35 posts tagged “obama”

The sage of polling has spoken. Nate Silver thinks health care reform is in trouble.

I am too tired and it is too late for me to express how profoundly disappointed I am in Obama's utter mismanagement of this issue. He has messed up on the politics, the public relations and the legislative management.

If this does not pass, or if we get a watered down bill (highly likely), the President has no one to blame but himself.
 

I encourage everyone to make the following (or something like it) there Facebook status today:

Happy 48th Birthday to Barack Hussein Obama, born August 4th, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

This is not intended to be a political statement, but rather a statement of fact. And I ask everyone (reguardless of your politics) to join me.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I support the President and have for some time. And while I have my problems with some of his policies and recent actions (some that I have not been able to blog about) I can no longer sit by and watch as a small group of crazy wingnuts continue to claim that he is not a natural born American citizen.

Do not doubt for one minute that the birthers will use the occasion of the President's birthday to amplify their cause. After all, they recently doctored an obviously fake "foreign" birth certificate and added that to the insane rants on cable television.

You may disagree with the President, but I hop that we can all agree on the facts.

BTW, you can also Tweet this (its under 140 characters).

The beer choices are set for tonight's "summit" at the White House. The President will have Bud Light (really???), Prof. Gates will have Red Stripe and Sgt. Crowley will have a Blue Moon.

This disappointed me (and not just because Obama has terrible taste in beer). I thought this night is suppose to be about coming together. Surely three grown men can agree on one brand of beer and split a six pack outside the Oval Office. But with three different tastes in beer, what should they choose?

Than answer is really simple: Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

After all, its from Boston so there is the "local" connection for the two guests, its named after a Founding Father, and its the standard "good" beer that everyone brings to a party. Never mind the fact that it is terrible stuff (for the record I prefer Pilsner or whiskey).

I'm so glad that we are all devoting time and energy to the important issue of what the President is drinking and not getting distracted by that silly health care debate. 

Alternate titles to this post:

"Maybe the Prof. just needed a time out"

"Obama opens mouth, inserts foot, takes eye off health care...again"

I saw Angry Young Dem in person tonight. Em and I had dinner with him, his wife and another old friend. It is a rare treat to be able to debate him in person on an issue, alas DMTU was in a mood (very typical these days) so the debate was cut short.

The gist of it is this: I disagree with AYD' stand on the "Henry Lewis Gates situation". And I am REALLY pissed at the President for once again using a (self admited) poor word choice and allowing an off-hand remark to become a distraction at a time when he really needs to be ONLY focusing on health care reform.

AYD, Em and most of my firends feel that Obama was correct in saying that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" when arresting Prof. Gates. AYD backs this up with the law, which he knows, since he is a criminal defense attourney and that is his job.

I on the other hand take the position that if a cop is responding to a call, even if that call was eronious, the best way to placate the cop and the situation (if you are in the right which Gate was) is with respect and recognition of social constructs (even ones that are f-ed up).

I don't know what Prof. Gate's state of mind was that night, but I'd guess (this is an opion blog so I can do this) is that after getting home from a long international trip, and having probelms getting into his home, he was pissed off. Then when a cop shows up at his door he gets even more pissed off. After all, why the hell did someone call the cops? Who is this cop and what the hell is he doing in my house wanting to see my ID?

With this type of situation I would be pissed too. But, (and maybe this is just becuase I am an Eagle Scout raised in white upper middle class America) no matter how right I am and how wrong the cop is, your damn well sure I am calling him "Sir" the entire time. And that is NO way I am yelling at him.

Now, is that right? Should I have to call him "sir" in my own home? No. But the reality of the sitaution dictates that if I call him "sir" as I show him my ID he will leave me alone faster than if I yell at him and call him a racist.

If you believe even one quarter of the arrest report (a PDF that I have read), it seems clear that Prof. Gates was at the very least being somewhat rude. Cops are human beings, they are paid to do a job, they walk into situations not knowing if they are going to get shot at or called a racist or neither. Even if Sgt. Crowley was being rude to Prof. Gates, he is a cop responding to a call, and as such he has the dominant position in this situation.

Now I am not Prof. Gates. I am not a black man who has expireinced passive and active racism my whole life. And I have never had a cop come into my house and ask me if I live there or not. But I do know that some times you have to bite down hard and give a little away to get through a situation. And if that means calling cop "sir" and not yelling at him, then so be it. Keep in mind that my job is basically daily diplomacy, so keeping people happy is what I get paid to do.

As for Obama...STFU already. I am so pissed that you spent four weeks worth of YouTube addresses NOT foucsing health care, only to try and swoop in at the end with a sub-par press conference to save the bill (or bills) when you still will not comit to where you really stand on the issue. And then you f*** it all up by making this MORONIC statement about cops, taking the news cycle away from your key issue for two whole days!!!! F***!

The interesting thing is that both with Gates and with Obama there's the way things should be and the way they are. A man should not have to pander to a Police Officer in his own home, but sometimes he needs to. The nation shoud pay more attention to health care reform than to an off-hand ill-worded remark at the very end of a press conference on a small local issue, but it doesn't.

AYD, we can pick this up tomorrow or Sunday.

In case you missed it (and considering that most of you don't work in advertising, my guess is you did) the Obama campaign took home some major prizes at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Fesival this past weekend.

For the ad biz this is a big deal. In fact, Joseph Jaffe thinks that it helps prove his point and used the occasion to declared the 30 second spot officially dead.

I for one can't believe that Obama for America took home a top advertising award. I mean who would have ever thought that the campaign represented not just a shift in politics, but also a massive shift in the integration of branding, advertising, social media, web 2.0, brand advocacy and a constant, clear and singular "call to action"?

Not me.

On his way back from the Middle East, President Obama stopped in France to attend the D-Day commemoration and took a little side trip with the family to Paris. They saw some of the famous sites (including Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower) and then went to the Pompidou.

Wait, what?

The leader of the free world was in Paris and went to the modern art museum? Not the Louvre. Not Musse d'Orsey. The f**king Pomidou.

Oh, and because of the White House Flickr stream I know that he spent time looking at a Kandinsky.

Obama at Pompidou

So the guy that I already support (and am a borderline apologist for) went to my favorite museum ON THE PLANET to look at my favorite artist?

F**k this guy is really going to break my heart one day.

Side note: How great is it to have a President that can appreciate art? Bush probabally though Bauhaus was a bar where he use to get drunk.

So the nominee is announced, and everyone has an opinion:

• John Dickerson thinks that we are seeing a pattern emerge in how the President makes these decisions (namely get a short list of options, have people you trust try to poke holes in those options, then go with your gut)
  
• Angry Young Dem says this is a milk toast (or turkey sandwich) nomination that conservatives will try to make into a controversy (he also says that Sotomayor is not a liberal legal lion and he has some great "inside baseball" points)
• Dahlia Lithwick basically repeats what AYD said, but she gets paid to do it (she also deconstructs the nominees two big "sound bite" gaffs and says they amount to nothing)
  
• Adam Nagourney doubts that the GOP will really want to fight it out over a not-so-liberal-once-you-think-about-it Hispanic woman with a great backstory
  
• YFSF likes that she is a Yankees fan and that she basically ended the baseball strike (what? I told you EVERYONE had an opinion)

Me?

I think that the GOP was going to mount opposition no matter who Obama picked (the largely over played and unneeded Alito fight all but assured that) so why not go with a historic pick and give it to the person on everyone's short list? It is both bold and practical at the same time, just the type of decisions that the President likes.

Plus, given that he is close to losing the media fight over national security he is all but daring the Republicans to oppose the first Hispanic nominee to the court. He would LOVE the PR hit they would take with that voting block.

The biggest disappointment that I have is that we will still have a SCOTUS made up entirely of former Appellate Court Judges, all of them from Eastern US. I would have love to see Obama pick someone with political experience or a Westerner (or both) so that we could get some intellectual and geographic diversity on the court.

A few weeks back, Slate's David Plotz compared judges (MP3 file) to the priesthood (a cloistered order that we mortals cannot understand or question) and it is a fair point. A non-judge pick would have been more unexpected and changed what feels like a very stale dynamic to our high court.

Here's what I fear:

The rejection of the funding to close Camp Delta in the Senate
+ A report showing 1 in 7 former detainees are now terrorists
+ The optics of the dueling speeches not going Obama's way
A moment that could derail a Presidency

I am beginning to wonder if closing Gitmo will be Obama's "Don't ask don't tell".

Then again, John Dickerson thinks the President won the day, and he is often right about these things.

All this just makes me hate the s**t storm that Bush left behind even more.

POST UPDATED BELOW

G.O.P. RNC Chairman Michael Steele thinks that the Republicans have turned the corner.

''The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over,'' he said. ''We have turned the corner. No more looking in the rearview mirror. From this point forward, we will focus all of our energies on winning the future.''

Hmmmm. When exactly did you turn this corner Mr. Chairman? Was it when you lost the special election in a Republican district? Or when a Senator recently switched parties? Or when the elected leadership presented a "budget" with no numbers? Or when not content to call the Democrats the "Democrat Party" you consider calling them the "Nationalist Socialist Democrat Party"?

This man is so delusional its funny and his political party is a joke.

Meanwhile, while Steele is busy fighting for his job, Obama continues to flex his power. He's convinced not one, but two New York Democrats to step out of a potential primary fight with Sen. Gillibrand.

Yeah, I'm thinking the ball is still in Obama's court and that magical corner Michael Steele is looking for is a long way away.

UPDATED

This post on Boing Boing reminded me of the OTHER stupid that Michael Steele said this week: that same-sex marriage will hurt small businesses by increasing what owners have to pay in healthcare and other benefits.

Let's put aside how stupid it is to oppose same-sex marriage while bringing attention to the fact that a lot of people don't have healthcare in this country. That is dumb, but as Olberman points out, Steele is also ignoring how many small buisnesses will get work when all of thse gay couples are allowed to marry. He enumerates this (citing sources, because that's what we do on this side (yes, I'm talkin' to you Ken)) and concludes that SSM would create $16 billion in economic activity. 

How does Steele still have his job?

Defense cuts deepen old wounds

"As I told the Congress in January, this budget represents an opportunity, one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity, to critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements,” [Gates] said. He called on lawmakers to “rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interests of the nation as a whole.”

I'm making the bold assumption that one of the main reasons Obama kept Robert Gates on at DoD was to provide political cover for this Defense budget.

It seems that Obama, having looked at his predecessors, has figured out a really crucial thing: he likely only has one year, with large majorities in Congress and will of the people behind him (which is still strong, even on defense) to get the big parts of his agenda in place. We knew the "big three" issues he was pushing (healthcare, education and the environment), but it now seems that this extends to a shift in defense spending.

Having Gates deliver the news gives Obama cover in to areas: first he is a Republican so it is harder or GOP members of Congress to paint this as liberals making us less safe (but they will still try). Second, you are talking about a man who is widely respected and seen as one of the key players in turning around the Iraq War. He already has a solid track record, he has been there for two years and he knows where the "bodies are buried". So these changes can be framed as pragmatic, "bipartisan" decisions of President and Secretary of Defense from different parties, not idealistic reductionism from the left.

Will it work? Probably not. Congress loves defense jobs. In fact I'd bet that Obama and Gates cut the F-22 orders just so they could put them back in later. One needs to have bargaining chips and while I think the President is genuine in wanting to make these reforms, he knows that he needs a ton of political capital for the "big three" and he does not want a protracted fight with Congress over defense spending.

I hereby retract my statement that keeping Gates was a mistake.