I don't have the time to waste time like that

Well, this post really spoke to me. (Not for long though. It's quite short.) When I am sitting home, alone, I spend almost all my casual time surfing the net, and reading small things and avoiding long things and clicking on websites I just read to see if they have posted anything new. "They haven't! Well, let's see if someone responded to my comment!" The whole time, in the back of my head, there is a voice screaming to read a book, just sit down and read a book. Last week, I showed up for work six hours early, and, not wanting to go home, I went to Barnes and Noble. After browsing a bit, I settled down in a big comfy chair and read the first 180 pages of Edgar Rice Burrough's The Martian Tales Trilogy. It was awesome. For nearly six hours, I was immersed—immersed—on the moss-covered terrain of Mars, with a naked Confederate soldier, his naked Martian lady-love, and fifteen foot tall, eight-limbed, green aliens. Then I got up, bought the book, and it has sat atop a pile on my floor for nearly a week now, untouched. It just seems like so much effort! I would much rather read the same things over and over again! When not forced to by circumstances, reading long-form peices just seems like too much committment, too much effort, now. I need to be plugged in, man! Connected! Like a shark, always having to be moving. But sometimes I just want to be a moss-covered stone.

More for Gore

Right now, it is 59 degrees outside. In the Midwest. In the first third of February. I just opened my door to let a breeze in.

Something ain't right, but it's also kind of awesome.

Gregg, Commerce, and Healthcare Reform

There has been a lot of talk lately about why President Obama (neat) has decided to nominate Senator Gregg to be his Commerce Secretary, most of it somewhat confounded. The conventional wisdom at work seem to be that even though this will maybe make some votes easier in the Senate, since Gregg, a pretty reactionary Republican, will be replaced by a Republican moderate, maybe even a RINO, there is really no reason why Obama would want a Gregg at Commerce. Well, I think I have a answer, and the answer is healthcare.

As is being illustrated right now with the Stimulus Bill, and which was obvious during Bush's attempt to destroy—er, reform—Social Security, any big governmental change, politically, requires bipartisan support. This isn't just necessary to spread the blame around, although that is a factor, but also to make any change look moderate and essential. If people from both parties support a change, it must just be an obvious and necessary change in course, not a sharp turn into uncharted territory. As Neil will tell you, when Pelosi shut the House Dems out of any negotiations, refusing to give a counter-offer to the ideas Bush was floating around, the Republicans backed off and didn't move towards privatization. It was too risky an endeavor for a party to take on their own. The Wall Street Bailout wouldn't pass the House without bipartisan support; no party wanted to own a very unpopular move to give $700 billion to the people that had gotten us into the mess in the first place, even if inaction might have lead to a credit freeze that would have actually thrown us into a Great Depression. Now, Obama wants bipartisan support for his smuttily tagged Stimulus Package, since he doesn't want to spend another $700 to 800 Billion ($900 billion?) without some of that sweet, sweet bipartisan support. He won't get it; he might just get some votes for cloture and no votes for the actual bill. But the Stimulus Package is such a no-brainer necessity at this point that it doesn't really matter what votes they get, the Dems need to go through with it regardless. Still, that hurts Obama's bipartisan clout, and on something less one-time, more long-term change, like health care, bipartisan support will be even more necessary.

So, if Obama can't get bipartisan cover, he can just make some. Make it in-house. With Gregg at Commerce, he can talk about how his bipartisan administration is working on correcting the massive issue of healthcare, and he is including both sides of the aisle in the planning. And since Gregg is part of the administration, that means he de facto supports it, for the administration supports it, and is he not part of the administration? Healthcare reform immediately looks less radical. And it's pretty easy to include Gregg in this project. Commerce, I understand, has some vague responsibilities in terms of promoting business, and Obama for a long time has been talking about the negative effects of the healthcare crisis on businesses; small ones can't supply it and it's bankrupting big ones. If he can be persuaded to, Gregg could end up playing some kind of liaison role, talking up the benefits of supporting health care reform to businesses, pointing out how it will ease their bottom line, especially in tough times like these.

Will Gregg go along with this? The way I see it, once confirmed as Commerce Secretary, Gregg has basically three options: 1) be a kind of loyal opposition/opposing viewpoint within the administration, offering counterpoint to ideas put forth by the more liberal (read:all) members, while performing the tasks President Obama assigns him, 2) Not do his job, disobey orders, attempt to sabotage the effort and get fired, or 3) resign in principled opposition, in order to show how far left this healthcare project is.

If he goes with either of latter two, it's no biggie. This is the benefit of Gregg actually being fairly conservative. If he leaves, it's not exactly a canary-in-a-coalmine type moment. It's quite easy for the Obama administration to spin that as just principled opposition from the far-right, wish Gregg the best on his endeavors, blah blah blah. It's not like they have been rejected by a Snowe, Collins, or Specter here. And they still got a hard-right Republican out of office and leveled the playing field for the seat in 2010.

But I think Gregg will take the first option. Commerce is it for him. This is the last stop of his career, and he knows it. The Republicans will be pissed at him behind closed doors for diluting their brand and making his seat more vulnerable. New Hampshire is pretty blue now, and they will probably lose the seat in 2010, since it's questionable whether Gregg would even be able to hold it then, even with the weight of incumbency. So he probably can't rely on too much Republican largess after he leaves public service. Gregg wants a job that has a good chance of going past 2010, and he wants a nice capstone to his career, and that doesn't mean resigning when healthcare comes up. Healthcare is coming this year; Gregg isn't going to resign before he might have lost his seat in the Senate. He may try to follow option 2, and if he does it is up to Obama to put his foot down, which, given his last couple of speeches on the Stimulus, I think it can be assumed he will.

After that, I bet Gregg with settle into his role as counterpoint, and comfort himself for the little checks or advice he gives, and the influence and closeness to the halls of power that he has. And Obama will talk about his bipartisan effort to reform healthcare, and Gregg will stand behind him at speeches and clap, or sit at photo-op meetings with Summers and Biden and the Secretaries of Labor and HHS and Treasury and OMB, and smile.

Update

Whew, long time no blog!

Today, I did quite a bit of housecleaning, though I am by no means all the way there. I have been spending the last couple of days agonizing over SK. A few weeks ago, I wrote a detailed outline of the last section I had been putting off grinding out, and then I just kind of let it sit there. I could sense I wasn't happy with the way the story was taking shape, or the way it sounded. I kept coming up with things I didn't like about it, and I felt that the endless edits were just killing it, bleeding it of any vibrancy. Then, after cleaning, I tried doing some writing, skipping over the part I was working on to work on the next section. This section pretty quickly got to a point where I had been meaning to drop in an old story I had written, oh, years ago. I cut and pasted it in, and started reading it, to edit for (hopefully mostly) continuity. And sweet Jesus, it was terrible. Just really really really poorly written. Made me really begin to doubt myself. Was the stuff I writing now any good?

So, more cleaning, then I watched an interview on youtube with Salman Rushdie*, where he talked about developing your voice in writing, and that's when I realized the problem I had been having with what I was writing was that it wasn't in the voice I wanted for it, and I knew this all along. Maybe spurts of it are but...I don't know. I jotted down a couple of notes in my scrap notebook about elements I wanted in the "voice" of SK. Then, a new way to telling the beginning the first chapter came to me. I grabbed a fresh notebook and started writing it. The events of the opening are now so fresh to me I can almost write its events from memory. I got a couple leafs in a felt much better.

So, I have committed myself to completely rewriting it, by hand, in a notebook. I am thinking the improvements in the new take are worth it, but one way or another I need to stop being so precious about it all and get used to rewrites.

I also reread the first two chapters of Wheelock's Latin today. I really want to regain that skill again, and I think a firm knowledge of Latin is essential to getting the eventual voice of SK right. So, here's me committing to making sure I stick to writing in the notebook and working my way through Wheelock.

...Oh, and here's the interview with Salman Rushdie:

Watch it! It's very good!

*At some point while letting the interview play, I also readjusted the distance of my double-bass drum beaters, making half the distance from the head. This has immediately increased my speed and accuracy. I can get reasonably close to thrash speed now, and with no noticeable change in sound or volume!

For Posterity

I spent a whole lot of time typing this comment out for this post on I am TRex, but since I am having trouble posting there, I will post it here:

Why do we always have to be the bad guys?

I think it all comes down to your approach to social change, whether you are a pragmatic incrementalist or an uncompromising idealist. Pragmatists try to get done whatever is possible, working with the conditions on the ground, and probably compromising their ideals in the process. Idealists state their ideals, loudly and repeatedly, hoping that others will sometimes come to their side, although often not worrying about who they alienate from the other side, or their own, in the process.

Now, I am left-wing. I would like to see single-payer health care (with abortions covered), unionization of all workers, fair trade, gay marriage, equal pay, ACLU-style free speech, decreased income inequality to the point we practically have income equality, the nationalization of various industries that are not reliant on innovation (it works for mail carrying!), the legalization of all drugs, you name it. And once that's all done, I plan look around and ask "What's next?"

But that won't all actually happen in my lifetime. If I voted my conscience I wouldn't vote. So I am an incrementalist by necessity. I vote for people who seem to have a chance of moving things in my direction, and I will support policies that will, over time, move the country in my direction, like getting a healthcare system that isn't single-payer. I don't think this compromises my ideals, or is dishonest, as long as I am upfront about what my ideals really are. And it isn't a betrayal either, since I view these compromises as steps on the road to getting what I really would like to see.

In this framework, I think the Warren choice, though disagreeable, definitely, is not too objectionable. Now, if Warren was the only preacher speaking, that would not be that case, since it would be as if to say that this is best representation of religious thought in America that can be presented. But, and this is important, Joseph Lowery, an old-school civil rights badass who supports gay marriage and rails against homophobia, is giving the benediction. So Warren isn't the be-all end-all of religious representation, but one of two nodes on a spectrum of religious thought being represented, a spectrum that includes gay marriage. Not preferable, yes, but not as bad. And considering there is hardly any difference between Warrens views on gay and reproductive rights are no different than the Catholic Church's, I don't think you can equate him to David Duke, those views aren't exactly fringe psycho views, but pretty widespread(The Church is much better than him on war and evolution, of course).

Now, you could argue that just because those views are widespread doesn't mean they should be accepted. That's where the pragmatic angle comes in. While it's true that difference in Warren and Dobson is one of tone, as he said, it's important to note what that tone is. Warren wants to spend time talking about fighting global warming and poverty and AIDS relief in Africa, things Dobson has shown no predilection for bringing up. I think it would be great to get some evangelical support for those issues. It provides cover from political risk, maybe force Republicans to go along with those efforts, and would make whatever action that would take place happen sooner and with more force.

Also, I think if Liberals found common ground upon which to work with Evangelicals, it would lessen their hostility, and make it easier for them to accept some of our other ideas when they see we aren't really Satan. I don't want to beat the other side, I want them to join us! Turn all their kids into democratic socialists and make them meet gay people that are just like them—that they might actually be. Mutual hatred doesn't really do our side any good. (No, I am not worried about movement in the other direction. Our ideas are right, theirs are wrong. They just need to be convinced, while we will not unlearn truths once we have learned them.)

Now, if you are an uncompromising idealist, none of that means anything. They are the bad guy, and they must be fought and kept from advancing their agenda. Opposition to them must be stated at every stage, and their advancement in public life discouraged. There's probably even some utility to this approach, since it forces people to make a choice on the issue, and gets the message out there in a very direct way, adding veritability through its passion. Maybe it forces other people to declare what their beliefs in this actually are. But if that's the approach you choose, then yeah, you have to be the bad guy. But I don't think you have to be.