New Yorker

After both SwinRo and daddYman recommended articles from the Oct 13, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, I relented and read most of it. Some good stories - although I remain largely unimpressed with the magazine on the whole. Not sure why.

George Packer - someone I have almost always enjoyed reading - starts off with "The Hardest Vote: Ohio's worried working class".

She remained uninspired by Barack Obama. His Convention speech had gone into detail about his policy proposals on matters like the economy and health care, which seemed tailored to attract a voter like Snodgrass, but they filled her with suspicion. His promise to rescind the Bush tax cuts for wealthier Americans struck her as incredible: “How many people do you know who make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? What is that, five per cent of the United States? That’s a joke! If he starts at a hundred thousand, I might listen. Two hundred fifty—that’s to me like people who hit the lottery.” In fact, only two per cent of Americans make more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, but that group earns twelve per cent of the national income. Nonetheless, the circumstances of Snodgrass’s life made it impossible for her to imagine that there could possibly be enough taxable money in Obama’s upper-income category—which meant that he was being dishonest, and that she would eventually be the one to pay.

It makes me think about an interesting problem - how the hell can we educate American voters who have no time to get educated? On so many important issues, tens of millions of people are woefully ignorant. This is not just about "Obama is a Muslim" but also those who think more nuclear power is the answer to high gas prices.

There is probably not an answer. But maybe we can chip away at it if we developed a new model for news. Letting for-profit corporations dominate it is clearly damaging our civic fabric. Probably not irreversibly.

Switching gears - ever wonder what the folks in Crawford think about the President? Pamela Colloff answers it with "Exile on Main Street." Again, I'm infuriated that people accepted Bush as a common person - as if he were truly some sort of rancher.

And it reminds me that the Democrats, even if they win this election, have once again missed an historic opportunity (as is their wont). This was the absolute best time to forever put that bullshit "tax and spend liberal" mantra to death. A few national advertisements with this graph would have done it. Image from zfacts.com.

Let's be clear. Republicans have killed our economy. They are responsible for huge deficits and the debt. The little bit of spending that Democrats push for the least among us (which apparently is not Christian when Dems do it) cannot compare to the money that Reagan, Bush, and Bush threw away on stupid military projects.

Switching gears again - There was a fascinating piece on the history of voting that is not online. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" by Jill Lepore is well worth tracking down.

Finally - "Worlds Apart" by Nicholas Lemann takes a deep look at the foreign policy approaches of Obama and McCain. Or rather by Obama and his legion of impressive advisors. Long, but mostly worth it if you care about foreign stuff.