cheese it, the cops!

so i'm sittin here watchin crank 2, which is approximately the baddest-ass movie ever made, with the possible excption of crank. the visual language, the music (perfect), the unbelievable chases and action sequences: incomparable, like its star, jason statham. also it's very very funny. plus it features the great dwight yoakam as an utterly vice-saturated (booze, pills, hookers, etc) defrocked doctor. not to mention, unbelievably, david carradine as a sex-addled 100-year-old. no autoerotic asphyxiation, though, but damn near everything else. somewhere right now, quentin tarantino, the great genius of pomo cinema, is watching crank 2 for the sixth time, having a filmic orgasm. one thing though: probably you shouldn't take the girlfriend, the wife, etc. she's not going to like it. it's so guyish that you got to check your estrogen at the door.  don't worry about the premise, which is insane. but within that, the plot does make sense, not that that's necessary. whoever these people are (="neveldine and taylor"?), they're dragging cinema past the millennium.

here's the sentence on the opinion page of the nyt , jumping us off into tom friedman's column: 'There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” can only manage, let alone fix, our huge problems if there is a collective “we” at work.' i would just declare my unalterable opposition to this point of view. only the first question is: what language is that? pig latin?

alright, we need we. or at least, you need we. we need to reforge a collective identity. the right wing is fucking with our we, or else we could merge like drops of water into an ecstatic quasi-sexual unity with one another. or: the blender of history, or education, can turn us all into a homogeneous human goop. and here's how we can form a we: you agree with me. then we will be as one! only a we can save...us. therefore, you had better acquiesce in obama/friedman globalism etc. it'll be organic and orgasmic!

i don't wanna be me. i've got to be we! wheeee!

"I am a slave by my vices and free by my remorse."
Rousseau, Emile

fox quotes the congressional budget office, assessing the constitutionality of requiring people to buy health insurance: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service, as condition of lawful residence in the United States." that was with regard to the clinton proposal in the 90s. but, good point.

john stuart mill, in on liberty, has an interesting response to an objection. the view he is defending is that everyone should be free to dispose of his life and property as he see fit. the objection is familiar, indeed it is the present theory of our government in its essence: people's bad decisions - to descend into vice, for example, or to go uninsured - impose costs on everybody. no decision affects only oneself. mill's response is in a way shockingly simple. right. if no decision affects only oneself, and if it is legitimate to intervene in decisions where they impose costs on others, then there is absolutely no aspect of anyone's life that is not the subject of legitimate control. that is, on this view there is absolutely no principled limit to the power of the state: it entails an entire eradication of human freedom, a catastrophe for the prospects of human happiness. so here's where mill drew the line: in a case where an action affects "in the first instance" primarily oneself, and only through that initial effect indirectly affects others, a sphere of autonomy must be preserved inviolate. the costs of that must be borne, because the costs of the alternative are incomparably more vast.

i've been reading a bunch of isaiah berlin lately, squeezing in paragraphs here and there. i have taught him in political philosophy and knew him from "two concepts of liberty" (and maybe"'the hedgehod and the fox," etc). these are good essays, but not earth-shaking, and in running through "two concepts" a number of times, i came to think that it was fundamentally unclear and not particularly original.

however, i swiped a copy of the roots of romanticism from my ma and was blown away. so i've turned toward the pure intellectual history side or the oeuvre, e.g. against the current. roots is a set of lectures, a brilliant introduction to late eighteenth-century german philosophy. berlin can give the most crystalline statement of the philosophy of kant or herder, for example. in a few paragraphs, he gets to the absolute center. but then there is also a point of view, which is slightly elusive but subversive.

one "controversy" that surrounds berlin's work in history of ideas concerns his taxonomies and periodizations. so, for example, he is perfectly willing to speak of "the enlightenment" and "romanticism." he says clearly what they are. but it is always the fashion to question or pulverize such general categories, which are indeed unbelievably crude instruments at best but also for one thing anachronistic: a lot of people might try to find the categories in which the writers arrayed themselves or one another, introduce more fine-grained systems etc. but i would say that probably the question is pragmatic, more or less, and berlin more than shows that there is work in these old war-horses.

one berlin contribution is the idea of the "counter-enlightenment," which has come in for much criticism (and which i would worry in various ways), but which is extremely useful. so: the enlightenment is represented by (descartes and newton and) voltaire - reason as the only legitimate source of knowledge and policy, a claim to speak on behalf of or from the point of view of universal mankind, utilitarian ethics, and so on. the counter-enlightenment is a freakshow of fideists, relativists, subjectivists, and irrationalists: vico (a berlin obsession), herder, montesquieu (!?), and berlin's great discovery johann georg hamann, the anti-kant. one might mention pascal as a precursor and kierkegaard as a successor of this (non-)movement, and indeed berlin draws the connection all the way to the twentieth century existentialists. as well, of course, as to romanticism, which it essentially is.

well now. one has to give the usual caveat about how different all these figures and trends are from one another, but this is good stuff: a place to start. berlin comes across as an urbane oxford don on the page, but his affection for the irrationalist tendency is quite palpable. not only that, but berlin was best friends with the best philosopher of the twentieth century, j.l. austin.

i doubt it'll be up long, and maybe you've got an intern or a hacker, but the headlines at the top of the front page of the washpost right now say "iran conducts thrid round of missile tests" and "nato contires back karzai."

Officials hope that the pressure -- to be applied at previously scheduled talks Thursday in Geneva -- will force Iran into a broader discussion about its program and then into a serious set of negotiations.

my feeling is that that is not the way this sucker is going to unfold. the way this sucker is going to unfold is that israel is going to bomb iran. soon. the only hesitancy, i assume, would be that it will strain relations further between israel and the obama admin. but there will also be an element of the american government that more or less implicitly supports such a move. also, no american administration can simply unequivocally condemn any aspect of israel's policies. i feel, offhand, that unless iran does actually already possess nuclear weapons (which i don't think they do, but who knows?) iran cannot project real military power in israel's direction, though there is liable to be some retaliation.

the result of an israeli strike are of course impinderable. obviously, regime change cannot be accomplished by foreign powers. an israeli strike is likely to strengthen ahmadinejad's hand (and that of whatever portion of the clerical hierarchy is on a's side). but there might also be a slow disintegration of the theocracy, if their impotence is really demonstrated. if iran were in a position to go to war with israel, a goodly portion of the world might be embroiled in the confrontation eventually. the tensions between "islam" and "the west" might be ratcheted up to almost unbelievable levels. there might be renewed waves of terrorism etc.

then, of course, the end of the world, which i hope you are looking forward to as much as i am. the world, and in particular our species, has persisted far beyond its worth or interestingness, as i understand again every time ahmadinejad addresses the un.

Power Tag
By Jane Sartwell (crispy's 9-year-old daughter)

This game combines the simple childhood sport of tag with the insanely complicated concept of super-powers.

Rules (tip: read to the end):
(1) With one exception, It is the only person who has super-powers.
(2) Before beginning, an It is selected, and each player chooses a super-power. One super-power per player per game.
(3) Here are some suggested powers, to give you the concept.

Teleportation: if It yells 'teleportation,' then the Nonits have to stand still while It takes five steps (long as she wants) in the direction of that person. Before making a tag, It yells "powerless!" in a very heroic voice. Then the Nonits can keep running.
Invisibility: if It yells 'invisibility!' the Nonits have to close their eyes (they can continue walking). Everyone opens their eyes when It yells "powerless!" in a very heroic voice. Again no tag can be made while invisibility is in effect.
Telekinesis: It can knock someone down at a distance by means of an agreed-on gesture. Then It can approach the prone person, calling "dumb!" Then It counts five (perhaps insanely quickly) before making any tag.
Super-strength: It knocks down anyone It tags. This prevents tagbacks (which are otherwise allowed). This is the only exception to the rule that the super-power disappears before the tag.
Flying: when It yells "flying!" all Nonits must drop to the ground.  It can take ten heel/toe baby steps in any direction. When It yells "landing!" players can move again.
Super Speed: When It yells "superspeed!" all the Nonits must go into slow motion. Again, before making a tag, It must call "powerless!"
Fairykind is the only power that can be used by the Nonits (except by agreement on something else!). Fairykind can be used once a game. When It is aiming to tag you, you can yell "fairykind!" and you are immune from the tag.

(4) You can only use your super-power three times in one round. If no tag is made (which seems unlikely), then the game becomes a conventional tag.
(5) No tags may be made while It is using her power, with the exception of super-strength.
(6) Kryptonite: if It falls down, It loses its power for the rest of the round, unless It is bleeding, bruised, or broken. Then the game continues until the ambulance arrives. No player can use Fairykind when the It has no power.
(7) Other super-powers can be developed by the invention and agreement of the players.
(8) Tag normally leads to many debates: who got whom, etc. This is even more true of Power Tag. Resolving such disputes is part of the point of the game.

(nyt)

one thing that world leaders certainly understand - as they meet to help realize their ecstatic vision of the future for us all, as we all pull together behind their inspirational leadership (yes, we can): they would all be bullet-riddled corpses without a continual massive security cordon. that's because the state is all of us, pulling together to help each other by means of a perfectly voluntary social contract.

here is a relatively good principle: live so that no one wants to kill you, or at a minimum, so that if they do, it's wrong and irrational for them to. tip: try not to run a war machine, have unfathomable power over every aspect of the lives of the people around you, administer a prison system, and so on. these things, understandably, piss people off.

Dr. Mekdese Kassa, 45, from Columbia Md., was marching with other Ethiopian immigrants Thursday in a permitted rally on Liberty Avenue to protest the presence of the prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, at the meetings. The protesters said Mr. Zenawi illegally took power by force in 2005.

Dr. Kassa said he was more worried about police behavior than vandalism.

“When you see this kind of police presence, it makes you feel like you’re back in your old state,” he said.

Shaking his head at the police officers standing in front of him, Mr. Kassa added, “That’s why we came here from Ethiopia, because our rights were repressed there.”

oh just for the hell of it, i'm going to explain to you where western philosophy went horribly, irremediably wrong. let's place it simplistically at the dawn of modern philosophy: descartes. now descartes' view was that what we directly experience is only our own ideas, essentially conceived of as mental images. that is, we directly experience only our own semiotic entities: symbols for things in the external world. of course, this raises an insoluble scepticism: how do we know our images match up to reality? we can't, since all we have is ideas. the empiricists exacerbated this disease: our experience consists of "impressions" and "ideas": again, mental semiotic phenomena. only through these do we know anything else. kant tried to deal with the myriad problems that arise, and everyone saw immediately that even though kant still had a world outside consciousness (the thing in itself) it wasn't doing any work and that all you needed was consciousness and its semiotic materials.

one problem is that you get absolutely nowhere in explaining perception by mental images: an image requires an eye to be seen no less than does a boulder. start this way and all you get is an infinite procession of humuncular eyes. that's one reason we switch from the image to language starting in the late nineteenth century and continuing through postmodern philosophy, e.g. rorty. all we have access to is language, and we can lose the world etc. this gives you a nice way out in terms of social practices and conventions as well.

but it is more or less the same thing: lock us in a world of symbols, then notice that once you have you ain't got no world.

this is a disastrous, empty dead end. not only is it false, but i think that if descartes or kant or hegel or wittgenstein or rorty had kept faith with their own actual experience for a moment, they'd have realized that they don't believe that we only have truck with symbol systems, which at any rate are roughly as mysterious as worlds. that is, retreating to semiotics doesn't even improve the explanatory situation. the view is arid, and profoundly anti-naturalistic: given a basically darwinian picture of who we are, the idea that we are only acquainted with our own symbols and not with our environment is incompatible with the fact that the human species exists at all, or survived its first crawl into the world.

ron paul, who's an obstetrician, on healthcare policy. now, this won't convince you that obama's plan is wrong. but it should convince you that it's false that only an idiot could disagree with you. but it won't, because even a thoughtful little catalogue of ideas can't be allowed to rip apart the last vestiges of your self-esteem. the healthcare debate is itself mental healthcare for the obamoids: the important thing isn't to convince or construct a good argument. the only question as you take a position or develop an argument: how does this make me feel about myself? the point is never the point. the point is: if i take a position, with what group am i affiliating myself? and with whom am i disaffiliating myself? so the question isn't: 'good policy?' but 'who am i?' in a situation where personal identity and group affiliation are conceived to be identical, and where group membership is a matter of delineating standards of exclusion. it's like the grail quest: i spend my life in a single-minded, heroic search to find out, in the words of elvis costello ("two little hitlers"), the names of all those i'm better than.

yes that's interesting what you say about capitalism, andrew. and this is also a problematical strand that runs through the american libertarian-type tradition, why it's infested with randians, e.g. sometimes. what that kind of libertarian needs to understand is the ways that corporate capitalism is in itself a form of oppressive power. we need to scout alternatives, e.g. josiah warren. but capitalism too runs all the way to the founding and is not only circumstantially connected to the basic theory and history of democracy.

that is, the connecton between capitalism and the american conception of liberty is intrinsic, while the connection between that conception and racism is completely contingent. so: an important dimension of freedom is to dispose of your resources as you see fit, to purchase what you want and can afford, and so on. this is why in a republican rhetoric, transforming china into a capitalist economy would entail transforming its polity into a democracy, which appears false.

at any rate, i really think the task for the libertarian right has to be to come up with something more inspiring - even in pure economic theory - than nonstop acquisition or accumulation. it has to take seriously that severe inequality of resources and severe poverty are severe limitations on freedom, that the leverage of employers etc is a real form of power, even in a case of voluntary-seeming contracts.

one angle on this might be provided by the basic idea of squishy totalitarianism. so the libertarian types stop celebrating the american economy as gloriously capitalistic, and start criticizing it on the ground that state and economy have merged here, as in china. this at least gets you out of defending the status quo, and is compatible with a celebration of small business and entrepreneurialism etc.

wow i'm watching ed schultz, and he's literally doing an impression of glenn beck, only left: overthetop emotionalism, endless rants: the same whole format. odd, the show wasn't like that a couple of weeks ago. and even trying to find that demagogue sweet spot. "watching people die: that's the republican way."

here's a way to think about the incredible political doctrine of sartwellianism. say you get a bunch of protestors in pittsburgh for the g-20. and say they're radical squatters, internet pirates, anti-globalization people, vegans, anarchists, earthfirsters, etc. now: some of these folks have a lot in common with some of the folks who have been going to tea parties. both you and the tea partiers are looking for a place outside the structures of power, where you can live as you think is right. what y'all have in common is the right approach. join hands, my children.

once more into the breach on obama, teapartiers, carter, and race. now let me start off by saying that the left has a million ways to not listen to what their opponents are saying. they regard the opposition to health care legislation, for instance, as only the ignorant, manipulated by demagogues. this is a way to say: no rational person can possibly disagree with what i'm saying. it's actually a kind of 'argument' for their position, based on the a priori or ad hominem dismissal of its opponents. as usual the basic strategy is self-praise. alternatively or as a supplement, we hold that the opposition to some very elaborate government program can only be based on something like race: or in other words, if you disagree with me, you are ignorant, manipulated, and just to throw this in, evil. so the arguments are strategic in terms of the inner life of those who make them. looked at from the other side, what they really say is: i am so reasonable and good, so educated and benevolent, that the positions i hold - despite the fact that i accept them on raw authority - cannot be rationally opposed. and if people do, they are evil, because i am so perfectly good.

but let me go the other way too, briefly. my view - which obama appears to agree with - is that these folks want to have an argument about the size and scope of power of the federal government. it's always a good time to have that argument, and this is an acutely, a severely good time for it. this view - suspicion of government, localism, small-scale democracy, fierce autonomy, etc etc - is at the precise heart of our tradition. just say 'jefferson' or fly 'don't tread on me.' however, this american tradition - which i believe is our contribution to mankind - is bound up throughout our history with racism, as the name 'jefferson' signals. but nullification, states' rights, goldwater-style libertarianism - all of them have been intertwined with racism throughout. (goldwater opposed the civil rights bill on libertarian grounds, e.g.).

here's one reason for that: the fierce individualism characteristic of america is an outgrowth of our settlement by radical protestants, whether quakers, puritans, or baptists. these people came from northern europe, and they're white. and throughout our history, most of the people touting individualism and small gov have been white men. and the defense of economic and political liberty entailed for them a continuing right to enslave, degrade, and exploit other sorts of people without state interference.

there is no conceptual connection between [love of liberty, individualism, and suspicion of state power] and racism. in fact they are in tension. but the historical connections are extremely elaborate. so when someone at a town hall says: "i'm losing my country" or "is this america?" i think that they are basically talking about pervasion of state power - the american tradition of loving liberty. but they are also, probably, talking about race; the two things are not fully distinguishable on the ground. we are losing our white protestant nation, and people like obama and sotomayor are perfectly visible signs of that. well, this is losing our ethnic character. but it is also losing our basic values.

it may be that individualism and personal autonomy are characteristic values of northern-european protestants. it is often said that asian and african cultures are more "collective" or less focused on individual differences and autonomy, and more on social cohesion. i would make such claims very carefully. but, that we are losing both an ethnic heritage and a set of values is, it seems, to me undeniable. the loss is real and important. that this heritage is problematic is undeniable. that it is inspiring is undeniable. do white people have a message for the world?

so anyway, my question would be: could we still care about liberty and stop caring about race? can we detach the needed part from the unneeded, the liberatory from the repressive?

shootin hoops this mornin at the new freedom playground. a maybe 5-year-old girl was playing tennis with her family, looking like it was the first time she had a racquet in her hands. precise quote: "it looks 3-d! wait! it is 3-d! for real!"

great moments in advertising: "americans are always finding ways to be more responsible" (bmw).

i guess overall i like the new directions in "advocacy" (or just "opinion") "journalism." one signal shift on cable is the development of the explicitly ideological host: not a nominally neutral host with pundit or advocate guests, but o'reilly, beck, olbermann, ed schultz. they're not my first choice on their networks, actually, but i think the form is still developing, and could get less hectoring and doctrinaire and funnier. but the elaborate half-assed advocacy of a host of positions is a nice little prerogative of citizenship. it's always been opinion that drew me to newspapers, for example.

i might just say that my favorite actual show in this vein so far is rachel maddow; sometimes she does olbermann, but she goes slower and and has a lighter touch. glenn beck really is something, though. actually "morning joe" does this sort of thing extremely well too. matthews is one nice model: you know he's a centerish democrat more or less and sometimes he editorializes. but he doesn't just lob talking points at the left or try to make the right look ridiculous: he likes an actual argument and is into the spectacle of politics. if you caount hardball, i like that better than maddow.

on the other hand, i really wish anyone had any sense of an american political landscape that was more than left/right in whatever its current permutation might be. the culture of consultants and spokespersons is pretty much worthless. you want the unbought expression of unvarnished views. but where is the, you know, green party show? the montana militia hour? how about the ronpaulesque show? the anarchists. a straightinyourface marxist etc? the point is to make a show like that entertaining: you don't have to agree with o'reilly to dig it in small doses.

but i even like the edge of conspiracy theories, the strange affiliations, the mysterious inner motivations etc: weirdness is alright in its zone. and in glenn beck, our discourse is really lurching into the funk.

sometimes david brooks is really good. actually, he's often really good, though it's personally hard for me to imagine a less similar temperament to  my own.

i'd watch glenn beck crucify himself only to return reborn tomorrow at 5; it is an amazing thing. but i'm too into chris matthews, who is very excellent.

the joe wilson thing has got the most remarkable people trance-channeling richard nixon. so you ask a couple of black women downtown and they're all like: "i thought it was disrespectful to the Office of the Presidency." now i wonder how worried you've really been over the decades about disrespect for the Office of the Presidency, which was ultimately nixon's argument: it would be bad for the Office of the Presidency to reveal evidence of the felonies and general disgusting basic behavior of the individual who holds that office. to be totally honest, i think that "the Office of the Presidency" is rather an abstract, empty, or imaginary object to sustain real respect or for that matter to be disrespected. in fact, if it weren't some kind of ontological mistake, i'd pistol-whip and then ass-rape the Office of the President of the United States. wait: the Office of the Presidency ain't got no ass! i want to make this clear to the secret service. i would never harm barack obama or any human being. but i herewith threaten to assassinate the Office of the Presidency. only: which way do i shoot? actually, it seems hard to express disrespect for the Office of the President of the United States. it's not as good as the Office of the Register of Wills! i don't know. maybe i should stick to expressing disrespect for actual human beings. of course, that you can't successfully disrespect the Office of the President of the United States entails that you can't successfully respect it. it's like respecting the number '5' or the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme or something. it's kind of indifferent to your positive regard. the idea appears to be that wilson is calling "the Office of the President of the United States" a liar, rather than barack obama, the alleged individual human being, if any. but the Office of the President of the United States doesn't even have lips in order to make assertions that could turn out to be true or false. or maybe the idea is that by insulting the concrete individual human being - if obama still is a concrete individual human being, which seems unlikely - we are insulting the persisting eternal abstract object that currently inhabits or possesses obama's body. good luck making that make sense, but the very charm of primitive supernatural explanations is their wondrous whimsicality.

one believes that the whole kanye/beyonce/taylor brouhaha is the first real salvo in the oncoming race war: the fort sumter, as it were. one hopes that collateral damage can be limited to celebrities, but is otherwise indiscriminate.

yes, it was predictable, even to me, that i would become a whole-hog reactionary six months into an obama administration. forward, my minions.

alright. this is my approach: no matter who you are, if you're out there saying that obama is expanding the power and scope of state power - continuously, enthusiastically, and with regard to every possible subject-matter - then i am going to nod along enthusiastically. if you start spouting racism etc, then i am going to condemn you. but i am not going to condemn you for criticizing obama's programs, or his truthfulness, etc, on the grounds that only a racist could condemn obama, or on the notion that if we peeled back the subconscious layers we would find racism, or on the grounds that you come from south carolina. i'm not reading minds; i'm reading signs.

know what? i agree with glenn beck just so far and on just those matters where i agree with him. if he thinks that the national debt will swallow the economy or something, then i say: good point. if it's some conspiracy crap or whatever, then i'm not there. i don't have to love the whole idea of the obama admin to distance myself from glenn beck, and all things considered i so far am basically liking the form of the right-wing backlash: the libertarian tone is precisely right. many conservatives have been improved and sharpened by the obama administration. this is the only moment in american politics that i can recal - with the exception of ronnie's 1980 campaign - where anti-statism actually seems to be a viable stance (and it's quite a bit more radical at the moment than it was in ronnie's time). this is the best development in american politics in a long while, in my view.

i do think that for a certain segment of the pop, obama arrived as an avatar of the future, an embodiment of the dream etc etc, and any criticism is intolerable or evil. this entails a complete loss of critical leverage on the american state. i still endorse the american traditions of protest and suspicion of government power. and the racism charge is getting way too easy and indiscriminate: not that americans aren't racists, but that it's an attempt not even to deal with criticism.

the crime spree in new freedom/shrewsbury intensifies.

well now, when was the last time they had a big rally in dc for smaller government? i'd call that very encouraging.

ok, ok. i just don't understand how these people are always saying things like "i'm gonna spend a trillion dollars, and it won't add a dime to the deficit." um, whatever. now i haven't exactly been paying exhaustive attention, but didn't he actually add the idea of an individual requirment to carry health insurance? probably you thought the town halls were hostile before...

my speculation on the reasoning behind the day-glo red panstsuit is something like this: hillary and nancy are relatively small people. and because of lingering sexist attitudes, a female presence doesn't command a room in the same way that a man's might. but it's their job to command a room. so some consultant figured out that if the clothing screeches, all eyes are riveted by the pulsing glow. thus what barack can do in a black suit, hilary can only do by looking something like a pylon. let me point out some of the problems with this. one way that obama can actually command a room is by quiet dignity. hard to muster quiet dignity in a fire-engine-red faux-silk pantsuit. and of course, personally, i select my leaders by their taste: when bill used "don't stop thinking about tomorrow" as his theme song,i became an implacable foe. and whatever "i'm pissing blood!" red expresses, it's not taste.

what i think you want to project is total assurance that you are in fact the center of power in the room. screeching "look at meeee!", putting it mildly, doesn't do that. even if you're 5'3" or whatever it may be, i'd try to express dignified, perfect self-assurance.

so you could think of this as part of our cultural adjustment to women in power. but part of that in turn is women's adjustment to their own power. now a secretary of state or speaker of the house has no reason feel insecure in her power. if she doesn't like you, you can expect a visit from the irs or the us army or whatever. compared to you, they're colossi, little gods who hold over you the power of life and death. they don't need to emphasize that at all; it's much more disconcerting when the power itself is the only radiance. that's why no one dresses in imperial robes anymore except catholic cardinals: the hooha isn't convincing anymore; but the implacable stripped-bare reality is impossible to deny.

donno about you, but i just can't blog any more healthcare. but can someone explain to me why women like hillary clinton and nancy pelosi wear neon-red pantsuits? on television they literally glow, like they're burning a hole out of the image. but michelle's in howling pink.