Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Most Intense Night of Television, Ever


Barack Obama won $1 million?!?!
Howie Mandel and a black woman named Tomorrow won the World Series?!?!
The Phillies told us why they are the better presidential candidates?!?!

Did I get those confused?!

Last night I sat and watched television with my girlfriend. We expected to be enthralled by Barack Obama's half hour special and just hang out, maybe watch some Mad Men on DVD. Instead, we were glued to our seats with anticipation for every second of television we watched for about 2 hours.

At 8pm, we tuned into NBC to watch Obama's advertisement (it was also on CBS, but I see CBS as having an elderly viewing constiuency so I passed). I thought the ad was one of the most effective ways Obama could have used his half hour. He played the political game the way it should be played nowadays; cleanly and respectfully. Not once did he mention John McCain's name. He took us through the lives of a diverse group of Americans and allowed us to see their everyday struggles with health insurance, job retention and an array of different issues. After each family's segment, Obama appeared in an office where he outlined how his presidency would allow that family and families like them to afford health assurance, retain their jobs and etc. At the end of the special, Obama appeared at a rally in Florida and made one final plea for his message of hope.

The night's intensity did not stop there. We were bombarded by NBC's amazing advertisement campaign; their advertising team seems to be one of a few that is thriving in this
recession, dare i say it (i.e. Tina Fey's double advertising effort with 30 Rock and SNL). Right away, following Obama's special, we were invited to stay tune to Deal or No Deal. Howie Mandel and that bald head of his was so inviting that we chose to actually watch it. This summary will be short. If you don't know how to play the game, you should go to the NBC website and figure it out (I'm sure it's on wikipedia also). Spoiler follows: This latina woman named Tomorrow, ended up winning $1 Million dollars--after about an hour and a half of playing the game! It was so intense that we actually watched the entire show... and we have short attention spans.

At this point we had been turning back and forth, from the World Series to Deal or No Deal. Howie Mandel was doing that, what if you take this money now BS that game show hosts have to do to make viewers mad, you know. When I finally remembered to check the World Series out, we found out that the Phillies were two outs away from the World Series! The Phillies?! About to win the World Series?! That doesn't bode too well in New York, where the Mets lost their spot in the playoffs to the Phillies by 3 games. We turned back to Deal and Howie was still wasting time so we went back to the game. Another out had happened. Turned back to Deal. Model opens case it's $300. All other cases have $1 Million dollars, celebrations erupt in the studio. It's crazy. We watch for maybe 15 seconds and then turn back to the World Series.

2 outs and 2 strikes. The pitch. Swing. Out. The entirety of the Philadelphia Phillies bench empties onto the pitcher's mound. It had to happend in about 5 seconds.

The Phillies had won the World Series.

Just like that, in about 30 seconds of time, the craziest night of television had spoiled me. Now, I want t.v. to always be like that and I don't know if It will ever live up to such amazingness. It won't and I probably won't watch t.v. that much but anybody who got a glimpse of these three programs found themselves wrapped in a special, unimaginable continium unlike anything in recent memory. I'd like to thank NBC and Fox for that feel good television last night.


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P.S.
Here's the video of Obama's half hour advertisement (Shout out to my fellow blogger Grambo):



Without having competition from John McCain's campaign with a similar event with such magnitude taking place, Obama probably helped his case with swing voters. I really think that he has more than just a chance of winning; he has a chance for a landslide. Watch my word. Read more!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Language and Politics, ya dig?

There is an awful lot that can be said about what the candidates are saying (or not saying, for that matter), and how the content of their stump speeches and debates have shaped the face of this election. If you need a refresher of what they are saying, please see here:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.


One thing that is going largely unreported, however, is their use of the English language throughout the campaign. It seems to me that the manner in which talking points are being delivered has almost as much clout as anything else on the campaign trail. It's not wonder, then, why Obama turns up the 'Midwest' when stumping in Minnesota, and dials up the twang when he's in good ol' South Carolina. It's natural for people who are familiar with the wide range of American dialects to in a sense code switch to speak more forcefully to their intended audiences. It's the reason why Oprah, for example, can say 'you go, girl!' and still manage to have billions of dollars fueled by white stay-at-home moms who buy O Magazine and read all the books in her book club. I know that I do it; it's the only way to stay ahead of the game sometimes.

I'm barely scratching the surface. An amazing blogger by the name of Anil Dash (he's been blogging since 1999! think about that for a moment. He was using Windows 98 on a Dell with a Pentium 3 processor, or maybe running Mac OS 9 on a PowerMac G4... tough times. I bet he worked tirelessly through the night eating eggo's and hot pockets watching "Can't Hardly Wait" on his not-flat-screen-not-hi-def tv. He wasn't riddled with text messages on his iPhone, he was just getting used to the call waiting and caller ID on his regular-ass phone. But I digress...) writes thoughtfully on this subject, and I encourage you all to read what the Blogfather has to say about culture, language and politics. Much respect for this man. Shouts to Jenn B. for enlightening me.

The second post on his blog is "Yo Mama" jokes that relate to the election. They are hilarious. For as long as I can think of clever ones, I will sign my posts with them.

Yo mama's so ugly even terrorists won't pal around with her. Read more!

Obama v. The World Series

Tonight Barack Obama pulls one of the biggest moves at the end of a presidential campaign; he will host his own half hour advertisement. Also tonight, the Phillies will attempt to pull off the biggest game of each player's career and the biggest game of their team's campaign; a potential World Series victory. Unfortunately, Barack and Bud Selig (the Commissioner of Major League Baseball) did not have a conversation on when Game 5 of the World Series would take place... and the league chose 8pm on Wednesday (tonight), the same time as Obama's advertisement.

Now, let's compare the two...

The "World" Series, obviously affects the entire world, even though all of the teams are from the Americas and don't ever play teams from other countries (I say America's and not the U.S. because you don't want ex Montreal Expos fans to come through and wail out on your boy)... but come on, We're America! We're just as good if not better than the world!

And Obama is only trying to win a couple of states, thinking that he already has some in the bag! How pretentious! He should focus more on the world and stuff! Take a hint from the Phillies and the Devil Rays, who decided that the world was more important than themselves and are playing in the "World" Series! Now that's patriotic!


MLP - Major League President

I'm not hating on baseball at all, I'm just trying to tell you what to watch on t.v. You don't have to listen to me. I'm not even making an argument! I'm kinda being a snob about it, actually. Don't hate me!

Let's be real for a second though.

Obama's half hour ad will be nothing short of amazing. If you miss it, you'll probably be youtubing it later. I just would prefer if Obama gets the ratings he deserved. And that the ratings are only the beginning to a landslide on Novermber 4th.

If you choose to watch the World Series tonight, enjoy it! I'll probably switch the t.v. over to Fox after Obama's ad. Gobama and go Rays! (I have to go with the Rays on this one, Phillies fans; you guys didn't knock off the Red Sox!)

Also, there's a chance that the game won't actually begin until after 8:30pm and we can all watch both! ...Making this entire post useless... ehhhh! Consider this my apology if it happens that way!

Watch either Obama's half hour advertisement on NBC/CBS or watch the game on Fox; both at 8pm. You can find out more about Obama's ad by reading my previous post, Obamavision.


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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

It has begun...but don't act all that surprised

If you haven't heard the news yet, the Feds disrupted a plot to assassinate Barack Obama and about 88 other black students in Tennessee. According to the Feds, the plan included killing about 100 African Americans and beheading 14. An assassination attempt to kill Obama would have included the men wearing White Tuxedos. Here is a link to the details of the story.


















While many have assumed that a plot like this was bound to happen eventually, I think it shows that America has such a long way to go. Just when it looks like our country has reached new heights with an African American running for President, some citizens like the ones shown above bring our country lower with ignorance and racism. While some Americans try to justify the war with Iraq and justify the idea that America should be a country that leads by example, we have Americans here who want to perform the same acts as the terrorists that we are trying to stop by displaying plans of a killing spree and beheading. While I'm glad these men were stopped, this news proves to be a sad day for America. I'm sure there are more men like these men out there who share this hatred and ignorance. How long will we have to wait for this foolishness to come to an end.

Deuces Read more!

Monday, October 27, 2008

Good News Bad News:

I apologize to the faithful readers of our blog (we've already had hundreds of unique visitors! thanks guys!), because I promised a weekly topic, and have slacked off. But without further ado, this week's installment of Good News, Bad News (Culture of the Week coming soon).

Good news for this week is that a flood of conservative thinkers and writers are jumping ship and joining the democratic camp. Christopher Buckley (son of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. who is essentially the godfather of the conservative movement in the United States) wrote a thoughtful and impassioned endorsement of Obama a couple of weeks ago. Of course, there's my main man Colin Powell, and now the former Bush White House Spokesman Scott McClellan and former Republican Governor of Massachusetts William Weld have both officially endorsed Obama. McClellan did his on D.L. Hughley's new comedy show on CNN (which, by the way, I think I have some beef with. More to come on that).

But the best news is a massive endorsement by a pair of famous twins, whose father is a household name. Props to ABond:



The bad news? School shootings are still very real in the USA. Thoughts are prayers are with everyone at Univ. of Central Arkansas.

More bad news? The surge isn't working. But not in the way you think (or don't think). The electrical 'surge' that powers the water pump 'surge' that is supposed to 'surge' waste water and treat Iraq's sewage systems (on the American watch and wallet), isn't working. We say that we want to leave Democracy in our aggressive, trigger-happy wake as Americans, but looks like we're leaving a whole bunch of other shit, too. And we're not very good at doing either, it seems, without overstaying our welcome and spending way too much money. That, I suppose, is the American way.

Those are my two cents, and they will be properly disposed of at the end of this message. Read more!

McCain Hands Over the Election

In the past few weeks, Senator McCain made a few errors at some of his rallies. Either he's just really tired or the fact that he's old and can't remember anything is finally beginning to be a factor; I'd have to say it's the latter. The following two videos are very self explanatory hence I'll stop talking.





With 8 days left until this election cycle reaches its conclusion, do you really want this guy calling the shots for our country? I'm afraid that he and Palin are going to say something to offend the Russians.. and then we're screwed.

Don't get screwed. Vote for the right person... you know, the one who remembers things.


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Sunday, October 26, 2008

Rogue Agent Palin... and possibly the anti Bradley effect

Ok, so we all know about Bobby and Whitney's relationship and the tension between Kobe and Shaq, but the most intriguing tension developing is that between GOP mavericks John McCain and Sarah Palin. With only 10 days before election day, this can prove to be devastating to the GOP team. Check out this video from cnn.com.



If you watched enough of this clip, then you probably saw the segment where Mark Preston says he believes that there are enough people who will vote for Obama because he is black that will offset the number of people that will vote against Obama because he is black. What do you think of this? How big of a role do you think the Bradley effect will play in this election?

Deuces Read more!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Well, she needed clothes.



...That is what John McCain is saying today, according to politico.com, in response to the eyebrows raised on the campaign spending $150,000 on Sarah Palin's outfits right before the RNC in September. While a "breaking story" like this is just s sign of a slow news week from the campaign trail, I think there's some deeper issues going on here.

1) No one gives a shit what all of the males are wearing in this campaign (except for me, maybe - McCain's suit in the last debate was ballin'). What I'm trying to say is that there is such a huge double standard in judging a woman's appearance if she is in the public eye. Nothing on Obama's (bomb-ass) $1500 suit. Nothing on John McCain's (bomb-ass) $500 Ferragamo shoes. Everything about Palin's hair, makeup, and attractiveness (I even saw an article about whether her lip liner was tattooed on?!) and Hillary Clinton pantsuits and Cindy McCain's $300,000 outfit at the RNC. Unfair.

2) According to McCain, the clothes will be donated at the end of the campaign. Great. Not only are you spinning this story like crazy, now three or four needy women will benefit from a handful of way-too-flashy outfits for, well, any event. Donated to whom? I think we both know that $150,000 can go much much farther than that. Please refer to John McCain's poverty plan for more information. Oh, I forgot, he doesn't have one.



3) If you want to talk clothes, let's talk clothes. The Obamas have spent some money on their outfits, but it was their own cash. And if you want to talk public perception, all you have to do is look at Michelle Obama's outfit on The View the other day (I know, I know, whatever. I heard it from someone. I work during the day people!) that flew off the stores. Grand total? $150. $99 if you buy it online. You want to do something that your constituents (namely "hard working, real Americans") will appreciate? Wear something in their price range, Gov. Palin. Keep those glasses, though. The designer is making a killing.

I'm no fashion guru, but those are my two cents. And they will be donated to charity after the election. Read more!

The Oldest Person to Have Ever Lived

Actually. Kookoo Molookoo from Limpopo, South Africa is the oldest woman to have ever lived and who is living now, obviously. She is 134 years old. (Shout out to my 134 dudes, by the way). She was supposedly born on July 4th, 1874. I say supposedly because as the dude in CNN has imformed us, South Africa did not officially record birthdays back around her birth. Here's the video from CNN:



Meat, spinach and sweets?! I think I can do that.


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Thursday, October 23, 2008

"How Can Anybody take Fox News Seriously?"

It's a good question posed by The Young Turks. The Young Turks (who can be found at www.theyoungturks.com) are great for getting to the bottom of any news story whether it be political or whether it pertains to Soulja Boy beefing with Ice T. I respect what they do and you should check out their videos on youtube or their website; shout out to D and A for the video. Basically to piggyback my own post from yesterday, here's some more "Fair and Balanced" Fox News.



(Minorities x Loans) + Time = Financial Crisis?!

Oh, obviously!

Fox News, I sincerely hate you. And as for the title of this post... I couldn't agree anymore. Read more!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Tell 'Em Why You Mad, Perf (#1)

This is my weekly installment. Basically, we lay out a situation. Whether it be an article, a television show, a person, etc. and I tell you why it gets to me. Sometimes, it will be offensive. Most of the time, there will be many who disagree. All of the time, you will be somewhat entertained by my ecstatic sabotage of your already established thoughts or either by my overwhelming hatred for racists, sexists, [most] republicans and the like.

Without further ado, I present to you my first post: Fox News.



Fox News, known for their slogan "Fair and Balanced", upsets me on the regular. Fox News is probably the most bias news in print, on television, on the internet, etc. The "Fair and Balanced" slogan solicits much laughter when I'm flipping through the channels with friends. I'm not hating Fox News because I disagree with it, in which I do often, but because of the way the news is presented.

You can watch pretty much any clip from a news show on Fox and usually view an old, white male speak on a subject in their own conservative view. Now, I have no problems with any conservative old, white males (in fact, that's the viewership we probably would like to reach out to the most with this blog... for argument's sake) however, the rest of the world is diverse; Someone must have forgotten to give Fox the memo.

It's not just the lack of diversity amongst their 'pundits' that upsets me either. It's their presentation! You've heard it a million times: People develop perceptions based on 55% body language, 38% tone and 7% on actual words. So concerning their "Fair and Balanced" news motto, I'd have to say that at any given time that their broadcasts are actually 7% fairly balanced. Their use of condescending tones and laughter in interviews and commentary sickens me.

And sometimes they just say how they feel... even if it involves the death of a politician...


Oooh! I found a clip with a white woman! How rare!

A black politician. Oh, and Kanye should have mentioned that not only does George Bush not care about black people. Fox News is right there with him! Come on Yeezy, how could you forget?!



Bush and Fox have more in common than their disdain for black folks.

Back in 2005, some of the Fox broadcasters were accused of accepting talking points from George Bush's administration. I think this was about the time Colin Powell bailed ship. So let's put this together... The most "Fair and Balanced" news had their broadcasts influenced by the President of the United States. No matter what president was in office, any station that claims to be "Fair and Balanced" should not accept any influence from the president or any other politician.

The stations disgusting commentators range from Bill O'Reilly to Sean Hannity, both horrible people. To learn more about why their souls will burn, please read here for Bill and here for Sean. Shout out to Grambo for that website!

For fun... Here's rapper Cam'Ron and exec. Dame Dash's interview with Bill O'Reilly.



Nah, Cam, O'Reilly's just a bad person. I'm the one who's mad.

With the election only 13 days away, look for Fox News to call Obama a terrorist multiple times or use his whole name with emphasis on his middle name.

And I don't know about you but when Obama actually wins the presidency on November 4th or 5th, I'm going to tune into Fox News first... because I'll need a good laugh after such an intense day.



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They're coming! Quick, Hide your Voting Rights!

I recently wrote about The other ways that the republicans can steal this election, and after watching the movie Recount this weekend and seeing a flurry of frightening articles in Rolling Stone and elsewhere, I thought that I needed to bring it up again. Not only are there programs in place for this election to purge voter rolls, they are happening. They are terrifying. They are inevitable. The one thing we can do about it is inform ourselves and each other of their dangers, so we have a powerful voice to fight back against them on election day and the lawsuits to follow. For some really insightful reading, go here and download the comic book. If you are wondering who could possibly be in charge of all of this, go here. And here. Greg Palast's article on his blog and on Rolling Stone should not be ignored.

One out of five African Americans does NOT have a government issued ID, and they want to do this?
Think about it - 3 million New Yorkers don't have a freaking driver's license. And it's not like you can just stroll up to any government building and get a FREE ID card. You can't. That wipes out poor people's vote in certain states. I'm getting mad and incoherent. I should stop now. We already know that the election is unfair. Check this site out if you want to do something about it. Shout out to Ari Savitzky and all the good people at FairVoteRI. Good work.


If you think there is no hope for mankind, there isn't! I mean, just look at this guy:
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The Readers Speak

You all keep seeming to vote overwhelmingly for one choice in these polls.

I really think Joe the Plumber is going to get a book deal and make bank off of this whole fiasco. The majority of those who voted believe that he will sleep with multiple women. I do think he is gonna do both... but I mean, come on, have you seen this guy? It's much more likely that he gets a book deal. Let's be real.



As for supporting, McCain or Obama, seems like none of us have a clue. That can only mean one thing: the guy has to write a book! The public is in suspence!!


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The Greatest's First Post

The Great one has joined the team. I will be adding posts on the weekends and once during the week. For this week's topic I want to discuss the recent polls, Biden's comments and the GOP.
First, CNN shows that Obama has added to his lead in the polls. Currently he is up 9 points and is expected to be up by 10 in the morning...Gobama!!!
Everyone is talking about the comments made by Joe Biden recently on Obama being tested within the first six months if/when he is in office. If you haven't read it or seen it yet, check this out.



While Biden reminds Americans that many President's in the pass, including Kennedy, Clinton and Bush were all tested early during their time in office, I don't believe reminding Americans of this and hinting that Obama could face the same challenge was the best choice. While the economy may be the issue pressed on most Americans minds' right now, our national security since 9/11 is way up there as well. As realistic as Biden's comments may be, this will only bring fear to Americans and could discourage them away from Obama. I think hinting to a national threat in the near future if Obama is elected is discouraging and scary to most Americans, especially the independent voters who have not decided who they are voting for. I think at a time when Obama campaign was looking as if they might have this race in the bag, Biden gave the McCain campaign a new weapon. McCain has been using this socialist argument for the pass few days and now that is getting old. Personally I think the president, no matter who it is, can expect to be tested but there is no need to bring that to attention. Both Vice President candidates are hurting their campaigns. I expect McCain to keep pushing this argument until election day, he really has nothing else to argue about. What do you think of Biden's comment?

Has anyone noticed that not too many Republicans have said that Palin was a great choice by McCain for Vice President? It doesn't sound like many believe that she is capable to lead our country, even though she does have more experience than Obama. Here is a link to Mitt Romney's recent thoughts of Palin. Does he answer the question?



You have to question the stability that this country will be if we hire a really old man and a woman that many in her own party don't believe has what it takes to run this country. Is Palin fit to be president or is she just an energizer bunny for the GOP? Was is smart for McCain to pick someone not too far off from his opponent just to get more votes? Is this race about getting the most votes or doing what is right for the country? Read more!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Response to Benjamin's comment on Grambo's "Cab in Boston" post

I don't know about that. I would say racist city. Obviously a city cannot keep racist people out of it, so like you said racist people live there. However, the ethnic enclaves in which the article Grambo posted describes, are pretty bad. You can take the T in Boston and go from a relatively safe college neighborhood and in 20 minutes be in an extremely dangerous, poverty stricken community. And the difference between Boston and New York in that manner is that in Boston you can tell the difference by the cleanliness of the stations. In New York, they're all dirty... besides the ones with heavy traffic like Times Square which gets cleaned daily.

The mind of a racist can also exclude celebrities and athletes. Big Papi and KG can be their favorite ball players and they can still turn right around and call you a nigger.

Also all people can try to pull a fast one; it is not an inherently black thing to try to not pay a taxi driver. In this instance, I don't blame the taxi drivers. As a people, I mean American people this time, we have been flooded with thoughts of blacks being dangerous, evil, stupid criminals. Check out Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, (Grambo's reading it right now). It goes into our unconscious first thoughts in particular situations such as accessing personalities.

I don't know how we go about handling this situation or racism in general for that matter.


That's why I let white girls get me taxis.

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Here's Grambo's original post below. Read more!

Can a brother get a cab in Boston?


Short answer: no.

Long answer: I was in Boston last weekend for a wedding. I haven't spent too much time in Beantown, so I insisted that my friends and I go out the night before to experience the nightlife. We went to a pretty cool bar with a live band that was unbelievable. Everything seemed to be going our way, until roughly 1:30am. That was when the bar shut down. Being a native Tri-Stater, I didn't know what was happening. But it was "after last call, so you have to get the f- out" according to the friendly bartender. Perplexed, yet nonetheless satisfied with my night out, I looked forward to catching a cab back to my friend's place in Cambridge and getting a good night's sleep before the wedding. As I headed out of the bar, a black bouncer stopped me, gestured over to my white friends and said, "stick with them and you'll be alright." He played it off as a joke, but gave me a knowing glance as I left the bar.

Now the tricky part. I stood out on the street for a while trying to hail down a cab. Granted, there were hundreds of other Bostonians trying to do the same, but I noticed that many of the cabs were empty when the passed, and some even waved me and my friends off. This wasn't a one-time thing, nor did it only last a short period of time. We were wandering the streets for two hours trying to catch a damn cab. (Thank God for 7-11) Now, call it bad luck, call it what you will, but I don't think that two hours is acceptable under any rule (maybe Jim Crow...). And why did the bouncer feel the need to preface my cab search with those light-hearted yet strangely ominous words? I started to get mad. At Boston, at my friends, at my headache, at everything. It's the kind of thing you want to think doesn't happen anymore. But is Boston really a racist city? I dunno. The third whitest US Metropolitan area, in my opinion, has some work to do. What do you think?

Extended reading. Read more!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Weekend Politics

Colin Powell endorses who?! Obama?! What?
Colin Powell is pretty much like Morgan Freeman; he is the man. What he says goes. If he says vote for Barack Obama, you vote for Obama. The former Republican Secretary of State of the current president endorses... a democrat! Watch it via Meet the Press:



Fox News at it again!
This time fox news refuses to accept that Bill Ayers and Barack Obama don't 'pall' around with each other. Check out the picture they have of Ayers from 2001! They can't even be tactful about it! I actually laugh at this stuff.



I had a problem with McCain and this whole Bill Ayers situation because he knows and reassures people that Obama is not a terrorist but he and his campaign haven't eased up with the Bill Ayers associations. McCain, however, has recently 'defended' Obama at rallies. Shout out to Jen for this one:



Palin, however, is still stupid. Check this video out. I won't describe the 20 second clip... it's worth a peek, believe me! Especially if you're voting in New Hampshire! Shout out to Jen again:



Also, the Governor and future... still Governor of Alaska was on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Go to www.nbc.com to check that out. Haven't seen it yet but I'm assuming that she got lucky SNL isn't a complete improv show because she would have failed horribly... not like she hasn't done so already.


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Friday, October 17, 2008

The 4th Debate!

I mean, that's what the Alfred E. Smith Dinner turned out to... not be at all. With both Barack Obama and John McCain in attendance, the two nominees decided to put away the fierce competitive spirits that they each sported so well at the previous night's debate and make us laugh. I think this is exactly what was needed in this heated race; a nice breather where we can all laugh. Below I have videos of both comics... I mean candidates at the dinner. They are both actually really funny or have great staff writers on their team. If Hillary Clinton takes over the country on her way to ruling the world, like she is probably schemeing for as we speak, then Barack and John should do a sitcom. It'd be great. It can be called The McCama-dy show! That's trademarked... so don't try to steal my ideas!





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Debate Scorecard (Grambo)

I'm looking forward to Perf's take on the debate. I think I would like to approach my scoring of this debate like a Ms. Cleo Tarot Card Reading. That is, I'm going to predict the future for 2.99 a minute. CALLL MEEE NOWWWWWW...

Cleo: First caller?
Caller: Who won the debate?
Cleo: I read the future, not newspapers. If you want me to read the future, I can tell you what happens next.
Caller: Umm, okay. Do that.
Cleo: The Goat of Saturn tells me that Obama will use this momentum to mobilize voters, and in particular independents in swing states to turn some "Lean McCain" states into nightmares for the elderly Senator from Arizona. The electoral map looks more purple and blue than red in the coming weeks.
Caller: But what about me? Who am I going to vote for?
Cleo: mmmmm.....chile..... it seems to me that you are passionate about a certain candidate who really proved to be cool as a cucumber tonight. Am I right?
Caller: I'm cool and I like cucumbers... so yeah. Wow, Ms. Cleo, you are amazing!
Cleo: ...
Caller: Hello, you still there?
Cleo: ...Okay, that's exactly 5 minutes. I'm going to put you on hold now so you get billed more. Thanks fah callin'!
Caller: But I had another ques- CLICK

Cleo: Next Caller! Now, before you say anything, I can see Truffle of Venus speaking to me. You are a conservative, yes?
Caller: Unbelievable. I am, and clingin' to it!
Cleo: Arright. How can I help you today?
Caller: Well, Ms. Cleo, I really want to know what John McCain is going to do to repair his image. I mean, he comes off as such a slimy, condescending old politician every time he debates Sen. Obama. I want him to do better, but now there are no more debates. I can't bear to watch the news anymore with all the opinion polls showing landslides. Can you just tell me what his strategy turns out to be in these next 19 days?
Cleo: Ahhh, my friend. I can feel your concern. It's deep. Like the Pit of Hades. I can tell you this: John McCain will release more positive ads, ads where he is only talking about what he will do as President, as opposed to what his opponent is doing wrong. It doesn't matter that Obama launches more attack ads, or is perceived to have spent the most money of all time on them.... no, no. None of that matters. What matter is that John McCain looks desperate, and now needs to try something different. And he will. I predict friendly ads, more peaceful rallies, and perhaps an interview with someone who disagrees with him! But you won't be watching anyway.
Caller: Wow, well, that sounds about right. Will it help him?
Cleo: No.
Caller: Why not?
Cleo: Because he still won't say anything to draw voters to his ranks, chile. You need to understand that there were very few times during the debate last night that would have made independents and swing voters any more fond of him. He will continue to play it safe, and ride out the wave of this election.
Caller: That sounds ominous.
Cleo: Do you pay me for good news, or do you pay me for the truth?
Caller: Well, I...
Cleo: Don't answer that. Next Caller!

Caller: Ms. Cleo, I need to know...
Cleo: Buy gold. The stock market is in the shit. Negative beta tells me that you should invest in gold.
Caller: Is that one of your cards, negative beta?
Cleo: No. It's a coefficient. But the Ulcer of Uranus tells me that you don't have much finance experience.
Caller: Unbelievable!
Cleo: ...And get excited to spread the wealth. Well, whatever is left after this financial crisis. Okay?
Caller: So does that mean...
Cleo: Yes, Joe the Plumber is going to expand his business. After he actually gets licensed as a plumber. And he won't make $250,000 until Obama's second term, during which he will slightly ease tax rates for the highest grossing small business.
Caller: I don't believe you... That's cr-CLICK.
Cleo: Americans. They really don't know what it is like to believe. CALLL MEEE NOWWWWWW!!!1 Read more!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Debate Scorecard (Perf)

The debate that took place last night between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain was outstanding! Much respect to Bob Schieffer, the moderator. I think with potential presidents talking with 19 days left before the presidency, things can get a little stale and boring... if the two are in a dead heat in the polls; that is not the case for Senator McCain.
With Senator Obama's substancial lead in the polls as of recent, Senator McCain's campaign had to speak now or forever hold their peace... as losers.
Weirdly, I thought this final presidential debate to be very similar to the vice-presidential debate. Basically, the conservative candidate attacked the liberal's policies and relied on a sadistic almost sickening 'I love America more than that guy' tone and the liberal lays out some policy talk, defends himself and attacks the conservative candidate's running mate. There were few distinct difference between each candidate and their running mate in the aforementioned debates. Here are a few:

Governor Palin is endearing. I don't think she should be second in command, however I would hang out with her and Joe Six Pack anyday.
Senator Biden didn't seem to want to be accused of sexism so he refused to attack Palin at all. This seems weird when you look at Biden's action in other debates.
McCain is cold and does not have a personality that has mass appeal to voters. I mean, I could be wrong but.. I doubt it. That was the slight difference between him and Palin in these debates. What their two debates have in common which also sets them apart is their choice to attack rather than answer the moderator's questions. We all already know that McCain is a seasoned politician, that's no new knowledge. However, the fact that he and Palin played similar debates does two things; makes her seem fiercer and more knowledgeable than we all thought and seemingly brings McCain down to a Palin level. Harsh words... but necessary.
Obama was the one facing a white man in this debate so he had nothing to hold back unlike his running mate Biden. Obama questioned McCain's policies but no more than he delivered his own or attacked McCain's campaign. Obama did not allow McCain's attacks to thrawt his pose and smiled at failed attempts.
Both candidates were very presidential and appealed to their already commited voters.

But what will the independents and undecided do? More importantly, what will Joe the plumber do? Well, if Joe the plumber is smart, he will go to a major publisher and get him a book deal. Let's be real.

Obviously, I'm going to vote for Barack Obama. However, the debate may not have been helpful for McCain's case. As a friend told me after the debate yesterday, she watched the Fox News commentary and they did not say that McCain won. In my book, that's a victory for Obama.

Oh, and if you're having any trouble deciding just check out the smiles on these guys. How can you not vote for them?!?!


If I was a toothpaste company, I know who I would want to endorse...

two times.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Cop Out Post - Blog Action Day

As I type, I'm listening to Obama rock McCain in this debate (look forward to our posts tomorrow.. they're gonna be good...). Basically, I couldn't come up with a worthy conversation to post for your enjoyment, comment and reflection so I'll share with you some links that I think to be either important, informative or ridiculous. I chose to focus my search specifically on black poverty. I hope this will hold you over until your cup runneth over with posts tomorrow. Here they are:

Interesting paper
about correlations between black male imprisonment and black child poverty.

Can't talk about black poverty without going back to Hurricane Katrina. Business Week offers this article.

Ooooh! An economic paper! Brings me back to my college days... like 5 months ago.

Bet you didn't know that: Tommie Smith and John Carlos both wore black socks
without shoes to protest black poverty during the medal ceremony of the 200 meter final in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics

So that's that. Stay tuned for tomorrow. It's something to look forward to

....Real quick! Check these outs: www.palinaspresident.com and this NY Times op-ed on Obama. Both are rich. Enjoy.


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What are the candidates doing to fight poverty? (Blog Action Day)


So, if you didn't already know, today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers around the world are rallying together to write about poverty from thousands of different perspectives. Every post today will focus on issues related to poverty and anti-poverty initiatives in the US and abroad.

I've got a lot to say on the issue, but first let's talk about what our presidential candidates are saying about it.

As I'm sure you know, the easiest way to find out what a candidate officially affirms on an issue is to go to their website and click on their "Issues" tab. So I perused the John McCain website for about 25 minutes last night, hoping to find something on his stance on poverty. 25 minutes. Far longer than I thought it would take to eventually find NOTHING on the subject. No subheading under issues, no blurb about it somewhere else (that I could find), nothing. That makes for a pretty unfairly biased argument against John McCain's poverty plan, because he doesn't have a publicly stated one. Maybe he is opening up his 11 other homes as soup kitchens and shelters? Probably not. It blows my mind that you could run a campaign without a poverty stance! Stunning, really. So, to give him the benefit of the doubt, that maybe I was just overlooking it, I googled "McCain poverty plan" only to find the first two hits reading something along the lines of "No Poverty Plan for McCain." Ouch. While I highly doubt that any of this will come up in the debate, I hope that it gets some air time before the election.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has a comprehensive plan to combat poverty that has measures that include ensuring the well-being of our nation's veterans as well. His plan details the routes he would take to expand the EITC, to create Promise Neighborhoods in locations with extreme poverty, create jobs in new sectors in rural and urban locales, and to make a concerted effort to revitalize and rehabilitate Urban America in particular as it has been so dearly neglected in the past 8 years. Now, I thought I was going to be able to have a comparative discussion on the issue when I started out writing this post, but the fact of the matter is, a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President seem to be the only way to make any sort of inroads in fighting poverty in the USA. This is the kind of economic policy we need; we need a plan that grows the overall pie of the economy and ensures fair(-er, everything in time) distribution of resources to our neglected underclass.

While the nuts and bolts of Obama's Economic plan (reducing taxes for 95% of working families) may not be 100% accurate, I feel that the larger picture of helping to redistribute wealth and easing the average citizen's burden can really help protect our image as a nation as well as protect the poorest among us. In the end, however, with a country with such great privilege, we should be doing more for each other to ensure equality (lofty, i know, but still true).

...But that's just my two cents. And you already know I'm all about change.




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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Response to Grambo's 'single-issue voter' post

I see the problem as people are reflecting their political party's view rather than their party reflecting their view. The party picks a solid stance on an issue and their stance has to (unfortunately) do one or two things. First, it has to derive from conservative/liberal thoughts so that it can be in accord with the respective party's people. To clear that assertion up, I do not mean that the party must reflect it's people's views, but that the party's stance must take little convincing to that party's people. I believe that the party must be able to present their stance minimally at a threshold; a threshold in which they can easily usher in many of their people by altering truths and making empty promises. Second, but not always true, the party's views must oppose the other major party's stance on the subject. This puts both major political parties in a horrible competition where sometimes the majority of our countries people get screwed with the minority voters' party taking rule, i.e. the 2000 presidential election. I really hate these strict and restraining rules of politics. Rules that stem from old, white male run government. Rules that did not include people of color, immigrants and women.

Obama is reaching out to voters who are seeing right through this type of old political system. For example, not many people believed that Obama could defeat Clinton in the primaries but he did. Clinton loss because she held onto her staunchly 'democratic' morals in a race that was being flooded with new voters... with new ideals. Near the end of her run, she began altering some of her views to appeal to these voters. Unfortunately for her, it was little too late.

This system is soon on its way out the door with progressive politicians such as Obama; progressive in his take on the system not necessarily his views.

The only positives I have about this system is that it makes for good television.

For Grambo's original post, see below.

Stay tuned for my upcoming weekly specialty called "Tell 'Em Why You Mad, Perf".


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The plight of the single-issue voter.


When a voter has a "dealbreaker," a single issue that trumps all others, how do they reconcile their general pragmatism with their emotional balance? For example, when a staunch republican father whose son is at war decides to vote Democrat to get his boy the hell out of danger, what does he tell his friends? When a Democratic social worker has worked her whole life saving up enough money to provide their children a comfortable life, only to find out that part of Obama's tax plan includes a massive inheritance tax, how does she quell the voices in the back of her mind to pull the lever for the other guy? I've been thinking about this a good deal all weekend, after meeting people who have not yet decided which presidential candidate they will vote for, and some others who intend to participate on Election Day, but will start their voting one line down from the top.

For me, I think part of the issue is that political parties these days are generally too unwilling to compromise to the views of the other side. But that's not how people work. People are a blend of ideals and ideas, and usually don't fall into rank and file of a specific political party. Take pro-life feminism, for instance. There's a really great article in the Christian Science Monitor about the dilemma some women face when deciding which party to support. Take a read, I think some good discussion can come of this. Angela Kays-Burden writes:

"Single-issue voters are not simple-minded. They make the hard decision to compromise on a myriad of urgent issues in order to vote their conscience on the one most important to them.

Our parties need to redefine themselves for moderate female voters – and left-leaning pro-life men – who see abortion as a lack of alternatives, rather than a celebration of progress. These female voters lead in their families, schools, and communities but still don't know where they belong in politics."

I agree. Do you? Read more!

And the Winner is...

Barack Obama!!

He didn't win the presidency, yet, however he overwhelmingly destroyed all competition in our own little poll.



Obama took in 87% of your votes. Obviously, this is a small sample but personally, I think it's a sign of what is to come 3 weeks from today.

3 weeks away from one of, if not the, biggest days of our lives.

Keep an eye out for my next post introducing my weekly blog specialty... it'll be strictly opinion and very opinionated.

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Monday, October 13, 2008

Oh, sorry, it's just an earmark...



"Barack Obama" before and after the debate... I think this sums it up. This guy needs to be on SNL asap.

Grambo's Debate Scorecard coming soon. Read more!

The Endorsement to End All Endorsements...

If there's anything you should spend time reading today, it's this. It is the most comprehensive endorsement of a candidate to date. And it's well-written. I don't usually read the New Yorker, but I put down my McGriddle for 15 minutes this morning to take this all it. Okay, i lied. It took 20 minutes. And there's no way I would put down my McGriddle. Shouts to Chay. I'm posting the story here so you don't have to jump around the internet to read it.

From The New Yorker Magazine:

Comment
The Choice
October 13, 2008

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party, and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its “base,” with a nominee who evidently disliked George W. Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub-rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian-right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a “compassionate conservative,” governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a “maverick” willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalizing relations with Vietnam, campaign-finance reform, and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto-fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the Justices of the Supreme Court, where four hard-core conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007 McCain risked his Presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honor: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything, and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline “the lessons of Iraq,” McCain said, “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” A soldier’s answer––but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness, and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than willpower and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.

Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international coöperation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation—the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.

The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture, and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern Presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making, and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less—and likely more—overseas.

What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policymaking experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organizing among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law—these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.

The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

—The Editors Read more!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Obamavision

So Obama is not only on his way to becoming president. My dude just got his own tv show... kinda.


Kinda like his shirt right there, I'm not gonna lie

Obama purchased a half hour of time on both CBS and NBC for Wednesday, October 29th 2008. No word on the exact use of the half hour special but with it being 6 days before election day, I'm sure Obama plans to encourage us all to vote and tell us why we should choose him over the other guy.

Obamavision


I hope Biden makes an appearance. I mean, when those two smile, it's envigorating... makes you think that this country could actually get back on track.

And again, please make sure you're registered to vote! Read more!

Last Day to Register

Our blog is a baby so not too many people are visiting yet. Those who do view this can help us out a bit. In the New York Metro Area, where we reside, it is the last day to Register to vote for this upcoming presidential election. So please do it and encourage others to do so. It is so serious that Barack himself e-mail me! Check this out:

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Perf --
You may already be registered to vote, but you probably know several people who are not.
If they're not registered by today, they can't vote in this historic election.
This election is going to hinge on unprecedented voter turnout.
Visit VoteForChange.com, our one-stop voter registration website, and register before the New York deadline.
Then encourage your friends, family, and colleagues to do the same.
Together, we can make history and bring about the change we need.

Thanks,
Barack

P.S. -- Please forward this email to your friends, family, and neighbors and make sure they register today.


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OK, maybe Obama sent that e-mail to a bunch of you too but I got a shout out in this one. But seriously people, please make sure that everyone you know who is eligible to vote, can and will vote when November 4th rolls around. If we want change, we must vote. Stay up.

two times. Read more!

Culture of the Week, and "Good News, Bad News"

I've decided to do a weekly post called "Culture of the Week" where I introduce certain topics related to music, arts, or theater. I'll post, and you comment. It's that simple! If you agree, then you should spread the word about this specific artist or show.



This weeks artist is Angelique Kidjo. She's from Benin, which is an African nation squeezed between Togo and Nigeria, and she is an amazing, Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter. Her new album, Djin Djin is amazing and is all over my iTunes right now. Another great thing about her is that she is one of those artists who is committed to giving back to her community. She founded the Batonga Foundation, which helps girls in her country get through Secondary School so they can one day help to change African government. Strong black women are dope. Anyway go to her website and listen to her songs. She has this dope one with Joss Stone.

Now, for the bad news:



The economy is fucked. And there is nothing we can do about it. All this talk about the bailout being the panacea for our nations financial woes is bogus. First off, the United States government doesn't have $700 Billion. They have to sell Treasury Bonds to the same sleazy companies that got us in this position in the first place. That won't get started until, say, November 5th, and won't be able to help these companies (and us) until the New Year. By then, people will be really mad. And really broke. People you know have lost 20-40% of their pension funds due to this fiasco. And by people you know, I mean your parents and relatives. Scary, right? If you ask me, I say withdraw all your money from the bank, buy a mattress, and put what's left under it. As for me, I'm moving to Brazil. Or Iceland.

The good news: New voters are big time Obama fans. So, make sure that they remember to vote on Nov. 4. It might do us some good. Read more!