This is making the rounds lately via email and it’s not a minor point. Not if you’re one of those people who wants your surgeon to be a med school graduate and — beyond any of the anti-intellectual BS that tends to follow this issue around — there’s a good reason for wanting your surgeon to be a med school graduate.
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Barack Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude |
John McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899 |
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Joseph Biden: University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.) |
Sarah Palin: Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism |
I’m going to try to do linky updates from each of the campaigns this weekend. Trying to keep up with ALL the news is futile lately, but I’ll do my best to hit the highlights…
Obama reaches out to deaf community, …and reaches out to a stranger. Supporting the troops, Esquire, Global Electoral College, Self-described conservative/libertarian/whatever and son of William F. Buckley, Christopher Buckley
Videos: AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama, It’s Never too Late for Change, Joe Biden: John McCain is no maverick!, Joe Biden on kitchen table issues (note callous mavericky response!), Israelis for Obama, You can’t ignore the economy!, Bruce Springsteen, Ralph Stanley, Joe Biden: this election is about you, not us!, Four Days in Denver, Dueling Rallies, Ohio, Change the World
(updates possible as the weekend winds down…)
This is all you need to do: just hit the ball back. Be Björn Borg — one of the greatest tennis players ever (from one of the best eras of tennis ever), he hung out at the baseline, just hitting the ball back, not trying to do anything fancy, not going for the putaway shot, just hitting the ball back, over and over and over again. That was his game: calm consistency. And he kept it up long enough so that most of the time, the other guy screwed up and Borg won the point (often times, if the player was someone volatile, like John McEnroe, his victories would come amidst lots of spitting and crying).
Anyway, my point is to be calm and consistent, and don’t try to score the gotchas or the zingers, because your opponent is inexperienced and has a lot to prove, so chances are she’ll be overreaching. If you just keep hitting the ball back to her, she’ll eventually screw up — and she doesn’t need any help from you to do so. So be chill and mellow.
(And in the case of Obama, this goes doubly, because John McCain is flailing all over the place, like a drunk trying to find the door in the dark, AND he’s got a pissy temper. He’ll totally play the John McEnroe to your Björn Borg, if you’ll just let him.)
The campaigns, 527s, news channels, volunteers and comedians have been spewing video like an open hydrant lately and I’m going to try to round up the last week’s worth here (wish me luck!).
Obama: McCain’s Lobbyist Campaign, Community Organizing, Education, On Letterman, 1982, What is Change?, On Tax Plans, What Economy Are You Talking About?, McCain’s Fundamentals, Another four?, Equal Pay, Old Boys Network, Hope
Biden: America Needs More
McCain: Bloodthirsty Warmonger, On GOP Diversity, Bush-McCain Republicans, Hot Blooded!, The First Family of War, Going for the Pedophile Vote, Squirming, Protecting Sex Offenders, John McCain’s Lies, Recycled Bush, Lies exposed, Women’s Issues, Out of Touch, McCain’s Honor, On Palin’s Experience, Subtle Racism, Rove: McCain has gone too far, Rape Kits, Medical Records, Romney on McCain, Who’s better off?, Fall From Grace, McCain is a Republican, Carly Fiorina, Buh-Bye, Carly!, Stay the Course!, Invented the Blackberry, Lying Their Way to the White House, ABC: McCain Flip-Flops, WHAT? Spain is in Europe?!?
Palin: Forced Gestation, Pentacostal, Wolf Hunting, Sound Familiar?, Bridge to Nowhere, Palin is a Liar, Book Banning, Charging Rape Victims, Hardball: Who is She?, The Bush Doctrine, Drags Out an Old Canard, Pork is Yummy!, On Special Needs, Pray For Us, Sarah!, The Todd, Her First Ad
Rachel: Lipstick, The Fundamentals Are Strong, Commissions
Palin spoofs: Palin in Four Minutes, Vlog, Palin is a Liar, Gina Gershon, The famous SNL skit
Stewart: McCain 2008 = Bush 2000, John McCain, Reformed Maverick, McCain’s Acceptance Speech, Palin is the Bush Doctrine, McCain’s Change?, Generic Off
Colbert: Repo Man, How Dare You?, McCain Attacks Obama
Bill Maher: New Rules (Republican Convention), New Rules (Cities vs. Small Towns), With Paul Begala
Craig Ferguson: Cut to the Chase
The Young Turk: It’s Not Just George Bush
Here’s a bit of a news catchup link list:
• Dick Cheney will be visiting the Chattanooga area later this month. Hopefully, he won’t have access to any guns.
• An aide-mémoire for the poor souls who struggle to recall what happened before this week.
• Oh, the confusion! (”In Dick Morris’s defense, he is a lying sack of …” — well, just watch!)
• Sometimes Samantha Bee is funny and sometimes she makes me laugh out loud.
• Hahaha — McCain $$$ being sent to Obama campaign (maybe that will teach them not to steal?)!
• Awesome! McCain gets Rickrolled! (Ha — when are they going to drop that green screen?!?)
• Ugh. That greedy bastard.
The Big Dog warmed up the crowd for Joe Biden this evening. He was, as always, great on the stump. He said “Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she’ll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us.” And then he caught himself and said, “actually, that makes 18 million of us.” It was a nice line. He then went on to say what he needed to say — that he’s convinced that Obama is the man for the job, and he enumerated Obama’s qualifications. He also gave Biden a hat tip by saying that when it came to choosing a running mate, Obama hit it out of the park. And as far as the Republicans are concerned, Bill had plenty to say, including this: “they actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. Let’s send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks.”
The crowd went wild when Bill came out and wouldn’t let him speak for the first several minutes he was on the stage. Clearly, he’s as popular as ever with the party faithful, and his speech demonstrated one reason why. Bill Clinton, is one of the greatest public speakers in modern politics. He still takes my breath away.
Here’re a the key lines from Clinton’s remarks this evening: “Everything I learned in my eight years as President and in the work I’ve done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job” and “Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Ready to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States.”
You can read his remarks as prepared here and watch the video here.
And then Joe Biden came out. Wow. What a bio. His beautiful mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden was there in the crowd to hear him speak — what a rock and an inspiration! Joe speaks like regular people and is a great storyteller. He slipped at one point and started to call John McCain “George” — an honest slip, I think, but also quite on-message.
Joe talked about dignity and respect. He discussed Barack Obama’s accomplishments in Illinois and DC, as well as how he learned about Obama when they were both on the campaign trail together. He also talked about his friend, John McCain, who wants to take this country “in the wrong direction.”
Here’s my nomination for the line of the night: “These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader.” And then he really got rolling…
As we gather here tonight, our country is less secure and more isolated than at any time in recent history. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has dug us into a very deep hole with very few friends to help us climb out. For the last seven years, this administration has failed to face the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water; the challenge of climate change; and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front against terrorism.
In recent days, we’ve once again seen the consequences of this neglect with Russia’s challenge to the free and democratic country of Georgia. Barack Obama and I will end this neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we’ll help the people of Georgia rebuild.
I’ve been on the ground in Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms: this Administration’s policy has been an abject failure. America cannot afford four more years of this.
Now, despite being complicit in this catastrophic foreign policy, John McCain says Barack Obama isn’t ready to protect our national security. Now, let me ask you: whose judgment should we trust? Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he said only three years ago, “Afghanistan—we don’t read about it anymore because it’s succeeded”? Or should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?
The fact is, al-Qaida and the Taliban—the people who actually attacked us on 9/11—have regrouped in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and are plotting new attacks. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Barack’s call for more troops.
John McCain was wrong. Barack Obama was right.
Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he rejected talking with Iran and then asked: What is there to talk about? Or Barack Obama, who said we must talk and make it clear to Iran that its conduct must change.
Now, after seven years of denial, even the Bush administration recognizes that we should talk to Iran, because that’s the best way to advance our security.
Again, John McCain was wrong. Barack Obama was right.
Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he says there can be no timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq—that we must stay indefinitely? Or should we listen to Barack Obama, who says shift responsibility to the Iraqis and set a time to bring our combat troops home?
Now, after six long years, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government are on the verge of setting a date to bring our troops home.
John McCain was wrong. Barack Obama was right.
Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was proven right.
Folks, remember when the world used to trust us? When they looked to us for leadership? With Barack Obama as our president, they’ll look to us again, they’ll trust us again, and we’ll be able to lead again.
Here are the prepared remarks, and more videos.
And as if that weren’t enough to work the Democrats into a frenzy, then Barack Obama, his badass self, showed up! He thanked the entire Biden family for being on board, complemented his wife on her great convention opener, gave Hillary props for “rock[ing] the house the other night,” and then gave Bill Clinton mad props as well. And then Barack and the whole Biden family filled the stage as the room rocked out to Bruce Springsteen.
Wow. What a night. Tomorrow, Obama will turn it up to eleven…
I’m pretty pleased with Obama’s choice for VP. During one of our long road trips this summer, DH and I ran through a long list of possible VPs, trying to predict the nominees on both tickets (both who we wanted to see on the ticket, and who we thought would get the job). My choice (both for who will get picked and who should get picked) was Biden. He’s got a great resumé, lots experience as chair of the foreign relations committee and member of the judiciary committee, a willingness to engage in debate, and the ability to think on his feet. For years now, DH has referred to him as “Fightin’ Joe Biden,” and I think an attack dog is just what the Democrats need in this presidential race, after two presidential campaigns spent in retreat.
As far as Bush’s stupid war goes, I wish Biden had not voted to go along with it, but in a city full of Chickenhawks, at least the Biden family has not shied away from making a personal investment in the war: Joe’s son, Beau, is set to be deployed in Iraq starting in October.
Biden has a long and strong history with unions and blue collar voters. And unlike John McCain (and potential running mate, Mitt Romney), Joe Biden doesn’t have any trouble counting his homes — he has just one, in Wilmington, Delaware, where he’s lived his whole career. He commutes to D.C. on the train every day (yay for being an Amtrak fan!), and doesn’t even have the means for multiple homes, as his net worth is reportedly just $150,000. This man, from humble beginnings in Scranton, PA — a guy who goes home every night and who spent years as a single parent — knows the value of a hard day’s work and understands the struggles of Americans who are losing ground in the Bush/McCain economy.
I think Obama and Biden will make a good team — that both of them will work hard for the American people in the coming years. They are both intelligent, curious, learned people who have known hard times and have shown dogged determination to achieve the goals they have set for themselves. They did not get to ride on the coattails of their rich fathers or wives to get them ahead in the world, but rather, they figured out how to get there on their own. This is the kind of talent I want to see in the White House next year.
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BTW, there were two HUGE reasons that Hillary was never in the running:
1) Hillary was all too happy to go after a fellow democrat in the primary. If Biden provided fodder for the McCain campaign, Hillary would have given them an embarrassment of riches!
2) Bill. Bill refused to be vetted (he doesn’t want to talk about his presidential library donors) and he proved to be an uncontrollable liability during the primary.
Also, I think it’s worth pointing out this irony: if it weren’t for the die-hard Hillary supporters (and their Joe-Lieberman-for-Connecticut-like attachment to a single person over a common goal), we might have ended up with a female on the ticket — the first woman to ever have a serious shot at the VP job! But their scary insistence that Hillary was the only acceptable choice for either spot on the ticket might have created a fear of alienating already-angry voters even further, taking all other women out of serious consideration. What a sad situation! And what a sad state of affairs for feminism (does the elevation of a single woman to great heights and expectations — to the exclusion of any other women — even qualify as feminism?)!
This is going to be interesting.
I read this a couple of days ago at Joe. My. God., and it’s been running through my head ever since. It’s from E. B. White.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born threre, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something….Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
Speaking of the City, an Ikea store just opened in Red Hook (amid some controversy), and to ease concerns about traffic congestion in the area, Ikea is offering free public transportation to and from the store. Eager consumers are already planning Ikea Hacks to take advantage of the company’s ground-breaking strategy.
But enough of the city and on to other random matters:
- The Eagles went and sold their souls to their corporate masters and Chris the wandering geneticist totally busts them for it. Nicely done.
- After jumping all over Michelle Obama’s patriotism will the right wing give John McCain a free pass? — or will they at least finally lay off the stupid non-story of what Michelle said?
- So, Charlie “Manhunt” Crist, caved in to the wishes of the Wonder Twins, McCain and Bush, and now thinks that we should drill for oil off the coast of Florida. But has he thought of the damage this could do to Florida’s tourist industry? For new leases that won’t start producing meaningful oil for 20-30 years? Maybe we should be truly innovative and think beyond politics: Here’s a funny thing. While the Republicans are arguing that drilling every square inch of America will cut fuel costs, study after study has shown that the effect will be both minimal and several years down the road. On the other hand, just dropping from 65 to 55 will net most cars a 10% savings in fuel costs. That’s far more than we’ll get by turning Florida into the Tar Sands State.
Plus, Joe Biden rocks. UDPATE: or for instant savings, close the Enron loophole! - Al Franken wants “to invest in America again.”
- I saw a lot of MSNBC’s hagiography (update: see Hitchens) after Tim Russert died, and while I understand that they were only trying to do right by the man after losing one of their own, it also made me a bit uncomfortable to listen to them go on and on about the greatness of Russert in what continues to be a field of failure — and as great a man as he was, it was a failure that Russert shared.
- I remember when my father would not pay more than 19¢ a pound for bananas. Those days are clearly over, never to return, and what’s more, the banana as we now know it may soon go extinct.
- Joe Lance is chasing down a story about voting and privacy that was prompted by a card he received in the mail.
- And finally, there’s lots more from the Tennessee blogosphere: Carole Borges wonders who we can trust in the medical field anymore, Tiny Cat finds something that’s just plain weird, and much, much more!
