Michael Steele is the only reason more people aren't laughing at Joe Bidenmore often. You see, Steele wanted to explain how the Republican Party totally is not looking backwards, and to explain what he meant, he talked a lot about Ronald Reagan. I've highlighted the Not Looking Back in blue, and the obvious looking back that often occurs in the same sentence in red:
The Republican Party has turned a corner, and as we move forward Republicans should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan. Again, we're not looking back - if President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward. Ronald Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America. For Reagan's conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to this age.
Actually, there's a hell of a lot more looking back there than looking forward. And what does the assertion that "Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America" even mean? Did anyone really believe that Reagan would've gone up to the podium and said, "I believe that Republicans should apply our beliefs in the past." In other news, I resolve to keep the job I have right now, instead of the one I quit ten years ago.
There was also a lot of rambling about highly debatable talking points, such as the assertion that Obama has shut out Republicans from legislation (this is not the case), that Republicans won't be 'classless' the way Democrats attacked Bush (I never heard the word 'fascist' from Hannity when Bush was issuing quasi-legal edicts), etc.
Look, I'd love to see a smart Republican Party. I still consider myself conservative. But I value competence much more highly than ideology, and it seems that America agrees with me. Nobody cares that Brownie and Rumsfeld were conservative, loyal Bush guys. All they remember is that they helped make sure New Orleans turned into a 3rd world country for several months (Bush to Rumsfeld during the disaster, when Rummy refused to send in troops to help the National Guard: "Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what's on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I'm watching? What the hell are you doing?").
In America, only competence matters. That's part of freedom. That's something we can all agree on. So will someone fire this guy? Like now?
Dan Savage is tearing Obama a structurally superfluous behind for sidestepping his campaign promises about DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act, which forces federal institutions to not recognize same-sex marriage) and DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to act to repeal both.
It must be frustrating to hear the talk but not see the walk, but I think something more is going on here. While pressure needs to be made from people like Savage, the absolute worst thing that the President could do to kill the momentum that has brought one state a month to recognize same-sex marriage would be to act to repeal DOMA.
It would be an incredible shot in the arm for the entire religious right wing to see Obama on national TV announcing that. And poor Gibbs is trying his best to keep the cards close to the chest. Remember how often Obama has been proven right in his long-term strategies so far. His maneuvering has so far felled the Clinton ivory tower, gotten Cheney to speak publicly and damn himself on torture, gotten the RNC to implode, and has Republicans giving Pelosi political cover for a Truth Commission (and even gaining support for said Commission among Republicans). Oh, and that whole one-state-per-month rate of recognition of same sex marriage thing.
The point is that tons of progress is being made WITHOUT him having to directly confront the opposition. At the rate things are going, he and Congress will have more than enough political cover to do it soon. When he has that, he'll tell the spineless Dems in Congress to repeal DOMA and DADT the right way - through Congressional legislation. I hated it when Bush thought he could make laws, and I would hate to see it from Obama just as much (if not more, as I expect better of him).
When he issues that directive to Congress, he'll be able to (truthfully) say it was the will of the majority.
But that only happens if he keeps his mouth shut about it for another 8 months or so.
Ben Smith has been on the ball about Obama's promises about a Muslim-Western summit promised in Obama's first 100 days of office. This promise's importance was eventually elevated onto the campaign website. The NYT says Cairo is a possibility, though a donor has said that Obama pointed to Jakarta privately among donors:
"Obama told the 20 or so of us at breakfast that 'his first trip as President would be to Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim country,'" Leary recalled.
"He then said when he got off [Air Force One], he would say 'xxxxxxxx' - which we, of course, didn't understand," Leary emailed. "He said that it was Indonesian (which he speaks) for, 'I am back, dudes.'"
I've been particularly interested in Obama's interaction with the Muslim world as President, for two reasons:
Firstly, I don't think there's any doubt that he can do a world of good on the hearts-and-minds front in the War on Terror. Simply being who he is - the American son of a relapsed African Muslim - he has more credibility than Another Old White Guy. There are 1.5 billion Muslims living in the world today (compared to 2.1B Christians and 1B non-religious), and the fact is that a tiny, tiny fraction of them can be called 'militant.' However, any respite fringe lunatic Muslims will receive outside their group will come from other Muslims; It doesn't seem realistic to me that al-Qaeda operatives would ask a Christian for a place to stay. So America - through Obama - must appeal to those billions of Muslims to quietly report, try, and convict the disturbed members of their own population.
"A few weeks ago an American I met at a friends house asked a much repeated query, 'Why do you the Muslims hate the Americans?' To which I answered in the same way as all the preceding instances in which this question was posed to me: 'We don’t hate the Americans, we might disagree with a certain US policy and dislike recent American actions in the Muslim world but we surely don’t hate the American people.'
The American who interrogated me was clearly not convinced with my answer and secretly I wasn't either. The truth is that at present the Muslims hate America and now, they hate not only its policymakers but most of the American people since they have proven recently without a shadow of doubt that they agree with their elite by voting back into office. [...]"
The second thing that both saddens and interests me is that he had to keep these promises relatively quiet during the campaign, lest the emails that railed about his religion become even more fervent in their conviction that he was going to somehow turn the U.S. into Iran, or that his parents had the foresight in 1961 to conclude their half-black almost-bastard son was going to be president and fake birth documentation (both are actually believed by some people, who are very stupid).
This is the hearts-and-minds front that isn't talked about a lot. In addition to the work Obama has to do abroad to convince that America doesn't hate Muslims, he has to get loud parts of America to stop hating Muslims. The last part of the article above says:
"What were you thinking when you threw the Qur'an in the toilet or when you used religion as a means of torture? I fail to see the efficacy of such actions in the so-called war on terror. These methods only point to a deep sickness in your society to which it will take decades for us and the rest of the world to understand its cause and to measure its destructive results. No, the question which someday will have to be answered is why, why do you the Americans hate us the Muslims so much?"
International diplomacy will be slowed or stopped as long as being called a Muslim is a slur in American politics. This is yet another reason for the separation of Church & State: The instant a nation's percieves itself to be for or against any particular religion, you have a Holy War. Holy Wars never, ever, ever, ever work out well for anybody. It's the third classic blunder.
This will not be as hard as it looks. We don't need to have everybody in the streets singing Kumbayah. No amount of work will dispel stereotype - after all there are lots of associations good and bad about Mormons, Jews, and Catholics. (Where would we be without Rabbi/Priest/Minister/Nun jokes?) But most Muslims are just normal people who do weird religious things that aren't much weirder than what other, 'mainstream' religions do: Magic Underpants, insanely long sideburns and beards, quasi-cannibalism, etc.
This will be Obama's toughest job, and frankly I'm not sure how it can best be done.
"Mom, do you remember Reagan's 'big tent' strategy?" "Wasn't that a term for his hair?"
"I am really looking forward to the international reaction to [Obama's] win." "I think if you step outside and listen carefully you'll hear the cheers from our back yard."
"I just hope Obama's inaugural address is enough to bring the international public relations handjob to climax."
"I will be your president, too."
"[toasting] To America."
"Someday I'll be rich enough to hire Nate Silver to help make all my life decisions. 'Should I sleep with her?' 'Well, I'm showing a 35% chance it will end badly.'"
Reach out to John McCain to work together on the issues in which they largely agreed: immigration reform, environmental protection, and earmark reform.
Give The Speech. Ask us not to ask what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. Instill that sense of patriotism. Don't ask us to shop to save the economy ask us to work to save our nation.
What I want Democrats to do:
REALIZE YOU ELECTED A MODERATE. He's not gonna institute gay marriage everywhere, socialize medicine, and give you a pony.
Don't gloat.
You also did not elect Jesus Christ himself. He's human. And a politician to boot.
What I want Republicans to do:
Call a spade a spade: Eject the completely insane people from your party.
Get back to small-government Goldwater ideals and get a really good nominee (say, oh, Ron Paul?) who professes those ideals. This means not grooming Palin to be the face of the GOP.
Work with Obama. No whining, no empiricists (see #1), no BS. Obama's a centrist (despite the claims of your attack ads) and together you can get a lot done.
There are a lot of artists out there who've been inspired to make Obama-themed works. An entire website is devoted to it. I rather expected a bunch of silly paintings or graffiti but some of it is really complex and incredible.
My vote for "Best Imitation of Winnie the Pooh Vibe":
There's also a really awesome use of LED lights in someone's bike spokes to make a glowing Obama logo in their spokes as they ride.
I've been reading the posts on 538.com regarding how the presidential campaigns have been run with intense interest. In particular, today's post paints a vivid contrast in volunteer enthusiasm. In the article, there is an implied correlation between the enthusiasm of the effort and the amount of power and trust the volunteers are given.
With the McCain campaign, few (if any) volunteers are given enough rope to so much as talk to reporters, for fear of going off-message. Obama's campaign, on the other hand, gives their volunteers guides but are otherwise given free reign to organize, call, and knock on doors. Sometimes this backfires on the Obama campaign. A long while ago, during the primaries, there was a volunteer with a Che Guevara poster hanging up, and more recently, an Obama caller did some drinking and dialing.
Although -- frankly, that audio is awesomely hilarious!
But the payoff is huge: Every town in America has a slew of Obama supporters creating meetings, doing phone bank parties, and canvassing neighborhoods. 538's correspondents have had a hard time just finding McCain volunteers, while Obama supporters are up late every night in houses and offices across the nation.
The conservative ideal is for people to have the power and freedom to guide their own lives without government interference. It's amusing and ironic that the Democratic candidate is running his campaign in such a grass-roots manner.
All of this is background information for a startling conclusion I came up with while reading that 538 article (appropriately called "The Big Empty"): Obama has run his campaign like a community organizer. That much-ridiculed term, which has served as a talking point and particularly ridiculed as resume padding is going to win him the election.
The role of the President is the most mercurial of the 3 branches of the U.S. Government, and its power and stature has ebbed and flowed through the centuries of our nation. But at the moment, I would say that its role is not unlike that of a community organizer: To develop and implement programs that help the U.S. help itself. Many of the most famous Presidential Programs are community programs writ large: Just Say No, The President's Challenge, and so on.
I've maintained for a while now that the power of an Obama presidency lies in his ability to get Americans to help America. Hopefully he will be enough of a centrist to allow those he inspires to do the heavy lifting.
My thinking Senator Obama could be the anti christ is similar to someone looking at a tall person and wondering if they play basketball.
No.
No it's not.
Your thinking Obama could be the anti-Christ is more like looking at someone with a Super Mario Bros. t-shirt and wondering if they're going to anally and vaginally rape you, simultaneously, with your own amputated limbs.
Rachel, on what she'd have said if I had asked her, four years ago, about the possibility that a mixed-race presidential candidate might win the electoral college votes of Arkansas.
I don't generally like Rand, but that was an excellent quote. It relates to something I missed in the debate (I missed the first few minutes). Holy crap, what an important 5 minutes! McCain proposed a fix to the mortgage crisis (followed up with details the next day). I was reading an article about it by Michelle Malkin - who is verrry far right - about it. Turns out - he wants to do what ACORN does. When did McCain start supporting ACORN and Obama stop? This is crazy. Here is another economist’s clarification of the various plans including McCain’s.
On another wholly unrelated note: It looks like Obama’s going to win (he would win even if he lost every toss-up state in the nation, according to the right-leaning RealClearPolitics), but I’m really worried about the negative tack that McCain’s camp is taking. In particular, I’m worried that they are going to whip up the less-sane voters to the point where they’ll become a poison to the country. Wild exaggerations about Obama’s associations with Ayers are getting to the point where when McCain says, "who is Barack Obama?", the audience has yelled back, "terrorist! " Even the NRO - bastion of right-wing thinking - is talking about how it’s going too far:
"Those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November. Is it really wise to send conservatives into opposition in a mood of disdain and fury for a man who may well be the next president of the United States, incidentally the first African-American president? Anger is a very bad political adviser. It can isolate us and push us to the extremes at exactly the moment when we ought to be rebuilding, rethinking, regrouping and recruiting."
They Ayers thing is particularly ludicrous since it was an education board on which they worked together under Ronald Regan’s close Republican friend and ambassador Walter Annenburg. There’s as much a connection to Reagan as there is to Obama. Moreover, McCain didn’t even have the chutzpah to say it to Obama’s face - it’s been in flyers and smear ads.
No campaign should surrender when they feel they’re right. That much is obvious. But it serves no good to the country (quite the opposite) to send your supporters into such a level of spite that they will hurt the nation because they are convinced that Obama really is a Muslim terrorist who hates America. I’m also very sad that McCain, who had very honorably not used his son’s service to further his political campaign has begun to do just that.
It is also disgusting to me that religion is being used to whip up this sentiment, both through fear (of Muslims) and faith (through prayers like this):
"O God, we are in a battle that is raging for the soul of this nation. You, O God, have raised up Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin for such a time as this ... Help them, O God, to strengthen our economy, to keep our taxes and spending low ... and grant them the privilege of being elected the next president and vice president."
Sorry for all the bile in one email, but I really worry about this, and you have been seeing a lot of the stuff that’ll do it. It’s related to something that I’ve been wondering: What could a president do to prove that he is a good president, to those who voted against him? How could you, for example, say in 4 years, "yeah, Obama worked out fine (even if I’m still voting for the Republican)" or the reversal for me if McCain wins. It worries me that for some people this is not possible. Conservatives spilled many gallons of ink about how we need to Support The President between 2001 and 2005, but I’m increasingly convinced it was hypocritical: we won’t have their support for Obama. That’s not to say that Presidents should be above criticism - far from it - but stirring hatred for a president (by anyone) is counterproductive and, frankly, Anti-American.
There's a reason that Obama's competitors keep trying to steal his messages: they know it resonates with everyone it touches.
Some people are pretty determined to make sure it doesn't touch them, of course - ranging from the able-minded cynics to the self-delusional people who insist he's A MUSLIM (the horror).
We want to believe that the idea that America can fix America is possible. The idea is as formidable as America at its best because it IS America at its best.
"We need the United States to lead rough-minded diplomacy, this includes direct engagement with Iran, similar to the meeting we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War"
- Barack Obama, 15 February, 2008
Aaand our boy George's rejoinder:
"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
- George W. Bush, 15 May, 2008
Ah, the difference between "appeasement and "engagement." Obama never said, "appeasement," and you can bet your life that Reagan "engaged" Russia. There were four Gorbachev/Reagan face-to-face summits around the world. Those meetings directly resulted in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Reagan is deified for this role in closing the Cold War peacefully, but his methods are, it seems, forgotten.
But to clarify: Hitler was appeased when the British and French gave him half of Czechoslovakia and hoped he'd stop. Russia and the U.S. entered talks to end the Cold War and agreed to reduce their nuclear weapons arsenal because both recognized that MAD wasn't a good situation for either nation.
I've been looking at the rhetoric between Obama and McCain, and at this point, I don't think either one will do anything differently from each other (regarding this question of diplomacy, anyway). In a way, all I see is McCain pandering a bit to the Republicans, and Obama pandering a bit to the Democrats. Both have said they’d only talk to Iran when they recognized Israel's legitimacy, but that we’ll have to eventually talk to Hama – they might support terrorists, but they won a democratic election in the region. They are, by our own measure, the rightful leaders of that area.
We also do have really good reasons to open relationships with both of those nations. Iran is at least as influential to Iraq as we are, whether we stay or go, whether we like it or not. Moreover, they're the ones getting open ceremonial greetings in the daytime. Cheney had to come unannounced, at night, with body guards. They are also in desperate need of humanitarian aid, need help getting their own country into shape, and Iran's population isn't as radical as its leader. We both have needs that we can help each other out with. The situation is not impossible, but can be made impossible when we dismiss the possibility of finding a mutually-beneficial arrangement. Same goes for Hamas, but even more so: Hamas supports terrorism abroad, and yet runs hospitals, feeds the poor, and takes care of its people. That's how they got elected. Israel also needs to have a good sit-down. They're our staunch ally, and are definitely a stabilizing force within the region, but they can make us pretty uncomfortable when they do land-grabs, or lob missiles into family homes, and Hamas says, "See? This is why they're evil."
None of that can be solved by ignoring the problem, or threatening to bomb everybody in the region that angers us at that particular moment (which was Iran, then Iraq, then Iran again, then it was Hamas, etc.).
Now, this is all just a general outline of course – the complexities that are the Middle East have made it nearly impossible to stabilize since… forever. I don’t know
From what I know about both candidates, their top priority for Iran is to keep them from developing and acquiring nuclear weapons. I know Obama played a part in this a few years ago while working with Republicans on the anti-nuclear weapons proliferation bill. Though I don't think McCain was part of that, I think it's pretty obvious he feels the same way about it.
For Hamas, if I remember right, I've heard both say they want Hamas to recognize Israel's legitimacy (which would be an obvious first step). Obama has, more candidly, noted that Israel is causing problems as well when Israel takes the same posture towards Hamas as Hamas takes towards Israel. He's been blasted for this, but it seems pretty fair to me. Even the Israeli Jewish press (Israelis are less convinced that Israel has flawless plans than the U.S. Jewish press, which seems convinced that any criticism of Israel is out-of-bounds) has generally agreed that Obama is about as "Pro-Israel" as any U.S. politician.
Anyway, like I said, this all strikes me as political buddying-up with each candidates' political base, but I see no daylight between their stances. Still, I don't think it helps McCain at all to defend Bush, the Least Popular U.S. President of All Time, Ever (really).
Here's a really good write up I found about the difference between appeasement and diplomacy here, by someone who was/is for the war, just to show I'm not just being a Loony Lefty, here.
Update: Boy, I'm really not alone. Obama actually went on the attack to denounce the remark (which is rare, though I can't decide if that's good or bad). Nancy Pelosi called it "beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel." Keith Olbermann spent morethan a fewsegments about it. Chris Matthews laid the best damn TV-interview smackdown I've seen since Jon Stewart's Crossfire hot-wiring.
Mr. Simpson, that does not even make sense. You think a secret radical Muslim would marry an atheist? Even if it was purely to piss off Christians? Sleeper agent jihadists are not known for their tolerance of Enlightenment principles!
Seriously, West Virginia, we are going to give you back to Virginia unless you can demonstrate that you can handle statehood again. And no one wants that.
I've written on productive feminism before (1, 2), but this bears another mention. There is a cry going up to the heavens from hardcore feminist supporters who are saying they will not vote (or, incredibly, vote for McCain) out of anger about Senator Clinton's loss of the Democratic nomination:
The Obamabots are under the delusion that if Obama wins the nomination (which he hasn't yet, by the way), all of us in the Hillary camp will forget about the misogyny and come over to their side. Make nice for the sake of party unity. Forgive all the abuse.
Nope.
Several of us have tried over the past couple of months to explain why that won't happen, but the Obamabots don't seem to understand. And I know why: it's because they don't take sexism seriously. When women say we will not reward misogyny, we’re laughed off. The Obamabots just tell more jokes and hurl more insults and write more crass articles about how the little lay-dees have their little pan-tees in a twist.
While I can see why a feminist would be upset at general bias, Barack Obama was not the cause of that bias. In fact he made a point to tell her to stay in as long as she wanted to, emphasized their friendship in speeches, and never said anything to or of her that could be construed as sexist. He obviously didn't agree with all of her policy ideas, and many of her campaign tactics, but frankly that's what an election should be about anyway. So why blame him?
Moreover, he two candidates' stances on a wide variety of issues is very similar. If a feminist were to agree with Clinton's policy ideas and was not just voting for her because of her gender (which would in of itself be sexist), then he is the next-best candidate. If John McCain appoints judges to overturn Roe v. Wade as a result of a feminist boycott, well, you could press shirts with irony like that.
Not everyone who votes against Obama is a racist and not everyone who votes against Clinton is a sexist. Surely some people are! But to lump everyone together like that is counterproductive because it insults feminist allies. All of the falsely-accused will stop listening to reasonable feminists.
Finally, I wish they would consider the possibility that while there's certainly a LOT of misogyny that has been spewed, a lot of people really, honestly, just thought Obama was a better option on purely merit-based grounds.
If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don't care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I'll fly the plane myself.
- Thomas Frank
That basically summarizes my enthusiasm for both Obama and McCain, although it's looking more and more like Obama's the more practical option - at least he's mostly realistic about where the money comes from.
The Phoenix Suns' championship run begins in a few hours. Barack Obama has his shot at sewing up the Democratic nomination in the next few weeks. I'll be talking to my landlord about possibly setting up a rent-to-own for my first home. I'll be bringing my car back home and driving my own car for the first time since October, in preparation for the final stages of its restoration.
There is so much potential for joy in my life in May, it's ridiculous, and I have almost no control over any of it.
Regardless of whether or not he wins the Presidency, there is one thing I'm grateful to Barack Obama for. I'm finding out just how much I like or dislike America.
The America I love is full of idealism and grit. It's the nation that got to the Moon, and always acts with its heart in the right place (even when it screws up). It's the nation that faced its demons of segregation head-on and won. The America I love is one in which the determining factor in success is work, not wealth or birth or luck. It retains the almost fanatical Puritan work ethic that built the nation to begin with.
The America that I can't stand is willfully ignorant, judicial, and blames all its problems on other people. It thinks that torture is OK, that Muslims are all evil and crazy, and is so much quicker to judge than to think. It's the America that can't get through a non-fiction book, a movie that questions their world-view, or a speech that asks them to work for what they want. It's welfare-think; group-think; pundit-think.
I know that America is both sides, just as I'm both hard-working and lazy in turns and circumstances. Obama, because he says things as honestly as he can, exposes both sides. When confronted with the anger of his own pastor, he didn't run away; He used it as a metaphor for American Blacks writ large. The America I hate is willfully ignoring that anger and bristles at the thought that anyone could be angry at America - even when a black person is 8.2 times more likely to be in prison than a white person. At that rate, about one in three blacks would have done some jail time during their lifetime.
So much for land of the free.
And Obama took that head on, and, more bravely asked America to look at themselves and their own families for that kind of racism. As an example, he acknowledged his own grandmother as occasionally saying some strong stuff. People freaked out! Oh my God! That nigger called his grandma a racist!
It's so much easier to point a finger than to think about yourself and your own family in a critical light. I've heard an occasional slur out of my friends, family, and myself, although here in Arizona it's much more likely to be directed at a Mexican. Or maybe I look at someone differently, or cross a street earlier than planned. But unless you are looking, you won't find it.
More recently, he acknowledged another kind of anger, and again it was used to manufacture some outrage. He noted how communities in the Rust Belt have been struggling for decades, and that struggle leads to anger that the politicians' promises never materialize. That anger is expressed not in right-left politics, because after thirty years, they know that doesn't matter. So instead it's expressed in the more-polarized politics of God, guns, and gays. But Obama caught flak for this because he, again, pointed out that yes, people are angry.
It's easier to be outraged than thoughtful.
I love to hear people disagree with the policies he wants to implement. That takes thought and at least a basic understanding of policy in general. I hate to hear people ignore his pleas for self-criticism, and for acknowledging anger and real problems within the nation.
So Obama will tell me how much I like this nation. I try not to let the pundits tell me what the nation thinks - they can't help but color their thoughts with their own opinions - and I know there is a bit of both, but who is the majority? I am so afraid and hopeful.
As I blogged waaaay back in October '05, I have a European TV set that doesn't pick up TV signals and instead of a coaxial input, it has a SCART input. This total lack of functionality is good for me because I don't watch TV, but can still watch movies, 'cos it has RCA inputs).
In 2008, though, the U.S. is changing its broadcast TV to be digital. This means that analogue television sets will need converter boxes - and many of those boxes sport RCA outputs. Suddenly, the market is being flooded with cheap converter kits made just for me.
At the moment, my lack of broadcast TV is a blessing. It probably saves me a lot of time. I like just using it for watching the DVDs I have, which often are TV shows anyway I also have it attached to my computer for watching YouTube videos or, more recently, Obama's speeches and debates. Yes, partly I watch them on the TV because I'm a fan, but also because they're often 45 minutes or longer, and I'd rather sit on the couch for that.
Still, it would be nice to catch the occasional Suns game, now that the playoffs are coming up. And there are some good TV shows out there...
So, for all that angst I went through, and all the noise the Clinton campaign is making about momentum from their three (very narrow) wins over Obama last Tuesday in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island...
Obama came out ahead in the delegate count, by 4 delegates. How? Well, the margin of victory for Clinton on Tuesday was 4 delegates (out of 370, or 1%). But California modified its delegate count, reducing Clinton's share from 207 to 203, and Obama's from 163 to 167, an 8-delegate swing.
Which means that after Tuesday, Clinton actually is further behind Obama.
I am amused. I really hope that the Obama campaign picks up on this and uses it to deflate the 'momentum' bubble his opponent will try to float.
*FTL is Internet slang for "for the loss," which is derived from "for the win," (FTW) as in, "Here comes Steve Nash, shoots a three 'for the win' - yes!" - and is used any time someone is very awesome (Obama FTW), or very much a loser (Clinton FTL).
The skill involved in delivering hundreds and hundreds of speeches, without "um," or awkward pauses is tough enough. But the way he can do so with grace and, indeed, rhythm akin to music is unreal.
Not only is he able to deliver these messages in a beautiful way, but he also is delivering several thick books' worth of information in them - all memorized. He rarely looks at his notes. He doesn't even have notes in his interviews, but is able to deliver that same tone and nuance.
The most ridiculous example of this was during a recent interview on Cleveland TV. The interviewer first asks about NAFTA, and he debunks a rumor about his campaign. Then, he was asked to name two things he could do as President immediately (i.e., without Congress) after being sworn in. He could've said, "get out of Iraq," but instead he had a more nuanced response involving a meeting about the Chiefs of Staff. He also (admirably) wanted to tell his Attorney General to review every executive order to examine which are necessary for national security. Not breathless rhetoric about restoring American rights, but a thoughtful response about what he would do and how.
Then he gets a question about NASA. Incredibly, he had a finger on the nation's pulse: it's been stuck in place, needs to review its budget to make for more effective innovation, and starting to plan for manned flights deeper into space in order to grab the imagination of the people again.
His third question was easy enough, about whether there would be a divisive campaign between himself and McCain (he didn't think so).
Finally, he was asked about the basketball trade between Cleveland and Chicago, and he gave a pretty detailed analysis of the Chicago Bulls' and Cleveland Cavaliers' position in the NBA.
No "um," no awkward pauses, no notes, and no half-cooked answers. Why can't all politicians do this?
"At the end of the day, you want someone who knows what they're doing on day one"
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on MSNBC with Brian Williams, 12 Feb 08 (video).
"What he doesn't have is the old, you know the old Mondale: "what the beef?" What are the details, and what is it going to cost? Which I assume one day we'll learn."
Bob Dole on MSNBC with Brian Williams, 12 Feb 08 (video).
This is beginning to irritate me. When Barack Obama was initially criticized for having too much content, a tone too professorial. People have noticed his soaring rhetoric in the last six months not because nobody cared before, but because he didn't use it as much before. When he made the shift, the New York Times devoted an entire article about the shift to more pointed rhetoric.
I don't know why this is the case. Obama has posted an absurd amount of information on his campaign website. Take environmental and energy reform. Senator Obama's page has twenty pages in PDF format detailing environmental and energy reform, and several very specific plans to cap carbon emissions, solutions for green energy, and so on. Senator Clinton has a little less, and it's not as well-presented, but the plans are equally robust.
Thankfully, this is beginning to get some attention. Just a few days ago, Matt Yglesias (who's working for the Atlantic just like my favorite blogger Andrew Sullivan) posted a great rundown of why it's ridiculous, and Carpetbagger followed up, although I think he Googled the wrong thing: he should've been looking for all the Hillary proponents who parrot the meme.
On the other hand, John McCain's website has a video of his stances on the environment (great Republicans were environmentalists, his belief in global warming, his concern with China and India, and oil independence). These are sensible stances, and ones he shares with Obama. Compared to the Democratic side, it's paltry. Even on issues that McCain ought to have a world of information (such as national security), there are no numbers. His positions are clear, but the means to accomplish them are not. That's not to say McCain doesn't know or understand his own positions, but how am I as a voter supposed to find out, if he doesn't put it on his own website?
So John McCain has some work to do, if he's going to try to convince the American people that Obama truly is trying "to encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas [and offering] not a promise of hope, [but] a platitude," well, he better get his own ideas out there.
I'm going to be comparing and contrasting the two candidates (Clinton's toast, in my opinion) from time to time for a while.
In this post, I'm looking at character: the candidates' grounding in their beliefs and their general honesty and integrity.
I find this is a wash.
It's hard to criticize John McCain on character. He earned his way through the military, made a name for himself out of the shadow of his father, and what he did as a P.O.W. is impossible for myself and most other people to understand, even if it was thirty years ago. His reputation as a "maverick" isn't undeserved, and he has made a lot of stands with both sides of the aisle in Congress, and has angered the far-left as well as the far-right fairly regularly. He has also had a positive campaign.
Barack Obama's history is also almost impossible to criticize: he didn't have a lot going for him demographically (the child of a teen mom whose father left him), he worked hard, worked his way through Harvard and in a pretty dramatic way, declined the rich jobs as a high-time lawyer to work on the streets of Chicago.
John McCain should really be admired for his willingness to say in straightforward terms that he wants the Middle East to have the kind of American influence that we've had in Korea, Japan, and Germany (though, of course, not in Vietnam): 100 years of permanant bases. I don't think that's a realistic goal, but I have to say that his willingness to say something that he must've known he would be criticized for endlessly reflects well on his character.
Barack Obama is also keeping with that sort of honesty in an equally impressive manner, when he goes to Detroit to tell automakers to stop building terrible cars. He preached gay rights in a Southern Baptist church. That sort of thing is incredible, as well.
So I'll start this series saying that I can't be happier about the two parties' choices. I had made plans to leave the country, on the occasion that the nominations were to have gone to Hillary and Giuliani. Instead, I look forward to a tough but issues-centric campaign that ultimately will help Americans understand their own politics and nation better.
There are a lot of things that impress me about Barack Obama, but his desire to use technology to create transparency in government is one issue that truly does set him apart.
His campaign updates his YouTube channel about a half dozen times per day, often including in-depth interviews with promoters, footage of promotional stops, and many well-edited and mixed TV interviews. Hillary updates 3-5 times a week, mostly with ads and TV excerpts. I couldn't find an official John McCain outlet. His website includes community webware (think MySpace), and I'm sure helps the people within it organize more effectively.
So when he says that he wants to expand the workings of the first bill he passed as a congressman, his "Google for Government" program, to organize and make transparent the government's workings through technology, I believe him. That transparency can be seized upon by a concerned America, because the government isn't great at policing itself. Barack knows that.
In this way, his message is different from Hillary's: "We" versus "She." She wants to fix things. It's a noble sentiment. But Barack knows that no politician in Washington can fix the nation. WE have to do it, and we have to be enabled by political communities like on his website, and OnTheIssues.
There are other good examples of technology being used as part of sensible, positive change. He went to Detroit to insist that they change their technology (despite the tepid applause). He promised to help them by subsidizing R&D costs in exchange for progress and commitment from them and the American people. The Obama health care plan wants to streamline and digitize our medical records, most of which are inexplicably still on paper.
The lack of these credentials and ideas in the propositions and efforts on the part of the current administration (who prefers the destructive status quo), as well as that of McCain (who has no interest), and Clinton (who has no excuse, really).
Driftglass on why Obama's enthusiasm/inspiration matters in the practical affairs of politics:
People are willing to go to war for scraps of cloth called flags.
They are willing to die for scraps of wood called a cross.
And 70 years ago as their world fell apart, Americans were willing to give their hearts away to a horse.
A horse.
Because people are flesh and blood, not circuits and spreadsheets, and we need hope and inspiration every bit as much as we need 10-point programs.
Which unfortunately makes us go weak in the knees for saints and charlatans alike.
Maybe this not the way it should be, but it is the way it is, and as proud members of the Reality Based community we need to accommodate ourselves to the fact that human nature is a force every bit as real and formidable as gravity.
If you do not understand this, you will never understand politics.
I'm a graphic designer. So when I see this, it just makes me very happy. In fall, when the race starts heating up, I am gonna print these up (or maybe get some people in the Obama campaign to do it!).
The kind of man that can tell an Atlanta church to embrace homosexuals, the Detroit Autoworkers Union to stop making crappy cars, and the American people that they're part of the solution is a man I want to be President.
The kind of man with the foresight to realize that Iraq was going to be a disaster, not out of some naive optimism, but because he wanted to go after the people who'd actually attacked.
The kind of man that would help a competitor in a debate, even if it meant giving up the advantage.
The kind of man who proudly proclaims himself a Hopemonger, and says: "in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
The kind of man that inspires people from all places: poor men to pop stars, in the country, in the cities, and yes, Democrats and Republicans.
It used to be the people in power could pretty much sit back, have orgies and collect taxes until the Revolution came, and when it did they were treated to a quick death that sure beat syphilis.
Now, the best they can hope for is a blowjob and some kickbacks (although, the above is still true in parts of the Middle East, former parts of the USSR, and most of Africa).
The biggest reason for that is that in developed countries, the citizenry have raised the bar of expectations to levels a 13th-century serf couldn't have imagined: free education, good roads, and food regulations. More recently, free public health care and welfare programs have upped the ante substantially (to mixed success). The government is suddenly there for the common good! But it's not the easiest thing to get people to do what's good for them in the long term, or as a whole, when they can do stuff that benefits them in the short-term but hurts the group as a whole.
Take those ubiquitous little plastic shopping bags. About two thousand are made per second (42 billion per year), and a lot of them end up in landfills, but an awful lot end up in forests, streams and sewage systems. It's a little problem, on an individual scale, but when anything is multiplied by millions or billions, things get dicey. This is the kind of problem that governments are ideally suited to fix. Ireland has done a nice job in the way that a government knows best: action through taxes. It charged 33 cents per bag sold (a type of 'sin tax') and suddenly everyone uses cloth bags, putting the plastic bags in the category of social ills like not picking up your dog's poo.
This is how governments can do some real good very easily: appeal to the Capitalist system we use to make it profitable or in people's best interest to do the right thing. Obama wants to charge companies and power-plants for every pound of smog produced, and give the income to subsidize the companies that buck up and use more expensive, non-polluting means.
I've spent so much time messing with my computer, and under such stress while doing it, that my biceps are sore. I worried so intensely, I slept about four hours of the 72 between Saturday morning and Monday. I freaked out so bad, I gave myself a cold.
My computer basically forgot where Windows was. After backing up everything onto an external hard drive, I spent three days trying to install Vista. I failed; the RAID setup was impossibly screwed up.
Sean, who recently inherited my mantle as "friend who knows a lot about computers," came down to Tucson on Thursday for the SuperBowl to hang out with his friend Andy. He came down early to help me out. That day, the Spurs played the Suns, Obama debated Hillary, and I was praying to turn my $2000 paperweight into my means of doing my job again. I was pretty nervous on Thursday afternoon.
We completely disassembled the machine, used some isopropyl alcohol to clean every connector. We then put it all back together - Sean did a dynamite job with the wire cleanup - and fired it up. After a few hours' work, it was running.
The Suns lost a close but terrible game to the Spurs, Obama did very well in the debat, and my computer is running. Two out of three ain't bad.
It turns out that a particular Windows update killed Windows. Now everything is back, backed up several ways, and my only complaint is that working on this until 6 AM has messed up my sleep schedule. January, a hard month, is over. Super Tuesday is coming up in a few days. I feel like I hit the reset button on my own health and mental state.
In relation to my previous post on feminism, I wanted to point out the false feminism of Hillary Clinton (I'm obviously a big Obama supporter), but someone beat me to it in a more concise fashion:
If Hillary Clinton wins, her success will become a lesson in how women should achieve power: marry well; put up with any humiliations your husband throws at you, and then, maybe, if you fight dirty, and ask your husband to run your campaign, you might be able to ride his coattails to your “own” political success.
That basically sums it up. Actually, the article runs down a list of all of the reasons I like Obama over her that almost exactly mirrors my own. On the other hand, people like Faye Wattleton, who probably has done a lot for women in general and is the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation and current president of the Center for the Advancement of Women, actually seem to believe that this is progressive feminism:
"Well, I think that Bill Clinton's role is that of the spouses of all the candidates, he's participating as a surrogate for his wife who is running. And I think that its entirely consistent with the ascension of other women to the top offices in their country; they come about it as the result of the president being their spouse or being members of prominent families. So I don't think that we should be so upset and agitated about Mr. Clinton's participation..."
If that's her big draw, she should be nowhere near candidacy.
Upon reading this excellent article about the inverse relationship between legislative experience and presidential abilities, it struck me how short the paragraphs are. They're almost blog-like in length. I liked the article's content a great deal, but I thought it was very nicely readable as well. I've noticed that occasionally when media is transfered from print to Web, the longer paragraphs make things harder to read.
This begs the question whether paragraph lengths are, as a whole in well-educated writing, becoming shorter. A study done in 1992 (and therefore not aware of its significance vis a vis the Web) summarized:
[The study investigates] whether readers are aware of and have any preferences about paragraph length. Finds that readers are aware and have a more positive attitude toward writing with paragraphs of less than 100 words. Finds that paragraph length does not affect attitudes toward the expertise of the writer, ease of comprehension, or quality of the passage.
So there you go. I've been fretting over whether or not I sounded well-educated since I habitually use two- or three- sentence paragraphs, but apparently all that matters is that I need to have a complete point in each one. I also habitually use very long sentences extended by parentheticals, semicolon extensions and lists. I should stop that, but apparently the paragraphs are O.K.
So it seems that the more finely-chopped paragraphs seen most often in blogs will become more common. Long, meandering paragraphs that looked good (4 to 10 lines or so) in the printed page look so much more monolithic on the Web, where text is wrapped more often, so we'll see more breaks in paragraphs.
If shorter paragraphs mean more pointed logic, that's good, but if it means less useful information, I'm not sure this is a good thing. I fear the latter - we have enough sound-byte commentary as it is. A good example is that Hillary keeps crowing experience when she's not half as experienced as the people who are already out of the race; but people only know about the experience angle.
Though I'm not sure I like to admit how much Andrew Sullivan has to do with it, I've been pretty convinced that Barack Obama is my candidate of choice for President for quite a while now.
There's a lot of reasons:
- He recognizes the difference between being informed by his beliefs and creating a nation of Christian Values. - He recognizes that Health Care should be optional for people who already have it, want a private institution's health care, or just don't like being told what to do. - Hasn't changed one whit his notions about Iraq from the beginning, and yet doesn't oppose force when it's necessary. - Recognizes why Presidential power doesn't mean universal power.
There's a few things that concern me: - Like most Senators, was a bit of an absentee, even for issues that he really should've been voting on. - His ability to actually do the things he has promised.
So, I was listening/reading to the various speeches by the Iowa caucus nominees that matter (i.e., Obama, Huckabee, Clinton, Edwards, McCain).
Huckabee was very effacing, and had Chuck Norris smiling in the background (I had to watch it twice; I couldn’t stop staring). He didn’t start talking about actual talking points until halfway – but it was mostly themes of unification and optimism that, honestly, reflect Obama’s – even a few of the same phrases (“‘this is about ‘we’”). I was disappointed that he didn’t really talk at all about what he was going to do, and it bugs me a bit that Huckabee, who is staunchly anti-civil unions, quoted the “all men are created equal” line in the Declaration of Independence.
He’s a very good public speaker, but stumbled very slightly in spots. After watching someone like Obama, who hasn’t stumbled over more than 3 words in the dozens of speeches I’ve watched, those spots are amplified. Still, he is usually a thinking politician, clearly means what he says, and is genuinely interested in non-partisan, upward change. In the Era of YouTube, adroit public speaking is incredibly important, and I think it is why Ron Paul has trouble (he really does come across like an Of course, then again, Bush described himself as a “uniter,” and immediately divided the nation. I do like the fact that he ran a clean campaign (albeit very heavily religious) and did well despite being out-spent 15:1. He also managed to lose about 5 ounces of fat per day for a year, for what it’s worth.
Finally, he won a big chunk of my favor when he said this today on Larry King: “The federal government needs to operate like our campaign has. We only spend what we have. We don't borrow, we don't go into spending in deficits. Wouldn't it be refreshing if the federal government would do that rather than spend off into the future?”
McCain finished fourth, with 13%, but didn’t advertise or really work at Iowa at all. He congratulated Huckabee, and rightly recognized that his big chance is in New Hampshire, where he won the caucus for president in 2000 or 2004 (can’t remember which). The big story for him isn’t Iowa, though, it’s that he was OK with having troops in Iraq for 100 years, in the same way the we have troops in Japan, Korea, etc. He has a point, but among those who can’t wait to get out, that will be an issue.
Giuliani is toast. He had 1/5th the votes of Ron Paul, which is… extraordinarily terrible and though he didn’t really bother with the state, I hope it’s a sign he’s toast. The pro-war right should rally now behind McCain, who’d be a better man to occupy Iraq anyway.
Edwards’ speech was good as well, but I had to read it instead of see it, so I can’t comment on his eloquence. Only that is was a good speech that was a bit darker: he talked a lot about people in broken homes and tough spots – classic liberal sentiments, really, in that he felt a need to help the people who have no basic health care or no way to feed their own children.
Clinton’s speech basically said “Democrats are great! We need change!” and, frankly, I got the impression she was trying to equate a record turnout with a Democratic victory. That may end up being the case, but it’s weird saying that the Democrats won the Democratic caucus. While she was right when she said that “the people of America, and particularly Democrats, and like-minded independents and Republicans who have seen the light … understand, number one, that the stakes are huge,” that kind of statement is exactly the divisiveness for which she is reviled.
The night did belong to Obama, though, as far as speeches go. I’d talk about it, but I’d come across as starry-eyed: The reason I was inspired to even read or view the other candidates’ speeches was because I saw something in the Obama speech I’d never seen: Democrats cheering, chanting, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” I am so glad I saw that – Dems seem to have realized that that kind of vocal patriotism isn’t always trite. Conversely, Republicans should realize that that kind of vocal patriotism can be very trite indeed when it is treated the same was as being a sports fan.
A lot of pretty intense philosophical shuffling can be extracted from the Roadrunner and Coyote, in a similar vein as the classic the Tao of Pooh, which my Mom (a devout Catholic) had me read. In particular, comparisons to Sisyphus seem accurate.
Despite all that, my favorite part of the dialog is where Chaos Theory and multiverses are brought in to explain cartoon physics:
It is possible that technology does not work in Mr. Coyote's universe in the same way it works in ours. First of all, what is known of Mr. Coyote is only third person speculation on a multiverse. It his particular multiverse there is a mysterious fifth force of weak horizontal gravity. This mysterious mechanism exerts a force on falling bodies horizontal to the plane of a strong gravitational force, such as the Earth. In this multiverse, were Galaleo to throw a cannonball off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the cannonball would first move horizontal to the Earth, hover for a few seconds contemplating its peril, then fall rapidly to the ground due to the strong gravitational force.
It is entirely possible that this weak horizontal gravitational force has a seemingly random interaction with technology that we are not quite able to understand.
So let's stretch the metaphor to the breaking point through philosophy, into political theory and possibly out my derrière: I hope that, if/when the Democrats get a president elected (hopefully Obama), they don't have a Coyote moment: They always wanted it, but now what?
Fox News - pinnacle of slanted journalism - has a story about how Senator Obama's pastor is black, unhinged, racist, black, not truly Christian, not truly white, and also, he's black.
Especially, they were really worried about Obama because his pastor had used a dirty word when talking to his inner-city congregation, and how they might find it easier to find God through their poverty and minority status.
Then, they pulled out this gem:
"If Barack Obama has really submitted himself to his church like he’s claimed, why does he have a different expression of faith from his own pastor?" asks Anthony Bradley, theologian and research fellow at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich.
OHNOES! Senator Obama is committing the Deadliest Sin: disagreeing with his leader. The Conservatives must be reeling in horror.
It's becoming very difficult for me to stop liking Mr. Obama. He's erudite, poised, and even has some well-reasoned, level-headed policy.
I told myself I would investigate each candidate, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to bother, as I have major, grating issues with all of them except one.
But I will keep watchin' YouTube of Hillary, Guliani, et al., just to be sure. But I'll probably watch it with grating teeth.
Name: Steve Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think. See my complete profile
