Posts from — August 2008

This article from The Atlantic makes some good points about why Obama has been so successful fundraising in Silicon Valley. The most interesting:

In Silicon Valley’s unique reckoning, what everyone else considered to be Obama’s major shortcomings—his youth, his inexperience—here counted as prime assets.

Young and inexperienced people are often the most successful here, and they tend to be the ones that trigger the big changes (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) I never really made the connection before, though.

The question of experience in this year’s presidential election has obviously become quite a bit more complicated in the last couple of days. The obvious narrative is that McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) completely undermines his “experience” argument. The McCain campaign can’t back off on experience, because that would expose how cynical the whole argument was to begin with. Thus, they’re left claiming that Palin’s less than two years as governor of Alaska are not only greater than Obama’s 8 years in state senate and 4 years in US senate, but so much greater that Obama is a risky choice, and Palin is ready to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

First, some good stuff. Palin has executive governmental experience, unlike any of the other candidates, and has shown an ability to fight through establishment and accomplish some anti-corruption goals. That’s a valuable skill, certainly, and fits well with McCain’s “maverick” theme.

McCain claims that we’re in a dangerously unstable world and in the midst of a battle for civilization against islamic terrorism. McCain plays this up in his fear ad:

Obama is “dangerously unprepared” to be president, according to the ad.

On this front, Obama is undoubtedly more qualified and experienced. He has served on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, as well as the Homeland Security committee, and was the chairman of the European Affairs subcommittee. He’s made trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa before his trip this Summer. Palin has also traveled a bit, visiting troops in Kuwait and Germany, though apparently she had to get a passport for that trip. According to Time, “It’s not clear what Palin thinks about foreign policy or many other national issues”. Obama has been talking on the record about his stance on foreign policy issues for years, showing not just where he’d like us to go, but also demonstrating the depth of his understanding.

Even more worrisome than undermining McCain’s experience argument is the undermining of his Country First theme. Obama’s first criteria for picking a VP, which he shared several times, was that the person should be ready to be President. That’s what it should be, as the main function of VP is to replace the President. McCain clearly picked someone who would help him get elected, not someone who would help govern or would be the best President.

It’ll be interesting to see how things look in a couple of weeks. There are clearly worse feasible picks than Palin, but early polling suggests that independents are less likely to vote for McCain with Palin on the ticket.

(from flickr: ccaviness)

Apparently these krispy kreme bacon cheddar cheeseburgers were created at google NYC’s cafe for the head chef’s birthday.

I think I’d try a couple of bites.

“In Calm Panic” – seems like a strangely appropriate anagram for the pick.

Here’s a chart from the Washington Post comparing the candidates’ tax plans:

(click to view just the image)

The analysis is from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

Now, whether or not either of these plans actually happen is questionable, but the point here is to understand the priorities of the candidates and keep some perspective when they start throwing numbers around.

You can find out what your tax change might look like on the Obama plan at ObamaTaxCut.com. The data is real, though if your taxes will go up, the site just says “you will probably not get a tax cut”.

Important quote from the site:

“Barack Obama will cut taxes for over 95% of American families. (even though more than half of American think he’ll raise their taxes)”

OK, that’s enough politics for now…

On Monday, completely by coincidence, I read a section of a history book about slave revolts in the 1850s and then watched Michelle Obama’s speech. It really put things into perspective.

Video:

Obama’s speech was different than I and many people expected, with less soaring rhetoric and more talk about policy, some of it specific. That’s a great choice, as it undercuts the McCain theme that Obama’s campaign only consists of vague talk. He also went through and connected members of his family to common American stories, aiming to lessen his ‘otherness’ in some people’s eyes. I’m really curious to watch the speeches at the Republican convention. I’m guessing that the main themes will be the same ones we’ve been hearing: we can’t “admit defeat” in Iraq, we need more oil to satisfy that addiction and John McCain puts his country first (wink, POW, etc).

You can watch the speech here.

Partially interesting interview:

If you haven’t already heard of Ubiquity, you’re probably not in its initial target audience. It’s an extension to firefox that lets you do some commands that weren’t possible before (video below). I finally tried it out tonight, and it shows a lot of potential, though I haven’t really seen anything that I really would use regularly. I would like to try writing a command for it, though, but I’m at a loss for ideas. Do you have any?

I noticed during last week’s Meet the Press that Tom Brokaw kept making vague anti-Obama statements in passing, which was unlike his performance in past weeks. Then, he said this tonight:

Being a former POW does not mean nobody can criticize you in the future. It’d be one thing if the democrats were criticizing him for his plane being shot down, but that’s not the case. McCain’s POW story is important and is a good showcase of his character, but it doesn’t make him right on Iraq (or Iran), it doesn’t make him any less anti-intellectual and it doesn’t lessen the degree to which he’s lined up with the republicans in the last few years.

Also, I’ve never been a big Clinton fan, but Bill’s speech tonight was really good. John Kerry’s speech was much better than the ones he gave while he was running, too.

Here are the C-SPAN versions of the speeches, which thankfully don’t have pundits inserting their commentaries mid-speech: