Obama?

Obama?

I heard the other day that Democratic Senator Barack Obama might run for the US Presidency in 2008. Obama is a dynamic speaker, gives the appearence of being an intellectual, is very charismatic, and really "seems to care". In other words, he might end up being another "cult of personality" President, much like Clinton, as Democrats can rarely win national elections by running on the issues.

So what are Obamas stances on the issues? Well, it appears he doesn't want people to know.

From vote-smart.org:

SENATOR BARACK H. OBAMA REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO PROVIDE ANY RESPONSES TO CITIZENS ON ISSUES THROUGH THE 2004 NATIONAL POLITICAL AWARENESS TEST.

That is enough to raise a HUGE red flag for me. What does he want to hide? Are his stances on the issues out of the mainstream? Fortunately, the voting record of every house member and senator is public information (at least for now), so lets examine his voting record:

He voted for the Unintended Pregnancy Amendment, which increases funding and access to family planning services (ie abortion).

He voted against the Defense Department FY2006 Appropriations bill.

He voted against the Increase the Number of Detention Beds Amendment.

He entered a no-vote for the Future Military Funding for Iraq Amendment.

He voted for the Temporary Tax on Crude Oil Amendment (another huge red flag that he doesn't understand economics nor the concept of cause and effect).

He voted for the Removal of ANWR Provision from HR 2863.

He voted againt making it illegal, excluding the minor's parents, to knowingly transport a pregnant minor across state lines in order to obtain an abortion, as a way to escape state laws requiring parental consent. (another HUGE red flag).

He voted against the Firearms Manufacturers Protection bill.

He voted for stem cell research funding.

These are enough for me to never vote for him. Unfortunately, most people in the US don't look at the issues. The for the vaunted "swing voters", this poster will be enough to doom the country in 2008:

 

Obama makes one good speech and he's vaulted into the national spotlight as if he's the second coming. Oh wait, the Left doesn't believe there was even a first coming. So much for that metaphor.

Here's another one:

Hitler started his public career with one good speech too...

(and now, let the moonbats bring their fire)

 

Obama comes across as a very nice man. But of course, nice is different than good.

Other big name Dems whose careers were greatly boosted by giving the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention:

Mario Cuomo
Ann Richards
Bill Clinton

A friend of mine says that Nostradamus had a prediction about a leader called "Barack". I think I'll try to find something about that.

 

 Scott Roche said...

"Unintended Pregnancy Amendment" = increased funding for abortion. That's not how it reads. It seems to provide funding for things like contraception and prevention of pregnancy. Perhaps you can point me to some information to the contrary?

"he doesn't understand economics nor the concept of cause and effect"

I'm sure he understands those things just fine. It just sounds like he disagrees with you.

I agree with you that most Americans vote based on some sort of "gut feeling" and not on the issues. Just don't fall into the trap of deciding that if someone disagrees with you that they are somehow stupid or aren't paying attention.

Obama Winning Duel of Alinsky Disciples

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

 

Kyle-Anne Shiver:

Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumnet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, very accustomed to a vagabond existence, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine African-American community.

Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to "rub raw the sores of discontent," in Alinsky's words.

One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik, who had this to say to an interviewer of The New Republic, about Obama:

"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."

The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the "realization" that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations will see imminent "self-interest" in granting whatever it is that will cause the harassment to cease.

In these methods, euphemistically labeled "community organizing," Obama had a four-year education, which he often says was the best education he ever got anywhere.

Is it any wonder, then, that Obama's Alinsky Jujitsu is making mincemeat of the woman who merely interviewed Alinsky, wrote about him, and spent the next 30 years in corporate law and in the lap of taxpayer-funded luxury in government mansions?

Obama Outfoxes Bill Clinton -- Landslide Victory

 

I read with amusement this past week or so how Bill Clinton had thrown Barack Obama off his game and gotten under his skin. The talk was that Mr. Clinton's obvious disdain for the truth and his insistence on repeatedly introducing race into the campaign had marginalized Mr. Obama and left him as the "black candidate".

Excuse me, folks, but it's my belief that Mr. Clinton was played like a fiddle. Let's re-examine the events. Bill Clinton got into the fray by claiming Mr. Obama's record on the war in Iraq was identical to Hillary's. That is totally untrue as can be seen from the video in Saturday's post entitled, Hillary's Truth -- She Promoted the Iraq War. Mr. Clinton temporarily sidetracked Obama, who felt he had to answer the intentional misstatements. He did.

Then, Barack Obama demonstrated that he is a brilliant tactician and completely outfoxed the former president. In a radio broadcast, Mr. Obama mentioned that Ronald Reagan's administration was the one that had the most transformative effect on our society, saying that was "unlike Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton". He fired his arrow right at where Mr. Clinton is most vulnerable -- his EGO.

Clinton went ballistic. He started spreading obvious lies about Obama's speeches and record, shook his finger belligerently at the media, and as he left South Carolina, made another strong attempt to inject race into the equation by comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson. The people of South Carolina and the rest of America were treated to "Bill Clinton Gone Wild", and the true nature and character of the former president were exposed. He is not fighting so hard for his wife -- he wants to be back in the White House for himself, Bill Clinton.

I think Mr. Obama's tactics in baiting Bill Clinton were brilliant and Bill's ego wouldn't allow him to not respond. The result: a LANDSLIDE victory in South Carolina where 68% of white voters said that Hillary Clinton had treated Obama unfairly.

Hail to the new King!

The Candid Blogger: Obama Accepts Kennedy Endorsement

Obama Accepts Kennedy Endorsement

Watch Barack Obama's inspirational acceptance of the Kennedy endorsements and the Kennedy Legacy. If anyone was too young to have lived during the 1960's, watch this speech and you can feel the electricity in the air, the feelings of hope for the future, and a young, dynamic leader to take us there.

The Candid Blogger: Obama Accepts Kennedy Endorsement.

Obama

 

Here's a few thoughts of why I think Obama is a good candidate:

He's smart and has a lot of experience. He graduated with a Harvard law degree and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He's been an Illinois state senator and US senator.

Also, he's lived abroad and all over the states. He's been a volunteer and community organizer and activist; he is a champion of the underprivileged. He's put climate change as a high priority in his campaign.

He opposed the Iraq war from the onset. He's not hawkish and wants to engage other leaders in diplomacy first (more than any other candidate). Also, so much of the modern conservative-liberal hawk versus dove divide has its roots in the Vietnam war. Obama was born in 1961 and so, thankfully, there won't be any campaigning on his service or lack of service (no swift-boating, draft-dodging, etcetera).

He's more electable than Clinton in the general election, especially against McCain.

Finally, he does have a lot of charisma and his message of change and ability to unite people are exciting.

Obama and the ghosts of racism

Monday, January 7, 2008

Obama and the ghosts of racism

The Boston Globe
By James Carroll
January 7, 2008

"THEY SAID this day would never come," Barack Obama declared in Iowa last week, and the ghosts of this nation nodded. With an African-American competing seriously for the presidency of the United States, the last act of a centuries-old drama begins. Obama's blood tie to the story of American slavery, ironically, comes through his white mother's ancestry, which apparently includes both slave owners and those who fought for the Union to end slavery. That Obama's father was a Kenyan links him more directly than anyone could have imagined both to Africa's past as an exploited continent, and to its present, where the bloody legacy of colonialism plays itself out. (Obama's father was a member of the Luo tribe, like Raila Odinga, the leader of the Kenyan opposition, whose people are protesting the recent election.)
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In the American memory, slavery and then the war to abolish it are taken to be the two poles of the story, but it isn't that simple. If racial injustice continued to be a hallmark of life in the United States, it was thought to be an inevitable, but essentially unchosen consequence of the "250 years of unrequited toil," in Abraham Lincoln's phrase, that were imposed on kidnapped Africans and their descendants. Nearly a million Americans died in the war to end slavery, and - still in the American memory - the nation has felt badly ever since that slavery's hangover includes discrimination against black people to this day.
The conventional wisdom, given powerful articulation a generation ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is that the plight of African-Americans - from broad family dysfunction, to almost unshakeable poverty, to disproportionate incarceration rates of black males - is a tragic consequence of the social evil that America nobly renounced in the mid-19th century. Black people are socially disadvantaged, according to this narrative, because of the unhealed wound that was inflicted on them across the early centuries. Innately equal, yes, but they have been made a crippled people, which accounts for their still inferior position.
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/07/obama_and_the_ghosts_of_racism/]

Obama: Offers Plan for New Orleans (with Clip)

 

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that the country cannot fail New Orleans
again and that as president, he would keep the city in mind every day.

"The words 'never again' cannot be another empty phrase," he said in front
of one of the few rebuilt houses he saw on a brief tour of the city's Gentilly
Woods section. "It cannot become another broken promise."

Obama is the first of several presidential candidates from both parties who
are set to visit New Orleans in connection with the second anniversary of
Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday. President Bush also is expected to mark the
occasion with a trip to the Gulf Coast.

[See the Obama video at Chicago Tribune]

As many presidential candidates convene in the city today for a summit spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Landrieu, the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landing in New Orleans is providing an opportunity for people to try to gauge how the country's next leader will handle the fallout from disasters past and future.

Being the first on the ground gave the Senator an opportunity to discuss his plan for rebuilding, which included: Incentives such as loan forgiveness to attract students and needed professionals back to the region; national catastrophic insurance reserve; and funding for community policing operations, among others.

Followup report on event at NOLALive

ALSO

In THE BLACK COLLEGIAN / Black College Wire interview with Obama last year, the Senator had stressed the importance of students' volunteerism to help rebuild communities like New Orleans', and to address racial inequities and issues of poverty.

As part of on weeklong series of Katrina anniversary superevents in New Orleans, a coalition of organizations from around the nation have called for Tuesday AUGUST 28 to be a UNITY Day of Community Service, urging volunteers from across the country to assist in environmental cleaning up of damaged neighborhoods, schools and churches in New Orleans and we will visit the sick and elderly in the few nursing homes that have reopened including Guste Home Senior Citizens Highrise. "Volunteers will help to paint, pressure wash and repair play grounds in a local public school and remove contaminated top soil from communities. Our goal is to personally touch as many survivors as physically possible to let the people of the Gulf know that we will not let the country forget the devastation that still exists in the Gulf." Main local organizers include Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, Mount Zion United Methodist Church, AALP, Urban League of Greater New Orleans, Rainbow PUSH New Orleans, Millions More Movement and LA Unity Coalition.

Cornered Clintstones attack: This Obama guy is black! Who knew?

So over the weekend the desperate Clinton campaign began circulating this photo of Barry Obama in an attempt, I guess, to make him seem scary. Drudge has the story here. Turns out Barry was on a tour of Africa when the photo was taken. But I guess we're supposed to believe that maybe he's some secret Al Qaeda operative and the photo was taken at his graduation from terrorist training school. Hoo boy.

Apparently the coded Clintstone message goes something like this:

Gosh, folks, guess what? This Barack Hussein Obama fellow comes from Africa! He may even be related to some Muslims! Does that outfit look familiar? Maybe remind you a little bit of this guy? Folks, he's not one of us! Does he really share our values? Can we trust him? Do you really want to elect a big scary dark-skinned foreigner who wants to destroy our nation and give away all our jobs to the special interests and leave all our children behind and not give health care to everyone?


Mother of God. This from Democrats? This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from Karl Rove. First the bogus plagiarism charge. Now this. What's next? Pictures of Willie Horton? (He's the dude in the photo at right and for those of you who are too young to remember the very ugly 1988 presidential race, check out the link to the Wikipedia page. In that case it was Bush Sr. and the nasty Repubes smearing Mike Dukakis, a somewhat swarthy son of Greek immigrants, and the coded message was that the Duke wasn't truly American and didn't share our values and gosh he let this big scary black man out of prison.)

Now the Clintons are dragging out the old tried-and-true "find a scary black man and attach him to your opponent" trick. Goddamn this makes my blood boil. Good news, I think, is that this time I believe the tactic will backfire on the Clintons and make them look like the craven, ugly, power-hungry creeps they truly are. Turning whites against blacks, turning one religion against another -- that's the crap we're all sick of and that's exactly why people are going crazy for Obama. So go for it, Clintstones. Show your true colors. You know what? I'm betting American people are better and smarter and a lot less bigoted than the Clintons give them credit for. I'm betting a lot of Americans feel really good about a dude who can travel to Africa and the rest of the world and reach out to them and respect them and earn their respect in return. Just a hunch.

The new book reading initiative

Well, okay. I got a few pages into Foucault's Pendulum yesterday but then I kind of dozed off. And then Jony came over to show me this new Aston Martin that he just picked up and then he stayed for a beer and dinner and then the Oscars were on and somehow the day just slipped away from me.

Key thing is that Jony says he totally empathizes with my situation on the book reading thing. Same thing happens to him, apparently, in his old art school circles. He says unless you're like starving in an apartment someplace making weird art that nobody buys, then you're totally shunned by the artsy crowd. God forbid you should go work in industry and actually make money -- do that and you're instantly branded a philistine. Which is weird, Jony says, because honestly San Francisco and the Bay Area are like the most intellectually alive and cosmopolitan places in the whole world. London, Paris, New York -- they get all the attention but honestly the Bay Area is so much more intellectually alive but people don't take it seriously because of the good weather.

"You know where else is cool," Jony says. "Barcelona. A lot like here, actually."

I was like, Yeah, um, that's in the south of Spain, right?

He says, "No, it's in the north."

I'm like, "Yeah, right. Barcelona, right. Very cool. Yeah. Very intellectual."

Then we started talking about that really famous restaurant near Barcelona, this place called El Bulli where the food is like a work of art and you have to wait like a year to get reservations and somehow Jony managed to get a table in April and he wants me to go and I was like yeah that sounds so amazing and I really don't get why people think we're a bunch of spoiled vapid non-reading people out here because see we do so many really cool artistic things like flying my Gulfstream halfway around the world to get dinner.

I tried to read a little more of FP before bed but I ended up checking email instead. Tonight, I swear, I'm going to get at it. I've cleared some free time on iCal and will devote it to reading the book. I mean it.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Crunchy takes iPhone to wilderness, praises self for not using it

See this story from Outdoor Photographer magazine. This guy took his iPhone on a camping trip but didn't use it to make any calls or check email for a whole day. Wow! Cool, right? Give the man a badge. This after much hand-wringing and the following quote: "Am I using technology or is it using me? Who’s in control here, anyway?"

Good news is that by nightfall he broke down and watched a movie in his tent on his iPhone. But that's cool too. Because he chose it. He was totally in control of the technology.

Whatever dude. You've got an iPhone. We're all happy for you. Now get over yourself.

My eyes! My eyes! Aaaaarggggh!!!

Sorry to do this to you on a Monday morning. But can someone please tell me what the hell this is all about? I mean I'm glad that people care about our brand. But Buddha be praised! There must be limits! The original is here.

Hillary is so psyched!!!!

Yeah, things are going great out there. You go, girl.

Bootleg iPhones around the world

We're driving more than 2% of Internet traffic in Equatorial Guinea, according to the chart that goes with this story in BusinessWeek. Money quote: "Apple could successfully take the iPhone international in an unlocked form, and bypass the difficulties of negotiating exclusive carrier relationships, and simply charge more for the phone. Clearly it will still sell. Clearly the gray market in iPhones is rather healthy."

Negroponte in 1993: "High-definition television is clearly irrelevant."

I'm not making this up. That's what he wrote. See here. I'm not sure about this because I don't ever visit actual retail locations other than our own, but I get the sense that many of the so-called "big box" stores now do indeed sell and promote a wide range of high-definition television sets.

If anyone knows of any other really hugely wrong Negroponte predictions, please send them in. I'm told there are dozens and dozens of them.

Bill Lerach is working out like a bastard

Just heard this rumor that's going around in the Valley. Apparently Bill Lerach is suddenly all freaked out about going to prison, and has realized that providing newspapers is not going to be enough to save his ass, as he seemed to think recently. So he's been working out like a madman at the gym and bulking up. Supposedly he's getting a big set of scary tats too. I'm trying to imagine what he would look like with those gang tats around his neck. Any ideas?

Total n00b just discovering that Apple stores rock

See here. This guy just walked into an Apple store for the first time and discovers that our furniture is great, our geniuses are smart and cool, and black clothing is cool. And then he bought a Mac. Nice to see we're still winning converts.

Caption contest

Frankly I think this one is begging for PhotoCrank treatment. And Photoshop treatment. Have fun, people.

Linux dudes love Macs. Who knew?

See here. Money quote: "Conventional wisdom — suggesting that open source advocates are cheap geeks who don’t want to pay for technology — is just plain wrong. On the contrary, it seems as if the open source movement is more about quality than price. And Apple’s commitment to quality, it seems, is enough for open source folks to overlook Steve Jobs’ penchant for building closed, proprietary systems."

I love you too, open source dudes. I just feel bad for poor old Dell. They totally fell for that petition thing and started making pre-loaded Linux machines. Then you guys all keep buying MacBooks. Hilarious!

My birthday resolution -- I'm going to read Foucault's Pendulum

Many thanks to the thousands of Apple faithful who have been sending me greetings on this, the holiest day in our Apple calendar, the Apple equivalent of Christmas -- yes, it's my birthday. Fifty-three years ago today a savior came into this world, born not in a manger but in a Bay Area hospital, which to be honest in 1955 was pretty much the same thing. San Francisco wasn't always the nicest place in the world. That happened later, when the gays started moving in.

Anyhoo, as you know, I live in Palo Alto. And one thing about living in a university town is there are lots of snobby intellectualoids running around looking for any excuse to pretend they're better than everyone around them. Recently I stepped right into this when I said that Amazon's Kindle thing was a dumb idea because nobody reads anymore. This really picked up steam a few days ago when some guy at the New York Times bashed me and painted me basically as some kind of anti-intellectual greedhead who doesn't read books and just wants to shove crappo movies down people's throats and force them to buy overpriced spiritually dead consumer electronics instead of worthwhile meaningful literature. Here in Palo Alto they're call this "Kindlegate" and putting up posters with my picture and the words, "WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST LITERATURE."

Well, see, in places like Palo Alto people actually believe what they read in the New York Times and on posters taped to cafe windows. And now everywhere I go I'm getting catcalls. "Hey, book-hater!" Or they recreate that that scene in Being John Malkovich where some guy throws a can at Malkovich and says, "Hey Malkovich -- think fast!" Only in my case it was some some drunk grad students and they threw a hardcover copy of the new Pevear and Volokhonsky "War and Peace" translation at me and said, "Hey Jobs -- it's a book. Have you heard of it?"

Of course I've heard of "War and Peace." I've even read substantial parts of it. The rest I had read for me by one of my assistants at Pixar who worked up a treatment for me and then recorded himself reading the treatment so I could listen to it on my iPod.

Anyway. The thing is, I really am an intellectual. Have you seen the way I dress? And I really resent this anti-intellectual treatment I'm getting. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start reading all the big brainiac books that I've never read, and then I'll be making sure I drop references to them into every conversation I have. And I'm starting with the one book that I'm convinced no one has ever actually read even though every big brain poser owns a copy -- "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. It's super huge, like 600 and something pages, and really intense, and extremely hard to understand. I've picked out a rare signed first-edition hardcover because that's all I ever read. It just feels more authentic to me to read a book that costs a few thousand dollars rather than some random paperback that anyone could just buy in a store.

As soon as I'm done with the Eco book I'm going to start mentioning it all the time and then saying, "It's this really amazing book -- have you read it? You really should." After that I'm on to the complete works of Harry Mulisch, starting with "The Discovery of Heaven." And I'll mention that all the time too. After that, Lacan and Derrida. Trust me, I'm going to be friggin unbearable.

Happy birthday to me. Now I must go up to my Jobs Pod and get to work. I've got a big day of reading ahead of me. Peace out.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

At last we find out how the Borg steals from us

Turns out they just tape pu Leopard screen shots in hallways, with Post-It notes so MicroTards can comment. Very high tech. See this blog post from a Borg developer named Brandon. Top part is about how much he loves his Mac. But the key bit comes at the end: "One day a friend of mine on the team printed off a couple dozen screenshots of Leopard, showing off various tasks the user can do in OS X, and hung them on one of our hallways. Across from it are pictures of the same tasks in that incredibly well-kept secret of a project that we’re working on. There are post-it notes and markers next to each wall where passersby leave comments/questions. I wonder if any hallways in Cupertino have something like that?"

In fact, Brandon, the answer is yes. We have people who do something like that. They're called lawyers. Watch your back, punk.

We thought we would have to kill RIM. Turns out they're doing it for us.

See here. Gist is these outages at RIM are starting to hurt the BlackBerry's "iconic status." No kidding. By the way, I swear on a stack of Bibles that these outages were not the work of Moshe and his team.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Little tip: Don't put the newspaper next to your MacBook. Duh.

So this guy in New York says he's got a MacBook that keeps trying to burn his house down. He's even written to me directly, because as everyone knows that's also part of my job, fielding tech support calls. Right. Like when I'm not driving the delivery truck and running out to pick up coffee and donuts for everybody back at the office.

But here's the kicker. The guy just outright admits that these fires keep happening because he puts the New York Times next to the MacBook and the sparks from the MacBook hit the newspaper.

Um, buddy? Simple solution here. See the headline above. Man oh man. I love these "user error" problems. It's like when Dave Winer huffed and puffed and marched into a retail store demanding service -- only to be told about the little button on the side of his iPhone.

BTW, firebug dude? Stop writing to me.