Election 2008

[bjorn_skurj]

This, I

[Sir Stewart]

Popular News What Patrick Stewart does for fun

[bjorn_skurj]

Popular News What Patrick Stewart does for fun

With that 'stache, he kinda looks like G. Gordon Liddy.

[mountain bed]

With that 'stache, he kinda looks like G. Gordon Liddy.

That was my thought too.

[Beltmann]

Bill Kristol makes my point from before a bit better than I did. (Shit. Am I becoming a Conservative?)

 

The Mask Slips

By WILLIAM KRISTOL

I read Kristol's piece earlier this afternoon and thought it was (as usual) poor punditry--he makes an astonishing number of specious assumptions in his attempt to extract as much poison as he can out of a few sentences spoken by Obama. Frankly, Kristol's ascriptions and conclusions strike me as a form of wide-eyed hysteria.

 

Earlier I also read this piece by a reporter who was in the room in San Francisco:

 

I Was There: What Obama Really Said About Pennsylvania

By DAVID COLEMAN

 

Last Sunday evening I attended the San Francisco fundraiser that has been the center of recent political jousting. The next day, when asked about the talk Obama delivered, I too commented about his answer to a question he was asked about Pennsylvania. Over the past week, though, I have had a Rashomon-like experience concerning those remarks.

 

Clinton, McCain, and media pundits have parsed a blogger's audio tape of Obama's remarks and criticized a sentence or two characterizing some parts of Pennsylvania and the attitudes of some Pennsylvanians. In context and in person, Senator Obama's remarks about Pennsylvania voters left an impression diametrically opposed to that being trumpeted by his competitor's campaigns.

 

At the end of Obama's remarks standing between two rooms of guests -- the fourth appearance in California after traveling earlier in the day from Montana -- a questioner asked, "some of us are going to Pennsylvania to campaign for you. What should we be telling the voters we encounter?"

 

Obama's response to the questioner was that there are many, many different sections in Pennsylvania comprised of a range of racial, geographic, class, and economic groupings from Appalachia to Philadelphia. So there was not one thing to say to such diverse constituencies in Pennsylvania. But having said that, Obama went on say that his campaign staff in Pennsylvania could provide the questioner (an imminent Pennsylvania volunteer) with all the talking points he needed. But Obama cautioned that such talking points were really not what should be stressed with Pennsylvania voters.

 

Instead he urged the volunteer to tell Pennsylvania voters he encountered that Obama's campaign is about something more than programs and talking points. It was at this point that Obama began to talk about addressing the bitter feelings that many in some rural communities in Pennsylvania have about being brushed aside in the wake of the global economy. Senator Obama appeared to theorize, perhaps improvidently given the coverage this week, that some of the people in those communities take refuge in political concerns about guns, religion and immigration. But what has not so far been reported is that those statements preceded and were joined with additional observations that black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer "relevant" in the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in destructive behavior. Unlike the week's commentators who have seized upon the remarks about "bitter feelings" in some depressed communities in Pennsylvania, I gleaned a different meaning from the entire answer.

 

First, I noted immediately how dismissive his answer had been about "talking points" and ten point programs and how he used the question to urge the future volunteer to put forward a larger message central to his campaign. That pivot, I thought, was remarkable and unique. Rather than his seizing the opportunity to recite stump-worn talking points at that time to the audience -- as I believe Senator Clinton, Senator McCain and most other more conventional (or more disciplined) politicians at such an appearance might do -- Senator Obama took a different political course in that moment, one that symbolizes important differences about his candidacy.

 

The response that followed sounded unscripted, in the moment, as if he were really trying to answer a question with intelligent conversation that explained more about what was going on in the Pennsylvania communities than what was germane to his political agenda. I had never heard him or any politician ever give such insightful, analytical responses. The statements were neither didactic nor contrived to convince. They were simply hypotheses (not unlike the kind made by de Tocqueville three centuries ago ) offered by an observer familiar with American communities. And that kind of thoughtfulness was quite unexpected in the middle of a political event. In my view, the way he answered the question was more important than the sociological accuracy or the cause and effect hypotheses contained in the answer. It was a moment of authenticity demonstrating informed intelligence, and the speaker's desire to have the audience join him in a deeper understanding of American politics.

 

There has been little or no reaction to the part of the answer that was addressed to the hopelessness of inner city youth who have been rendered "irrelevant" to the global economy. No one has seized upon those words as "talking down" to the inner city youth whose plight he was addressing. If extracted from an audio tape HuffPost Blogger Fowler, those remarks could (and may yet) be taken out of context as "Obama excuses alienation and violence by urban youth." But in context, Senator Obama's response sounded like empathetic conclusions and opinions of a keen observer: more like Margaret Mead than Machiavelli.

 

As the week's firestorm evolved over these remarks at which I was an accidental observer, I have reflected upon the regrettable irony that has emerged from Senator Obama's response to a friendly question: no good effort at intelligent analysis, candor -- and what I heard as an attempt to convey a profound understanding of both what people feel and why they feel it - goes unpunished. Such insights by a political candidate might otherwise be valued. In a national campaign subject to opposition research, his analytical musing has instead created an immense amount of political flak.

 

Now and "in this time," to invoke one of the candidate's favorite riffs, such observations and remarks shared among supporters are just a push of a record button on a tape recorder away from being spread across the internet to be dissected by political nabobs. What struck me immediately after the fundraiser as so refreshing turned out to be a moment Senator Obama is forced to regret. Today we marvel at de Tocqueville insights about American communities. Apparently, such commentary is valued as long as it is three centuries old and doesn't come from the mouth of a contemporary observer who might be elected president.

 

EDIT: Sorry about that long quote. Didn't realize it was quite so long.

[H-Bomb Henry]

Obama didn't just hit the nail on the head he buried it.

 

I choked on my cereal this morning when I came across this picture in the paper.

 

Hillary chugs with the working man

[bjorn_skurj]

Earlier I also read this piece by a reporter who was in the room in San Francisco:

 

 

 

EDIT: Sorry about that long quote. Didn't realize it was quite so long.

I dunno. Guess it's all in the eye and the ear of the beholder. As a journalist, I am bound by custom to distrust all politicians, but I'll still vote for the guy.

[Good Old Neon]

I choked on my cereal this morning when I came across this picture in the paper.

 

Hillary chugs with the working man

 

Shit like that is far more nauseating and condescending and insulting than anything Obama had to say. I love how her back is turned towards the actual “voters” - who, if my eyesight is still decent, look as though they’d rather just go back to enjoying their drinks in peace.

 

It’s a shame no one under 18 is allowed in bars - Hillary holding/kissing a baby while standing in front of a flag would have been the icing on the cake.

[Good Old Neon]

I dunno. Guess it's all in the eye and the ear of the beholder. As a journalist, I am bound by custom to distrust all politicians, but I'll still vote for the guy.

 

Well then please, in all seriousness, do what you can to get this out there - from Salon.com:

 

Radio silence on Bush's torture admission

 

ABC News reported a few days ago that a group of so-called Principals -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice -- met dozens of times in the White House to "discuss and approve" specific interrogation techniques to be used against suspected terrorists.

 

Initial reports indicated that Bush was "insulated" from the "series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved." Bush eventually dispelled the notion that he was out of the loop, though, and said -- arguably, bragged -- that he endorsed the Principals' work from the outset. The president told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz, "I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

 

I realize that Barack Obama's making some clumsy comments about economic blight and the culture war may be mildly interesting, but this is a fairly big deal. Torture is, you know, illegal, immoral, un-American, etc. As Dan Froomkin noted today, "If you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according to U.S. and international law, Bush's statement shifts his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy to commit."

 

And yet, major news outlets have decided not to bother mentioning these revelations to the public at all. Froomkin observed, "There was no mention of Bush's admission in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC."

 

Post Script: On a related note, a journalist at the Associated Press' national conference today asked John McCain about torturing detainees, saying, "Don't we stand for something better?" McCain responded:

 

"I've made it very clear, I've made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act.... And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding."

 

Well, there's a bold declaration from Mr. Straight Talk. He does not believe that the U.S. government should torture U.S. citizens. What a relief.

[MattZ]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington...flagpinlap.html

 

This is not good if you are a Dem. Although I suppose some RNC folks are licking their chops right about now.

 

EDIT: I hate when people post links without a hint... Basically, Obama has gone back to wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

[EL the Famous]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington...flagpinlap.html

 

This is not good if you are a Dem. Although I suppose some RNC folks are licking their chops right about now.

 

EDIT: I hate when people post links without a hint... Basically, Obama has gone back to wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

 

i'm trying to figure why this is 'not good'.

[bjorn_skurj]

i'm trying to figure why this is 'not good'.

At some point, some second-tier conservative commentator will accuse Barack of "flip-flopping" on the lapel pin issue. If we must extend our reasoning in this direction, we can theorize that his change of heart on the issue indicates that he has no real commitment to that particular symbolic act of patriotism. That suspicion further makes him suspect to the embittered who cling to religion, guns, patriotism and economic protectionism.

[Sir Stewart]

OMG you said bitter!

[EL the Famous]

the fact that it was given to him by a disabled veteran is of no creedence? besides, it's a fucking lapel pin.

[myboyblue]

That son of a cocksucker better be displaying at least two of these on his bumper:

 

[bjorn_skurj]

the fact that it was given to him by a disabled veteran is of no creedence? besides, it's a fucking lapel pin.

Sure, it's a ridiculous issue. I assure you, it won't affect my vote. But the only way for Obama to have avoided this altogether was to have worn a lapel pin, if not from birth, at least as far back as when he was at the madrassa. Did he wear one when he was an Illinois state senator?

[EL the Famous]

the all-important 'bhs bruin' vote.

 

Sure, it's a ridiculous issue. I assure you, it won't affect my vote. But the only way for Obama to have avoided this altogether was to have worn a lapel pin, if not from birth, at least as far back as when he was at the madrassa. Did he wear one when he was an Illinois state senator?

 

i have no clue whatsoever...i can't get past the fact that he's black.

[MattZ]

i'm trying to figure why this is 'not good'.

 

I could have been more clear. What I meant is basically what bjorn said. It's a total nonissue in my mind too, but I have a feeling certain folks will make it an issue of flipflopping. As ridiculous as that sounds.

[LouieB]

The only time folks like Bill and/or the vast majority of political candidates get down with the people is when they condescendingly visit local diners in search of votes.

I love local diners....I should run fer president....

 

I also hang out with drinkers and smokers, even though I don't smoke or drink....

 

LouieB

[ikol]

i have no clue whatsoever...i can't get past the fact that he's black.

 

That's because you're a "typical white person."

[Beltmann]

I could have been more clear. What I meant is basically what bjorn said. It's a total nonissue in my mind too, but I have a feeling certain folks will make it an issue of flipflopping. As ridiculous as that sounds.

You just called a whole segment of Americans ridiculous, you condescending elitist.

 

The thing with the lapel pin is that Obama didn't say he would never wear one; he only stopped when wearing one started to feel like an empty gesture (as opposed to, you know, actually living like a patriot). In this instance, he wore it because the gift from the veteran meant something more to Obama than just empty patriotism. If Republicans call that inconsistent, it would say nothing about Obama, but volumes about their own inability to recognize distinctions.

[tugmoose]

If a pin decides this election, then we'll get what we deserve, just like in '04. This is the kind of stuff you worry about when things are going great, or when things are going so bad you don't know where to start.

[jc4prez]

Caught Ralph Nader in Chicago last night. Great speech. Spoke mostly to the issue of regaining power from the corporations and community organization.

 

 

If your at all intrested his running mate (Matt Gonzalez) was on democracy now this morning, i haven't had a chance to listen yet but here is the link:

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/17/nade...att_gonzalez_on

 

 

ETA: Thought I should also mention that he spoke quite a bit about solar power and marketing to children. When i came home i read up on Ralph's Commercial Alert organization which can be found here http://www.commercialalert.org/ ; democrat, republican or independent the issues addressed on this site are extremely important.

 

One of the most interesting things on there was this http://www.commercialalert.org/pbor.pdf the parents bill of rights; if any of you have children I highly suggest giving this a glance.

[Good Old Neon]

Caught Ralph Nader in Chicago last night. Great speech. Spoke mostly to the issue of regaining power from the corporations and community organization.

 

 

If your at all intrested his running mate (Matt Gonzalez) was on democracy now this morning, i haven't had a chance to listen yet but here is the link:

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/17/nade...att_gonzalez_on

 

 

ETA: Thought I should also mention that he spoke quite a bit about solar power and marketing to children. When i came home i read up on Ralph's Commercial Alert organization which can be found here http://www.commercialalert.org/ ; democrat, republican or independent the issues addressed on this site are extremely important.

 

One of the most interesting things on there was this http://www.commercialalert.org/pbor.pdf the parents bill of rights; if any of you have children I highly suggest giving this a glance.

 

I

[jc4prez]

I