Thursday, September 25, 2003

A Little Thought From The Start Of The Debate Clark just delivered a great answer to the "Well, are you a Democrat or not?" question in the debate - without saying anything about Reagan, he said that he, and the country, have changed since early '01, and that Bush was reckless in his tax cut and reckless in going to war in Iraq. And Dean, given the opportunity to rebut, gave a solid non-confrontational response, that he turned into an attack on the whacko right who try to deny us the right to patriotism. Nice stuff. BTW, I'll be writing more on the debate later - I'm home, but cleaning, so I'm TiVoing the debate for watching tomorrow...

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Edward Said Dies Edward Said Dies; U.S. Scholar Was Leading Voice for Palestinians. My longtime friend Edward Said has died, one of our great public intellectuals and activists; I saw him for the last time earlier this year where he made a stirring talk for Palestinian rights one night and presented a brilliant seminar the next day on li [Blog Left: Critical Interventions] I've got a copy of Said's Orientalism sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. Whether you agree or disagree with his politics, it's clear that Said has been one of the more important and influential intellectuals of recent years, and the world is a poorer place without him.

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New Hampshire Poll Numbers Marist Polls NH. Marist College has new numbers out of NH (link is a PDF). Note that their previous poll was in December... [Daily Kos] Basically, Clark's polling a strong 11%, well behind Kerry and Dean, but, well, he's not an elected official from a state next door to New Hampshire. It's been pretty obvious for a while that NH is going to come down to one of Kerry or Dean. So for Clark, the significance is that he's running well ahead of everyone else - Leiberman's at 6%, Edwards at 4%, etc...if he can get third at NH and then win SC a week later, he's in very, very good shape.

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Yet More On Quicksilver About halfway through Quicksilver, there's a line that nails exactly what Stephenson is doing with the book. His version of Gottfried Leibniz, mathematician, proto-engineer, and all-around uber-savant, says this: "I love reading novels," the Doctor [Leibniz] exclaimed. "You can understand them without thinking too much." What Quicksilver feels like is Stephenson taking that assumption and using it as a trojan horse into our minds. By cleverly disguising his massive lessons on history, science, and - most especially - the history OF science in the form of a quite entertaining novel, he's able to enlighten more people more effectively than any other way. As a result of this book, more people will have a sense of the religious conflicts in England in the mid 17th century than ever before, for example. This is so brilliant. I love it.

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Clark's Economic Plan Clark's Economic Plan. Clark's economic plan strikes me as both completely reasonable and extremely sellable. He's using the frames Gary Hart started and Kerry continued by phrasing everything in terms of security. With Clark, though, a theme of security makes sense and plays... [Not Geniuses] I meant to mention something about Clark's economic plan yesterday - I'm liking it a lot. First of all, it does something I think is good for the economy on its face - it revokes $100 billion in tax cuts on the rich. Then, there's $40 billion for homeland security - training, hiring first responders, etc...in other words, fighting terror effectively. $20 billion will go to tax incentives to encourage job creation. But most important is $40 billion in relief for the beleagured states. I've been in support of doing exactly that for a long time now - it seems to me to be the best way to encourage job growth and protect essential services. I'd rather that Clark went as far as Dean and Gephardt - calling for revoking ALL of Bush's absurdist tax cuts, but I can accept that it's a better political move for Clark to go part way. All told, this looks good to me.

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Marshall On Bush Numbers Presidents can do... (September 24th, 2003 -- 10:29 PM EDT). Presidents can do a lot worse than 49% approval a year before they face reelection -- as NBC is reporting for President Bush tonight. ... [Talking Points Memo] As always, Josh Marshall gives us some quality analysis. Here, he looks at Bush's poll numbers, and the specific causes for their collapse.
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