Category: Current Affairs

Obama leading McCain 6-1 in troop donations from abroad

This article should give Obama tremendous ammunition that in order to support our troops, Americans should vote for him. His campaign would be foolish not to highlight this figure as much as possible. 

TP

Niebuhrian? Obama yes, Bush, not so much…

This post is part of an article from
Gregg Easterbrook, an ESPN columnist and the author of The Progress Paradox:
How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, and other books. He is also a
contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The
Washington Monthly.

 

Speaking
to the columnist E.J. Dionne, Barack Obama not only used but correctly
pronounced the word "Niebuhrian," which means, "The thinking of
Reinhold Niebuhr." Most theologians probably cannot pronounce that word!
Though Niebuhr, a religious celebrity of the midcentury, is little-known today,
it is not that unusual to hear him cited by political leaders (who may or may
not actually have read him; Obama surely has). Niebuhr saw the world as a
malevolent place, and argued that although Christ was a pacifist, Christians
serve Christ by fighting evil. Much contemporary "just war"
philosophy is Niebuhrian. His writing and speeches convinced many Christians to
support war against Germany in World War II — war against Japan was
self-defense, while war against Germany needed just-war underpinnings — and
then to oppose Communist tyranny. Before the elder George Bush took the United
States into the 1991 Gulf War, he consulted religious scholars, including
experts on Niebuhr; the soldiers who fought in that war knew their
commander-in-chief was deeply concerned with moral reasoning. Before George W.
Bush took the United States into the invasion of Iraq, did he engage in any
philosophical contemplation at all?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080812&sportCat=nfl

 

Shouldn't even our recent history be instructive? Which Presidential candidate do we trust to make thoughtful, coherent decisions rooted in something beyond political expediency? I hope you have some answer…


TP

Pollstar suggests huge Obama cushion

Doesn’t
this polling data bode incredibly well for Obama’s candidacy?

http://www.slate.com/id/2195956

If
these projections hold something close to form, even if a couple of the lean-to
states fail to go to Obama, McCain would have to run the table by winning every
competitive race, just to throw the outcome into doubt!


TP

Will Obama win in a rout?

Isn’t there a chance that Barack Obama will win in a rout? I
know that prospect would not provide much intrigue for the media but might that
happen?

 

There’s a chance that Obama will do well enough to dominate
the Electoral College vote in 2008. He could carry both Ohio and Florida
without anyone being surprised. That’s realistic and a great start to hitting
270 assuming he holds the states leaning his way.

 

If he does somewhat better than expected, he’ll win Colorado,
Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and sneak out victories in Missouri and Iowa which
would mean something on the order of 310-315 votes. In these days of the deeply
divided electorate, 310 is a clear mandate. That could absolutely happen with a
good night for Obama. 

 

If he does substantially better than expected right now, and
there are some important reasons to think he will, he’ll take most of the
states above as well as Indiana, Missouri, and edge out margins in Alaska,
Louisiana and one of the Mountain West states (one of MT, ND, SD, WY). (That would
mean something like 363 electoral votes and doesn’t take into account the races
in Georgia, New Mexico, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania, some of which may tilt
to Obama.)

 

That kind of electoral outcome would be a shocking
repudiation of John McCain, the Republican party, the Bush years and the Iraq
War. It would indicate a fundamental shift in the American electorate and while I don’t feel confident that this level of victory will happen, something on this order may be an actual outcome in November.

 

TP 

 

 

 

Presidential Health News

Whose health news would you rather have? I mean, the one
that reminds you that Obama’s an athlete or, uh,  the one that reminds you, uh, you know, McCain had skin
cancer?

 

Jay Carney on MSNBC’s Race for the White House

 

 

Huckabee apologizes (for the wrong thing)

Daniel Drezner posts his approval of Mike Huckabee’s apology regarding his Barack Obama ‘joke’ of today.

Except that being offensive isn’t really the issue here. It is only disparaging to Obama if one assumes that he should NOT jump to the floor if someone attempts to shoot him. The problem with these remarks is that Huckabee makes light of the possibility of an assassination attempt. I would much prefer he have used the opportunity to have suggested to the NRA (and everyone else) how wrong it is that we live in a country in which Obama has to be more concerned about being killed than John McCain does.

TP

Justified Use of Force

Justified Use of Force

Every year there’s a new one
A Diallou, King or me
Clamoring loudly
Faces on TV
We ask so many questions
But no one’s forced to answer

With sympathy’s short half-life
Soon most are hoping for the noise to stop
And the questions to disappear once again
Just like us
In our lives
And our deaths

© Gayle Force Press 2002