Election Aftermath: Obama Supporters

Okay, this falls in the category of LMFAO. Stolen from Buck, this is too good not to pass on. Be sure to pay attention to the text that changes in the lower corner of the screen as the video progresses. Oh, too funny. Way too funny. All my conservative friends who have been beating me up for the last couple of months will love this one.

It's Done

Busy over at the WLA blog today.

Cannot possibly express how glad I am that I will no longer (please, please) have to sort through all the warnings from my conservative friends that an Obama victory will herald the end of days. With luck, they'll be too busy now filling their fallout shelters to fill my inbox. For the record, I'm not in favor of all the man's positions. But I greatly prefer someone earnestly wrong to someone hysterically so. The former can be reasoned with. The latter can only be sedated or ignored.

Heaven Help Us

Over at Enrevanche, Barry's post today struck a nerve. What follows is my comment, posted over at his place.

See? See, Buck especially? See? This is why I'm fed up with my former party. This is the same BS as claiming that Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex. Low, dirty, shameful lies. Anyone who allows, "I'm (insert name here), and I approved this message," to go on the air with something like that can't be trusted to wash windshields at a stoplight, let alone serve in public office.

What shall I do? I dislike Obama's policies just slightly less than I despise McCain's, and now Dole's, tactics. Sitting on my file cabinet is a flag flown over the capital for me by Dole. Like Tommy Lee Jones's character from In the Valley of Elah I am tempted to fly it . . . upside down.

God help us all.

Abraham Obama

Riiiight.

From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

An art piece that combines the face of President Lincoln with the face of Sen. Barack Obama can remain on the walls of local businesses.

. . . . . . . .

After a short investigation, the department decided that "Abraham Obama" is art and not a political endorsement, which would have violated city sign ordinances.

"It was decided that it was a mural," said Sue Matz, revocable permits coordinator for Colorado Springs.

Why I'm Leaning Toward Obama

Leaning, mind you. Much can change in the next few weeks.

There is an axiom that goes, “Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” (And it was not Winston Churchill who said it, though he’s frequently given credit.) If it’s true, that axiom, then like most of my life, my politics are backwards.

I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I think, for the most part, I still agree with most Republican principles, though these days, I consider myself an Independent, sick to death of the false dichotomies which rule two-party politics. Politicians of either major party I find to be a lot like too many evangelical Christians I know, backed by a philosophy and principles I can understand and appreciate, but that have too little effect on their daily conduct.

I know that some people stress that a vote for party rather than person is, in effect, a proper vote for those principles. I’ve bellied up and bought into that in the past. I don’t think I can this year. As much as I find myself on the side of Republican principles, I don’t think I can find myself on the side of Senator John McCain. I think that probably, once upon a time, there was a man and warrior named John McCain who would say exactly the same thing about the person the politician has become.

The reason an ad hominem argument is considered a logical fallacy is that it substitutes attacks on an opponent’s character for worthwhile disputation on the issue(s). Admittedly, in a presidential race, character is an issue. Sadly though, every attack I’ve seen thus far (in mainstream ads or chain mails) on Obama’s character has done more to turn me against the attacker than against Obama. The end result has been to make me a somewhat reluctant Obama defender. And in those instances where the attacks have come from the official McCain campaign apparatus—the ones that finish with “I’m John McCain, and I approved this message”—those have convinced me, in the end, that McCain made a conscious decision at some point that honor was a thing he could dispense with in order to win the White House.

Earlier today, I got a link to a video from a good friend. I’ve not hyperlinked the foregoing phrase because I want to qualify the video before anyone heads off to it. About the most insightful thing you’ll find on the page with the video may be this comment left by someone who had seen the video earlier: “Just one more proof that racist, idiotic ideas are not the province of one race or gender. This guy is a nutcase and his momma was a nutcase if she instilled vicious racism into her son. Sickening.” I couldn't have said it better. While certain historical facts contained in the video rant you’ll find there may be truthful, the interpretation of them, laden with prejudice, name calling, and utterly despicable inferences about the character of a woman the speaker never knew, are worse than sickening.

And, as near as I can tell, a number of the historical assertions made about specific events are true, but the conclusions one draws from those events can vary widely. I don’t recommend watching the video, but if you do, and if you’re curious to know more about the facts behind it, I would suggest going here, to a January 2007 article in the Daily Mail. The gist of that article is that most of the assertions in the more recent video are true. So? (Of course, the Daily Mail itself deserves some qualification as a source. I had thought of lamenting that journalism is not what it used to be, but then I decided, more likely, it is exactly what it has always been. See here for information on the Daily Mail, including details of more than one episode of its having been sued for running stories that were less than factual. So it goes.)

I can hear some of my friends already protesting a double standard. “How can I take McCain to task,” they ask, “for furthering falsehoods about Obama, and yet let Obama off the hook for being less than truthful about his father?” Well, how shall I answer? Like so: In the one case the falsehoods are designed to make a political opponent appear a less decent, less admirable person than he probably is, and to attribute to him actions he didn’t take and views he doesn’t hold; in the other, the falsehoods are designed to cast a family member, the teller’s own father, in a better light than he probably deserves. Can you seriously question the difference in degree of these two falsehoods? For me, they are telling.

The argument can also be made that, in some ways, the somewhat mythical construct of father that Obama has offered to the public has more relevance to his character than does his true sire with all of his human flaws. Obama appears to have had a loving mother who, for whatever temptation she may have had to give Obama the brutal truth about the man who sired him (and I’m sure there were moments when she was tempted), gave him instead an image of a father that gave us the Obama whose fate voters will decide in November. The truth is that both are relevant: the real Barack Sr. and the maternally constructed absent-but-better man each had a role to play in the creation of Barack II.

The Daily Mail article offers two good reasons to suspect this, both equally related to the roots of Obama’s ambition:

A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."

This ugly truth, say friends, has made Mr Obama ruthlessly determined to use every weapon that he has to succeed, including the glossily edited version of his father's story.

And the article's observation on a passage from The Audacity of Hope:

This tome contains one telling paragraph, in a section in which he fumbles to try to justify his abrupt leap into the national political arena: he is, he says, chronically 'restless'.

"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady."

So, bottom line, while I might be a Republican at heart, in another month, I’m likely to cast a vote for character, and I find Obama’s more admirable, in the end, than McCain’s, or, more accurately, less suspect than what McCain, whatever he may once have been, has become. Because let’s face it, American politics of late has become even more a science of what to vote against than what to vote for.

Perhaps it was always so.

Barack Obama E-mail

From the "Great Minds Think Alike" category.

I began this post three days ago. Collected most of the links and wrote part of the text and then decided I should count to ten. I'm only up to about eight, but today, over at Enrevanche, Barry scooped me. Only he's being nicer than I intend to be. But then, I get the impression he's writing to a woman of our mothers' generation--someone for whom the internet may well still be rather mysterious. Consequently, Barry was tactful.

I probably won't be. Different audience here. Okay, technically much the same audience really, but Barry's electing to let his tactful letter to someone outside this audience speak to you. I intend to get in your face. Not all of you. Many of you, most I pray, will read this and simply nod your heads north and south and be glad that I said it. Because, if you are savvy enough to be reading a blog, you're probably savvy enough to recognize digital bullshit when you see it or read it. What you probably do when you get those annoying smear-mails about a current candidate--any candidate--is delete them and make a mental note that the sender may just be an idiot after all. This post will give you another option. As a bookend to Barry's polite e-mail turned into a post, here will be a probably too straightforward post that you can e-mail using the button below. With luck, I'll say what you would have liked to say, but better. Or maybe not.

This post is not for those of you behaving well, nor is it for those like Barry's mom's friend, who don't know any better. This is for those who should know better, but for whatever reason (and I can think of a few) elect to forward electronic horse manure nonetheless.

Right up front, let's get something clear. This isn't an endorsement of any political candidate. Although it has a candidate's name as title, and although I'm going to talk about that candidate a little, this post is not so much about the candidate as about the yahoos who are passing around one or more select e-mails about the candidate. Here is the e-mail I received, I am sad to say, from more than one source:

If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself.

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas. Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta . He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that he is not a radical.

Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran.

Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag. While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!!

This, folks, is the sort of crap that keeps good men from running for office. While I can't provide a specific citation for it at the moment, my understanding has always been that one reason Colin Powell elected not to run for public office, despite sufficient popularity with the American people to have made him an even more likely candidate than Obama to be the first African-American US president, was to avoid subjecting his family, his wife in particular, to the outrage of hearing such slander about the finest man they knew.

So, what of the e-mail above about Barack Obama? How much is true? Well, one part that is certainly not true is the claim to have checked it out on Snopes.com. If you go here, you will find a page with links to information about each of the more inflammatory claims circulating in a variety of e-mails about Obama. The one truth of which people will make too much is that he doesn't necessarily always place his hand over his heart during the national anthem. A separate page at Snopes discusses that fact in detail. Look around people! The next time you're at a ball game or a race. This is an oversight that pisses me off on a regular basis, but ignorance of US Flag Code is not the same thing as being a closet terrorist. (In reality, a few of those good ole boys at the race probably are closet anarchists who would gladly get in line for the first shot at Obama with a sniper rifle if he's elected, but that's why we have a Secret Service Presidential Detail.)

My point is this: Snopes.com really is a reasonably reliable place to debunk this sort of e-mail before you make an ass of yourself by forwarding it. The same goes for those virus warnings that come in with a message urging you to forward it to everyone you know. People, if you do, you become the virus. Snopes has a page for validating those warnings as well. I usually just delete either variety of e-mail (along with promises of blessings and riches beyond my wildest dreams), but I don't forget from whence they came. You lose points with me, big time, if you are the sort of person who should know better, because I figure you do. I give you that much credit. I surmise, when you forward messages of this ilk, you do so with full awareness that it's garbage, but you don't like the candidate anyway and deem all fair in love, war, and politics. Please don't. Not if you want to be my friend. My friends and I don't roll like that.

What goes around . . .

I'm listening to Robert A. Caro's, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, right now (have been since July--it's huge okay, but two more CDs and I'm done), and if there's one thing I've learned about LBJ (besides the fact that he knew he wanted to be president before he could walk), it's that he was studiously careful, during those years that he was "Master of the Senate," not to do things, as a senator, that would set a precedent he might find restrictive and unpleasant should his ultimate ambition be realized. Today's news makes me wonder if Obama has read Caro's book.