"'Birthers' fade after passage of law against them"

Someday, many years after 2016, I will go to Hawaii (I hear it's beautiful) and I will stop by the appropriate government's records office and I will ask for a copy of Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate..... and I will have it framed.

(link goes to article)

A Badge of Honor

Today's Moment of Zen

The End

. . . (?)

News From The World

Greetings, from Naguabo, Puerto Rico:

A President Like My Father

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

-- Caroline Kennedy
New York Times, Jan 27 2008

The Politics of Either/And

Andrew Sullivan is a skilled opinion maker. Both gay and conservative (the real kind), think of him as a younger, butcher, out-of-the-closet version of William F. Buckley.

He has written a devastatingly brilliant essay endorsing Barack Obama that I encourage all (especially those who think they have already made up their minds) to read carefully.

Goodbye to All That

how to make an awful song even worse

Some noise has been made about this photograph of Barack Obama keeping his hands down while the US National Anthem was being played at an Iowa event recently (yawn indeed).



(click through the photo and scroll down to view video)

Perhaps he was actually honoring the anthem by not honoring the performance. In 33 years of being subjected to that cat-in-a-hydraulic-press of a composition I have never heard such an acoustical dismemberment. Not only would I have not saluted or otherwise praised the singer, I would have come at her with an axe no doubt to loud applause from those in attendance still capable of hearing.

Fifth Anniversary Rally

Yesterday I attended a rally on the steps of Borough Hall (Brooklyn City Hall, pre- 1989 incorporation)






....to mark the fifth anniversary of the speech given in 2002 by then- Illinois state senator Barack Obama -- at a time when such things were rather unpopular -- decrying the notion of going to war with Iraq as a "dumb", "unnecessary" (and other choice words) war. Full text of 2002 speech here. Full text of 5th anniversary speech delivered in Illinois by Senator Obama is found here (and really gives a complete picture of what the man is about, in the full context of a presidential race).



There were plenty of volunteers handing out signs etc and (after things got going for a while) plenty of attendees.

I brought my own sign:

(photo taken before the rally started)

Overdue: Volunteered at a Brooklyn for Barack rally

About a month ago I volunteered to help coordinate an appearance by Barack Obama at a downtown Brooklyn hotel (ok it was the Marriott, which has now hosted more than one such appearance in NYC; a kudos to them). In an ironic twist of fate I was charged with a task which required two skills in which I particularly lack those abilities: schmoozing and handwriting.

I was asked to do "press intake". What that means is that as members of the press, be it magazine, newspaper, radio, TV, whatever, arrive they need to be "checked in" against a list of those who were known to have RSVPd and if they weren't already on the list -- and here's where the handwriting comes in -- write them up as walk-ins. I was also expected to explain to said members of the media why, for example, they were not allowed to enter the rally/speech/convention space for fully an hour after they were cited to be at the location -- not the sort of diplomatic assignment with which I brag about having had experience on my resume.

I did manage with the help of various people whose names are lost to posterity.

What most impressed me about the afternoon was that in the space of minutes this:

... turned into this:

The power of a rock star, in essence (or, GQ, in this case).

My favorite linear equation of the day

A report-with-analysis released by Gallup in the last week shows a direct and "sturdy" correlation between favorable ratings of Barack Obama and the level of education of the respondent.

In other words, the more (formally) educated the person is (feel free to translate that to "smarter" or not as you see fit) the likelier they are to think the guy is OK.

I used the word "sturdy" because the Gallup people were smart enough to also present the data controlling for the fact that

(a) higher-educated people are more likely to be Democrat, across the board (also a surprise that wasn't a surprise but it's nice to see it written down), and (and this is the real surprise)

(b) among Republican respondents Obama is the only candidate for which the favorable numbers go up significantly as a function of education(*).

(*) Conversely, the other consistent finding in this survey/study is that Hillary Clinton is the only major Democratic candidate for which the favorable numbers drop significantly as a function of educational level -- both on the Democratic and Republican side although strangely not for independents (added 8/17: most likely a taxonomy issue; "independent" often being a catch-all term for "don't know / don't care / hung up").

If only there were more smart people than non-smart people this would be a lot easier.

Obama outraises Clintonby $10 million in 2nd quarter

Here's to Our Man of the Second Quarter Thumpin'

I'm in The New York Times

A news story published today in the New York Times (and nytimes.com, linked above) features yours, this time, truly.

Not exactly the central focus of the piece, but you can see me at timecode 2:39 of the video piece.

The article was about the March for Change grassroots drive to promote the Obama '08 campaign, which I wrote about here.

I was there - Obama speaks at Sharpton's National Action Network convention

"I've said to Rev. Sharpton and I'll say it today, if there is somebody - I don't care whether they are white or black or they are male or female - if there is somebody who has been more on the forefront on behalf of the issues you care about and has more concrete accomplishments on behalf of the things you're concerned about, I'm happy to see you endorse them. But I am absolutely confident you will not find that."

I was at the National Action Network (presided by Al Sharpton) meeting where Barack Obama spoke yesterday (midtown Manhattan Sheraton, 12 noon). It wasn't a huge crowd but I'm sure that's because it wasn't widely publicized that he would be speaking there that day (I only got an email from a fellow pro-Obama person less than 36 hours before). Hillary had been invited to speak the day before and apparently she did quite well.

His remarks, often addressed directly to Sharpton himself, were actually more pointed than the linked-to article depicts; he told Sharpton almost in as many words (and right in front of "his people") that he is wrong in his unofficial endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Also, the article doesn't really do justice to the incident with the cell phone. It wasn't quite as quick and by compressing it they make it sound like the intent of his joke was something other than how it was meant.

What happened, in order, is that a buzzing sound was heard for about 5 seconds while he was speaking. He paused and said "What's that buzzing sound? You hear a buzzing sound?" (pause) "I think it's Sharpton's Blackberry." (quiet general laughter).

Sharpton takes out his phone to turn it off.

Obama: It IS Sharpton's phone. (laughter) Is that Hillary calling?

(the implication, as far as I took it, was that Hillary and Sharpton are in constant contact, perhaps several times a day, in order to coordinate their efforts; a natural thing since they both have region-specific complementary interests).

Sharpton: No, it's your wife.

(Consider what plausible scenarios would explain such a thing happening.) At this point I'm covering my face with my hands from embarrassment; what an awful, stupid, positively Don Imus-like thing to say. I was actually expecting the crowd to go "oooohhhh..." (pronounced: "I can't believe he went there"). Instead there was raucous laughter and clapping so the moment was saved. Perhaps the subtler implication of the joke was lost on them, or they chose to ignore it in order not to damage either of the two men on stage.

Obama: (Obviously also trying to defuse it) Tell her I'll pick up the groceries on my way home. (or something like that; I'm doing this from memory).

In any case, I'll try to go out of my way to go see him whenever he comes to town; it's fun to get these things live and then see them reported nationally.


There are photos I took of the event here:
http://public.fotki.com/juanolator/obama-08/

And random video clips (unfortunately not of any of the above-described moments) I shot here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z4tpvCgEdrI

Also, my new favorite Harry Chapin song; photo taken at the event yesterday:

lyrics (for the lazy)

Come one, Come all

I'm hosting a public meeting
to view a live online event with Barack Obama


click here to attend

Barack Obama | NYC March 9 '07 fundraiser

I went to the March 9 fund raising event for Barack Obama in New York.

I had made some laser-printer signs to hold up in case there was an opportunity to have my picture taken with Mr. Obama. I actually had this idea where he and I would hold up one of the signs together -- his choice of which one. As it turned out the cattle call of $100 donors was more akin to a Led Zeppelin concert ca. '72 than something even as impersonal as a royal receiving line.

Still, the sentiments endure. We're open to an over/under for when the back of this idealism will be broken.