Letters to the Editor
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Obama's BS
I forgot: What I meant by BS was "Blank Slate."
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Salon's editorial slant.
Tonight, on the eve of the New Year, I can look at Salon's home page and see two articles which have the primary focus of attacking Barak Obama and one talking about how great Hillary Clinton is that practically reads like a campaign speech for her.
Going back just a little further this month, we see a speculative article about how Barak might (might!) not do so well amongst conservative voters. (Another meme straight out of Clinton HQ - since she can't claim she'll bring in conservative voters with a straight face, she has to attack his ability to.) On December 20th and 18th, more articles that could have come straight out of Clinton central about how it's not fair to be a woman candidate.
Barak's record should be scrutinized, absolutely, but it'd be nice if that same scrutiny would shine on Salon's favorite candidate. But I'm sure if the anti-Obama slant of Salon (and so much of the beltway press) works, all of a sudden it'll be time to start digging around on John Edwards.
Salon does a good job of talking about the roll the media plays in framing the debate, and backing (publicly or not) one candidate or another. Could you please apply that same analysis to your own reporting?
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Obama NO,NO,NO.
Obama says he will bring both parties together. what a joke Mitch McConnell (who I despise) would have him for breakfast.As long as you have these hard line rightwing republicans in congress nothing will get done.They are the party of nothing and they make sure that the democrats get nothing done. We have an idiot president now we don't need another who would use tranning wheels.Wake up people Obama has nothing but a gift of gab.We need a Joe Biden with a larger democratic majority in the senate to get this country back on track.
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Obama's elusiveness
I watched Barrak Obama interviewed by Tim Russert and listened to MPR"s debate and was very unimpressed by him.
He seems to be a great speech maker before a large crowd, but when asked specific questions one the one on the NBC interview, he was not very convincing nor forthcoming. He hedged on many of his answers. In addition, he was rather dull and seemed to stumble just as he did on the MPR debate.
One may preach hope, but how does one deliver?
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Obama's Message
is like the message all the other corporate owned marionettes have for us all--
Sit still and smile while we shove what remains of the rolled up U.S. constitution deeper into your aft orifice.
RON PAUL or watch the US devolve deeper into third world nation status.
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Obama's strategy makes sense
One thing we find in public opinion research is that average Americans tend to believe that there is a basic consensus on what we should be doing, like "fix education" and "fix Iraq" and "make the economy better." They believe the partisan bickering is a clash of "special interests" taking time and money away from doing what we all want done (fixing everything). Average Americans don't necessarily grasp that partisan disagreement is about fundamentally different approaches to education, to foreign policy, and to the economy.
Obama's speech may sound like BS to people who read Salon, but when he says things like:
"A politics focused not on what divides us but on our common values and our common ideals, [focused] not so much on ideology, but practicality."
Obama is speaking to what most Americans already believe about politics. I'm sure Obama has partisan policy goals, but his campaign has decided that instead of making a case for various proposals, this is the time to sell people what they already want -- hope, unity, a promise to solve problems.
So even though I know he's full of crap, I'm impressed with how well the Obama campaign understands how ordinary people think about politics. It makes me believe Obama can win the general election -- and that gives me hope.
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Shapiro's lament: I knew it was coming just be as you stated "a political reporter"
and let the voters and readers define Obama's mission..
What do you folks fear so much?? Change?? Race??
Keep hope alive our country needs it...
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Time warp or what? Is Shapiro worried about his morning after hangover?
So I have been on the receiving end of early posts before. Late P.M. posts are often forward dated for the next day. But, didn't Shapiro attribute a reaction to a speech and the Ad man's reaction to his question in the future tense. Of course it had not happened...yet, he is responding to an event and attributing an answer to a question that could not have occurred at the time of writing. Somebody please explain?
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Talk is cheap
Check out his voting record on Iraq and the "war on terror." He's the same as Clinton! What does it matter what you believe in if you don't have actions to back it up?
What the hell are we doing voting for "hope" without actions, leadership experience, or results? Was it "hope" that caused him to seek out the support of a violent homophobic bigot, fail to vote against Mukasey, fail to charge against the Military Commissions Act that legalized torture and destroyed habeus corpus, spew inflammatory rhetoric on Pakistan that included threats to violate its national sovereignty if Musharraf failed to act and promising to deploy US troops to an unstable nuclear-powered Muslim country, or repeatedly vote to give Bush a blank check to fund an unending occupation?
He may promise that he's "change we can believe in" but I'd rather have change that is real.
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Vagaries
While I respect and admire Barak Obama's politics, I too find his campaign long on themes and short on substance. One shouldn't have to click through to a website to ascertain the key points in a candidates platform. The seeming reluctance to publically articulate a platform makes me to some degree uncomfortable with voting for him. I am not without hope because I don't plan to vote for him, but my hope lies in concrete policy not platitudes, I can't have hope in a candidate who floats like a Butterfly and never stings like a Bee.
Lucky for him I live in Michigan and my vote doesn't count for crap at this point anyway.