Obama and the World

Start out with this point in your mind, four years ago Barack Obama was in the Illinois State Legislature. Now he is running for the Presidency of the United States and just finished a tour of the Middle East and part of Europe. On his tour was a gaffe hungry media feeding a twenty four hour a day hungry beast, and he pulled it off without a problem beyond a "damed if you do and damned if you don't" missed visit with wounded troops at Ramstein, Germany.

Meanwhile, back in the US, John McCain was stumbling around making virtually a gaffe a day. The big story is, naturally, Ramstein. So far Andrea Mitchell (scarcely an Obamabot) and Keith Olberman have been the only ones to call BS on the McCain ad attacking Obama over Ramstein. It should be noted that Mitchell was on the trip and has completely debunked the McCain ad. Fires of outrage still blaze. McCain has managed to get Iraq's timelines completely screwed up, redefine the word "surge," and attack a sitting Senator as trading losing a war for politics all the while assuring us he is an honorable Maverick POW war winning machine and, demonstrably, only a POW.

I'll argue policy all day long and not get furious, this is a matter of thought and view point; then there is the point of being a lying sack of excrement. That one gets me going. The McCain campaign has been based on exactly one fact - he got shot down over N Vietnam. He is the most fact free candidate I can remember outside George II - since it worked for that guy McCain must think it will for him. Go ahead and show me the stance that McCain has that is McCain's and not BushCo's. Show me what he's said in regard to Obama that is factual. This will be a real problem for the Republicans if the media ever starts to pay attention to him. I have no reason to doubt the reports that show Obama with more media coverage and even less reason to doubt their assertion that he gets more negative coverage than McCain.

I do understand the news worthiness of the new guy, charismatic speaker guy as a basis for more attention, but I do not understand the media's willingness to essentially shill for McCain by playing his ads and attack rhetoric unquestioningly - to the extent of editing out a gaffe by CBS. This is propagandizing. I do not understand the reasoning behind this behavior, the corporate world will not take a hit from Obama, the world of wealth will not go away under Obama. The media, their corporate masters, and their shareholders will take no particular damage from Obama. The media is risking further damage to a battered image by this behavior for no return I can see. The American people are slow sometimes to get past a general narrative, but once they figure out they've been burned for their trust, they get furious. The 70+% who are ticked off at GWB will not come back to him, Iraq could come up roses and they still would not buy a nickle candy from the guy. He's done. If people finally see enough of McCain to figure him out on their own, in the face of the media's behavior, they are both going to be toast.

Amidst all the discontent around Iraq and the economy is the lurking feeling of betrayal by the media with their sycophantic cheerleading of BushCo following the September 11 attacks and run up to the Iraq war. Fox gets away with their nonsense because no one has standing to kick the snot out of them on this issue except McClatchy (Knight Ridder) and they're print. None of the major print or airwave media asked the hard questions or refrained from whacking the war drums. What we got from them was, "Oooooh look at that blast, how impressive."

McCain is caught in endless loops of him rah-rahing George and his bunch of Mission Accomplished flower catching liberators crap so his only alternative is to attack Obama's character. He cannot trump him on judgement only some fact free assertion of experience. He has been in the American consciousness for over eight years with his failed campaign against GWB in 2000 and possibly more with his "story." He is bruited about as the known quantity and that is a fiction comparing his 2000 rhetoric and his current version, he is not known beyond the congruence of his anti-choice stance. Oh, he is still a POW. POW. POW. POW... Will the real John Sidney McCain please stand up... POW.

'I'm a decent honorable POW Navy man (he won't add in comparison to George II) and I'll run a civil campaign - and lie through my teeth because I really want to be President and the media loves me.' At some point this is going to hit a wall, Americans like to believe what they want to believe but they will finally believe the evidence of their eyes and ears. I like Obama well enough, not uncritically, and I never really liked the 2000 McCain; but I loath this current Rovian version. I cannot see a substantive policy difference between him and the current White House occupant and I cannot see where electing him would mean an improvement in the character of that occupant. What do you think the 'world' sees?

If nothing else, Obama can help our image around the world; he's going to play hob digging us out of this Republican mess. Bill Clinton had 12 years of Reagan/Bush mess to try to correct and he made a partial stab at it but that was child's play compared to what Obama will have to do after only 8 years of George II. If Obama has an uncontested majority in Congress he'll have a better chance, think hard about what the down ticket means to the future. Take nothing for granted, work for it.