There are two essential rationales people can use on the left to blame Obama and the White House for the failure of the Senate to produce a bill with a public option and/or Medicare buy-in provisions.

The first is that Obama is a super-genius 11-dimensional chess master who has been setting up all the pieces to knock them down precisely to accomplish health care reform without these two progressive policies in place.

The second is that Obama can swoop into the Senate, jiggle a few carrots, whack a few sticks, and everyone would fall in line and health care reform would pass with the exact requirements of Obama and his White House without further complications.

Anyone who ascribes to either of these positions is a fool, or really digs the DC universe.

I personally think Obama should have done more to pressure moderate Democrats to toe the line on this issue; I don’t think it would have done any good, but at least Obama would have demonstrated some position. As nice as it is to have a White House administration more interesting in passing legislation than jockeying for power, it doesn’t hurt to bluster on occasion.

But I’m not going to sit here and argue what others have: that Obama is essentially talking a good game in public but sneaking wry grins in private as his plan to limit health care reform unfold. These sorts of extremes do nothing but persist the idea that the executive branch not only does but should have a choke hold on the rest of the government. Quite frankly, even if Obama did have the power and clout to wrangle the Senate into line, which I don’t think he does, shouldn’t we be glad he isn’t doing that? I thought Bush was hated for his abuse of the office, not because he abused it to get things we didn’t like.

As a devout fan of Babylon 5, I’ve had more than my share of discussions about it. I’ve told endless people to watch the show, to not give up on the show before they get to the second season — when the show really begins to take shape — and, like any B5 acolyte, I’ve defended the controversial fifth season. Obviously, don’t read any further if you don’t want to be spoiled about Babylon 5.

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Glenn Greenwald wrote this morning about Obama’s new message to Iran. I absolutely agree that reconciliation and the development of peace is desirable, with any nation, but one note of his post struck me as slightly off:

But whatever else is true, it is a weak, decaying and insecure nation that beats its chest and relies on ugly threats to establish its “toughness” and “credibility” with the world, while the mark of a strong and confident nation is the willingness to take a first step like this one towards its adversaries.

This is true in many respects, most especially in our modern society. But it’s that temporal qualifier that makes the sentence true, a qualifier Greenwald excludes. At the height of the Byzantine Empire‘s reign, it was a military force to be reckoned with, sacking the cities of any nation that dared cross its border. But as its power and wealth dwindled, new invaders like the Saracens exploited that weakness. Ultimately, unable to defend themselves they resorted to buy-offs, providing their enemies with millions of pounds of gold to maintain their territory. As their star faded, much of their power was retained via political back channels, using conspiracies to wage their enemies against each other, and ceding territory for the sake of peace. But their true power was gone¹. It’s true that the truly great emperors of the Byzantine Empire also ruled justly, but that does not belie their military acumen and its use.

I don’t mean here to criticise President Obama’s policies, in fact I agree with his tact regarding Iran, for the most part. But it is a tact of its time. Which is a good thing. Our world is changing, the solutions of the future are not the solutions of the past, and America now has a President that understands that.

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Footnotes

1. I apologize if I’m grossly wrong about any of the history of the Byzantine Empire; I’m mostly working off of memory for this, and even then my knowledge and analysis is mostly cursory. [↩]

Note: I don’t claim to be a porn historian (more of an archivist, really) but I don’t think porn attained any level of mainstream notoreity before Deep Throat and its ilk. If I’m mistaken about the history of porn, I would love any and all corrections.

Porn will never be a truly mainstream form, but it will never be a completely ostracized form again. Pandora’s Box, as it were, has been opened. When porn first lept from the dirty underbelly of America and made its way into mainstream cinema in the late 60′s and 70′s, a part of it was that porn stars were struggling actors who showed up for auditions and found themselves wondering whether or not they should shave their pubes. And so there was a generation of porn stars hoping to make the leap to mainstream cinema. Deep Throat wasn’t made with any particular mainstream success in mind, at least not from what I’ve read, but the tongue-in-cheek plot, the satirical writing, and the general sexual freedom being examined by the public at large at the time made it a mainstream sensation.

For a brief period, porn and regular film even intermingled with cult hits like Deep Throat and big epics like Caligula. But ultimately the stars of Deep Throat accomplished nothing of note in non-pornographic film, and mainstream cinema slowly moved away from the explicitness of the X-rating. Porn would continue on with the cheesy plots and soft focus camera work of the 70′s for many subsequent years, but ultimately the conservatives won: Porno Chic was dead.

But now, in the past four years or so, the porn industry has introduced many a pervert to a new breed of porn star. Women like Sasha Grey, Bobbi Starr, Joanna Angel, and many more. These women don’t have the aspirations of the old-school porn stars. Just a little over a decade ago, with stars like Jenna Jameson, porn was merely a means to and end, which often meant mainstream success. But these women have no such desires.

There has always been a sort of underground fetish for extreme acts in porn, but it has always remained lingering in relative obscurity. But now, this new generation of porn star revels in expressing themselves through the sexual boundaries of both them and their sex partner. Much of their work has gone towards revolutionizing the sterilized sex scenes of the past — moving beyond the decades-old blowjob, missionary, doggie-style, facial pattern seen in most porn of the past — but their dislike for the pointless “Please fix my car, Mr. Mechanic. I’ll do anything” stories of yore is also quite well known. Sasha Grey recently worked on James Gunn’s PG Porn, which satirizes ridiculous porn plots, and her distaste for these old cliches was noted in her interviews regarding the project.

Some might say that this is nothing new. The Gonzo genre of porn — wherein the camera is a character in the scene and the actors don’t act but merely fuck — has been on the rise for quite some time. But this new brood goes beyond that; they bring passion to the job. For quite some time, porn relied on large silicone-filled breasts to distract viewers from the look of complete disinterest on the faces of the stars and the middling moans of mock pleasure. The new generation is much more natural looking, and uses experimentation and enthusiasm to arouse their audience; smiling, which was once essentially verboten, has become a staple of the porn starlets repertoire.

It’s true that some of these porn stars will attain mainstream celebrity by virtue of porn’s relative integration into the mainstream, but none of these women seem to have that as a goal. Sasha Grey has discussed what her future goals are and they consist of eventually starting her own porn company and continuing to push sexual boundaries on film. Obviously, she didn’t turn down Steven Soderbergh when he cast her as the lead in his upcoming film The Girlfriend Experience, but it hasn’t changed her goals by any appreciable amount.

Bobbi Starr, another new starlet whose work is also primarily adventurous extreme scenes, has different goals. From her wikipedia page:

As of 2008, Starr is a student studying pre-med, with the aim of becoming a gynecologist. Her intent is to work within the adult entertainment industry, where she has identified a lack of female gynecologists.

Joanna Angel runs her own studio, BurningAngel, which focuses on so-called Alt-Porn films. She also contributed a chapter to the book Naked Ambition: Women Who Are Changing Pornography and like all the women who inspired this article, they are changing porn. Most of these women are not what you would expect of a porn star. They’re intelligent, highly motivated, and love their job. To me, there’s a perfect storm of change happening in the porn industry. The women who keep the industry alive are taking an active interest in the managing of the industry, and they feel no stigma; they want more than to be successful within the industry, they want to improve the industry.

And that’s ultimately the key here. President Obama said in his address to the joint session of Congress “I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.” People were quick to correct him that American did not invent the automobile, but they did invent the automobile industry. Henry Ford, for all his flaws, saw an industry and wanted more than to succeed within it, he wanted to improve it.

Did I just compare Sasha Grey to Henry Ford? You’re damn right I did.

I admit that I’m going a little overboard with this hagiographical ode to porn, but at the same time, there are many feminists who still cling to the idea that porn is little more than rape and a means of sexually demeaning women. Neither is the truth, but mine’s a little closer to it. The chauvinism of the porn industry is dying if it’s not already dead. The industry is changing. The women are taking it back.

I should write something big and grand here filled with purple prose — and I definitely considered it — but tonight the words to listen to tonight are those Barack Obama will speak shortly. He will be the next President of the United States of America. This moment will be remembered by all who experienced it. The words are hard to come by right now, not because I’m crying or overcome with emotion. I’m humbled. This was more than a watershed moment. This was more than an attack on republicanism. This was more than a breakthrough in race relations. This was something else. I want to say more, but right now there are simply too many things racing through my mind about how much this changes… everything.

I was watching Larry King Live tonight and Penn Jillette made the claim that you should vote for the person whose ideas and policies match yours the best. I was ok with that. Until he emphasized that competency shouldn’t come into it.

I don’t know if Penn supports McCain or Obama, or if perhaps he’s going to write in Ron Paul to assuage his Libertarian leanings, but his comment on voting from ideals implies to me that he’s going for McCain/Palin and the only way to intellectually justify that was for him to say “vote for ideals, not capability.” (Of course, if that was his rationalization, he probably should have also looked at the extreme religious views of Palin, which would likely disqualify her in his mind)

I respect Penn Jillette, because Penn and Teller: Bullshit is a great show. I don’t agree with everything they say on their show, but on the balance it’s a public service that they talk about these things that tend to go unnoticed or unchallenged. That said, I think that voting exclusively from ideals is lunacy.

Now obviously policies matter. If you’re a strict Libertarian, you’ll probably never vote for someone who wants to increase the size of government or introduce anything remotely socialistic, but that doesn’t mean you should vote for the incompetent guy just because he wants to give you a tax cut. I’m just saying, let’s not be idealogues about this. There are numerous things that should factor into any decision you make, and the decision as to who will lead your nation for the next four years especially should not be so oversimplified.

There are better sites out there talking politics right now, so I’d go to those, but here’s a quick little analysis of what I saw. To me Obama won that debate handily. McCain was doing very well for the first half hour or so but by the end Obama had run away with it. CNN (well the Republicans over at CNN) is saying that John McCain won because he was on the offensive. But that fact is that McCain’s offense was easily swatted away by Obama. Every attack McCain threw at him, Obama handled with poise and nuance.

Beyond that, most of McCain’s policies were overly simplified or left unmentioned. And the few that were mentioned, such as the spending freeze, wlater had holes poked in them by Obama and McCain never rebutted. Every time McCain criticized a policy, Obama responded with a clarification of McCain’s lies and disinformation.

This debate was won by Obama, and in my opinion by a greater margin than any of the previous debates. Not only was Obama a more persuasive debater, but his policies align with my own personal opinions better than most politicians. Obviously, that skews me towards him, but I’d be willing to admit if McCain made valid points that made me question my preference. But he didn’t. Obama won. Hands down.

And Joe the Plumber is now officially a celebrity. Probably only for a week, but he’ll have a wikipedia article, gosh darn it, you betcha.

Tonight was the first night of the Democratic Convention where I saw most of the evening material. Previous nights I saw snippets of the speeches and a bit of the after the fact analysis but missed most of the coverage because I finally restarted my exercise regimen after over a month of laziness. But tonight I was still sore from the previous two nights so a bit of politics seemed like a good idea. Besides, what I saw of Hillary’s speech last night convinced me I should take the time.

First of all, Bill Clinton’s speech was really good and was the best so far at explaining the core problems of the republican party. Some of the online pundits are saying that his arguments against the last 25 years of Republican policy would have been better if focused on just the last 8 years, but I think that the very problem is that they’re trying to sustain decades old policies without reevaluating them based on new evidence. Obviously, Bush’s policies are broken, but they’re not broken solely due to Bush’s incompetence, the deeply entrenched problems of the Republican party clearly contributed.

I do think that Hillary’s speech last night, or what I saw of it, was a bit better in its rhetoric, a bit more lyrical and driving, but Bill Clinton’s speech had more depth, more reasoning, much more information about why McCain was the wrong choice and why Obama was the right one. And of course, he let fly those magic words: “Barack Obama is ready to lead.” and hearing that coming from a former president carries a lot of weight.

I see the Clintons’ two speeches as a one two punch. The first telling Hillary’s supporters to really think about why the voted for Hillary and why they shouldn’t vote for McCain. It was a very feminist-oriented speech with many references to the suffrage movement and the great strides her campaign made to eliminating the inequalities between genders our society still grapples with. The second speech was much broader, attacking the Republicans for claiming that Obama is too inexperienced, just what they said about Bill in ’92. It also touched on why our foreign policy needs to change, and that part of the speech left the best most quotable line from his entire speech where he said that America should lead by the power of their example and not by example of their power.

After Clinton, I saw a bit of John Kerry’s speech but not the whole thing. While it did bring up some good points and continued the attack on McCain, I found myself having trouble listening to it because Kerry’s delivery was lacking. Basically, even though I agreed with what he said, he still sounded like a tool.

Finally, Biden closed out the night with a retelling of his and Obama’s life stories, emphasizing the decisions Obama made to get to this position, letting the people know that this is someone who cares about the nation and genuinely wants to fix it and isn’t just some politician seeking power. In regards to his attacks on McCain, I thought the first was bad and reminiscent of McCain “that’s not change we can believe in… [disturbing chuckle]” speech — though not as bad, half because of Biden’s delivery and half because the audience was willing to at least feign excitement — but I thought the second was really good and probably connected with many more people. For weeks and months now people from every corner of the political realm have been questioning Obama’s judgment and ability to lead the nation. Biden’s repeated refrain of “McCain was wrong. Obama was right.” was really good at showing that just because McCain’s been in the game longer doesn’t mean he’s the better man for the job.

I also want to make a special note of Beau Biden. His introductory speech for his father was amazing. It truly and honestly moved me and I welled up a few times. That guy’s going places if he wants to.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed the speeches from the DNC so far and thought they’ve painted a compelling argument against McCain as much as it has been for Obama. And watching all of this convincing compelling rhetoric demanding change and improvement for our government definitely got me fired up and ready to go. I can hardly wait for Obama to turn these four nights of speeches into a Grand Slam.

I don’t talk politics all that much on this site, but the fact that McCain is gaining ground on Obama despite being the poorer choice for every rational metric is driving me crazy. The image above is one of the most telling images about the disparity between McCain’s and Obama’s campaigns.

At first glance, McCain’s seems better because he just drops all taxes across the board. But you will then quickly notice that not all taxes are equal: the rich get huge tax breaks, and the poor get hardly any. Meanwhile Obama taxes the top 1% richest people more and gives the poorest much bigger tax breaks. 60% of tax paying citizens, the bottom three tax brackets, save anywhere from 3 to 50 times more money under Obama’s plan.

So the super-rich lose more of their income, but retain their super-richness, and the poor and middle class families get a tax break, all while losing less money overall allowing for the massive country deficit to be recovered faster. How is anyone still supporting McCain?

Through a random Wikipedia journey I came across the Wikipedia page for Raul Castro. I came across a section where they quoted from one of his speeches talking about him taking over for Fidel Castro: “Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together.”

That line is more than just a cute sound bite, but also a fascinating socio-anthropological cue. It emphasizes the communal aspect of a communist government (well, the ideal one anyways) which is not something seen in most American speeches. It made me suddenly realize that great speeches do not necessarily use the same vocabulary. There might have been a time and place where the words of Kennedy wouldn’t have inspired the masses. A whole new vocabulary of persuasion has to be invented based on what the people of your country want.

This semi-revelation also opened my eyes a little about the current presidential race: Barack Obama’s speeches bring hope and inspiration to millions, but there are many out there who wouldn’t be inspired if only because he’s using the wrong words, or he’s accentuating the wrong things. Obama is obviously aware of the power of targeted language since he often injects phrases evangelicals would recognize when he speaks of his religion.

But it goes beyond that. Using certain words to affect is a subset of this larger idea. This is more than selecting the right words, it’s about selecting the right concepts and the right words. This may have seemed to obvious to many, and indeed it’s obvious to me now, but that doesn’t dull the impact it had on me. The depth of effort a speech-writer must go through to perfect the image of the speech-giver was so much more abstract until I read that understated phrase.