Something is Stirring in America

The last six paragraphs of this post are beautiful:

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I'd gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march. He hadn't yet arrived at the voting center, and I decided to find him when I got back.

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy's seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great.

So when I got back to the voting location with the car, I went to find him in the line. Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an "I Voted" sticker, but I couldn't see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy's head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn't ask the man for a quote. I didn't need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

If you can read that passage without feeling something well up inside you, well, you're made of sterner stuff than I. (click on the link to see the picture).

Joe the Plumber

I have to admit, Joe's got me thinking. That coupled with some of the arguments I've read on Obama's tax policy, have made me wonder whether Obama's financial strengths aren't all smoke and mirrors. All I've read of the Joe Plumber exchange was "spread the wealth", hardly a promising campaign slogan.

Well, watch the clip:


Obama really is amazing. He just won my vote all over again (I admit, I have been wavering)

He met the challenge, knowing he was talking to someone who would probably never vote for him, but he tried to talk to him (not use him as a symbol, but actually address Joe's situation) and he stayed with him, for a while, really talking about the complicated issue which are (is?) taxes. (side note: I had a wonderful conversation with My friends Gini and Paul about subject verb agreement related to sentences like this)

Anyway, I'm back into the fold.

Speaking of which: check me out at 3:09

Why Obama will win

watch this video and you will see why Obama will win this year's presidential election (don't peek at my explanation after the video):













Did you see it? No, it wasn't how well he handles the crowd. It wasn't his quick, light and even banter with the ladies. It wasn't how much like a good guy, smooth, and temperentally ideal for the current crisis he seems.

If you thought it was any of those things that guarantees Obama the win you missed it.

Did you see the gentleman standing slightly behind Senator Obama? Monitoring everything. Moving forward slightly to prep the situation, then hanging back to make sure it all went smoothly? With multiple bluetooth devices plugged in? He is Obama's secret weapon:

Reggie Love!

Obama's body man is Reggie Love.

McCain never even had a chance.

The Tax Man Giveth

Last year, when I filed my taxes I got a huge refund, so large that our summer plans suddenly opened up because we had extra money to use. I was confused by this because I don't have taxes deducted from my paycheck; an advantage to earning income overseas is that it is tax exempt, except for the payroll taxes. In fact the refund I got back actually exceeded my annual payroll deductions. I couldn't understand how this worked until I read this article in the Wall Street Journal.

I have to say, in general, I am very uncomfortable with this tax policy. First of all, because, as the WSJ rightly says, it is welfare disguised as tax policy, so well disguised, in fact, that I wasn't aware that I was a beneficiary of welfare until I read the article.

Which leads me to my second problem. I don't want welfare, and don't feel I need it. I wouldn't apply for it even if I knew it were available for it. In this system, however, I have little choice to apply for it, since I have to file my tax claims. I'm sure I will continue to take the "tax refunds" I'm eligible for, since I have my tax claims prepared for me online, and don't have much to do with the actual details.

The fact that this has become a way for welfare to sneak back into the system, in a form much harder to resist than the old welfare system. WSJ rightly faults Obama for using this formulation as a way to claim that he is giving "tax cuts" to 95% of the American people.

I do believe in progressive tax rates, but this is silly. If you want to redistribute wealth, then do it above board. Welfare, though is so unpopular that it would never pass. If that's true, then it shouldn't be snuck into the tax system.

On the other hand...

I was impressed by Biden's performance in the VP debates and thought Palin spoke empty and meaningless platitudes.

WSJ points out some serious problems with the "Kid from Scranton":

We think the word "lie" is overused in politics today, having become a favorite of the blogosphere and at the New York Times. So we won't say Mr. Biden was deliberately making events up when he made these and other false statements. Perhaps he merely misspoke. In any case, Mrs. Palin may not know as much about the world as Mr. Biden does, but at least most of what she knows is true.

Homer's Wine Dark Sea

This morning I fell into the NYTimes Op-Ed page and found an uncommon richness. Will Self started my morning off with a tasty (if somewhat sardonic) snapshot of Ibiza in the summer

On the horizon the superstructure of a freighter piled high with containers wavered in the heat, never seeming to progress: all that stuff, cars and car tires, dishwashers and dialysis machines — the whole lot being thrust through Homer’s wine-dark sea. The sheer inertia of global commerce began to make me feel dizzy — there was this, and also the sense that with our ceaseless advances and retractions we were in some way mimicking the vacillations of our own culture, with its Promethean thefts always being found out by the aeronautical engineering of Icarus.

I began to worry: would we become lost here in the Ibizan hinterland? Meeting perhaps with other Brits who’d gone feral? A lost tribe, stark naked save for denim penis-sheaths, who called themselves “the Ex” and enacted weird psycho-sexual rituals.

Next, Pinker has an interesting article on Palin's debate performance:

SINCE the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, two opposing myths have quickly taken hold about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. The first, advanced by her supporters, is that she made it through a gantlet of fire; the second, embraced by her detractors, is that her speaking style betrays her naïveté. Both are wrong.

Then Judith Warner has an utterly depressing piece on the financial crisis:

And those of us who felt, well, like losers, are feeling like even bigger losers, as we shove our unopened 401K or (if we’re double-loser freelancers) SEP-IRA statements into bottom desk drawers and wait for a cathartic burst of schadenfreude that simply refuses to come.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

Just thought I'd share my Sunday Morning reading with you.

Gotcha Journalism

Katie Couric is obviously in the tank for Obama. :eye roll: