An interesting insight into how Obama might manage his potential administration, from ABC News.Obama said. "And the truth is that we've got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know ten times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you.
From Bob Herbert's excellent Op-Ed in the NY Times:How much do voters really know about John McCain?
Senator McCain crossed a line that he shouldn’t have this week when he said that Mr. Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” It was a lousy comment, tantamount to calling Mr. Obama a traitor, and Senator McCain should apologize for it.
But what we’ve learned over the years is that Mr. McCain is one of those guys who never has to pay much of a price for his missteps and foul-ups and bad behavior. Can you imagine the firestorm of outrage and criticism that would have descended on Senator Obama if he had made the kind of factual mistakes that John McCain has repeatedly made in this campaign?
(Or if Senator Obama had had the temerity to even remotely suggest that John McCain would consider being disloyal to his country for political reasons?)
We have a monumental double standard here. Mr. McCain has had trouble in his public comments distinguishing Sunnis from Shiites and had to be corrected in one stunningly embarrassing moment by his good friend Joe Lieberman. He has referred to a Iraq-Pakistan border when the two countries do not share a border.
He declared on CBS that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11, apparently forgetting — at least for the moment — about the war in Afghanistan. In that same interview, he credited the so-called surge of U.S. forces in Iraq with bringing about the Anbar Awakening, a movement in which thousands of Sunnis turned on insurgents. He was wrong. The awakening preceded the surge.
More important than these endless gaffes are matters that give us glimpses of the fundamental makeup of the man. A celebrated warrior as a young man, he has always believed that the war in Iraq can (and must) be won. As the author Elizabeth Drew has written: “He didn’t seem to seriously consider the huge costs of the war: financial, personal, diplomatic and to the reputation of the United States around the world.”
He also felt we could have, and should have, won the war in Vietnam. “We lost in Vietnam,” said Mr. McCain in 2003, “because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting and because we limited the tools at our disposal.”
The spirit of the warrior was on display in the famous incident in which Mr. McCain, with the insouciance of a veteran bomber pilot, sang “Bomb-bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys.
No big deal. Just John being John.
Bishop put to death
Before he died Wednesday evening, death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop apologized to his victim's family, thanked America and urged people to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama."For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice," Bishop said.
As Curbed LA describes it. "The angels and the mechanical monster talk quietly, plotting their attack on the evil Nokia aliens."
In an interesting development, Mike Farrell, of Death Penalty Focus (a group that I have been involved with in the past), and "the hanging judge of Orange County, Don McCartin, have joined forces to try to end the Death Penalty. See the story in the LA Daily News. Don McCartin, having sentenced nine men to death and then watched as the system examined, re-examined and finally overturned all of his convictions while executing none of them, now believes the death penalty is a hideously expensive fraud. It tortures the loved ones of murder victims by dragging them through the years of complex appeals required by the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to protect the innocent.
He's aware of the constitutional dilemma created by the tension between the need to protect the rights of the accused in a death case and the desire for some form of justice to be done. But he's outraged that the mother of Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old girl raped and murdered in 1979, is now required to sit through yet a third trial of the alleged killer almost 30 years later. A sentence of life without parole would have allowed her to go on with her own life so long ago.Well said. And, as Mike Farrell said "our entire society is harmed by the dehumanization process inherent in state killing."
Yesterday I linked to the first part of a top 25 list of political speeches. Today 12 - 1. And the winner is:1 Winston Churchill, August 20, 1940At the height of the Battle of Britain, Churchill gave his landmark speech in the House of Commons, paying tribute to the Royal Air Force pilots whose struggle was eventually to win the battle. Churchill’s measured but soaring rhetoric was a source of great inspiration and comfort for a nation under the greatest sustained bombing campaign to date and confronting the prospect of a German invasion.
"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
The report into conditions at Doncaster Prison, South Yorkshire, found that two-person cells had been turned into three-person cells by placing a bed in the shared toilet.
Late last night, the McCain campaign kept it up when aides handed out luggage tags to the traveling press that read “McCain Press Corps: JV Squad, ‘Left Behind to Report in America.’ ” The words were translated into French on the opposite side.
There's this tidbit in Maureen Dowd's column in today's NY Times.A member of the king’s inner circle who attended the chicken-and-rice dinner with King Abdullah and Queen Rania said that Obama had gone a long way toward assuaging their fears that he would be so eager to run away from his paternal family’s Muslim roots and to woo skeptical American Jews that he would not be “the honest broker” they long for after W.’s crazed missionary work in the Middle East.Can you imagine any foreign leader having this kind of reaction to our current president?
“The guy gets it,” the Jordanian official said after dinner with Obama. “Sharp, aware and a very good listener. He doesn’t seem stuck in preconceived positions. He said he would get straight to the Palestinian issue as soon as he becomes president.”
Hat tip for the cartoon: Ellie
A friend just spotted Anglina Jole looking in damn good shape, having just recently given birth to twins. He snapped this photo when he realized she was wearing the Opinionated Old Fart on her chest.
Batman star Christian Bale was to be questioned by police over allegations he assaulted his mother and sister the night before the European premiere of his film, "The Dark Knight," British media reported Tuesday.
Map above as John McCain sees the region. His comment this morning regarding trouble on the Iraq-Pakistan border confirms its accuracy. Map by: Matt Yglesias.
From Times Online comes this interesting bit of research. Religious people are more positive towards homosexual people than is claimed by conservative faith leaders, a report out today says.
According to academics at Leeds University, faith leaders are failing to reflect what the people in the pews really think about gays.
The report Love Thy Neighbour, commissioned by the gay rights lobby group Stonewall, says that Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Christian believers are “significantly more moderate” in their views on homosexuality than is often alleged on their behalf.
Here's something we all need to remind us each morning of what we have lost during the past eight years. It's the "Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug."Drink your decaf in this dazzling mug - and watch your civil liberties disappear and reappear! Simply pour in your coffee or any hot beverage and watch the painstaking work of the founding fathers vanish before your eyes and then reappear after drinking up or cooling down. A great way to amaze and entertain a guest with satire.
But, not McCain. This AP story is fun.If Sen. John McCain is really serious about becoming a Web-savvy citizen, perhaps Kathryn Robinson can help.
Robinson is now 106 — that's 35 years older than McCain — and she began using the Internet at 98, at the Barclay Friends home in West Chester, Pa., where she lives. "I started to learn because I wanted to e-mail my family," she says — in an e-mail message, naturally.
With all the Republican accusations of Obama being an "elitist" and "not one of us," take a look at the real story from the Chicago Sun Times. How many rich kids do you know who worked at Baskin-Robbins, construction, selling trinkets in a gift shop, a deli counter and as a telemarketer?As a high school student, Obama's first job was at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store. He also has mentioned he worked construction. And we know about the famous summer job between his second and third years of law school at Sidley Austin in Chicago, where he met Michelle, who was already at the firm. The summer before, Obama worked at Hopkins & Sutter, a law firm in Chicago.
Here's what we know for the first time, with information passed on from the Obama campaign in response to my inquiries: As a college student at Occidental in Southern California, Obama returned home to Hawaii the summer after freshman year to sell island trinkets in a gift shop. Obama also had a summertime job at a deli counter in Hawaii -- making sandwiches.
Once in New York to attend Columbia, one summer Obama worked for a private company holding a contract to process health records of either police or firefighters; I'm not sure exactly what he did.
During one school year at Columbia, Obama was a telemarketer in midtown Manhattan selling New York Times subscriptions over the phone, wearing a headset. He did not like the job because "he worried that some of the people he called couldn't really afford the subscription."
From Turkey, this is a sad story. Read it all for a full story but here's a couple of bits.Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country's first gay honour killing."He fell victim to a war between old mentalities and growing civil liberties," says Sedef Cakmak, a friend and a member of the gay rights lobby group Lambda. "I feel helpless: we are trying to raise awareness of gay rights in this country, but the more visible we become, the more we open ourselves up to this sort of attack."
"From the day I met him, I never heard Ahmet have a friendly conversation with his parents," one close friend and near neighbour recounted. "They would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing."
The family pressure increased, the friend explained. "They wanted him to go back home, see a doctor who could cure him, and get married." Shortly after coming out this year, Mr Yildiz went to a prosecutor to complain that he was receiving death threats. The case was dropped. Five months later, he was dead. The police are now investigating his murder. For gay rights groups, the student's inability to get protection was a typical by-product of the indifference, if not hostility, with which a broad swathe of Turkish society views homosexuality. The military, for example, sees it as an "illness". Men applying for an exemption to obligatory military service on grounds of homosexuality must provide proof – either in the form of an anal examination, or photographs.
I am always appalled at who has the ear of a certain segment of the US population and, Michael Savage is one who continues to say things that are so outrageous as to warrant anger. You may have heard his latest tirade about autism."I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'"
-Michael Savage
This was not the first time that Savage, who holds master’s degrees in medical botany and medical anthropology, and a PhD in “nutritional ethnomedicine”, has shown his ignorance of autism. Last month, Dr. Savage, née Michael Weiner, said “In my day if a kid shot his mouth off in class we wasn’t called autistic, he was called a pain in the neck.” Autism, said Savage, is a racket for poor families to collect disability payments from the government. In Savage’s sad little world, there is no ASD or ADD: “To me, there is only one disease they all have - S.T.U.P.I.D.” The ignorance is not confined to autism - he once said that 99 percent of all depression “is rage turned inside.”
Either Savage skipped class the days his professors talked about “medicine”, or he’s an entertainer who doesn’t care who he hurts. I vote for the latter.
Chances are, Savage knows that autism is a real disorder, with a strong genetic component, and that changes in diagnostic criteria have led to a spike in diagnoses over the last 20 years. But how boring is that? How many of his eight million listeners would sit through 15 minutes of their hero going all Dr. Phil, telling us that autistic children need understanding and accommodation? So much more entertaining to joke about smacking the handicapped.
The need to entertain first, then inform, has long been a favorite subject of media watchdogs and scholars. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, published 20 years ago, Neil Postman showed us how mass media, primarily television, convert otherwise serious conversations into entertainment. Treating autism as entertainment, whether it’s calling the disorder a scam, or peeking into alternative medical clinics to see what some parents do to their kids, preempts serious discussion. Shocking, unverified anecdotes are elevated over dry scientific consensus. Preposterous medical claims are presented for their shock value, with little effort given to refutation. Over time, the public loses its appreciation for serious issues, as once serious issues morph into entertainment.
"Could I mention the presence of my friend, Congressman Steve Pearce, who I believe will be joining me in the United States Senate?
Here's another bit of good news on the equal rights for gays front. Poll results in tomorrow's Washington Post.Public attitudes about gays in the military have shifted dramatically since President Bill Clinton unveiled what became his administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy 15 years ago today.
Seventy-five percent of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62 percent in early 2001 and 44 percent in 1993.
Fifty-seven percent of white evangelical Protestants now support allowing openly gay service members in the military
"Obama elicits more excitement than McCain"
Officials at the Department of Elections announced today that the citizens’ initiative to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant has qualified for the November 4th San Francisco ballot.
There is a fun article in The Chicago Tribune today, by John Kass, about the history of coffee, or should I say our obsession with it. There's a funny couple of paragraphs about the authors nightmare of a confrontation with Teddy Roosevelt. President Theodore Roosevelt drank a gallon of coffee every day before he'd go out to shoot a bunch of creatures and put their heads on his wall. And when he'd sit down with his gallon of coffee, no one would dare tell Roosevelt that he'd just ordered a "venti." He might just put their heads on his wall.I've been trying to drink much less coffee (caffeinated beverages in general), so I guess my reaction to this is tainted by where I am now, but I enjoyed the history lesson.
I have a recurring nightmare in which Roosevelt confronts me on Michigan Avenue while I'm holding my favorite, a large mocha Frappuccino. He stares at it, then begins to mock me, louder and louder. My face turns beet red from the shame, and I begin to run on my stumpy bowlegs, with Roosevelt yelling, "Bully! Bully!"
Time to play the fear card to help McBush. We haven't had a terrorist alert since the last election but it's time. We all know terrorists only are a problem when Republicans need them to gin up fear. European terrorists are trying to enter the United States with European Union passports, and there is no guarantee officials will catch them every time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.
Chertoff's comments on Capitol Hill comes as the country is entering a potentially vulnerable period with the presidential nominating conventions coming up next month; the presidential election in November; and the transition to a new administration in January — all of which may be attractive targets for terrorists.
Been relaxing since I returned from the hospital a week ago. My reading has include re-reading the poems of Robert Creeley, one of my favorites. Here's one I like called, "Love Comes Quietly."Love come quietly,finally, dropsabout me, on me,in the old ways.What did I knowthinking myselfable to goalone all the way.
Some of you may recall my involvement with Get On The Bus. It began 5 years ago when, through a local Catholic nun, I got involved in the program which organizes bus trips on Mother's Day to take kids to visit their mothers. We coordinate with the families and prisons, provide transportation, meals and gifts for the kids, etc. The program has grown from one bus nine years ago to over 50 this year. And, my parish now sponsors 3 buses each year.A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, "This joke isn't going to work because there's no Muslim in this boat."
I guess I am in a mood to pick on Senator McCain; he makes it so easy. Below are two "jokes" by the man who would be President. The first from 1998:Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.
And, one from 1986:
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’Not so funny. And, he thinks he can win the women who were Hillary supporters?
"I'm 62, I'm having trouble remembering things."-- President Bush, at a news conference earlier today.
there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique.
The emails have been coming in all day. My favourite begins: "Dear sodomite supporter, you are nothing but a dirty sodomite-loving ugly stain of a man who is a disgrace to humanity." It ends "Burn in hell, Mr K." Well, thank you for that, Mr K. I have had a fair number of letters and emails from people who think like you. One suggested that I ought to be executed at Tyburn. Another graphically described the details of fisting.
My crime had been to offer the Bishop of New Hampshire a pulpit to preach the word of God. I usually have the emotional hide of a rhino, but even I was upset by the unpleasantness of the reaction, hiding my hurt in a few too many vodkas at lunchtime. How on earth does Gene Robinson cope with the disgusting abuse to which he is subjected most days – the protester who interrupted his sermon in my church on Sunday being a pretty mild example? Day after day, buckets of spiritual shit are thrown at him, sometimes by fellow bishops, and he just keeps going.
Spending some time with him over the last few days, I have discovered how he does it. He is the real deal. He is a believer. Responding to attacks that he had a "homosexual agenda", he insisted: "Here and now, in St Mary's Church, Putney, I want to reveal to you the homosexual agenda. The homosexual agenda is: Jesus." He went on to preach a fiery, almost revivalist, sermon, calling on Anglicans to take Jesus into their heart and to allow Him to cast out their fear.
What makes this person so interesting is that he has lost any sense that he is able to support himself spiritually through his own effort alone. His recognition of his "failure" to cope is precisely his strength. The theology is pure Luther: only when you recognise that you are unable to make yourself acceptable to God under your own steam can you collapse back upon God as the sole source of salvation. Later in the sermon, he described going from a meeting of the US House of Bishops to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and being relieved that, at this second meeting, he could at last speak about God.
Forget what you think you know about Gene Robinson – his is Gospel Christianity of a very traditional kind. This is what Christianity looks like once it has got over its obsession with respectability.
Today, the momentum favors same-sex marriage. Polls show that the electorate has become more used to the idea of same-sex marriage; women in particular see it as stabilizing for society, not destabilizing.That's good news and is certainly what I see.
And, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, homosexuals are marrying at a fast pace. That means it is gay-marriage advocates who are defending the status quo, while traditional-marriage advocates must upset it. At the least, for many voters, the idea of voting against what is already legal could create confusion, and confusion often yields a "no" vote.
And then there's the matter of timing. Proposition 8's supporters should have put their remedial measure on a primary ballot years ago. Failing that, they should have started early enough to gather sufficient signatures to qualify the measure for last month's primary ballot, not the Nov. 4 general election ballot. That's because with no statewide offices contested, and coming after the high-turnout presidential primary, the June 3 primary was guaranteed to be a low-turnout affair (i.e., older, more socially conservative voters).
On top of that, while no one could have known precisely when the Supreme Court would rule on gay marriage, as it turned out, the May 15 decision also would have energized the traditional-marriage voters who, before the first same-sex marriage licenses were issued June 15, could have stopped the whole megillah by voting for Proposition 8 on June 3.
Putting Proposition 8 on a high-turnout November presidential election ballot is dumb. Trying to pass it once same-sex marriages have become a legal, daily occurrence throughout the state is dumber. And now, if Californians vote it down, conservatives can't blame judicial tyranny for imposing same-sex marriage on the unhappy masses.
Will Californians now vote to render those marriages invalid? I don't think so.
Have you seen the cover of the new New Yorker? According to the magazine:"On the cover of the July 21, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, in 'The Politics of Fear,' artist Barry Blitt satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign."
"The New Yorker may think...that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
