If you’ve been under a stone, Barack Obama has been elected the next president of the United States. What did he have to say? Listen.
Tag: barack obama (Page 1 of 2)
Starbucks has just moved up a notch in my book. Vote on Tuesday and they’ll give you a free coffee.
The election is five days away and, while I would hope that everyone who’s voting has figured out where the candidates stand on the issues, I’m going to post this video to make it perfectly clear, to those who are interested, where Obama stands. This was broadcast over six or so major stations last night. It’s a thirty minute long “infomercial” and it’s an unprecedented move for a presidential candidate. The price tag on this is some three to five million dollars which pretty much no candidate ever has at this point in the race. He had this money because he’s had an enormous amount of donations. His average donation is around $100. Last month he raised $150,000,000 that way. That’s a lot of Americans handing over some hard earned cash for something they believe in. That’s not to say that anyone should vote for him because his numbers are impressive. No one wants an election to be bought. Those numbers should tell you that maybe there’s something going on with this guy that’s special though. Anyway, here it is:
There has been a lot of talk about ACORN. This is an nationwide organization that aims to register low income people and minorities to vote. Recently it’s been brought to the attention of the national media that in some areas ACORN has turned in a lot of fake registrations. You can hear daily from the Republicans about how this is voter fraud and evidence that Obama is trying to steal the election. It’s not.
First of all, the most important point, Obama has not used ACORN at all during the general election.
Now that that’s out of the way, there are very good reasons why this has become such an issue. ACORN was paying people by how many registrations they turned in. The natural reaction for some would be to write up a bunch of fake registrations and get a lot of money for no work. These people have, for the most part, been fired. The registrations they turned in were flagged by ACORN as being fake. In some states every registration collected must be turned in to the election board so that the board can be in charge of deciding if something is fake or not. ACORN followed this rule and sent the bad registrations with the good and flagged each to be clear. That’s it. That’s the whole situation. Now, somehow, ACORN is destroying democracy and they’re becoming a focal point of the election. Remember those issue things? Yeah, all that stuff about policy and the real problems our country is facing? The GOP would apparently like you to ignore those things and focus on manufactured crap like this ACORN “issue”.
Also, for the record, this isn’t voter fraud. Voter fraud would be someone actually showing up and voting illegally. Brave New Films has put out a video that gives a good explanation for all this. They get into stuff about how Republicans want voter turn out to be low, and I’m sure there are some that do, but that may be the unfair part of this video. Anyway, watch.
Honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing only three words from this five minute long conversation. It seems everywhere I turn there’s someone repeating the phrase “spread the wealth” as if those were the only words Obama said to Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio. This is usually followed by claims that Obama is a socialist, a communist, and wants to punish successful people. This even sometimes flows into claims that Obama is a terrorist, un-American, and isn’t even a natural-born US citizen.
The level of xenophobia lately is crazy. In the news I’ve seen anything from a man cackling as he shows a camera his stuffed monkey with an Obama hat that he calls “Little Hussein” to someone’s Halloween decorations that include a lynched ghost with “Obama” written on it as well as “Husain” (yes, it was spelled wrong). There is such a huge amount of disinformation, racism, fear, and just plain hate lately that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start correcting some of it so I guess I’ll just correct one thing.
Here is the entire “Joe the Plumber” conversation.
And before you get swept away in all the non-sense propaganda out there, take at least one look at FactCheck.org. Seriously, don’t be stupid.
Today Obama gave a speech on the economy. The whole speech (38 minutes) is on YouTube. He basically lays out the actions he would take to straighten out the problems we’re having while simultaneously pointing out the fact that McCain has no idea what he’s doing. Check it out. Make up your own mind.
So far this election year hasn’t been too bad on the stretch-the-truth meter. I’ve been following it closely since the beginning of the primaries and, while there have been some out of context statements, pretty much every inaccurate claim has only been a small stretch of the truth. Now that we’re less than two months away from voting day it appears that blatant lies are the way to go. The Washington Post wrote a good article on this.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903727.html
The article lists lies from both sides but, and maybe this is just a bias of mine, the McCain camp seems to have the big ones. Obama’s mistakes consisted of claiming that McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years and saying that McCain thinks the fundamentals of the economy are sound. McCain really did say both of these things. The 100 years in Iraq statement is a bit out of context since he’s talking about keeping forces there in the same vein as we have in places like Germany. The problem with that is that Germany isn’t fighting off insurgents like Iraq. The situations are completely different. But still, it was a stretch of the truth on Obama’s part. And the sound economy statement, well, I don’t even know what McCain really thinks. He’s talked about how the economy is in trouble quite often but the statement he made about how it was doing well was made on Meet the Press some six months ago or so. On that episode he was being asked about his connections with Bush. He was basically pandering to the Bush crowd by saying how often he has agreed with Bush and how the economy is doing just fine because of him. So what’s his deal? Is he a Bush-y or is he a maverick? I really don’t know anymore.
On the lies from the McCain camp, here’s a list.
Palin turned down the bridge to nowhere. FALSE
– She actually campaigned in support of the bridge until she won her election for governor, then she decided she didn’t want the bridge. She also didn’t give back the money that congress gave her for said bridge.
Obama will raise taxes on everyone. FALSE
– Yeah, he’ll actually lower taxes more than McCain for everyone except those who make more than $250,000. It works out to be an increase for 10% of Americans and a cut for 81%. This one is so blatantly false and repeated so ridiculously often that I think it may be the biggest misconception of the year. I frequent a forum with a lot of people who are interested in politics and even they think Obama is going to raise everyone’s taxes. Did you see the percentage of seniors who think Obama will raise their taxes? 41%?! That’s insane given that seniors who make under $50,000 a year will literally pay $0, ZERO DOLLARS, in taxes. I’m sorry, but this one bothers me a lot.
This is going to take longer than I expected so I’ll leave the list at only two lies. There are plenty of others though. The point is, pay attention, check out the facts at places like FactCheck.org. This is why it’s important to vote. Do you want to end up with completely unfounded bullshit for the next four years? It makes a difference. There was a lot more opportunity in this country eight years ago, remember that.
And don’t forget to check out the debate on the 26th. I’m sure a lot of this will come out there.
So has McCain given up on the secular vote?
That was McCain’s vice presidential candidate. It appears that if he is elected we will once again have God running our country. Seeing as I don’t believe in God, I find that frightening. If you do believe in God then maybe you feel different. Seriously though, you should vote if you haven’t already been convinced that doing so is important this year. Remember, there is a drastic difference between the world today and the world prior to 2001.
Oh yeah, the first presidential debate is September 26th. The first and only vice presidential debate is October 2nd. They’re usually a good place to start if you don’t know much about the candidates.
If you haven’t been following, the republican and democratic vice presidential nominees have both been chose. Obama picked Joe Biden while McCain chose Sarah Palin.
Biden is a long time senator. He actually ran for the presidential nomination but dropped out after performing badly in Iowa. I’m not particularly thrilled about him but he’s not terrible either. He just has a big mouth and knows how to use it. Anyway, here’s the pertinent info on him:
http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/joe_biden.htm
Palin is the governor of Alaska. She’s held the position since 2006 and had some other minor executive branch experience prior to that. She seems pretty hardcore social conservative to me. She’s a member of the NRA, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, etc.. I actually don’t think she’s such a bad choice for McCain except that, to me, it highlights his desire to say and do what he thinks will get him elected instead of sticking to his guns. Basically, I believe he’s purposely chose a woman so that he could increase his chances of wooing disenfranchised Clinton supporters. Hell, Palin’s first speech contained praise for Hillary. Pander much? Anyway, I’m bias, but she does seem like a decent choice for getting McCain some conservative votes. Here’s the pertinent info on her:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm
I’m just trying to keep everyone up to date. Maybe some people who know me and aren’t interested in voting and whatnot will have a change of heart? Eh? Eh? Oh, and the democrats had their convention. Here’s Obama’s speech. It’s rather good.
I am amazed. By now I’m sure everyone is at least somewhat aware of all the flooding in Iowa. This is a pretty big deal. I’ve read that the flood levels are high enough that they’re hitting people who aren’t in high risk areas at all and aren’t likely to have flood insurance. Apparently this isn’t likely to be over yet either and more flooding is expected in other areas.
Normally I wouldn’t bring something like this up but there has been some heavy criticism of Barack Obama because he went to fill sand bags in Illinois in preparation for more flooding. Check it out:
His actions have spurred hatred and cynicism among those who already don’t like him. There are claims that he’s pandering. Apparently leading by example and helping those in need is now considered pandering. Then there are claims that he was only there for a photo op. According to an ABC News blog he filled at least 15 sandbags. This may not be enough for those that think the only way he can help is to spend 60 hours a week for a month filling bags but helping out in this way for even an hour can make a big difference. It can especially make a difference when your presence brings more attention to the issue and adds morale support to those in the area. While getting his photo taken in this situation probably does benefit his campaign, there’s a good reason for that. There are even more outrageous claims made to the detriment of Obama’s character but they’re not worth going through one by one.
It appears that we live in such a cynical world that even when a person is being directly helpful we can still find ways to try and tear them down. What’s the alternative to Obama’s actions? Do nothing? Sit back and tell the press when they ask you that those people are proud and can help themselves so there’s no reason for you to try and obtain more help for them as McCain has done? McCain was sitting in at a fund raiser in California while all this was going on and didn’t even have the decency to mention the issue on his website where Obama put a link right on the opening page that went to the donations section of the American Red Cross site. Or, instead of doing what Obama is doing, politicians could follow Bush’s example and just fly over the area like Bush did during Katrina. That helps immensely, right? Katrina was handled effectively, right?
Seriously, lets all take a step back and question our own cynicism. I’ve been guilty of it myself on numerous occasions but I no longer think it’s worth it. Sure, you might get burned from time to time but the alternative is to live in a world where you have to constantly be paranoid that everyone is out to dupe you.
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