Frontpaged, and welcome. - Bouldin

Just about a year ago when I began volunteering with a political campaign for the first time, my candidate was considered a long shot at best. That candidate was facing the full weight of an overwhelming political establishment. Opinion makers quickly dismissed the upstart candidate as too young and too inexperienced, noting the primary would be nothing more than a formality or procedural obstacle on the way to the front runner's inevitable coronation [1].

(crossposted to dailykos)

Of course, that "incumbent" candidate was Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama, my candidate, the one pundits expected to implode into a cloud of inexperience under the crushing weight of the establishment with an audible 'poof', is now our Democratic nominee. There's still a great deal of work to be done before Barack Obama becomes our 44th President, but he's out of the gate with a strong lead, even with the wounds of our the long, contentious primary campaign still slowly mending.

New to politics a year ago, I entered the fray with only a passing familiarity with the candidates various policy proposals. Despite my indifference and apathy at the time, Barack Obama's commitment to good government policies -- specifically campaign finance reform, government transparency and ethics reform -- drew me into the campaign, and eventually into Democratic politics for good. I could go on and on about my admiration for Obama's dedication to these issues, how good-government, campaign finance, and increased transparency are the prerequisites for lasting change, but I imagine there's little need to trumpet Obama in a progressive place like DG (for the record, this post was originally written for a broader audience at dailykos -- I hope I my relative ignorance of state issues compared to the average DG reader doesn't spoil the message).

Well, once again I'm rooting for the reformer-underdog. Still, despite the overwhelming weight of New York's establishment machine bearing down on Paul Newell campaign, I'm more convinced than ever that Obama-style bottom-up Change is precisely what NY state so desperately needs.

NEWELLNYC.ORG

A reader emails over to announce a new e-book about the history of Coney Island, another part of the City quickly being gentrified into a luxury product.

Boing Boing reviews:

Roaming about, ([the author] Professor Solomon) interviews old-timers—searches for antiquities—explores what is left of the amusement area. (Among his finds: a man who remembers seeing the first human cannonball, shot into the air at Coney Island; the remains of Steeplechase Park; and a ride—the Wonder Wheel—that began as a perpetual-motion machine.)

He also provides a history of Coney Island—from its Canarsie Indian days, to its era as a lawless, Tijuana-style resort, to the rise and fall of its amusement parks. On this historical tour, you’ll meet such personages as John Y. McKane (notorious mayor of Coney Island); George Tilyou (amusement-park pioneer); and the Wild Man of Borneo (actually, an actor from the Bronx). And you’ll visit the Pavilion of Fun, French Nudist exhibit, Elephant Hotel, Trip to the Moon, Insanitarium, Tunnel of Love, flea circus, Feltman’s restaurant (where the hot dog was invented), and other vanished attractions.

I was surprisingly inspired by John and Teresa Heinz Kerry’s new book, This Moment on Earth, coming out March 26th, 2007. This inspiration snuck up on me around the third chapter. Prior to that, I found the book good, well worth reading, but a little bit like just one more book outlining what humans are doing wrong. Starting around the third chapter I realized I was referring to the book in several conversations and several blog diaries and that several of the people and organizations featured in the book I mentally filed away as worth looking into for future political connections, diaries and general research.

In short, almost without my realizing it, John Kerry’s book was getting into my brain and inspiring me. The book starts a bit dull but by the end is excellent.

My earliest impression, from the press material that arrived with the book and from the introduction, was that this book promised something really new and welcome. The book was billed as the next step in the evolution of the environmental debate. I was ready for a book that took as given the problems and focused primarily on solutions. Having been through way too many “debates” online where I yet again outlined the very clear scientific evidence for global warming only to have yet the same false claims that global warming was some kind of scam or myth (these claims are never backed up by scientific evidence of any substance), I really was ready to have a book that moved beyond that.

This was first published at c u l t u r e k i t c h e n:
today was like any other day.

it was a beautiful day, just as it was two years ago. blue sky, gentle breeze.

the kids were romping and jumping. we took time to play, time to read and time to learn. the house was a mess, we were running low on groceries, and the kids were getting antsy. so we picked up a bit, i left the kids in the playground with our neighbors while i went to the store.

it has been just a day like any other day. still, evan asked:

"are they coming back?"
"is the empire state building still sad?"

this day, two years ago, i was feeling a bit tired, a bit disoriented and, well, a bit lazy. i had this great week planned out for our official first week of homeschooling. i had decided not to go to the observatory, just to keep things simple, and just go to the empire state building because it was closer to us.

the "observatory" was the top of world trade center #2.

this year, two years ago, we heard a loud boom. not a sonic boom, but a boom louder than the one a truck would make after hitting a pothole. i thought "that must have been one helluva big truck".

[Conservatives] do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

- Lionel Trilling

They haven't really improved much in the fifty years since that quote was spoken, but now, as per the NYT, the people that call themselves conservative can at least point to a thick volume that claims to offer an exhausting look at what passes for thought on the right side of the aisle.

The partisans are pleased. "Feel the heft of it", to quote Lee Edwards, a former aide to the very dead and very right-wing Barry Goldwater, seemingly confusing two meanings of substance, or perhaps quoting Victorian pornography, which would seem apt.

The simple fact is that conservatism does not have a lot of ideas, and I would surmise that the 'heft' noted above stems in large part from explaining the contradictions between those ideas it does have. I'd add that I consider the people who call themselves conservatives these days to be empty shams, because they're not conservative in any sense of the word, and that because of this, what calls itself the 'conservative movement' is dying, but that's another post. So back to those vaunted ideas.

Essentially, cons are against big government, except when they're for it – as when big government builds prisons, subsidizes donors, investigates ovaries and develops a prurient interest in consensual sex. That kind of big government is fine, as is the kind that sells national parks to oil companies.

Cons are for values – in other people. They themselves are, due perhaps to the get-out-of-jail-free card that comes with advocating for "standards", absolved from living up to them.

Cons support a lot of things. The troops, freedom, religious liberty, the American family, the rule of law, mom, a balanced budget, apple pie, you get the idea. The only problem is that this support is very much open to revision as expediency demands; their support of the troops doesn't include, say, getting them the hell out of a god-damn shooting war. They love the family; there had just better not be any ass-fucking going on between members of any family. And so on.

It's interesting to me that this encyclopedia is coming out at this moment in time – because the movement it describes has run out of ideas, if indeed it ever had any. Bush-Coulter conservatism is withering at this writing, not least because it does not work and makes no sense.

That's not going to change with a single volume, no matter how hefty.