Obama Notes

Traffic to Hootsbuddy's Place spiked within hours of Barack Obama's Iowa win. My post of December, 2006, What is Barack Obama's religion? Updated ,has been amended and updated so often it resembles my poor ten-year-old Toyota pickup. Patched up but still running okay. There were nearly two thousand hits to this blog Thursday and upwards of ninety percent were to that post. I don't know how Google works but I'm pleased that the search terms Obama and religion kick up that post on the first page. Thanks, Google.

On a side note, the proliferation of fake blogs is a growing spam menace. I have my Google search preference set to return fifty items per page instead of the default ten or so. Using the Google search bar I can also selectively search News, Blogs, The Net, Images, Groups, etc.

The blog search feature can also enable searches that select only the last hour, last twelve hours, last day, etc. Using the terms Barack Obama and selecting only the last hour brings up only a dozen or so legitimate hits. If you scan down the list you soon come to the gobbledygook that only comes from computer generated prose aimed at fooling other computers. It's not yet clever enough to fool even a stupid human being, but I'm sure that day will come. Meantime get a load of these...

"Well, alex d linz filmography ku klux klan today sake here bill cowher falcons 'Gene senator barack obama nfc playoffs american gladiators zap todd collins washington redskins the bed-plate, and punic wars soldier hines ward nfl ...

She had been made. mrs doubtfire quotes the field rob dyrdek house a barack obama age innocent high jasmine tame rocco dispirito recipes the green turtle restaurant will kate snow bio democratic nominees republicans gma breaking news ...

Strother kate snow rob dyrdek dc shoes this you tube funny videos was rob amp; big season 3 middlin' fernley jobs detroit pistons myspace layouts etonline newslink too barack obama cattle-bars, abc debates jeffrey chodorow free agent ...

Suppose mobile phones gutter topper the sasquatch gang jacksonville fl matt hasselbeck abc debate amit goswami amnesty usa ama supercross to detroit pistons 2007 2008 schedule swimming slowly barack obama age campaign rhythmically ...

This is the new pornography. The difference is that no one can get off looking at it. What a mess. I'm sure someone at Google is working on it. This is the toxic waste of cyberspace.

Back to Obama...

Andrew Sullivan had a hunch last year that Barack Obama was gonna amount to something, so he started collecting his speeches. His post In His Own Words has links to more Obamaspeak than anyone has time to read. Scanning the links, I am struck by the measured tones and consistency of what I find.

Around a year ago, when I was first struck by Barack Obama's oratory, I decided to use the Dish to record his speeches in full as they occurred. I did it because they are rare among contemporary political speeches in being readable and literary. But also because I had the sense I was witnessing history. Here are some links to those posts - and the full text of various speeches - for those of you who would like to hear Obama in less frenzied times over the last twelve months, as he laid out his concrete proposals and general ideas and approach to politics.

Here he is at DePaul, the moment when he reignited his fall campaign. And here's his address at Howard in the wake of the Jena 6 controversy. Here's a commencement address from last summer. Here he is on foreign policy. And here on poverty. There is a meme beginning to go around that he is vague and empty. If you do not know what Obama is proposing in many areas, it's only because you don't know how to use Google. If you want to know more, click the links.

It didn't take me long to find an interesting clip. Here is a part of the Howard University speech following the Jena Six episode in which he candidly agrees with President Bush about something important.

I think its time we took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first time nonviolent drug users for decades. Someone once said, and I quote: 'While minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space, and/or heal people from their disease.' You know who said that? That was George W. Bush--six years ago. And I don't say this very often, but I agree with George W. Bush. The difference is that he hasn't done anything about it. When I am President of the United States, I will. We will review these sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the blind and counterproductive warehousing of nonviolent offenders. We will give first-time nonviolent drug offenders a chance to serve their sentence where appropriate, in the type of drug rehab programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior and reducing recidivism. So let's reform the system. Let's do what's smart. Let's do what's just.

No observer of politics needs to be reminded that there is a great gap between what someone says and what they are able to do. Ask George Bush how far he got with this reference. Or his immigration reform package. Or uncoupling health insurance from employment. Ask Bill Clinton how far he got standing up for gays in the military. That was one of the first initiatives of his first-term administration and he got shot down. Badly shot down. That don't ask, don't tell foolishness has to be one of history's silliest political compromises, but it's all that Clinton could get.

But political realities notwithstanding, we can see where someone stands in principle by hearing what he aims to do. Whether or not he is able to accomplish that goal is a very different subject. Building the political will is the critical first step, and keeping that will alive until the job is done is as important as birthing it.

There is no way to predict how successful anyone will be. Too many unknowns. The best we can do is put someone in office and hope...
Wait...did I say HOPE?

Where have we heard that word before?