Tag Archives: Obama

Barack Orwell Obama

“Just don’t call it a surge”.

From a policy perspective I guess I should be happy. The Obama administration is pursuing policies that look identical to those from the last administration, even if they are named differently. It’s become so blatant that even the New York (Obama is the messiah!) Times has begun to report it, and Jon Stewart is laughing at it.

Tens of thousand of troops are pouring into terrorist enclaves. (We used to call that “the surge”)

Know enemies of the state will be detained indefinitely (Close Guantanamo, but move the prisoners to an other secret facility, and keep some there, perhaps, forever)

Pay cap restrictions are being circumvented (The administration is building loop holes into the Pay for Performance act and providing instruction to their employees at the banks on how to use them)

We no longer are fighting a war on terror, now we have “overseas contingency operations” to prevent “man-caused catastrophes” (Listening to Hillary say these ridiculous phrases makes me think of the sweetness of political revenge. No woman from the Midwest can say those words without sounding churlish.)

But somehow I am dishearten by the disingenuousness of it all…

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Finally a Tech Savvy White House

CNN Technology gets swamped on inauguration day, and isn’t sure what to do in “The Moment” with Photosynth. Perhaps they can take few lessons from the new tech savvy White House who is showing some chops in cyber space. PWND!

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The Speech

Leaders lead from the podium. Those who say otherwise do not understand how leadership works. Regardless of your political stripes, few dispute that somewhere along the path of the last eight years George W. Bush stopped leading the country, primarily because he failed at the podium of public opinion.

President Obama has been something of national Rorschach inkblot test. People see in him what they want. His (fabulous) inauguration speech today was no different. Many will see in it what they want.

Here are my picks of favorite quotes. What do they say about me, and what does all this say about us?

Posted in The Annals of Protest | Tagged | 3 Comments

The End Of Cynicism?

Is this the end of cynicism? Obama’s soaring victory speech in Chicago last night was an oratorical flourish of positivism, such as has been missing in public discourses in America for years.

But what does this victory mean to the future tone of discourse in America? Is this the end of cynicism, the tone of voice which has become the best way to identify one as an American? Now that the revolution is over how will we speak, casually and formally, without the ability to mock, snark or deride the archetypes built since the 1960′s?

Certainly the old rebellion is over, so what will replace its messenger, which has been the sound of sarcasm in our voice?

Posted in Best Of, The Annals of Protest | Also tagged | 9 Comments

Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal

Bill Peshel’s site reminds us of a the 1968 mud wrestling match between Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal. Since along with Jean Shepherd, WFB is one of my earliest media influences, I throw my two cents in the ring:

“Regardless of how one feels about his politics – and the terms arrogant, elitist, monarchial, papist all fit – Buckley was a force that influenced politics for decades.”

Posted in Best Of, Visionaries | Also tagged , | 4 Comments
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