President Obama's Call to Action

President Obama sent the following message to all those on his e-mail list yesterday.

A Call to Action

This morning, Michelle and I awoke to some surprising and humbling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award -- and the call to action that comes with it -- does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

So today we humbly recommit to the important work that we've begun together. I'm grateful that you've stood with me thus far, and I'm honored to continue our vital work in the years to come.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Showing dignity, reticence and restraint in public

I often disagree with Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks but I think he hit a home run with today's column. The subject was the personal dignity and reticence shown by most of this country's early leaders and politicians, epitomized by George Washington.

The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested — to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.

Brooks laments that that this code no longer exists and that we now only see the qualities of dignity and personal restraint among those who exhibit a natural dignity, apparently a rare trait. As examples Brooks mentions Joe DiMaggio, Tom Landry, Lauren Bacall, Tom Hanks, Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr.

The three big news stories of the last few weeks feature people totally lacking in the qualities of dignity, reticence and restraint -- Mark Sanford and Michael Jackson and someone aspiring to high office "unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust" -- Sarah Palin.

But Brooks ends the column on a positive note.

But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

That an avowed Conservative should praise Obama's character and leadership should not surprise anyone and will only come as a shock to those who have fallen for the big lie promulgated by so many right-wing hacks that Obama is some sort of left-wing radical. The truth is that he is the opposite of an extremist or radical, exemplifying true Conservative values that people all along the political spectrum can and should admire. I keep waiting, so far in vain, for true Conservatives to rise of and reclaim their political philosophy from the bunch of radicals who have hijacked it. Perhaps this column is the opening salvo in that war.

Instant Polls show public liked Obama speech

As reported by Sam Stein of Huffington Post:

Instant public surveys on Barack Obama's address before Congress showed, by in large, that the public was incredibly receptive to his speech, regardless of political party. ...

A CBS News poll of approximately 500 people saw approval of the president rise from 62 percent before the speech to 69 percent afterward.

Meanwhile, a poll on CNN showed that 68 percent of respondents -- who skewed a bit Democratic -- viewed the speech positively, 24 somewhat positively, and only eight percent not positively. Eighty-two percent supported the president's economic plan as outlined in the speech, while 17 percent opposed it.

Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s official Republican response received a less favorable response. Here is how the Fox News panelists, who are usually receptive to the conservative point of view, responded:

BRIT HUME: “The speech read a lot better than it sounded. This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment.”

NINA EASTON: “The delivery was not exactly terrific.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “Jindal didn’t have a chance. He follows Obama, who in making speeches, is in a league of his own. He’s in a Reagan-esque league. … [Jindal] tried the best he could.”

JUAN WILLIAMS: “It came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy. He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish.”

President Obama is re-administred the oath

Chief Justice Roberts came to the White House last evening and re-administered the presidential oath. Since Obama had repeated the words of oath slightly out of order during the official Inauguration doubts had been raised about whether he had actually taken the oath. Read more about it in this New York Times article.

You may have missed any mention of this in your local newspaper, if your local newspaper is not a big city paper with independent national reporting. The Associated Press is apparently boycotting this story and several other first day of the new administration stories in a dispute about their right to take their own White House photos rather then just distribute photos released by the Obama Administration. Read the Associated Press's take on it here. Notice how even in this story mention of the retaking of the oath is downplayed.

I can publish the above photo since it is an official government photo and therefore belongs to all the people. If the only photos of the event had been ones taken by the news organizations then there would have been no photos that I would have had rights to use.

Why we all should celebrate the first African-American president

As part of the Moline Dispatch newspaper's 'What Obama Means to Me' feature Jan Anderson of Moline had the following to say:

...Because Barack Obama is an African American does not make him any more or less important than any previous presidential candidate and I question The Dispatch and their offer to the public to "be part of this historic event."

Every inauguration is historic but it seems that the media, including The Dispatch, has for some reason blown this one way out of proportion. Whatever happened to fair and balanced reporting?

She seems to be claiming that celebrating Obama as the first African-American president is unfair. Unfair to whom? I would have to guess she means unfair to white people.

Apparently Ms. Anderson sees no advantage to her that Americans of color can now join white Americans in realistically believing that their children can grow up to be president. She must not see it to be in her interests for all Americans to have reason to fully buy into the American dream and to have a stake in our nation and economy working well. Her limited and narrow understanding of what is and is not to her advantage and "fair" to her must interfere with her ability to choose what is truly best for her and for the nation. We can only hope hers is an extreme minority opinion and that she will eventually see the light. Perhaps President Barack Obama will have found the right words and phrases for his speech today to open her eyes to the opportunities this moment has for all Americans.

What kind of change was Obama promising?

When you heard Barack Obama promise to bring change to Washington what kind of change did you imagine? Did you take your cues from his criticism of our decision to invade Iraq and his promises to bring the troops home in 18 months to understand Obama to be promising change away from the Bush Doctrine of preventive wars of choice? Did Obama’s willingness to talk to any foreign leaders, including ones the Bush Administration refused to meet, indicate to you that he meant change toward a less belligerent and militaristic foreign policy? Did Obama's emphasis on the environment and sustainable energy suggest to you a change in the way those issues are handled? Did you also hear indications that Obama would be appointing and hiring people based on competence and ability rather than the loyalty standard used by the Bush Administration?

If so, then you are probably as surprised as I was by the following lead paragraphs of an AP story in today’s newspapers:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The inauguration committee of President-elect Barack Obama, who ran on a platform to change the way business is done in Washington, is selling four-day packages of four tickets to his historic swearing-in ceremony and parade plus some extras in exchange for $50,000.

The deal does represent a change. President Bush charged $250,000, selling his supporters a much bigger menu of inaugural goodies that featured candlelight dinners.

Does the writer of this article really believe that the change Barack Obama was promising was to not do fund-raising? That seems unlikely since Barack Obama did the most successful fund-raising in history during his campaign. No, it seems more likely to me that the writer of that article knows exactly what kind of change Obama was promising but is trying to persuade her/his readers to forget.

Clinton was a tougher opponent for Obama than McCain

I just finished listening to the podcast of the November 10 edition of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She was talking to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker Magazine, who has been covering the Obama campaign for the last 2 years. Terry asked Ryan what the Obama campaign insiders now say about the effect on their campaign of the long and tough primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Lizza said that everyone in the campaign was unanimous about the overwhelmingly beneficial effect of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy on their eventual victory. Having potentially damaging issues, such as Rev. Wright, brought up during the primary season made them easier to deal with than if they had been brought up for the first time just before the general election. Also the Obama Campaign’s internal polling showed that, thanks to the lengthy primary campaign, by the time of the nominating conventions the public had a much clearer picture of who Obama was than they did of McCain, who had an easier and shorter path to the nomination.

Back in February many blogs, including this one, were worried that Hillary Clinton, by continuing her doomed campaign, ran the risk of lessening Barack Obama’s chances of winning in November. It now appears that we were wrong about that. Mea culpa.

Of course we were not the only ones that had worries at that time that turned out to be unfounded. Remember that Hillary Clinton and her supporters were claiming the McCain and the Republicans would be tougher and have more damaging and more difficult-to-deal-with attacks against Obama than he was currently facing from her in the primaries. That turned out not to be true. McCain refused to allow his campaign to even mention Rev. Wright, because he did not want to play the race card.

Fear of an Obama Presidency

My brother, who is a sixth grade teacher in the public schools in the Rockford area, just emailed me about what happened in his classroom the day after the election:

The majority of students in my class, those whose parents voted for Obama, could not enjoy a moment of glory because two students who were strong Republicans were terribly distressed, telling fellow students that they were going to have to leave our school and flee with their parents to Canada when President Obama started destroying our country. Other students were concerned and sympathetic to the fear felt by their fellow students.

I saw that this fear, pressed upon these children by ****** parents, was real, lasting, and not a ploy or act on the student's part.

In his Concession Speech Tuesday evening John McCain seemed to be trying to put back into Cassandra’s Box all the unwarranted fear and hatred of an Obama presidency that his campaign had unleashed, but obviously it is not going to be that easy. Of all the damage that has been inflicted onto this country the past 8 years, this unreasonable and unwarranted suspicion and fear of Obama held by those who drank the McCain/Palin Campaign Kool-aid may turn out to be among the most destructive of all. If this distrust of Obama cannot be overcome it will undermine the unity needed to get the country back on track and solve our dire and urgent economic, environmental and international security, prestige and moral authority problems.

Bad news for Obama?

As of October 31 the polls show that all the states where Barack Obama has more than a 9% lead add up to 264 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. That list includes New Mexico (+10%), Iowa (+12%), Pennsylvania (+11%) and New Hampshire (+13%). Assuming that Obama will win those states (a fairly safe assumption, it is hard to imagine a shift of 10% in 4 days) then John McCain would have to win almost all the states where Obama has less than a 10% lead in order to win the election. To get to 270 John McCain would have to win all the states where he leads in the polls plus Ohio (6% Obama) and Virginia (7% Obama) and North Carolina (2% Obama) and Florida (3% Obama) and Missouri (1% Obama). Any one of those 5 states would put Obama over the top – McCain has to take them all. Source: electoral-vote.com

With that reality in mind take a look at the spin McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis is putting on recent developments in a memo to McCain’s supporters yesterday:

Expanding the Field: Obama is running out of states if you follow out a traditional model. Today, he expanded his buy into North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona in an attempt to widen the playing field and find his 270 Electoral Votes. This is a very tall order and trying to expand into new states in the final hours shows he doesn't have the votes to win.

Yes, according to the McCain Campaign the fact that the formerly solid Republican states of North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona are suddenly in play and being contested by the Democrats is bad news for Obama.

"Tell me how you keep this straight?"

Oh dear. Once again we in the Quad Cities are presenting ourselves to the whole world, which is closely following this presidential race, as ignorant bumpkins. Here is an actual letter to the editor published in today's Quad City Times:

I am confused how anyone could consider voting for president of the United States a man who has lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, had a Muslim stepfather and attended a Muslim school half a world away.

What we are taught as children during our formative years continues to influence us the rest of our lives. This effect troubles me. In fact, even his name confuses me at times. I have a difficult time remembering if his name is Obama or Osama?

Perhaps you could tell me how you keep this straight?

Michael Elmore

Bettendorf

Since you asked, Michael, my guess is that you have been listening to right-wing talk radio and that is the source of your confusion. It is quite simple, really. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, United States Senator, running for president who drew crowds of more than 100,000 people in recent rallies in St. Louis and Denver. He will be on your presidential ballot, listed as a Democrat. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi national, who at last report was living in a cave in or near Afghanistan. He will not be on the ballot. If someone tries to confuse you again on this matter, my advice is to stop listening to them.

Right wing hacks repeat discredited lies

A local conservative blog is again making reference to claims that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that the Hawaiian birth certificate his campaign has released is a forgery. This is only a “continuing controversy” because right wing hacks continue to repeat these baseless claims in spite of the fact that they have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.

As repeatedly documented by Media Matters:

...the Obama campaign has posted a copy of Obama's birth certificate on its "Fight the Smears" website and reportedly provided the original to FactCheck.org, whose staff concluded in an August 21 post that it "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." A Hawaii Health Department official also reportedly confirmed to PolitiFact.com that Obama's birth certificate is valid.

Even right-wing sites like WorldNetDaily have looked into this and concluded that the claim that the birth certificate is a forgery has been discredited.

Why do people continue to read and listen to blowhards who knowingly repeat lies? Does the concept of credibility even exist anymore? By any reasonable standard these false rumor-mongers should by now be so thoroughly discredited that they would have sunk into richly deserved obscurity never to be heard from again.

Why pro-life Conservatives should vote for Obama

I had been wondering if there were any true Conservatives anymore. You know, ones that think traditional Conservative principles like small government, fiscal responsibility, distrust of government power, etc. are more important than being partisan Republicans. I think I may have spotted a few in this video.

I was especially struck by the fellow that said he was pro-life but was putting that on hold for this election and voting to save the country in hopes that the pro-life/pro-choice thing can perhaps be worked out some time in the future.

Maybe the best thing the pro-life movement could do would be to make a public show of voting for Obama on that basis. What good does it do them to go down to defeat with McCain/Palin? If enough of them publicly state that they are voting for Obama in order to be able to continue the pro-life fight in the future then an Obama victory is no longer a defeat for the pro-life cause. Think about it.

A video from the Creativity Campaign

Have you seen this yet?

Vote Barack!

Seeing racism in Powell's endorsement

The above cartoon is by syndicated conservative cartoonist Gordon Campbell who said that Colin Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because he “wishes to see someone who looks like himself in the White House.” Others who dismissed Powell's stated reasons and confidently told us that race was the only factor were Rush Limbaugh, George Will and Pat Buchanan.

It is hard to imagine what more Colin Powell could have done during his lifetime of service to this country and to the Republican Party to prove that he does not see the world through a prism of racism. It is hard to imagine what more Colin Powell could have done to have deserved to be taken at his word now, especially by the Republicans he has so self-sacrificingly served. If Powell is more offended by racist attacks on Barack Obama and on Muslims than are most white Americans because of his lifetime of experience as a black man, as I have doubt that he is, that is not racism. Colin Powell stated his reasons for breaking with the Republican Party in this election. He deserves to be taken at his word.

The racism that Gordon Campbell, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Pat Buchanan and others have detected in this situation is their own.

Who won last night's debate?

I would have thought that the only conceivable basis for judging who “won” last night’s presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain was which candidate converted the most undecided voters into supporters. On that basis it was no contest. Barack Obama overwhelmingly won. See here for a good analysis of how undecided voters' reacted to the debate.

But the tv network talking heads who provided instant analysis immediately following the debate must have had some other criteria. If you figure out what that was could you let me know?

Who won the first 3 debates?

Who won the Palin/Biden debate and the first two McCain/Obama debates? The vast majority of the experts who discussed it in the media immediately following the debates seemed to think they were basically draws – no clear winner. But those were all opinions. What are the facts?

As reported in this morning’s New York Times the latest Times/CBS News poll show a 14 point lead for Barack Obama.

After several weeks in which the McCain campaign unleashed a series of strong political attacks on Mr. Obama, trying to tie him to a former 1960s radical, among other things, the poll found that more voters see Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking.

Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain.
Read the entire article.

Remember that up until the debates the polls showed the race to be pretty much a dead heat. Also remember that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were extremely close, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. For the Democrats to have opened up a double digit lead in 3 weeks shows that the debates were a total disaster for McCain/Palin and a stunning victory for Obama/Biden.

As all the experts discuss tonight’s debate will they acknowledge how incorrect their analysis of the previous 3 debates has turned out to be? Not likely. Being accountable for performance is apparently just for school teachers and administrators.

Family Man Barack

In general I think that people should decide for whom to vote based on the issues and political philosophy rather than on personality and "feeling your pain." But in this video you can see that Barack Obama is a true family man who really likes babies in a way that only a proud and devoted father does. Contrast his demeanor with the smoldering "Yosemite Sam" anger that John McCain has been showing lately.

Breaking news – McCain’s proposing a tax increase on the middle class

Almost all of John McCain's supporters and defenders in the Main-Stream Media have now deserted him. The latest defector is the Associated Press, which until recently had been consistently putting a pro-McCain slant on all its coverage of the campaign. The incredible events of the last few days must have been the straw that broke the camel's back over at the A.P. Check out this A.P. story that just appeared in the latest news headline stories on the 'My Yahoo' website.

Voters whose bottom line is taxes can use a new online tool to calculate what their own bottom line would be with the IRS under a Barack Obama or John McCain administration. ….

For example, the model indicates that a couple with two children earning $100,000 with $20,000 in itemized deductions would have a net tax bill for 2009 of $9,555 under McCain and $9,002 under Obama. That compares with a $9,505 tax bill for this couple under current law, the electiontaxes.com site says. In another example, a single taxpayer making $50,000 and using the standard deduction would pay $6,867 under McCain and $6,325 under Obama, compared with $6,827 under current law.
Read entire article.

It is hard to imagine anything more damaging to McCain's chances of winning the votes of still undecided voters with yearly incomes less than $200,000 than to point out that their taxes would be lower under Barack Obama's tax plan than they would under John McCain's. In fact, for most taxpayers McCain's plan would be a tax increase over what they are currently paying while Obama's would be a tax cut. These facts contradict everything McCain has been saying in his television ads about his and Obama's tax plans so this story efficiently and effectively demonstrates that not only does McCain favor the rich at the expense of the middle class but his entire campaign is built on lies.

Since neither McCain nor Obama have changed their tax plans recently one can wonder what about this story is "breaking news." My guess is that A.P.'s sudden realization of what their former hero John McCain has become is the breaking news being announced in this story.

Obama described as the ideal conservative candidate

John McCain and his supporters constantly describe Barack Obama as the "most liberal member of the U.S. Senate." This claim has not received as much attention from the fact-checkers and debunkers as McCain's charge that Obama wants to teach kids about sex before they can read or that Obama called Palin a pig, but that is not because it is any less untrue.

Like Diogenes looking in vain for an honest man I have been waiting for an honest conservative to admit what is obvious to me -- that in many very important ways Barack Obama is much more conservative than either George W. Bush or John McCain. He is much less reckless and impulsive and much more thoughtful, careful, realistic and family, community and church-oriented than any Republican currently on the national stage.

I have found such a conservative - Wick Allison, a former publisher of the National Review. This is what Allison had to say in a recent editorial:

But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.
Read entire article.

Avoid blogs that deal in trivialities

A local conservative blogger wrote a blog post that proclaimed that after the Democratic Convention "12,000 American flags had been tossed in the garbage" and "were rescued from the landfill." When the blogger was informed that in actuality the flags were not so much discarded as possibly left behind she wrote in a comment this was turning out to be a typically overblown campaign issue that turned out to be much more ambiguous than originally portrayed and then said:

Honestly, if I wasn't blogging, I don't think I could stand all the trivial bullsh*t.
As it is, the trivial bullsh*t provides many blogging opportunities.

She has just admitted that writing overblown, over-generalized accusations based on exaggerated trivialities is her concept of political blogging.

I agree that seems to be the essence of conservative political blogging. It is certainly not what I am attempting to do in this blog.

I am blogging in hopes of nudging the thinking of the body politic in a positive direction. I think that we need to vote this November as if our lives depended on it, because they may. John McCain is an impulsive, shoot-from-the-hip, gamble on hunches, trust the gut, war-mongering militarist who appears to want the presidency in order to avenge the Vietnam War loss by winning a war – any war. Since the opponents he seems to be setting his sights on are Iran and Russia this is serious business indeed.

Barak Obama is a very intelligent thoughtful man whose decision-making style is the exact opposite of John McCain's. John McCain seems to like the idea of "bombing Iran." Barack Obama appears to be a man who would react to a suggestion that we should bomb Iran by thinking of the innocent Iranians who would be killed --Iranians he probably sees as people like himself, with families, hopes and dreams.

Electing a president of the United States is very serious business. The whole world is watching us to see what we will do. Don't allow yourself to be distracted by trivialities.