The International House of Bacon

* The arrogance of Barack Obama. I’m not as bothered by this as Fournier is, or as many bloggers appear to be. What does throw me is that Obama is arrogant and it doesn’t bother his supporters - wasn’t the arrogance of George W. Bush a big problem? Is it just that you like what Obama’s arrogant about that it’s okay?

* Barack Obama is a politician. Congressional Quarterly’s election blog, Ground Game, covers what is obvious, but misses the fact that Obama presents himself as not-a-politician. That’s where the problem sits.

* I expect this to be the political meme of the summer: “What’s wrong with the beer we got?!” Must be heard to be believed, skip ahead to a little after 5:30 to get the juicy stuff. Short story? Alabama debates allowing an increase in the alcohol content of beer, which would expand the beer market and provide some more options, and one politician takes some offense to it.

* Have i mentioned lately how glad I am to not live in Massachusetts anymore? The Mass legislature is going to consider a bill to make it illegal to sell M/AO rated games to minors. Glad you got that budget situation worked out there.

* McCain is not only against Universal Health Care, but makes a fairly reasoned approach about the issue:

“Well, I think that’s one of the big differences we have about the role of government. If you think that the government should mandate anything to the American people than besides a safety net, and I don’t view it as a safety net. I view Medicare and Medicaid as a safety net,” McCain said. “But to mandate that all Americans are required to do something then that’s just not within the fundamental philosophy that I have about the role of government in America.”

While I’m not generally a fan of the “safety net,” that’s probably the best argument anyone could put out there in the current climate. Cheers to you, Sen. McCain.

* A lot of the spin on this one has been about how ridiculous Comcast is, but I happen to think they have a point in their lawsuit against the FCC challenging the “30% rule” which disallows the cable carrier from having more than 30% of the market. Not only does such a rule not appear to apply to groups like AT&T, but all it’s going to do is screw the current Comcast customers - without allowing Comcast to grow, it means that 100% of any future improvements to the system or cost increases are stuck on current customers rather than Comcast being able to grow their way out of it. While the FCC could care less about exclusive cable carrier contracts with municipalities, this is a very bizarre position to take.

* I have a severe problem with the use of minors in any politicking, especially very young ones. So as if this video wasn’t creepy enough, the addition of a bunch of kids parroting talking points their parents fed to them is really disturbing and disgusting to me. Can we make an agreement to, you know, NOT do this?

* Zogby noting that Nader’s making some progress. Good thing Zogby’s typically pretty far off these days, eh?

* A question from National Review: if it was so important for Senate Democrats to push a resolution condemning Presidential candidates speaking at Bob Jones University, why the reluctance on Obama/Wright now?

* China’s been especially brutal with Tibet over the last week. It’s a damn good thing that the US State Department removed them from the Human Rights Violators list days earlier, eh?. Moronic.

* Walter Williams had a scathing op-ed regarding ethanol over the weekend. The money shot: “If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil?”

* A few reactions to the Obama speech I found interesting. I don’t endorse them, but they’re a different reaction from my own: National Review, Reason.

* One word for Jim Cramer: Ouch. I have no real input on the Bear Sterns issue - whatever is going to happen is going to happen, we’re much better set up and diversified as a nation to handle it, though.

* Today, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the Washington, DC gun ban. I’m using the newly adopted Elmore Rule on this one - if you want something good to come of something that might work out very well, pretend it’s not happening. So instead, let’s get excited about The Supremes taking on an FCC case!

* Michael Stipe is gay. I highlight this not because it’s news, but more to laugh at the fact that it’s being treated as news even though we’ve all known it since the early 1990s.

* Thomas Sowell on Obama. This was posted pre-speech, but it’s still resonant.

* Fred Thompson to debate John Edwards. I so hope this gets televised or ends up on the web. Thompson would have made a great candidate for President, IMO.

* An interesting set of musings on why the “peace movement” has failed.

* Finally, humorous link of the day: Ludacris’s Rap Map, showing where his women at according to his song “Area Codes.”

I think that’s enough.

* In terms of having a speech that he had to make, I generally think he pulled it off. I haven’t seen the speech, only read it, so I’d imagine Obama’s general delivery helped things considerably. It’s not a perfect speech, and I don’t consider it any more inspiring or amazing or anything like that than any of his other speeches, but it’s really a good speech overall, and I don’t feel the need to hesitate much in saying it.

* Problem elements: it turns out that he was lying about whether he witnessed the statements first hand, which could bite him in the rear end if played properly. Rather than sticking to a universality theme, he made some hits on Ferraro and “[T]alk show hosts and conservative commentators” that I thought were more than a little inappropriate, but will likely be glossed over in the long run. The campaigning toward the end wasn’t really useful - if you’re trying to convince people that you’re not a crazy racist crank like your pastor, health care and jobs aren’t really on people’s minds. The final anecdote about Ashley felt really out of place for me, especially how it ended. I couldn’t figure out the point, except that maybe he’s trying to demonstrate how a young white girl who supports a black Presidential candidate who lives post-civil rights legislation was able to convince an elderly black man to come on board? I dunno, but it didn’t work for me.

* If racial exclusion is one of the problems, did this speech work on an inclusionary basis? Thankfully, he didn’t get too preachy about it (my number one fear going in), but the segment about Trinity, where the “services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear…” was a bit odd. I know what the point was - it was a teachable moment for Obama, and shedding some light may have been beneficiary, but it does come across as a little condescending. We’ve all seen movies, we know that the black church is not all full of stand-sit-stand-sit-kneel-stand-sit reverent obedience to the pastor, but more of a larger experience. I remember being personally jealous of that in grade school and high school. But that was never the problem, either - the energy and enthusiasm of the congregation during their time in church was never at issue as much as the energy and enthusiasm for Wright’s comments. Obama seems to recognize that to a point, but, in trying to help the majority understand what the minority experiences, he fails to understand exactly what it is about the minority experiences in this episode that makes the majority at best uncomfortable and at worst outraged.

Toward the end, he gets very empathetic about the entire thing: “a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch.” I’ll forgive him the “white privilege” meme and drill down to the broader problem - on one hand, he says “Yeah, I get it - there’s some anger on the majority side, too, and I think it can be justified,” but then turns around with how he feels those issues “affected the political landscape.” By attaching the views of the minority - in this case, those who disliked things like welfare or affirmative action because of the benefits to minorities - to those of the majority - who often had policy-based (welfare is not a good use of taxpayer money, it has questionable results) or equality-based (affirmative action fights inequality with inequality) views - it turns the entire statement into one that’s only better than Wright’s in terms of tone. I’m positive that it was an inadvertent action, without a doubt, but to spend any number of minutes on a speech trying to explain the minority position only to then try and make a different, more disturbing, minority position larger than it is may end up negating the broader message in some circles.

* Overall, though, I was surprisingly impressed. He could have gone an entirely different direction, and largely didn’t. He refrained from throwing Wright under the bus, which is fairly noble in a way even if I think he’d be better off cutting ties. He didn’t prey on some of the more negative and unfair criticisms that have been levied to this point, and he could have. He largely kept the entire speech positive and on-topic, which is hard to do when talking race these days. While I can obviously go on and on about the parts I don’t agree with, the simple fact remains that I think he pulled off the speech he had to pull off, and there’s no faulting him in that, IMO. My only hope at this point is that the bleeding kind of stops a bit - it’s apparent that he’s addressed this comptently, so let’s move back to the point that we can’t afford his agenda or something.

Today, Barack Obama’s slated to make a speech on race, religion, etc. It’s an interesting situation Obama’s put himself in with this - on one hand, it’s a speech he generally has to make, as the “bury it on a Friday and hope the media ignores it enough where the whole thing passes for now” didn’t work all that well, and daily tracking polls have not been favorable toward Obama since the story hit the mainstream late Thursday. In a way, he’s stuck in a political corner with no way out except this.

The speech can’t be anything but problematic, however - granted, if there’s anyone in politics today who can pull off the rhetorical flourish necessary to convince people of what they need to hear regarding this whole Wright flap, it’s Barack Obama, but the stark problem is that Obama doesn’t seem to get what the problem is:

“I am going to be talking about not just Reverend Wright, but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks,” Obama told reporters after a town hall meeting here. According to aides, he was up until 3 a.m. Monday working on his remarks.

…

“The statements that were the source of controversy from Reverend Wright were wrong, and I strongly condemn them,” the Illinois senator reiterated today. However, Obama added, “I think the caricature that is being painted of him is not accurate. And so part of what I’ll do tomorrow is to talk a little bit about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently.”

Ignore for the moment that he’s still sticking with the “statements that were the source of controversy line” and let’s breakthis down simply: Obama feels that this is ultimately not a problem with Wright (although, now that he’s been pressed on it a bit, it’s kind of a problem), but that it’s more of a racial and religious community misunderstanding.

Now, on the surface, you know, that might be true: it’s been put out there that Wright probably isn’t that controversial in comparison to some others in his position, for instance, It may not necessarily be Obama’s fault on all counts on that one, especially if (and I can’t find the link on this currently) it’s actually true that Obama’s reasoning for joining this Church was more to better connect with the community he was working with. But the surface isn’t what’s persisting in this story.

1) Obama’s lost the trust of a lot of people. I can see a few eyes rolling on this one, but this is important to note - it’s very hard for Obama to position himself the way he has been when he’s got this albatross around his neck. That people can’t see through his policies or rhetoric is one thing, but having a guy who says we deserved 9/11 on your advisory council isn’t going to fly with undecided voters, frankly. It takes the shine off the whole image, and that’s not one you can easily recover from.

2) People’s problem with this isn’t race. Well, okay, to be fair, SOME people see it as a race problem, but the stories I’m reading are not looking at it from a race angle, or even a religious angle - they see it quite simply as the ravings of a non-mainstream pastor making remarks that are usually relegated to the lunatic fringe. Barack Obama decided that, not only did this guy with the lunatic fringe commentary inspire him (because we all know he likely heard it at some point over the last 20 years), but he was influential enough to be a political adviser and serve on his campaign. When it comes down to an undecided voter pulling the lever, a guy who occasionally panders to the extreme religious elements is still going to be superior to the guy who’s taking those loons and taking their advice…

3) …which leads to the third problem, the lack of understanding of context. I see this get compared to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, et al. I had one person ask me about this in context to the Ron Paul Newsletters. The difference with the former is that Falwell and Robertson aren’t taken seriously by anyone except their core constituencies, a very small but vocal minority that occasionally get a hearing from mainstream candidates but have little in the way of sway with anyone on the right other than themselves, compared to Wright’s role in the Obama campaign. Furthermore, it’s widely understood that Falwell and Robertson aren’t taken seriously by a whole lot of people - even the most religious person you know probably doesn’t think Hurricane Katrina was God’s retribution for allowing gays to marry, while we’re supposed to understand that Wright’s statements are somewhat moderate in comparison to some other preachers? Really?

The Ron Paul Newsletter controversy is probably closer to this situation, except that Ron Paul was never going to win the nomination and more people were voting for him either because of his stance on the war or as part of the broader “revolution” rather than actually thinking he had a chance in hell of sniffing the Presidency. That certainly doesn’t excuse him from associating with the Lew Rockwells and Alex Joneses of the world, but no one was assuming they’d play a role in his never-gonna-happen Presidency either. But Wright?

At the core of it, it comes back to what I posted about yesterday - judgment. Obama, for the moment, is not showing that he’s really one to pass his own judgment test. Will his speech today change that if he starts in on trying to lecture people about race and black churches and how we should simply let statements like that go because of their own experiences? Maybe for the Obama true believers, but people don’t want to hear how Wright may be justified (mainly because they know it generally isn’t true), they want to hear Barack Obama say that he was completely wrong and those sort of statements aren’t tolerable under any circumstances. If he does that, I’ll frankly be shocked because direct statements that may bother a constituency he wants to win over aren’t Obama’s style.

I’m looking forward to reading the speech, in any regard. It’ll be a defining moment of this campaign, I just hope for the right reasons.

EDIT: Full text of the speech here, thoughts to come.