Extreme Pawlenty

Via T. Miss, Pawlenty goes for a joyride in a stolen car.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty spent Sunday riding around Pennsylvania in a stolen van.

The theft was inadvertent; his Keystone State driver was told to pick up the keys to the vehicle in which he was to shepherd the governor at the Holiday Inn in Allentown, Pa.

"He did exactly what he was told, except it was the wrong Holiday Inn and the wrong van," said Pawlenty, who campaigned through Pennsylvania for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Saturday and Sunday.

The van the driver picked up was a tricked-out touring vehicle, complete with an LCD video screen, an Xbox and video games and an iPod-ready, six-speaker stereo system.

Wrong Way W

Via Sullivan, Peggy Noonan:

The best line of the convention so far? Ted Strickland of Ohio, when he echoed the 1988 Democratic convention joke about George H.W. Bush, that he was born on third and thought he hit a triple. Strickland said of George W. Bush that he was born on third and then stole second.

Dragon Fruit

RZA on McCain

Richard Gowan is right. Enough with the clichés and ad hoc narratives of the pundit class! RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan is a much better and more enlightening read.

What do you think of Biden?

I don’t know Mr. Biden. I just saw him on TV yesterday.

He got in trouble last year for saying Obama was the first “clean and articulate” African-American candidate we’d ever had run for president.

He got in trouble for that?!

I guess it was seen as stereotyping.

A lot of us ain’t clean and articulate, because we grew up in harsh conditions. So Mr. Obama is clean and articulate. I’m actually proud to watch him on TV, myself, as a black man, because I think we hold our dicks when we walk — know what I mean? — and he got something about him that’s really classy. It’s like in every nation and every race, you have some people that are born as a prince because of the natural way they are.

Do you support him because he’s the first black candidate or for other reasons?

I’m not really a political guy. Some of my friends were supporting Hillary in the beginning, and I do what my friends do. I was trying to help Hillary in the beginning.

Really? Why?

Because I thought, When the Clinton family was in office, my family had better food in their house. I could call my aunt up and she could say, “Yeah, things is good.” Now everybody calls me for money. So I thought that Clinton could help out families better. But when she moved out of the race and I started watching Mr. Obama, I actually became a fan of his. You know, this man has something elegant about him!

And I watched Mr. McCain, too, and I know he went through a struggle with the war and all that. But in all reality, if you’re a P.O.W., it means you’ve been locked up and in jail. And in our country, you can’t vote as a felon. A lot of people can’t vote because once you’ve been locked up and incarcerated, it changes your mentality. He did that for his country. That’s a great thing and a great sacrifice. But people I know have been making comments, saying, “You know, a man who’s been through that … Rambo was crazy!”

Far Away

Regarding the most recent mass killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the US,

Imagine if an airstrike from a foreign power killed 60 American children - even in an accident. It would be an historic event that would be seared into the Western consciousness for ever. And yet, US bombs just killed exactly that number and the odds are: this is the first time you heard about it.

That's right.

Public Space Art

Pruned has more on Wifaa Bilal, who I mentioned earlier, as well as some other interesting spatial art projects. Two of my favorites:

Adrian Kondratowicz, TRASH: anycoloryoulike, 2008. Photo by Gina Marie. Source.

Michel de Broin, Superficielle, 2004. Photo by Michel de Broin. Source.

See more.

Steve McQueen Fixes a Radio

From If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger....

Prisoners

Ouch (from Eschaton)... Roger Ailes:

The McCain campaign keeps emphasizing that McCain was a prisoner in Vietnam, as proof of his qualification for the Presidency.

Well, so was Gary Glitter, and I'm not voting for him either.

JR in the Favelas

Via Wooster Collective. More here.

Biden

I like the Biden choice as VP for a number of reasons, most of which have been elucidated elsewhere. Obama's choice, to me, shows something he has demonstrated over and over: his understanding that the past always informs the future, even if critically and even if that future needs dearly to break with the bad habits of the past. This often tragic feature of the human condition is the main core truth shared by thoughtful conservatism (which barely exists today) and thoughtful progressivism. It's Peircean semiotics for everyday consumption.

Obviously, one can't agree with all of Biden's policy choices, and everyone makes fun of his capacity to talk, but I've always liked the guy mainly for the reason that he's smart, no-nonsense, has a fine wit, and is one of the few congresspeople who really does have a grasp of foreign policy concerns in both the big picture sense and the localized, human dimension. I like to hear Biden talk because he has something interesting and important to say. I honestly can't say the same thing about most politicians. McCain's foreign policy statements (as with Bush's), for example, can basically be predicted before he opens his mouth ("POW" is the least of it). There's no hard work involved. If we can do that, it's a good sign we don't have much leadership.

Furthermore, unlike those who think Biden's "foreign policy experience" fills a gap for Obama, I think Obama actually also has a strong foreign policy sense, in both the big and local picture. It may not be in terms of experience itself (using the language of "experience," by the way, automatically cedes the debate to McCain), but it is certainly in terms of diplomatic charisma and intellectual judgment. Compare McCain's reckless cold-warrior statements on Georgia, which got both the description and the prescription wrong. Obama-Biden is a strong ticket in this sense and, given McCain's ongoing gaffes on what is supposed to be his strong point, Obama's VP choice just won that territory, in my view.

Acknowledging that VP choices don't usually have a huge impact on elections, the Biden choice nevertheless also humanizes Obama's image at this point in the campaign. I mean this in a very strict sense. The Obama "brand" (yech, an awful term) does indeed have a certain amount of saintliness about it, which has occasionally given even strong supporters pause. If it didn't, the McCain camp's incessant criticisms of "The One" and Obama-as-celebrity would have no purchase on the public. Polls suggest otherwise which in turn says that the Republicans have effectively made inroads on the Obama image. Biden - partially because of his faults - brings the Obama brand back to earth; or to the kitchen table:

Your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. That's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.

Nice. As many have noted, Biden won't back down from a fight and we can all relish the debates to come. But there's another crucial factor composed of two parts that seems to have been overlooked in today's commentary across the internets. Yes, Biden does well among older voters and "undecided" voters, which FiveThirtyEight (prior to the Biden pick) suggests have heavy overlap:

Biden's case is probably stronger than I indicated, because he tends to be most popular among voting groups with a lot of undecided voters, which means a lot of persuadables. In particular, Biden's strength with senior citizens could be a real asset. How so? Because seniors are far more likely to be undecided in this election than their younger counterparts.

But even further, one data point that's nearly impossible to poll is racism or, to put it euphemistically, racial discomfort (racism, after all, isn't always black and white, so to speak - its existence and effects come in a range of degrees). It's heartening that racism genuinely seems to have withered among this generation's younger vote. When I've talked with European friends about Obama, they've often said they don't think he'll win because of American racism. I've always responded that I think this has changed. But that response is inadequate. The reality is that it has changed among the youth vote. This may even be part of the promise of Obama, as when he himself uses the language of being merely a mirror or a blank slate for this generation to write its aspirations. But things are different with the senior vote.

Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate, claims that the one thing that could lose this election for Obama is the racism of a significant chunk of the American public.

Much evidence points to racial prejudice as a factor that could be large enough to cost Obama the election. That warning is written all over last month's CBS/New York Times poll, which is worth examining in detail if you want a quick grasp of white America's curious sense of racial grievance. In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

Five percent surely understates the reality. In the Pennsylvania primary, one in six white voters told exit pollsters race was a factor in his or her decision. Seventy-five percent of those people voted for Clinton. You can do the math: 12 percent of the Pennsylvania primary electorate acknowledged that it didn't vote for Barack Obama in part because he is African-American. And that's what Democrats in a Northeastern(ish) state admit openly. The responses in Ohio and even New Jersey were dispiritingly similar.

Such prejudice usually comes coded in distortions about Obama and his background. To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.

Then there's the overt stuff. In May, Pat Buchanan, who writes books about the European-Americans losing control of their country, ranted on MSNBC in defense of white West Virginians voting on the basis of racial solidarity. The No. 1 best-seller in America, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., leeringly notes that Obama's white mother always preferred that her "mate" be "a man of color." John McCain has yet to get around to denouncing this vile book.

Racism was always going to play some role, and we can set aside the overt bigotry of Buchanan, Corsi, and others who'll only ever vote for a white male Republican. I don't have much to go on but a hunch, but I suspect that Corsi and other's swiftboating won't have as much of an impact on this election. It's not that John Kerry was swiftboated; it's that the swiftboating of John Kerry gave us four more years of the hugely unpopular Bush.

But there are the others along the spectrum of euphemistic racial discomfort for whom the sense of racial identity is more complex and ambiguous. These are the people who hear the racial code language of "good American" or "elitist" or "patriot" or "us" from John McCain and picture white, even while they may say they're not racist. That's the code of demagogues. It's the kitchen table around which "people like us" usually sit. It's traditional America, the past informing the future, memory anchored politically by the senior vote. That ambiguous place is not necessarily racism, at least not overtly so, but it's easily convertible to "racial discomfort" racism by demagogues, an eternal truth of political elections.

Not to instrumentalize the whole affair (because I don't actually think it's so), this is where choosing Joe Biden, with his avuncular wit and his appeal to seniors, is an extremely clever move. His very presence shuts down the code by showing a gentler, reality-based version of a pluralistic kitchen table - which Obama embodies and which the younger vote already admires - than the one antagonistically presented by demagogues to the fears of racially uncomfortable, white senior voters.

But this is also less about election gaming and more about the consistency of Obama's character. He wanted someone to challenge him. Biden will do that in the best of ways as a smart thinker with long experience that doesn't hinder fresh ideas. I can easily see a terrific working relationship and a good friendship developing in an Obama-Biden White House, one that combines both dynamism and security. It is, however, also about the complex picture of American racial and class reality that Obama has been painting with perhaps its high point in his brilliant post-Wright speech on race and religion. This is a picture that understands that we always carry the past into the future, shared with conservatism, but that also understands that we can always tweak and evolve the meanings of national and international existence so that we don't merely repeat the past. It's a wise choice and says very good things about the wisdom of Obama himself.

Readings

• Gorbachev in the NYTimes on the Russia-Georgia spat.
• Russia has more cards up its sleeve regarding tension with the US.
• Chalmers Johnson on the continuation of American imperialism.
  
• Very nice piece on Obama's economic policy/thought from this coming Sunday's magazine.
• Fellow POW in Vietnam on why he won't vote for McCain.
• Lessig on McCain's tech policy.
  
• Towards a new Green Revolution?
• BLDGBLOG on Mayans and muons.

Photo by Alex Hofford/European Pressphoto Agency, via No Caption Needed.

Elitists in Hawaii

Oh, a bit of campaign palaver here today, cause I've got nothing else to say. Besides, it was a fun day for the battle of campaign rhetoric.

Cindy Hensley met John McCain more than 20 years earlier at a party in Hawaii. He was a 43-year-old naval officer, married at the time. She was 25. They married a year later — in 1980 — and they signed a prenuptial agreement, which was fairly rare at the time.

Just so we are clear- visiting your grandmother while vacationing in Hawaii, the state where you were you were born- elitist.

Meeting the millionaire heiress daughter (who you will soon begin an affair with and divorce your first wife and then go on and buy a ton of houses) in Hawaii and then going on and honeymooning in Hawaii – not elitist.

These Two Things Go Together

Kevin Drum (and Matthew Yglesias):

Matt Yglesias takes a look at John McCain's record on foreign threats and describes it this way:

In short, not only is Russia on the march beyond Tbilisi to Ukraine, Finland, and substantial swathes of Poland but that's not even the transcendent issue of our time. And North Korea's nuclear program is "the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today" but that's not the transcendent issue of our time. And Islamism is the transcendent issue of our time, but not a serious international crisis or an especially great challenge to U.S. security and world stability. Now of course there's no way to make sense of that, because it's not supposed to make any kind of sense. McCain just thinks that overreacting is the right reaction to everything. It's a hysteria-based foreign policy.

I know I'm not making an original point here. Conservatives, and neoconservatives in particular, have always thrived on a sense of being surrounded by manifest, civilization-threatening dangers. But somehow, even compared to their usual hysteria level, they seem to have turned their internal threat-o-meters up to 11 for this campaign. They're convinced that Russia is on the march, China is on the rise, Islam is a transcendent threat, we live on the cusp of world historical times, and if Barack Obama becomes president we're all probably doomed. And that's one reason the campaign has gotten so nasty. If you think the survival of the nation is at stake, you're certainly not going to be worried about a bit of freelance political smearing, are you?

Glenn Greenwald, via Thoreau:

The idea that the U.S. can, should and must be, more or less, in a state of permanent war, and can start wars in a whole host of circumstances having nothing to do with defending the country from an attack or imminent attack, is as close to an unchallengeable, bipartisan article of faith as it gets. We’re a country that fights wars and uses military force in far more places and for far broader reasons than any other country in the world, by far. Again, regardless of one’s views about whether our wars are really Good and Just — even if one believes that what we drop on other countries are Good and Loving Freedom Bombs — it’s still just a fact that no country views military action as a more appropriate response in more situations than the U.S. does.

Pace Mamey

Academia of Debauchery

Having, on frequent occasion, spent evenings like this past Saturday with friends who are also academics, collapsing political and lightly philosophical discussions in the early morning hours into creating the crudest possible limericks and converting those into salsa songs (Una dama que venía de Nantucket...), it is worth reminding myself on occasion of the noble roots of my calling.

If the Bacchanalia created a blueprint for our most depraved debauches, the ancients also bequeathed us its more elegant counterpart: the learned drinking party or symposium. Like the Algonquin roundtable of 1920s New York, it was a brilliant excuse for all forms of excess: In classical Athens, A-list philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates loved to gather for wine-fueled intellectual bouts, during which they would recline on sumptuous couches, sip wine from ornate goblets, be entertained by beautiful lute girls and handsome dancing boys, and throw themselves into scintillating debate. In fact, Plato’s fundamental tract, The Symposium, is based on a real party in 415 B.C. Athens, attended by a revolving cast of artists, thinkers, and politicians, including the playwright Aristophanes and the dashing, up-and-coming general Alcibiades. The wine was mixed with water in a bowl called a krater, then passed amongst the guests in a communal cup engraved with erotic drawings; the food was simply prepared, with plenty of olives, honey, feta, and freshly grilled fish. Plato says the boozing and philosophizing went on all night, until everyone except Socrates fell asleep in a stupor.

Many other symposia were far less dignified. The fourth-century B.C. poet Eubulus describes a typical evening in Athens, when the bright conversation degenerated as the wine cup was passed around. While the first few drinks inspired moments of brilliance, he writes, “the fourth libation belongs to Hubris; the fifth to Shouting; the Sixth to Revel; the seventh to Black Eyes; the eighth to Summonses; the Ninth to Bile; and the tenth to Madness.” After the parties, philosophers and their golden-haired boys would run around the dark streets, scribbling graffiti under sophomorish pseudonyms like Sacred Erection, and squander their inheritances on the beautiful and talented Greek courtesans, called heiterai, who lay in wait.

After conquering Greece, the Romans adapted the symposium tradition for their own more civilized banquets frequented by poets and great minds. Around 200 A.D., one of the unsung classics of Western literature, Deipnosophistae — “The Drunken Professors” — was penned by the bon vivant Athenaeus, a Greek-born author who grew up as a scion of the Roman Empire. Set at a fictional dinner party, it is basically a compendium of anecdotes about great moments in the history of food, wine, and entertainment, drawing on the whole Greco-Roman world. Of course, the issues that were mulled by these boozed-up professors are still fascinating at social gatherings today, and it could be said that this column is a direct descendant of Athenaeus’ noble project.

The Iron Border Dam

Image: Faulty design turned border fence into dam, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

America's own Iron Curtain is turning into an iron dam. Bryan Finoki has been on the case.

Aufhebung, or "Crunchy"

Justin Smith at 3 Quarks Daily:

Some years later, Hünn-Tuk took part, along with four other members of the Vendyak community, in the aboriginal-peoples contingent of a conference on the anthropology of food at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Their hosts had taken them to a diner a bit out of town called ‘LeAnn’s’. A professor from the Slavic department was along to translate for Hünn-Tuk into Russian, who in turn translated for the others into their native tongue. I was at the conference, and heard about the incident first-hand from the professor (we had been roommates during my years at Michigan).

The Vendyak were very curious about everything on the menu, as the diner had been played up to them by their hosts for days as featuring ‘authentic’ local cuisine. Just as the Russian professor was struggling to come up with an adequate rendering of the concepts of ‘cheese grits’ and ‘chicken-fried steak’, one of the Vendyak pointed to the cover of the menu and asked to know the meaning of the phrase underneath the name of the restaurant: “LeAnn’s: Home-cookin’ just like granny use [sic] to make.” The professor translated the phrase into Russian, and at once Hünn-Tuk’s face contracted into a worried cringe. He tried to hide it, but the other Vendyak had already become excited, and Hünn-Tuk found himself unable to invent a lie under pressure. They demanded to know what the phrase meant at once, and he gave in: “This food is prepared as if by an elder woman,” he told them sombrely in Vendyak.

Two of the men ran out of the restaurant at once, right out across the state route, and disappeared into the forest on the other side. The youngest of them dropped to the floor and began convulsing, as if in the early throes of an epileptic seizure. The fourth, a man of nearly 60 with grey whiskers and a few teeth, marched over to the anthropologist who had arranged the outing, an innocent young Melanesianist who had simply taken it for granted that love of granny’s cooking was a cultural universal. The Vendyak grabbed the Melanesianist by his throat and bellowed: “Do you want to poison our people!? Do you want to shrivel our testicles and make our arms too weak to hunt!?”...

Read the whole essay.

Televised Ego Physics

Wolcott:

...If Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer raced toward the same MSNBC camera at the same velocity from converging angles, would they...

a) Bounce off each other upon point of collision

b) Fuse upon impact (smack) into one super-talkative, tele-addicted, Kali-armed, dual-cam ego'd uber-Senator?

I suppose "a" is the more plausible outcome, but "b" would enliven Senate hearings and might angrily bite the bug head off of George Stephanopolous in the middle of one of his schmancy interrogations, which is something I think we'd all appreciate.

Breadfruit