The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

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

From The Atlantic’s politics page:

Honestly – it made me chuckle. I remain one of the people who really thinks that President Obama is an amazing President, doing stuff that we’ve not seen before, against overwhelming odds. But – I’m not sure I needed him to repair my car.

[poll id="2"]

QT

Seriously – it’s going to be a long, unpleasant 4 years if our discourse can’t elevate past “oh look! Obama did something that Bush did and liberals whined about! Let’s go kick some liberals in the teeth” versus “Oh look! obama did something better than Bush did! Let’s go rub it into the faces of the conservatives that Bush lost!”

There are plenty of things worthwhile talking about – and we are all going to have our differing points of view. For instance – I’m not convinced that there’s any way at all for Obama supporters and liberals (not all the same thing) to see eye to eye on the recovery package (conservatives want more tax cuts, liberals want more spending, and depending if they are Obama supporters specifically, or liberals generally, there may be differences on kinds of spending desired). But that’s an ideological difference worth having, without claiming a priori, that anyone doing it differently than how your ideology dictates, is “screwing everything up.” Etc.

As someone who hasn’t been on the liberal side of the fence until Obama became my favorite candidate, this back and forth is wearying, depressing, and really uninviting. Personally – as an Obama supporter, I am genuinely appreciative of the President’s effort to change the tone of dialogue.

Is this what we’ve been reduced to? Years of Clinton/Bush fighting has reduced us to being fundamentally incapable of civil discourse – only able to receive news that suits our own ideas, incapable of even giving real respect to one another? Seems to me the bible spoke about this tendency in people to seek only what they want to hear. I’m sure the Apostle Paul was speaking on more spiritual matters when he said in 2nd Timothy

4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

… but I’m also sure that spiritual conditions affect every other condition. This way we have of dealing with one another is unhealthy, a sickness, no less so than the unhealthy greed and lack of discipline/self-restraint that landed us into this economic mess. If we (liberals/Obama supporters) are angry with Bush for not listening to opposing points of view, how much more should we be doing better? And if we (conservatives) are angry for hypocritical posturing just to pile on to a beleaguered presidency, how much more should we avoid continuing in the same vein? In other words – must we continue this dance? No one seems to be having fun with it – I certainly am not.

Apologies for the judgmental tone of this post, but I mean every word of it, just the same.

QT

It seems odd to me to think that this is even a debate, and it seems odder that the press acts as though the only legitimate criteria for sound judgment is polls.  Our free press (are they still free?), with a journalistic obligation to truth-telling, and with a unique worldview born of covering national and international figures and events over time, nevertheless fails to aggressively pursue a line of discourse about John McCain’s choice of vice presidential candidate that reflects a genuine concern for the respect of office? It seems unpatriotic and a waste of the 4th amendment for the press to only report on how “popular” such a wrongheaded move is.
Well.  Here’s Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic on the same subject: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2224950/33157262

Hat tip (see! I’m catching on to blog lingo! ) to Ben Smith @ Politico for the reference to Scout Tufankjian’s amazing gallary of photographs of the Obama campaign to date. The pictures are stunning, moving, hopeful. (Plus – she is in Brooklyn – a fact that earns extra props from me…even IF she’s a Red Sox fan!) Please have a look! I’m hoping to save up some pennies and buy a print.

http://www.scouttufankjian.com/main.php

QT

There are two pundits who have periodically been disdained by Obama supporters: Mayhill Fowler and Maureen Dowd. Mayhill Fowler brought us the now infamous “bittergate” – a scandal which was wholly manufactured from the soundbyte machine that is the mainstream media. I’d read the article without any sense of impending doom – she was faithfully reporting a personality trait of Senator Obama that was both endearing and human, and until the media reduced the whole of her writing to a snippet that could be exploited by the 30-second rule, I had thought it was one of her best pieces. Maureen Dowd, of course, gives us “Obambi” which has been picked up by feminists as proof that Hillary should have been the nominee, since “Obambi” is presumably about to get eaten alive by the general election process. I only began reading Ms. Dowd this cycle, and at that, after the “Obambi” nick had gone mainstream, so I originally had an impression that Ms. Dowd was anti-Obama. After a while though, I began to realize something quite different.

I’m reasonably certain that both Ms. Dowd and Ms. Fowler are my seniors. I’m nearly certain that they are also Obama’s seniors. And – it seems to me that they both act like clucking aunties where he is concerned, which always amuses and delights me. Yeah, I know. That’s weird. But they both take a tone about him that is both admiring and admonishing, and it oozes of older women teasing and cajoling younger men – in good fun, and in character building fashion.

All of that to preface that in the race for favorite auntie – Maureen has won. Today’s article cleverly weaves Jane Austen into the Obama narrative, with a good humor, a touch of concern, and typical, incorrigible teasing… I admit that I love all things Jane, so this, was the clincher. Bring your sense of humor, and open-mindedness, and I think you might discover that Maureen’s narrative about Obama is a caring one (whether you agree with it or not).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03dowd.html

QT

Sometimes it just gets silly:

Above is video of Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC complaining bitterly about lack of press access in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wish I had a longer clip that had Andrea Mitchell responding to the idea of the military being too positive to the Obama campaign. The idea is laughable on its face. General Petraus has no particular reason to be overly friendly to Obama, as he and Obama clash on opinions about what to do in Iraq (in today’s news conference, Sen. Obama asserts that this clash is appropriate – that the generals on the ground have a single mission while the president, or any candidates for that office, have to think about the country as a whole, and not just one aspect of the country’s strategic objectives). My point is – it seems highly likely that McCain is the favorite of the military, NOT Obama – and if the press was shooed away from the goings on in Iraq and Afghanistan it was either for their protection, or because the candidate wanted an opportunity to do as close to a genuine assessment as he could – which likely necessitated being away from press view.

Anyway – I am curious to know how Andrea Mitchell felt about today’s press conference, or how she feels about McCain’s lambasting of the media in an upcoming ad.

QT