Why I Like Barack Obama

His place on a political spectrum notwithstanding, he's at heart a moderate, intellectually, temperamentally.
Here's just one example. It's not so much that I agree with his campaign position against Hillary's vision of health care. I think perhaps scrapping our present system might indeed be the thing to do... but not for the sake of burning down a house just to build something on top of it; only if it's really the smartest way to do it.
In any case, I guess I just like the way the guy's mind works. If anyone equated his conception of "change" with "revolution," they may be disappointed. But on the other hand, they may just see some change.

from Thursday's "town hall" meeting on the economy:

OBAMA: Let me just see a show of hands. How many people here have health insurance through your employer?

OK. So the majority of Americans, partly for a historical accident -- I won't go into -- you know, FDR had imposed wage controls during wartime in World War II.

People were -- companies were trying to figure out how to attract workers, and they said, well, maybe we'll provide health care as a benefit.

And so what evolved in America was an employer-based system. It may not be the best system, if we were designing it from scratch, but that's what everybody's accustomed to. That's what everybody's used to. It works for a lot of Americans.

And so I don't think the best way to fix our health care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to and the vast majority of people already have....

Spike in Military Suicides: Is it reallly still such a mystery?

I've heard this issue discussed enough in congressional hearings; the questions are always asked, but there are never any answers...
Could the repeated (up to four!) deployments have anything to do with it?

From Gen. James Amos, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps: "We have looked at the data to try to find answers that will enable us to address this needless loss of life.... The most likely cause is a failed relationship with a woman."

And I wonder why that's happening... would it possibly be related to the repeated deployments? Is it possible for anyone to deploy three or four times in seven years and not have some form of combat stress that would be extremely destructive if not treated?

And in many cases, it's not being treated, acknowledged, or understood. As for Congress, it seems they need to try a new tack.

Sad Money

I know my blog-rate is petering out here, but I had to comment on the heartbreaking mastery of Jon Stewart's Frost/Nixon job on "Mad Money's" Jim Cramer. I guess everyone who hasn't been living under a rock has seen the show, and those living under rocks have probably seen at least a clip, but if you haven't seen the full interview, it's HERE.
Not surprisingly, the parts that weren't aired were the more amicable moments. I know I shouldn't, but I hope Jim is OK. I'll just keep thinking of all those CNBC viewers who lost their life savings.

Religious Pluralism and the Nonbeliever

I like how Eboo Patel, executive director of something called Interfaith Youth Core, parsed his terms in last Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on engaging Muslim communities -- specifically how those terms didn't exclude nonbelievers or promote unity at their expense.

PATEL: Mr. Chairman, I believe that the question of the 21st century will be the question of the faith line -- that is, how diverse religious communities choose to interact, whether that interaction moves toward conflict or toward cooperation.

The biggest mistake we can make on the question of the faith line is to define it wrong. The wrong definition of the faith line pits Muslims against Christians, or believers against nonbelievers.

If we define the faith line as Muslims against Christians, we are left with a world of 2 billion people at war with a world of 1.3 billion people. That is an eternal war.

I prefer to divide the faith line -- to define the faith line as a line that divides people I call religious pluralists from religious totalitarians.

I have a very simple definition for a religious pluralist. It's somebody who believes in a society where people from diverse backgrounds live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty.

I have a very simple definition of a religious totalitarian. It's somebody who wants their community to dominate and everyone else to suffocate.

In honor of Valentine's Day...

... I thought this photo was cute (no, it's not a kitten and a duck, but still cute ;)

The Oddest of Odd Couples

Newsflash: Chris Wallace Believes What He Reads In "The Media."

on Fox News today:

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Since you became president, you have warned Republicans, quote, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Now, how do you know that's a quote?

WALLACE: Well, I read it in the media.

OBAMA: Yeah.

WALLACE: Did you not say...

OBAMA: I just wanted -- I'm not sure that was the exact quote.

WALLACE: Let me throw another one at you and you tell me whether this is an exact quote. You were widely quoted, when you met with the House GOP caucus saying, "Go ahead, free feel to whack me. I'll watch Fox News and feel bad about myself."

OBAMA: That one I did say.

WALLACE: Is perhaps -- let me just raise the possibility -- are you a trifle thin-skinned?

OBAMA: No, no, no. I said it in good humor. I think everybody understood that that was a joke.

Yep, Chris, this guy is no Clinton in the hot seat, but no Bush, either. What did we learn today? Chris Wallace follows the MSM and has no sense of humor.
I like our president more and more every day.

Weekly Schiefferism

OK, yeah, I like Bob Schieffer. Here's yet another of his quotable "final thoughts," from Sunday on "Face the Nation":

Finally today, it is an example I have cited many times over the years, that Hubert Humphrey once said the 1964 Civil Rights Act was America's single most effective foreign policy initiative.

It had nothing to do with foreign policy, but it told the world who we were and what we stood for and that our system was about fairness and equal treatment, and that it worked.

I thought about that when Barack Obama announced that torture would never be part of our national policy. America has always been the most successful when it is leading by example, when we have practiced what we have preached.

America's weapons did not win the Cold War. They kept the Soviet Union at bay. The war was won when the people on the other side looked across the Iron Curtain, saw a better way of life there, realized their system of government could not give it to them, and so the walls came down.

With a simple declaration, President Obama told the world our system of government is so strong, we don't need to torture people to survive. That is the way of those who would destroy us. But that is not us. We have found a better way.

That is what our message to the world must be. More importantly, that is what we want our children to know. When we are admired and respected by others, we are far more secure than any weapon can ever make us.

Quote du Jour: Hope Over Fear

The inaugural speech

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." -- President Barack Obama

Important Presidential Update: Obama is Keeping his BlackBerry!

on John King's new CNN Sunday show, "State of the Union" today:

KING: Well, actually, one last question. And it's, in part, silly. But it's not always silly. You like these [holding up BlackBerry]. I was just with you before this, and you have a couple of them. And there are a lot of people who say, because this will end up in the presidential library, because you don't have privacy any more, your life's about to change.

Tuesday noon, you have to give this up.

OBAMA: Yes.

KING: You going to do it?

OBAMA: I think we're going to be able to beat this back.

KING: Beat this back?

OBAMA: I think we're going to be able to hang onto one of these. Now...

KING: Do you want mine?

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: My -- my working assumption, and this is not new, is that anything I write on an e-mail could end up being on CNN. So I make sure to -- to think before I press "send."

But what this has been -- what this does is -- and it's just one tool among a number of tools that I'm trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me, that if I'm doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, "What are you doing?" You know? Or "you seem detached" or "you're not listening to what is going on here in the neighborhood."

I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and -- and send me a message about what's happening in America.

Good for you, Mr. Soon-President. Bring us into the 21st century, in yet another sense.

Quote of the Year (so far): Joe the Plumber...

... I mean Middle East war correspondent:

"I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting."

More words of wisdom from Joe

Some clerical errors are worse than others.

This is probably the worst I've seen.

Army apologizes for "Dear John Doe" letters

Where do they find these contractors? I guess I shouldn't ask.

More ex-presidential photo ops

Don't you feel nostalgic just looking at those guys? (Well, some of them, anyway...)

And a belated ball-drop moment...

Given how I've followed the Clintons' ups and downs this past year, I couldn't resist posting this cheerier moment from New Year's Eve.

New Year's Day Special: Why You Should Sleep Late

from Wired:
3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late

Speaking of dire headlines...

... now Israel's defense minister has described their retaliatory air strikes in Gaza as "war to the bitter end." Not to freak anyone out, or anything...

Aww heck... bah humbug aside...

... a happy holiday to us all, both Dems and 'pubs, Libertarians and Socialists, Greens and (Other)!
Hope the day's as joyous as November 4th! ;-)

Another one for the "Really?" file.

It's bad enough that three policemen, at the wrong house, looking for three white prostitutes, tried to arrest a 12-year-old black girl as one of their suspects, and beat her so that she had to be hospitalized and suffered ear drum injury.
But then, instead of apologizing to the traumatized girl, who's still having nightmares about the incident two years later, they try to sue her and her father for assaulting a public servant, because they tried to fight back against the ridiculously bungled arrest by plain-clothes policeman who just jumped out of an unmarked van and began attacking the girl, who had stepped out of her home to turn on a breaker switch.
The first case was a mistrial, and the new case it set for February.
WTF, Galveston, Texas? Really?

Bah Humbug.

I finally get it, why some people have a problem with Christmas. And it has nothing to do with religion. I grew up hearing about how "commercialism" was ruining Christmas, and I never really got it. Well, I was a kid and I liked presents. Nor could I fathom why this time of year had the highest suicide rate of the year. It was nothing but holly and jolly to me then.
As an adult, I began to understand. Losing my religion had far less effect on my enjoyment of Christmas as merely progressing deeper and deeper into adulthood (and not having yet made the decision, as of this moment, to start a new generation and relive the whole thing through their eyes.)
I see that it's not the commercialism per se that is so objectionable (although to some, that would be enough.) It's the way the hypersentimentality (thanks, Victorians!) of the season is exploited by merchandisers to sell their trinkets. It's not so much the fact that Christmas has been co-opted that bothers me. It's the 21st century, and solstice celebrations have always reflected the times. The present epoch, for better or worse, is a very commercial epoch. What bothers me instead is the way that widowed people, single and divorced people, people who have lost a child or a sibling or a parent that year or are dealing with an illness or personal tragedy of their own, who depend on the humdrum workaday world just to cope until they can manage again, must endure 6 weeks of holiday music on the radio, holiday displays in the stores, holiday commercials on TV, Christmas lights on every corner, Christmas cookies in the office -- reminders everywhere they go to get with the Christmas program and feel how the Victorian Christmas meme tells us all we're supposed to feel, just so that we'll buy some crap at Target.
It's just a bit insidious, that's all.
I mean, it's nice to have something to distract us from and brighten the darkest time of year. I just think it should be compressed from six weeks down to maybe one, or two at most. That's not going to happen, of course, but I was feeling cranky and I had to share.
I'll be chipper again on New Year's Eve (and back to par by January 2nd.)

Waiting for the Other Shoe...

Wolf Blitzer was salivating over it early this afternoon on "Late Edition":

BLITZER: President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq this morning, the fourth and final trip of his presidency. Let's go to Michael Ware. He's our man in Baghdad, right now. Michael, what do we know?

WARE: Well, Bush -- well, Wolf...

(LAUGHTER)

... the most extraordinary thing. You may or may not believe this. We're getting reports from the press pool that flew in with President Bush, and apparently, just a short time ago, at a press conference with Prime Minister Maliki, an Iraqi man stood up in the press conference and threw a shoe at President Bush.

By the reports we're getting, it just sailed past his head. And while the man was dragged out of the room, President Bush is said to have remarked that, "This was a size 10 shoe he threw at me, you may want to know," even as the man was heard screaming in the hallway.

So this is all during President Bush's farewell trip, as it's billed, to Iraq, where he's celebrating the SOFA agreement struck between Baghdad and Washington to see the U.S. troops to go home. Wolf?

BLITZER: Wow. That's -- that's -- that's good. I'm sure that the videotape -- we'll get that pretty soon. Any idea when we'll get that video?

WARE: No. We're all waiting with bated breath. Now, we haven't seen many pictures coming out of the trip, but, given this was at a press conference, keep your fingers crossed. Let's hope we see something very soon, Wolf.

BLITZER: I'm sure we will. And we'll bring it to our viewers, Michael, as soon as we get it.

And here it is. Yes, it's as good as it sounds. How are you liking that 3-week vacation now, Jon Stewart?

Well, I'm Not Worried Yet.

Liberals Voice Concerns About Obama

(Syntax aside) I agree with this guy (John Isaacs, the executive director for Council for Livable World):

“To me it’s not as important as who’s there, than what kind of policies they carry out.”

and this guy (Juan Cole, who "runs a prominent anti-war blog called Informed Comment"):

“... But overall, my estimation is that he has chosen competence over ideology, and I'm willing to cut him some slack."