If you haven’t made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t buy a house is they don’t have the money. And so, our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident if people have a chance to buy high-quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. That’s what our plan does and nobody disputes that.
And this...
That starts with relieving the biggest burden to families, state budgets, and business: the crushing cost of health care. My plan would not only guarantee that every uninsured American could get the same kind of health care that Members of Congress give themselves, it would bring down premiums by $2500 for the typical family, and bring down costs for the entire country by making our health care system more efficient through better technology and more emphasis on prevention.
Shepard Fairey, the graphic artist who did TIME magazine's Person of the Year cover, makes a statement that speaks for me about my own graphic tribute to the president-elect.
Tomorrow my illustration for Time Magazine’s “Person of The Year” hits the newsstands. While I’m very honored to be validated by a periodical that is nothing short of an American institution, the moment is bittersweet because I’m very disappointed by Obama’s appointment of Rick Warren to deliver his invocation during Obama’s inaugural address. Rick Warren is against gay marriage and reproductive rights, and he does not believe in evolution (maybe he offers himself as proof of lack of evolution). I understand that Obama is trying to appeal to conservatives and evangelicals, but this move is symbolically a slap in the face to many people. Warren is not a uniter, but a divider… he is intolerant in many of his views. I still think Obama is the best choice for president, but I can’t condone Warren’s involvement in Obama’s inauguration, no matter how insignificant it is. While I’m on the subject of gay marriage, I will be donating a chunk of the proceeds from an inauguration poster of Obama I was asked to create to the movement to overturn Prop 8. At first I was considering pulling my inauguration poster, but I think re-directing funds from it to put into a cause I care about is actually more constructive. Plus, I wouldn’t want withdrawing the image to come across as a blanket boycott of Obama. I’m sure I will ultimately disagree with Obama about many things, but I think I will agree with him on more. I think it is important to speak one’s mind, but also to not let the narcissism of petty differences sabotage our unity and progress.
The video is entitled "I'm Confused", but of course we are not confused at all about the fact that what we have witnessed in this race is a story of ethnic and cultural hypocrisy. It's subtle and insidious enough to have escaped the attention of the media and other observers of the political scene, but when the candidates' histories are juxtaposed in this way, the racial bias is breathtaking.
The following is from an email that is going around:
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?
What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.
Educational Background:
Barack Obama: Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations. Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Joseph Biden: University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
vs.
John McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
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
Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call.
If McCain/Palin go on to win the election, and the country continues to slide down the tube with their same old policies, we'll want to look back on the low point of the American electoral "process" and remember what Obama was trying to talk about.
The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism. [...] We chant in unison with Obama that we want change, we yell “yes we can,” and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes away our civil liberties. The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues to fund the war. It refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the government to spy on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells us it is our salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse. And, as so often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer, we keep coming back for more.
When I first learned about the existence of the superdelegates earlier this year, I was aghast at the notion that a group of party elders and party hacks should be able to determine the outcome of the race for the Democratic nomination. It seemed elitist and undemocratic. But now I see the wisdom behind it all.
The outcome of this race is almost certain. In fact, it as certain today as it has been for the last two months. The voters have spoken. (No, not all have voted, but when you have ten voters and you need a majority, you can stop after you get six votes in one direction. It's over.) It is only the spinning of reality by the Clinton campaign and the all too willing, craven and complicit media that has convinced a large portion of the electorate that this is still a contest.
By not putting an end to this process that goes on needlessly, the supers' lack of action only serves to damage Obama's chances in the general. The only thing it does is allow more time for Clinton to convince people that she is a populist and champion of the common man by drinking beer, hunting ducks, and promising fraudulent and irresponsible gas tax holidays - and that Barack is an elitist, unpatriotic, non flag lapel pin wearing angry black man who shares the views of radicals like Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers.
Of course, this is all crap. It is the old politics of fear and racism. It is Rovian, which is the worse thing that can be said of any politician. The only thing missing is the gay bashing and godless abortionists.
The idea of supers now seems like a very good one. They are more well-informed, more savvy and do know better than the average voter, especially the average white, elderly, rural, midwestern blue collar, Reagan Democrat voter. The problem is that they are not doing their job. They are inexplicably complacent, or timid or otherwise unmoved by the fierce urgency of now. We turn our eyes to them to deliver their party and this nation from the Clinton lies and from those remaining voters who are gullible, ill-informed, and bigoted enough to buy into what she is selling.
I have defended Wright up until this point even after the Moyers interview, which I thought was rather harmless and thought it showed the pastor in a positive light. I defended him against criticisms, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't mean to infer that Obama said things for purposes shielding his true thoughts, or for political expediency. But now with consecutive appearances before the NAACP and NPC, he has actively and quite unnecessarily inserted himself deeply into the Democratic campaign, and he has proven me wrong by affirming that indeed he did mean to imply Obama is something of a pandering, disingenuous politician. Whether intentional or no, whether passively or aggressively, the pastor is actively engaged in the process of throwing Obama under the bus.
I continue to argue that it is unfair to hold Obama accountable for his pastor's comments, or for the media or the other two candidates to try to conflate the two men into a single entity. But I am no longer cutting Wright any slack. At all. Perhaps Barack won't or can't denounce him (and I admire him for not doing so), but that doesn't prevent his supporters from doing so.
In a mirror corollary to Obama's position, I am, if not entirely in agreement with, then mostly sympathetic to Wright's socio-political preachings (save for AIDS conspiracy theories and the like). And the man certainly has a right to speak his mind in and about America.
My denunciation is of the man himself, for allowing his enormous ego to damage Obama's campaign. It is hard for me to believe the Reverend is completely unaware of the harm he might inflict. And if that is the case, then one must wonder if he is not intentionally attempting to undermine Obama's chances due to some interpersonal dynamic between the two not yet understood. But whatever the reason, it is unforgivable. With friends like that, who need enemies?
(I hate to end with a cliche, but there it is.)
Update: If an old friend is deliberately trying to run your campaign bus off the road and into a ditch, then the moral imperative is to throw that old friend under that bus and back up over him a few times, for the benefit of not only yourself, but for all the passengers on board, for the good of the country and the world. After having given Wright every benefit of the doubt, only to be rewarded with intentional personal betrayal, Barack did the right thing today.
Do you think the members of the MSM will ever understand that they are actually the real elitists and are the ones that are truly out of touch with the lives or ordinary Amercians and the mood in this country? Don't you suppose they read Frank Rich?
Thus did another overhyped 2008 story line go embarrassingly bust, like such predecessors as the death of the John McCain campaign and the organizational and financial invincibility of the Clinton political machine against a rookie senator from Illinois. Not the least of the reasons that the Beltway has gotten so much wrong this year is that it believes that 2008 is still 1988. It sees the country in its own image — static — instead of as a dynamic society whose culture and demographics are changing by the day.
In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because “they never have before” and “they’ll be tired.”
However out of touch Mr. Obama is with “ordinary Americans,” many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible “YouTube young people” are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on “Meet the Press,” as she did last Sunday, it’s pure farce. It’s typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying “we don’t need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead.” Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he’s Harvard ’67.
Many people were stunned to learn of Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright's belief that HIV was invented by the government as a means of genocide against people of color. What they did not realize is how widely that belief, and other conspiracy theories, is held amongst the black community.
You can even feel the beginnings of respect germinating in places formerly barren from decades of retrograde rhetoric spewed from fear mongering demagogues whose sole reason for being seems to be the deterrence of hope, the halting of action, the deriding of dreams. Obama is an incongruity, wished for but rarely seen, compelling but distrusted by the senses. Real inspiration has been dead for so long on the American scene that half-assed darlings and penny-ante celebrities with the density of meringue have been to hoisted to heroic levels only to be subsequently proven inadequate to the charge, so desperate is America's need for a truly viable, truly courageous and truly substantial leader.
