The election’s impact on the world of sports. Better chance for a Chicago Olympics? Presidential order to implode Wrigley Field? Choice quote:
In August, Obama was asked who he would root for in a Cubs-White Sox World Series. This was his answer: “Oh, that’s easy. White Sox. I’m not one of these fair-weather fans. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer; beautiful people up there. People aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball. South Side.”
Reason #603 Why I Wish I Could Vote for Obama:
In his own words:
At least some of the decline in [political] civility arises from the fact that, from the press’s perspective, civility is boring. Your quote doesn’t run if you say, “I see the other guy’s point of view†or “The issue’s really complicated.†Go on the attack, though, and you can barely fight off the cameras.
—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 126
When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath.
—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 21
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all. I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or not, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody’s religious beliefs—including my own—on nonbelievers.
Furthermore, I am a prisoner of my own biography: I can’t help but view the American experience through the lens of a black man of mixed heritage, forever mindful of how generations of people who looked like me were subjugated and stigmatized, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that race and class continue to shape our lives.
I also think that my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised. I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.
I think America has often been a force for good than for ill in the world. I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.
—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 10-11
HT: Joshua Sowin
Reason #281 Why I Wish I Could Vote for Obama
While McCain was referring to parts of America as “the most pro-America, the most pro-God”, Obama was saying this:
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We can’t afford to divide this country…. Let me tell you something… There are no “real†parts of the country and “fake parts of the country.†There are no “pro-America†parts of the country and “anti-America†parts of the country. We all love this country, no matter where we live, or where we come from….
There are patriots who supported the war, and patriots who opposed it. There are patriots who believe in Democratic policies, and those who believe in Republican policies.
[Those who fought in Iraq] have not served a Blue America or a Red America, they served the United States of America. Nobody should forget that.
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Video after the jump, if you want it. » Read the rest of this entry «
Reason #439 Why I Wish I Could Vote for Obama:
Remember Michael Pollan’s article to the future “Farmer-in-chief”? Obama’s already read it:
I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For those of you who care to mix economics with Obama, I found this piece to be particularly intriguing.
Quoth!:
Based on this interview, it seems unlikely that Obama opposes constitutionalizing the redistributive agenda because he’s an originalist, or otherwise endorses the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties,” though he explicitly recognizes that this is how the Constitution has been interpreted since the Founding. Rather, he seems to think that focusing on litigation distracts liberal activists from necessary political organizing, and that any radical victories they might manage to win from the courts would be unstable because those decisions wouldn’t have public backing. The way to change judicial decisions, according to Obama, is to change the underlying political and social dynamics; changes in the law primarily follow changes in society, not vice versa.
Three points of interest:
1. I’ve always been curious about Obama’s specific views concerning The Constitution. There’s some meaty stuff here, especially Obama’s surprisingly not Statist view that social change doesn’t come through the courts.
2. I couldn’t help but draw a corollary between “redistributive change” and our own hope of ending abortion. Especially compelling is his point that the courts generally follow society’s status quo when making potentially revolutionary decisions.
Generally.
3. In the comments, the following socialist gem, from Adam Smith of all people:
The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
I just finished reading Economics in One Lesson, which should be subtitled “Why The Kingdom of God is a Free Market, and Marxists Eat Babies.” Adam Smith is quoted extensively throughout.
NOOOOOOOO! Obama is a Sox fan. Shoot. And he’s a “principled” fan, at that. Darn it all.
Compare that admittedly admirable stance to the behavior of Sarah Palin. Both Obama and Palin pander to local sports fans. But there’s something repugnant to this baseball fanatic about the way that Palin does it. Geck. Check it out for yourself (skip to 0:45):
Thank goodness political loyalties are not determined by sports.
Okay, so why couldn’t McCain have performed like this in Wednesday’s debate? Obama wasn’t bad himself, but McCain’s got that Don Rickles quality.
It’s gonna be a long, long night at MSNBC if I manage to pull this thing off. For starters, I understand that Keith Olbermann has ordered up his very own Mission Accomplished Banner. And they can hang that in whatever padded room has been reserved for him. Seriously, Chris, if they need any decorating advice on that banner, ask Keith to call me so I can tell him right where to put it.
Part one:
D’s post got me thinking about the Sarah Palin backlash. The only explanation that accounts for all of it is that she is a living rebuke to the abortion-is-necessary crowd. It’s impossible to underestimate the power of all the guilt crawling under the skin of all the career women who got rid of unwanted babies, or indeed among all the men who were complicit in their crimes. She is a living rebuke, and her shortcomings just make it even harder to take.
This also accounts for the silence on anything that might make Obama, the most pro-abortion candidate in history, look bad. Or the fact that Biden’s gaffes don’t have any effect on him, when Palin’s gaffes destroy her credibility instantly. I believe that abortion is the issue this election.
Even though abortion is viewed as a defining issues for the Republican party, it’s amazing how marginalized the anti-abortion crowd is. We’re getting to the point where the only acceptable position is Obama’s “reasonable, middle-ground” one.
In the end the McCain camp’s biggest mistake was choosing someone who is too pro-life. Obama is fooling plenty of conservatives on this issue, but there’s no mistaking where Palin stands.
I know it was once popular in certain conservative circles to predict a McCain landslide. That was months and epochs ago, back when Obama was (conveniently) painted as an academic and too “elitist.” I never understood that whole argument, not even when appealingly presented by Noemie Emery (“It’s Not Race, It’s Arugula”).
If you have a strong stomach, take a look at the current electoral map. This could very well be an electoral landslide for Obama.
I called it for Obama last year. Um… yay?
UPDATE: Apparently some Sons of (Mc)Cain are still pulling for a late-in-the-game surprise. Guess who? Sounds like desperation to me, to be perfectly honest. Anyone disagree?
UPDATE #2: The Grey Lady agrees with me. Double yay?
David Tanenhaus gives a different perspective on the Bill Ayers of the 1990s.
