Obama in 30 seconds

Very impressed with the video ads from all over America for moveon.org’s recent contest.  My video was fun to make.  I learned a lot.  Check it out here. And then check out and rate the rest after you log into mine.

Times Op-Ed and Information Media

In reading the op-ed portion of the New York Times this morning, I found myself much more informed by two opinion news pieces than the news stories. Perhaps it is just the bias of the Times’ general reporting, but their news pieces always strike me as one dimensional. I was relieved to see these two articles this morning identifying complexities of the recent Obama comments that I had not discovered on my own.

David Brooks writes that it is not trade deals and out-sourcing that has broken the pocketbooks of folks in the heartland, rather it is technological (and social) innovation itself. He argues that it now takes less workers to manufacture a piece of steel, and some of these workers are women which pushes down wage rates for men. Obama uses the anti-trade rhetoric because that is what most people in the heartland understand; they see their enemy as trade and Barack wants to appeal to them. But Mr. Brooks points out that if Obama is going to lead, he needs to speak to these folks honestly and plainly about why they don’t have the abiality to feed their families anymore. He needs to educate without patronizing, something he is very gifted at. And in reaching less-informed voters in Pennsylvania, Obama cannot afford to alienate those of us that really do want to understand the issues. We feel like we’re being talked down to with elementrary language on issues we really ought to understand.

The second piece by Bob Herbert on racism in the heartland is also quite compelling. He says that Obama ought to answer the question on why his campaign is doing poorly in Pennsylvania honestly. That it is racial divisions that are causing his failure in the last large state remaining in the primary. Instead he “danced around the truth” and gave a “tortured response that was demonstrably incorrect.” This slip up was a big one he goes on to say, and if he was Mr. Obama’s adviser he would advise him to “confront the matter head-on, meeting as often as possible with skeptical, and even hostile, working people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Let the questions rip, and answer them honestly. One of Mr. Obama’s strongest points early in this campaign was his capacity to make people feel good about their country again. If I were him, I’d try to re-ignite that flame.”

I hope Mr. Obama or someone close to him is reading these pieces from the Times.

Truth

When one hears truth about himself and he is not ready/willing to hear it, he often views it as an attack. Most of our society could be characterized this way.

We as Americans are the largest consumer of the finite resources of our planet and we produce the most waste and most Americans don’t see themselves as as participants in any global climate change phenomenon.

The Homestead policies of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century United States stole not only land but the entire way of life for Aboriginal Peoples on this continent. Most Americans do not consider themselves as beneficiaries of this cultural genocide.

The wealth of our nation at its conception, its birth, and for one hundred years after was built upon the backs of African people hunted down like animals, taken from their established communities, loaded on boats where they underwent horrific conditions (close to a million people died on these brutal voyages), unloaded as cargo and sold to the highest bidding American to plow, grow, harvest, and transform into goods and services all the resources of this great nation. These African people were never paid and they were treated worse than animals.

Most Americans do not associate themselves with this, these or any other of the brutal actions during the the last five hundred years that those who settled these lands, those who have governed those settlers, and those that call themelves Americans have engaged in, even though all Americans are beneficiaries, sometimes directly, of these abhorrent actions.

I am not sure why, but most Americans do not want to hear these truths. They say they want to “move beyond” what has happened in the past, which translates as trying to forget the feelings associated with this grim history. But the trouble is, we cannot move on until we see and recognize the truth. Until we remember and voice what our current style of life has cost millions of people in the past and will continue to cost millions of people in the future, we will continue to be haunted by our own guilt.

The irony is that while in the denial of our own truth, we continue to engage in the behaviors which engendered the guilt in the first place.

The collective America is still engaged in arocities. Currently torture is practiced as a military tool in Iraq, Afganistan, and at Guantanimo Bay. Noted prominently as pictures viewed my millions through a news leak Abu Ghraib was just one small case of our current military torture policy.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, upwards of 600,000 Iraqi lives have ended violently. Many more Iraqi people have experienced life-altering injuries.

Americans under the poverty line were left to fend for their lives after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans.

Genocide, rape, and murder is daily fare in Darfur where we have chosen to ‘let them sort it out for themselves’ which indirectly supports the genocide.

Instead, we have focused our entire military capasity on Iraq where we have come to find out Sadam Hussein was bluffing. He had no more military power than his constant boasts and fearful followers which were all wiped out in the first month of our military engagement there. Now we fight a defensive battle in Iraq and have no military here to defend our own land.

And the real threat to the American dream is the failing economy. We don’t have the money to take care of our own against corporate greed because we are overspending on a war that the rest of the world does not support. When will we learn?

Even these media covered truths are hard for people. I am surprised that a candidate like Barack Obama who speaks the truth every chance he gets has gotten as far as he has. We’ve been lied to for so long that an honest voice in our leadership can be a bit jarring and feel like a personal attack.

Take Obama’s recent words to wealthy fund raisers in San Fransisco last week. He wanted to help these rich, open minded folks in California to understand the challenges faced by mid-west and bible belt America whose jobs have gone overseas and whose hope in the future is very limited. He said they cling to their religion, their guns, and their antipathy toward others who are not like them. These words are true. The truth can be hard, especially when it is about you and you are not used to or ready to hear it.

Of course he could have said this better. Truth should always be tempered with compassion.

And it is important to note that Obama was not speaking to people in the mid-west or the bible belt. These words were delivered to people who have never had to worry about money, who don’t understand why folks in the bible belt think and act the way they do. Or why folks in this area of the country have more than one gun kept loaded under their bed. Or why folks in rural Pennsylvania have such antipathy (racism) toward non-white people. These traditions and ideologies are what what even I cling to when hope in the future is a dwindling commodity. It is hard for the wealthy west-coast elite to understand this.

Barack Obama was acting as a bridge. He was saying, invest in my candidacy because even though I am not doing as well in states like Pennsylvania where people are broken from years of over work and poverty, if I can reach these people with my message (with your funding help), I can help these people feed their families as president. That is what he was trying to say. He was bridge building and he was focused on one side of the bridge for that short moment, when as anyone who has built bridges knows, you have to focus on both sides you are trying to bridge all the time.

He needed more money for his campaign (which has been far more transparent than any other in history) and he spoke to his funders in a way that they might understand his campaign in Pennsylvania.

Building those bridges in this day and age of polarization, has got to be one of the most difficult prospects in history.

Obama can only do it by being honest and speaking the truth one hundred percent of the time. It is a brave undertaking and I think he is doing a tremendous job.

When one hears truth about himself and he is not ready/willing to hear it, he often views it as an attack. Most of our society could be characterized this way.

We as Americans are the largest consumer of the finite resources of our planet and we produce the most waste and most Americans don’t see themselves as as participants in any global climate change phenomenon.

The Homestead policies of the 17th century United States stole not only land but the entire way of life for Aboriginal Peoples on this continent. Most Americans do not consider themselves as beneficiaries of this cultural genocide.

The wealth of our nation at its conception, its birth, and for one hundred years after was built upon the backs of African people hunted down like animals, taken from their established communities, loaded on boats where they underwent horrific conditions (close to a million people died on these brutal voyages), unloaded as cargo and sold to the highest bidding American to plow, grow, harvest, and transform into goods and services all the resources of this great nation. These African people were never paid and they were treated worse than animals.

Most Americans do not associate themselves with this, these or any other of the brutal actions during the the last five hundred years that those who settled these lands, those who have governed those settlers, and those that call themelves Americans have engaged in, even though all Americans are beneficiaries, sometimes directly, of these abhorrent actions.

I am not sure why, but most Americans do not want to hear these truths. They say they want to “move beyond” what has happened in the past, which translates as trying to forget the feelings associated with this grim history. But the trouble is, we cannot move on until we see and recognize the truth. Until we remember and voice what our current style of life has cost millions of people in the past and will continue to cost millions of people in the future, we will continue to be haunted by our own guilt.

The irony is that while in the denial of our own truth, we continue to engage in the behaviors which engendered the guilt in the first place.

The collective America is still engaged in arocities. Currently torture is practiced as a military tool in Iraq, Afganistan, and at Guantanimo Bay. Noted prominently as pictures viewed my millions through a news leak Abu Ghraib was just one small case of our current military torture policy.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, upwards of 600,000 Iraqi lives have ended violently. Many more Iraqi people have experienced life-altering injuries.

Americans under the poverty line were left to fend for their lives after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans.

Genocide, rape, and murder is daily fare in Darfur where we have chosen to ‘let them sort it out for themselves’ which indirectly supports the genocide.

Instead, we have focused our entire military capasity on Iraq where we have come to find out Sadam Hussein was bluffing. He had no more military power than his constant boasts and fearful followers which were all wiped out in the first month of our military engagement there. Now we fight a defensive battle in Iraq and have no military here to defend our own land.

And the real threat to the American dream is the failing economy. We don’t have the money to take care of our own against corporate greed because we are overspending on a war that the rest of the world does not support. When will we learn?

Even these media covered truths are hard for people. I am surprised that a candidate like Barack Obama who speaks the truth every chance he gets has gotten as far as he has. We’ve been lied to for so long that an honest voice in our leadership can be a bit jarring and feel like a personal attack.

Take Obama’s recent words to wealthy fund raisers in San Fransisco last week. He wanted to help these rich, open minded folks in California to understand the challenges faced by mid-west and bible belt America whose jobs have gone overseas and whose hope in the future is very limited. He said they cling to their religion, their guns, and their antipathy toward others who are not like them. These words are true. The truth can be hard, especially when it is about you and you are not used to or ready to hear it.

Of course he could have said this better. Truth should always be tempered with compassion. And it is important to note that Obama was not speaking to people in the mid-west or the bible belt. These words were delivered to people who have never had to worry about money, who don’t understand why folks in the bible belt think and act the way they do. Or why folks in this area of the country have more than one gun kept loaded under their bed. Or why folks in rural Pennsylvania have such antipathy (racism) toward non-white people. These traditions and ideologies are what what even I cling to when hope in the future is a dwindling commodity. It is hard for the wealthy west-coast elite to understand this.

Barack Obama was acting as a bridge. He was saying, invest in my candidacy because even though I am not doing as well in states like Pennsylvania where people are broken from years of over work and poverty, if I can reach these people with my message (with your funding help), I can help these people feed their families as president. That is what he was trying to say. He was bridge building and he was focused on one side of the bridge for that short moment, when as anyone who has built bridges knows, you have to focus on both sides you are trying to bridge all the time.

He needed more money for his campaign (which has been far more transparent than any other in history) and he spoke to his funders in a way that they might understand his campaign in Pennsylvania. Building those bridges in this day and age of polarization, has got to be one of the most difficult prospects in history.

Obama can only do it by being honest and speaking the truth one hundred percent of the time. It is a brave undertaking and I think he is doing a tremendous job.

Obama’s Presidency

In an article Obama at the Helm in yesterday’s Washington Post, Peter Beinhart makes the following point. Most presidencies follow the tone and rhythm of their winning campaign. Of the three candidates, he feels that Obama has run his campaign with the recipe desperately needed in the next presidency: grassroots enthusiasm and tight organization with intelligent control.

He also leaves us with an apt warning:

The danger is that Obama will fall prey to the malady that ruined Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter: self-righteousness. Elections are winner-take-all, but governing isn’t. Candidates can denounce Washington, but presidents have to live there. If the lesson Obama draws from his outsider campaign is that he and his supporters are children of light while those who oppose them are cynics, he’ll find it hard to compromise. Successful presidents know how to make half a loaf look like a big win, and presidents with messiah complexes don’t do that very well. But if Obama can come across as idealistic without being moralistic, if he can keep his supporters’ spirits high and their expectations in check, if he can fuse exuberance and discipline, he might just run the government pretty well. That won’t be easy, but then, neither is running for president. Just ask Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Clinton’s Tax Bracket

Just my curiosity, but why is Hillary Clinton, who made $109 million in 2007, paying only 30.3% of that in taxes?  Jeff Alworthy makes this brilliant point here.  Why, at this income level, are people paying the same percentage of their income in taxes as someone making $30,000 in 2007?  What is this country coming to?

Barack Obama Questions Petraeus

Obama questioned General Petraeus minutes ago in an articulate and persuasive manner.  He asked Petraeus, “Would it be ‘good enough’ a goal to keep a status quo in Iraq with less soldiers (30,000 troops)? Would this constitute success? We have finite resources for this endeavor.  We all want to know, as we’ve been asking today reflects, how we are going to leave Iraq successfully.  I just want to know if we can lower our lofty goals and definition of success so that we can actually achieve these goals?”  He has asked earlier if the goal of no Iran involvement and no ability for Al-Qaeda to have any presence in Iraq is unachievable.  He asked if some Iran involvement would be acceptable.  He asked if success would allow for Iraq forces to keep Al-Qaeda at bay if not entirely out of Iraq.  The General was very responsive and respectful to Obama and answered his questions carefully and respectfully.