The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

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

Here’s Scientific American:

You’re not supposed to kick a guy when he’s down.

Of course, in reality, when he’s down is the perfect time to kick him. He’s closer to your feet, for one thing. But the particular kicking I have in mind should be thought of as tough love. These kicks at the freshly defeated McCain-Palin ticket, as I write in early November, are an attempt to knock some sense back into the group of my fellow Americans who seem determined to ignore or even denigrate valuable scientific research because it’s something outside the realm of Joe the Plumber’s daily activities.

Then came the coup de graceless. On October 24 vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin took on what looked through her designer eyeglasses like silly pork-barrel spending by the U.S.: “Some of these pet projects, they really don’t make a whole lot of sense, and sometimes, these dollars, they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit-fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.” Never mind that fruit-fly research has brought us modern genetics and molecular biology. The particular earmark in question was some $211,000 to a laboratory in Montpelier, France, with long experience studying ways to protect olive trees from fruit flies. And the little pests are threatening California’s olive crop—with a retail value estimated in 2005 at $85 million. So this money might be looked at by anybody with business savvy as an investment. I kid you not. Oh, and strike three.

Strike three – as in, the article starts off with two strikes before the one I quoted.  I thought this was the most dramatic one, so its the one I picked.

We need to go a lot further though – we need to make it s that Joe the Plumber gets it why science is important.   And who better to bring that idea to the foreground than a president who is unafraid to be a spiritual human being AND a fact-based one?

QT

The purpose of this blog is to avoid partisan politics but to talk about this time – the effect of the Obama candidacy on our country. I’ve focused mainly on race, though I’d hoped to get into discussion of gender (Sarah Palin helped me focus there a bit) and the wider discussion of culture – proposition 8 brought out a culture discussion, but I also hoped to talk a little bit about some of the right in front of our face happenings – like when Obama brought the house down doing his brush his shoulders bit. What a moment!

The Republican Party is having a bit of an identity crisis as a result of the Obama and Palin candidacies. Sarah Palin rallied the religious conservative base of the Republican party while wholly alienating the conservative “elite.” Given a choice, I’d choose that “conservative elite” – education and thoughtfulness deserve to be not only acceptable, but preferred qualities. Barack Obama exemplifies both, which in the long run thrilled his supporters (more on this later!). But the landslide victory of Obama over McCain was partially the result of African Americans and Latino voters going overwhelmingly for Obama. Combine that with an overwhelming youth vote favoring Obama, including a good chunk of evangelical youth, and you can see the problem the republican party is having – demographically they are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

The internal debate on this very issue has begun – with Gov. Michael Steele, one of the most prominant African-Americans in the Republican party – stepping up to run for the chairmanship of the party. And here is a debate between Pat Buchanan and a republican strategist – who happens to be African American:

QT

Here in the United States, the nation is embroiled in the political season as we gear up for presidential elections on the first Tuesday in November 2008.  We’re winding down on the primary season, and will immediately pivot into the general election campaign thereafter.  It is likely that Barack Obama will be one of the candidates for president.  As a result of the primary campaign, a number of disturbing trends have come to light – these include racism, sexism, religious intolerance, anti-intellectualism, classism, and a complete lack of unity.   The Obama Project is an effort to address this in the spirit of what WindonWater.net is all about… namely producing small ripples to push against the current…

What:  The Obama Project will be a series of posts focussed on presenting factual information about candidate Barack Obama that negates misinformation about him – but with the specific goal of NOT promoting the candidate, but rather, promoting the eradication of racism, sexism, classism, religious intolerance, and anti-intellectualism.  Of course, I hope that focussing on these things will yield more unity in place of divisiveness.

How: The mission statement of WindonWater.net is “conversation for a better world, and a happy soul.”   The idea is that by changing the way we talk about stuff, we turn the tide on cynicism and negativity.  How necessary is THAT these days?

Why: Why Barack Obama?  Well, largely because his candidacy has called all of this stuff to the forefront of public discourse.  With this candidate, we have room to talk about racism, and religious intolerance.  We have room to talk about the meaning of love of country (patriotism).  We have room to talk about classism, and sexism.  And of course, the candidate has given a groundbreaking speech on race, that gives us a starting place.

As a Baha’i, I’ve been hesitant to start this effort.  Baha’is are not supposed to engage in partisan politics, but rather, are supposed to simply vote their consciences.  I’ve fallen short of that mark often this cycle, because of being so very partisanly in support of candidate Barack Obama.  Notwithstanding, I have concluded that this is something that I can do, and even should do, and I do believe it is doable without trending toward partisanship (at least I hope it is).

Anyway – as a woman and as an African-American, I’ve been sucked in to the process because the issues are very real to me.  And I do feel a personal need to have a direct response to these issues, and a need to do so in a way that avoids the persistent negativity that has dominated the blogosphere.  I hope others will join the conversation, and lend thoughts and ideas – especially out of the box, especially with a spiritual perspective, as we work through these tough issues.

My goal is to produce one post a week – that’s ambitious perhaps – that pushes against the wind.  Everyone is welcome to continue the conversation – and of course to start topics of interest throughout the thread.  The front page will be adjusted every week to promote the latest Obama Project post.

We’ll see how it goes!

Finally – since it really is more of a blogging project than a forum effort, I’m blogging here, instead of on my main forum site.  I’ll try to RSS to WindonWater.net, just the same.

QT