Complete Sentence Controversy

From 60 Minutes, Andy Borowitz

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

Continued here at the Huffington Post.

This would be funny if it weren't so true.

Poll Watching on Historic Day

This is an historic night as the United States ends the Bush era in a big way and just as significantly, demonstrates that while racism still exists, it's significance is reduced to the point where a majority of Americans can vote for an African-American candidate. Things haven't been officially called for Obama, but enough key states have gone his way that I can't see how Obama could lose. I'll save other comments on this incredible change in the United States' ability to go beyond race and the potential we know have to regain our status as a country the rest of the world looks up to. Meanwhile I'll tell you about my day as a poll watcher.

I was at the 'staging area' (someone's basement) at 6:40am and at the polling place at 6:50am in time for the starting of voting at 7am. It was dark when I got there and it wasn't clear where the polling place was. This picture on the left I took when I was leaving at 4:30pm and they had put up some signs. Still, it was hard to see. There was also a sign up on the street by the time I left(see bottom picture).

I had several jobs:

1. Keep track of the likely Democratic voters. I had a list of voters who were expected to vote Democratic and my job was to mark them off on three identical lists. The first list was to be picked up at 9:30am, the second one at 1:30pm, and the third one at 4:30pm. The lists, as I understood it, were to be used to call people who hadn't voted yet.

2. Report problems with voting - people turned down, overly long lines, machine problems, etc.

When I got there, about 30 people were in line, waiting for the polls to officially open at 7am. Once that initial crowd got handled, there were never more than four or five in line and most of the time there was no wait. But most of the time things were moving along briskly and the voting booths were busy all day.

The election workers were great. They were very friendly, made things as easy for me as possible, and were on top of any problems before I even knew about them.

No one came to pick up the 9:30am list. Nor did anyone come at 1:30pm, including my replacement. So I stayed. One problem came up with the voting machine about 4pm. Apparently, someone had dropped a ballot on the floor and it picked up a chunk of de-icing salt which got caught in the shute and so the ballots couldn't go in. They started putting them into the side box to be counted after they closed the polls. But Richard who was monitoring the machine was able to get the salt chunk cleared out and voters could put their ballots through the shute again and they could get counted.

The voting at our polling place was running much lower than one might have expected. By the time I left - my replacement came about 4:30pm - only about 25% had voted. (That doesn't count people who had voted early or absentee or had questioned ballots.) Of those who voted, about 40% were on my list which seemed like a good sign. There was no Republican poll watcher.

I'd left a message on our home phone to let J know I was still there and not sure when or if I'd get relieved. She showed up with a bag of goodies about 3:30. Do I have a great wife? And we left at 4:30, when I took the two outdoor pictures. And since we were across the street from the Thai Kitchen and they were about to open, we stopped there for dinner.

Obama Overkill?

"Hello, my name is Steve. I'm part of a crazy horde of Obama supporters and our goal is to call every home in America at least 26 times."

Sometimes when you know how to do something well, there comes a point where doing it no longer pays off. I don't know if the Obama campaign's phone banks are still serving a useful purpose or if they've reached the point of diminishing returns. I spent two and a half hours this afternoon calling people in Las Vegas. I had five or six pages of names - about 20 to a page. Where they got the numbers I have no idea, but they were in numerical order all in area code 702. Most people were not home or the phone was not in order. I left a few messages, talked to a few people. Other people there had been calling Iowa and some were actually calling people in Anchorage. If you got a call, this is what it looked like where I was calling from. I should have brought an earplug for my other ear.



But overall, it didn't feel right.

• I couldn't help but think about all the people being bothered by the phone calls. One caller near me said the people had been leaning for Obama but were so disgusted by the phone calls that they were now voting for McCain. Obviously the point is to make sure Obama supporters vote. But our list was orphan numbers - they didn't know what the people were planning on doing.
• I couldn't help but wonder what the enormous amount of volunteer time might be better used for. Non-profits always need volunteers. Can this organization now be used to redirect the volunteers to some of those organizations or is this just about Obama?

Was my time usefully spent? I know, we're just the foot soldiers who are supposed to do as we're told because we don't understand the big picture. Someone said that McCain couldn't do this using real people. Their calls are all robocalls. I hope that the cumulative effect of all this phoning will actually pick up some Obama voters. The best option would be that they don't matter because the Obama lead will be enough without our effort. But who knows, so we were calling.

The script we had was really stilted and I started modifying once I got the hang of things. Humor did seem to get past the anger. I told some people who complained about the calls that I felt the same way so I decided to get out of the house and make calls so I didn't need to answer any more.

Tomorrow I experience something I haven't experienced for a while - being awake before 6am. I have to get to the polling place where I'll be a poll watcher by 6:45 after picking up my badge and lists at a gathering point.

Race Matters II

From Elstun over at Celtic Diva

Barack Obama is winning over swing voters because of what is called his "temperament". It turns out that his coolness, calmness and steadiness is just what voters are looking for and those qualities stand in great contrast to the "erratic" and fuming McCain-Palin campaign.

Because of the racism in the United States, Barrack Obama, like every African-American male who wanted to succeed, has learned how to control his anger, to swallow his outrage, and to respond with coolness. Angry black men had to transform their anger into some other socially acceptable manifestation - humor, the blues and gospel, slam dunks, knock out punches, or verbal virtuosity. While open anger no longer results in lynching, it can still cause serious damage to the person who expresses it in the wrong situation.

Obama, because of the color of his skin, had to learn to turn his anger into calm, articulate phrases.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President

From Voice of America
By Paula Wolfson
Washington
19 October 2008

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he is backing Democrat Barack Obama for president.

VOA's Paula Wolfson reports Powell made the announcement during a nationally broadcast television interview.

Colin Powell (2008 file photo)

Powell says Barack Obama has the ability to transform America and American politics.

"He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage. And for that reason, I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama," he said. [All the above including the photo from Voice of America]

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I think this one is important because there was actually any doubt that Powell would do this.

As the most prominent African American in US politics before Obama, as a Republican who was burned by the Bush Administration over his Iran testimony at the UN, as a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was probably pulled in different directions, but I just don't see how he could do anything but endorse Obama. If Obama were a Palin type candidate, there's no way Powell would have endorsed him, simply because he was black. But a very credible candidate like this? How could he not?

If Obama is elected (yes, I know, I just don't count my chickens early) just his election will change the landscape of the United States and the world. We'll have a president whose consciousness is open to the future, not the past. Powell has to know this.


Don't hold you breath waiting for Clarence Thomas' Obama endorsement, though.

Obama Wins Debate in First Five Minutes

The debate isn't even ten minutes old, but for me Obama won this debate when he said his choice for Treasury Secretary is Warren Buffet. He did say there were other qualified people, but that Buffet was one of his advisers and a great choice.

The economy is the biggest problem as we go into the election. I can't think of anyone who is more respected in this country in the area of business and investing than Warren Buffet.

OK, I know there's still about 75 minutes left in this debate.

Democrats Have Developed Anti-Swift Boat Attack Weapons System

Sarah Palin and others have been talking about Obama's supposed close friendship with Bill Ayers, who back in the 60's was a member of the Weather Underground involved in anti-war bombings.

She doesn't mention that Ayers was never convicted of anything and is now a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois - Chicago. The Washington Post Fact Checker looks at the whole story if you want more on this. As many have pointed out, Obama was eight years old when Ayers was in the Underground.

This sort of sniping from the Republicans - piecing together the flimsiest facts and blowing them up into a completely new and blatantly false, out of context, accusation - has a long history in US presidential campaigns, from Willie Horton, to Swift Boat, and to stuff like this.

What's new, is that the Democrats seem to have been ready for this and in response have released a very slick - music, shots, story - video about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five affair.




We'll see how the facts of this video play out, but the narrator was a banking regulator who was intimately involved in the trying to regulate Lincoln Savings. He's now a professor at the University of Kansas and the author of at least two books on this subject. Here are book reviews the University of Missouri Kansas City Law School Web Page on Black cites:

His book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (University of Texas Press 2005) has been called “a classic” by George Akerlof, the Nobel Laureate (Economics, 2001).

More directly related is this:

Robert Kuttner, in his Business Week column, proclaimed:


Black's book is partly the definitive history of the savings-and-loan industry scandals of the early 1980s. More important, it is a general theory of how dishonest CEOs, crony directors, and corrupt middlemen can systematically defeat market discipline and conceal deliberate fraud for a long time -- enough to create massive damage.

Just compare the Palin speech and accusations to the Obama campaign produced video with Professor William Black. You can't help but believe that Black knows a lot more about Keating and McCain than Palin knows about Ayers and Obama. And that Black's motivation seems a lot less self serving than does Palin's.

The real story in my mind, though, is the Obama campaign seems to have developed an anti-swiftboat weapon. Do they have others ready and waiting in case the McCain campaign decides to keep fabricating more stories about Obama?