Positive Obama thread

Amy, you're right about Prop 8.  I think the opponents misread the voters and didn't spend their money wisely.  The "yes" groups waited until the last few weeks and saturated the media with their ads, the "no" folks were slow to counter.  I think if they had gotten a couple of major black leaders, like MLK, III to do TV spots and got Schwarzenegger to do ads sooner rather than later, they might have done better.  And done more outreach to minority communities.  But it's gonna end up in court, like so many of these propositions.  Most legal experts think that the 18,000 who have already married will be safe. 

Linora, I don't think the jihadists need an excuse to hurt us.  We're going to keep on supporting Israel and that's going to piss them off, no matter what religion the chief of staff is.  I think Obama is going to be welcomed by legit Middle East leaders, much more so than Bush.  And the Secy of State will be more influential with foreign leaders than the COS. 

Emanuel is not only Jewish, but his Father was born in Jerusalem and was a member of the IRGUN, the "terrorists" who with people like Menachem Begin, threw the British out of Palestine.  Emanuel, during the first Gulf War, went to Israel to help in a supportive role for the troops.  Axlerod too is Jewish.  I think this bodes well for a strong Israel support policy, and that was my biggest concern about Obama, that he wouldn't support Israel.  One reason I am very happy right now.

Did you see the assholes that protested in front of the white house today when Barack and Michelle came to visit??  Go crawl back in the cave you came out of!!! 

Sorry, I am just so sick of these people.  How about joining in now and all work together!

Just popping in here to say to justanna who wrote:  I am in the field and it absolutely sucks that there are willing, happy healthy potential families with two mommies or two daddies but don't fit the Arkansas defininition out there for kiddos in need. 

I have to say ... some people don't realize the need out there .. some people do need to wrap their head around the fact that 2 mommies or 2 daddies is better than NO parents.  Please don't criticize my statement ...  A very long time ago, I worked at a car dealer.  A salesperson apparently refused to wait on 2 lesbians.  I had no clue "what" they were ... I was asked to help them. OK.  They had kids with them. On the test drive, it came out that both of them were the mommies.  I was 23, I was confused. I asked them. They explained. I then asked how they got the kids!!  LOL! They explained they adopted them from Bangladesh.  I am a cry baby ... I started bawling. I knew these kids had NO CHANCE in their country, yet here were two loving moms (actually rich ones) and these kids were getting the best of everything: especially parents and grandparents, whom I met.  The ladies gave me their trade in to drive to the dealer and get it appraised. When they came back I had no idea if we had a deal ... they said after disclosure, they were buying no matter what I said: they trusted me, they liked how I treated them. 

I sure wish that more people would realize that loving children along with providing them with a safe and sound home is more important than keeping them available for 2 married people. Some single parents can provide a safe loving home for children and yet so many are left in the homes, left wanting a place to belong.

Amy...lol...I'm guessing it was a little of both!! 

Scanning the NYTimes this morning before heading to work. I came across an artical by one of my favorite guys, and it fits right in with my values and what I want in the leader of the free world...a brain. Because when my right -winged buddies are befuddled about "what has Obama done??" I like to think also about what I know he's going to do. And I say, "at least he has an effin' brain!"

November 9, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist

Obama and the War on Brains

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Barack Obama's election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we've seen recently that the converse - a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance - doesn't get very far either.

We can't solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn't realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. More recently, we've had some smart and well-educated presidents who scrambled to hide it. Richard Nixon was a self-loathing intellectual, and Bill Clinton camouflaged a fulgent brain behind folksy Arkansas aphorisms about hogs.

As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can't think of anybody I've ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.

At least since Adlai Stevenson's campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it's been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned. Thoughtfulness is portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. The social critic William Burroughs once bluntly declared that "intellectuals are deviants in the U.S."

(It doesn't help that intellectuals are often as full of themselves as of ideas. After one of Stevenson's high-brow speeches, an admirer yelled out something like, You'll have the vote of every thinking American! Stevenson is said to have shouted back: That's not enough. I need a majority!)

Yet times may be changing. How else do we explain the election in 2008 of an Ivy League-educated law professor who has favorite philosophers and poets?

Granted, Mr. Obama may have been protected from accusations of excessive intelligence by his race. That distracted everyone, and as a black man he didn't fit the stereotype of a pointy-head ivory tower elitist. But it may also be that President Bush has discredited superficiality.

An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and - President Bush, lend me your ears - that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

(Intellectuals are for real. In contrast, a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like "fulgent" and "supercilious.")

Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn't condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.

As Mr. Obama prepares to take office, I wish I could say that smart people have a great record in power. They don't. Just think of Emperor Nero, who was one of the most intellectual of ancient rulers - and who also killed his brother, his mother and his pregnant wife; then castrated and married a slave boy who resembled his wife; probably set fire to Rome; and turned Christians into human torches to light his gardens.

James Garfield could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other, Thomas Jefferson was a dazzling scholar and inventor, and John Adams typically carried a book of poetry. Yet all were outclassed by George Washington, who was among the least intellectual of our early presidents.

Yet as Mr. Obama goes to Washington, I'm hopeful that his fertile mind will set a new tone for our country. Maybe someday soon our leaders no longer will have to shuffle in shame when they're caught with brains in their heads.

Anne, thanks for the article. I was a Gore supporter and I still think he was too 'smart' for the average American and that's why he lost! (that, and the vote/chad/FL fiasco)

Great comments this am ladies and gents.  I am really tired of people asking what has Obama done?  He's done a LOT in my opinion, the problem seems to be that it doesn't compute with what those who didn't support him were looking for. In addition to that, the man has common sense and  is brilliant (Pres of the Harvard Law Review).  Well we KNOW what GW and his administration have done the past 8 years and it's not pretty.  I wish the skeptics would just be quiet and give the new Pres a chance.  If, in a couple of years we are even worse off than we are now (which is almost impossible) then they'll have something to compalain about.

I agree with Linora, we need a much stronger UN.  With this new adminnistration I think we will see that happen.  There's good reason why people all over the globe are celebrating the outcome of this election. We will no longer be perceived as bullies of the world.

Maureen (formerly Blue16) 

Amy, they would actually get further with their cause if they "exploited" the issue of the needy kids ending up in loving, caring homes.  I've told you all about the story when T was in pre-school and she was flabbergasted with joy that there were a brother and sister there who had TWO MOMMIES.  I mean she was like:  aren't they lucky???!!!  ...  I assumed it was a step mom and a mom who were picking up ... it was not until a birthday party (where my wig fell off in the jumper) that I found out it was just two mommies ...

Since I posted this in the Republican thread, in response to something I read on there, I need to also post it here to be completely nonpartisan.  Anyway, this is an article that explains the voting process in Minnesota, which sounds like a darn good one, in my opinion, and it explains how it is that Franken could win the recount in his bid against Coleman.  I don't know anything about the publication that the article is in.

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/106625/why_al_franken_will_be_minnesota's_next_senator/?page=1

No, my wig fell of when my 4 year old asked me to do a flip. I never had heard of wig tape. I did the flip, my wig fell off and all the little kids were stunned silent.  My daughter picked it up, said, "My mommy has breast cancer and chemo. Don't laugh at my mommy." And she handed me my wig.  No one was laughing til she said that!  Then they ran screaming with wonder, "She lost her hair, she lost her hair."  I was laughing so hard I almost peed my pants.  None of the other moms knew I had cancer and that's how they all found out.

After that ...everytime I went to preschool, the little kids asked me to take off my wig to feel my head. Moms would be embarrassed by their kids requests but I wasn't .. I just took it off, sat down and let them feel ... sometimes, it's better to go with it, especially for my daughter to see I was going to be ok .. and hair was coming back.

Anyway, I need to get out of this thread before I become a Democrat.  I mean, isn't it contagious?