Archive for the ‘Obama’ Category
Have you heard about McCain’s new ad? It’s on his main page, though there seems to be no way to direct-link to it. Somewhat bizarrely, it starts off with video of throngs of cheering Obama supporters, and calls him the biggest celebrity in the world, flashing images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. (By the way, Paris Hilton apparently had no knowledge she was being used in the ad; using one’s likeness in commercials is generally illegal, though I have no clue if political campaigns are exempted.)
It then goes on to say, “But is he ready to lead?,” before attacking Obama for opposing offshore drilling (I’ll save that rant for another time), but, more significantly, talks about his plan to raise taxes on electricity. Yipes, that’s bad! Raising taxes now? On electricity?!
There’s one problem, though. It’s not at all true.
Newsweek has a good article explaining where McCain’s campaign got the quote about Obama wanting to raise taxes on electricity. In an interview, he was asked, “Have you considered other funding sources, say taxing emerging energy forms, for example, say a penny per kilowatt hour on wind energy?” You can read the quote for yourself, but his answer was essentially that taxing renewable energy was an awful idea; taxing ‘dirty’ energy would make more sense, but even that isn’t the real solution to funding education. And yet, if you quote just one sentence from the middle with no context, you can make it seem like he’s saying that we need to raise taxes on electricity. Except that he was making the exact opposite point.
When Obama’s campaign criticized the ad as baseless FUD, McCain then went on to accuse Obama of “playing the race card.”
I keep hearing people on the right reiterating that “the surge worked,” so that withdrawing from Iraq would be surrendering. To me, this is a non sequitur.
First of all, there’s the simple question of why we’re at war. We went in as a pre-emptive strike against Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. We took him out, and although we never did find evidence to support that he was building up his WMD arsenal, we did take out a cruel tryant. I’m a little unclear why we’re still there: the Iraqi threat has been neutralized, and Iraq’s got a sovereign government in place. Al Queda keeps coming to try to attack our troops, but the fact that our troops have become targets is hardly a reason to stay in Iraq.
Now here’s the thing! If the Iraqi government wants us to stay, I’m all for allowing our volunteer troops to keep helping them. But it’s being widely reported that they want us out. While I trust this was an unfortunate accident, it suggests that Iraq has wanted us to leave for some time: “It also bolstered calls from Iraqi politicians to pressure the American military to leave Iraq after this year, when a United Nations mandate expires, unless the United States agrees to permit its soldiers to be subject to criminal prosecution under Iraqi law for attacks on civilians.”
I’d ask: if we’re at war, who are we at war with? It’s the Iraq War, but we’re supposed to be helping Iraq. We’ve taken out Saddam, and most of the violence is directed at our troops: staying in Iraq isn’t going to fix anything.
It’s not “surrendering” or “giving up” to recognize that you achieved your goal a long time ago, and that all you’re doing now is making things worse. It sounds great to try to attack your opponent for that, but it’s simply not true.
Rapper Nas has a new song, Black President [obscene lyrics, NSFW]. I don’t give it high marks musically, but it’s interesting to me for two reasons. The first is that rap music actually addressing contemporary issues is rare. (Though it’s not entirely unheard of: Changes, for example.) The seconds is that the song is about Obama.
As I said, don’t set your standards too high if you listen to it, and don’t even waste your time watching the video, which seems to just be a montage of images of Nas. Do take care to read the lyrics carefully: a lot of people seem to miss the leading “They said…” and interpret the song as being against Obama. And the “Although it seems heaven-sent, we ain’t ready to see a black President” is actually from Tupac’s Changes, not an assertion that Nas is making.
What troubles me about the song:
Whats the black pres thinking on election night,
Is it how can i protect my life? Protect my wife? Protect my rights?
…
KKK is like what the f—, loading they guns up, loading up mine too,
Ready to ride ’cause I’m riding with my crew, he dies we die too
I read an article a while ago, citing absolutely no evidence, saying that there’s a persistent belief among African-Americans that Obama would be assassinated if elected. Hillary played into it, too, if inadvertently, both when some speaker in NH at a campaign event made a comment to the effect of, “Some have compared Obama to JFK, but let’s not forget what happened to him” (which Hillary denounced), but also when she said the same thing about Bobby Kennedy to explain why she was staying the race when it was clear she couldn’t win. It’s creepy how often it comes up, and then you add in the creepy amount of parallels to Lincoln…
And I find this snippet interesting, too:
Gotta do what we gotta do,
We ain’t got no governors comin’ through to help,
Anything we need, we gotta do for self,
New improved JFK on the way…
You may recall Kanye West’s spontaneous George Bush doesn’t care about black people remark during a Red Cross fundraiser, which then led to the (highly profane, thus NSFW) video, George Bush Don’t Like Black People song. While I’m not necessarily supporting the claim that Bush was overtly racist, I think it’s historically significant: not only was the whole Katrina event horribly mismanaged (the lyrics to the song include, “If it’d had been Connecticut, he’d have been there twice as fast”), but the whole deal with shooting looters (who were inevitably black) makes it entirely understandable that African-Americans may have felt a tad bit alienated.
Again, I’m hardly in agreement with everything put forth in the song, but I think it’s culturally significant. It’s not an advertisement or a campaign song, but just his perspective on the state of affairs. And I think it was interesting to look at.
Do you guys recall Obama’s “fist bump” with his wife when he clinched the nomination? It was a big hit with younger Obama fans.
It was not a big fan with E.D. Hill, a Fox News anchor who called it a “terrorist fist jab,” as I was just reading about. That’s not the real concern, though. I just rolled my eyes at that.
What really concerns me is the “news contributor” Liz Trotta who suggested that Obama should be assassinated.
Are you serious?! How the hell is that acceptable? Can you imagine how outaged everyone would be if a CNN anchor joked that someone should shoot McCain? It would be incredibly inappropriate.
The last paper I ever wrote in college was for my Power and Propaganda course, and addressed the propaganda being hurled against Obama. One thing I addressed was that many of the criticisms of him were blatant lies. It’d be like if I started posting here that John McCain said, “Thank God for the Nazis!” and President Bush met with McCain and used “the N-word” to refer to Obama. Total fabrications as part of a smear campaign.
The problem is that they work. I’m going from memory, but if memory serves me correctly, 13% of people in a recent poll said that they thought Obama was a Muslim. Soon it was being reported that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran, too. Of course, the Muslim rumors would soon be contradicted by trying to label him racist because his pastor said some crazy things, and the fact that he was sworn in on the Qu’ran would be refuted by photographs showing him with his hand on the Bible when being sworn in.
There was also the big row over the photograph of him “refusing to say the pledge,” with some versions of the chain letter or website alleging that he refuses to do it for religion reasons; one even said that he didn’t know the words. In actuality, Obama was singing the national anthem, as a video of the event shows.
There’s another one about him hiding his birth certificate because he’s not actually a citizen. (If you want to get technical, John McCain is the one who wasn’t born in the US… Though it’d be asinine to argue that he’s not a US citizen because he was born on a US military base.)
The Obama campaign has finally launched Fight the Smears, a page refuting the utter falsehoods against him. The latest one seems to be alleging a videotape of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey.” Frankly, I could see this being done in a non-racist manner, but it’s a moot point, because none of the <sarcasm>reputable</sarcasm> sources claiming to have seen / possessing the tape have released it, and because one person has some pointed allegations of exactly where the tape was filmed, most of which seem fabricated.
It’s totally cool with me if you’d prefer to vote for McCain. (Well, I’d still disagree, but I’d at least respect that you had a rational difference of opinion.) Obama isn’t a Muslim, terrorist, or unpatriotic. John McCain isn’t a rapist and he doesn’t eat babies for breakfast. In a time when the truth is so sorely missing, can we please try to stick to reality this election?
While looking at job postings on Craiglist, I somehow ended up at Craig Newmark’s personal blog. (He founded Craigslist.) He linked to this YouTube video.
For some reason I’m reminded of Hillary’s tall tale of ducking sniper fire. I respect McCain as a decorated soldier and a Senator who understands bipartanship, but after eight years of the Commander in Chief misleading* us about Iraq, I’d really prefer to not elect a president who will do more of the same.
* Whether it was intentional lies or him being fed false information I’m not sure, but either way, we were misled.
Ed.: Because the blogs have been slow, and because this is a hot topic, I’ve fudged the date on this to appear to have been published two days later, so it will stay on the main page a bit longer.
It looks like Obama is the Democratic nominee, while Hillary Clinton, the woman who has twice alluded to Obama being assassinated (okay, the first time was a speaker at her event, not her), has conceded that she’d be open to running as his VP.
I’d be happier with an Obama-Richardson ticket, but people are calling Obama-Clinton the fastest way to try to heal the wounds this election cycle saw. In her defense, if she doesn’t get him assassinated, she’d make an excellent VP.
Needless to say, I’ll be watching the news tonight for what may be two very historic speeches: Obama’s victory speech and Hillary’s concession speech. (It seems like it was just weeks ago that Obama gave his “concession speech” that was anything but a concession speech, in New Hampshire, which led to the Yes We Can Song.)
The AP story is hot off the press, and many MSM outlets aren’t carrying it yet. Whether that’s because the polls don’t close for two hours, because it’s not factual, or just because MSM isn’t as obsessed with checking Google News as I am remains to be seen.
Update: It seems that Hillary hasn’t conceded quite yet. Honestly, I’m not sure how the AP is so sure that Obama’s won yet.
Update 2: USA Today has a good piece suggesting that, while Obama might do it tonight, it’s still about 30 delegates premature. And they also have this good article on exactly how the AP story was put together.
Update 3: You can follow the whole Google News thread.
Rusty and I were just talking about the recent decision by the Democratic party and how we’re going to count delegates from the two states, which has left both sides somewhat unhappy.
But then we kind of realized that no one is talking about the real issues? I don’t particularly care how we seat delegates. The whole system sucks, and I hope after 2008 is over we can overhaul the way the DNC works. And I kind of had an epiphany: I feel like I’m trapped in this country, a faded emblem that used to be a beacon of prosperity and freedom.
Let’s talk about some things that actually matter.
- I paid $53 to put gas in my car yesterday. It’s increasingly tempting to get a hybrid, but they’re in short supply. Not because they’re in high demand (though they are), but because not many are produced. American auto’s only hybrid seems to be the Ford Escape hybrid. (I refuse to count GMC’s “greenest” SUV that gets 20MPG.) A question on Ask MetaFilter today called my attention to the fact that they’re basically impossible to get, with the dealer he went to telling him flat-out that they wouldn’t order one for him. BTW, Ford just announced a $3 billion plant in Mexico.
- We are the only civilized country in the world that doesn’t have universal health care. Americans are running into massive debt because they got sick. The typical response, beneath it all, seems to be a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that if you get cancer and go bankrupt paying for your treatment, it sucks to be you. Attempts to reform the system are consistently subverted by cries of “socialized medicine” without ever presenting a legitimate claim, just the catch phrase? (And there’s a good point to be made about how this is costing us huge money in less-obvious areas.)
- If you come to see homosexuality as something that isn’t ‘wrong’ or ‘bad,’ opposition to gay marriage seems appallingly bigoted. I really don’t think opposing gay marriage is any different than opposing interracial marriage.
- College is $40,000 a year. Schools throughout our country are failing. To quote, well, everyone, No Child Left Behind has left plenty of people behind.
- Veterans are returning home and getting next to no support, or staying in ramshackle hospitals. Support our troops! Anyone? Those who oppose sending young Americans—my peers; people I went to school with; maybe me if I was born into a different family—to die in someone else’s civil war are branded as unpatriotic and not supporting our troops by the same people who can’t be bothered to waste money caring for our returning soldiers?
- The United States economy is tanking. It probably has something to do with the fact that our schools are being surpassed by countries around the globe, that our post-9/11 xenophobia has resulted in immigration policies forcing college students who come here from abroad to leave our country, and that our health care costs are through the roof.
The thing is, I really love this country. But all around me I see signs of our great nation crumbling. At times I almost feel trapped. Can we please stop focusing on the things Republicans and Democrats disagree on, and instead work on getting things done? We all love America, want our troops to be cared for, want our schools to be the best, want to get treated in hospitals, and want our economy to thrive. Working with two parties seems to keep us from ever getting anything done, because all we can ever do is disagree. But why does it have to be that way? We all want the same things deep down. Can’t we take our different viewpoints and use them to our advantage, crafting solutions that appease both of us?
I used to have a great deal of respect for Bill Clinton. Sure, the Monica Lewinksy scandal wasn’t so great, and I was pretty peeved at how many people he pardoned on his way out. But overall, I thought he did a good job, and his continuing work on charitable causes painted a picture of a man who truly cares about helping the world.
The more he campaigns for his wife, the more I think he’s a loose cannon who may have developed mad cow. Besides all the occasions of him flipping out, this news article (with a ludicrously long URL) says it all. His Sunday speech in South Dakota accused the media of some sort of vast conspiracy against his wife, and suggested that McCain will win if Hillary isn’t nominated. (Which is odd since most polls I’ve seen suggest the opposite: we need Obama if we’re going to beat McCain.
I also used to think it was premature and tasteless to try to suggest that she had to withdraw from the campaign. I’d have loved to have seen her withdraw and give her approval to Obama, but I thought it was inappropriate for people to call her to do so. But there are increasing calls for her to do just that, and I think the time has come. Unless she finishes big in June, she’s going to seal her fate, and it’s important that she, as the linked article says, withdraws while she still has some dignity left. Between her husband’s increasingly paranoid-sounding angry speeches, and her comment about Bobby Kennedy being killed*, which still hasn’t blown over, she’s already attracting a lot of negative sentiment, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better. I can’t find the link, but a few vocal people in New York are suggesting that, if/when she loses and goes back to being a Senator, she’s going to have a lot of wounds to heal first.
As Wikipedians would say, it’s time for her to withdraw under WP:SNOW. Wait until the next round of elections, but if she doesn’t finish big, it’s time she gracefully withdraws and urges her followers to cut out the business of promising to vote for McCain if she doesn’t get the nomination. Otherwise, she’s going to fracture the Democratic party, humiliate herself, put John McCain in office, and be hated for 20 years.
* While campaigning in New Hampshire, someone speaking at an event before she arrived said something to the effect of, “Some have compared Obama to JFK… But let’s not forget what happened to him.” Hillary seemed to be genuinely horrified when she was told about the remark, but still… Double references to Kennedys being killed, both times insinuating that the same might just happen to Obama…?
…I’d try to arrange a meeting of all the major candidates, in front of the media, where we all pledge to stop this crap. (Obama himself commented that he knew Hillary meant nothing negative, but that after such intense campaigning, he knew exactly what it was like to slip up and say something that sounds really bad but wasn’t what you meant.)
