The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

You Know …

… it’s going to be tough for Howard Dean to sell himself as a deficit hawk when he can barely keep tabs on his campaign funds.

What a Long, Strange Trippi It’s Been

… 14:58 … 14:59 … 15:00.

With Dean seeing his double-or-nothing strategy in New Hampshire and Iowa blow up in his face, it looks as though he wants to try a more traditional approach — which meant bringing in a traditional manager to execute it. Bye-bye, Net wünderkind; hello, grey flannel.

The fast switch — and the narrowness of the margin of error, thanks to the accelerated campaign schedule — raises questions. Will Trippi take his loyalists — star pupils like Mathew Gross and Clay Johnson — with him? Where will Neel take the notion of recruiting two million supporters to donate a hundred bucks? To what extent will Dean de-emphasize the Internet-based organizing model that Trippi developed?

Ryan Lizza has sized up the weaknesses that led to Trippi’s tumble with pinpoint accuracy tonight. What Lizza shows, though, is that campaigns turn on unpredictable factors — personalities, charisma, message, gaffes — that have little or nothing to do with the merit of the campaign model itself. Trippi came up short, no doubt about it. But the innovations that he introduced will stay with us for a long time to come.

Where to Get Your South Carolina Fix

With attention turning to South Carolina, look for fresh insights and insider information about Palmetto State politics at the Wyeth Wire, the official weblog of the South Carolina primary.

Deep Thoughts

The bean that I pass off as my analytical mind hit on a song I guarantee no one will never see in a record store. Honest. Wait for it:

… R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, trading lines in a cover version of “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”

Am I right? Am I right?

The Problem With Kerry

Earlier today as I drove home from the barbershop, I imagined this dialogue:

REPORTER: Senator Kerry, could you discuss some of the details of your education policy?
KERRY: Well, when I was back in ’Nam …

From what I gather, that’s about what Kerry’s platform boils down to: vote for me, I fought in Vietnam, and I can beat Bush. He mouths platitudes about routing the special interests and restoring the will of the people, but when I listen for what he wants to do once he gets to 1600, I hear nothing.

Well, I want to beat Bush as badly as the next guy. But plenty of Americans have an open mind about the president. To that crowd, telling them that Kerry can beat Bush leaves them waiting for a sales pitch; they need to hear why they should want Kerry to beat Bush.

What reason has Kerry given anyone to vote for him, aside from being not-Bush? None that I’ve heard. He still needs to establish himself as a candidate with an agenda that ranges beyond his own election, but he has yet to get serious about doing that.

That spells disaster for him, over the long run. If he runs on a platform of gracing America with his probity and wisdom, natural questions come up: how wise can he be when he opposed the first Gulf war? How acute can his judgment be if he admits to getting his decision on the second Gulf war wrong? An 0-for-2 record hardly speaks well of his prized foreign policy instincts — and when we get down to the November campaign, Bush and his friends will take the issue of Kerry’s indecision about international affairs and use it to beat him like a piñata.

Kerry has medals and a long record of public service, but no compelling rationale for his campaign. I admire that he wants to beat Bush, but let’s face facts: as a message this fall, “[w]e will beat Bush” simply won’t cut it.

Can I Just Say …

… that I have a huge blog crush on Amy Sullivan — who you really should be reading if you’re smart, a Democrat, and care about politics?

Thanks. I knew you would understand.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

The blogroll just got a thorough overhaul, and I may make more changes elsewhere on the site in the days ahead. Watch and enjoy — and take a second to browse through some of the new links.

Saying No to the SoTU

[Note: Notice the appropriately revised tagline?]

I have little to say about the State of the Union address. I went out and got my laugh on instead, thanks to Gil Rogers, a favorite graduate of my old prep school’s crap rival.

From what people tell me, though, I didn’t miss much. A brief summation of what I’ve gleaned:

• Norbizness gets the nut graph — the whole weapons of mass destruction-related program activities nonsense — about right;
• OxBlog draws interesting conclusions about presidential priorities by timing different segments of the speech;
• Andrew Sullivan makes noises about deserting Bush in November [yeah, that’ll stick];
• the Discount Blogger says the White House lost his vote;
• the libertarians at the Cato Institute ran out of fingers and toes while trying to count the number of government programs Bush wanted to boost spending for;
• Michael Hanscom chortled over the ripple of applause after Bush told Congress that parts of the baseball apple pie home and hearth Patriot Act were due to expire;
• Tom Shales called the presentation “cocky,” saying that much of it came across as taunts directed at Democrats or the rest of the world;
• Charles Barkley now wants to quit the GOP to support John Edwards.

Wow — my boy must have given one heck of a speech.

The Year in Music [cont’d.]

We’ll pick up where we left off yesterday:

5: These Are the Vistas, The Bad Plus
’Loudest piano trio ever’? They can take home the trophy — and they could also walk off with the title of least conventional. The group’s improvisational brilliance leaves contemporaries in the dust, and it uses that skill with mind-bending results on deconstructions of modern rock classics such as “Heart of Glass” and, believe it or not, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Only ten tracks long, but a hidden gem just the same.

Key Tracks: “Heart of Glass,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

4: Yours, Mine and Ours, Pernice Brothers
The world might hardly have expected this record during Joe Pernice’s alt-country period as a Scud Mountain boy, but the tracks here find his new band evoking an aesthetic not expressed so well since the days of the Smiths or early Belle & Sebastian. Pure pop pleasure, with a twisted subtext — but they’ll have you hooked long before you pay attention to the words you’re singing along to.

Key Tracks: “One Foot in the Grave,” “The Weakest Shade of Blue”

3: You Forgot It in People, Broken Social Scene
A twee record title. A weird band structure [ten members?!]. A totally unheralded U.S. release. All made up for with some of the finest pop songwriting you never knew you wanted to hear. While the record wears its indie roots on its sleeve, the sheer hooky goodness that the group manages to work into a four-minutes-and-out song structure makes this disc tough to resist.

Key Tracks: “Cause=Time,” “Stars and Sons”

2: Give Up, The Postal Service
I mean the band, not the couriers who make appointed rounds — silly cease and desist letters aside. The difference? While many doubt that the latter can reliably deliver anything, the former — actually a one-off side project of Ben Gibbard, emo scenester and member of Death Cab for Cutie, and Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel — delivers sinuous electronica with a warmth that slowly reveals itself, song after song, in a way that flies in the face of the self-consciously circa-Atari era instrumentation. A pleasant surprise, and an uplifting record.

Key Tracks: “Such Great Heights,” “Nothing Better”

And finally — drumroll, please …

1: Hearts of Oak, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Don’t call him the next Bruce Springsteen; with a record this good, being the first Ted Leo is praise aplenty. He forged his sound in the harDCore punk scene, but melds it somehow with (1) a killer pop instinct, and (2) an incisive mind that leaves its stamp everywhere, in one genius lyric after another. The result: a heady cocktail of a record, one that — with the very first chords of “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” — makes rock feel fun again.

Key Tracks: “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”, “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”

Now, the best of the rest:

• Worthy Contenders:
  • Blur, Think Tank;
  • Ben Folds, Speed Graphic and Sunny 16;
  • Kings of Leon, Youth and Young Manhood;
  • The New Pornographers, Electric Version;
  • The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow;
  • The Strokes, Room on Fire;
  • Sun Kil Moon, Ghosts of the Great Highway;
  • Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears
• Need to Hear More Of:
  • Cat Power, You Are Free;
  • Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism;
  • The Decemberists, Her Majesty the Decemberists;
  • Joe Henry, Tiny Voices;
  • Damien Rice, O;
  • Rufus Wainwright, Want One
• At Risk of Becoming a Class-Action Negligent Misrepresentation Defendant:
  • Britney Spears, In the Zone
• Sure to Be Missed:
  • Johnny Cash
  • Celia Cruz
  • Sam Phillips
  • Nina Simone
  • Elliot Smith
  • Barry White
  • Warren Zevon

The Year in Music

I dragged my feet a little with this, but I had my ears opened to so many good indie records in the last few weeks of the year that I had to seriously rethink my opinion that 2003 was a low year in music.

I got that one wrong — colossally wrong. Last year had good records aplenty, once you looked past all the American Idol and nü metal claptrap. It would be a crime to miss out — so with that in mind, let me make some recommendations.

10: Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle and Sebastian
I don’t know who put Prozac in the band’s drinking water, but whoever did it needs to keep it up. The band’s best, funniest, most buoyant work since If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Key Track: “Step Into My Office, Baby”

9: Hail to the Thief, Radiohead
Return to form, political statement, inspiration for reams of fevered reviews — whatever you thought of it, Hail to the Thief was downright inescapable for much of the year, and for good reason. The band’s sonic adventurousness continues to grow at warp speed, but never — at least on this disc — at the expense of good songcraft.

Key Tracks: “There There,” “Myxomatosis”

8: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Outkast
A sprawling mess of a record, but enough brilliance to make up for misfires like “Roses” [‘[r]oses really smell like poo-poo’?! What the f—-?] and the excess of skits. Another thing: despite the critical accolades for André 3000’s turn as the latter-day Prince, Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx more than holds its own.

Key Tracks: “Hey Ya!”, “Ghetto Musick”

7: Kish Kash, Basement Jaxx
Match some of the most astoundingly dense, relentlessly busy production ever put on record with left-field choices for guest vocals — J.C. Chasez from ’N Sync? Siouxsie Sioux? — and you ought to get something that has no right to sound as self-assured as this. To quote a Fatboy Slim track: “If this don’t shake your booty, then your booty must be dead.”

Key Tracks: “Lucky Star,” “Plug It In”

6: Boy in Da Corner, Dizzee Rascal
That voice, that voice, that voice — it’s like Chuck D meets Eastenders. Aggressively British [now there’s a curveball for hip-hop fans] — but match that oddly compelling patois with the unbridled, jagged power of beats like this one [*.ram], and you’ve got an artist of jaw-dropping potential.

Key Track: “Fix Up, Look Sharp”

More picks later today — stay tuned.

Face, Meet Egg

Oy — that wasn’t what I expected. Kerry and Edwards came through after all, ‘superior field organizations’ be damned. [And a few Dean supporters might need need babysitting themselves tonight.]

Shame about the outcome aside — and yes, Reid, you told me so — I’ll pick up my dented prognosticator’s cap and make a few observations about winners and losers:

• We already know one casualty: Gephardt is out.

• I can’t see how this affects Sharpton one way or the other; he never had much chance in Iowa. He can hang in until South Carolina.

• Dennis, we hardly knew ye.

• To go against the grain a little, I think this result helps Clark. The blow Dean took in Iowa could push his New Hampshire supporters with second thoughts to another candidate — and with Kerry, the Iowa winner, coming from next door, I don’t imagine many people drifting to his campaign.
  
  

  Clark has had the run of New Hampshire for the last couple of weeks, thanks to the other candidates’ having decamped to Iowa — and as the only candidate with nationwide backing and financial support that compares to Dean, he stands in the best position to gain from any slippage in Dean’s support. If he can capitalize on the momentum he’s built this month, he could make a strong showing — possibly even in first place.

• Brokered convention, anyone? Keep an open mind …

Regardless of the outcome, I feel pretty good. The three candidates I could really get behind — Clark, Dean and Edwards — are still in the thick of it. On to New Hampshire we go …

When to Turn the Radio Off

When Rush Limbaugh, attempting to elucidate the difference between the campaigns of Howard Dean and Barry Goldwater, says:

“[B]ut the Deaniacs hate America!”

Sorry — if I wanted to develop high blood pressure, I’d rather do it by gorging on all the barbecue I can eat. That said, Limbaugh’s perspicacity knows no bounds, eh?

I’m With Drezner …

… this campaign tactic — pointed out by my favorite center-right U. of Chicago political science professor — is pure genius.

While five Democratic presidential hopefuls sprinted across Iowa in a final act of courtship Sunday, the substantive discussions of the 2004 campaign gave way to more practical concerns in this too-close-to-call race: persuading voters to devote at least two hours of their Monday evening to politics.

The Howard Dean campaign even offered free baby-sitting …

With the race suddenly tightening, Dean’s supporters tried to eliminate any excuse for Iowans not to turn out Monday evening for the town-hall style meetings where voters discuss aloud their preferences. His backers aren’t just telling people where their caucus site is or offering them a ride. They’re ready to baby-sit.

One of the biggest questions about the Iowa race is whether Dean’s vaunted Internet organizing will yield real support. But at the very least it managed to identify Chubb as executive director of a group that educates day-care providers—the perfect person to watch the children of Dean supporters so they can caucus for the candidate. [Emphasis added.]

If you wonder why I never placed much stock in the polls that showed John Kerry and John Edwards edging into the lead in the Iowa caucus, this should give you the answer. Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi is too canny an operator — and the Dean and Gephardt campaigns have too much strength in their field organizations — to allow last-minute fickleness in public opinion to cut into their votes.

The Media as Funhouse Mirror

I don’t advocate that people get political news solely from the internet. [I prefer newspapers myself.] Even so, Kos does a great job today of pointing out how this was a banner weekend for media frivolousness — and makes a solid case for writing mainstream coverage off as all but useless. As he put it:

We’re at war. People are dying. That war was sold with lies. North Korea has nukes. The entire country created a measly 1,000 jobs in December. Blue- AND white-collar jobs are being exported at alarming rates. We’re facing record deficits and a runaway debt. The dollar is sinking. Our civil liberties are being stripped away. Millions lack basic health insurance.

But wait — stop the frickin’ presses! — Wesley Clark wore a sweater!

Much of the power of the net, of course, lies in how it disintermediates communication between people making news and the people who consume it. Nowadays, just about anyone can surf around the net to look at news stories from a variety of perspectives — or, if they feel like it, they can go straight to the source.

So if an editor says Wesley Clark’s wardrobe deserves a front page story, I say let him go ahead. He can exercise his news judgment — and I can exercise mine.

The Bush Giveth, and the Bush Taketh Away, Pt. II

You may have noticed all the clatter in Washington about a coming change in overtime rules — in spite of congressional opposition, the White House looks set to adopt new regulations that could end overtime pay for some 8 million workers.

Bush administration spinners have pooh-poohed critics by pointing out that more than a million Americans would actually earn more after adoption of the new rules. But while they told us that, guess what officials have told employers?

A proposed Labor Department rule suggests ways employers can avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible this year.

The department’s advice comes even as it touts the $895 million in increased wages that it says those workers would be guaranteed from the reforms.

Among the options for employers: cut workers’ hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.

The department says it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even under current law.

“We’re not saying anybody should do any of this,” said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank.

Ri-i-i-ight. [Hint-hint. Wink-wink.]

The Bush Giveth, and the Bush Taketh Away

Those who don’t follow economic stats might not know this, but oil prices have spiked this week, thanks in large part to President Bush’s fiscal policy.

No, really — I’m not joking.

While the president and Republican Congress much to-do about tax cuts — when that is, they don’t spend “like drunken sailors,” as Senator McCain put it — America’s public debt has piled up for month after month. That accumulation continues, with no sign of correction in sight. The White House, in fact, seems to be preparing for a new round of tax cuts.

With that record staring them in the face, foreign investors have started to succumb to a gnawing worry that leaders might weaken the dollar to solve the problem — to make debt bearable, in other words, by making the money that the debt is denominated in worth less. The result? The birth of a sellers’ market in dollars, which means that the dollar is already worth less.

What does that have to do with oil? Everything. World oil markets trade in dollars. When the dollar’s value falls, oil-selling countries have to charge more dollars to get a steady return in their own currencies. For people who buy their gasoline in euros or pounds, that doesn’t mean much — but for those who buy their oil in dollars, that means higher prices at the pump.

So, put plainly, some of the tax rebate Bush gave you last year just got siphoned off to Saudi Arabia. Thanks a bunch, Mr. President!

The Political Thicket

The advent of the new year means that Georgia’s political season has kicked into high gear — and thanks to that, you should probably expect sporadic posting here in Green[e]land while I spend time at the Capitol and ramp up for a few months of lobbying at the General Assembly.

Not that I plan to make myself totally scarce around these parts — far from it — but what with paying clients beckoning, I hope you understand if I let blogging take a back seat for a little bit. Tante grazie.

… Ring in the New

Now, a check around the rest of the blogosphere:

• Jim Henley ticks off the best and worst weblogs of the year …

• … and Andrew Northrup points us to the best of the year in Glenn Reynolds.

• Norbizness thinks the spirit of next year is best captured by “The Ambiguity Song” …

• … while Clancy Ratliff tilts toward “Ask Me” by the Smiths.

• Matthew Yglesias offers a few thoughts …

• … while the Mighty Reason Man gets chagrined that Andrew Sullivan can still offer a few thoughts.

• PhotoDude jots down predictions …

• … while South Knocks Bubba offers, er, predictions. Sort of. I think.

• The Single Guy in the South might need to change his name to the Single Politico in New Hampshire …

• … and D. Clay Smith recaps the year in drink.

Alright, alright — you’re right, those last two didn’t have anything to do with each other. I think I’ll take that as my cue.

New Year’s Resolutions

As promised — although I don’t want you to hold me to these. I don’t think I could handle the pressure. =,

• Volunteer more — and not only in politics, because that’s easy for me.

  It could be tutoring, or I could do some other project sponsored through these guys. Whatever I do, though, I want to make it count.

• Get into a new exercise routine. For the last few years I’ve planted myself in a rut — lifting weights, hitting the stationary bike, rowing machine, situps, etc. Thing is, all that’s become so boring to me that I hardly do it anymore. So I may take a leaf from Michal Wallace’s book and hike Stone Mountain more often. [Seeing as how I live there, that one’s really a no-brainer.] Or I may push myself into one of the ideas I’ve talked about for years without getting in gear: jiujitsu, t’ai chi, boxing, mountain biking, golf or racquetball.

  My point: its a great big world out there, and there’s a lot of great exercise that I haven’t been doing. That has to change.

• And now, a wee bit of verse [ahem!]:

  Talk like Yoda, no;
  write haiku more often, yes —
  promise this, I do.

  Damn it, I already broke one! Sheesh …

• Cook more. I find it a great form of relaxation; truth be told, I have yet to come across a better one. [Well, maybe a couple, and one of those is sleep … but let’s not go too far down this road, eh?]

• Help America put a W in Texas. Word up.

• Procrastinate less. Hmmm, I may have to get to that one later …

• And finally: post my thoughts at the Green[e]house Effect every stinkin’ single d— oh, who am I kidding?! But post more often, I will. [Hey — shut your piehole, Yoda.]

That’s enough to be getting on with, I think. Now — how about yours?

Happy New Year!

… and for you and yours, may it be a great one. Oh, and something else: let’s make 2004 the year we put a W in Texas.