Oprah introducing Barack a few hours ago:
“There are those who say that Barack Obama should wait his turn. There are those who say that he should take a gradual approach to presidential leadership, but none of us is God,” Ms. Winfrey said. “We don’t know what the future holds, so we must respond to the pressures and the fortunes of history when the moment strikes. And Iowa, I believe that moment is now.”
With that, Mr. Obama took the stage.
[digg-reddit-me] It is not enough to have every intelligent person in the country voting for me. I need a majority.
Perhaps that quote helps explain why Adlai Stevenson lost two presidential races.
Either because:
Either way, it’s a quote that has some bearing on how this coming election will turn out, as many people question whether a majority of the country, having voted for Bush, is capable to making an intelligent decision about who should clean up Bush’s numerous messes.
[digg-reddit-me]I’m now realizing some people might not have been following this as closely as I have.
In mid-November, Obama unveiled this indirect attack on Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush:
“I’m not in this race to fulfill some long-held plan or because it was owed to me…”
Hillary responded in a number of ways – suggesting she had really bad dirt on Obama that she was choosing not to leak ((It turned out to be a land deal that
Finally, earlier this week, Hillary released a press release citing an essay Obama wrote as a kindegardener, another essay from third grade, and a quote from one of his law school acquaintances, all suggesting that Obama was planning to run. The section on third grade read as follows:
In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]
After being ridiculed about the matter for a day, Clinton’s top pollster and adviser, Mark Penn stated that the press release was just a joke. No one seems to have quite believed that, but that’s the current state of affairs.
Brian Duffy of the Des Moines Register had this response to Hillary’s inane use of Obama’s third grade essay:
via Andrew Sullivan
Forthcoming in the next few days, my take on “Libertarian Liberalism” following up the lib•er•tar•ian: Ron Paul libertarians vs. Daily Kos libertarians piece that got some attention two weeks ago. (Also, the reason for my slow blogging recently.)
[digg-reddit-me]Worth revisiting as long as Giuliani is still in the presidential race is this bizarre rant against a ferret owner protesting the city’s ban on the pets. The clip is from 1999 when Rudy was mayor of New York and dropping fast in opinion polls.
In an unrelated note, here is the definition of the psychological term “projection”, which is related to the Orwellian technique of transference that George Soros attributed to Giuliani a few days ago.”Projection” is defined as a defense mechanism in which one attributes to others one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions. Projection is commonly associated with paranoid personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy. It’s not as if Giuliani (TM) ((Yes, Giuliani has also trademarked his name.))has ever been described as a paranoid, narcissistic jerk though.
Do any of these characteristics remind you of anyone? A selective list of some symptoms of these disorders ((I know there are going to be some who say all politicians have all of these characteristics. To some extent this is true, but most of these characteristics can be balanced in a healthy personality. Ambition and confidence can be good; a grandiose sense of self-importance ends up being destructive.)):
Paranoia
Narcissism
Antisocial
Psychopathy
Ron Rosenblum had this must-read article about World War III over at Slate magazine this weekend.
I think this is the urgent debate question that should be posed to both parties’ candidates. What happens if Pakistan falls into the hands of al-Qaida-inclined elements? What happens if Musharraf hands over the launch authorization codes before he’s beheaded?
Don’t kid yourself: At this very moment, there’s a high probability that this scenario is being wargamed incessantly in the defense and intelligence ministries of every nuclear nation, most particularly the United States, Russia, and Israel.
War is just a shot away, a well-aimed shot at Musharraf. But World War III? Not inevitably. Still, in any conflict involving nukes, the steps from regional to global can take place in a flash. The new “authorized” users of the Islamic bomb fire one or more at Israel, which could very well retaliate against Islamic capitals and perhaps bring retaliation upon itself from Russia, which may have undeclared agreements with Iran, for instance, that calls for such action if the Iranians are attacked.
If Pakistan is the most immediate threat, U.S., Israeli, and Iranian hostilities over Iranian bomb-making may be the most likely to go global. That may have been what the “very senior” British official was talking about when he said the Israeli raid on Syria brought us “close … to a third world war.” Iranian radar could easily have interpreted the Israeli planes as having its nuclear facilities as their target. On Nov. 21, Aviation Week reported online that the United States participated in some way in the Israeli raid by providing Israel information about Syrian air defenses. And Yossi Melman, the intelligence correspondent with Haaretz, reported a few days later that—according to an Israeli defense specialist—the raid wasn’t about a nuclear reactor but something more “nasty and vicious,” a plutonium assembly plant where plutonium, presumably from North Korea, was being processed into Syrian bombs.
Ben Wallace-Wells meanwhile wrote this instant Pulitze prize contender for Rolling Stone on “How America Lost the War on Drugs” with the subhead: “After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure.”
The ads, which ran under the slogan “The Anti-Drug,” had been designed by a committee of academics who apparently believed that kids needed to be shown that not doing drugs could be fun too. In one characteristic spot, a pen draws an animated landscape, with a cartoon boy avoiding the advances of cartoon dealers before driving off into the distance with a cartoon dragon on a cartoon motorcycle. “My name is Brandon, and drawing is my anti-drug,” the narrator says sweetly. The commercials made abstinence seem so lame they could have been designed by the cartels…
[Bush’s drug czar] Walters called citizens who plant and tend marijuana gardens “terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.”
By virtually every objective measure, the White House had lost the War on Drugs. Last year, Walters boasted that drug use among teenagers has fallen since 2002 – ignoring the fact that overall drug use remains unchanged. The deeper problem is that the drug czar has stopped measuring anything other than drug use. During the 1990s, at the direction of Gen. McCaffrey, Carnevale had created a comprehensive system to measure whether we were winning the drug war. The system took into account drug price and availability in the United States, how difficult it was for drug smugglers to get their product into the country and the consequences of drug use on public health and crime. But Walters simply tossed out that system of evaluation – as well as the unflattering facts it highlighted. “Had we kept it,” Carnevale tells me, “we would see that the Bush administration has not made a positive impact on any of the measures.”
Most unexpectedly of all, crime – a problem that seemed to have been licked a decade ago – is beginning to creep back up. In October 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum released a report declaring that violent crime in the country was “accelerating at an alarming pace.” Murders were up twenty-seven percent in Boston over the previous year, sixty percent in San Antonio and more than 300 percent in Orlando. Even in the cloistered world of policing, complaints began to build about the numbers and about the cuts in federal funding. “The reality is a lot of police officers are politically conservative folks,” says Ron Brooks, the president of the National Narcotics Officers’ Association. “But there’s been a lack of leadership in this administration on this issue.”
A clip from Judd Apatow’s new film, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story with John C. O’Reilly and Tim Meadows.[reddit-me] A spoof of Walk the Line, the film has cameos from Jack White as Elvis, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly.
I’ll never think of that ring the same way again…[digg-reddit-me]
Rudy’s scandal has now been named: “Sex on the City”.
[digg-reddit-me]The Wall Street Journal had an editorial this past Thursday by Warren Bennis, a professor of business at the University of Southern California and Noel Tichy, a professor of business at the University of Michigan and co-authors of Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls which was published earlier this month. In exploring the theme of experience versus judgment, they came down on the side of judgment (link behind subscriber firewall):
Where do we put our money? First, let us cite Ted Sorenson, one of John F. Kennedy’s closest advisers and speechwriters. When asked about his former boss’s judgment, Mr. Sorenson responded, “I cannot emphasize how important that elusive quality is; far more important than organization, structure, procedures and machinery. These are all important, yes, but nothing compared to judgment.”
After a five-year study of leadership covering virtually all sectors of American life, we came to the inescapable conclusion that judgment regularly trumps experience. Our central finding is that judgment is the core, the nucleus of exemplary leadership. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters…
Judgment isn’t quite an unnatural act, but it also doesn’t come naturally…
Yes, Mrs. Clinton, experience is not without value. But judgment, fed by solid character, should determine the choice of our next president. [my emphasis]
[digg-reddit-me]Barack Obama was in New York City last night and unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it as I did his Washington Square Park event in September. By most accounts, the event was a huge success as Obama continued to use the new stump speech he premiered at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa earlier this month to great acclaim. Over 1,500 were packed into the Apollo Theater including Dr. Cornell West, Chris Rock, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, who is still on the fence about the Clinton-Obama match-up. Barack has consistently had strong showings in the New York City area and as happened at the two other campaign events I attended in New York, Obama attracted overflow crowds.
Chris Rock introduced Barack to the audience just a few blocks away from Bill Clinton’s Harlem office, slipping in a reference to “that white lady” who happens to be Bill’s wife, and explaining how George Bush has actually met our expectations as a nation:
“I want to stand up for those who still hunger for opportunity, who still thirst for justice. I don’t want to wake up four years from now to find that we missed the opportunity. We cannot wait.”
At this point, it is hard to deny the momentum is building for Obama as many take a second look at Clinton and a first serious look at the race.
A note on Chris Rock‘s performance: Evidently not at his best last night. The line he delivered fell flat, but I think this phrasing, stolen from FoxNews is an improvement.