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Yeah, I don’t have much at present. I’m sure you’re coping.

I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, as per usual (or the rebuttals or, gods help us, the probably a permanent fixture from now on “prebuttals”), and having looked at various summaries and commentaries I struggle to find anything to even fix on.

Which is why I couldn’t resist highlighting this one reaction from The Atlantic Cities:

The Urban Message Missing From the State of the Union
The issues facing the nation’s cities were largely ignored in the president’s speech

I mean, the general impression I get of Obama’s 2012 address was that it was a piled-up heap of just about everything but the kitchen sink. But, y’know, hey. We’ve still got to have at least one (and probably more than one) person coming along the next morning to lament that “well, the president didn’t even mention xyz issue once!” (Though “largely ignored” suggests to me that there wasn’t even a complete absence, here, and this guy’s still complaining.)

Apparently we still expect the president to be not only all things to all people but to be all those things at all times. Right-o, that’s realistic, then. Carry on everyone.

This is interesting. Apparently, California is moving toward joining the National Popular Vote project.

I’ve been aware of this project for some years now, and looking forward to a success which has seemed, to me, almost inevitable if perpetually too distant to get really excited about.

The very brief outline is this: America’s president is currently selected by an Electoral College, seen by all right-thinking people as a worse-than-useless distortion of our democratic process. It has proven, however, incapable of provoking the kind of sustained, mass movement which is necessary to clear the enormous hurdles placed before would-be amendments to the Constitution. Five or six years ago, however, some game-theory type dreamed up a truly viral idea for circumventing this obstacle: state legislatures can individually pass a guarantee to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, which guarantee only takes effect once the same guarantee has been passed by enough other states to ensure the winner of the popular vote is elected president.

The more I think on this concept, really, the more fiendishly-brilliant it seems. One could arguably describe it as easier done than said in America’s political context: it has too many moving parts for the talking heads to discuss voluntarily, and yet left more-or-less alone it seems to be actually working. Slowly, but steadily, and that’s why I’ve been confident that at some point the project would/will succeed: it can work on an incremental-progress basis. (more…)

Not everyone is happy with President Barack Obama. Reactionaries are unhappy with him because he’s a Democrat. “The business sector” is unhappy with him because they feel he doesn’t sufficiently appreciate them. Many “average” schmoes are unhappy with him because unemployment is around 10%. And even many liberals/Democrats are unhappy with him because it seems, sometimes, like he isn’t actually all that concerned with what we thought were our (i.e., that of him and ourselves alike) priorities.

And certainly, at least in this last item, I share some of the disappointment. Some things just don’t seem to make sense at all, no matter how you look at them, such as volunteering expanded oil and gas drilling out of the blue one day.*

At the same time, though, and without actually denying that dumb acts or statements are anything other than just plain dumb, lately I’ve found myself wondering: if Obama does screw up a lot, how are we arriving at our standard for “a lot?” Honestly, when was the last time America had a really good President?

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