June 24, 2008
Obama addresses his staff
This is a video of a nice moment: Obama addressing his staff after clinching the nomination.
Speaker info
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June 19, 2008
YouTube satire
I’ve been enjoying the Public Service Administration’s Election 08 satires. The Message To Ralph and Bass Motives are very funny, as well as the better known parody of the Yes We Can video. Warning: Totally Obama slanted. In fact, I think their anti-Hillary stuff is the weakest of the lot (well, the Monty Python mashup is funny).
June 5, 2008
Let’s see the vice-sausage being made
Barack Obama has promised to tear down the stone wall and dense bushes with which the current administration has barricaded the White House. Good. Democracy without transparency is at best assumed.
And, Obama has promised to take advantage of our new connective technology — the Internets and all its associated tubeware — to enable a level of citizen participation undreamed of since our population outgrew the local town hall.
So, how about if the campaign starts now by opening up the vice presidential selection process?
Instead of having potential VPs enter through the back door of some undisclosed location, how about if we get to see some of the discussions? Certainly some conversations need to be held in private, but the traditional black box method leads to the impression that it’s all back backroom deals and ulterior motives.
And how about letting us have our say? An online poll would give the false impression that this is up for popular vote. But the VP selection committee should at the least set up a discussion board where we can engage with one another and with the committee.
Why wait? Let the sun shine in now.
Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: obama • politics • transparency • vice_president
May 18, 2008
Blogher interviews Obama
May 17, 2008
OMG, would you just please look it up in Wikipedia?
Here’s 9 minutes of Chris Matthews trying to get a hollerin’ right-wing radio host to acknowledge that he (the host) doesn’t know what “appeasement” means. Clearly, neither does President Bush.
The notion that it’s weak to talk with your enemies is even more dangerous than the Bush preemption policy. If you don’t talk, you use force. Force is expensive. Force kills innocents. Force kills Americans. Force is wildly ineffective. Force makes peace harder to bring about. That’s why force is a last resort. The problem is, Bush doesn’t have a first resort.
That’s why during the cold war, every president spoke with the Soviet leaders, even while the Soviets were a launch-code away from obliterating us with nuclear weapons. Of course you talk with your enemies. What are we, inarticulate Huns? Blood-raged animals? Implacable minions of death? Jeez!
Talking with your enemies doesn’t mean you incrementally give them what they want in the naive hope that they’ll stop with that. That would be, um, appeasement. But refusing to talk with your enemies is — I don’t know what other word to use — wickedness.
Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: appeasement • obama • peace • politics
April 23, 2008
My life as a counter-indicator
Apparently, the traits I like in a candidate are the traits most of the country dislikes. I am therefore a counter-indicator. And also pretty depressed.
Pity me.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that the candidate I prefer (= am in love with) has in fact “closed the deal” with the majority of Democratic voters and delegates. So, maybe you shouldn’t pity me.
Yet.
April 8, 2008
Obama in China (and how to read Global Voices)
This is a Google-automated translation of the Baidu page on Obama. (Baidu is the Chinese search engine.)
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Ethan Zuckerman says his favorite way to browse GlobalVoices is through the digests page.
Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: baidu • china • culture • everythingIsMiscellaneous • globalvoices • obama
March 23, 2008
Stop the presses: CNN actually listens to Wright’s sermon
CNN actually had a reporter listen to the entire tape of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, instead of just the sound bytes. Wow! What a revolutionary idea! And it turns out that in context, Wright’s words are — get this! — more understandable and less inflammatory. Isn’t it crazy how context will do that? Furthermore, it turns out that the when Wright suggested that our chickens were coming home to roost, he was quotingciting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force.
How many days did it take for the professional news media to get around to this?
Categories: Uncategorized Tagged with: cnn • jeremiah_wright • journalism • media • obama • politics
March 22, 2008
The neck-and-neck narrative
From Politico:
Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.
In fact, says the post,
But let’s assume a best-case scenario for Clinton, one where she wins every remaining contest with 60 percent of the vote (an unlikely outcome since she has hit that level in only three states so far — her home state of New York, Rhode Island and Arkansas).
Even then, she would still be behind Obama in delegates.
The post is about why the media portrays a contest Hillary is highly unlikely to win as a neck-and-neck horse race.
(As an Obama supporter, I’m reluctant to blog this since I have never been right.)
March 20, 2008
Obama’s Constitutional Christianity
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
TL;DR: Share this post freely, but attribute it to me (name (David Weinberger) and link to it), and don't use it commercially without my permission.
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