"True love is watching someone die of cancer." It's a sentiment I've lived through. More than once. And anyone else who has done the same knows the look of person who has seen the most important person in their universe endure a brush with death. That's why this video hit home for me. In it, former President George H.W. Bush comments on his wife Barbara's recovery after a "routine" heart operation.
Now whether or not you consider heart valve replacement surgery routine for a women of 83 years of age is one thing, but what can not be disputed is the joy and relief expressed by the former president. How many other Americans will have this privilege? How many of us now know that when the time comes, our own loved ones will be similarly cared for? These are particularly relevant questions when douche nozzles like Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) has the gall to state that "Health care is a privilege...It's not necessarily a right."
"U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaces an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly-sworn-in U.S. President Barack Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base January 20, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Brennan Linsley-Pool/Getty Images)" via boston.com
The attacker had a knife, and he scratched the letter "B" into her face. Was it made of plastic? Most knives in the hands of muggers do not leave nice tidy scrapes. Bonus: she refused medical treatment, and police are re-interviewing her today.
I guess her story didn't add up to them either. She was held at knife point at an ATM, and the attacker accepted $60 she had in her pocket. That just doesn't even make sense.
Then, after she had managed to step away, the attacker noticed the bumper sticker on her car and became irate. Really? Was he checking to see if she honks for Jesus?
Also the - naturally - black assailant ran off in an "unknown direction". Sorry, but if you've ever been mugged, you damn well remember which way they ran off.
That's just my gut on this one, and I've been wrong before. If I am here, then I will offer my most sincere apology, but this just doesn't smell right.
Holy shit. What a week. Excellent speeches and few momentous surprises made for a great capstone to the 2008 primary season. It was History occurring before our very eyes. Ancient curses condemning us to live in interesting times aside, I am happy to have witnessed it.
I watched Hillary Clinton's speech with interest and an open mind. Still, she left me feeling as though her speech was less about her supporters and her party's candidate for the presidency than it was about her own aspirations. The only saving grace was that she did not insert an ounce of discernible invective or slight against her former opponent into the speech. In short, she went through the motions and did the bare minimum for the Democratic party and Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton's speech was good. Not great, but good. He went significantly further than Hillary in voicing his support for the Obama/Biden ticket, and after his comments and posturing on the primary campaign trail I think he needed to; if only to reposition himself as a valued former president and elder statesman instead of a feckless shill. One commentator summed up his speech by noting that President Clinton's speech went after the current administration, and by extension the McCain campaign, as only he could. Clinton attacked the status quo with a litany of contrasts between his own tenure as president and the present debacle of governance we now endure.
Joe Biden followed with a show stopping acceptance speech. Introduced by his son, Captain Beau Biden of the Delaware National Guard – soon to be deployed to Iraq - who also serves as Delaware's Attorney General, Senator Biden took the stage fully formed following one of the best character introduction pieces of the convention. I'm not thrilled with all of his policies as a Senator, but the man delivered for the party and for Barack Obama, and I believe he will make a dogged and tenacious Vice President.
As good as these speeches were, all of them paled in comparison to the oratorical masterpiece that was Barack Obama's acceptance speech. I've mentioned in previous posts that I've been a political junkie for a good portion of my life and have never, ever, seen anything like this speech. Not even in the history reels.
I watched the speech coverage on MSNBC. Chris Matthews and Kieth Olbermann are as explosive and unpredictable as they are intelligent and interesting in their analysis, and I was floored by their reactions to the speech. Matthews has suffered slings and arrows from media critics for his exuberant praise of Obama's rhetoric and style in the past. Too often, it would seem to some, Matthews allows himself to listen to the speeches of our would-be governors not as a newsman, but as an American. And the night of Obama's acceptance was no exception.
Following Obama's speech the entirety of MSNBC's analysis and commentary was conducted off camera as we were inexplicably treated to views of the crowd milling about during the inaudible closing benediction and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's adjournment. The reason for the odd camera work during what should have been the pièce de résistance of MSNBC's Democratic Convention coverage, the culmination of their long running primary season coverage, was that Matthews was emotionally unable to appear on camera. The man was stricken, as many who heard the speech were, with patriotic fervor. You can actually hear the tears in his voice as he chokingly delivers his summations of the key moments of the speech.
It was that good.
But how did it play at home? If the anecdotal evidence I've collected over the past few days is any indication, Barack's speech hit home in a big, big way. One friend confided that his father, an apolitical man in his 60's who has never voted in an election will be going to the polls in November for Obama. Another, an independent who is a daily listener of conservative talk radio, told me that Barack Obama was definitely growing on him. That might not sound like much, but believe me that sort of sentiment is nothing short of catastrophic for the GOP come November.
My first memory, that earliest cloudy moment in time that I can remember with only a passing clarity, is of Jimmy Carter's first State of the Union Address. I can remember ambling over to the television and being told what it was I was seeing by my parents who promptly burned the instant into my mind forever by warning that if I pressed my chubby little hands up against the shiny new TV tube one more time it would surely explode and kill me instantly. Heh, you should hear what my mother tells her grandchildren. Comedy gold.
That dreamy time so long ago marked the beginning of my conscious attention to politics. I made my first bet on an election in second grade. I lost. Coming from a blue collar union family, it's no surprise that Mondale was the household favorite even against the Reagan machine. I hoped again for a Democratic ticket when I taped the Presidential debates a few years later on VHS. Even at 13 I knew damn well that the revolving door ads, Willy Horton, and the infamous "geek in a tank" photo had done Dukakis in.
As a teen, I wanted nothing more than to escape the construction laborer/waitress tax bracket my parents struggled in, and I let my fantasies infect my political leanings. My last act as a fledgling Democrat was to stand in line for Bill Clinton. I was by far the youngest person at the polls that year at a musty V.F.W. post in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I wasn't old enough to vote yet, but I wanted to see the polls for when I could. Dude, they had levers. Levers. WTF?
Then college happened. While everyone else was smoking up and finding their inner beret wearing leftist, I turned right. Hard right. I started out pretty far left with a mother whose paycheck depended on affirmative action, and a father who never missed a union meetting, so I never went off the Ayn Rand deep-end. Still I covered enough ground to sign up as a College Republican, and eventually joined the military against my parents urgings.
I voted for George W. Bush.
Once.
I left the military a few months after September 11th, 2001. I saw first hand the utter chaos and dumbfuckery that got us into that mess in the first place. I also saw what we liked to call the "Great Leaders of Men" attempt to shove ten pounds of shit into a five-pound-bag and call it "intelligence." So, yeah. That was enough for me.
I've been a Democrat ever since, and I've never been prouder of my country in my adult life than I was when I saw throngs of Europeans waving American flags not in sympathy or protest, but in support of an idea and a hope of what could be.
As a student of politics and government for very nearly my entire life, I've seen a lot things and I've studied many more, but I've never, ever, seen, heard, nor read about anything like what we saw in Germany when Senator Barack Obama spoke. It was awesome.
This is what it takes to change the world. A person in the right time, in the right place, doing the right things.
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, four-star General Wesley Clark envisioned a volunteer force of specially skilled Americans to be called upon to serve both domestic and international functions ranging from fighting forest fires to nation building in his 2004 platform for President of the United States. I wrote about a similar program dubbed the Civilian Reserve Corps proposed by President Bush in 2007.
This model for service fits nicely with Barack Obama's vision for America.
In the following video, General Clark critiques John McCain's positioning as the presumptive national security candidate in this year's election.
Who else is on your Obama VP short-list? Post a comment.
Yesterday, while speaking at the Israeli Knesset in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, President Bush criticized those in the American government who would speak to our international adversaries as “appeasers,” a reference to the fatally flawed Munich negotiations of British statesman Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The reaction was instantaneous in Washington, and throughout the entire American mediascape – to include the Blogosphere – and it was almost universally accepted that Bush was indirectly poking Democratic Presidential contender, Barack Obama.
While Godwining the 2008 presidential race is ballsy enough, Bush took the Heisman of arrogant dumb-assery a day later when he traveled to meet with America’s staunchest friend and ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. There he begged the king to increase oil production to ease the strain on the U.S. economy as we enter the annual, Summer-time months of peak consumption. The king, like any good friend and ally, served President Bush a nice steaming hot cup of STFU, and then negotiated U.S. aid and cooperation in Saudi Arabia’s fledgling nuclear program.
I'm all for political gamesmanship. Beyond rhetoric and ideology leaders must be ready and able to out manoeuvre there opponents. During the campaign season - and particularly now with just a week to go before the all important Texas and Ohio primaries - we can get a sense for how a prospective candidate's administration would get things done in Washington should we choose to elect them.
Case in point: The Clinton campaign has taken to circulating a photo of their opponent Barack Obama dressed as a Somali Elder during a five nation tour of Africa. The image depicts Senator Obama in traditional garb as is a common practice for foreign dignitaries. For their part, I imagine the Clinton campaign is attempting to seize upon the CNN and MSNBC stories that question Senator Obama's patriotism. Stories which repeat rumors and falsehoods as fact in their headlines and leading paragraphs, only to set the record straight deeper - far more so than most readers care to venture - in their articles.
"Last summer, [Senator] Obama was photographed by Time magazine at an event in Iowa standing with his hands folded during the national anthem. His primary rivals Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson appear beside him, with their hands on their hearts...It has been repeatedly reported that the moment came during the Pledge of Allegiance, but that's not the case."
It's well played, but nasty, and ultimately reaffirms my belief that Senator Clinton knows no bounds. She will stoop to any level, and do anything necessary to win. Our nation has dabbled with a Lord of the Flies president. We have made our deals with shady characters to "get the job done." We have learned that expediency at the cost of virtue is a loosing proposition.
Plus, who can fault the guy for wearing ceremonial dress? It's polite. It's diplomatic. And everyone does it.
Immunity for telecommunications companies who illegally assisted the Bush Administration in collecting data on US citizens has passed the US Senate.
Senator Obama voted to uphold the law and deny immunity for unscrupulous corporations.
Senator Clinton did not believe that our civil rights, or the standing law of the land was worth the trouble of voting.
In a previous post I described my attempt to share my concerns with a fellow Maine Democratic Party member about Hillary Clinton's stance - or lack thereof - on the issue of warrantless wiretaps.
We know telecommunications companies have been illegally forwarding records of our phone calls, emails, and web traffic to government agencies without judicial oversight. We do not know where this information is stored, how long it will be stored for, or who has access to it. Unfortunately, our government has a very poor record of safeguarding our personal data. Ask a veteran. Won't someone please get me off the AARP mailing list?
So, I'd like to say I told you so to the little old lady in the red hat. We have Senator Clinton to thank - at least in part - for what may happen should our identities and personal information be stolen, sold, leaked, or lost from this corporate-government information sharing database. I wish you the best of luck reclaiming your identity, repairing your credit, getting off a no-fly list, or re-entering the country after a holiday abroad unmolested by over-zealous border security agents.
I arrived at Portland High School at 1:30 in the afternoon today. As the snow began to fall and the chanters began, I took my place in the swelling crowd. I was cold and soaked through when I actually got into the school at 2:30, but I had it good. Others were still in line outside as late as 6:30.
I knew what to expect: Long lines, overworked volunteers, and crazy people who were apparently my neighbors. Good times. What I didn't expect was the hate.
I found myself in line with a small gang of grandmothers. They were complaining about the crowd, and tsking the fact that the party hadn't held the caucus in the Civic Center. Typical gripes really, and nothing I hadn't heard from others in the crush of would-be voters, but then it got nasty. It started with a sneering jibe at the folks – mostly young Obama supporters – waiting in an opposing line to register to vote. "If you were so enthusiastic to vote, why didn't you register before today," one of them muttered to her coven. This was meet with general approval before she turned to me and noticed my "Obama for ME" sign.
She was a grandmother in a red hat complete with tell tale purple accessories. "You're on the wrong side," she said, her Hillary sticker proudly displayed. I welcomed the recognition, and readied myself for her pitch, it was a caucus after all, but I wasn't expecting the curve. "He's a Muslim you know."
I'm not sure if my eyes actually popped or not, but she backtracked quickly with a: "That's what I hear." Even after six years, I'm still not used to the racism/xenophobia I encounter here in Maine. It's a quiet racism. Insidious. But I dropped into posture quickly and shot back. "Actually he's a Christian. Not that it would matter to me even if he was a Muslim." Now it was her turn to be shocked...and she was...for about a nanosecond. Then she asked what I knew about this guy anyway, and exactly where did he get his money from?
I in turn asked about Hillary's stock trading record with Tyson Foods and Walmart, but this only pushed her Bill Oreilly buttons and caused her to breathlessly demand that I answer her question. Who is this Obama guy? Where did he come from? Was he a Republicans plant?
I tried to take the wheel of this train to crazy-town and explained that I support Barack Obama because of his platform. Specifically his pledge to open government, and his science and technology policies as endorsed by the EFF. Attempting to explain the EFF to a red-hat wearing racist crone is a good time. I highly recommend it if you have the means. At any rate, she promised me that the good folks up in Aroostook County would never vote for a black man, and that Obama didn't have a chance in Maine. That's where the line ended and we parted ways.
By 8:30 tonight, our votes where cast and counted. In my precinct I'm happy to report that the final tally was 374 for Obama and 104 for Clinton.
The Internet phenomena that is Ron Paul's base considers it's next best option...Barack Obama. Cheers to that. I am biased of course, but given Obama's open government and technology platforms(64k pdf) as endorsed by Lawrence Lessig, I'd say Obama stands alone as the next best choice for Paul supporters concerned about matters of privacy, government transparency, and issues such as net neutrality.
Via DMIESSLER.COM: "Question: When Do We, As Paul Supporters, Switch to Obama?
Ron Paul just took 3% in Florida, and most states have been going similarly. I'm thinking what everyone else is thinking, but now I'm thinking it out loud.
When do we call gg and switch our energies to keeping Romney or McCain out of office? In other words, when do we give up and start supporting Obama?
Perhaps there are those among you that don't like Obama, but here's something to consider: you should vote for him for the same reason you'll vote for Paul even though he doesn't believe in evolution. He's an honest man with common sense."
Will we see a Ron Paul bump in Obama's February 5th poll numbers?
Last week in South Carolina the eight announced hopefuls (I'm still pullin' for you Ali G!) for the 2008 Democratic nomination met to "debate." This fat honkin' slice o'political theater has been re-run on MSNBC several times since, and has been edited and condensed in Daily Show soundbite-montage-style in various forms online (If history were written using only tidbits of viral marketing one might think former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel dominated the event).
I'm an election geek, so I was looking for the basics: Tie color, lighting, stage position, camera angles. Throughout the campaign process, top candidates from both parties are trained, poked, and prodded to take full advantage these near subliminal elements which in aggregate add to the publics estimation of that indefinable yet all important quality of appearing "Presidential." Take stage position for instance (supposedly random, by the way):
The Right Wing Richardson (Gov-NM) Dobbs (Sen-CT)
The Center/Mainstream Edwards (Sen-NC) Biden (Sen-DE) Obama (Sen-IL) Clinton (Sen-NY)
The Left Wing Kucinich (Rep-OH) Gravel (Sen-AK)
The mainstream media is once again attempting to short circuit our electoral process by choosing our front runners for us by emphasizing Obama and Clinton. Personally I didn't see anything in the debate that excited me about any of the candidates beyond the fact that none of them are the current Administration. In that light, my pick for the top two clear winners of the first debate are: John Kerry (Sen-MA) and Al Gore (former USVP)!
Both are smart enough to realize that it's ridiculously early to even announce candidacy, never mind hold a staged and manipulated debate. Both have also won Presidential elections in the past. These two facts alone put them head and shoulders above the rest of the field.
uicksilver workshop
