What Made Obama's Speech Great

The true power of the speech is that it does what it says. It not only talks about empathy, it creates it.

We are on the cusp of a new politics in America. It should be dated from March 18, 2008, the date of Barack Obama's landmark speech "A More Perfect Union." The usual pundits have looked mainly at the speech's surface theme: race. They weren't wrong. It was indeed the most important statement about race in recent history.

But it was much more. It was a general call to a new politics and an outline for what it needs to be. Just as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was about much more than the war dead on that battlefield, so Obama's speech -- widely hailed as in the same ballpark as Lincoln's -- went beyond race to the nature of America, its ideals and its future.

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There's Nothing Wrong with Rev. Wright

"The manufactured controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright ignores the tradition of 'prophetic preaching' in African-American churches."

I expect there will be several more articles like this showing up, to explain why many were neither shocked or offended by those little snippets of Wright's words...



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4000

h/t: Crooks and Liars

Conservatives Beware

What's the matter with conservatism? Its problems start with the failure of George W. Bush's presidency but they don't end there....

So begins a truthdig article discussing two books by con writers that explore the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement.

The authors are worried about their movement’s future, and accept—to use the language directed once upon a time against liberals—that the right is tired, short of ideas and mired in the past.

I think they may be right.

Some more quotes:

Many on the right think there is no problem with conservatism today that doing a better job of imitating Ronald Reagan wouldn’t solve. But the 1980s were a long time ago. What made Reagan great, Frum argues, “was his ability to respond to the demands of his times. We must respond to the demands of ours.”

Frum acknowledges that the problem of economic inequality is real. “The American economy grew handsomely between 2001 and 2006,” he writes. “But over those five years, the income of the median American ... did not rise at all. The number of people in poverty rose by 5.4 million between 2000 and 2004.”

“There is emerging within the Republican Party a very interesting debate about whether we need to change our approach, or just reassert the policies we already have,” Frum said in an interview.

Frum would like the heretical Republicans to come together to create their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council. The GOP sure could use something. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that only 27 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage in Pew’s 16 years of polling. If ever there was a moment for change agents within the nation’s conservative party, this is it.

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An AmericanNeoCon has something to say...

...but believes it right & proper to piss his words out anywhere he sees fit (in this case in the "Protest symbol turns 50" thread, below, as though anything he posted had the slightest thing to do with peace)

Repsac: Are you and Biobrain calling me names over at that old thread?

Since you linked to it, the thread shows that Biobrain went limp after I applied the same logic to his arguments. But here's my comment tonight:

"A nutjob?

I don't recall, Biobrain, that you'd resort to argumentium ad hominem, but in reveiwing the debate here, I do recall how sleazy your debating practices ended up being, particularly when you you wouldn't apply a fact based rebuttal to your own arguments.

Look at the debate here. You can see that once I applied a strict decision rule about your example of judges, you were flummoxed.

Here's a quote for you:

"Conservatives have long been amazed by liberals who ask, indeed demand, of every conservative they meet to give reasons for each and every of their views, yet when faced with logical answers that astound them, either retort with some jibberish that bears no relevance to the issue being discussed, make some snide remark, or immediately seek to change the subject that they themselves so insistently started."

I applied it to Repsac as well. You're two peas in a pod, and obviously you've sunk to a new low with the name calling.

Totally. Intellectually. Dishonest. Repsac's no better."

Yes, NeroCon (who fiddles while America burns) I believe I did call you a name or two at that old thread (this old thread: And Doctor Biobrain's Response Is...: Why Bush Invented Terrorism and the Ideology of Hate... ...and perhaps elsewhere, too...

If you can call me an anti-intellectual fraud, I can reply in kind... (I know... It's all different when you dip into the insult pool, because when you say it--& seemingly by virtue of your saying it alone, & nothing more--it's all true... Get a friggin' life.)

As far as your cute & cuddly little quote, I replied to it on your blog, the first of the three times you've posted it this eve... (1, 2, and here makes 3) I contend that it doesn't apply to the conversation we were having there, as you have not seen fit to answer any of my requests for evidence in support of your many claims, let alone do so employing anything in the way of logic.

Aside that, it can just as easily be turned around so as to be a leftwing slogan against the right, a christian slogan against jews, or a white slogan against blacks... There is nothing that makes it apply any better to one group over another... ...& considering how piss poorly you've been doing in defending your points & backing up your claims of late, I really don't think you want folks to think too hard on the subject of good debate techniques, lest they apply such things to the words you write.

I was just checking out the rest of the article from which your "conservatives have long been..." quote comes, and landed on this little bit: CFP: The Root Cause of Why Some Liberals Are Unresponsive to Logic and Debate: "He or she does not have to give proofs and those who dare to challenge the scientist’s assertions are heretics."

Now, who does that quote about proof (& indeed the title of the whole article, save the misplaced word "liberal") really describe; me, or you? Think about it...

World's best-known protest symbol turns 50

"It started life as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world. It has also been adapted, attacked and commercialised."

Read the rest here

More info here: Peace symbol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Cole learns from his mistakes.

Balloon Juice:
My Iraq War Retrospective, by John Cole:

I see that Andrew Sullivan was asked to list what he got wrong about Iraq for the five year anniversary of the invasion, and since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:

Everything.

(Follow the link for the rest of his post.)

It takes guts to admit to being wrong, and John has earned my respect for doing so... Far too many partisans of all stripes are never, never, EVER wrong about anything they utter...

Jake Tapper - "I don't really think..."

Political Punch or "Tapper's drunk too much wingnut Kool-aid, again..."

TAPPER:

"In a long, and interesting speech, [Clinton] characterized what the US and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren"

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?

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Compare that with what Clinton actually said, in context:

CLINTON:

"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work."

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See the difference? Tapper obviously can't... & that's a problem.

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What did Jake Tapper mean by the confession "I don't really think", which appeared in his blog yesterday?

In a short entry with a misleading headline and complete distortion of a quote of former President Bill Clinton, Tapper confessed "I don't really think."

In an update published later, Tapper said "I understand," which seemingly contradicts his earlier confession.

Or perhaps he just misspoke.

We here at Wingnuts & Moonbats cannot be certain.

For the full text of Tappers comments--full, proper, & undistorted by creative editing--please follow the link above.

-- comment on Tapper's blog by Ida Noe, on 2/1/08, at 9:22:15 AM (I rewrote it, a little, both for style & so it'd make sense here)
---------------------------------

A few comments later I wrote a comment of my own in support of "Ida's" & blasting Mr Tapper a bit more, but it was removed shortly thereafter... (There was a place to add my site url, allowing other readers to click my screen name & end up here--which I did--& now I'm wondering whether that was the problem... There are many comments blasting Tapper, but no comments at all that link to the blogs of those making the comments...)

As far as I can recall, it went something like this:

------
Ida Noe (2/1/08, 9:22:15 AM) was right on target.

I once thought you were a reliable reporter, but this blog entry makes me question whether you ever were...

As was obvious to pretty much everyone who saw or read the whole passage (except you, obviously), Clinton was expressing an example of what NOT to do to solve Global Warming, and your careful editing of the video & subsequent blog post gives a patently dishonest impression of what he actually said.

You claim not to understand Clinton's meaning, but that doesn't wash for a major network's Senior National Correspondent for their Washington bureau. Whether by ineptitude or design, your failure to comprehend simple English (& if you did understand more than you're letting on, creative license with this story) makes you a poor reporter unworthy of your position.
---------

And now:

Instead of apologizing, Tapper is now defending his egregious post by insisting that addressing global warming will in fact slow the economy, whether Clinton said it or not:

"This is the much more important issue here. Any serious effort to reduce greenhouses gases will have an impact on the economy and, initially, that impact could be negative."

- Think Progress � ABC Publishes Hit Piece Against Bill Clinton, Peddles Right-Wing Misinformation On Global Warming

Typical.