Posts Tagged: Barack Obama


15
Jan 10

Creative Political Disruption

We try and try to work within the system.  A couple of years ago TBogg pointed out our naiveté of how the system really works?

Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.

You don’t live there.

Grow the fuck up.

Both parties fail us.  That’s obvious when the healthcare reform bill that passed with a supermajority is liked by no one and may still be scuttled over the incomprehensible possibility of losing Ted Kennedy seat in Massachusetts.


4
Jan 10

Education Policy Disagreements in My Household

My wife – a special education school teacher – and I have a bit of a policy disagreement regarding teacher merit pay.

Most can agree that our Education System is broken (see anything by John Taylor Gatto) and some sort of reform is necessary (even if it rankles some of the President’s core constituents).  Sometimes that change can only be motivated through monetary incentives.  On the macro-level, I can see the potential benefits.  On the micro-level, it’s likely that her students may not ever achieve sufficiently for her to earn said bonuses.


6
Dec 09

Someone Alert Sarah Palin!!!1

In this multimedia portrait gallery of world leaders by Platon (?) in the New Yorker, note who is  pictured next to Barack Hussien Obama!

Portraits of Power, from the New Yorker

Portraits of Power, from the New Yorker

That’s right – Raila Odinga [wiki]- the Prime Minister of Kenya!


30
Nov 09

Obamastan

John Cole linked to this from Sully:

If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton.  Obama’s middle way, I fear, is deeper and deeper into a trap, and the abandonment of a historic opportunity to get out.


25
Nov 09

Envisioning Purity

I ran the text of the GOP’s Purity Test as reported in the NYTimes through Wordle to generate a visualization:

Wordle: GOP Purity Test Supports Opposing Progress

It appears that the GOP is supporting opposition of, well, everything.  Or something.


6
Nov 09

Do collegiate teabaggers want limited student government?

The rational, principled argument for a Republican or Independent college student would of course be “no”.  The theatrics of yesterdays tantrum in a teapot on Capitol Hill (contrasted by the killings at Fort Hood and within the context of Guy Fawkes Day) really obscures how most people feel about government.

People generally don’t care about government, or at least will tolerate the status quo so long as their lives are comfortable,  the mail gets delivered, and the trash gets picked up.  As soon as effective governing becomes impossible via scandal, ideology, or externalities (like the economy), any politican, regardless of party, is vulnerable.  You can see it in the polling data from the 2009 NJ Governors race, based on voting priorities (summed-up by taxgirl):


23
Sep 09

Grand Unifying Conspiracy Theory

It appears that the entirety of the blogosphere  is staying away from Sibel Edmonds explosive interview in Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative, of all places.   This is certainly understandable, given the treasonous accusations she has made.   From the article, via MeFi:

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.


15
Sep 09

Did Obama ‘Sister Souljah’ Kanye West?

First, some background on ‘the Sister Souljah moment’ from Wikipedia:

The term originates in the 1992 presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton. In an interview published May 13, 1992, the hip-hop MC, author, and political activist Sister Souljah was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill White people?”[1] The remark was part of a longer response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The quotation was later reproduced without the context of the complete interview[2] and resulted in wide criticism from the media.


10
Sep 09

Joe Wilson’s War

Yesterday, Joe Wilson was a nobody.  Today, everyone knows his name.

Here’s a few things you may not know about Joe:


7
Sep 09

Innoculated against the Hissy Fit

The more I think about it, the more brilliant I think this “Obama speaking to the kids” thing was.  The very concept was unresistible catnip to the far-right lunatics.  The subsequent hissy fit made them all look ridiculous, enough so that the media by and large couldn’t sit back with a “he-said, she-said” narrative.  With any luck, each and every subsequent hissy fit will be compared to this craziness.

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