Comparison of warm and cool shades of grey. Image Credit: Knulclunk, vectorized by Fvasconcellos
From Shades Of Grey To B&W – Obama Comes Into Focus
This rocket ship ground swell of support for Barack Obama is pretty amazing when one just stands and watches what is actually going on. The press is in the tank for Obama, he never gets questioned on any subject that requires meat to be on the bone to answer … and when he gives only a bare bones response to a difficult question, no follow-up question that would flesh out a real answer is forthcoming.
“Yes We Can”, “Change You Can Believe In”, “Moving Forward Into The Future”, “The Audacity Of Hope”, is all we are fed on the way to the Democrat Party political convention to be held this summer. No real pushback on the issues of Gay Marriage, Abortion, the tensions developing in South America, Israel and the rocket attacks of 2008, the reality of a stronger, more Communist Russia, and the changing world economic landscape.
But now, we do not have to wait on the Mainstream Media (MSM) to do this work of definition for us anymore. Barack Obama, in an unguarded yet genuine moment, captured and reported on by a “citizen journalist” posting in the Huffington Post, Barack Obama has provided us with a glimpse of the core values embedded in his belief system.
By stating to a group of Democrat Party faithful at a fundraiser in San Francisco April 6, 2008, that the way to understand a large group of voters in small town America is to first explain why they “cling” on to religious faith and principles, personal freedom and gun ownership, the dislike toward open-borders immigration, and caution in the acceptance of people different than themselves is a bitterness built as a result of a 25 year shifting economic landscape.
This opinion by Jonah Goldberg excerpted from The Los Angeles Times -
Barack Obama, the yuppie candidate
By Jonah Goldberg - April 15, 2008
Barack Obama is finally coming into focus.
For a while now, the Obamaphiles have insisted that their candidate represents a profound break with the past. No more culture wars. No more "re-litigating the 1960s," in Obama's own words.
But what about re-litigating the 1980s?
There's always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that's been hard to pinpoint. But I think I've got it: They're self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which was to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.
For those too young to remember, "yuppie" was shorthand for young urban professionals
----
Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies -- like the Obamas.
The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to '80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she's complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League law degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family's half-million-dollars-a-year income.
----
It's Ronald Reagan -- the president of the 1980s -- who seems to loom so large in Obama's world. (Recall how last year, Obama caught some flak suggesting he might be a new Ronald Reagan.) Reagan famously restored confidence in the nation while reducing confidence in government as the solution to our problems.
----
The Reagan Revolution moved the country durably to the right -- so much so that even Democrats saw the writing on the wall.
----
Bill Clinton's 1992 victory stemmed from the fact that he was a "different kind of Democrat" -- that is, one who understood the lessons of Reaganism, or at least claimed to, and rejected the "brain dead policies" of the old Democratic Party. He was a pro-death-penalty free-trader who oversaw the triumph of the Reaganite critique of welfare.
It's as if Barack Obama spent the 1990s in some kind of Democratic Brigadoon -- and I guess Cambridge, Mass., and the South Side of Chicago might qualify -- and didn't keep up with his party, let alone the nation. Barack Obama, the man of the future, in fact stands athwart that history yelling "Stop."
This is the best way to understand his recent comments at a San Francisco fundraiser as he explained his challenge of connecting with rural and small town voters.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," he said, "and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. ... It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Later, when his comments sparked a controversy, he dismissed it as a "little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."
But everybody doesn't know anything of the sort. Not in this decade anyway. Obama's merely recycling the liberal cliches of the 1980s, namely that Pennsylvania's "bitter" voters have been duped by "wedge issues" like guns, religion and racial resentment. New Democrats recognized that wedge issues are legitimate concerns. Old Democrats remain in denial.
----
Slate columnist Mickey Kaus has been waiting for Obama to "pivot" to the center as Clinton did in 1992. But it may be that America's most reliably liberal senator doesn't think he has to. He isn't a unifier. He's a counter-revolutionary. And waiting for him to pivot is like waiting for Godot.
Reference Here>>
These observations by Jonah Goldberg, we at MAXINE believe, are the best gauge on the what, why, where, when, and how a Senator Barack Obama’s presidency would look like and the shape it would take.
A counter-revolutionary Marxist willing to place socialism over personal freedom in order to bring proper definition to a group of people HE doesn’t understand or relate to ... Americans!
This rocket ship ground swell of support for Barack Obama is pretty amazing when one just stands and watches what is actually going on. The press is in the tank for Obama, he never gets questioned on any subject that requires meat to be on the bone to answer … and when he gives only a bare bones response to a difficult question, no follow-up question that would flesh out a real answer is forthcoming.
“Yes We Can”, “Change You Can Believe In”, “Moving Forward Into The Future”, “The Audacity Of Hope”, is all we are fed on the way to the Democrat Party political convention to be held this summer. No real pushback on the issues of Gay Marriage, Abortion, the tensions developing in South America, Israel and the rocket attacks of 2008, the reality of a stronger, more Communist Russia, and the changing world economic landscape.
But now, we do not have to wait on the Mainstream Media (MSM) to do this work of definition for us anymore. Barack Obama, in an unguarded yet genuine moment, captured and reported on by a “citizen journalist” posting in the Huffington Post, Barack Obama has provided us with a glimpse of the core values embedded in his belief system.
By stating to a group of Democrat Party faithful at a fundraiser in San Francisco April 6, 2008, that the way to understand a large group of voters in small town America is to first explain why they “cling” on to religious faith and principles, personal freedom and gun ownership, the dislike toward open-borders immigration, and caution in the acceptance of people different than themselves is a bitterness built as a result of a 25 year shifting economic landscape.
This opinion by Jonah Goldberg excerpted from The Los Angeles Times -
Barack Obama, the yuppie candidate
By Jonah Goldberg - April 15, 2008
Barack Obama is finally coming into focus.
For a while now, the Obamaphiles have insisted that their candidate represents a profound break with the past. No more culture wars. No more "re-litigating the 1960s," in Obama's own words.
But what about re-litigating the 1980s?
There's always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that's been hard to pinpoint. But I think I've got it: They're self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which was to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.
For those too young to remember, "yuppie" was shorthand for young urban professionals
----
Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies -- like the Obamas.
The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to '80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she's complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League law degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family's half-million-dollars-a-year income.
----
It's Ronald Reagan -- the president of the 1980s -- who seems to loom so large in Obama's world. (Recall how last year, Obama caught some flak suggesting he might be a new Ronald Reagan.) Reagan famously restored confidence in the nation while reducing confidence in government as the solution to our problems.
----
The Reagan Revolution moved the country durably to the right -- so much so that even Democrats saw the writing on the wall.
----
Bill Clinton's 1992 victory stemmed from the fact that he was a "different kind of Democrat" -- that is, one who understood the lessons of Reaganism, or at least claimed to, and rejected the "brain dead policies" of the old Democratic Party. He was a pro-death-penalty free-trader who oversaw the triumph of the Reaganite critique of welfare.
It's as if Barack Obama spent the 1990s in some kind of Democratic Brigadoon -- and I guess Cambridge, Mass., and the South Side of Chicago might qualify -- and didn't keep up with his party, let alone the nation. Barack Obama, the man of the future, in fact stands athwart that history yelling "Stop."
This is the best way to understand his recent comments at a San Francisco fundraiser as he explained his challenge of connecting with rural and small town voters.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania," he said, "and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. ... It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Later, when his comments sparked a controversy, he dismissed it as a "little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."
But everybody doesn't know anything of the sort. Not in this decade anyway. Obama's merely recycling the liberal cliches of the 1980s, namely that Pennsylvania's "bitter" voters have been duped by "wedge issues" like guns, religion and racial resentment. New Democrats recognized that wedge issues are legitimate concerns. Old Democrats remain in denial.
----
Slate columnist Mickey Kaus has been waiting for Obama to "pivot" to the center as Clinton did in 1992. But it may be that America's most reliably liberal senator doesn't think he has to. He isn't a unifier. He's a counter-revolutionary. And waiting for him to pivot is like waiting for Godot.
Reference Here>>
These observations by Jonah Goldberg, we at MAXINE believe, are the best gauge on the what, why, where, when, and how a Senator Barack Obama’s presidency would look like and the shape it would take.
A counter-revolutionary Marxist willing to place socialism over personal freedom in order to bring proper definition to a group of people HE doesn’t understand or relate to ... Americans!
