Unlikely Words

I’m too angry to write anything sensible about Clinton’s and McCain’s unbelievably stupid “gas tax holiday,” so read Robert Reich instead.

So, so stupid.

This seems like a pretty cut and dry case of an industry group promoting their economic interest over public safely in a laughably obvious way, right?

[Rhode Island] has proposed banning vehicles with more than two axles from two key bridges that are weakened by deterioration, the Route 24 bridge over the Sakonnet River and the Route 95 bridge over the Pawtucket River.

The state says that the weight limits it has imposed on both bridges aren’t working well enough, while the trucking industry says that the state’s plan would fall most heavily on local businesses and force thousands of trucks that aren’t heavily loaded to take detours.

The clash of interests the plan raises — the cost and inconvenience of detours versus the need to protect two major bridges that are failing — points to the difficulty the state is having maintaining its transportation system.

Just to recap, the clash of interests are:

1. Cost and inconvenience of detours
2. Failing bridges

Seems like an easy choice to me.

Here are some words of wisdom:

There are several ironies at work in conservative criticism of Wright. The first is that I have never heard so many conservatives express concern for black children in my entire life. Unmoved by decrepit, segregated schools, their parents working two or three jobs without guarantee of health care, and dismissive of their abuse at the hand of law enforcement officials, they are suddenly terrified that the Obama children will grow up hating white people.

They shouldn’t be concerned about them. They should be concerned about the children living through what I have described above. Those kids don’t need a Reverend Wright to tell them what they already know.

I’ve written before about how I find Obama’s rhetoric stirring but underwhelming. He’s a great speaker, but I’m more fond of how he speaks than of what he says. Armando Iannucci’s parody in the Guardian expresses the same sentiment, but more hilariously:

Every time I listen to him, I start off thinking I’m about to wet my pants, but a minute-and-a-half later find my mind wandering, asking itself things like: ‘What does “the challenge of hope” mean?’

…

But, rhythmically, it’s quite alluring. It can make anything, even, for example, a simple chair, seem magnificent. Why vote for someone who says: ‘See that chair. You can sit on it’ when you can have someone like Obama say: ‘This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl’s behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America’s huddled arse.’

Via Andrew Sullivan, who actually likes Obama.

(I confess that this post is mostly about trolling Eli.)

The progressive case for John Edwards:

The world is gaping with awe – and disbelief – at the prospect of a black or female President of the United States. If George Bush symbolises everything we hate about the United States, Barack Obama seems to symbolise everything we love about the country: its warm openness to immigrants, its shimmering civil rights movements, its idealism. So it feels strange to say it, but reader, it’s time to look away from the woman and the black guy towards the white man from the Deep South – because he is more left-wing, and more electable, than either of them.

You might remember John Edwards as the plastic vice-presidential candidate standing at John Kerry’s wooden side in 2004. Back then, he offered anodyne Clintonian soundbites and centrist platitudes – but losing to Bush yet again did something strange to him. It turned him into an angry whistle-blower, exposing the corruption consuming both of Washington’s parties.

He explained: “I have seen the seamy underbelly of what happens in Washington every day. If you’re Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what’s happening with the government, you go and hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is what you find. About half the lobbyists are Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the money around. If the Democrats are in power, the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They’re pushing the same agenda for the same companies. There’s no difference.”

The feminist case against Hillary Clinton:

When John Edwards stepped up to the podium to concede victory to Barack Obama, he said, “The one thing that is clear here in Iowa is that the status quo lost and change won.” I do not want a feminism that is part of the status quo, and so I do not want the first woman president to be a Clintonian. Every time Hillary Clinton puts on the mantle of the Bill Clinton presidency and reminds us of how important it is to be practical and work with the other side to get things done, I think of every cowardly practical choice that Bill Clinton (or should I say the Clintons together) made. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” sellout of gays in the military; the abandonment of Lani Guinier; a failed healthcare reform package that would have sacrificed women’s reproductive health to the Catholic Church’s demands as moral arbiter; a welfare reform bill that actually hurt poor women and their families; and presidential approval of a permanent ban on Medicaid funds for poor women seeking abortions.

The women’s movement, along with other progressive movements, did little to challenge the Clinton administration to live up to its campaign promises. And now it seems that the longtime women’s movement is falling into the same trap over Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Just read the feckless and stale defense of Clinton’s record on the war posted on the National Organization for Women’s Web site to get a sense of how willing some in the feminist establishment are to defend any woman, regardless of her track record.

But some women aren’t buying it. We’d like to see a woman president, but more than anything we want to be able to say at the end of the first woman’s tenure in the highest political office that it really mattered. That the first woman president did things no man would have done, that feminist values were at the core of her decisions — and that the country was on the road to further transformation.