Politics

The Matthew 25 Network has released a video spot (h/t The Brody File) that emphasizes Obama's fidelity to his wife and family and implicitly how that contrasts with McCain (who left his first wife for his current one despite the fact that she had been seriously injured in a car accident).  Some folks question Obama's character based, for example, on associations with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, etc.  On the other hand, folks don't seem to be too concerned about what McCain's infidelity says about his character.

Here's the Obama ad:

Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks: link) raised the comparison of Edward's actions with McCain's, and when Alan Colmes did the same it apparently sparked some debate on Fox News (Newshounds: link, link).  Here's a link to an LA Times article that describes how McCain's relationships with the Reagans and others were seriously strained by how he treated his first wife (link).

Speaking of Edwards, I don't have too high expectations for Limbaugh, but the other day he went way, way out of bounds while speculating on what motivated Edwards to cheat on Elizabeth (Media Matters: link).

A friend recently wrote:

This election ignore all the lies about obama is a terrorist, or obama is anti christ, or obama will destroy the u.s. those things are ridiculous and they are gonna continue to go out of conrtol. but here's one thing that is true and is equally as disturbing:

In a failed abortion situation, when the baby survives, the question is what do you do with that baby? The united states congress voted on this and there was a general consensus that it was wrong to just let that baby die. However, Obama did not feel the same way. He voted for letting the baby die. Hillary Clinton voted to let the baby live. This is not propaganda, google this, I'll even give you what Obama said to defend his side:

"that we live in a pluralistic society, and that I can't impose my religious views on another."
-Obama

Its not a matter of religion, it's a matter of the right to life, the most important right in America. Some people will argue in the case where a baby will harm the health of the mother that the abortion is fair. But in a failed abortion the baby is outside of the mother and if everyone shared Obama's view they just let the baby lay out to die.

This is an extremely ugly and graphic topic, but I think its necessary to hear. Maybe McCain is old, pretty boring, and just kind of a weird guy, but he at least has never in his 200 years of congress life voted against life.

If you don't like either just do what I'm doing write in Ron Paul.

Ron Paul: Youtube him

As a HuffPo article (of course, sympathetic to Obama) points out (link), my friend's summary gets some of the facts wrong (e.g., Obama's vote was in the Illinois senate not the US senate and there are reasons other than a disregard for life that may have prompted Obama to vote against the Illinois bill).  That's not to say that Obama's position/votes related to abortion don't bother me.

Regardless, I see in this appeal from my friend (and most conversation about abortion) a perpetuation of the focus on ideology rather than practicality.  The American public is pretty evenly divided between the view that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare and that it should be illegal and rare. Ideologically those two views are very different, but practically they are very similar. Both parties focus on ideology as a wedge issue, dig in to give no ground, and as a result do things that don't help.  Rather than focus on ideological differences, an approach that has led to stalemate with little hope for significant change in the foreseeable future, I'm more interested in both sides focusing on where they agree and can work together to do practical things to reduce the abortion rate.

Some examples are suggested in an article by Tony Campolo: Pro-Life Democrats Call for an Abortion Reduction Plank

One of the common themes I'm hearing in the current race for the president is that we don't know who the real Barack Obama is.  Is he really the post-racial, bipartisan, uniter that he claims to be now or is he really the typical politician of his early career in Chicago, and ultra-liberal to boot?  By contrast, at least McCain is a known commodity.  For example, see this post of the same title by Rod Dreher: Who's the real Obama?

Dreher writes:

It is all but impossible to reconcile the Obama that emerges from [his days in the Illinois legislature] with the Obama we're presented with today. It suggests one of two things: either today's Obama is a fraud, an ultraliberal masquerading as a moderate, or he is a man of no fixed convictions, a Zelig-like chameleon able to be whatever he wants to be for the sake of advancing his own political career.

Again: who's the real Obama? With McCain, you may not much like what you get (I don't), but at least you know what you're getting. With Obama? He's a mystery. Brooks is right: a number of people can't commit to him because they aren't sure what they're committing to

I don't get this.  Just look at all of the shifts McCain has been making to become more palatable to the Republican base (e.g., on torture, offshore drilling, Bush tax cuts, etc.).  Romney has done the same thing too on a variety of issues.  Of course, it makes sense to try to figure out who Obama really is - but I don't see that McCain is really a known commodity either.

Word clouds from the campaigns' web sites (link):

Yesterday Obama said:

"There are things that you can do individually though to save energy," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much."

Today, Limbaugh and others ridiculed the comment:

"My friends, this is laughable of course, but it’s stupid!  It is stupid! How many of you remember the seventies? When we had these shortages, all through the Jimmy Carter years and we have all these tips, all these tips on how to save gasoline?  Avoid jackrabbit starts, keep your tires properly inflated, there’s a list of about ten or twelve these things.  I said if I follow each one of these things I’ll have to stop the car every five miles, siphon some fuel out, for all the fuel I’m going to be saving. This is ridiculous.  This is a presidential candidate and he's talking about keeping your tires inflated and getting regular tune-ups and that would save as much oil as drilling would produce. And this guy is the Democrat presidential nominee.  Who has filled his head with this stuff"

I accept that some might find the statement laughable because convincing everyone to diligently keep their tires properly inflated is not practical. Fair enough, but that’s not what Obama was intending to communicate anyway. I figure he was making the point that conservation and improved efficiency will inevitably be part of the energy solution, as will technology advances and development of other energy sources. As a statement of fact, Obama’s probably doesn’t hold up exactly…a careful examination indicates proper tire inflation would probably only account for 2/3 of offshore drilling (link), but I’d hardly say that’s a laughable comparison (link) and would also point out that Republican governors of both California and Florida recently (one of who is on the short list for the Republican VP spot) (link):

…appealed to those with the real power to make change — average citizens — to drive slower, keep engines tuned and tires properly inflated, to buy hybrids and lower overall consumption.

Of course, that quote hardly a complete summary of Obama’s energy policy. If you care to be informed, a thorough description of his energy policy can be found here: link