James MacDonald on Making Light:
“It’s like Barack Obama saw his shadow and we’re going to have six more weeks of campaigning.”
It could be worse; we could be fated to repeat the last six weeks of campaigning over and over until the dems get it right.
So, in spite of all the recent outrage over comments and sermons made by the Pastor of the United Church of Christ church where Barack Obama has been a long time member, a recent survey by the Pew Center finds that there has been little reduction in the number of people who incorrectly believe that Obama is a Muslim.
There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama’s affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. . . . Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.
I suppose they must just think the UCC is some kind of Muslim church or something.
(Via Crooked Timber.)
Playmobil Security Check Point
I’m finding a new love for Amazon based on customer comments like the ones for this product.
(Via a long complicated chain of sites I can’t began to reconstruct)
Michael Bérubé uncovers the ancient liturgical form for denouncing AND rejecting:
Famously tough but fair questioner: Abrenuntiatis farrakhanae? [Do you renounce Farrakhan?]
Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.
Famously tough but fair questioner: Et omnibus operibus eius? [And all his works?]
Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.
Famously tough but fair questioner: Et omnibus pompis eius? [And all his pomps?]
Liberal black officeseeker: Abrenuntio.
As we contemplate moving sometime this summer, I occasionally wonder about how we should arrange our internet and telecoms. Right now we have a very basic landline with DSL through Verizon, which I’m mostly fairly happy with, except that we really make very little use of the landline, now that we each have cell phones. So sometimes I think maybe we should go with basic cable and internet in the next place. We don’t really do a lot of TV, either, but perhaps it have slightly more utility to us than the slightly superfluous phone line?
The trouble is, while I’m sure that Verizon is no angel in these matters, Comcast, one of the biggest cable internet providers, is just descpicable: they admitted today to paying and busing in 100+ people to “hold places” for Comcast employees at an FCC hearing in Cambridge today, effectively shutting out many citizens who had shown up to protest Comcast’s practices.
No. No way. This is unacceptable. I will not do business with a company that treats the public this way.
Come to think of it, that extra phone line might come in handy for calling my congresspeople.
Zag and I just went and did our civil duty and voted in the Massachusetts “Super Tuesday” Primary (well, I voted, Zag observed). With Edwards out of the race, and down to Clinton and Obama, I found that trying to decide on policy was no longer working for me. Neither really seems to embrace my policy ideals, and in important ways. I have doubts about Obama on healthcare, and Clinton on foreign policy, and both on a range of other issues.I’ve been leaning Obama for a while, and a few things finally pushed me over. One of them was the video above. I’ve watched over and over. I wasn’t sure there was any of this kind of hope left in the country. But Obama really does seem to be able to bring it out in people. If I can’t decide on policy, then I want to go with the candidate that can inspire us to our best. Clinton seems to want us to feel that she will be the competent executive, that we can trust her sober judgement and her dogged slogging along, working the machine. I just can’t settle for that, especially having seen the previous Clinton administration.
I have to go with Hope.
Edit: I pretty much go along with what Patrick at Making Light says here, although I’m a little more swept up at the moment. I especially like this:
I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create room and space for real change.
Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important, something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this country, in this time: how to hearten people. Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.
That’s not enough. But it’s something. It’s a real something. It’s a start.
From the Group News Blog, but bears repeating:
Approximate Total Voter Turnout (approximate): 356,000
Percentage of total vote:
24.5% Obama (D)
20.5% Edwards (D)
19.8% Clinton (D)
11.4% Huckabee (R)
Remember that the Democratic caucuses in Iowa are a much more of an ordeal and a bigger demand on time from caucusers.
3 posts in one night! A new record!
Barak Obama has apparently been taking some flak for his reported belief that:
. . . the very act of Americans choosing to elect him would amount to the biggest foreign policy advance of the past 20 years, would immediately change the way, say, a young boy in Lahore views this country, would crush the propaganda gains of radical Islam since the end of the first Gulf War, would heal the scar that serves as a reminder of America’s original sin (slavery), would directly engage the mass Muslim world . . .
At least in the context of East Africa, I think this is absolutely true. While I was in Kampala, I listened to a lot of people talk about American foreign policy and our upcoming election. They were all convinced that Hilary Clinton would win the nomination, because they were all convinced that Barak doesn’t have a chance–that Americans would never elect a black man, someone they see as a fellow African, would never elect one of them.
Now, probably this is at least partly because this is how politics in East Africa tend to work out. Relatives or spouses of former leaders have a definite edge. Tribe plays an important (if largely unspoken) role in who can get elected and who can’t. Outsiders have a very hard time breaking in.
But also, it’s about their perceptions of us, of the American electorate and who we are. The last 7 years have not been kind to those perceptions.
Any Democratic present is likely to improve our image there. The current administration is not well liked, largely because of our current approach to foreign policy. They loved Bill Clinton in Uganda, and still do, because he took notice, and because he went there, and some of that will doubtless carry over to Hilary. But I think Barak, just by running, is already doing something much different, much more. He really is changing how some people outside the U.S. think of us. I don’t know about a boy in Lahore, but I know lots of people in Kampala who will be rethinking their image of America if Barak Obama is elected
(via Ezra Klein)
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence–but don’t rule out malice. –Hanlon’s Razor (with optional corollary)
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. –Clark’s Law
‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’ –Matthew 10:16
What is a Christian response to bad faith?
Apparently, a recent poll of right-wing bloggers by right-wing news shows that 84% of them believe that “a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons”. Slacktivist has an excellent post discussing the ways that such a presumption of bad faith erodes the very possibility of civil discourse.
This kind of attitude is by no means limited to the right–it lives all over the political spectrum, to be sure (although the 84% is sort of disturbingly high). I had assumed that it was very often an act of bad faith itself, a willful misreading of opposition positions to portray them in the worst possible light. Here amongst the windmills, we have been thinking about the issue of bad faith in the context of the ongoing tensions in the Anglican Communion, particularly the tensions between the American Episcopal Church and some of the other provinces in the Communion, largely focused around The Episcopal Church’s position on homosexuality.