Iyow - in your own words

Now that all the excitement from the historic 2008 U.S. Presidential election has died down, Yuval Levin’s ‘The Meaning of Sarah Palin’ is the best analysis I’ve read yet on Sarah Palin and her symbolism, and why people reacted as they did to her. (And I’ve read a lot of them.)

It’s a fair and sober piece that understands the depth of Palin’s strengths – a stubborn belief in the importance of ethical government and the redeeming virtues of fair competition – as well as her (and more centrally McCain’s) electorally fatal deficiency in painting a full vision of why their beliefs would make Americans better off: “Palin’s potent combination of cultural populism and social conservatism might provide the roadmap a Republican politician will need in the future to make headway against the Democratic tide. But that roadmap will only take that Republican politician so far. The rest of the journey requires the articulation of a broader vision for American families, American prosperity and freedom, and American security; a vision of conservatism, not only a nimbus of populism.”

When it’s still got gusto for taking on controversial, real issues – even in its 37th year. More yet, when it uses its forum to provide a voice for true stories from the front lines of the Iraq War – as Doonesbury has been doing with an open invitation to military personnel to post letters.

I’ve been a fan of Doonesbury since high school. I must say, at that time a lot of his sly humor went over my head – not least because of its wordiness. Nevertheless, I’ve always admired author G.B. Trudeau’s willingness to really use his forum – even when it occasionally landed him in the Editorial pages instead of the Cartoons.

Anyway, the from-the-front dispatches from Iraq are worth a look. Not least because it appears the editor took a light hand to them. I wonder though how frank most military personnel can (or want) to be while still in active duty.

My name is Sachie, and I’m a coffee addict. I love my cup of joe. I fill my stainless steel Zojirushi thermos with delicious home-brewed coffee Monday through Friday. Though our Cuisinart Grind & Brew is a pain to clean, it’s well worth the effort.

But on the weekends, I am free to roam. Brunch and strong coffee can’t be beat. Among the best in the city are Universal Café and Boogaloos (when you don’t need to wait an hour).

Expanding our coffee radius over the holidays, my husband and I finally went to Blue Bottle Coffee in Hayes Valley. It’s hip. It’s cool. It’s somewhat hidden. The lines are long. And the individually brewed coffee gives you a strong buzz. So strong, in fact, that it has led to inane arguments. And yet we still went back for more.

As for the best of the brews, this past weekend we decided to try Philz Coffee (the Castro location). I had heard about this place from a Mission hipster and was skeptical. But my husband insisted we give it a try. And I’m so happy he did. The coffee at Philz is transcendent. Brewed “one cup at a time” (like Blue Bottle) you need to wait for your coffee. I ordered mine with sugar and cream. Fantastic. I want to try every blend, but I don’t know if I’ll make it past the Tantalizing Turkish coffee with my current cardamom obsession.

The coffee is so good in fact that we gave it a shout-out last year. But when most of us are headed to work 250 days a year, sometimes we need a reminder to start the day with ‘the kind of thing that will get you excited about life’.

My favorite libertarian recently told me that the President had signed some provision invoking martial law. Not quite, but he definitely, quietly got the ducks lined up that would make it easy to go there.

With legal wordsmithing over the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act, President Bush’s administration can take over the National Guard for purposes deemed “National Public Emergencies” and not the harder-to-satisfy criteria of “Interference with State and Federal Law.”

What’s the significance? It’s a lot easier for President Bush to use states’ National Guard – any states’ National Guard – as a law enforcement tool at home. Previously, he had to have a specifically good reason, say, terrorist activity, or Hurricane Katrina – and even then states’ government could insist on their own authority.

It seems like a bad flashback from high school civics classes, but is shaping up to be real-time history in the making.

Daily Kos’s Major Danby breaks it all down. It’s worth the read.

My hometown SF’s Sixth Street is known more for the seedier side of life. Playbar’s Backlit Lounge is threatening to do some more damage, as ‘twas jumpin’ with musicians of electronic persuasion last Wednesday. Truly a pleasure, the commingling of earnest young bohemians with the earnestly unwashed.

In the spontaneous art culture that is SF, Backlit Lounge is stepping up an unsual committment to do it again every week, a treat for local denizens where the drinks are steep and the tunes are pretty.

The Economist had an interesting article on the emerging boom in South Asian Indian art, as a result of its rising middle and upper classes. This is a good sign. The renaissance of tech is visibly raising the wealth level in developing countries – or, more likely, the continuation of the tech boom in places where the profit margins have continued to be juicy.

It’s also heartening on another level – it speaks to some universal need to push one’s culture forward after basic needs are met. It’s so common to hear news about wholesale economic re-investment in India and China, that one would almost think that the only thing people in developing countries do or care about is drilling their young in math and science and importing business into their country. Of course not.

In college, my native-born Chinese language tutor and I used to spar over values differences between the West and the East, as well as about the importance of wealth. I kept insisting that it was essential to people’s happiness that government took pains to ensure their freedom. My language partner laughed and said, “If you had to choose between freedom or food, what do you choose? Food, of course.” Uh, yeah. When you put it that way. But the follow-up to that, is once you have enough food, you don’t want more food, you want your freedom – and art, or maybe just something that reflects you.

Sigh, I hate these stereotypes of young-dot-commers happily skimming the cream off of dubious tech savvy. Now Coming Soon! To a theater near you! Web 2.0!!

SFGate really should’ve known better – the amount of ad revenue cited by one of their interviewees ($450/mo.) really doesn’t go that far in SF. And these little niches of income do not a down payment or retirement plan make.

It has not been a free ride for those of us on the work end of the stick. As a close friend said after the first bust, “I rode the tail-end of the dot-com wave, and all I have to show for it are 57 t-shirts and a severe case of burn-out.” As another friend said with a shiver as we discussed the oncoming whatever-it-is over dinner, “I’m scared.”

Well, yes, if you are Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

I can’t help but wonder how the hell Colbert got this gig in the first place? Did they learn nothing from seeing Jon Stewart on Crossfire? Did they miss that? Did the organizers simply never bother to watch Colbert’s show, or did they just think that he would be different when faced with the President in person?

I’ll slab on another layer of meta to Slate’s meta conversation on the performance of The New York Times’ literary critic Michiko Kakutani.

The slam on Kakutani is that though a voracious reader, she is an unimaginative, pedantic critic with no personal style. Her defenders point out that she is almost always right. I have to agree. Though beloved critic Pauline Kael she ain’t (yet, wait 20-40 years and the next generation may provide the hagiographies), Kakutani has the critical ingredient of good taste.

So, yes, good taste is important for a critic to have, but how important is it really in the real world?

If you were an artist of indeterminate political leaning, what might your monument to the pro-life movement be? Say, a sculpture of Britney Spears giving birth while clutching a bear-skin rug head?