Dear Repub­li­cans and/​or conservatives,

I don’t know how to break this to you, since you obvi­ously haven’t fig­ured it out your­selves yet, but it’s start­ing to become a prob­lem. So here it goes.

You lost.

Last Novem­ber, the Amer­i­can peo­ple took a good hard look at where your ideas and poli­cies have taken us, and decided, as they say in show­biz, “to go a dif­fer­ent way.” It’s not that we didn’t under­stand your posi­tion, it’s just that, well, we’re just not that into you.

I know it hurts. I know you’re used to throw­ing your weight around and get­ting your way. But that’s just not going to hap­pen any­more. Democ­rats, lib­er­als and other folks you’ve spent the last three decades demo­niz­ing are call­ing the shots now. It’s over.

It didn’t have to be like this. Pres­i­dent Obama (gee, I just love say­ing that) and the rest of the Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship tried to reach across the aisle. They asked for your input into how we should go about fix­ing the mess you put us in. We tried, so very hard, to be not bipar­ti­san, but post–par­ti­san. We wanted your help.

What we got instead was a bunch of petu­lant prima don­nas stomp­ing their feet, hold­ing their breath and shout­ing “NO!” at the top of their lungs at any­thing and every­thing. In the great­est cri­sis most Amer­i­cans have seen in their life­times, Repub­li­cans have opted to act like three-​year-​olds. Well, that’s your call.

But here’s how it’s going to go down. We’re going to fix this coun­try with or with­out you. We’re going to do what’s nec­es­sary, even if it’s not pop­u­lar. We’re going to raise taxes to pay for nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture. We’re going to spend tax­payer money to cre­ate jobs. We’re going to nego­ti­ate with other coun­tries rather than just wav­ing bombs at them. And we’re going to see if just maybe you cre­ate fewer ter­ror­ists by build­ing schools than by blow­ing them up.

And as we do this, you will have no input and no choice. This is entirely your own doing. We asked for your input, and the only thing you offered was the same tired and thor­oughly dis­cred­ited ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. Let me be very clear. Neo­con ide­ol­ogy, of pros­per­ity through tax cuts for the rich and peace through bel­liger­ent nation­al­ism, is has been proven just as wrong as the flat Earth the­ory. We don’t believe the sun revolves around the Earth, and we don’t believe in Reaganomics. The extreme ver­sion of con­ser­vatism espoused by the Repub­li­can party has been proven to be wrong. It sim­ply doesn’t work. So we’re not going to do that anymore.

And as long as that’s all you’re will­ing to bring to the table, you will remain in exile, ignored and irrel­e­vant. If we have to, we’ll start forc­ing you to actu­ally fil­i­buster the bills you want to force to 60 votes and show the Amer­i­cans you sup­pos­edly rep­re­sent how you’re try­ing to hurt them for your own polit­i­cal gain. It’s sad, but it’s your own deci­sion. When you’re will­ing to act like adults and have a seri­ous dis­cus­sion about our seri­ous prob­lems, we’ll be here. But we’re not hold­ing our breath.

Really good arti­cle explain­ing how reces­sions work and why tax cuts and “let­ting peo­ple keep more of their own money” may sound nice, but doesn’t actu­ally help anything.

Now we’ve entered “para­dox of thrift” ter­ri­tory. Peo­ple are sav­ing more. And the increased sav­ing isn’t being cycled back into the econ­omy as new invest­ment. In part, that’s because of prob­lems in the finan­cial sys­tem. But in part, it’s because with short-​term demand slump­ing so much, there’s not a lot of worth­while invest­ing to be doing. The econ­omy needs some­one to decide to bor­row some money and start a new firm that employs these newly unem­ployed peo­ple. But with the vol­ume of con­sump­tion going down so rapidly, nobody’s really in the mood to start a new busi­ness. And exist­ing busi­nesses are busy scal­ing back pro­duc­tion, not inter­ested in bor­row­ing money to ramp it up. The result of this is an over­all fall in the aver­age level of income. And that means that even with the share of income being saved going up, the actual level of sav­ings can be going down and we can truly end up in the toilet.

The ulti­mate point of a fis­cal stim­u­lus pol­icy is to avoid that toi­let sce­nario. To get money flow­ing in the econ­omy again, so that sav­ings gets trans­lated into invest­ment which gets trans­lated into jobs which pay salaries which, in turn, are spent and saved in ways that cre­ate jobs.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/02/understanding_the_paradox_of_thrift.php

Calm down, lib­er­als. Take a deep breath. I know that trust­ing your elected offi­cials and being skep­ti­cal of the press feels alien and wrong, but times have changed. It’s really okay. Ease down. You’ve blown the transaxle, you’re just grind­ing metal.

I woke up this morn­ing to a cacoph­ony of Chicken Lit­tling about the pos­si­bil­ity that Obama might not roll back the Bush tax cuts! OMG! How could he do such a thing?

Well, if you slow down and read the fine print, he didn’t. Here’s what he actu­ally said.

“Whether that’s done through repeal, or whether that’s done because the Bush tax cuts are not renewed, is some­thing that my eco­nomic team will be pro­vid­ing me a rec­om­men­da­tion on.”

So the ques­tion here is whether the tax cuts for the wealthy are repealed in 2009 or allowed to expire on their own in 2011. And he’s not say­ing he won’t repeal them, just that all options are on the table to be con­sid­ered along with the rest of our eco­nomic pol­icy. That doesn’t sound as scary. It actu­ally sounds kind of, you know, rational.

I’ve seen this hap­pen almost daily since the elec­tion. The media, and their audi­ence, is so used to every­thing going to hell sans hand­bas­ket that they imme­di­ately jump to the worst pos­si­ble con­se­quence of any­thing com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. But the new guy is such a fun­da­men­tal change from the smirk­ing chimp cur­rently occu­py­ing the Oval Office that this approach doesn’t make sense any­more. I find myself in the dis­tinctly uncom­fort­able place (no, not the back­seat of a Volk­swa­gen) of hav­ing to trust the politi­cians and be skep­ti­cal of the press. Because every time I’ve seen this hap­pen, it sounds hor­ri­ble until I actu­ally read what Obama said and say, “Oh, well, that sounds okay.”

It really does come down to trust. I trust Barack Obama to be smarter than me and do the right thing. I’ve trusted Bush for eight years to be dumber than me and try to screw me over, but that dif­fer­ent. I know that Barack Obama knows every­thing about pol­i­tics that I know, plus a lot that I don’t know, even stuff, with apolo­gies to Rummy, that I don’t know I don’t know. And I trust him to weigh all of that against itself and make the right call for our long term pros­per­ity and security.

And the key to that is “long term.” Pol­i­tics is the sci­ence (and art) of com­pro­mise, and if we want the changes we get in an Obama admin­is­tra­tion to endure, a sim­ple numeric major­ity in Con­gress isn’t enough. We need Repub­li­cans who might, even though it looks more dubi­ous with every Sarah Palin photo op, be back in charge some­day to have some sense of own­er­ship over these changes.

Think about this like a chess grand­mas­ter, look­ing sev­eral moves ahead. Obama knows that his­tor­i­cally, our econ­omy has tanked after every tax cut on the rich and rose after every tax hike on the rich. But he also knows that we’re going to be run­ning a seri­ous deficit for at least most of his first term as we try to spend our way out of this reces­sion (the only proven way to get out of a reces­sion), so the money lost to the Bush tax cuts between 2009 and 2011 is just a fac­tor in the size of the deficit, not the cause of one. So if he extends this poten­tial olive branch to the Repub­li­cans (and their super-​rich con­stituents), does that grant some Repub­li­cans the polit­i­cal cover they need to step across the aisle and pass uni­ver­sal health­care or a new New Deal to rebuild our crum­bling infrastructure?

So stay calm, trust that Obama has his eye on the big pic­ture, and don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s going to be okay. Ratio­nal adults are in charge now, give them room to do their jobs.

I’ve seen lots of peo­ple on the left freak­ing out about Obama’s recent cab­i­net choices. Let’s review.

• Sec­re­tary of State: Hillary Clinton
• Sec­re­tary of Defense: Bob Gates
• Health and Human Ser­vices: Tom Daschle
• Home­land Secu­rity: Janet Napolitano
• Attor­ney Gen­eral: Eric Holder
• Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff

All famil­iar names to peo­ple who remem­ber the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. Hell, one of them is a Clin­ton. So is this change we can believe in?

Hell yes. Mal­colm Glad­well points out that it takes 10,000 hours to mas­ter any com­plex skill. Writ­ing, play­ing piano, or even run­ning a gov­ern­ment. 10,000 hours. If you work a 40-​hour work week and have two weeks off for vaca­tion, you work 2,000 hours a year. So we’re talk­ing 5 years at a reg­u­lar job before you’ve mas­tered it. I under­stand the need for fresh faces and fresh ideas, but shouldn’t some­one in the new admin­is­tra­tion already have those 10,000 hours under their belt?

Let’s take a look at each one of these choices and see if just maybe they’re not as bad as the hard core left is saying.

Sec­re­tary of State: Hillary Clinton

This is the big one that no one can shut up about, least of which the peo­ple who keep leak­ing every step of the process to the press. Bill Clin­ton has agreed to do any­thing the Obama peo­ple want to make this hap­pen, so I don’t think he’s going to be the bag­gage peo­ple thought he’d be. The big ques­tion here is whether Clin­ton can and will be a faith­ful instru­ment of Obama for­eign pol­icy, the sin­gle point on which she and Obama seri­ously dis­agreed in the primaries.

I think she will be. Every­thing we’ve seen so far shows that Clin­ton is a team player. And we also know that Obama won’t hes­i­tate to replace her if she goes off mes­sage. More impor­tantly, Clin­ton knows that being very good at this job is a great step­ping stone to the Oval Office in 2016, since Biden almost cer­tainly won’t run at age 74.

Sec­re­taries of State have to be good at two things: talk­ing to for­eign heads of state and bypass­ing for­eign heads of state by talk­ing directly to for­eign media when nec­es­sary. Clin­ton can do both, maybe bet­ter than any­one else. Obama knows this, so he’s will­ing to give her the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

Sec­re­tary of Defense: Bob Gates

We knew there would be some Repub­li­cans in Obama’s post-​partisan cab­i­net, and as we pre­pare to get out of Iraq, con­ti­nu­ity of com­mand is impor­tant. Gates knows the cur­rent state of the mil­i­tary, and can enact a with­drawal plan faster than some­one who has to be brought up to speed. Plus, Gates has already taken a stand on secur­ing our nukes by fir­ing the top mil­i­tary and civil­ian heads of the Air Force over nuclear weapon safety. I think he’ll do a good job, and will prob­a­bly be replaced once the tran­si­tion out of Iraq is well under way.

Health and Human Ser­vices: Tom Daschle

He knows health care back­wards and for­wards and he knows how to get votes on the Hill. No one is bet­ter suited to drive leg­is­la­tion on uni­ver­sal health­care, not even Teddy Kennedy. Daschle knows where enough bod­ies are buried to get votes through on this, some­thing we’ve tried 4 times in a cen­tury and haven’t done. This time it will work.

Home­land Secu­rity: Janet Napolitano

Napoli­tano has been a voice of rea­son on immi­gra­tion and bor­der secu­rity, even rid­ing horse­back along the Mex­ico bor­der and walk­ing in the sewer tun­nels ille­gals use to cross over. She’s ide­ally suited to secure our bor­ders and ports, while not piss­ing off our legit­i­mate immi­grant population.

Attor­ney Gen­eral: Eric Holder

Yes, he was Deputy AG under Clin­ton, but he’s also the best man for the job. He knows Wash­ing­ton and he has an up close look at what Ashcroft and Gon­za­les have done to break the Jus­tice Depart­ment. He can put it back together.

Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff

Every admin­is­tra­tion needs a DA, a Des­ig­nated Ass­hole. A Bad Cop to Obama’s Good Cop. Rahm Emanuel was born for this job. He’s the attack dog that Dick Cheney was for Bush, but hope­fully he won’t shoot anyone.

So to wrap up, what we can tell from Obama’s picks so far is that he doesn’t care where peo­ple worked pre­vi­ously. Work­ing for Clinton’s or even Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tions isn’t a deal breaker. What he’s look­ing for is excel­lence. Peo­ple who can do the job they’re given superla­tively. In a way, it’s a very anti-​Bush pol­icy. There will be no “Brown­ies” in this admin­is­tra­tion, no one given a job for polit­i­cal rea­sons what­so­ever. Instead, we’ll have the best peo­ple pos­si­ble in each posi­tion, lead­ing with competency.

And after eight years of naked patron­age, that’s change I can believe in.

Just saw this on the book­shelf at my local gro­cery store. Haven’t read it and don’t endorse it (it’s pretty easy to find on Ama­zon if you’re inter­ested), but I found it intensely inter­est­ing that we have a pres­i­dent (or will, on Jan­u­ary 20^th) that inspires with his ora­tory skills.

Unlike the cur­rent guy, who just embar­rasses.

I’ve been think­ing a lot recently about Obama win­ning the elec­tion, about my writ­ing, why I washed out of NaNoW­riMo this year (more on that later), and the pass­ing of one of my favorite authors last week, Michael Crich­ton. I’m also reread­ing Juras­sic Park, my favorite Crich­ton novel. And in so doing, I’ve come to real­ize some­thing. My whole life, I’ve served two mas­ters. Worse, two seem­ingly mutu­ally exclu­sive masters.

On the one hand, I’ve always been a skep­tic, a ques­tioner. While I under­stand the his­toric sig­nif­i­cance of the United States elect­ing an African-​American pres­i­dent, I’m still baf­fled at the racism that, yes, still exists in the south where I grew up. To me, racism never made sense. I learned at an early age that the amount of melanin in one’s skin is a sim­ple genetic trait, not more sig­nif­i­cant to the organ­ism over­all than eye color or hand­ed­ness. Dis­crim­i­nat­ing against peo­ple for skin color was just as ludi­crous to me as say­ing that blue-​eyed peo­ple were nat­u­rally supe­rior, or than left-​handed peo­ple were pos­sessed by demons. It was only years later that I found out the lat­ter two asser­tions had also had their turn, and resulted in mil­lions of deaths. I still think it’s stupid.

I’ve always wanted to know why. Why any­thing. “Because we’ve always done it this way” is never a good rea­son to do any­thing as far as I’m con­cerned. I’ve always had a scientist’s nat­ural curios­ity and deter­mi­na­tion to find a ratio­nal expla­na­tion for things, even things that, like racism, aren’t ratio­nal. This was, I think, what drew me to Crichton’s books. Look­ing back over his col­lected works, includ­ing those I fun­da­men­tally dis­agree with like State of Fear, the con­stant thread that unites nearly every­thing Crich­ton pro­duced is a healthy mis­trust of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy. Not from a lud­dite per­spec­tive, but an aware­ness that with the won­ders of new dis­cov­ery and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment we must always keep a care­ful eye out to make sure it’s not acci­den­tally or even delib­er­ately mis­used. Most of Crichton’s books are about sci­ence gone wrong, about mod­ern day Daedaluses and Prometheuses reach­ing too far or play­ing with things they didn’t truly under­stand. I think this is an impor­tant theme, espe­cially as our tech­no­log­i­cal pace con­tin­ues to increase, and I hope some­one (even me) picks up where Crich­ton left off.

But the other rea­son I was such a big fan of Crichton’s work is that his books also reached out to the edge of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy, push­ing the bound­aries of what we con­sid­ered pos­si­ble. and while part of me is a skep­tic, the other side of me deeply wants to believe. While I have a scientist’s thirst for ratio­nal expla­na­tions, I also have a storyteller’s sense of won­der and magic. And so I’m will­ing to give some things the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

Keep­ing in mind Crichton’s con­stant warn­ing that we never know as much as we think we do about the nat­ural world, I note that until one cen­tury ago, 1908, the gorilla was con­sid­ered a myth­i­cal crea­ture. So is the exis­tence of a fifth species of great ape, one more closely related to humans and fully bipedal, but which avoids us and sticks to the most remote parts of the world so hard to find pos­si­ble, if not plau­si­ble? Tales of rare encoun­ters with these shy crea­tures are so wide­spread and con­sis­tent that there must be more to them than myth. And, if they are descended from the so-​called “miss­ing link” they could fill in an impor­tant gap in pri­mate evo­lu­tion. So with all this mind, I’m inclined to believe these crea­tures exist more than not, whether you call them Big­foot, Sasquatch or Yeti.

For sim­i­lar lines of rea­son­ing, I’m also open to the exis­tence or con­tin­ued sur­vival of Mokèlé-​mbèmbé (what sounds like an apatosaur deep in the Congo rain­for­est where no human but pyg­mies has ever gone), mega­lodon (a 60 – 100 foot ances­tor of the great white shark that I think might be no more extinct than the coela­canth) and other things that “ratio­nal” peo­ple dis­miss as imag­i­nary. Because we don’t know. We can never know everything.

So as I bid farewell to Michael Crich­ton, I’m going to keep both the sense of dis­cov­ery and won­der he brought me over the years, and the warn­ing skep­ti­cism behind his books. And I thank him for help­ing to shape the reader, writer and thinker I am today.

From texts between me and my Max­i­mum Geek cohort Josh Curry today:

me: SF Gate is call­ing it. 95% report­ing, 52 – 48 for ban­ning gay mar­riage in CA. Damn.

me: THEY WILL FEEL THE WRATH OF GEORGE TAKEI (oh, my…)

josh: wow that sucks

me: Frickin’ haters. We have a lot of work to do.

josh: Yes, we do.

josh: Luck­ily we have the ghostly form of Abe Vigoda to guide us.

me: All hail the Fish.

josh: For he is mighty.

me: Not as mighty, though, as Mrs. Fish.

josh: tru dat homeboy

We really do a have a lot of work to do. The younger gen­er­a­tion must learn of Bar­ney Miller. And we need to legal­ize gay mar­riage, too.

MSNBC just had the gov­er­nor of Penn­syl­va­nia on and he said that because the state Repub­li­can party chose to run some inflam­ma­tory com­mer­cials in the final days about Jere­miah Wright, African Amer­i­can turnout has been off the charts today across the state, east and west. Obama is already look­ing to win the Key­stone State, turn­ing out to be this year’s Ohio ’04 and Florida ’00, by dou­ble digits.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing Nate Silver’s analy­sis on fivethirtyeight.com, you know that McCain’s chances of get­ting to 270 elec­toral votes drops dra­mat­i­cally if he loses Penn­syl­va­nia. He’d essen­tially have to win every state Bush took ver­sus Kerry and Gore, includ­ing Col­orado. And as a Col­oradan, I can pretty much guar­an­tee he’s not get­ting Col­orado. So if McCain loses Penn­syl­va­nia, he’s as good as sunk before the bal­lots west of the Mis­sis­sippi are even counted.

Even though I only need 774 words to stay on pace, I’m not sure I’m going to get it. The elec­tion cov­er­age is going to be pretty much all-​encompassing, unless things wrap up early.

Get out there and vote, peo­ple!