Obama plays loose with the facts

I love me some Obama. If you want to debate who should be president, I’d love to talk.

But it’s important to hold your friends’ feet to the fire too, so I’ll point out a couple of things from Obama’s speech that were dishonest. First, if you read the text of Obama’s speech it will be clear that it was not John McCain who called the country a “nation of whiners,” but an advisor (Phil Gramm), but the language was purposely obfuscated to make it sound like McCain made the comment. Second, Obama claimed that McCain defined middle class as anyone making “less than five million dollars a year.” This was in reference to McCain’s answer to the question “what is the definition of rich” at the recent Saddleback forum. I thought McCain was actually pretty nuanced on that issue, he tried to point out that some of the least happy people he knew were quite well off. This could very well be because John McCain doesn’t know any poor people, but I digress.

Um…The Al-Jazeera visit did not go well

As promised, Elaine and I walked past the Buffalo Rose last night where Al-Jazeera interviewed some Golden residents re: the election. There were plenty of people in the bar, but the spectacle was out front where folks were holding signs that said things like: “God forgives, we don’t” and generally being rowdy.

As I looked on in quiet disappointment – denigrating Muslims for not eating pork and conflating Al-Jazeera with Al-Qaeda are not the ways to win friends in the Middle East – I noticed a reporter jotting notes. I almost walked up to him and said, “Don’t sensationalize this; it’s just a handful of ill-informed and possibly even well-meaning folks that want some attention.” But I didn’t.

Well it turned out that the guy was Dana Milbank from the Washington Post and he wrote about the incident in a pretty non-flattering tone in today’s paper. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703977.html?referrer=emailarticle

And, in a particularly ironic twist, the only coverage of Golden I could find on the Al-Jazeera website was pretty positive.

“On this second day of the Democratic convention, it was off to the small city of Golden, 24km west of Denver. The city sits in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains – just 21 square kilometres nestled in a valley along Clear Creek. Small shops and offices line the streets, and people warmly say hello to each other. When they see our crew, some tell us they're glad to have a chance to tell the world what they think about this political season. The overwhelming message – people are hungry for a renewed sense of economic and psychological security – and they're very keen to see what both Barack Obama and John McCain have to offer them.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/08/200882516620749740.html

After we walked by the protest I fished in the creek for a while (I long-released a couple) and Elaine went to the library to knit with a group of needleworkers. When I stopped in to say hi, I noticed that one of the regulars, a girl who wears a headscarf – and is a member of the family who owns the Lebanese place that is probably the best restaurant in town – wasn’t in attendance. If she stayed home because she didn’t feel like it was safe to be out among the protesters, then shame on Golden, and shame on me for not doing more about it.

Your man at the DNC (or at least within several blocks)

So I went to see the hoopla today. I rode the bus from Golden to Denver and went to a forum convened by the Progressive Democrats of America (http://www.pdamerica.org/).

The first panel discussed immigration. The two takeaway points were:

A) There are two types of factors that lead to immigration, push factors – that is crummy conditions in other countries – and pull factors – opportunities that exist in the U.S. that don’t exist elsewhere. Immigration policy has largely dealt with the pull side, busting U.S. employers for violations (when it’s politically expedient). But what about push factors? Are we making good-faith efforts to help Latin American countries thrive? The panelists argued that U.S. imposed neo-liberal economic policy, so-called “free trade,” and American military support for corrupt regimes have created de-stabilized conditions that cause people to leave their homes.

B) All people, citizens or not, have a vested interest in immigration policy. If we normalize the idea that some people are illegal human beings because they didn’t have the good fortune to be born here, and we pursue them aggressively (think police raids with lots of guns), then we begin to think of a world where civil liberties are contingent as normal. First they came for the janitors, but I was silent...

The second panel discussed economic justice. The highlight was Jim McGovern, U.S. Rep from Massachusetts who was remarkably candid about poverty and hunger in the United States. There was lots of talk about a new New Deal, such as a modern Civilian Conservation Corps to repair the American infrastructure. The other panelists were the heads of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (http://www.citizen.org/trade/) and the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (http://fresc.org/). They were pro-Union and anti-WTO, and frankly, a little glib.

This was the truest of the true believers, there was lots of hugging and some painfully sincere acoustic musical performances. On the whole though, I was pretty impressed. I like passionate people, even if I don’t agree with everything they say. Sean Penn was there. Aloha Mr. Hand.

I bailed on the third panel and went off in search of the free speech zone. I was secretly hoping to get caught up in a march for something cool – religious freedom in China or equal pay for equal work or fully funded children’s health care – but it didn’t happen. I couldn’t get within several hundred yards of the convention center. The friendly policemen with machine guns told me how to get to the designated protest area, but it was a total joke. There was a stage and a live microphone, but the place was dead empty. Literally, it was me and some lady looking at each other and asking “where are the protesters?’ Kind of scary.

Hillary

I have never been a Hillary Clinton fan before, but I thought she did a really good job tonight. I heard some pundits say afterwards that they thought she could have gone further to renounce her comments in the primary about Obama's lack of experience, but I thought she made it abundantly clear that the distance between her and Obama is much closer than her and McCain. Obama and McCain both said at the Saddleback forum that "it's not about me." Clinton said the same thing, and time will only tell if her supporters will heed her call to fall in line behind Obama.

Susan Faludi wrote in the New York Times today about the Clinton die hards. I thought her most interesting comment was on the lack of women in the political pipeline. For instance, state legislatures are still overwhelmingly male. My take on this is that its about egoism. You have to think pretty highly of yourself to run for elected office, and many men (and women) have a hard time with confident and brash women. The sin of the electorate is not that we punish arrogance in women, but that we accept it and reward it in men.

What's the solution? Term limits and public financing for a start. More turnover means more opportunity and public financing would allow principled people to run without selling their souls to moneyed interests.

The Honorable Michelle Obama Package

Earlier today I decided to look at the DNC schedule to see what they meant by prime time. The schedule did not fully answer my question, but did raise two more:

• Who decided that all elected officials are honorable, and all regular joes are not?


• Since when is Michelle Obama a package, and not a person?

Alvin in the Wild

Now that I live somewhere that has chipmunks, I like to classify them as Alvins, Simons, or Theodores. This one

is definitely an Alvin. After my friend Cathy and I stopped for lunch about 4 miles into Rocky Mountain National Park, he audaciously tried to get to our food from every angle. Unfortunately for him, we don't feed wildlife. We suggested he go to the trail head where someone left part of a PB&J and half a graham cracker on top of a rock.

Weather Forecast

According to the radio, we have a slight chance today for a "weak tornado." Is there such a thing?

Come on Ex-Hurricane Fay, pour and pour and pour (gently) on North Georgia. They need it.

Fundraisers…how I loathe them

Last week I was accosted by some members of the Golden High ninth grade football team who were selling raffle tickets for a team fundraiser. As someone who has mixed emotions about football (modern gladiators, injury potential, blah, blah, blah) I did not buy any tickets.

I utterly detest typical kids fundraisers – that is the raffle ticket/bumper sticker/magazine/scented candle/wrapping paper/candy bar variety. You expend a ton of effort to sell junk that no one wants at highly inflated prices, and in most instances the margins are small, usually because you’re making some fundraising company very wealthy. I can well remember high pressure presentations trying to turn my classmates and me into junior snake oil salesmen so that we could “earn” crummy prizes.

Mercifully, mom and dad were pretty cool about it. They hated buying the junk that other kids were selling, so instead of making me and Melissa take part, they usually just quietly made a small donation to the PTA or little league or debate club or whatever. Sometimes there were side benefits – like the time we got to eat a case of chocolate bars instead of selling them.

I also remember a couple of exceptions to our fundraiser boycott. For a while, Melissa was a world class Girl Scout cookie salesperson, and dad even helped out the cause by taking a sign-up form to work – a rare piercing of the work/home veil.

And then there was the time in elementary school when I was hell-bent on raising $25 for the children’s hospital – not because of any great virtue on my part, but because I coveted the T-shirt that came with such a generous effort. That was back when a walk-a-thon was a walk-a-thon. You asked people to sign up to support you on the basis of how many miles you would walk on a fifteen mile course. There were actually stations where a volunteer would check off that you had passed certain mile markers. To make my goal – and get my T-shirt – I had to walk the whole course, but because I was all of about 10 years-old at the time, mom had to walk the whole course with me. She dragged my sorry, chubby little self the last 5 miles, maybe even further. She even tried to buy me a popsicle with our emergency quarters – although, if I recall, they were sold out of anything you could buy for 50 cents. All in the name of making sure that I finished what I started and didn’t let those people down who I’d told that I would walk 15 miles.

God bless Katie Hale.

You can call me Al…Jazeera

We have lived in Austin -- an island of blue in a sea of red. We have lived in Houston -- a crazily libertarian place where a five minute walk could take you past schools, churches, adult bookstores, flop houses, and mansions. Now we live in Golden, which is pretty Ozzie and Harriet. Sure, we have our motorcycle mamas, kayakers, and ski bums, but this ain’t no Boulder, and you get the sense that people like it that way.

So imagine my surprise when I heard that during the Democratic National Convention Al-Jazeera (the Qatar-based Arabic/Islamic media giant) will be broadcasting from our little hamlet. http://politicswest.com/28026/al_jazeeras_slice_west_during_dnc_feature_golden

I don’t know much about Al-Jazeera beyond what I’ve picked up from other media – I know that they catch flak for giving a platform to bad guys, but their website doesn’t look too crazy. Their analysis of American voters http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/08/200888225515777102.html is pretty interesting.

At any rate, I might have to walk by the Buffalo Rose the night that Al-J is in the house, just to see how the regulars interact with the camera folk. Golden will be beamed around the world; I hope we don't do anything silly.

Update: The City of Golden's "Letter to Citizens"
http://ci.golden.co.us/News.asp?NewsID=581

Walking the neighbors' dogs

Miles:



Bill:

The other night we needed to return a couple of items to the library. While we were headed towards town, we stopped by to ask our friends down the street (Robb and Anne) if their dogs -- Bill and Miles -- would like to join us for our walk. It took Anne a minute to figure out we were serious, but of course we were.

It was a nice walk; the dogs were really good at spotting rabbits. Elaine and I like dogs, but they sure are a hassle, so it’s really nice to have neighbors that are happy to share their pets. It’s kind of like being a grandparent.

Anyways, if you like animals, but you don't have the time, money, or disposition to own one, there is likely someone living near you who would be happy to let you walk, pet, or play with their pet. Just ask.

(Travis)

Trivia and Web page of the Week

The estimated mass of the earth is 5,940,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons, which might be a handy fact to know the next time you need to formulate a "Your mama's so fat..." taunt.

Who says bigger is better? Check out the Small House Society.
http://www.resourcesforlife.com/small-house-society

Trivia and Web page of the week

Trivia


The circumference of the largest hail stone recorded in the U.S. was 18.75 ( http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s2008.htm). Think that would leave a ding on your car?


Web Page


If you want to have a site bookmarked with sunrise and sunset data, here's one --

Sunrise and Sunset information from the U.S. Navy http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html