Obama '08?

Associated Press

Barack Obama has picked up three superdelegate votes from Hawai'i.

Hawai'i Democrats selected three Obama supporters to fill its remaining superdelegate slots at their state convention Sunday, including the new chair and vice chair of the party.

Chairman Brian Schatz and vice chairwoman Kari Luna say they will support Obama at the national convention. State Democrats chose retired Judge James Burns, also an Obama supporter, as the final superdelegate.

The three Obama supporters are among the state's nine superdelegates, only two of whom support Obama's rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Among Hawai'i's pledged delegates, Obama leads Clinton 14-6.

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nimh wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:
do you really think there was fact-checking findings posted to counter his point -- remember his point? -- which you feel is not getting acknowledged by MM

Yep. He wrote that "the media ... seemed to either ignore or barely mention that there was a band at the Portland event"; Soz promptly linked in the selection of news stories she found when Googling for coverage of the event, which turned out to pretty much all mention the band. Fact check. She offered to go deeper if there were concerns about it being an unrepresentative sample; instead the fact check was ignored and hopp, the next alleged outrage was on.

I asked for you to link to the "fact-check" post ... and since you didn't, I looked back myself.

The first post soz made after MM posted his original post on the band issue, seems to be this one. And I didn't find a link to the "selection of news stories" soz found. She linked to a blog entry, which itself doesn't seem to link to a "selection of news stories" discussing the Decemberists.

And the next day she linked to another politics blog entry -- again, it does not contain links to a "selection of news stories" discussing the Decemberists.

Her next post in this thread is her opinion post, which I mentioned in my last post.

Now, I don't discount the possibility that my eyes have missed soz' post that "linked in the selection of news stories she found when Googling for coverage of the event, which turned out to pretty much all mention the band" -- so please link me to it if I did.

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sozobe wrote:

Thomas wrote:
This is not to suggest that Obama is another Bush, just that I'm not terribly impressed when he personally stays above the fray when his campaign does not.

OK... but has his campaign been trafficking in outrage, either?

Difficult to say, because the official statements you cite aren't the whole picture. Typically, the final product of outrage manufacturing doesn't come to us directly. It comes to us through talking heads on TV talking about the outrage, and talking about other talking heads on TV talking about the outrage, and so forth. In every turn of this self-referential cycle, you will typically find people in or near the campaign who give the proto-outrage just a little more edge than it had in the last round of the cycle. This continues, bit by bit of edge, until the outrage gain saturates. I'm confident that if you look closely at this particular "outrage", you will find Obama people acting as outrage amplifiers in the way I described.

But fair enough. You won't accept "I'm confident" as real evidence, as well you shouldn't. And I lack the time for the detective work to gather fully satisfactory evidence about the outrage production line in this particular case. I'll just cede this point to you.

sozobe wrote:

Heh, this is cool. New website, "Is Barack Obama Muslim?"

It is cool. I only wish they'd put in a reference to the Chicago Tribune article about the issue. The people they want to persuade are Independent to Republican, so it would help them to show that they have conservative sources on their side, too. (I learned this the hard way over Christmas, when I debated the issue with my conservative St Louis friends.)

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Ticomaya wrote:

Now, I don't discount the possibility that my eyes have missed soz' post that "linked in the selection of news stories she found when Googling for coverage of the event, which turned out to pretty much all mention the band" -- so please link me to it if I did.

OK, you got me.

I should have done the search myself. I now did after all - and it seems I inflated what was written in my mind. So my statements you quoted here were false, for which I apologise.

What Mysteryman wrote was, first, "It seems that the Obama camp intentionally left out part of the story concerning his Portland rally". To which Soz replied:

sozobe wrote:

Where does this "media didn't report that the Decemberists played" thing come from in the first place?

Heh, when I was doing the Google search to point out all the mentions (I read several accounts from several sources at the time, all of which mentioned the Decemberists), I found this:

<snip>

I need to go to bed. But if anyone doubts that the Decemberists thing was in a whole bunch of the reports on the Portland rally (I won't say all, I only read ~5 at the time), I'm happy to get a passel of 'em tomorrow.

(She later posted a link to a NYT item)

No reply to that. Instead, Mysteryman reappeared to just re-assert that "[the media] seemed to either ignore or barely mention that there was a band at the Portland event."

Soz again replied:

Quote:

as I've said before, the "ignore or barely mention" part is itself a canard. (Put forward by Hugh Hewitt, I found out -- seems to be ground zero of this stuff.) I mentioned earlier that the ~5 accounts I read of the rally at the time mentioned the Decemberists, and offered to do a more thorough check of how often they were or weren't mentioned (nobody took me up on it.)

And again, MM ignored the reply and launched into the next outrage: the media has double standards on medical records!

So again, obviously I made up a whole bunch of stuff in my mind remembering the exchange - I was wrong. My shame. But when it comes to the actual exchange, yes, I still think it's rude. To make some blanket assertion about the media intentionally ignoring something, see others respond that they saw a bunch of stories mentioning it and offering to look it up properly for you, ignore them and just re-assert that the media seemed to have ignored it, have others again offer that this is not true and that they're willing to dig up the evidence, and again ignore their post in order to move on to the next "outrage" about the candidate.

And yes, I do think that this fits perfectly in a strategy of just throwing anything you can find against the wall and hoping something will stick. Thats a pretty transparent strategy, and yes, if you're going to make such blanket assertions but ignore any replies outlining how it's not true and/or offering to look up the details, you're being rude. That's just my standards though; yours may differ.

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Thomas wrote:

nimh wrote:
Dont you think that, you know, the Obama family might be a bit bothered about a rival candidate speculating about his assassination?

Clinton did not speculate about an Obama assassination. She merely pointed out that it's not unusual for a nomination campaign to go into June.

But would the Obama family be bothered? Of course it would! Campaign politics thrives on manufacturing the appearance of outrage. So if you can get an edge over your competitor by being offended about her phrasing a comparison badly, why wouldn't you? It's not as if Obama wants to rise above politics as usual in Washington or something.

Thomas,

I spent enough time arguing the other side of this, saying that the Obama supporters needed to take a step back and do a reality check on this episode, so I'm not going to argue with you about this at length. But yeah, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle on this one, then.

I think Obama's supporters (not the Obamas themselves, as Soz pointed out, and I dont think it was all a covert organised effort either) overreacted, and were too quick to assign all kinds of devious motives to Hillary's slip of the tongue. Cause thats all I think it was, an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Not some kind of deliberately subliminal appeal to Superdelegates to vote for her, the candidate less likely to be shot. Not some subliminal appeal to party leaders to refrain from pressuring her to get out, because you never know what might still happen. Just a slip of the tongue, and yes you can make the same slip twice in several months without it signalling some deliberate devious strategy.

But yes, I also think the slip of the tongue demonstrated more than just a simple reference to the time frame involved. I think it said something about how she now looks at this race, and at her place in it. Sort of in the way Joefromchicago hilariously described it in the other thread. And yeah, I dont know whether you considered my paraphrasing fair enough or not (obviously my paraphrasing of what other people have said or written is not always the best lately... Embarrassed

), but personally, if I were, say, Obama's brother, and his main rival publicly said something like, 'I'm not going to drop out! I mean hey, you never know what might happen, Kennedy was still assassinated after this time of year...' -- I would be pretty unnerved by it. The Obamas are a lot better about this than I'd be, obviously, but yeah, I think it's strange that she eventually publicly apologised to the Kennedys for this remark, and not to the Obamas.

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nimh, I think maybe part of the confusion is that there was a bit of a link-fest between me and mysteryman in another thread -- forget which one -- re: how likely it is that the Democratic nominee won't be decided until the election. (I don't think he ever replied to me there either, but I've been busy this weekend and haven't checked lately.)

Anyway, yeah, in this discussion I've mostly just offered to get more info on request (still willing! :-))

Thomas, I know what you mean, and I'm not sure you need to concede that point. I have been by and large happy with how Obama is conducting his campaign. I have no illusions of perfection or purity -- this IS politics. However I'm pretty satisfied that they have a line in mind that they haven't gone over and that they could have gone over many times -- a certain basic decency. (I think Hillary has gone over this line, less often than she is accused of but nonetheless more than once.) But I think they are willing to go right up TO that line if it is politically important.

For example, Hillary has been pushing the VP line hard lately. I firmly believe that Obama does not want her to be the VP, for a lot of reasons including (but not limited to) how she steps on his message ("Change, featuring a former two-term First Lady") and the spectre of Bill lurking around wanting to be a part of things.

But if she makes it abundantly clear she wants the VP position, and he just outright says "no," that's really dangerous for him in terms of uniting the party and bringing her supporters on board.

If this RFK thing is not only a gaffe but a Gaffe, then it becomes more obvious that of course he can't ask her to be VP.

Meanwhile, two more articles about Obama's use of the Internet and the importance thereof -- the Marc Ambinder one extends it beyond Kennedy/ Nixon (TV) back through FDR (radio) and all the back through Lincoln and Andrew Jackson (newspaper).

"HisSpace" by Marc Ambinder
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/ambinder-obama

Quote:

"The Amazing Money Machine" by Joshua Green
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance/3

Quote:

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Novak Takes a Swipe at Possible Obama VP Pick
by Chris Cillizza washingtonpost.com's Politics Blog The Fix is taking it easy on Memorial Day but couldn't resist a short post on a piece penned today by columnist Robert Novak.

Entitled "A Pro-Choicer's Dream Veep", Novak seeks to dismiss the idea that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) -- currently sitting in the top slot on the Fix's Veepstakes Line -- is a moderate by pointing out her record on the abortion issue during her time as the state's chief executive.

Novak calls Sebelius the "national pro-choice poster girl" and alleges, among other things, that "she is allied with the aggressive Kansas branch of Planned Parenthood in a bitter struggle with anti-abortion activist District Attorney Phill Kline" and that "there is substantial evidence she has been involved in what pro-life advocates term 'laundering' abortion industry money for distribution to Kansas Democrats."

Those are serious charges and, as evidence, Novak details Sebelius's ties to Wichita doctor George Tiller, who has been at the center of the abortion fight in Kansas for the last several decades. (Make sure to read the whole column.)

Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran condemned the Novak piece as forwarding his "personal agendas and hyperbole." She pointed out that Novak's column failed to mention the 8.5 percent decline in the Kansas abortion rate since Sebeliushas been in office and added: "Clearly, the people of Kansas don't share Mr. Novak's narrow view of Governor Sebelius, having overwhelmingly voted to re-elect her in 2006 in an endorsement of Governor Sebelius's centrist, mainstream approach."

From a purely political perspective, being attacked by Novak -- a journalist and columnist who makes no bones about his conservative views -- does two things: First, it raises her national profile, and second, it affirms her Democratic bona fides to party activists who might otherwise be concerned about the possibility of Barack Obama picking the governor of Kansas (a ruby red state at the presidential level) as his running mate.

Being attacked by a national columnist may be a new experience for Sebelius, but as a leading member of the veepstakes list she'll need to get used to it. Over the coming months all of the potential picks for both parties will get a close look from the national media, as well as the chosen VP vetters for Obama (Jim Johnson) and John McCain (A.B. Culvahouse).
link

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http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/Absolut_Domino_Obama_Hope.jpg

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Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

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Gargamel wrote:

Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

No point. We know you've got a lock on the humor. Could you please stop hogging it?

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blueflame1 wrote:

Fox commentator jokes about 'knocking off' Obama link

A "joke" I didn't get! Liz Trotta is no better than Hillary! :wink:

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Gargamel wrote:

Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

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engineer wrote:

Gargamel wrote:
Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

I'm genuinely interested to find out what the humorous part is.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

engineer wrote:
Gargamel wrote:
Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

I'm genuinely interested to find out what the humorous part is.

Cycloptichorn

I'm dying to know what's funny, too! Cool

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

engineer wrote:
Gargamel wrote:
Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

I'm genuinely interested to find out what the humorous part is.

Cycloptichorn

Since you are genuinely interested, the first part is the stunned expression on the dominos' faces. The second is the bottle caption "contents may change" expressing a common talking point on the right that Obama's hope message is fuzzy and not much on substance. Face it, BPB could have posted this.

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engineer wrote:

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

If you think Obama's possibly not the worst of a bad lot, can you admit it's funny?

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engineer wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
engineer wrote:
Gargamel wrote:
Dear Brand X,

Please post something mildly humorous or clever next time. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Gargamel

You have to admit, if you don't care for Obama, this is pretty funny.

I'm genuinely interested to find out what the humorous part is.

Cycloptichorn

Since you are genuinely interested, the first part is the stunned expression on the dominos' faces. The second is the bottle caption "contents may change" expressing a common talking point on the right that Obama's hope message is fuzzy and not much on substance. Face it, BPB could have posted this.

The odd thing is that it is reminiscent in some ways of an Absolut Vodka ad, but it doesn't use any of the cute wordplay that is associated with it.

And why are the people who are fainting dressed all in black?

Meh. I give it points for effort but not really very funny.

Cycloptichorn

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From the library of gaffe's department:

Obama was in New Mexico this past weekend giving a speech and holding a town meeting at the Veteran's center in Las Cruces. His prepared speech was provided in advance to the media and has been printed in its entirety as HERE:

In the press release the opening line was:

Quote:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

In the actual speech however the opening line was delivered as you can see HERE: in which the opening line was:

Quote:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes-I see many of them standing here today--our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

He went on to deliver a speech much more appropriate for Veteran's day than for Memorial Day. No big deal. Just another one to add to the list.

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4 a: to leave an erect position suddenly and involuntarily <slipped> b: to enter as if unawares : stumble, stray <fell> c: to drop down wounded or dead; especially : to die in battle d: to suffer military capture <after> e: to lose office <the> f: to suffer ruin, defeat, or failure <the>

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"Got faint?" is pretty lame but I thought "The actual content of hope is subject to change" was funny and looking again; "Not available in all 57 States" is funny too.

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