Election Day Article

"A Date With Scarcity" by David Brooks

I really liked this article. I heard David Broder speak in Madison a month or so ago at a lecture series titled "Getting to Purple" hosted by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters*. In his lecture, Broder echoed a few of his (i.e. Brooks') points, primarily his characterization of the Baby Boomers:

"The baby boomers, who entered adulthood promising a lifetime of activism, have been a politically undistinguished generation. They produced two presidents, neither of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by the culture war that divided their generation."

The points in the article that stood out to me:

1) "...today is not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots." (Referencing the end of an economic era, a generational era, and likely a political era)

2) "We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold scarcity that they do not seem to recognize or have a plan for."

Happy Voting!


*some of you may have met its Executive Director this summer, tehe

feed the barracuda

i know this has already been said over and over, but sarah palin is quite clearly unqualified, unaware, and unable to come up with her own thoughts. besides the glaring gaffes of not knowing what the bush doctrine is or how to pronounce "nuclear", her interview with abc's charles gibson showed us how she was obviously being fed lines to say ...over and over:

"GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and need to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends of Israel, and I don’t think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves, and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we didn’t second guess it and if they decided they needed to do it, because Iran was an existential threat, we would be cooperative or agree with that?

PALIN: I don’t think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right?

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself."

wow. Gibson tries to get her to actually answer the question in her own words, but she does nothing but read off her mental cue cards. and to think she's just another face cancer case away from being the person in charge. *shudder*

also: the women of the band heart are super-pissed at palin's use of "barracuda" as her theme song. "Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women ... The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late '70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.)"

irony plz?