Long Walk plus: Raw Replay – Revisiting History (Obama on Fox)

Workout notes 26 mile (plus) walk in 5:59; 1:30, 1:29 (CVS to the 1.5 mile mark on the East Peoria to Morton leg). One short shower, light wind on the down hill stretch. 4:36 at 20 mile. In short, I had a training marathon, though it was just me, the bike path, and a bottle of tea.

A few notes: one older lady laughed and said “you can walk faster than that”. I said “not right now” with a smile (I was at mile 24.5 at the time). Near the end, some little girl asked me “why do you swing your arms?” and I replied “because it makes it easier to walk faster”.

Wildlife/animals: I saw a braying mule, chipmunks, and a couple of white tailed rabbits.

Social Stuff

A Daily Kos member talks about his heartfelt reaction to Obama’s speech on race.

A note about myself: when I was driving back from my long walk, I turned into my alley. I stopped the truck because a rabbit darted in front of me. I stopped because I didn’t want to kill it; and I didn’t resent it at all. I thought “oh, that poor bunny might get killed.”

A few days ago, my wife was driving when a youth walked out in front of our car; she stopped and then honked the horn. He flipped us off. I thought “too bad we didn’t run him over”, though I realize that was my ugly self talking.

Yes, this youth was African American; yet those who did this in Austin were white and I didn’t like it then either. (think: Urban Cowboy, Dustin Hoffman, and the “I am walking here” scene.)

But think of how I reacted: I showed far more compassion for the rabbit than I did for the human! Sure, if you asked me “would you kill the rabbit to save this guy’s life?” I’d say “sure”, in a heartbeat. Of course!

My point is that often, when I react to a situation, I am reacting to what I think that the other person is thinking rather than to what they are DOING. After all, the effect that the rabbit and the human did was exactly the same, as far as I was concerned.

Election stuff (what else?)

Obama takes on the idiotic “elitist” label.

Hat tip to Jackbauer8393.

Karl Rove: gives Obama some advice. I’d caution BHO against taking it; after all BHO’s “base” is very different that Bush’s base. Obama can’t throw Wright under the bus: in part his is because it will alienate African Americans, and in part, because many of us know that Wright was right about much of what he said.

HERE ARE SIX SUGGESTIONS FOR WHAT TO DO.

1. Your stump speech is sounding old and out of touch. You made a mistake by not giving the bored press (and voters) something new last Tuesday when you lost Pennsylvania. Come up with something fresh that’s focused on the general election. Recapture the optimistic tone of your start and discard the weary, prickly and distracted tone you’ve taken on.

2. When you get into trouble, pick one, simple explanation. And stay with it. [...]

3. Your lack of achievements undercuts your core themes. It’s powerful when you say America is not “Red States or Blue States but the United States.” The problem is, you don’t have a long Senate record of working across party lines. So build one. In the coming months, say that you’ll appoint Republicans to your cabinet and get a couple to say they’d serve. [...]

4. You speak of the “fierce urgency of now” that calls leaders to confront important challenges. Sounds good, but people are asking, what urgent issues have drawn your enormous talents? It’s counterintuitive, but spend less time campaigning and more time working the Senate. Pick a big issue and fight hard for it. [...]

5. Stop the attacks. They undermine your claim to a post-partisan new politics. You soared when you seemed above politics[...]

6. To answer growing questions about your inexperience, people need to know, in concrete and credible ways, what they can expect from you as president. That’s missing now[...]

Yes, I sometimes quote Karl Rove and Dick Morris. No, I don’t like their public policy positions. But they do understand people. (and I don’t)

Bill Clinton: I am not the only one that thinks that “he has really lost a step”, so to speak.

Notes from the ground in Indiana. Not all of the news is good.

[...] 3. I helped bus local voters to the polls and noticed something very disturbing. The people entering the polls were divided between Obama’s core constituencies (African-Americans, young voters) and Clinton’s (older white women). We drew not one, but many, dirty looks from Clinton supporters as we drove up to the building. I’m hoping this simply reflects the enthusiasm for those motivated enough to vote early, but I’m afraid the calcification of support runs deep, and so does the enmity. I find comparisons to past primaries completely delusional at this point, and I’m afraid super-delegates may not be in touch with what’s going on on the ground. Anyone who thinks this campaign is comparable to the enmity between Deaniacs and Clarke supporters in 2004 has spent too much time in the DailyKos bubble.

4. From what I can tell, Obama supporters are extremely disturbed by Clinton’s tactics and will sit out the election in the fall if she wrestles the nomination away from him. This is not a joke–every single person I talked to stated this. And their understanding of the situation was extremely nuanced. Far from being “sore losers’, they are upset about what they feel is Clinton’s sense of entitlement and, yes, her attempts to tarnish Obama’s image as the only path to the nomination. [...]

My two cents: yes, the animosity is real. Yes, the Clintons are responsible for the ugly tone of the campaign.

I’ll be blunt: in Borders, I noticed that there were a ton of “It takes a Village” (ghostwritten for Hillary Clinton) CD’s on sale and I thought about buying one for my upcoming road trips. But the thought of hearing her voice now makes me react in the same way that I react to George Bush’s voice. Seriously.

I’ll admit that I view Bill a bit differently: I really feel sad for what he has become; I think “how sad that one of the great political minds has come to this.” But to be honest, though I had never hated Hillary, I was never that big of a fan of hers; I always thought that she was a bit overrated.

Now, I am completely appalled at her lying and at how incompetently she has run her campaign, and at how she refuses to take responsibility for her manifold failures.

Hillary Clinton’s current ads seek to portray her as the tough leader who is ready on Day One to handle crises. Borrowing from a line made famous by Harry Truman, the tag line trumpets, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” The sub-text, of course, is that she will dish out a full plate of heat and if Obama can’t respond on her gutter level, he can’t handle heat.ﾠ

The truth is almost exactly the opposite. Hillary is nasty, but she is not tough. In fact, Hillary is a classic whiner. She and Bill whine about everything that doesn’t go well for them. Unlike Harry Truman, who also said, “the buck stops here,” she and Bill accept responsibility for nothing and blame others, especially the media, when things go wrong or their deceptions are exposed.ﾠ

Hillary and Bill whine about Democratic Party activists, young voters, running as a female, the media in general, the media catching her fabricating her history (bringing peace to Ireland, opposing NAFTA, facing sniper fire in Bosnia, etc.), the appeal of hope, Obama’s eloquence, money, donors, Democratic Party rules. Last week, Hillary blamed the “activist base” of the Democratic Party — and MoveOn, in particular — for many of her electoral defeats, claiming, without a shred of evidence, that activists had “flooded” state caucuses and “intimidated” her supporters. Rather than accept responsibility for her campaign’s well-documented failure adequately to plan for the caucus states, and despite her repeated claim she is the candidate “ready on Day One,” she attacked core Democratic Party supporters. Rather than take responsibility for her inability to inspire the activist base with her ideas, she whined about their support of a more thoughtful, inspirational candidate. Candidates normally celebrate high levels of voter activism in the primaries, knowing these activists will work for the party’s nominee in the general election, but Hillary is willing to burn the peasants in order to win the village for herself.
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Hillary and Bill whine about young voters. Last week, Bill said in Pennsylvania that young voters are easily fooled and older voters are wiser — too wise to be fooled by Obama’s inspiring rhetoric. Of course, he forgot to mention that the most well-educated voters — young and old — heavily favor Obama over Hillary. Most candidates, and both political parties, yearn for support from young voters because young voters represent not just the present, but also the future. And, certainly if young voters were supporting Hillary, she wouldn’t be whining about them. But since she is not very good at inspiring young voters, she chooses to whine about them. Thankfully, she has not yet proposed raising the voting age to 60, but that could be next. [...]

Caught dead-on lying about being under “sniper fire” as she landed in Bosnia — when absolutely no danger existed — she claimed she simply had “misspoke” [seven times?], then claimed she was tired by “lack of sleep,” then Bill chimed in to attack the media for even covering the story. This was all taking place as she asserted her competence to answer that mythical 3 am phone call. So if we believe the Clintons, her “lack of sleep” caused her to fabricate a story about landing in Bosnia into hostile sniper fire and risking her life like a seasoned military veteran, but this fabrication should be disregarded because, despite her history of sleep deprivation, if a crisis occurs at 3 am, we can trust her to be awake and alert and respond truthfully and with good judgment. With leadership like this, we’ll all be awake at night.
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Hillary whines about Obama’s inspiration and eloquence. Hillary whines about the very nature of hope. Despite the Clintons’ history of playing the Hope Card (we all remember Bill’s 1992 campaign biopic, “The Man from Hope”), when the other guy is offering it, all of a sudden, hope is suspicious. In fact, it is downright delusional. “I could stand up here and say, let’s get everyone together, let’s get unified and the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and the world will be perfect,” she said in mock sarcasm of Obama’s message of conciliation and hope.
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Hillary whines about the fact Obama has engaged more donors and raised more money than she. Of course, she didn’t think it was unfair in 2007 when she had twice as much money as any other candidate. But as soon as she fell behind, Little Miss $100+ million War Chest was whining about being outspent. But isn’t the ability to inspire donors and raise money part of being a successful presidential candidate? Isn’t that a measure of electability, not something to be disdained?
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Obama on Fox News.

from rawstory.com posted with vodpod