Change I believe in

Barack Obama addressed the wide distaste for government -- and the fact
that he and John McCain are running against Washington -- at the forum on
national service at Columbia University.

"Our campaign from the beginning has been about changing government," he
said, recalling some great accomplishments of American government: Civil rights
legislation, the interstate highway system, and the National Park
system.
Obama would, he said, "transform Washington" and "make
government cool again".

There has been a distinct lack of coolness at all levels of government for at least the last 230 years. Thank god Obama has decided to take on this pressing issue! Many have tried, and failed but they were probably not cool enough for the task at hand.

I can only hope that when Obama's done changing our current uncool government into a cool government I will be cooler by association.

Ruh Roh

(Is his emo/hippy army scaring donors away?)

Obama’s decision to be the first candidate to ever turn down public financing may turn out to be a huge strategic blunder.

Pushing a fund-raiser later this month, a finance staff member sent a sharply
worded note last week to Illinois members of its national finance committee,
calling their recent efforts “extremely anemic.”

At a convention-week meeting in Denver of the campaign’s top fund-raisers, buttons with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up...

But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.

A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C. The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it
raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and
finished with just $13 million in the bank.

Could this be why he’s now gone back on his pledge against coordinating with 527 groups?

Update: Obama has record $66 million dollar August! But only nets about 16% of that.

I realize he had his convention in August but a lot of that was covered by the DNC. What on earth is he doing to burn through 50 mil in a month? I didn’t think emo’s cost that much? Do they?

Time to pass the hat.

The Real Sullivan

You would think someone who was publicly outed as an aficionado of unprotected gay group sex with complete strangers and proceeded to present himself as a victim of “Sexual McCarthyism” would have some qualms about being party to exposing someone else’s (particularly a child’s) embarrassing private sexual affairs.

Nope.

This speaks volumes about his character not to mention his judgment/intellect for letting this rumor pass through his BS filter.

What a douche.

The Speech

I watched a good deal of Obama’s big speech last night and have to say I was generally impressed. I was skeptical about whether the venue would work but it turned out to be pretty spectacular. I liked the bits about “trimming unnecessary government programs”.

The one line I thought was particularly cringe-worthy was Obama’s suggestion that if people are questioning whether his judgment is suitable for the presidency “he’ll take that debate”.

Well to date he’s clearly done the opposite. He’s rejected all but the minimum 3 debates (and the idiotic Rick Warren faith “debate”) this fall, his campaign has threatened boycotts of TV stations airing critical ads, his campaign is attempting to silence a 527 through the justice department, his campaign recently instructed supporters to interfere with a Chicago radio station interviewing a researcher looking Obama’s chairmanship of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

To date when challenged Obama has not responded with anything resembling a “debate” but instead has resorted to litigation and bullying tactics.

Maybe Michael Klonsky taught him too well.

The Lightworker

Pray to him*:



Here (4:48):


*Prayers are apparently most effective when using the Cher effect.

Obamanomics

Well this clarifies things:

If you talk to Warren [Buffet], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle
in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute
it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re
achieving equity on the back end.” He continued by saying that he thought there
was some merit in Buffett’s argument.

Antioch

Living up to type:

To bad the man did this:

Greatest...show...ever

Obama's in this for Obama

Here’s a pretty good breakdown of this NYTimes summary of Obama’s professorship at the University of Chicago by a current law professor at UW Madison.

The take-away sentence:
Obama either sought to avoid making a record of what he thought or he actually lacked opinions.

Obama may actually have an ideology but it's unlikely we’ll never see it. Instead we'll get months (or years!) of the political equivalent of the color beige; reasonable sounding reasonableness coated in illiterative prose and preachers cadence.

Ideas are apparently secondary to Obama's long held political apirations.

Auditory Allusion

Nope, it's not a quote from either of our presidential candidates. It's something I've never heard before.

Listen to the included clip a few times in a row. It's what's called a Shepards Tone. "A tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower."

Weird and awesome at the same time.

Speaking of which, I'll be in Indiana on Wednesday. We land at 9:40 am and purchase a sampling the best tamales in the world shortly thereafter.

Hat tip: Boing-Boing

Does pandering even matter?

During the ‘04 campaign I remember a lot of sympathetic media lamenting how damaging charges of “flip-flopping” were to Kerry; that the differences in position changes were actually small, that his words were taken out of context, that “everyone does it” and that his position changes suggested an “open mind”. I recall thinking that if this line of thought was taken to its logical conclusion the necessity for having an executive branch may have passed and that governance through referenda may ultimately be what people desire.

Do we really want a president who is simply better at researching and reacting to public opinion or do we want a president that leads with conviction?

Has communication technology given us the ability as a society to collectively know what policies are sound? Do we no longer need the leadership of an individual?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. Are our choices ultimately between another Clinton or another Bush?

McCain Tax Policy Shifts

Talk about pandering:

youtube video of Meet the Press

Another 3 position pivot

This is just additional context to the discussion in the previous post moved here per Ben's request.

Position 1:
Hawkish rhetoric recognizing the threat of Iran and the ongoing need from troops in Iraq:

A reduced but active presence will also send a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria that we intend to remain a key player in this region…Make no mistake, if the Iranians and Syrians think they can use Iraq as another Afghanistan or a staging area from which to attack Israel or other countries, they are badly mistaken. It is in our national interest to prevent this from happening.

But what about the withdrawal?


Position 2:
Campaign commercial intended to subtly attack Hillary for supporting the Kyl-Lieberman amendment; a bipartisan measure that urged the U.S. government to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. This allowed the US greater ability to apply sanctions and tighten restrictions through the global financial system.

It passed this spring 76-22. Obama strongly opposed it with his signature rhetorical restraint:

Obama today also penned an op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader warning that Congress -- including, notably, rival Hillary Clinton -- has given Bush the pretense to invade Iran by approving a recent Senate amendment. "When you give this president a blank check, you can't be surprised when he cashes it," Obama writes. "I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment.

But perhaps aware of his fickleness he again opted not to record this position and just didn’t vote because he couldn’t make it.

Position 3
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/23/1218024.aspx
It was remarkable in terms of the strong language Obama used repeatedly to demonstrate the depth of his support for Israel, saying at one point that he had an "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security." His message appeared to be directed at American Jewish voters, an important voting bloc and one that has been wary of Obama's commitment to Israel.
On Iran, Obama said he would take no options off the table in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.
"A nuclear Iran would be a game changing situation not just in the Middle East but around the world," he said. "Whatever is- remains of our nuclear non-proliferation framework, I think would begin to disintegrate."
The senator argued that as other Middle Eastern countries, some with ties to terrorist organizations, sought nuclear weapons of their own that would increase the likelihood that loose nuclear materials could falling into the hands of terrorists.

"That is our single most important threat to Israel but also to the United States of America. So this is something that we're going to spend a lot of time working on," he said.
Obama said his goal was to mobilize the international community to offer big sticks and big carrots to Iran to end its nuclear program, urging the country to take advantage of what he called "the shift" in Bush administration's approach to direct talks.

Obama made a mistake when he began to list legislation he's supported to show that "vote after vote" he had been a friend to Israel.
"This past week we passed out of the US Senate Banking committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon," Obama said

There are lots more of these: FISA, NAFTA, Gun Control....

Sunlight is the best disenfectant.

The following article in the Chicago Sun parallels foolish moves made on the part of two politicians early in their careers. Worthy of note:

Amid crumbling bungalows on Chicago's South Side or ranch-style homes in the Phoenix suburbs, an ambitious politician can still get too close to a wheeler-dealer developer.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama admits it "was a boneheaded move" for him to buy property from his friend and donor Tony Rezko's wife after headlines proclaimed federal investigators were looking into Rezko's manipulation of state pension boards for his own profit. Rezko was later convicted on 16 fraud counts.

John McCain admitted he made a "serious error" in not reporting free trips to the Bahamas he took on friend and donor Charles Keating's private jet.

Republican candidate John McCain admitted he made a "serious error" in not reporting free trips to the Bahamas he took on friend and donor Charles Keating's private jet. McCain was one of the "Keating Five" senators who met with federal regulators to ask them not to crack down on Keating's failing Lincoln Savings and Loan.

Keating's political hardball bought him an extra two years. During that time, the cost to tax-payers of bailing out his thrift grew from $1.2 billion to $3.4 billion.

Both Obama and McCain, as up-and-coming office-seekers, attracted the attention of these friend-mentor figures early in their careers.

Which candidate was more naive? Did Obama and McCain show poor judgment by getting close to multi-millionaire businessmen accused of collecting office-holders to advance their interests? Which candidate¹s alliance with a donor hurt taxpayers more?

Deep

The Onion? Oh Yeah!

Sherwood said he was granted full access to the candidate, and was permitted by
chief strategist David Axelrod to ask any question he desired—an opportunity the
reporter used to lob the easiest softballs at Obama yet, ranging from how happy
he felt when he met his wife to what songs are currently on his iPod playlist.
Sherwood was also fearless in his effort to paint the candidate as someone who
is "surprisingly down to earth," a phrase that is used a total of 26 times
throughout the feature.
"If we were going to get the story we wanted, it was
my responsibility as a journalist to ask the really tough questions to his two
young daughters," said Sherwood, who grilled Malia and Sasha Obama, 9 and 7,
about whether they were "proud of [their] daddy." "I also had to capitalize on
every opportunity to compare the story of Obama's upbringing and rise to power
to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and John F. Kennedy's, no matter how
suspect those parallels really are."
According to the Time reporter, work on
the profile was often harder than he had anticipated, with Obama at times
dodging questions about whether or not he played a musical instrument, and about
what Monopoly piece he thought best represented his candidacy and why.
"Situations like these are when you have to get on the phone and talk, not
only to his mother, but to his aunt, his uncle, a Boy Scout leader, or maybe
even one of his camp counselors growing up," Sherwood said. "And if they don't
return your call, you turn to Sunday school teachers and former
babysitters—anyone who is willing to go on record and say that Barack Obama was
a really good kid who was destined for great things."
Added Sherwood, "It's
all about getting the factoids out in the open."
Readers have so far
responded favorably to the piece, with sales of the latest issue of Time nearly
tripling that of an issue last month featuring a 36-page exposé that tore apart
and vilified former candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan.
"I'm not
quite sure how he intends to turn around the economy or get us out of Iraq,"
said California resident Geoff Mills, an ardent Obama supporter who read the
Time story. "But any man who prefers his steak cooked medium-rare has my vote."

Onion? No.

On Wednesday, Barack Obama promised to shift our narrow-minded focus on Iraq to deadly "terrorist sanctuaries" in Pakistan.
He said it forcefully, folding his arms gently, as if to say everything is going to be just fine. And for a moment, you could tell that his audience felt the same way.
Something was in the air — and, in his forearms. Looking at them, it was clear that the senator has been working out more. His chest looks firm and he seems to have more definition in his rock-hard biceps. I bet he does preacher curls — free weights only, none of that Bowflex crap.
But that's not the only muscle Obama has been flexing. Earlier this week, he received a standing ovation at the NAACP convention, saying that blacks need to assume more individual responsibility.
When he took this stance, one word came to mind: courage. Also, quads. You couldn't help but notice how powerful they are. You can see the strength emanating upwards from Obama's strong calf and thigh muscles — the kind I could put lotion on, over and over again.
No doubt they are well toned by playing tag with his lovely daughters. Even the word "adorable" does not do them justice. Perhaps a word needs to be invented to describe something more adorable than adorable and then we can apply that to his daughters.
Until then, allow them their privacy.
But speaking of those angels, they must have been proud, when their father spoke to La Raza last Sunday. There he boldly said how disappointed he is in McCain's new stance on immigration. You could hear a piñata drop it was so quiet, and the silence seemed to illuminate his hair, like a halo.
His sensibly styled mane seems to have been graced with a touch of grey, not unlike a younger Morgan Freeman, giving him an air of wisdom extremely rare for a man of such a young age. It's like he has all the experience of a John McCain, without the nasal hair.
This is a guy you could definitely have a beer with or marry or cohabitate with, if you're gay.
And if you disagree with me, you're probably a racist.

Still not the Onion

Six percent of the population having 25% of the wealth. Half the world’s oil consumption and now 100% of Obama? What kind of God only smiles on the fortunate? Aren’t there other parts of the world more deserving of numinousity? Is it just that only Americans can bask in his mysterium tremendum? People that are so…ugh… American?

This is not the Onion

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Perhaps it isn't fair to judge a candidate by his supporters, but I'm very much making an exception in this case.

Influence Peddling

Obama secured state tax dollars for local slum lords. Those slum lords provided the financial backing for his 2004 senate run, hold senior positions within his campaign and can look forward to federal dollars should Obama become president.

The spin