The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

On President Obama’s Bow to the Japanese Emperor, An Academic Friend Writes That Both the Left and the Right Are Wrong – Political Punch.

This from the article:

“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.

“BTW, Obama’s bow at Suntory Hall was much better. Correct angle, slight bow. His hands were wrong but the physical tone was correct and appropriate.

Sure. I agree.  Someone buy the President one of those “Doing business in… ” books.  The idea of the Japanese bow is that among equals you bow only slightly as a show of respect, not deeply as a sign of humility.  That said – I’ve read where “Slight bow” means to an equal height… and given the obvious height differences between the president and the emperor… that could have caused some confusion.
Still – we’re a year past the election, almost a year into the presidency, and basic protocols, the kind you can buy info on from Barnes and Noble, are lacking.  Whoever is the protocols overseer is overdue for a performance review…

QT

The White House continues to categorize Fox News as a biased source. There are many ways to look at this, but for me there are two obvious facts: 1, its true… and 2, so what?

Unless I missed something, the president’s advisors are saying that Obama will continue to appear on their shows. Maybe not as frequently, but he’ll show. Meanwhile, they are providing a reasonable service if they stop answering to lies and instead start calling them lies. There is value to having a conservative analysis of the news…. but no value in being lied to in the name of freedom of the press.

Baha’u'llah talks about the excess of liberty… when freedom of speech and freedom of the press is used to protect deliberately misleading statements, we are seeing an example of the excess of liberty.

QT

Seriously – is the Huffington Post trying to become the internet version of a gossip rag? There’s already quite a lot of entertainment content – must their headlines be offensively, misleadingly sensationalistic as well?

Hint: No way in the world this was not an agreed upon plan between Pres. Obama, Secty of State Clinton, and Pres. Clinton.

QT

Really – this requires no commentary. It means the world to me to have this bit of history being made.

Update: She’s fine, and back at work.  Glad to see, despite the unfortunate sequence of events.

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Maureen Dowd in her Sunday and Wednesday column, plagerized a blogger.  This is pretty awful – bloggers often channel the news, but rarely get credit for doing so… so outright plagerism stings… (and gets widely reported, and quickly noticed.)

The next week, she published this story panning President Obama: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/opinion/20dowd.html. It was a piece unworthy of Maureen, in my opinion, but clearly “red meat” for a certain sector of the liberal blogosphere.  I read it with utter distaste, and concluded that Maureen had dug in a little deeper to placate her liberal readers – the ones most likely offended by her plagerism.

Since then, nothing.  No new articles from MoDo.  I’ve written here on this blog of my appreciation for Maureen, but the silence since that last essay doesn’t sit well with me.  It feels like she, having not drawn the liberal applause for the manipulative piece, has dropped off the map (or been dropped?).

I hope not.  I hope she is healthy, that all is well for her, and that she is still in the NYTimes employ.  Here’s wishing Madame Incorrigible well, despite my recent displeasure.

QT

h/t Mark Knoller on Twitter

For those wonderiing if there’s value to twitter – Mark posted that Louis Caldera (who authorized this picture) has resigned. Can’t find any other outlet reporting this news online…

(And actually – I’ve now posted WITH comment. But not on the picture, per se. So I’m keeping the title!

QT

A Turning Point for Voting Rights Law – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com.
The New York Times has created a blog called “Room for Debate” – in which prominant Times contributors debate various thorny issues in the news.  It is a wonderful contribution to the ongoing struggle for genuinely trustworthy, nonpartisan education on various issues, and I heartily recommend it.

This issue relates to the  Voting Rights Act reauthorization – and I’m posting because so far I feel myself unable to follow the argument.  The argument (and therefore presumably, the law itself) seems to hinge on two separate issues, but commentators seem to address only one at a time.  The first is a concern about laws that would prohibit or suppress minority (in general, black in particular) votes, and the second is a concern about districting.  While I can see how they are related – they don’t seem to be the same at all – and it seems therefore that those in favor and those opposed to recertification are talking past each other.

I’ll be digging more into the issue – but if anyone has more to share on the topic, please do!

QT

This past Wednesday, I had the privilege of calling in to the Bob and Lee internet radio show “Agree to Disagree, with Bob and Lee”. As an added bonus, they had a special guest, Elvis Dingeldein, who was also on hand when I called. The topic I asked about is one I’ve been pondering quite a bit – namely the continued polarization along political lines of our information. I want to expand upon the problem (as I see it) here, and share the segment of the podcast in which I was involved, and where the gentlemen addressed themselves to my question. I’ll come back later with a follow-up post of what I think could be a solution.

The problem is that with the increasingly expanded availability to accrue like-minded opinions, we are growing more and more entrenched in our own “echo-chambers.” While segregation between the races has been held to be a bad thing, segregation by ideology, which have lately been conflated with racial and religious tribalisms, has become the mode du jour. We are so enamoured with our like-minded-seeking that we often miss how much information we actively reject when it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions – and we have become comfortable allowing a gradual drift – such that knowledge is being segmented into our ideological spheres.

To say this is unacceptable is putting too fine a point on the matter. This is something that needs to be hit with a blunt edge. Our energetic, vitriolic disputes, clever wit and sarcasm need to be better employed in the arena of ideas, rather than in the clannish protectionism of one camp over another.

(audio under the fold)

QT
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OK, so now that I’ve made fun of Conor Clarke’s headlines , I had to be fair and go back and read the actual articles. It only gets funnier… in a sad way. I urge everyone to actually read these, but let’s go to some excerpts (creatively edited, for effect):

Obama Won’t Stop Your Tears
Michelle Malkin was going postal this morning about “new federally subsidized counseling services” for those suffering from economic hardships. Sounds like a crazy government boondoggle, right? Indeed it does. And Drudge seems to agree.

But, fortunately for taxpayers and unfortunately for critics, the new “services” in question actually consist of a single page

Obama Won’t Repair Your Car
The conservative blogosphere is indulging itself in a bit of snark over this part of Obama’s auto-industry speech…

But I doubt any of these people has actually read the plan.

If they did, they would realize that the warranty program does not put the government in the business of making auto repairs.

Big Government Will Set Your Salary?
One of the nice things about the Internet is that you no longer need to rely on a journalist’s description of a bill: You can dig up the bill and read it yourself! (If you can handle the excitement, of course.) And in the case of Byron York’s piece in the today’s Examiner — “Beyond AIG: A bill to let Big Government set your salary” — it’s worth going back to the primary sources.

…
I am willing to bet that none of these people has read the bill, because all of their descriptions are wrong.

…
But don’t take my word for it: Read the bill (it’s below). So many others have not..

Just who does Conor Clarke think we are? Intelligent Americans??

QT