On the Republican side, this whole campaign has been, overtly or in an underlying way, about accusing the other side of being elitist.
Elitist, in Republican rhetoric, is a slur, as well as socialist, redistributor (coined by McCain to describe Obama, just before he coined redistributionist in chief), liberal of course, etc., etc.
So John and Sarah pretend to be like any other American. It does not really matter that John owns seven houses and Sarah owns a plane. What matters is that, at heart and in talking, they are like us. You betcha!
Unfortunately, this pose does not always go as planned.
A few weeks ago, Sarah the Hockey Mom, dropped the puck at a hockey game (dropping the puck is "donner le coup d'envoi" for a soccer game, my dear French readers).
She was booed by the Hockey Joe Six-Packs filling up the stands.
Oops!
Yesterday, in Pennsylvania, Palin started her speech by saying it was a great pleasure to be in the home state of the Philadelphia Phillies (note for my French baseball-clueless friends, the Phillies, the baseball team from Philadelphia, just won what they call here the World's Series -- although the Americans are the only ones playing baseball, but shhh, some American friends are listening).
She was booed by the audience. Her own audience. Why? Because she was talking in western Pennsylvania, home of the arch-enemy of the Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Oops, again!
Yesterday also, McCain was campaigning in Ohio. He called Joe the Plumber on stage. "Joe, come on up... Joe, where are you? ... Joe??? Joe, I thought you were here with us today." Oops again! Joe was not there. Had his staff played a mean trick on John? It doesn't matter. John knows how to get out of such a dire strait honorably. "Well, it doesn't matter, you are all Joe the Plumbers," he said to the timidly cheering crown of 6,000 which included 4,000 high school students who had been bused in.
But why was he calling for Joe the Plumber, by the way?
Well, because Joe the Plumber had been campaigning for John and Sarah. He has been answering questions from the audience. Not just questions about plumbing. Nooooo. Questions about foreign policy. He agreed with an idiot in the audience saying that if Obama was elected, it would mean the death of Israel!
What the f...!!!
Joe, come on. Go back plumbing. I know you really want to be John's Secretary of State, but John is not going to win, so forget it.
I don't really understand why people don't want someone smarter than they are leading their country. I wouldn't want someone like me for President, and yet, I dare say I think I am reasonably smart.
They have had the dumbest president ever for the last eight years, and they haven't learned the lesson yet.
When I thought you could not produce a worse candidate than Bush, John invented Sarah.
Please, if you are not really smart, don't vote for the people who say they are like you.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Violence in the campaign
Last week, a young Republican supporter claimed that while getting money at an ATM she was attacked by a tall black man, "an Obama supporter" who had carved the letter B for Barack with a knife on her cheek.
As it turned out, it was a hoax. She had mutilated herself with a B on her cheek and invented the whole story. The hoax did not last long. The B was backwards. She had done it looking in a mirror.
Yesterday, we learned that two youngsters defining themselves as neo-Nazis, had planned to assassinate Barack Obama. Before that, they were planning to kill 88 black people, 14 by beheading. 14 and 88 are symbolic numbers for neo-Nazis. 14 is the number of words in a sentence uttered by a supremacist leader about preserving the white race and the white children. 8 corresponds to the letter H in the alphabet. Two 8 means two H, the initials for "Heil Hitler."
This is the kind of violence which goes with the current election. In previous posts, I wrote about the fact that the supremacists wanted Obama to be elected, I wrote about the outbursts of racist hatred coming out of McCain and Palin's audiences.
Quite incredibly, this violence, underlying or in the open, is becoming commonplace. People are hardly shocked by such news. They do not really question the deep-running causes of such hatred and violence.
It does not really matter how often the candidates on both sides will say that the US is the greatest country on earth, the US still has a long and continuing history of violence, racism, presidential assassination. What does it mean to be the greatest country on earth when such violence is commonplace?
And for my American readers, I have to insist that although I am saying this, I am not "a primitive anti-Americanist" as I was called once on national French radio. I love the US. I teach the US, I read the US, I married the US, I have US children.
I just think that if only all those people who claim they love their country so much simply questioned their country now and then, they could make it better.
I come from a country where the electoral campaigns are so boring that when the candidates call each other liars, it is a big deal. Just imagine!
Of course, the candidates are not responsible for all this violence. Well, kinda!
As I wrote in a previous post, Palin has not reacted in the least bit to the hateful outbursts coming from her audience. A reminder: "Off with his head!" "Kill him!' could be heard when Palin said Obama was "palling around with terrorists."
McCain has been very slow, and mild and awkward, in correcting the outbursts in his audience, taking the mike from a woman calling Obama "an Arab." A reminder of McCain's awkward response: "No, Ma'am, he is a decent family man." Awkward, but still the most soothing reaction he has had so far.
Since then, Obama has been linked to terrorists again and again. Until he was called a Socialist, also with underlying violence, since the socialism they are refering to here is not the Mitterandian socialism that we the French know, but something McCain, Palin and their surrogates confuse with Stalinist Communism.
Why is Obama called a socialist? Because he wants to "spread the wealth." That is he wants the rich to pay more taxes than the poor, and use that money to help the poor.
Finally, yesterday, commentator David Gergen had tried to remind everybody that this is not Socialism in the Communist sense of the word, it is Progressive Taxation, something that Teddy Roosevelt, McCain's model advocated and a policy that Reagan, another model of McCain and Palin's, implemented.
But that does not matter. "Socialist" and "terrorist" are uttered so often in the Republican stump speeches that they almost become synonyms, negative epithets that depict Barack Hussein Obama as a dangerous man. An editorialist has even gone so far as accusing Obama a "Muslim Socialist."
When Barack is finally elected next Tuesday, this is so stupid and absurd that it will be funny. Right now, though, it is stupid and scary.
One more thing: Colin Powell, a Republican who served in the Bush administration, endorsed Obama last week. He explained very clearly why he did so. He said that Obama was a transformational figure. He said that McCain's VP pick said much of his poor judgment. He gave a lot of reasons that he had thought through.
The following day, Rush Limbaugh, a racist, far-right radio host, yelled in his mike that Powell's endorsement of Obama was "totally about race."
It does not matter that Powell is an intelligent man with a lot of political and military experience. For Limbaugh, he is above all a black man, and that's why he endorsed Obama.
I guess all the white men's endorsements of McCain are also about race then.
I guess all white people will vote for the white candidate, and all black people will vote for Obama. I guess Limbaugh wishes that were true. McCain would win. But Obama will.
I am rambling.
What I mean to say, I guess, is that, yes, the candidates are partly responsible for all this violence. They blow on the glowing ashes.
McCain still have not said anything about the hoax I referred to at the beginning of this post. He needs to talk about it, and about all the rest. He needs to talk against this violence and this ambient racism.
He could lose with dignity, at least.
Lionel Hussein Larre
As it turned out, it was a hoax. She had mutilated herself with a B on her cheek and invented the whole story. The hoax did not last long. The B was backwards. She had done it looking in a mirror.
Yesterday, we learned that two youngsters defining themselves as neo-Nazis, had planned to assassinate Barack Obama. Before that, they were planning to kill 88 black people, 14 by beheading. 14 and 88 are symbolic numbers for neo-Nazis. 14 is the number of words in a sentence uttered by a supremacist leader about preserving the white race and the white children. 8 corresponds to the letter H in the alphabet. Two 8 means two H, the initials for "Heil Hitler."
This is the kind of violence which goes with the current election. In previous posts, I wrote about the fact that the supremacists wanted Obama to be elected, I wrote about the outbursts of racist hatred coming out of McCain and Palin's audiences.
Quite incredibly, this violence, underlying or in the open, is becoming commonplace. People are hardly shocked by such news. They do not really question the deep-running causes of such hatred and violence.
It does not really matter how often the candidates on both sides will say that the US is the greatest country on earth, the US still has a long and continuing history of violence, racism, presidential assassination. What does it mean to be the greatest country on earth when such violence is commonplace?
And for my American readers, I have to insist that although I am saying this, I am not "a primitive anti-Americanist" as I was called once on national French radio. I love the US. I teach the US, I read the US, I married the US, I have US children.
I just think that if only all those people who claim they love their country so much simply questioned their country now and then, they could make it better.
I come from a country where the electoral campaigns are so boring that when the candidates call each other liars, it is a big deal. Just imagine!
Of course, the candidates are not responsible for all this violence. Well, kinda!
As I wrote in a previous post, Palin has not reacted in the least bit to the hateful outbursts coming from her audience. A reminder: "Off with his head!" "Kill him!' could be heard when Palin said Obama was "palling around with terrorists."
McCain has been very slow, and mild and awkward, in correcting the outbursts in his audience, taking the mike from a woman calling Obama "an Arab." A reminder of McCain's awkward response: "No, Ma'am, he is a decent family man." Awkward, but still the most soothing reaction he has had so far.
Since then, Obama has been linked to terrorists again and again. Until he was called a Socialist, also with underlying violence, since the socialism they are refering to here is not the Mitterandian socialism that we the French know, but something McCain, Palin and their surrogates confuse with Stalinist Communism.
Why is Obama called a socialist? Because he wants to "spread the wealth." That is he wants the rich to pay more taxes than the poor, and use that money to help the poor.
Finally, yesterday, commentator David Gergen had tried to remind everybody that this is not Socialism in the Communist sense of the word, it is Progressive Taxation, something that Teddy Roosevelt, McCain's model advocated and a policy that Reagan, another model of McCain and Palin's, implemented.
But that does not matter. "Socialist" and "terrorist" are uttered so often in the Republican stump speeches that they almost become synonyms, negative epithets that depict Barack Hussein Obama as a dangerous man. An editorialist has even gone so far as accusing Obama a "Muslim Socialist."
When Barack is finally elected next Tuesday, this is so stupid and absurd that it will be funny. Right now, though, it is stupid and scary.
One more thing: Colin Powell, a Republican who served in the Bush administration, endorsed Obama last week. He explained very clearly why he did so. He said that Obama was a transformational figure. He said that McCain's VP pick said much of his poor judgment. He gave a lot of reasons that he had thought through.
The following day, Rush Limbaugh, a racist, far-right radio host, yelled in his mike that Powell's endorsement of Obama was "totally about race."
It does not matter that Powell is an intelligent man with a lot of political and military experience. For Limbaugh, he is above all a black man, and that's why he endorsed Obama.
I guess all the white men's endorsements of McCain are also about race then.
I guess all white people will vote for the white candidate, and all black people will vote for Obama. I guess Limbaugh wishes that were true. McCain would win. But Obama will.
I am rambling.
What I mean to say, I guess, is that, yes, the candidates are partly responsible for all this violence. They blow on the glowing ashes.
McCain still have not said anything about the hoax I referred to at the beginning of this post. He needs to talk about it, and about all the rest. He needs to talk against this violence and this ambient racism.
He could lose with dignity, at least.
Lionel Hussein Larre
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Republican volunteers and us
Hellow, my fellow Americans. Oops, this whole campaign rhetoric is getting to me.
So, what's up?
I'm okay, I guess. Slowly recovering from missing the biggest Obama rally in the history of the greatest country on earth.
Anyway, there is a huge lot to talk about. Some serious stuff, too. The campaign has become very very disturbingly ugly. Quite incredibly, what has dominated the campaign this week is racism. At a shocking level. I will write about that in a post later next week because I suspect this is not over.
There would be a lot to say, also, about Palin. Again. And about her shopping spree. $150,000 dollars in high-end clothes stores in the last eight weeks. But here again, I think Palin is not done yet with her daily blunders, so I'll write a comprehensive Palin post before Election Day.
I also need to write about Socialism, the new S word. Obama is accused everyday of being a Socialist, of wanting to "spread the wealth." Oooohh! Bad Obama, bad!
I could also talk about the new candidate, Joe the Plumber. Remember, my fellow French, in our last election, we had a lot of talk about "le plombier polonais." Well, that was nothing compared to how many times we hear the candidates refer to Joe the Plumber this week.
Anyway, a lot to write about.
But today, I would like to tell you about my last own adventure. Get the kids away from the screen, because it is kind of scary. But you know, I am an adventurer, and I am not afraid to face danger. I have spent a year in the Guiana rainforest, two years in the Libyan desert, including a night in a Libyan jail. Let me tell ya, that was nothing compared to today's adventure.
I paid a visit to the Republican headquarters in Norman, Oklahoma.
I did that quite innocently. I went in because I was looking for the best button ever, the one that says "Our VP is a hot chick."
But I went in with my wife, LeAnn and my two-year old daughter, Alyenor. And LeAnn loooooves to argue. Oh yeah, she does! (Love ya, honey).
There were a man and a lady in their fifties there, sitting at a table covered with pamphlets, leaflets, stickers and other campaign attire. I told them the object of my visit.
I wanted to pretend I was an independent voter and engage into a discussion with them. LeAnn could not refrain from saying we were from the other camp.
Havoc ensued. What follows are bits and pieces that I grasped when I could not turn a deaf enough ear to the whole conversation.
The lady said to LeAnn that she was a one-issue voter, that she was against abortion in all cases and that she could not vote for anyone, Republican or Democrat, that is "pro-abortion." I knew then, of course, that that lady would not be convinced by anything. LeAnn tried anyway.
I looked at the stickers and the buttons. The man looked at me looking at the buttons. And the ladies went on.
In the meantime, the lady would point at Alyenor and asking LeAnn questions like "Would you have aborted her if your life had depended on it?"
The question is so obviously stupid that I am not going to waste my time to comment on it. It is sad, though, that people make up their political minds on such generalizations and skewed interrogations.
LeAnn was trying to tell that lady that on such an issue, people cannot convince each other because they start from fundamentally different premises, etc, etc. She was right of course, so right that she did not convince that lady.
At some point, though, I could not refrain myself. The lady said that those Obama people don't care about babies. I had to say that this was nonsense and that people should not be characterized in such a way.
She said they were "pro-abortion." I said if they were "pro-abortion," they would encourage people to abort, and of course, they don't, so it is also nonsensical to use that label against your opponents.
So then, she asked me what experience Obama had to be President.
I said none. Obama does not have more or less experience than McCain and Palin, but Palin does not know what a Vice-President does.
She said that Palin is not running for President.
I said, No, she's running for Vice-President, and she does not know what a Vice-President does.
"Yes, she does."
"Well, she was asked that question several times, and she could not answer the question."
"Yes, she did."
"Well, I'm sorry, but she didn't"
"She does know what the Vice President does."
"Well, no, she doesn't. My French students know what the role of the Vice-President is," I lied, "and Palin does not. It is simply unbelievable."
"Well, it was nice talking with you. You have a nice family," said she very nicely, without an ounce of irony or sarcasm.
I said "Thank you" and that was the end of our conversation about whether or not Sarah Palin knows what the job she is applying for is about.
At the end of the day, I am thinking, that lady was a nice lady. She is the average citizen, with an average everyday unnoticeable life, like you and me. Really, what I am trying to say is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that person. She was not mean to us, she was not aggressive. I might actually have been more aggressive in my trying to prove a point, which does not make me a superior to her.
But she is ignorant. I don't mean that disrespectfully. I am not saying she is stupid. She is just a misinformed voter who believes the lies she is being told because they tap into her core values.
Either you think beyond your core values, or you don't. Nobody, I am sure, enjoys the idea of abortion. At the core of everybody, there is the idea that abortion is not a cool thing. And then, some of us go beyond our core value and try to think and to get informed about the reality that abortion implies, the reality faced by women who consider an abortion. And although that reality does not resonate much with our core value, we think, we ponder, and we make up our mind.
Now, if you don't think and ponder beyond your core value, you are going to vote for the person that tells you that abortion is murder.
As LeAnn concisely put it to me on our way home, "I should have told her it is easy to be agaisnt abortion in all cases. Because it prevents you from facing the reality of the women who consider abortion."
The other day, Michael Moore said that Obama is not running against McCain, he is running against ignorance. He's right. Many working-class, struggling, Joe Six-Packs and Joe the Plumbers are going to vote against their best interest because they are lied to and they are not informed enough to see beyond the lies.
As a final note for today, I would like to write for my Presidency-and-Congress-class students who might happen to read this blog: When I ask what you know about the American Constitution and more specifically about the role of the Vice President, please don't be ashamed not to know anything about it. There is not shame for you not to know since one of the two Vice-Presidential candidates this year thinks that "the Vice-President is in charge of Congress" and can work with Congress at "policy-making."
Don't be ashamed not to know, but if you ever write that answer in your papers, don't be surprised if I call you Sarah, and that won't be a compliment.
So, what's up?
I'm okay, I guess. Slowly recovering from missing the biggest Obama rally in the history of the greatest country on earth.
Anyway, there is a huge lot to talk about. Some serious stuff, too. The campaign has become very very disturbingly ugly. Quite incredibly, what has dominated the campaign this week is racism. At a shocking level. I will write about that in a post later next week because I suspect this is not over.
There would be a lot to say, also, about Palin. Again. And about her shopping spree. $150,000 dollars in high-end clothes stores in the last eight weeks. But here again, I think Palin is not done yet with her daily blunders, so I'll write a comprehensive Palin post before Election Day.
I also need to write about Socialism, the new S word. Obama is accused everyday of being a Socialist, of wanting to "spread the wealth." Oooohh! Bad Obama, bad!
I could also talk about the new candidate, Joe the Plumber. Remember, my fellow French, in our last election, we had a lot of talk about "le plombier polonais." Well, that was nothing compared to how many times we hear the candidates refer to Joe the Plumber this week.
Anyway, a lot to write about.
But today, I would like to tell you about my last own adventure. Get the kids away from the screen, because it is kind of scary. But you know, I am an adventurer, and I am not afraid to face danger. I have spent a year in the Guiana rainforest, two years in the Libyan desert, including a night in a Libyan jail. Let me tell ya, that was nothing compared to today's adventure.
I paid a visit to the Republican headquarters in Norman, Oklahoma.
I did that quite innocently. I went in because I was looking for the best button ever, the one that says "Our VP is a hot chick."
But I went in with my wife, LeAnn and my two-year old daughter, Alyenor. And LeAnn loooooves to argue. Oh yeah, she does! (Love ya, honey).
There were a man and a lady in their fifties there, sitting at a table covered with pamphlets, leaflets, stickers and other campaign attire. I told them the object of my visit.
I wanted to pretend I was an independent voter and engage into a discussion with them. LeAnn could not refrain from saying we were from the other camp.
Havoc ensued. What follows are bits and pieces that I grasped when I could not turn a deaf enough ear to the whole conversation.
The lady said to LeAnn that she was a one-issue voter, that she was against abortion in all cases and that she could not vote for anyone, Republican or Democrat, that is "pro-abortion." I knew then, of course, that that lady would not be convinced by anything. LeAnn tried anyway.
I looked at the stickers and the buttons. The man looked at me looking at the buttons. And the ladies went on.
In the meantime, the lady would point at Alyenor and asking LeAnn questions like "Would you have aborted her if your life had depended on it?"
The question is so obviously stupid that I am not going to waste my time to comment on it. It is sad, though, that people make up their political minds on such generalizations and skewed interrogations.
LeAnn was trying to tell that lady that on such an issue, people cannot convince each other because they start from fundamentally different premises, etc, etc. She was right of course, so right that she did not convince that lady.
At some point, though, I could not refrain myself. The lady said that those Obama people don't care about babies. I had to say that this was nonsense and that people should not be characterized in such a way.
She said they were "pro-abortion." I said if they were "pro-abortion," they would encourage people to abort, and of course, they don't, so it is also nonsensical to use that label against your opponents.
So then, she asked me what experience Obama had to be President.
I said none. Obama does not have more or less experience than McCain and Palin, but Palin does not know what a Vice-President does.
She said that Palin is not running for President.
I said, No, she's running for Vice-President, and she does not know what a Vice-President does.
"Yes, she does."
"Well, she was asked that question several times, and she could not answer the question."
"Yes, she did."
"Well, I'm sorry, but she didn't"
"She does know what the Vice President does."
"Well, no, she doesn't. My French students know what the role of the Vice-President is," I lied, "and Palin does not. It is simply unbelievable."
"Well, it was nice talking with you. You have a nice family," said she very nicely, without an ounce of irony or sarcasm.
I said "Thank you" and that was the end of our conversation about whether or not Sarah Palin knows what the job she is applying for is about.
At the end of the day, I am thinking, that lady was a nice lady. She is the average citizen, with an average everyday unnoticeable life, like you and me. Really, what I am trying to say is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that person. She was not mean to us, she was not aggressive. I might actually have been more aggressive in my trying to prove a point, which does not make me a superior to her.
But she is ignorant. I don't mean that disrespectfully. I am not saying she is stupid. She is just a misinformed voter who believes the lies she is being told because they tap into her core values.
Either you think beyond your core values, or you don't. Nobody, I am sure, enjoys the idea of abortion. At the core of everybody, there is the idea that abortion is not a cool thing. And then, some of us go beyond our core value and try to think and to get informed about the reality that abortion implies, the reality faced by women who consider an abortion. And although that reality does not resonate much with our core value, we think, we ponder, and we make up our mind.
Now, if you don't think and ponder beyond your core value, you are going to vote for the person that tells you that abortion is murder.
As LeAnn concisely put it to me on our way home, "I should have told her it is easy to be agaisnt abortion in all cases. Because it prevents you from facing the reality of the women who consider abortion."
The other day, Michael Moore said that Obama is not running against McCain, he is running against ignorance. He's right. Many working-class, struggling, Joe Six-Packs and Joe the Plumbers are going to vote against their best interest because they are lied to and they are not informed enough to see beyond the lies.
As a final note for today, I would like to write for my Presidency-and-Congress-class students who might happen to read this blog: When I ask what you know about the American Constitution and more specifically about the role of the Vice President, please don't be ashamed not to know anything about it. There is not shame for you not to know since one of the two Vice-Presidential candidates this year thinks that "the Vice-President is in charge of Congress" and can work with Congress at "policy-making."
Don't be ashamed not to know, but if you ever write that answer in your papers, don't be surprised if I call you Sarah, and that won't be a compliment.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Barack and I were in St Louis last weekend
Last week, we visited LeAnn's brother and family in St Louis, Missouri, unexpected toss-up state in the coming election.
Because Missouri is an unexpected toss-up state, Barack came to St Louis on Saturday.
And I did not even know of his coming before we took the trip. How lucky is that for someone as interested in the election as I am! The candidates do not publicize their campaign trail too much in advance because, especially in the last weeks, they go where they have a chance to overturn the Electoral votes. I suspect, it is also for security reasons. They do not want to give loonies too much time to plan an assassination.
Anyway, pure luck!
Barack spoke under the famous Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River, symbolizing the opening to the westward expansion. Incidentally, for Barack, it could symbolize many other things if you enjoy symbols. The Arch is standing across the highway from a white house. In that case, it is the white courthouse of St Louis. But it is not just any courthouse, it is the courthouse of the infamous Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave who remained a slave after the US Supreme Court declared slavery constitutional in 1856. Barack, about to become the first black US President in the history of the country, was addressing 100,000 people on Saturday facing a white house which is a symbol of the peculiar institution that slavery was.
I am not sure Barack thought of all that when he decided to come speak there, but I enjoy the symbolism.
Anyway, I was in St Louis on that historical day.
We even had a picnic under the Arch. As we were having the picnic, with the kids running around, we saw four or five men in dark suits talking and looking like they were assessing the area. When I saw them, I immediately thought they were secret services personnel planning a political rally. It is funny how secret services personnel do not look secretive at all. They are conspicuous, a la James Bond. You know how different spies can be, right? There is the James Bond type, especially Sean Connery or Roger Moore-style, the most famous spy ever, telling everyone, including the villains, "My name is Bond, James Bond." He might as well add, "I work as a spy in the service of Her Majesty, and I have a license to kill that I intend to use against you after I have jumped from a few buildings and chased you with my fancy conspicuous car. Oh, and by the way, I am great in bed, as your girlfriend is about to find out." And there is the Jason Bourne/Matt Damon type -- or Ferris/Leo DiCaprio in the last Ridley Scott movie Body of Lies. Bourne has a hundred different passports, spends his life hiding, never gives his real name.
Well, the "spies" I saw under the Arch in St Louis were clearly the James Bond conspicuous type, although I suspect they do not have the same qualities as James Bond himself (I am not talking about the good-in-bed part, here, I don't know about that, and did not have time to ask).
Okay, I probably recognized them as secret services personnel also because on the way to Missouri, we had heard on the radio that Jill Biden, the democratic VP candidate's wife, was planning to spend a few days campaigning in Missouri, in yet unknown places.
Anyway, Barack, not Jill, came to St Louis to speak on Saturday.
In the morning, I took the family to the Cahokia mounds in nearby Illinois, Obama state. The mounds -- pyramid-like structures -- were built by Cahokia Indians between 900 and 1200 AD. Besides being very interested in American politics, I am also very interested in Native American history, so that was a great place to go to. Great museum, amazing mound sights. The kids had fun and learned a lot. Great.
Then, we went home and had a nap. Well, Alyenor, my three-year old needed a nap, and I took one too because I was knackered after the crazy day we had spent on Friday at the crazy City Museum.
After the nap, we went to town and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, the loudest restaurant I have ever been to, and after I paid a bill that made me feel like I was a communist government bailing out the freaking place, we went home and went to bed.
What about the Obama rally? you might wonder, dear reader.
Well, that's the beauty of it. I went to the Arch on Wednesday. I saw the spies on Wednesday. Barack came to St Louis on Saturday. Under the Arch where I had a picnic on Wednesday, he gave the most important political rally in the history of the universe on Saturday. At the time he was giving a speech under the Arch, I was having a nap and a lousy expensive dinner in the most annoying restaurant in the history of the universe. I learned about the Obama rally on Sunday morning in the paper. Obama gave a speech in front of 100,000 people, and I was three blocks away! I am writing a blog on this election, and I was three blocks away from Barack Obama and I missed him!
I missed Barack Obama, although I was three freaking blocks away from him! I went to the Arch three days before him!
Barack, Michelle, Joe, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, send me emails every single day, several emails every day, and I did not know Barack would be three blocks away from me!
How dumb is that!!
I am so dumb I might vote Republican, and I am not even an American voter.
Dear reader, if you can't believe what you have just read, it is simply because it is too darn stupid to be true. Read it again.
Now, I need to go blow my brains out.
Adieu.
Because Missouri is an unexpected toss-up state, Barack came to St Louis on Saturday.
And I did not even know of his coming before we took the trip. How lucky is that for someone as interested in the election as I am! The candidates do not publicize their campaign trail too much in advance because, especially in the last weeks, they go where they have a chance to overturn the Electoral votes. I suspect, it is also for security reasons. They do not want to give loonies too much time to plan an assassination.
Anyway, pure luck!
Barack spoke under the famous Gateway Arch by the Mississippi River, symbolizing the opening to the westward expansion. Incidentally, for Barack, it could symbolize many other things if you enjoy symbols. The Arch is standing across the highway from a white house. In that case, it is the white courthouse of St Louis. But it is not just any courthouse, it is the courthouse of the infamous Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave who remained a slave after the US Supreme Court declared slavery constitutional in 1856. Barack, about to become the first black US President in the history of the country, was addressing 100,000 people on Saturday facing a white house which is a symbol of the peculiar institution that slavery was.
I am not sure Barack thought of all that when he decided to come speak there, but I enjoy the symbolism.
Anyway, I was in St Louis on that historical day.
We even had a picnic under the Arch. As we were having the picnic, with the kids running around, we saw four or five men in dark suits talking and looking like they were assessing the area. When I saw them, I immediately thought they were secret services personnel planning a political rally. It is funny how secret services personnel do not look secretive at all. They are conspicuous, a la James Bond. You know how different spies can be, right? There is the James Bond type, especially Sean Connery or Roger Moore-style, the most famous spy ever, telling everyone, including the villains, "My name is Bond, James Bond." He might as well add, "I work as a spy in the service of Her Majesty, and I have a license to kill that I intend to use against you after I have jumped from a few buildings and chased you with my fancy conspicuous car. Oh, and by the way, I am great in bed, as your girlfriend is about to find out." And there is the Jason Bourne/Matt Damon type -- or Ferris/Leo DiCaprio in the last Ridley Scott movie Body of Lies. Bourne has a hundred different passports, spends his life hiding, never gives his real name.
Well, the "spies" I saw under the Arch in St Louis were clearly the James Bond conspicuous type, although I suspect they do not have the same qualities as James Bond himself (I am not talking about the good-in-bed part, here, I don't know about that, and did not have time to ask).
Okay, I probably recognized them as secret services personnel also because on the way to Missouri, we had heard on the radio that Jill Biden, the democratic VP candidate's wife, was planning to spend a few days campaigning in Missouri, in yet unknown places.
Anyway, Barack, not Jill, came to St Louis to speak on Saturday.
In the morning, I took the family to the Cahokia mounds in nearby Illinois, Obama state. The mounds -- pyramid-like structures -- were built by Cahokia Indians between 900 and 1200 AD. Besides being very interested in American politics, I am also very interested in Native American history, so that was a great place to go to. Great museum, amazing mound sights. The kids had fun and learned a lot. Great.
Then, we went home and had a nap. Well, Alyenor, my three-year old needed a nap, and I took one too because I was knackered after the crazy day we had spent on Friday at the crazy City Museum.
After the nap, we went to town and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, the loudest restaurant I have ever been to, and after I paid a bill that made me feel like I was a communist government bailing out the freaking place, we went home and went to bed.
What about the Obama rally? you might wonder, dear reader.
Well, that's the beauty of it. I went to the Arch on Wednesday. I saw the spies on Wednesday. Barack came to St Louis on Saturday. Under the Arch where I had a picnic on Wednesday, he gave the most important political rally in the history of the universe on Saturday. At the time he was giving a speech under the Arch, I was having a nap and a lousy expensive dinner in the most annoying restaurant in the history of the universe. I learned about the Obama rally on Sunday morning in the paper. Obama gave a speech in front of 100,000 people, and I was three blocks away! I am writing a blog on this election, and I was three blocks away from Barack Obama and I missed him!
I missed Barack Obama, although I was three freaking blocks away from him! I went to the Arch three days before him!
Barack, Michelle, Joe, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, send me emails every single day, several emails every day, and I did not know Barack would be three blocks away from me!
How dumb is that!!
I am so dumb I might vote Republican, and I am not even an American voter.
Dear reader, if you can't believe what you have just read, it is simply because it is too darn stupid to be true. Read it again.
Now, I need to go blow my brains out.
Adieu.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
O like Obama?
A few days ago, Barack Obama gave a speech in front of flags that looked that the American flag but instead of the fifty stars representing the states, there was a big O in the blue part of the flag.
Some kind of conservative radio commentator said that really, standing in front of an American flag which had been transformed to fit a big O for Obama was wrong, unpatriotic, and that it was the sign of someone who would become "a potentate, a dictator."
Well, in fact, Obama was standing in front of the Ohio flag. O like Ohio, not Obama.
Is it me, or anytime there's the most idiotic comment out there, it is from a Republican?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Miscellany in a rental car
As I am waiting the kids to snore and sniff the night away, and since the nice lady at the reception does not want to let me sit in the lobby waiting for breakfast time, I am blogging my waking night away with random thoughts and breaking news from the campaign trail.
It is 5.00 am, I am on the parking lot of an Econolodge (more econo than lodge) in Springfied, Missouri, and I don't see any candidate around. Yet, surprisingly, Missouri is a battleground this year.
Missouri is one of the few traditionally red states which are about to turn blue this year, if something horrific does not happen before. Among the other states in the same situation are North Carolina, Nevada and Virginia. It does not sound crazy, but trust me, it is.
Obama could be elected in a landslide.
Yet, some people are talking about the Bradley effect. Bradley was a black candidate running for mayor of Los Angeles in the eighties. The polls saw him win easily. On Election Day, he lost. Many people had said they would vote for him, but at the last minute, in the privacy of the booth, they did not vote for the black guy. This is the Bradley effect.
Some journalists who like to scare themselves argue there might be a Bradley effect with Obama. Others argue, however, that if there was to be a Bradley effect, it would have taken place during the primaries. They are probably right.
Two days ago, the chairman of the Republican Party in Virginia declared that both Obama and Bin Laden have friends who bombed the Pentagon, and that's scary.
I don't think I need to comment on that.
A few days ago, at McCain/Palin rallies, there was a sign saying Obama Bin Lyin'.
Also, there was a man holding a stuffed monkey with an Obama head band.
I don't think I need to comment on those either.
McCain and Palin have not yet repudiated the "Kill him!" and "Off with his head!" shouts heard at their rallies.
Last Friday, an independent investigation declared that Palin had abused her power in Alaska.
All weekend, Palin was declaring that she was very happy that the investigation cleared her of any legal infraction.
Go figure.
Tonight is the last debate, and I hope my hosts will let me watch it.
I'm gonna try to grab some breakfast now.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Hatemongers
This has been the craziest week I have ever seen in a political campaign.
Crazy and scary, really, sad, pathetic, dangerous.
A month or two ago, a friend of mine, Jack, and I were talking about the campaign. At the time, there was a rhetoric the Republicans had just barely started to use, and they used it very occasionally, consisting in saying that we don't really know who Barack Obama is. Jack thought that this rhetoric was really code language to say "He is black. We can't have a black president."
It made much sense to me when we had this conversation. Since then, though, the economic crisis has been forefront and the question "Who is Barack Obama really?" was dropped.
This week, this rhetoric has come back full swing, and in a very ugly way.
And Jack was right.
Last weekend, as I wrote previously, Sarah Palin started to link Obama to terrorists. The exact quote was: "Obama thinks America is so imperfect that he pals around with domestic terrorists." Since then, she has repeated this kind of attack everytime she had an opportunity, depicting him as someone who is "not one of us," "not a man who sees America like you and I see America."
At one of her rallies, a sheriff talked of Barack Hussein Obama, emphasizing Obama's middle name.
The code is hardly veiled now. Clearly, this whole rhetoric appeals to old subconscious fears and hatred in American people's minds.
Now here is the scary part: it works, it does arouse what the worst in the audience's subconscience (and I am saying it is subconscious only to be polite). When Palin or McCain talked about Obama at their rallies this week, you could hear people screaming "Terrorist!" "Kill him!" or even "Bomb Obama!"
Palin and McCain did not try to shut them up. They can't even tell they did not hear them to justify their inaction, because on one occasion, after we hear "Terrorist!" from the crowd, we can see McCain frown. He frowns in disapproval, he just can't believe he heard that, but he continues as if nothing had happened.
This is wrong, very wrong. Even if the US did not have the history of presidential assassination and of black lynching it has, it would be wrong to let people get away with this kind of outbursts.
And McCain knows it is wrong (I am not so sure about Palin) and he redeemed himself slightly.
Yesterday, at a town hall meeting, after a man in the audience told him he had to "fight" and a woman said: "I don't trust Obama, he's an Arab," McCain actually, albeit awkwardly, defend Obama.
He literally took the microphone from the woman and said: "No, Ma'am, no, Ma'am, he's not, he is a decent family man." Of course, it is a bit awkward since this response to "Obama is an Arab" kind of implies you can be an Arab and a decent family man at the same time. But, McCain reacted in the spur of the moment, improvised, and I am not going to be too picky. To the man asking him to fight, he answered that he will, but respectfully. He said he respects Obama, that Obama is a decent man, with a decent record; he disagrees with him, and he thinks he would be a better president than Obama, but Obama is a decent man.
As he was saying all that, McCain was booed by his own audience. But he went on.
I have to say, I was flabbergasted. These images were riveting, fascinating to watch. Not really because this was beyond who McCain is, but because it was completely inconsistent with the rest of the week.
Here is my theory, for whatever it's worth. I do think McCain is a decent and honest politician. I think his policies are not good, but he is a good guy. And I think he did not control his campaign. I think he was not free to choose the VP he wanted and he is not free to choose the campaign he wants.
The Republicans do not like McCain, he is not their favorite candidate. I think he was forced by the Republican strategists to pick Palin, a woman that he had met once before and who had never been mentioned as a possible pick, who had not even run for the nomination. I think the strategists use Palin now as a pitbull but I think McCain disapproves. McCain lost to Bush in 2000 after the Bush campaign launched a rumor saying that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock! So, I don't think McCain really wants to play that ugly.
Yesterday, when he defended Obama, he became himself again, rebelling against the strategists of his party.
Sure, he might have realized also that people had enough of hearing this kind of crap when they are losing money everyday in the stock market.
What a crazy week this was!
To crown it all, we heard yesterday of the results of an investigation taking place in Alaska to find out whether Palin abused her power when she fired the head of the State Troopers because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law who had given a hard time to her sister. It turns out, she did abuse her power.
Of course, she says now that the investigation was biased. The problem is, the judiciary committee which led the investigation was composed of a majority of Republicans.
Don't throw the first stone, Sarah. The glass ceiling you were talking about when we first met you might collapse on your cute little face.
Crazy and scary, really, sad, pathetic, dangerous.
A month or two ago, a friend of mine, Jack, and I were talking about the campaign. At the time, there was a rhetoric the Republicans had just barely started to use, and they used it very occasionally, consisting in saying that we don't really know who Barack Obama is. Jack thought that this rhetoric was really code language to say "He is black. We can't have a black president."
It made much sense to me when we had this conversation. Since then, though, the economic crisis has been forefront and the question "Who is Barack Obama really?" was dropped.
This week, this rhetoric has come back full swing, and in a very ugly way.
And Jack was right.
Last weekend, as I wrote previously, Sarah Palin started to link Obama to terrorists. The exact quote was: "Obama thinks America is so imperfect that he pals around with domestic terrorists." Since then, she has repeated this kind of attack everytime she had an opportunity, depicting him as someone who is "not one of us," "not a man who sees America like you and I see America."
At one of her rallies, a sheriff talked of Barack Hussein Obama, emphasizing Obama's middle name.
The code is hardly veiled now. Clearly, this whole rhetoric appeals to old subconscious fears and hatred in American people's minds.
Now here is the scary part: it works, it does arouse what the worst in the audience's subconscience (and I am saying it is subconscious only to be polite). When Palin or McCain talked about Obama at their rallies this week, you could hear people screaming "Terrorist!" "Kill him!" or even "Bomb Obama!"
Palin and McCain did not try to shut them up. They can't even tell they did not hear them to justify their inaction, because on one occasion, after we hear "Terrorist!" from the crowd, we can see McCain frown. He frowns in disapproval, he just can't believe he heard that, but he continues as if nothing had happened.
This is wrong, very wrong. Even if the US did not have the history of presidential assassination and of black lynching it has, it would be wrong to let people get away with this kind of outbursts.
And McCain knows it is wrong (I am not so sure about Palin) and he redeemed himself slightly.
Yesterday, at a town hall meeting, after a man in the audience told him he had to "fight" and a woman said: "I don't trust Obama, he's an Arab," McCain actually, albeit awkwardly, defend Obama.
He literally took the microphone from the woman and said: "No, Ma'am, no, Ma'am, he's not, he is a decent family man." Of course, it is a bit awkward since this response to "Obama is an Arab" kind of implies you can be an Arab and a decent family man at the same time. But, McCain reacted in the spur of the moment, improvised, and I am not going to be too picky. To the man asking him to fight, he answered that he will, but respectfully. He said he respects Obama, that Obama is a decent man, with a decent record; he disagrees with him, and he thinks he would be a better president than Obama, but Obama is a decent man.
As he was saying all that, McCain was booed by his own audience. But he went on.
I have to say, I was flabbergasted. These images were riveting, fascinating to watch. Not really because this was beyond who McCain is, but because it was completely inconsistent with the rest of the week.
Here is my theory, for whatever it's worth. I do think McCain is a decent and honest politician. I think his policies are not good, but he is a good guy. And I think he did not control his campaign. I think he was not free to choose the VP he wanted and he is not free to choose the campaign he wants.
The Republicans do not like McCain, he is not their favorite candidate. I think he was forced by the Republican strategists to pick Palin, a woman that he had met once before and who had never been mentioned as a possible pick, who had not even run for the nomination. I think the strategists use Palin now as a pitbull but I think McCain disapproves. McCain lost to Bush in 2000 after the Bush campaign launched a rumor saying that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock! So, I don't think McCain really wants to play that ugly.
Yesterday, when he defended Obama, he became himself again, rebelling against the strategists of his party.
Sure, he might have realized also that people had enough of hearing this kind of crap when they are losing money everyday in the stock market.
What a crazy week this was!
To crown it all, we heard yesterday of the results of an investigation taking place in Alaska to find out whether Palin abused her power when she fired the head of the State Troopers because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law who had given a hard time to her sister. It turns out, she did abuse her power.
Of course, she says now that the investigation was biased. The problem is, the judiciary committee which led the investigation was composed of a majority of Republicans.
Don't throw the first stone, Sarah. The glass ceiling you were talking about when we first met you might collapse on your cute little face.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
What is Sarah running for?
Sarah Palin declared today that this campaign is at a "halfway point"?
Oh my gosh, that's why she is so bad. She thinks she has time to prepare and learn about stuff, because she thinks she is running for the Republican primaries of an election that would take place next year.
Be nice, Republican friends. I know you are kind of ashamed of your VP pick now, but you need to tell her that the election takes place in 27 days.
Oh my gosh, that's why she is so bad. She thinks she has time to prepare and learn about stuff, because she thinks she is running for the Republican primaries of an election that would take place next year.
Be nice, Republican friends. I know you are kind of ashamed of your VP pick now, but you need to tell her that the election takes place in 27 days.
President Obama
Last night, Tuesday October 7th, was the second of the three presidential debates.
John was supposed to carry it because it was a format he is used to, the town-hall format. Questions were from the audience, follow-up questions was from moderator Tom Brokaw from NBC.
Before the debate, there was a lot of anticipation of nasty attacks on character, as they call it. For the three previous days, the Republicans had tried to tie Obama to a former "domestic terrorist."
The problem is, yesterday the Dow Jones went down more than 500. So McCain could not possibly sling mud and retain some appearance of decency.
He attacked though, repeating over and over than that Obama wanted to raise taxes when the latter repeats over and over again that he will not, or repeating over and over that Obama does not understand foreign policy.
Barack then responded: It is true, I don't understand. I don't understand why we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Oops.
As far as contents and policies go, the debate was quite enlightening, both candidates explaining more or less clearly what they would do. Hear both and choose. My writing here that I think Obama's policies would be better is rather useless.
What is interesting though is how each candidate manages to contradict their opponent and explain why their opponent's policies are wrong. At that game, Obama clearly won, explaining very clearly, not being too professorial -- that is his Achilles' heel -- "Achilles' what? Let me come right back to ya" -- okay, Sarah, do that, take your time -- explaining very clearly, I was saying, why, for example, McCain's health care plan would make things much much worse.
On the other hand, the typical response McCain gave to basically any topic was "Look at my record, my friends."
Since all this is a show anyway, let's talk about style. After all, a huge proportion of voters base their decision on style.
John simply looked like an arrogant, condescending, patronizing jerk. At one point, he even called Barack "that one" (that is a big deal in the news studios today). He had a smirk on his face, he hardly ever looked at his opponent. He said to one guy in the audience who had asked a question: "You probably did not know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were before recently but..." How awkward! It might have been true, but a candidate should not assume his voters don't know what he is talking about.
On the contrary, Barack was cool, man, amazingly so. The guy remains so calm under attack it is almost creepy. While McCain lashed at him, he was looking straight at his opponent, relaxed, happy to be there, no worries, never trying to interrupt, not shaking his head, nothing.
Then, he gets up and says, after an attack on his foreign policy experience: "John McCain seems to think I am green behind the ears, that he is the sober one..."
John interrupts saying "thank you" with a big smug smile on his face.
Barack continue: "... but John is the one who sang Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran, he is the one who after Afghanistan said 'Next stop, Baghdad.'"
A fortunate cut showed McCain in the background. His smile was yellow, as we say in French.
The first post-debate polls showed a huge advantage for Barack.
There is no way the campaign is going to get uglier and uglier. And there is no way McCain is going to win however ugly he gets.
John was supposed to carry it because it was a format he is used to, the town-hall format. Questions were from the audience, follow-up questions was from moderator Tom Brokaw from NBC.
Before the debate, there was a lot of anticipation of nasty attacks on character, as they call it. For the three previous days, the Republicans had tried to tie Obama to a former "domestic terrorist."
The problem is, yesterday the Dow Jones went down more than 500. So McCain could not possibly sling mud and retain some appearance of decency.
He attacked though, repeating over and over than that Obama wanted to raise taxes when the latter repeats over and over again that he will not, or repeating over and over that Obama does not understand foreign policy.
Barack then responded: It is true, I don't understand. I don't understand why we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Oops.
As far as contents and policies go, the debate was quite enlightening, both candidates explaining more or less clearly what they would do. Hear both and choose. My writing here that I think Obama's policies would be better is rather useless.
What is interesting though is how each candidate manages to contradict their opponent and explain why their opponent's policies are wrong. At that game, Obama clearly won, explaining very clearly, not being too professorial -- that is his Achilles' heel -- "Achilles' what? Let me come right back to ya" -- okay, Sarah, do that, take your time -- explaining very clearly, I was saying, why, for example, McCain's health care plan would make things much much worse.
On the other hand, the typical response McCain gave to basically any topic was "Look at my record, my friends."
Since all this is a show anyway, let's talk about style. After all, a huge proportion of voters base their decision on style.
John simply looked like an arrogant, condescending, patronizing jerk. At one point, he even called Barack "that one" (that is a big deal in the news studios today). He had a smirk on his face, he hardly ever looked at his opponent. He said to one guy in the audience who had asked a question: "You probably did not know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were before recently but..." How awkward! It might have been true, but a candidate should not assume his voters don't know what he is talking about.
On the contrary, Barack was cool, man, amazingly so. The guy remains so calm under attack it is almost creepy. While McCain lashed at him, he was looking straight at his opponent, relaxed, happy to be there, no worries, never trying to interrupt, not shaking his head, nothing.
Then, he gets up and says, after an attack on his foreign policy experience: "John McCain seems to think I am green behind the ears, that he is the sober one..."
John interrupts saying "thank you" with a big smug smile on his face.
Barack continue: "... but John is the one who sang Bomb bomb bomb, Bomb bomb Iran, he is the one who after Afghanistan said 'Next stop, Baghdad.'"
A fortunate cut showed McCain in the background. His smile was yellow, as we say in French.
The first post-debate polls showed a huge advantage for Barack.
There is no way the campaign is going to get uglier and uglier. And there is no way McCain is going to win however ugly he gets.
Monday, October 6, 2008
If Barack is a terrorist...
That's it. It's getting dirty. A month before the election, the McCain campaign knows they cannot win on issues, especially on the issue number one among Americans polled, the economy. So, they are getting dirty. That's how the Republicans win their elections.
They let go of the pitbull. They sure put some lipstick on it, but you can put lipstick on a pitbull, it's still a pitbull.
For the past three days, Sarah Palin has emphasized some link Barack had with Bill Ayers, a radical anti-Vietnam war activist of the 60s whom she calls "a domestic terrorist."
We are back to the tactics used before the summer to try to depict Barack Obama as a mysterious guy whom people don't really know. There are some fishy things about him.
First, he is black of course. Experts say that this fact probably costs him about 5 percentage points. You can actually hear people saying it is a problem for them to elect a black president.
Then, his middle name is Hussein. Barack Hussein Obama. That's not very American, is it? Hussein, Hussein, hmm, it rings a bell. Didn't we just hang a dictator called Hussein? Even a guy with Milhous as a middle name would be better off (that was Richard Milhous Nixon).
Oh, and he attended a muslim school in Indonesia when he was a kid. So, he is a Muslim.
Now, in today's context, what does the whole picture represent? A stroke of former ties with a radical activist, a stroke of "Hussein is his middle name," a stroke of "he attended a Muslim school," take a few steps back and you have portrayed Barack Obama as a terrorist.
If someone would have told me that the Republicans were cynical enough to do this, I would not have believed it. This has to be the dirtiest campaign I have ever heard of.
It is too early to know if people buy that. But I wouldn't be surprised. Ignorance and fear are the two pillars of a Republican victory.
What that move truly does, though, is debunking the seriousness of terrorism. American voters who are afraid of terrorism, who were terrified and horrified at the planes crashing in the World Trade Center should realize that people who use images of 9/11 during their convention, who play so lightly with the words terrorist and terrorism are not trustworthy.
In my world, Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist. If Barack is in fact a terrorist, I guess Osama Bin Laden is Jesus!
Vote Osama Bin Laden, then.
They let go of the pitbull. They sure put some lipstick on it, but you can put lipstick on a pitbull, it's still a pitbull.
For the past three days, Sarah Palin has emphasized some link Barack had with Bill Ayers, a radical anti-Vietnam war activist of the 60s whom she calls "a domestic terrorist."
We are back to the tactics used before the summer to try to depict Barack Obama as a mysterious guy whom people don't really know. There are some fishy things about him.
First, he is black of course. Experts say that this fact probably costs him about 5 percentage points. You can actually hear people saying it is a problem for them to elect a black president.
Then, his middle name is Hussein. Barack Hussein Obama. That's not very American, is it? Hussein, Hussein, hmm, it rings a bell. Didn't we just hang a dictator called Hussein? Even a guy with Milhous as a middle name would be better off (that was Richard Milhous Nixon).
Oh, and he attended a muslim school in Indonesia when he was a kid. So, he is a Muslim.
Now, in today's context, what does the whole picture represent? A stroke of former ties with a radical activist, a stroke of "Hussein is his middle name," a stroke of "he attended a Muslim school," take a few steps back and you have portrayed Barack Obama as a terrorist.
If someone would have told me that the Republicans were cynical enough to do this, I would not have believed it. This has to be the dirtiest campaign I have ever heard of.
It is too early to know if people buy that. But I wouldn't be surprised. Ignorance and fear are the two pillars of a Republican victory.
What that move truly does, though, is debunking the seriousness of terrorism. American voters who are afraid of terrorism, who were terrified and horrified at the planes crashing in the World Trade Center should realize that people who use images of 9/11 during their convention, who play so lightly with the words terrorist and terrorism are not trustworthy.
In my world, Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist. If Barack is in fact a terrorist, I guess Osama Bin Laden is Jesus!
Vote Osama Bin Laden, then.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Folksy Sarah!
Well, last night's VP debate was quite disappointment.
I did not really expect Sarah to go down in flames -- since I was sure she would come prepared and that the campaign staff forbade her to say again that she is a foreign policy expert because she can see Russia from her bedroom window -- but I certainly hoped she would commit more blunders. I even performed a little bit of witchcraft in my backyard to make her say that Canada should be attacked and invaded because they have nuclear -- by the way, I think she says that word the Bush way, "nukelar" or something like that -- weapons directed at Alaska.
No, she did not blunder too much, but she did not answer the questions either when the answers she learned by heart did not fit. The way she changed the topic of the questions asked was quite incredible. They all come up with rote answers to some extent, but I had never seen anyone ignore the questions like she did.
Towards the end, there was this beautiful moment when the moderator asked the debaters what were their "Achilles' heels." Her answer to that humbling question was to explain how prepared she was for the job, how much her experience as mayor would make her the perfect VP, etc., etc.
Joe Biden kind of did the same thing, but only after acknowledging the question with humility.
I think Sarah's answer there was not only the same technique of changing the topic. I think she did not understand the question, she does not know what Achilles' heel means!
Anyway, contentwise, the debate was relatively interesting. Joe Biden knows what he is talking about. Sarah Palin wants diplomacy but without sitting at the table with foreign leaders. To the question, Do you support same-sex marriage? they both answered The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman, but Joe Biden said he supports equal civil rights for gay couples. When Sarah was asked Do you support equal civil rights for gay couples? she answered the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
????
Are you gonna raise taxes? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
Do you want to attack Pakistan? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
Do you see Russia from your house? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
In the end, what will be remembered of the debate is that Sarah is just like us, she is just like me "Joe Six-Pack" and you "Hockey Mom." And she talks like us. She is folksy, because that's just who she is, us. So, repeatedly, she said:
"I betcha"
"you're darn right"
"Joe Six-Pack"
"Hockey Mom"
"in Alaska up there" (a hundred times)
"also" (a million times)
"Obama, he" or "John and I, we"
"blessed their hearts"
"to tap into 'em"
"ready to back ye up"
"I tell ya"
"I can't wait to work with ya"
For the intonations and the face language that is just like ya, see video on the net.
Now, I want to tell my numerous American readers: Beware! Talking like the man in the street, sorry, like Joe Six-Pack or your regular "Hockey Mom," works. How do I know? Our dear French President Nicolas Sarkozy did it.
Never underestimate the power of language.
Anyway, I really look forward for this country to be governed by Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Mom, because really, what is so hard in governing a country that Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Mom can't do it. Those Liberals with all their Ph.Ds and expertise are not going to tell us how the world works. What do they know? They have spent their time learning stuff in libraries, how do they know how to look into foreign leaders' eyes and see their soul?
I did not really expect Sarah to go down in flames -- since I was sure she would come prepared and that the campaign staff forbade her to say again that she is a foreign policy expert because she can see Russia from her bedroom window -- but I certainly hoped she would commit more blunders. I even performed a little bit of witchcraft in my backyard to make her say that Canada should be attacked and invaded because they have nuclear -- by the way, I think she says that word the Bush way, "nukelar" or something like that -- weapons directed at Alaska.
No, she did not blunder too much, but she did not answer the questions either when the answers she learned by heart did not fit. The way she changed the topic of the questions asked was quite incredible. They all come up with rote answers to some extent, but I had never seen anyone ignore the questions like she did.
Towards the end, there was this beautiful moment when the moderator asked the debaters what were their "Achilles' heels." Her answer to that humbling question was to explain how prepared she was for the job, how much her experience as mayor would make her the perfect VP, etc., etc.
Joe Biden kind of did the same thing, but only after acknowledging the question with humility.
I think Sarah's answer there was not only the same technique of changing the topic. I think she did not understand the question, she does not know what Achilles' heel means!
Anyway, contentwise, the debate was relatively interesting. Joe Biden knows what he is talking about. Sarah Palin wants diplomacy but without sitting at the table with foreign leaders. To the question, Do you support same-sex marriage? they both answered The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman, but Joe Biden said he supports equal civil rights for gay couples. When Sarah was asked Do you support equal civil rights for gay couples? she answered the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
????
Are you gonna raise taxes? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
Do you want to attack Pakistan? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
Do you see Russia from your house? The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman.
In the end, what will be remembered of the debate is that Sarah is just like us, she is just like me "Joe Six-Pack" and you "Hockey Mom." And she talks like us. She is folksy, because that's just who she is, us. So, repeatedly, she said:
"I betcha"
"you're darn right"
"Joe Six-Pack"
"Hockey Mom"
"in Alaska up there" (a hundred times)
"also" (a million times)
"Obama, he" or "John and I, we"
"blessed their hearts"
"to tap into 'em"
"ready to back ye up"
"I tell ya"
"I can't wait to work with ya"
For the intonations and the face language that is just like ya, see video on the net.
Now, I want to tell my numerous American readers: Beware! Talking like the man in the street, sorry, like Joe Six-Pack or your regular "Hockey Mom," works. How do I know? Our dear French President Nicolas Sarkozy did it.
Never underestimate the power of language.
Anyway, I really look forward for this country to be governed by Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Mom, because really, what is so hard in governing a country that Joe Six-Pack and Hockey Mom can't do it. Those Liberals with all their Ph.Ds and expertise are not going to tell us how the world works. What do they know? They have spent their time learning stuff in libraries, how do they know how to look into foreign leaders' eyes and see their soul?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
John, Barack and populism
The bailout plan has failed.
Congress is about to try again to pass it. I am not quite sure what sense it makes to reject a bill one week and accept it the next, but that is what seems to be about to happen. To be more successful, some people suggest that they should stop calling it "bailout plan" but "rescue plan."
Power to the language!
Anyway, I don't really know if they should approve this bill or not because I don't understand much of the economy generally speaking.
There is one thing I know though. It is that both Barack and John, who both support the bailout /rescue plan are very populist about it.
They, and many others -- supporting or opposing the bill -- keep saying that Main Street -- that is the average Americans, the small businesses and their employees, the taxpayers -- should not pay for Wall Street's mistakes and greed.
This is highly hypocritical, or blind.
There is no denying that Wall Street shares a huge responsibility in the current disastrous economic crisis.
But Main Street is also responsible.
Generally speaking, Americans live way above their means. I read this morning that American cardholders have in average nine credit cards in their wallet. Americans live on credit. They buy houses they can't afford, they buy cars they can't afford, they buy huge TVs they can't afford, they have to have the last new thing, even if they can't afford it. How do they do that? They pay with plastic. That is, they pay until they can't.
I go to campus everyday. A huge number of students drive huge cars that I could not afford. All of them are not from rich families. Yet, they drive big brand new SUVs or sports cars. How do they do that? They go in debt forever.
Every other day, when I go see my daughter's soft ball game or my son's football game, I see 12 year-olds playing with their iPhone. Do they really need an iPhone at their age?
This way of life is unhealthy. It can't go on forever. People buy and buy and buy, but they don't own anything. The banks and credit companies own people's houses, cars, TVs, iPhones.
At the end of the day, the US as a whole owes so much to China that the US does not own anything.
China owns the US.
If the candidates cannot face this reality, I am not sure people are going to change their mindset.
The sad part is that even if the economy collapses, I don't think people are going to wake up and understand they need to change their way of life.
They will keep blaming Wall Street, with the blessing of their leaders.
Congress is about to try again to pass it. I am not quite sure what sense it makes to reject a bill one week and accept it the next, but that is what seems to be about to happen. To be more successful, some people suggest that they should stop calling it "bailout plan" but "rescue plan."
Power to the language!
Anyway, I don't really know if they should approve this bill or not because I don't understand much of the economy generally speaking.
There is one thing I know though. It is that both Barack and John, who both support the bailout /rescue plan are very populist about it.
They, and many others -- supporting or opposing the bill -- keep saying that Main Street -- that is the average Americans, the small businesses and their employees, the taxpayers -- should not pay for Wall Street's mistakes and greed.
This is highly hypocritical, or blind.
There is no denying that Wall Street shares a huge responsibility in the current disastrous economic crisis.
But Main Street is also responsible.
Generally speaking, Americans live way above their means. I read this morning that American cardholders have in average nine credit cards in their wallet. Americans live on credit. They buy houses they can't afford, they buy cars they can't afford, they buy huge TVs they can't afford, they have to have the last new thing, even if they can't afford it. How do they do that? They pay with plastic. That is, they pay until they can't.
I go to campus everyday. A huge number of students drive huge cars that I could not afford. All of them are not from rich families. Yet, they drive big brand new SUVs or sports cars. How do they do that? They go in debt forever.
Every other day, when I go see my daughter's soft ball game or my son's football game, I see 12 year-olds playing with their iPhone. Do they really need an iPhone at their age?
This way of life is unhealthy. It can't go on forever. People buy and buy and buy, but they don't own anything. The banks and credit companies own people's houses, cars, TVs, iPhones.
At the end of the day, the US as a whole owes so much to China that the US does not own anything.
China owns the US.
If the candidates cannot face this reality, I am not sure people are going to change their mindset.
The sad part is that even if the economy collapses, I don't think people are going to wake up and understand they need to change their way of life.
They will keep blaming Wall Street, with the blessing of their leaders.
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