have visions of sugar plums and faeries dancing in his head. Cue the hardcore death metal soundtrack; this is going to be an ugly ride.

Why Wisconsin counts

Because Obama won by double digits. Because Hillary Clinton did nothing to stem the tide. Because another victory fuels the Obamamentum. Because Wisconsin is milky white and they still voted for him.

With Texas already in a dead heat and the gap closing in Ohio, Camp Clinton should be running to the drugstore for a case of Depends. In an earlier post, I predicted that Clinton would probably go negative, and she did in Wisconsin. It's a clear sign of desperation. Wisconsin counts because Obama took the hits and still got a big win. This bodes well for March 4. Expect the negative attacks to get more ridiculous, more shrill, more snarky. The problem for Clinton though, is the negative attacks might hurt her negativity ratings more than Obama's. Ripping pages from the Mike Dukakis gotcha playbook aint going to cut it.

It's looking like a last stand is shaping up in Texas and Ohio. If Obama can sweep the March 4 states, the party is going to hop on the bandwagon.

Pat Buchanan quipped on MSNBC, it's going to take a deus ex machina for Clinton to get back in the race. It's not over till its over, and it's true that Obama likely can't win the nomination outright without a little help from his superdelegate friends. I don't see any reason why they would side with Hillary in the face of those Obama headwinds. The undeclared supers should side with the will of the electorate.

Until March 4, expect to see a hailstorm of Clinton gotcha bombs. A hard rain's a gonna fall. Twill be ugly and shameful. And potentially embarassing.

If it gets too dirty, I would not be surprised to see someone of stature step forward and endorse Obama to put an end to the silliness. Someone like Al Gore or John Edwards. If enough pols cross over soon enough, the Clinton's could find themselves isolated in a room with the walls closing in.

The Garden of Forking Paths

Dr. Fiel Fajardo-Acosta's The Garden of Forking Paths page offers an ample set of discussion questions and themes on the fertile story by Borges.

Personality test based on Jung - Myers-Briggs typology

Take an online Jungian Personality test to assess your personality. For the record, I'm an INFJ. Introverted, intuititve, feeling, judging. Or maybe I'm an INFP, more of a perceiver than a judger. Or maybe I'm totally f*cking confused. What's the acronym for THAT?

ReadingGroupGuides.com - Demian by Herman Hesse

Reading Group Guide to Demian by Herman Hesse. I'll be rereading this bildungsroman soon. In the 60's thru 80's, Herman Hesse was a staple among teenagers.

Writing in the existential tradition of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and drawing on the teachings of Carl Jung, and upon his own experiences as a child and adolescent, Hesse presents a compelling portrait of an individual who finds within himself the means to resolve anxiety and inner conflicts and to perceive in the turmoil of his world the promise of a new, enlightened order. Hesse's classic novel has transfixed generations of readers with its dynamic vision of individual and social transformation.

I wonder how well the novel has aged and whether its coming of age story still connects with young people today. From what I've heard, the popularity has waned, but that doesn't mean it's worth forgetting. A quick review of comments at amazon and shelfari indicates that it IS a book that bears fruit when read again.

Clinton Team Seeks to Calm Turmoil - WSJ.com

WSJ reports on shakiness in the house of clinton. Let the message retooling begin:

As part of that revamp, Sen. Clinton is getting tougher on Mr. Obama. "There's a big difference between me and my opponent," Mrs. Clinton told a mostly Hispanic crowd here in McAllen: "I am in the solutions business. My opponent is in the promises business."

Pretty lame stuff, and tone deaf. For one, she gets the rhetoric wrong. In a statement like this, you want the emphasis to fall on the last clause, so you can get a punch out of it. It should read "My opponent is in the promises business ... [dramatic pause] ... I'm in the SOLUTIONS business." This is really basic stuff. A quality, battle-hardened, ready-on-day one candidate, should know where the downbeat falls. And by the way, can we please retire the "Ready on Day One" line?

Potomac primary analysis

Another drubbing for Hillary in DC, MD, and VA. It wasn't even close, and the tea leaf reading experts detect an erosion in her base of support. Obama's building a larger coalition as he ascends Mount Nomination. Couple these un-spinnable facts with staff shakeups in the Clinton campaign, and you can't help but detect the whiff of defeat in the air. That being said, the Obama campaign would be foolish to assume anything is wrapped up. It does look as if Clinton is all but conceding Wisconsin (why jump ahead to a rally in El Paso last night), which I think is a mistake, because she needs to scrape for every vote in every state to somehow slow the momentum building against her. I still don't know how she can turn it around, which is why you have to think Obama's going to pick up two more states next week -- Wisconsin and Hawaii, and head into March 4 with a major head of steam.

Right now, the major ally for Clinton is time. There's a couple weeks of news cycles to fill and a televised debate in Texas to score some points and make inroads. She's going to have to hope for change -- change in attitudes about Obama as the country catches its breath and takes a second look at the guy. She has to hope for change in the Obama campaign, that they will get overconfident, gloating, look too far ahead. That the Obama minions will get complacent. That the media will decide take a more critical look at him now that he's been declared the front runner. That he won't be able to back up his impressive style with substance. The stars are going to have to cross if she's got any shot at climbing back into the race. At this point, both Texas and Ohio are in play, and Obama has a serious shot at knocking her out. Conventional wisdom in the mainstream media is now saying that even Clinton wins in those states might not be enough, unless they're big wins. I don't entirely agree with that analysis, for the record. If Obama should lose Ohio and Texas, the nomination is thrown back into question.

Last night's speeches should not instill any confidence in Clinton's ability to scrape her way back into this contest on her own merits. Taking flowers from a tired hispanic boy in a spangled gaucho costume while a longwinded local pol spends 15 minutes introducing you, and you stand there waiting and waiting and waiting isn't going to gain you much momentum. Clinton's stumping is earnest but belabored. Her speeches are little more than laundry lists of policy positions, high in caloric content but low in seasoning. There's no poetry here. No spice. It's like eating warmed over refried beans.

Do not discount the possibility of a major "go negative" campaign against Obama. This will probably be executed by surrogates and guns for hire. How they go negative will be key. It's difficult to sharpen the differences with someone more or less in agreement with you on policy.

IN the final assessment, I don't see any tactical solution to Clinton's problems. What she needs to pray for is a mistake on the other side, for Obama to say something unbelievably stupid, like "I'm glad the ho and her pimped out bitch daughter aren't getting the nomination!" Or a major discovery, like Obama's really a Satan worshipper. Or he's being funded by Saudi oil interests. Or he's having an affair with a 15 year old midget on the good ship monkey business. Short of major revelations like that, I don't see a turnaround in the cards.

But there is time, and there is a chance that the electorate will take a second look, and a chance that on sober reflection they will want to pick the more "experienced", insider candidate to be their agent of change. It's a tough sell, and if you wanted somebody really experienced, why didn't Joe Biden or Chris Dodd get traction this season? It's not a winning argument in this cycle.

The word coming out of the Obama campaign last night was encouraging for those of us who support his candidacy. They are worried about flying too high, getting drunk on victory. They expect the anti-aircraft fire. They know it will come from the Republicans, the Clinton mercenaries, and the press. And they also I think are aware that Obama needs to evolve his campaign message. You don't want to just keep blabbing about change to the point of hollowness. He needs to start laying out some sensible policy positions to counter the argument that he's all hat and no cattle. IF I heard the report last night correctly, he's got a major economic policy speech planned today. That's exactly the direction he needs to go.

The sky is falling, the house is burning, and the cat's in the well

Nobody writes gloom and doom as colorfully as Jim Kunstler. In his latest blog post, he foresees financial ruin:

We're burning down the house and kidding ourselves that there is a remedy for it. All the rate cuts and loans to big banks and bank-like corporate organisms, and "monoline" bond insurers, and mortgage mills amount to little more than a final desperate shell game to conceal the radioactive pea of aggregate loss. The losses are everywhere, and when you add up seven billion here and eleven billion there they probably amount to something like a trillion dollars in sheer capital evaporation -- not counting the abstract "positions" that the capital was leveraged onto by the playerz and boyz who mistook algorithms for productive activity.

The significance of Maine

Obama continued his winning streak today by taking the Maine caucus handily. I thought it might be closer than it was. Obama's been mopping up with caucuses all season, but New England has been difficult turf for him, Clinton having edged him out in New Hampshire and thumped him in Massachusetts and New York. Obama was able to eek out a close win in Connecticut on Super Tuesday. So although he had the caucus advantage, I thought Clinton might be able to slow down his momentum tonight. She should have done better. She failed. Dismally. For the first time this season, we can say that one candidate has the wind at his back. Expect to see big victories next week in the Potomac primaries of Maryland, DC, and Virginia. The question right now is going to be, how lopsided they will be.

The Clinton campaign is bleeding badly. Today she replaced her campaign manager. How does she get back on her feet? She really should try to compete in Wisconsin, which comes before the big Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont primary, if only to make it close somewhere. The dominoes are falling, and it will be hard to persuade many superdelegates in the face of all those losses. But my read on it is that the Clinton's are ceding way too many contests in the style of Rudy 911, standing down and banking on the big states down the road. Is the campaign running out of money, out of enthusiasm? If Obama can keep his streak alive and pick off Maryland, DC, Virginia, and Wisconsin, going into March 4 I think he has an excellent shot at winning Texas and possibly Ohio. Momentum counts for something in politics, just as it does in sports. Clinton's immediate challenge is how to change the momentum, but I don't see it happening unless she pull an upset in Wisconsin. By March 4, it might already be too late.

Watch to see how the polls move in the coming week or so in Wisconsin, Texas, and Ohio. If you see a big bounce to the Obama side, March 4 could mark the end of the Clinton era in national politics.

Potemkin Town Hallmark Moments

Frank Rich deconstructs Hillary Clinton's Lifetime network town hall event that aired before Super Tuesday.

"Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out."

And this,

However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

Rich goes on to criticize the Clintons for their attempts to drive a wedge between Latinos and Blacks. He is capturing the sense I have that Hillary is running a 90's style spin doctor campaign, even a Rove style divide and conquer type campaign. It's out of tune and off key.

Smackdown Saturday

Tonight Obama dominated Clinton in Nebraska, Washington, Louisiana, and the Virgin Islands. He can be expected to gather huge momentum heading into the Chesapeake primaries of Virginia, DC, and Maryland.

Clinton's shred of hope this dismal weekend is to throw up a small roadblock by winning in Maine. New England has been good to her so far, so it's not far fetched to see her pull it off; however, the Obama bandwagon is kicking into high gear now. A victory in Maine would be small but very significant, showing that he really is working the momentum to his consistent advantage. Assuming that he mows through Maine and the Chesapeake states, then it's looking like Clinton will have to make a last stand in Ohio and Texas. That's really where the showdown is going to be. As I said before, Obama is going to need to prove himself in a big, delegate rich state to establish his national worthiness. Clinton is simply trying to avoid the technical knockout, and if she could take Texas and Ohio, she'd be reestablished as a comeback kid. Expect her to campaign for the rest of February as the plucky underdog, fighting the biased media and the ObamaZombies. The question is, will she be able to stay standing without going negative on Obama. If the opposition researchers have any mud to sling, it better be now, and they better be six degrees of separation away from Clinton before they launch the dirt bombs. If the nastiness can be traced back to the source, the blowback is going to hurt her bigtime.

I think Clinton's campaign strategy must have been to have this thing locked in on Super Tuesday. It didn't work. The inevitable candidate has been framed as yesterday's news. The new kid in town is grabbing the headlines and he has the mojo.

Expect Texas and Ohio to be the ultimate contest. I can't see how Clinton could survive losing both states. If Obama wins only one, maybe Clinton survives until the Pennsylvania primary. If Obama should lose both, then his campaign would be badly punctured, and a loss in Pennsylvania could prove fatal to his hopes. The problem for Clinton is going to be, how do you regain the momentum? Obama's going to be able to match her dollar for dollar. His rallies are only going to get bigger. Unless he turns into a toad during a debate, and unless there's some phantom lurking in the closet; how does she reshape the narrative in her favor? The Clintons have always been master spin doctors, but for me the spin cycle is over. It's so 90's. We've been there before.

Obama's campaign offers something that Howard Dean's 2004 campaign anticipated but couldn't quite deliver on -- a bona fide grassroots, internet fueled, get out the vote juggernaut. You see it in action at these caucuses and your jaw drops. We forgot what democracy was supposed to look like. All these people showing up. Thousands of boots on the ground, coming together online and offline to make it happen. How could a wavering democratic super delegate not see this and say, damn, I want in on that.

At this point, I do not sense any shift in momentum away from Obama. The surge is building. The margins of victory are widening. The political tide turning. The same cannot be said for the John McCain campaign, which appears to have sputtered on its way to the nomination. My theory is this: the more the country gets to know Obama, the more his ads run, the more the momentum builds. And if he can win a decisive victory on March 4, especially in Ohio, the swingiest of swing states, the nomination should go to him. He'll have earned it.

Getaway: Speedwell Forge & Wolf Sanctuary|abc27 News

A Wolf Sanctuary in Lancaster county Pennsylvania? You bet.

Sir Richard Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus

Sir Richard Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus: a thorough overview of the play at Perseus, orginally cited from Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1899.

Oedipus at Colonus, BBC production, 1984, part 1 of 12

The ERINYES

Theoi.com has a wonderfully detailed set of pages on the Erinyes, aka. The Eumenides, the greek chthonic goddesses of vengence. Traditionally seen as three furies, the Erinyes personify the retribution visited upon those who have violated natural laws of kinship or have made false vows.



Currently, I'm reading Oedipus at Colonus, where an old blind and beleagured Oedipus, has wandered into the sacred grove of the Erinyes at Colonus, just outside Athens. I am trying to understand the symbolic logic of this transgressive act. Oedipus has a habit of going places where he shouldn't, but in this sacred place, he is destined to find peace after his many years of suffering. Theoi.com has a page devoted to Oedipus and the Erinyes, well worth reading. The Erinyes may have been responsible for the plague afflicting Thebes in the prologue of Oedipus the King, a vengence for the unsolved murder of Laius (at the hands of the unwitting Oedipus). I also wonder whether the Sphinx has affinities to the Erinyes, since they are frequently depicted as having wings, not to mention serpents in their hair.

SPHINX (Sphinx), a monstrous being of Greek mythology, is said to have been a daughter of Orthus and Chimaera, born in the country of the Arimi (Hes. Theog. 326), or of Typhon and Echidna (Apollod. iii. 5. § 8; Schol. ad Eurip. Phoen. 46), or lastly of Typhon and Chimaera (Schol. ad Hes. and Eurip. l. .c.). Some call her a natural daughter of Laius (Paus. ix. 26. § 2). Respecting her stay at Thebes and her connection with the fate of the house of Laius. The riddle which she there proposed, she is said to have learnt from the Muses (Apollod. iii. 5. § 8), or Laius himself taught her the mysterious oracles which Cadmus had received at Delphi (Paus. ix. 26. § 2). According to some she had been sent into Boeotia by Hera, who was angry with the Thebans for not having punished Laius, who had carried off Chrysippus from Pisa. She is said to have come from the most distant part of Ethiopia (Apollod. l. c. ; Schol. ad Eurip. Phoen. 1760); according to others she was sent by Ares, who wanted to take revenge because Cadmus had slain his son, the dragon (Argum. ad Eurip. Phoen.), or by Dionysus (Schol. ad Hes. Theog. 326), or by Hades (Eurip. Phoen. 810), and some lastly say that she was one on the women who, together with the daughters of Cadmus, were thrown into madness, and was metamorphosed into the monstrous figure. (Schol. ad Eurip. Phoen. 45.)

I have not been able to find any strong genealogical connection between the Sphinx and the Erinyes; however, the idea of the Sphinx being unleashed upon Thebes for not having punished Laius for his rape of Chrysippus has thematic similarities to the vengeful retributions for which the Erinyes were so well known. Oedipus, the man of strong intellectual acuity, the champion of thinking for oneself, of overcoming nature through the power of one's own wit, had tried to transform himself, to shed identities and thereby avoid fulfillment of dire prophecies. He has ignored or been blind to the hidden message of the Sphinix's enigma: that the man of multiple identities (four legged, two legged, three legged) is at the same time, inescapably, one man. You cannot escape or shed your self. When he arrives at Colonus at the end of his life, he must make peace with his nature.

After the revelation of his parricide and incest, Oedipus suffers the curse of exile and wandering homeless and blind. This could be seen as retribution at the hands of the Erinyes.

The most terrible of the family curses were those inflicted for the crimes of patricide or matricide. The ghost of the dead parent would return from the Underworld with avenging Erinyes (Furies) to haunt and drive mad the criminal child. Only through severe atonement could the wrath of the ghost and their Furies be abated.

The three most famous victims of the Erinys-curse were: Orestes for the slaying of his duplicitous mother, Oidipous for his unintentional patricide, and Alkmaion for the crime of matricide.

Ovid has a vividly horrible description of the Erinyes appearance:

The Sorores Genitae Nocte (Night-Born Sisters) [Erinyes], divinities implacable, doom-laden . . . sat, guarding the dungeon’s adamantine doors, and combed the black snakes hanging in their hair . . . Tisiphone, dishevelled as she was, shook her white hair and tossed aside the snakes that masked her face . . . malign Tisiphone seized a torch steeped in blood, put on a robe all red with dripping gore and wound a snake about her waist . . . The baleful Erinys stood . . . stretching her arms entwined with tangled snakes, and shaking out her hair. The snakes, dislodged, gave hissing sounds; some crawled upon her shoulders; some, gliding round her bosom, vomited a slime of venom, flickering their tongues and hissing horribly. Then from her hair she tore out two with a doom-charged aim darted them. Down the breasts of Athamas and Ino, winding, twisting, they exhaled their noisome breath; yet never any wound to see, the fateful fangs affect their minds. Tisiphone brought with her poisons too of magic power: lip-froth of Cerberus, the Echidna’s venom, wild deliriums, blindnesses of the brain, and crime and tears, and maddened lust for murder; all ground up, mixed with fresh blood, boiled in a pan of bronze, and stirred with a green hemlock stick. And while they shuddered there, she poured the poisoned brew, that broth of madness, over both their breasts right down into their hearts. Then round and round she waved her torch, fire following brandished fire . . . She went, and loosed the snake she’d fastened round her waist.

Not the kind of girls you'd want to take on a dinner date.

We must not forget that Oedipus himself invoked the Erinyes against his sons Eteiocles and Polynices, who had mistreated him in Thebes and were the agents of his eviction from the city. Oedipus laid the curse of the Erinyes upon them, and in the battle of the Seven against Thebes, both sons would die (thus setting the stage for Sophocles's Antigone).

So how does Oedipus, the gross violator of nature, make his peace with the Erinyes? Oedipus at Colonus is your key to understanding the mythic resolution.

To appease the wrath of the Erinyes, the murderer or killer had to undergo the rite of ritual purification, and perform some act of atonement.

The atonement of Oedipus at Colonus should be the subject of another post.

McCain's stealth conservative replacement

Clearly, the conservatives are not happy campers with John McCain as their presumptive nominee. But let's apply some Rovian logic to the equation. John McCain is an old man. Already in his seventies, there's a decent chance he could die in office, so if the Republicans nominate an ultra conservative VP from the south, the Republican base is going to turn out in droves, especially if Hillary Clinton is the nominee. They will anticipate and have wet dreams wishing for Johnny to go gentle into that good night. If, once elected, McCain proves to be healthy with no signs of failing, he can always be given the Warren Harding treatment. Once out of the way, the conservatives will have their boy. The question I don't have worked out is this: which right wing lunatic fits the bill? I'm thinking a neo con with religious right credentials and roots in the south. Must be young with little to no attachments to the Bush regime.

Dem primary analysis

I expect Obama to roll up nearly all the states this weekend and into next week. If he stumbles in any of them, it's going to be a blow and expect Clinton to be in comeback mode. Evidence shows Clinton is gearing for a challenge in Virginia or Maryland. Assuming Obama sweeps the Chesapeake primaries, we move to Ohio and Texas, where both candidates are in must win situations. Obama really needs to score a victory in a big state to establish his front runner credidiblity. Clinton needs to win both Ohio and Texas to save her candidacy. Odds favor Clinton at this point, and it will be very interesting to see far Obama can move the numbers when he has a chance to campaign more in those states. After that, Pennsylvania looms large in April. If Clinton takes Ohio and Texas, a victory in Pennsylvania (where she should win), would most likely give her the bragging rights headed into the convention (i.e. Obama can't win in the big states). If Obama can pull an upset, I can't see Clinton recovering. Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Those are your key states. In the short term, look to see how well Obama does in Washington, Maine caucusus (can he pick off another New England state, where Clinton has strength), and Virginia (a hard state to read).

Rodney Square Wilmington

At the Obama rally last Sunday.

Obama rally, Wilmington DE

It was a beautiful February day for an outdoor campaign rally. I'm guessing the crowd was about 10,000 strong (I've seen estimates of 20,000). It was difficult to see Obama from the fringes. We arrived just as he came onto the stump. Definitely a lot of curiosity seekers. Heavy African-American turnout (Wilmington has a significant black population). I'm guessing the crowd was at least half African-American. The overall impression was that of great diversity: old and young, black and white, rich and poor, higher and lower educated. The PA speakers were not up to the size of the crowd, and the sound reverberated through Rodney Square, making it difficult to parse every line of Obama's stump speech. But even at a distance of 150 yards or so, the man exudes confidence, authority, and poise. With this kind of turnout, I'm thinking there might be something tsunami like on the horizon, and it's going to start crashing ashore on Tuesday.

The Brass Figlagee

The Brass Figlagee. A Jean Shepherd podcast with tons of programs from the 60's and 70's. Best known for his film "A Christmas Story," Shepherd was a witty storyteller and great radio personality in his day. My Dad introduced me to his shows when he was on WOR in New York city, which sometimes we could tune in on the AM radio in Philly. We used to watch him on PBS (he had a couple of shows in the 70's). Along with Joe Frank, Shepherd remains one of my favorite radio voices.