Thursday, June 19, 2008

Morning Whiskey - 06/19/2008

1. Volunteers for Obama's campaign prevented 2 Muslim women wearing headscarves from sitting behind him and Gore the other night. First, Obama has had women in headscarves sitting behind him before. Secondly, take off your damn headscarves. If the candidate you support, and will bring a differently level of respect for your faith than Bush/McCain, swallow your damn pride and take that nonsense off. 13% of the country believe Obama is some secret Muslim terrorist. When he fist bumps, they call it a 'terrorist fist jab'. Obama has an image problem, and all I'm saying is that people shouldn't wearing attire that would further that problem. It's not like black people show up with 'black power' t-shirts on or something. All Obama supporters now need to think of 'old white set in their ways narrow minded male swing voters' if they want change. These were 2 volunteers working in Detroit. I don't think it will happen ever again.
UPDATE: The women got the apology they sought directly from Obama.....apparently they will continue to support Obama....where were they going to go? McCain? Back to Hillary? Good thing you didn't put yourselves first and see the bigger picture, ladies.
2. But that doesn't prevent stories about how Obama is controlling access
3. New Muslim controversy....Obama's half brother saying his brother will be elected in spite of his Muslim background.....Taps goes through it and says the half brother never said it, even though it didn't stop Fox News from throwing it up on the air.
4. I've said before that if Obama wins Ohio or Florida the election is over and Virginia or North Carolina is a back breaker. Well DCW's general election tracker shows that Obama is dominating McCain at this moment.
5. Morning Joe is functionally retarded. He gets an email on his blackberry saying Iraq's foreign minister feels that Obama's position on Iraq is similar to John McCain's. This goes on to be that Obama is double-talking on Iraq like he double-talked on NAFTA back in March. On to Obama doesn't mean he will pull out of Iraq. On to Obama is a phony. On to Obama doesn't have any foreign policy credibility. On to Obama can't be trusted. I can't even find the article over at the Washington Post, but Morning Joe was reading it off of his blackberry because we all know that is where TV news should come from. I just got an email on my blackberry detailing the 50 best ways to have sex in public. Is that news too?
6. McCain calls for building 45 nuclear reactors. I couldn't find anything about nuclear reactors on Obama's site. I agree with McCain and think it should be at least tripled. 100 nuclear reactors supply 20% of our power.
7. All the big oil companies are going back to Iraq in a must read story. They were kicked out years ago, we invaded, and now before Bush leaves office they are securing no-bid contracts.
8. The field looks at Obama and his new democratic mentality where we won't back down from a fight.....I have yet to see Obama admit he is wrong on a policy he has taken.
9. He better cut that rat tail.....leading GOP VP candidate hosts McCain, and yes, he wears a rat tail....apparently he cut the mullet.
10. 538.com finds Obama gets a huge bounce in Appalachia and 538.com goes over yesterday's polling.

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posted by Brian Francis at 7:03 AM 18 Comments home Email This! StumbleUpon! del.icio.us! Digg This!

18 Comments:

Blogger Lars Rupert said...

re the morning joe stuff:

to make matters worse, ford was on 'defending' obama

7:48 AM  
Blogger Brian Francis said...

ford looked like a deer in headlights

8:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, Obama's Appalachian white voter problem was more about running against a very actively campaigning former president. That never got factored in enough, that "the Clintons" had been doing everything they could think to do to set this up for her going back a dozen years. Obama was running against a virtual incumbent Democratic nominee. She wasn't an incumbent president but she was sort of an incumbent nominee.

9:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This "whatever Obama does is never bad" thing is getting ridiculous.

Like it or not, the headscarf thing WAS a goofup by the Obama campaign. No, the volunteers should NOT be expected to take off their headscarves. The whole point of the Obama campaign is to be inclusive and beat the fearmongers - not to run away from those fights and let the bigots have their way. "Black power" shirts are political statements; headscarves are part of a religious and cultural identity. You wouldn't ask people to take off a cross worn on their neck - it's stupid to ask people to take off a headscarf.

2. The Appalachia thing is a small bounce in territory that is still unfriendly to him, like it or not. When you have 20% of *Democratic* voters openly admitting they are racist in the exit polls in some of those areas, that's a problem that's not going away. Polls fluctuate up and down, but I wouldn't count on winning WV/TN/KY, or those rural parts of Ohio or Pennsylvania.

10:03 AM  
Blogger rikyrah said...

I could not DISAGREE MORE with you about #1.

This was a STUPID STUPID STUPID move by the Obama campaign.

This was Michigan. There isn't a larger concentration of Arabs in America than in the Detroit/Dearborn Area. They not only vote, but they GIVE MONEY.

McCain has already messed up with this group, earlier this year, when he insulted one of THE biggest fundraisers in the Arab community.

That meant, with McCain's insult, and the natural hostility of the GOP towards Arabs/Muslims, that community was prime pickings for Obama.

He SHOULD HAVE BEEN able to pick up that voting block with little cost to himself, despite the Muslim rumors.

Now, he's messed that up, and he and McCain are basically on even ground. He's now seen as a Black Man who insulted Arab WOMEN. (Only THEY can insult their women - not some Black guy).

So, he just bigfooted a ' gimme', and a way to keep Michigan solidly in the Democratic column.

Dumb.ass.move.

10:57 AM  
Anonymous megan said...

I completely agree with the fact that this was a total goof on the part of the Obama campaign. It does nothing but completely undermine what his campaign is supposed to be all about. Those women have every right to be pissed, and Obama's camp just opened themselves up to the bullshit that is more than likely to come his way by the McCain camp. They are going to use this to spout that "see! He's a politician too! Don't believe his lofty rhetoric!"

The sad thing, however, is that I can understand the hesitancy to set up this photo-op for the Right. I can definitely see them using it completely wrong and out of context--which they have a pretty good track record of doing.

But, I agree wholeheartedly that this was a dumbass thing to do. It made me cringe when I saw it. How many bets that we see a headscarf soon?

BF--I personally agree that the headscarf shit is stupid. I see no point in it. But, I'm not a Muslim. And I respect their right to agree in any stupid thing they wish--because it's THEIR religion and not mine. And that is supposed to be the beauty of Obama's campaign--INCLUSION and UNITING of everyone, no matter what spectrum exists in beliefs and opinions.

1:08 PM  
Anonymous megan said...

oh, and we MUST be willing to say Obama is wrong when he wrong. The more supporters attempt to paint him as some sort of gospel that can say and do no wrong---the more its going to come off as a kool-aid sort of movement.

1:09 PM  
Blogger Brian Francis said...

I put responsibility on the people involved. Yes, the Obama campaign shouldn't have told them no. That goes without saying. But it is the responsibility of the supporters of Obama to represent in the best way to get him elected. If that means taking off the burka, so be it.

2:17 PM  
Blogger Sandalstraps said...

Brian Francis,

I wanted to leave a comment here to let you know that, in an update to a post of mine on the incident of Obama volunteers turning away Muslim women, I responded to the part of this post that dealt with that event.

As a matter of self-disclosure, I am an active Obama supporter who proudly voted for him in the primary and will proudly vote for him again in the general. I have also written a number of essays both praising him and the conduct of his campaign, and defending him against baseless (and often racist) smears. That said, both in person and in my post, I am highly critical of this particular decision, for reasons that I hope are clear from the text of my post itself.

I also have a few lines critical of your comments concerning these two women. I hope that you will not those comments as insults or personal attacks. I don't know you, and thus hold nothing against you. However, I do take issue with what you said, and I hope that - if you take a few moments to read what I wrote, you will at least consider the implications of your statement that these women should just take off their damn scarves.

Thank you for your time and attention, and I wish you and this blog well.

2:44 PM  
Blogger Brian Francis said...

Sandalstraps.....knock it off. This is why democrats lose, election after election, year after year.

Obviously, it is disrespectful to the faith of these women. But I want to win more than I want to respect their faith. Maybe that makes me no better than the Republicans, but I take winning over losing with honor any damn day of the weak. There are no moral victories.

Republicans stand in lock step behind their nominee. My contention is that it is the responsibility of Obama supporters, including these women, to get in line and protect Obama's flank. If they don't fall in line and minimize the problems they pose for Obama's appeal to independent white voters, he won't win. Supporters of Republican candidates treat every interraction with swing voters as a job interview. They are professional and don't do anything to offend the voter. They know that whereever they go and whatever they do affects people's perception of their candidate. YOU ARE ALWAYS SELLING OBAMA if you support him and let people know it.

What is the number one barrier to entry for people still unsure about Obama? "Is he a closet Muslim who will bomb all our cities with our nuclear stockpiles once he gets elected?" I'm not talking bigots and racists, I'm talking over 50 white Democratic voters. It is unbelievable that more Republicans (90%) are voting for McCain than Democrats (81%) voting for Obama right now. I don't care about historical trends and how Gore and Kerry ran this way. This isn't a traditional election. Obama should be getting 100 of the Democratic vote. The only reason McCain is competitive is because Obama isn't. The reason Obama isn't is because he has an image problem. He is looked at with skepticism by voters who would normally vote straight Democrat.

Democrats lose because they put their issues before the campaign of the candidate they represent. No issue shows that more than the fact we are talking about two OBAMA SUPPORTERS who are outraged they were turned away. The crazy thing is that this will actually rebound to Obama's benefit, that is how bad his closet Muslim who we can't trust image problem is. The fact he turned away two muslims will cause a large part of the electorate to breathe a sigh of relief.

4 months from now, you can let it all hang out, burkas and all, but until then don't do a god damn thing if it will make Obama look bad, threatening, or imply he is a risk.

Sorry to say it, but if you really want Obama to win and bring about an America that will respect your religion, sex, orientation, whatever, then stuff that shit away for another 4 months, iron your shirt, put on a tie, and go out and sell him. That includes Muslims. If you want Obama to win, take off the headscarves. You don't like me saying that? Then tell your cousins and family members who are moderates back in the middle east to stop tacitly supporting Al Queda and bin Laden. You and your Muslim brothers and sisters haven't stood up to the people who hijacked your faith and our airlines. Sitting by silently and letting them recruit the weak in your communities is why your headscarve will scare people into voting for McCain.

3:43 PM  
Blogger Sandalstraps said...

Brian,

I'm not a Muslim, I'm a Christian. Please try not to make assumptions about my faith (or anyone else's) from a position of abject ignorance. Since my blog is principally a Christian theology blog, discerning my faith before you spout off ignorant and inflammatory comments about me letting my burkas hang out in four months, would not have been difficult for you.

It is an all-too-slippery slope to move from your argument, "I take winning over losing with honor any damn day of the weak" to Bush-Rove politics. Not only does that lead to the elimination of our cherished civil liberties (including the Constitutionally-granted right to freely exercise one's religion), but it also no longer works.

Barack Obama is winning not because he stole the Republican's play book, but because he has sold Americans on the notion that the conduct of politics matters, and that there is a better way to participate in the political process than to prey on our worst fears and basest impulses.

So, no, I won't "knock it off." I'm not hating on the man or his campaign: I'm calling them to live up to the promises embedded in their politics of hope.

Don't get so cynically mired in a vile political process that you're willing to justify this sort of bigotry in the name of winning an election. Not only would such justification be morally repugnant, but it would also fail to deliver the long-anticipated victory. The day Barack Obama becomes just another politician is the day he can no longer transcend the handicap placed on him by America's entrenched racism.

In defending this, in other words, you're not doing Sen. Obama any favors. If you can't see that, then I hope you'll at least see the wisdom in Rikyrah's analysis, which rests less on an appeal to abstract ideals and more on an appeal to critically engage political implications. I say this was a case of bad ethics, Rikyrah says it was a case of bad politics, and we're both right.

Any way, I've wasted enough of your time. But please do try to actually hear what I'm saying.

I really do wish you well, and hope you hear the comments with a charitable spirit. I have a great deal of empathy and compassion for you, even though your words on this particular subject drift toward bigoted hate-speech.

4:22 PM  
Blogger Dan Parker said...

Not picking a side, but I believe Brian's "you" that he was referring to was the two women in question, not to sandalstraps.

Again, I'm not picking sides, but Brian's point is basically being made here in that two gung-ho Obama supporters are basically infighting.

Not sayin'; just sayin'.

4:30 PM  
Blogger Dan Parker said...

The way I look at this whole thing is that I understand where Brian is coming from, but I ask the question:

Barack hasn't really backed down from any of the attacks thus far, so why would he be a shrinking violet about this one? All he needs to say is: If I'm such a Muslim, why was everyone harping on me for spending 20 years in a Christian Church (Rev. Wright)?

Finally, it's not like Obama himself came over and turned these women away. He's being held to an unfairly higher standard, in that everyone he's ever met or associated with somehow is in play, and yet the fact that McCain ACTUALLY WAS one of the fucking Keating Five doesn't even get mentioned.


Then again, I also consider myself an intelligent person with critical thinking skills (for example: how in 2004 was John Kerry both a pathological flip-flopper and yet also "always on the left bank of the mainstream" when it came to issues? He certainly couldn't be both!), so to assume that the rest of the watered down electorate would get something as fundamental as that can also be a reach.

4:36 PM  
Blogger Brian Francis said...

Sandalstraps....spare me.

My point was not about you at all, it was about the two women who shouldn't have raised a ruckus but chose to because they are selfish. You are just the sensitive messenger who thinks we should all hold hands and love each other fo who we all are because each of us is a unique individual who is special, which is absolute nonsense. It is time to suck it up, bury our uniqueness, and not do anything that would make Obama look bad, say parade around my new same sex lover, or protest a hearing on the war, or generally act like left wing nut jobs who have a particular cause that is more important to them than anything. Obama wins in November if we are a united front. Not a bunch of whiny interest groups all looking for a moment in the spotlight for their pet project. The battle is now between Republicans and Democrats, not Barack Obama and two dumb Muslim women and the 2 dumb volunteers who barred them from being seated.

My point is not whether or not it was ok to bar them, it is obviously not, but point is that raising a ruckus, as these two women chose to do, hurts Obama.

As I said, I am perfectly fine with these two women being inconvenienced if it means winning in November. I am perfectly fine if these women swallow their pride and don't tell a soul what happened, as they should have done. And I am perfectly fine if these two women take off their damn headscarves even if it pains them to do so. It isn't about them. It is about the rest of the country. If they cared about Obama enough to know their shit, they would have pointed out to these volunteers that Obama has had Muslim women behind him numerous times during the campaign. But they didn't. They wanted, and got, an apology. But they made Obama look like a jackass in the first place.

My opinion is that the two volunteers were wrong for barring them, but the two Muslim women were equally wrong for going to the press.

You don't air your dirty laundry if you want to win. This was the principle argument made for months against Hillary Clinton. She should get out of the race because she is tearing down the nominee, and given the quotes being used against Obama all come from Hillary but are spoken by right wingers, there is some credence to that.

Both the Muslim women, and the campaign volunteers made Obama look bad, so spare me with the Muslim women should be respected. The disrespected themselves when they chose to play for the Republicans yesterday.

And they do need to tell their damn community to stamp out extremism in their midst. Moderate Muslims are the first line of defense in the war on terror, but they tacitly sit by. Silence is culpability.

6:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"But I want to win more than I want to respect their faith."

That's truly sad. You've lost all perspective if that's the case. The whole philosophy of the Obama movement is that you do things the right way. You talk about how those Muslim supporters should take off their headscarves to help Obama. Your attitude as an Obama supporters probably hurts him more than a picture of two Muslim women in a crowd.

"Republicans stand in lock step behind their nominee."

BS. A lot of top Republicans including 14 House & Senate members won't even endorse him.

"Supporters of Republican candidates treat every interraction with swing voters as a job interview. They are professional and don't do anything to offend the voter."

BS. At the Texas GOP convention, a vendor was selling "If Obama wins, will it still be called the White House" buttons? You think that was professional and non-offensive?

You don't think the things that Rush Limbaugh or the Falwells of the world say don't offend voters? You don't think that calling a fist-jab a terrorist symbol is offensive to potential voters? Republicans are offensive to voters all the time.

"YOU ARE ALWAYS SELLING OBAMA if you support him and let people know it."

Maybe you need to take that to heed yourself if you really believe in the Obama ideals.

9:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"My point was not about you at all, it was about the two women who shouldn't have raised a ruckus but chose to because they are selfish."

Absolute and total BS. Your point was that the women should have taken off their headscarves - you never once mentioned going to the media in your first post or your comments here. Don't act like a whiny politician and try to back away from it.

And then you compounded it by calling them "dumb Muslim women". That's both rude and flat out ignorant - you have no idea the intelligence or lackof of those people. They have every right to expect the campaign to treat them properly. The fact that you think they should just be submissive is, frankly, disrespectful.

And for all your talk about them representing the Obama campaign, you and your blog do so as well - and this is an absolutely disgusting way to do it, and shows the worst of people in politics.

Fortunately, Obama did personally apologize to them - unlike you, he actually realizes how wrong his campaign's actions were.

10:10 PM  
Blogger Mark Joseph said...

Some of you people are waaaayyyy too sensitive.

Should these women have been treated like this? No.

Were the staffers really dumb? Yes.

Does anyone think that this is how the campaign as a whole or Obama rolls? No, again.

Should these women have turned the mistake of some staffers into a national news story that only hurts the big picture of Obama as president? Big fat no.

The touchy-feely, feel-good bullshit of whining to the news cameras and apologies and everything else is stupid and counterproductive.

The women were wronged, no doubt. They got their apologies. Congratulations on helping John McCain.

10:45 PM  
Blogger Brian Francis said...

anonymous....I did say in my original comment here that they were wronged. "I put responsibility on the people involved. Yes, the Obama campaign shouldn't have told them no. That goes without saying. But it is the responsibility of the supporters of Obama to represent in the best way to get him elected. If that means taking off the burka, so be it."

The Obama campaign to me doesn't mean that we will all get along. I don't care about that one bit. Getting along doesn't pay the bills...a good economy that works for the 95% of people who make under 100k instead of rich people who don't need extra money before the rest does. Getting along doesn't prevent whackjobs in the middle east from doing everything they can to bring down this country...getting off crude oil does. What it means to me is a group of Democrats, some shady as Republicans, will take over the government from head to toe, and almost eliminate the Republican party in the process. I don't see the Republicans as a necessary part of our political process. I see most of them as counterproductive to us achieving things we shouldn't even be discussing, we should just be doing. Democrats, because of dumb stuff like these headscarves, have ceded conservatism to Republicans....who aren't conservatives in the least. Democrats should be pounding this every day..but they don't because they like losing.

Any deviation from a democrat or Obama supporter that hits Obama from the left is unacceptable until November. He isn't God, and when he is president he should be held accountable. But until then, calling him or his campaign out is an unnecessary and willful distraction. He isn't president yet, and untl he is, John McCain will be doing enough tearing down of Obama that we shouldn't help out.

3:11 AM  

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