Maybe Doonesbury will help jolt some on the right out of their complacency. Or maybe not:
Via: The Daily Dish
11.28.2008
11.23.2008
The Worst Christmas Jobs in History
The Worst Christmas Jobs in History. I think the Roman House Slave/Saturnalia party puke collector gig had to be one of the worst! Yuck!!
11.21.2008
Oh! The Humanity!! In Which Gov. Palin Shows Us How Not to Pardon a Turkey
Not since the hilarious "Turkeys Away" episode of WKRP in Cincinnati has there been a more misguided use of Turkeys! Wearing a Burberry scarf, drinking a Starbucks Latte, former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave an interview yesterday on KTUU Channel 2 in Anchorage, Palin is interviewed at a turkey farm while a man drains the blood from dead turkeys in the background.
I partially grew up on a farm, I'm not a vegetarian, I love eating turkeys, and I don't inherently think there's anything wrong with eating them ... but honestly, how dumb is that to stage a T.V. interview right there. I believe most people are of the we-don't-want-to-see-how-our-food-gets-to-the-table-just-so-long-as-it-does mentality. And that's fine. Just more proof that she just doesn't get it and that Wasilla was missing their village idiot during this campaign!!
My favorite thing were the Chyrons below the MSNBC footage:
0:20 "TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM THE MEDIA"
0:35 "GOV. SARAH PALIN KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER"
1:00 "GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER"
1:20 "GOV. PALIN NOT REALIZING THE INCONGRUITY OF HER WORDS VERSUS HER BACKDROP"
I had to double check to make sure I wasn't watching The Daily Show.
11.20.2008
An History of the Oval Office
It's possibly the most recognizable workspace in the world, but the office that President-elect Barack Obama, visited Nov. 10 hasn't always been the enduring symbol of the U.S. presidency. Before the 1930s, the Oval Office was in a different part of the White House. And before that, it wasn't even oval.
 Image by Monroedb1 via Flickr |
| The Resolute Desk in B. Harrsion's WH Office |
Image via WikipediaPresidents have since left their mark on the office (except Jimmy Carter, who kept Gerald Ford's décor). L.B.J. installed a bank of televisions. On the Resolute desk, used by 21 of the past 24 Presidents, Harry Truman placed his THE BUCK STOPS HERE SIGN (the reverse read I'M FROM MISSOURI). And while its darker hours saw Richard Nixon's secret taping sessions and, in adjoining rooms, JFK's and Bill Clinton's trysts, the Oval Office is where the President comes to draw the nation together.Source: Time Magazine (11-13-08)
11.19.2008
Catch Up With the Guys Featured in the Documentary, Hoop Dreams
The Chicago Tribune updates the two young men featured in Hoop Dreams, the award-winning documentary about high school basketball stars trying to make their way through life and, hopefully, to the NBA. It was one of my favorite films in 1994.
"Gates, the reserved one, has become an authoritative force who leads a church in the Cabrini area. He is married with four kids. Agee, a spirited charmer, doesn't have a regular job but is launching a line of "Hoop Dreams" apparel. He has five kids by five different women."
Agee also spends time working on his non-profit foundation that works with underprivileged kids. Hoop Dreams is available to watch on Hulu.
11.18.2008
Creative Commons Offers an Exclusive Unreleased JoCo Compilation On USB Drive
CC will be offering the drives at $50 dollar donation level (and above) until December 31st. Also included are a CreativeCommons.net account, an OpenID identity, and a 2008 campaign sticker.
JoCo wrote a letter on how he, as a musician, uses Creative Commons to support himself and his career. Read it here.
Check out A Shared Culture, a short video by filmmaker Jesse Dylan. Known for the Emmy Award-winning Yes We Can Barack Obama campaign video.
Via: Boing Boing
11.16.2008
Historians' Opinions About Obama's Win
Historians’ Comments
- ERIC FONER “What it meant In the great national narrative, where will Obama’s election really fit? Five historians answer”: MOST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS do not fundamentally alter the American political landscape. Even when the party in power changes, the basic assumptions governing policy generally remain the same. But in a few critical elections, the advent of a new president is a transformative moment that reshapes American public life for a generation or more….
Obama has the bad luck to come to power in the midst of an economic crisis. He has the good luck to do so in a country yearning for strong leadership and a renewed sense of political possibility. No president can perform miracles. But if, like his most successful predecessors, Obama seizes the occasion by striking out boldly, articulating forcefully a new philosophy of governing at home and relating to the rest of the world, we will add 2008 to the very short list of elections that have truly transformed American life. - Boston Globe, 11-9-08 - STEVEN F. LAWSON “What it meant In the great national narrative, where will Obama’s election really fit? Five historians answer”: IT HAS TAKEN 43 years since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which extended the right to vote to the majority of African-Americans, for a black candidate to become president of the United States. The significance of this achievement rises further when we remember that it has been nearly 90 years since women received the suffrage and that no woman has been elected president or even chosen by the two major parties to run.
Barack Obama’s election confirms the faith that the civil rights movement placed in the power of the right to vote. In becoming commander in chief, Obama has inherited the legacy of countless civil rights warriors who risked their lives and many who lost theirs, to gain the right to vote, not as an empty symbol, but as a genuine tool for freedom and equality. He stands on the shoulders of John Lewis, Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, Ella Baker, and Martin Luther King Jr., among many others….
And, remember, Obama’s triumph does not guarantee the election of another African-American any time soon. John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic to win election to the presidency in 1960 and remains the only Catholic president to date. In fact, unless Americans become racially blind, which has not happened through 500 years, it will become harder for African-Americans to win the White House again. Demography is working against them, as Hispanic-Americans have now become the nation’s largest minority group. - Boston Globe, 11-9-08 - THOMAS J. SUGRUE “What it meant In the great national narrative, where will Obama’s election really fit? Five historians answer”: ON ELECTION NIGHT, Barack Obama addressed nearly 200,000 supporters in Chicago’s Grant Park - the place where, just 40 years earlier, antiwar protesters, hippies, yippies and black radicals clashed with police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Alternative visions of America had collided on Chicago’s streets: dissent versus “America love it or leave it” patriotism, militancy versus law and order, sexual libertinism versus family values. Obama’s Grant Park celebration - just like the election of 2008 - exorcized the ghosts of 1968, perhaps forever….
Generation Obama has its own issues: global warming, worldwide epidemics, the threat of terrorism, and the collapse of the financial markets, to name a few. McCain’s evocations of small-town values, of dissent and the silent majority and campus radicalism, left those problems unaddressed. Obama’s rhetoric of unity - of common purpose and common cause - threw the dated politics of division and resentment into the dustbin of history. The cultural warriors, fighting over law and order, God, guns, and family values, will not be silent during the Obama administration, but they are increasingly relics of the past. - Boston Globe, 11-9-08 - JACQUELINE JONES “What it meant In the great national narrative, where will Obama’s election really fit? Five historians answer”: NOW THAT HALF a century has passed since the election of President Barack Obama, we can begin to place that watershed event into historical perspective.
Those of us who witnessed the turbulent campaign of ‘08 recall that, at the time, many pundits, scholars, and politicians argued that “racial progress” constituted the true significance of Obama’s election. Certainly his success at the polls that year was a great symbolic victory; less than a century and a half earlier, the vast majority of Americans of African descent were enslaved, and as late as 1965, the vast majority of rural black Southerners were disenfranchised. Obama’s election then was a triumph on two fronts: Many white Americans repudiated centuries of pervasive racial prejudice and discrimination to vote for a black man, and at the same time, President Obama represented the integration of blacks into the highest echelons of American elective office. The night of the election, Obama’s supporters joyfully celebrated what many considered to be the elimination of racial barriers to black people’s full participation in American political and social life….
In time-honored fashion, many Americans searched for scapegoats to blame as the long era of freewheeling spending came to an abrupt halt; and in the years after 2008, those scapegoats were likely to be African-Americans and undocumented immigrants. In hindsight we know that contemporary observers who celebrated Obama’s victory as a new era in American “race relations” were sadly mistaken. - Boston Globe, 11-9-08 - JOHN DITTMER “What it meant In the great national narrative, where will Obama’s election really fit? Five historians answer”: FIFTY YEARS FROM now historians will look back on the election of 2008 as a watershed. Transcending the issue of his race, Barack Obama assembled a new progressive coalition, galvanized by the young and minorities, that successfully challenged the conservative consensus that had defined American political life for more than a quarter century….
On Election Day, men and women who had once fought for the right to vote stood in line for hours to elect a black president. At the Obama victory rally, when asked to explain the tears running down his cheek, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he was thinking of all the martyrs who had given their lives to make the moment possible. Television footage from across the country showed people crying and hugging each other, evoking images of the spontaneous celebrations at the end of World War II. A new day seemed to be dawning. Once again America was leading by example, giving hope to all who believe in the possibilities of democracy. - - Boston Globe, 11-9-08 - John Hope Franklin “In Obama’s victory, America comes to terms with past”: “This is one of the most historic moments, if not the most historic moment in the history of this country,” said 93-year-old John Hope Franklin, professor emeritus of history at Duke University. Franklin, one of the nation’s most accomplished historians, said Wednesday that he was confident that Obama could reach this historic milestone. “I knew that it would come sooner or later,” Franklin said. “I had the chance to meet and talk with him, so I was not shocked or terribly surprised because he is a winner.” - Kansas City Star, 11-13-08
- Horace Huntley “In Obama’s victory, America comes to terms with past”: “I’ve taught for 35 years and I always tell my students, ‘When race comes into play, logic has a way of exiting.’ But I may have to revise that thinking after this,” said Horace Huntley, a historian and the director of oral history at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. “Now it appears that logic may be overtaking the illogical. It appears there’s a groundswell of sensibility.”
To a generation of young blacks who never experienced overt racism, many can’t fully appreciate the magnitude of Obama’s victory. That’s mainly the fault of black parents and schools that don’t make civil rights history mandatory, Huntley said. - Kansas City Star, 11-13-08 - Clarence Williams “In Obama’s victory, America comes to terms with past”: Clarence Williams, a history professor at the University of California at Davis, was equally pessimistic about Obama’s chances, saying he never thought he’d see a black president in his lifetime. “Because I think of the United States, historically, as a deeply and pervasive racist country,” Williams said. “It may have changed a bit in some ways, but in some ways it has not. And I have no shame about saying that to you.” Williams, who describes his feelings about America as “critical patriotism,” said that he, too, was heartened by the widespread support that Obama got from nonblack voters who gravitated to his positive message. “This notion of giving people hope is a very important thing,” he said.
Williams warned, however, that Obama’s victory doesn’t mean that America is or ever will be colorblind. “But what it does is suggest we have taken another gigantic step forward with our racial problem,” Williams said.
“We attempted to coddle our children and protect them from the harshness of the past rather than teach them what had taken place,” Huntley said. As a result, many young blacks “have put a diesel engine on an oxcart and raced away from their past,” Williams said. - Kansas City Star, 11-13-08 - Nell Painter: “In Obama’s victory, America comes to terms with past”: Nell Painter, a history professor emeritus at Princeton University, also was taken by the country’s ability, in the end, to judge a black candidate based on his ideas rather than skin color. “The idea that we can vote for a black person for president just really makes me feel good about the United States, given our history,” Painter said. “It’s like we’re saying ‘Look, we’re not these bad old people any more. We’re fair-minded.’ It’s a powerfully positive statement about the United States turning its back on its evil ways.”
“The breaking down of segregation made possible what we’re seeing today in Barack Obama,” Painter said. “This could not have happened in a segregated America. Too many white people would have found it impossible to vote for him.” - Kansas City Star, 11-13-08 - Gil Troy “Obama’s “Historic” Triumph: Did He Win or was it a GO George – Get Out George W. victory by default?”: Historians have to navigate carefully when entering the strange, alluring world of media commentary. To maintain our integrity, we need boundaries. Presumably, those of us who comment believe that offering historical perspective even as history unfolds can elevate public debate, using current events as “teachable moments.” But most of the time journalists want us – especially on television – to do things we should not do, namely predict the future or determine the historical meaning of fleeting events as they unfold. Even on the air, historians should dodge certain questions. We should never predict. And we should sidestep premature queries such as “Is George W. Bush the worst president ever,” halfway through his term. Anyone who survived oral exams should be able to handle it. During last week’s remarkable redemptive moment as Barack Obama won the presidency, it seemed that most of the media wanted to trot out historians to certify that this election was indeed “historic.” — HNN, 11-13-08
- Gil Troy “How Generation Y became Obama’s political animal”: “This is not a generation of enduring loyalty,” said Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University. “They have quicksilver loyalties compared to their parents. At some point, there’ll be a confrontation between hope and government.” - Globe and Mail, 11-11-08
- Allan Lichtman “‘President Obama’ Will Be Greeted By A Stack Of Problems”: Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., said like great presidents of the past, however, Obama seems suited to the task of navigating the country through its current morass. “He’s very cool, very unruffled; he doesn’t panic and he’s retained his good humor, like Ronald Reagan, and that’s going to be very critical,” Lichtman explained. “Also, he’s been very inspirational and that’s an important quality because it helps bring people along with you and the only way to counter wealthy, special interests is the power of the people. That’s how Teddy Roosevelt countered special interests in his administration.”
“I think it’s a return to a kind of liberalism that we have not seen since the 1960s, early 1970s,” said Lichtman. “Ther’s a much greater faith in government, a less militaristic approach to foreign policy and a much more multilateral approach compared to the Bush administration….there’s less of an emphasis on supporting the wealthy.”
“Obama can take good lessons from Franklin Roosevelt, who came into office during a financial crisis, and that is bold, persistent determination and a willingness to try lots of different things. There is no one silver bullet for this economic problem.”
“He’s shown tremendous willingness to experiment and change and try to do new things and not just walk down the line in Democratic orthodoxy,” he said.
“Race is a sore spot,” said Lichtman, the American University historian. “He’ll have to tread softly but not back down, and he’s shown his ability to do that. The best way to defuse the issue of race is for Obama to show he can be president of all people and to govern well, and governing well means solving problems.” - Seattle Medium, 11-12-08 - Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said she was hard-pressed to find a similar moment in history when the tone had changed so drastically, and so quickly, among so many people of such prominence. “The best answer I can give you,” said Goodwin, “is they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.” - Star Tribune, 11-13-08
- Douglas Brinkley, the best-selling author and professor of history at Rice University: “Monumental … a major shift in the zeitgeist of our times.”
- Joan Hoff, a former president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency: “I can’t think of another election where the issues were two wars and a crashed economy. There just isn’t any historical precedent for this.”
- James McPherson, author and professor emeritus of history at Princeton University: “It’s an historic turning point … an exclamation point of major proportions to the civil rights movement that goes back to the 1950s.”
- Douglas Brinkley says Obama Could Permanently Ban ANWR Drilling: “I think what they’re trying to do is in the Obama administration, start pointing out some clear divot spots where they’re going to deviate from the Bush administration –things like Guantanamo, things that, ‘No, we are not going to be for drilling around parks.’ I wouldn’t be surprised in the coming year if you see someplace like ANWR in Alaska turn from being a wildlife refuge run by U.S. Fish and Wildlife and turn over to becoming a National Monument where you couldn’t drill. So you’re going to be, and that’s because you’re going to have to do some things sort of on the cheap. - http://www.businessandmedia.org, 11-12-08
- Edna Greene Medford “Obama’s victory a ‘renewed hope’” Howard University history professor Edna Greene Medford said President-elect Barack Obama’s historic victory is “a symbol” to blacks, but “we don’t expect much because we know we’re not going to get much.” A Lincoln historian, Mrs. Medford said Mr. Obama, like Lincoln, is offering hope but black voters are “smart enough to know” that the 44th president is only one man and his election “does not mean that life is going to get better for me.” Mrs. Medford made her comments, which were disputed by Obama transition team officials, during a heady meeting of the Trotter Group of black columnists at Howard. - Washington Times, 11-12-08
- Daryl Scott “Obama’s victory a ‘renewed hope’” 20th-century historian Daryl Scott, echoed the sentiment that Mr. Obama “ran a campaign on helping the middle class;” not the poor, who disproportionately are minorities and women. “There will be nothing done for the poor in the name of the poor, nothing done for blacks in the name of blacks,” Mr. Scott said. “Obama will do what Lincoln did - give them nothing but freedom.” - Washington Times, 11-12-08
- Michael Honey, MLK historian, reflects on Obama presidency: “It took an African-American to really follow through on what freedom means. We have elected a leader whose insight comes from his own historical roots. He is trying to make freedom real for everybody.”…
In 30 years, people of color will be in the majority in the United States. The U.S. is about inclusive equality and freedom. But a certain portion of the electorate is holding on to the old America. The old idea of white men running things doesn’t fit the reality of the country any more. It’s like we’ve been trying to build America while excluding a big part of America. We have had so much trouble [with racial issues]. But now that Obama has been elected, I feel like we’re finally dealing with our own history. We’re not living in unreality anymore. - http://www.tacomadailyindex.com, 11-10-08 - Shelby Steele: ‘Why Obama Can’t Win’ Author Defends Analysis: “My feeling is that I stand by every word of the analysis — what is between the covers of the book. For the year I have had to apologize for the stupid, silly subtitle that was slapped on to the book.” - NYT, 11-10-08
- Harold Holzer & James McPherson ask: WWLD? (What would Lincoln Do?): So, what lessons can Obama learn from what Lincoln did—and didn’t do—in the time between his election and inauguration? To find out, the Tribune asked two Lincoln scholars, Harold Holzer, author of the newly published “Lincoln President-elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861,” and James McPherson, author of the classic Civil War history tome “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief,” published in October. - Chicago Tribune, 11-9-08
- Timothy Garton Ash: Obama must show the way to a goal set by Russell, Einstein - and Reagan - Guardian (UK), 11-13-08
- Alonzo Hamby: Why liberals now call themselves progressives Conservativenet, 11-12-08
- Julian Zelizer: What Obama should do with Biden CNN, 11-10-08
- Beverly Gage: Do Rookies Make Good Presidents? - Time Magazine, 11-5-08
- Andrew Doyle: 2-minute Tuesday: Andrew Doyle, Associate professor of history at Winthrop University - Herald Online, 11-4-08
Via: A much longer post @ HISTORY MUSINGS… Bonnie K. Goodman
11.12.2008
Resistance Will Be Futile, I Guess?
Awaiting the moment we Obama voters have our 'Socialist, Wealth-Sharing, Hanging with Terrorists, Muslim, Gun Thieves of Doom' neural implant chips triggered! Crap, I said that out loud! Now the wingnuts'll know! Oh, wait, they already do.
11.11.2008
Every Grain Of Sand
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.
Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.
Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.
I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.
I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.
Copyright ©1981 Special Rider Music / Bob Dylan
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Anathem by Neal Stephenson My review
I picked this book up over the week-end. Not an easy task for a book just shy of 1,000 pages!!
Here's what scifi.com review says:"If Ursula Le Guin and Umberto Eco set out collaboratively to write a Hardy Boys adventure of detection and employed the selected works of Gene Wolfe (the New Sun sequence [1980, et seq.:]), John Crowley (Engine Summer [1979:]), Brian Aldiss (the Helliconia series [1982-85:]) and Austin Tappan Wright (Islandia [1942:]) as models, they might have come up with Anathem."
I'll review when I'm finished, sometime into Obama's second administration probably. ;)
View all my reviews.
11.08.2008
Obama Team Prepared To Undo The Damage
From the Sunday, Nov. 9th, Washington Post. President Elect Obama positions himself to quickly reverse Bush actions on environmental and social Issues.
Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse the president on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.
It goes on to say:
Other early Obama initiatives may address the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say. But they add that only a portion of his early efforts will be aimed at undoing Bush initiatives.
Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center's senior vice president for external affairs.
Tolerance Is a Moral Value: My Thoughts on Legislating Hate As a Value
As a Quaker I believe the movement to isolate and scapegoat homosexuals, to promote hatred against them, and to impose in law one group’s religious beliefs on us all, is blatantly immoral and contrary to Jesus’ teachings.
With half of marriages ending in divorce, unquestionably the right thing to do is to strengthen marriages. But diverting the question to whether two people of the same sex can have legal rights together completely loses track of the problem of frail marriages.
The now, sadly passed, constitutional amendment really had nothing to do with marriage; but thinly veiled attacks on gays and lesbians, part of a pattern of discrimination and institutionalized hatred. It is a strategy of power practiced by would-be tyrants throughout history.
Some have portrayed persecution and hatred of gays as a Christian thing to do. Nowhere is it found that Jesus said anything about homosexuality. Nor did Jesus ever suggest encoding Christian teachings into a Sharia-like law to force religious beliefs on society.
I believe that God loves us all equally, and that we are called to treat each other with the same love in which God created us. We have no need to hate, or to discriminate against, any group for any reason. It is simply not Christian to do so.
Several Quaker meetings have married gay and lesbian Quakers, and many other meetings have passed minutes affirming their willingness to do so.
Quakers have often appeared at the forefront of social change in the United States. Just as Quakers abolished slavery within their communities long before the Emancipation Proclamation, so have many Quaker meetings recognized gay and lesbian marriage in advance of our nation's courts. Let us hope that soon, history will not fall so far behind its conscience.
11.06.2008
The Idea Prevails
Just a note and a thought.
More than any war, more than any funding of an insurgency in a totalitarian regime, more than any economic embargo, more than any imported TV show or film; America just gave the watching World and Billions of sets of eyes a lesson on what the American Dream actually is. That it's real and attainable.
We also gave the World a lesson on what American democracy truly is. A country can loose a war, can turn good-will against itself by acting counter to the core belief sets it is supposedly at war to promote, but you can't, as the trope goes, kill an idea. We should remember this, we NEED to remember this.
11.05.2008
Mr. President
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."
--Address in Chicago Accepting Election as the 44th President of the United States, November 4, 2008
11.03.2008
Endorsements? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Endorsements!
I'm not a pundit, talking head or political apparatchik. I'm just a fairly well informed, even-headed, politically active guy from Indianapolis. Rather than say I endorse Barack Obama for President and think that that may influence anyone to go vote for Obama. I will provide some links. Enjoy. Oh and please, please, please VOTE!!
Peggy Noonan's WSJ Editorial: Obama and the Runaway Train
Tim O'Reilly of the O'Reilly Radar very thoughtful endorsement: Why I Support Barack Obama
Oh and what this guy says
The Final Indignity: Dick Cheney's hometown paper, the reliably Republican daily in Casper, Wyoming, the Star-Tribune, endorsed Obama this morning. Like so many others that backed Bush in 2004 the editorial cited as a key factor, the horrendous pick of Palin.
The Annenberg School's Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Brown University's Glenn Loury on the final days of a historic election cycle on Bill Moyer's Journal: Watch this thoughtful, critical, intelligent, summation of this election cycle.
"KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON This has been a disappointing election year in which there were major problems facing the electorate, a campaign process that didn't address them, debates that didn't do as much as they could to inform people about the tough challenges, the tradeoffs, and the likely solutions. Candidates who didn't tell us the full truth about everything that we know that they stood for in the past and would stand for in the future but which nonetheless put forward I think two qualified individuals to be president of the United States."
"Glenn Loury And I'm thinking, you know, some of this stuff, maybe it won't sell in middle America. But there's nothing wrong with it as such. There's nothing that should be disqualifying about it. It should have a place at the table of American conversation. And my fear was that as Obama, of necessity, needed to sort of marginalize that kind of thing, which had been important in his own life coming along. But now to move on, he needed to marginalize it, that the result would be that it would end up being marginalized across the board. It would end up a kind of commonplace assumption that that kind of talk is un-American or mildly offensive or whacko or something like that. And I just don't think that's so."
Back in late September, Bill Moyers also interviewed Andrew J. Bacevich — Professor of International Relations at Boston University, retired Army colonel, and West Point graduate who encouraged viewers to take a step back and connect the intellectual and philosophical dots between U.S. foreign policy, consumerism, politics, and militarism. It's a fascinating discussion.
"Andrew J. Bacevich I've been troubled by the course of U.S. foreign policy for a long, long time. And I wrote the book in order to sort out my own thinking about where our basic problems lay. And I really reached the conclusion that our biggest problems are within.
I think there's a tendency in the part of policy makers — and probably a tendency in the part of many Americans — to think that the problems we face are problems that are out there somewhere beyond our borders, and that if we can fix those problems, then we'll be able to continue the American way of life as it has long existed. I think it's fundamentally wrong. Our major problems are here at home."
Some final thoughts:
One of the things that I think has happened in this election is that the symbol of Barack Obama has been taken by the world community as a symbol of change. And that's not simply a change in a reconciliation with a troubled part of the United States' past but also change from the Bush administration, change from a world in which anchoring in the international community was frowned upon. Here's a candidate whose biography is anchored in the international community. Time in Indonesia, father from Kenya.
I think the symbolic importance of an Obama candidacy to the world community at a time in which our relations have with other parts of the world are somewhat troubled is, in fact, one of the important symbolic elements of this campaign.
I also think one of the things that we (I) know about Senator McCain is that in important ways he isn't President George W. Bush. And he hasn't been able in the campaign to talk about those things. Because to the extent that he does, he alienates part of the base that he needs to be elected. And he didn't tell us things about his own biography.
Speaking to this impulse to use government to protect people, virtually no one knows that he championed the Patient's Bill of Rights, something that runs counter to virtually everything a real conservative would want to see government do.
It's a failure to be able to find a way to deliver a message that would let his base still support him and yet speak to the rest of the folks about what his actual record was. And I wonder if he hadn't stressed all those things, if his electoral equation right now wouldn't be a lot more positive. And then there is Palin.
The World badly needed a Pres. McCain in 2000. I would have voted for him over Al Gore. At this time, after these last eight years, America and the World needs Barack Obama. We still badly need John McCain, the old, original flavor, pre-2008 version of him, in the US Senate, now more than ever.
11.02.2008
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - My Review
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz My review
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Published - September 6th 2007 by Riverhead Hardcover
Hardcover, 352 pages
url - http://www.junotdiaz.com/
Setting - Dominican Republic
Literary awards - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2008); National Book Critics Circle Award (2008)
isbn - 1594489580 (isbn13: 9781594489587)
Narrated by an old college roommate named Junior, "Oscar Wao" is, among other things, the story of Oscar LaInca - an overweight, sci-fi reading, Dungeons and Dragons playing, "ghetto nerd," whose nickname is Spanglish for Oscar Wilde (meant as an insult, alluding to both Wilde's girth and sexuality). Although Dominican, Oscar completely defies the machismo stereotype, and given that he lives in the more-than-a-little-rough Paterson, NJ, Oscar spends most of his time in his bedroom where he can safely escape behind his Akira posters, Tolkien and role-playing games when he isn't in the midst of an obsessive and wholly one-sided love affair with some disinterested female.
As can be easily inferred from the title, Oscar's life is brief; yet, Junior must span two countries and three generations in order to tell the story of it. He begins by explaining that the LaInca family is said to have suffered from a powerful fuku (curse) earned when Oscar's grandfather angered Trujillo. Anticipating that most readers may have "missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history," Junior explains:
Trujillo, one of the twentieth century's most infamous dictators, ruled the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961 with an implacable ruthless brutality. A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon-ear haberdashery, Trujillo (known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface) came to control nearly every aspect of the DR's political, cultural, social, and economic life through a potent (and familiar) mixture of violence, intimidation, massacre, rape, co-optation, and terror...He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our One and Future Dictator, a personaje so outlandish, so perverse, so dreadful that not even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass up.
The story of the Trujillo-era Dominican Republic becomes the backdrop for Díaz’s tale, which is equal parts coming-of-age novel, historical fiction, and epic family saga that seamlessly weaves hip-hop, feminism, mythology, science fiction and magical realism throughout.
And if I haven't made it clear enough by my rambling and overly long overview, I loved it. Admittedly, it took a little while for me to fully get into it, but was hooked come fifty pages in. I felt two sorts of sadness at the novel's conclusion: one for the sweet, brave, pathetic Oscar, and the other because I simply didn't want it to be over.
- Check out the Nov. 1, 2008 Chicago Tribune. It was mentioned as one of the 12 books the next President should read.
11.01.2008
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