My voting place is a home for the blind, a metaphor I always found appropriate given the degradation of democracy. Voting every four years seems to have become a substitute for engagement with the poilitical prccess. Usually, pehaps because I go early-polls open at 6 AM- I am in and out in a jiffy, usually before the blind people get to set up their table selling donuts and coffee. This time, it was different. The big assembly room was PACKED with lines snaking around each machine that was allcoated to a different assembly district. It looked like a madhouse but there was a method in this madness and soon, you could find where you belonged. A fellow was shaking his head. "This is unprecedented," he said. Right behind me was a youg wman who told me proudly she was a first time voter. She was psyched, "pissed and pysched" she said. There was an excitement in the air, to reuse an approprite cliche, even here in cynical NY. The scene was changing. When I started voting in this valley of the blind, I was much younger. It was older people who ran the balloting. They are gone and now young men-"this is my first time," the guy at my desk chirped--and younger women are in command. A generational baton is passing. Lots of this had to do with the population explosion in Chelsea where new buildings have broken out like acne thanks to the dreaded Rudy Giuliani's avarice and contempt for decent city planning. But here we were in a high state of excitement and anxiety, doing our bit to breathe some air into our demcracy. We will find out later what happens, but right now even as embarassing mich of this campaign and its media boosterism was, I feel good. http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/
This time, it was different. The big assembly room was PACKED with lines snaking around each machine that was allcoated to a different assembly district. It looked like a madhouse but there was a method in this madness and soon, you could find where you belonged. A fellow was shaking his head. "This is unprecedented," he said. Right behind me was a youg wman who told me proudly she was a first time voter. She was psyched, "pissed and pysched" she said.
There was an excitement in the air, to reuse an approprite cliche, even here in cynical NY. The scene was changing. When I started voting in this valley of the blind, I was much younger. It was older people who ran the balloting. They are gone and now young men-"this is my first time," the guy at my desk chirped--and younger women are in command. A generational baton is passing. Lots of this had to do with the population explosion in Chelsea where new buildings have broken out like acne thanks to the dreaded Rudy Giuliani's avarice and contempt for decent city planning.
But here we were in a high state of excitement and anxiety, doing our bit to breathe some air into our demcracy. We will find out later what happens, but right now even as embarassing mich of this campaign and its media boosterism was, I feel good.
http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/
ByAmbrose Evans-Pritchard IT is not just that the Democrats will win a crushing victory in both houses of Congress, perhaps reaching the 60-seat Senate threshold that lets them steam-roll legislation. It is also that the incoming class of 2008 is of a new creed. Many no longer believe - or actively reject - the free trade and free market catechisms. As commentator Markos Moulitsas put it in Newsweek: "The big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply 'win' the night - or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a 'center-right' country?" he said.... For those who missed it, I recommend Edward Stourton's BBC interview with Eric Hobsbawm, the doyen of Marxist history. "This is the dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union: we now know that an era has ended," said Mr Hobsbawm, still lucid at 91. "It is certainly greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. As Marx and Schumpeter foresaw, globalization not only destroys heritage, but is incredibly unstable. It operates through a series of crises. "There'll be a much greater role for the state, one way or another. We've already got the state as lender of last resort, we might well return to idea of the state as employer of last resort, which is what it was under FDR. It'll be something which orients, and even directs the private economy," he said. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3366575/Revenge-of-the-Left-across -the-world.html
ByAmbrose Evans-Pritchard
IT is not just that the Democrats will win a crushing victory in both houses of Congress, perhaps reaching the 60-seat Senate threshold that lets them steam-roll legislation. It is also that the incoming class of 2008 is of a new creed. Many no longer believe - or actively reject - the free trade and free market catechisms.
As commentator Markos Moulitsas put it in Newsweek: "The big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply 'win' the night - or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a 'center-right' country?" he said....
For those who missed it, I recommend Edward Stourton's BBC interview with Eric Hobsbawm, the doyen of Marxist history.
"This is the dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union: we now know that an era has ended," said Mr Hobsbawm, still lucid at 91.
"It is certainly greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. As Marx and Schumpeter foresaw, globalization not only destroys heritage, but is incredibly unstable. It operates through a series of crises.
"There'll be a much greater role for the state, one way or another. We've already got the state as lender of last resort, we might well return to idea of the state as employer of last resort, which is what it was under FDR. It'll be something which orients, and even directs the private economy," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3366575/Revenge-of-the-Left-across -the-world.html
