Health-care reform, skyrocketing unemployment, war in Afghanistan, appropriate alien-life-form greetings. Which of these things is not like the other?
In Denver, Jeff Peckman has managed to collect enough John Hancocks to have added to the 2010 electoral ballot an initiative that would ensure that contact with extraterrestrial life will be conducted in a manner bespeaking a great republic. In fact, an expert council will be convened for just such a purpose.
If approved, the city panel would promote “harmonious, peaceful, mutually respectful and beneficial coexistence” between earthlings and extraterrestrials, in part by developing protocols for “diplomatic contact.”
Its seven members would include an expert in taking testimony from people who’ve survived “direct personal close encounters” with aliens.
We should all hail Peckman’s efforts. I have spent too many sleepless nights anxiety-ridden, not at the prospect of growing poverty, joblessness, and hunger in our nation, but over whether a high-five could be misconstrued as vaguely insulting to a being with no hands. (“Does the earthling mock me? Ontar, bring me my death ray. And my yellow crocs.”)
For the record, I, too, have survived a “direct personal close encounter” with an alien being. (Anyone who has attended a Lutheran parochial school for any length of time knows exactly what I’m talking about.) So if such an initiative were to surface here in New York, I hope I would be considered for a spot on an appropriate council, lest visitors from another time-space dimension wind up with misimpressions of the Big Apple, especially the No. 1 train during rush hour.
Or as Og, chief plenipotentiary for the Poon galaxy, likes to say: “Cheese it, the cops.”
Jennifer makes a great point. I heard Jeff Toobin on CNN talk about Obama is more in tune with the working class than Clinton and McCain since he grew up in poverty.
There’s a phrase that ends with please that springs to mind.
Obama grew up in Hawaii, one of the richest states in the union, with a bank executive raising him. He went to a $20,000 a year private “academy”. He spent 4 years in Indonesia going to another “academy”. He’s not even really from the US. Hawaii is about the same distance from the voters in PA as Tel Aviv. Indonesia is further away from PA and IN and WV and KY than Baghdad.
He was already struggling with the white vote in OH and this won’t help him going forward. I see him struggling to top the 44% he got in Ohio and doing similarly bad among the demographics.
I said when the Wright stuff came out after his dismal showing in Ohio that Hillary would end up the nominee and this only stengthens that opinion.
Ragin Cajun, you just lost the Hawaiian vote. (Don’t eggs cost over a dollar apiece there, btw?) But Barry can’t have made Howard Dean very happy, either, assuming The Screamer meant what he said about all those people with pickup trucks, gun racks and Confederate flag decals. The problem is that when Elton John complained about he-man, woman-hating ‘merkins, he wasn’t simply referring to Republicans, but to Obama voters: They just can’t stand Hillary, and when you throw in the racial thing, you’ve got, at best, screeching electoral gridlock in the nomination contest. I don’t know if somewhere out there the Goracle is smiling, but you have to believe a lot of super-dees are reaching for their Blackberries.
keith olberman played the comment in it’s full context. It wasn’t offensive, it was a pretty typical obama shows cause and effect point.
you guys should really do some more substantitive topics. 90% of this blog seems to be “american idol” style gaffes n laughs from the campaign. what about jewish religious issues? and what about the economy, the #1 issue according to many surveys?
So, I have been dissapointed abuot the lack of variety and especially substance here.
Nice try Lester, it’s the Economy but….this economy is still better than your buddy Clinton’s ever was and now your that your Marxist/Racist Candidates are cutting their own throats what are you going to do/ Change the subject…bawawa. Go Rats all the way to Denver for the best nomination process EVAH!
Just in case there was any chance that you folks might take lester’s suggestion to heart (who knows: you might have fallen this morning and struck your head on a sharp stone thus making them sound good) let me just say: please keep the “American Idol” gaffes coming
Considering that Obama’s explication of his SF remarks boils down to “Well, folks, you ARE bitter and loony,” I take leave to regard his “cause and effect” proposition as erroneous. And condescending.
there was no context, lester. he was asked by a group of billionaires at the getty mansion in marin county why he can’t connect with all those rubes in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Why only 27% of white democrats voted for him in a state the democrats likely need to win the leection and why the # will be similar in a state they also vitally need to win.
1st he said that being a young black guy with a funny name is a problem and they all laughed along with him
then he said that the economy has sucked for the past 25 years, when in reality the economy in the past 25 years has seen its great expansion and growth under Reagan and Clinton, and unemployment and inflation have been at historic lows. In PA particularly, unemployment has been BELOW the natl avg and is the lowest in the state’s history. so, he’s plain wrong on the facts.
then he explains to these San Francisco liberals that it’s hard for him to break through because their bad economic status causes them to cling to and lose themselves in things like religion, the opiate of the masses, guns, racism, xenophobia, and protectionism.
never mind that obama himself has been mr. protectionist, at least when his campaign isn’t telling those that count to look the other way.
he basically perfectly encapsulated the elite liberal mindset that’s caused liberals to lose 7 of 10 elections since 1964, 5 of 6 between 1968-1988, and basically every election where they can’t find a Southerner who can pull of the trick of appealing to said “rubes”(see Clinton, Carter, and Watergate basically elected Carter and Perot basically elected Clinton)
Clinton is jumping on him big, looking to run up the score in PA and pretty much end his candidacy. She has a decent shot.
BO is going to have to drop a whole lot more ‘g’s in his speech to overcome the emerging image of the snooty toff trying to explain the ignorant and unwashed to the brie-eating, wine-sipping wealthy Marin county liberals.
Ragin Cajun Says:”then he said that the economy has sucked for the past 25 years”
Obama to Voters:
“For twenty five long years
You’ve lived in misery -
But only, it appears,
Because you had not Me!
The end of your frustration
I’m able to foresee:
Take hope, unhappy nation,
Because you now have Me!
To save you from your trouble
I graciously agree:
Let hope groundswell and bubble,
Just come and vote for ME! “
el vaquera- i’m a conservative. I’m not a clinton supporter
ragin cajun- how could there not be a context? everything in the world is said in some context.
and the middle class hasn’t seen a great expansion under reagan and clinton, certainly not relative to the super rich.
” he was asked by a group of billionaires at the getty mansion in marin county why he can’t connect with all those rubes in Pennsylvania and Ohio. ”
so that’s the real crime here, that he is popular and raises a ton of money.
“the brie-eating, wine-sipping wealthy Marin county liberals”
now look who’s engaging in class warfare.
really, I’m so glad i am almost completely out of the american dollar and into gold and euros. this american idol bs is no way to choose a president. you deserve john mcain aka Bush third term
“the middle class hasn’t seen a great expansion under reagan and clinton, certainly not relative to the super rich”
The new super rich came from former middle class.
Upward mobility was rapid in these years.
The material well-being of the great mass of population has also increased considerably -
as evidenced, e.g., by the fact that home ownership is at the highest level in history.
With some ups and downs, we have done, on the whole, pretty well
with “corporate greed” and without Barack Obama.
Marc Ambinder really has been pretty shameless in his shilling for Obama. It’s sad to see him throwing his credibility down the drain like this.
Even now we have mainstream press trying to save Obama from himself as he is and has been their chosen, and therein is a major part of the problem. Lets not forget, that the Huffington Post sat on this story for almost a week, the source even stating on CNN that she was reluctant to break the story because it could KILL OBAMA’s campaign. The Liberal Elite for their own reasons have touted Obama from the get go, have done their best to squash every single scandal that could derail Obama’s coronation, but the gig is up, Obama is through…the question is, “Will the Democratic Party accept this reality and put Hillary Clinton up as our nominee, or instead stick with Senator Obama to the bitter end and toss him to the Republicans as RED MEAT in the fall election?
Most clueless phrase yet by a member of the media describing Obama: “Despite his working class upbringing. . .”
I’m thinking a lot of working class folks lived in Hawaii, then travelled abroad and spent time in Indonesia, and then attended private schools – all before attending Harvard.