Blog category: Barack Obama

MBA in Hand and Back to Chicago | May 3rd, 2010

My two-year stint in Ann Arbor is now over, but we went out with a bang:

Chicago: let’s do this.

The Health Care Bill in 10 Slides | March 19th, 2010

With the big vote coming up this weekend in the House, I wanted to share this plain-language look at what the bill actually contains. Amidst all the shouting, this is a calm layout of the bill:

Salon.com: The healthcare bill: 10 things you need to know

Also, if this bill — which relies on market exchanges and doesn’t have a government-run plan — is what passes as “socialist”, the word has truly lost all meaning.

Gotta Admit, Obama Beats Kofi Annan | February 11th, 2010

And I thought we had a prestigious, rub-your-face-in-it speaker at NU in 2002:

President Obama to deliver U-M spring 2010 commencement address

Yet before I think this is too cool, it’s only for the undergrad graduation, as the b-school graduation is April 30. Regardless, that is one serious publicity coup for UMich. Way to go, Blue.

UPDATE: Seems grad students get four tickets after all. Sweet.

So Long, Healthcare Reform, See You in 2025 | January 19th, 2010

I’m not 100 percent bummed about tonight; this will probably force Obama and the Democrats to focus on naked job-creation projects like they should have done in the first place. The only problem is that any efforts to get job projects passed will probably get caught in the newfound morass – by gaining a seat (and maybe more in November?) and never budging an inch to support anything Democrat-initiated, Republicans have created a self-fulfilling prophecy that government can’t solve anybody’s problems.

And apologies to anyone who follows my Twitter posts, from which I basically constructed this entire post. Recycling is good for the Earth, after all.

Massachusetts Election, 2010 and 2012 | January 18th, 2010

Tomorrow is the Massachusetts special Senate election for Ted Kennedy’s seat, the coverage of which has been drawing my attention for the past week and a half. While I think it’ll be a disappointment if Coakley loses, as it would indicate reinforcement of the unsuccessful status quo of the past decade, that and a G.O.P. gain in November will surprise me about as much as our Chicago toaster oven will when it burns the toast again. (And by that I mean I will be not at all surprised.)

The stats on midterm elections are frequently trotted out, and they’re almost always bad for the incumbent President’s party. Also frequently trotted out these days is the fact that the “Tea Party” is more popular than either major party, and while that movement doesn’t seem to me to have a platform beyond “visceral howls of opposition”, that’s a lot of voter anger floating around that’s inevitably focused on the team in power.

That said, what potential G.O.P. candidate out there can win in 2012? It looks now like none of them can: Romney is too manufactured to get the nomination; Huckabee commuted the sentence of a prisoner who later murdered four police officers; Palin won’t convince enough general-election voters that she’s competent; and Pawlenty is possible but Midwestern governors are usually too nondescript (remember when people said Tom Vilsack could get the Democratic nomination?). The best remaining candidate is probably Rudy Giuliani, but his personal life is a mess, he’s too socially liberal for the base, he dropped out in 2008 when he couldn’t even win the Florida primary and he’s made enough ridiculous claims recently to turn off most voters. In early 2006 the Democrats had the Hillary machine and Obama was an untarnished star, but there’s nobody in the G.O.P. like that as of January 2010.

Anything’s possible in almost three years — caveat up in here — but the conservative part of the G.O.P. is super fired-up and determined to knock off all moderates, meaning they’re either going to nominate someone like Palin who is very unlikely to win the general election or they’ll get angry at having to swallow yet another compromise mainstream candidate like McCain. Either way, not a great situation for challenging a sitting president who’s had time to recalibrate from midterm results.

The ‘Burgh As Star of the Developed World | September 24th, 2009

Things I don’t like about the G20 in Pittsburgh today:

1. In Pittsburgh fashion, the citizens are mistaking dreadlocked-white-people protesters for a snowstorm and hunkering down with supplies of bread, milk and toilet paper.
2. College-educated anarchists breaking things, garnering tons and tons of sympathy for their cause. And by tons and tons, I mean zero.

Things I like about the G20 in Pittsburgh today:

1. National news outlets being forced to do stories (here and here and here) conceding that “Once smoky and horrible, Pittsburgh today is a creative, scenic center of high-tech industry,” or in layman’s terms, “Hey, it’s nice here!” We keep telling you it’s not a dump, but you just can’t stop indulging the “blue-collar” stereotype.
2. Mad props from the President and world leaders!
3. $8 million into the local economy — even if that’s not a ton, and G20 cities don’t usually see much economic benefit, it’s still a net positive. (Though what’s up with that taken-aback headline, former employer?)
4. This humorous image (from Magnus Patris via the blogger formerly known as PittGirl):
   
5. World summits hosted: Pittsburgh 1, Cleveland 0.

The First Media Pay Wall, Obama as The Joker, Chicago Trib Redesign, and Where Vick Will Go | August 7th, 2009

• The trend has been building, so it had to tip at some point, for better or worse:

  News Corp. to Charge for All Websites, Business Spectator (Australia)

  In America, this could work to an extent, because News Corp.’s two big properties here are the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both outlets with a dedicated (read: rabid) readership that turns there for a specific take on things that really speak to them. But outside the U.S. and for most of the company, I think this is a really bad idea: I don’t see anybody paying to access Sky News online, or junk tabloids like The Sun or New York Post (American, but more reminiscent of a British or Australian News Corp. publication).

  I don’t think the blanket approach is a good way to go, and this type of drastic change should have been evaluated on a per-publication basis. (Maybe it was and they went with this anyway, but that would be puzzling.) TIME.com tried this when I was there, and it was a big failure — TIME is going for such a wide volume of readers that they don’t create a really targeted, “I need my fix” demand, and Sky News isn’t exactly media crack, either. Even the NY Times couldn’t pull this off with their opinion section, and that’s at least at the heroin-level of punditry.

  More reaction roundup from the NY Times.

• I read an opinion piece in the Washington Post criticizing the Obama-as-Joker poster, in which the author argues that the poster is playing on racial fears and says that this poster isn’t as effective as the “Hope” one from the election.

  That seems wrong on two counts. First, even the article itself takes a way long rhetorical path before it can make a connection between the Joker and racial fear. The Joker has always been a white guy, except on the ’60s Batman TV show, when you could possibly say he was sorta-Latino thanks to Cesar Romero. This article just doesn’t convince me that there’s anything about the Joker that links to blackness at all — if you want to break this Joker dude down racially, Heath Ledger clearly depicted him as a source of random violence, a.k.a. terrorism, and I’d say there’s a defined ethnic group that has a clear monopoly on being considered terrorists. Also, the Joker is a sociopathic serial murderer, and “weird middle-aged white guy” is the depiction that immediately springs to mind with that term.

  Second, the Joker poster is totally blunt, but that’s not really ineffective: the great bulk of people are going to think, “Joker bad and socialism bad, so Obama bad”. I’m already seeing it as online avatars, so clearly it’s blunt enough to work on some level. You could get into the fact that probably 70% of people who dislike socialism have any knowledge of the topic besides negative word association, but the point is the poster ties the president pretty effectively to two things Americans dislike. Fair or not, it’s effective, and it’s not racist.

• The Chicago Tribune launched a redesign today. I’m struck first off how much the top navigation looks like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette site. (Check out the two local-news pages, which for the Trib is the one I read the most.) But they did do a good job of cleaning it up a bit, particularly the headlines toward the bottom of the local-news page that used to get lost with no context, a.k.a. subhead, and the fact that the flyout links under the top navigation bar seem to be pretty flexible for spotlighting new stuff.
• My pick for Michael Vick’s ultimate destination: the Oakland Raiders. Here’s why:
  1. JaMarcus Russell is not exactly a showstopper;
  2. Jeff Garcia is too old;
  3. Oakland likes to take slightly older players with something to prove — think Daunte Culpepper;
  4. Al Davis is a total jagoff and probably hates puppies.

  This guy seems to differ from my opinion, but I think he will be surprised in the end. Or I will. The point is, surprise will happen at some point.

Making Me Miss DC | February 12th, 2009

I do miss the cheese fries and cherry milkshakes. And Geeta and I sat at that same table the last time we ate at Ben’s.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7822643.stm?lss

It seems this is a month old, but it’s all good.

That Was Fast | January 21st, 2009

Obama Orders Halt to Prosecutions at Guantánamo

While I think it’s good to close down this negative symbol of America, I’m still curious what the new administration plans to do with the detainees. Now that we’re back with a lawyer president, much less a law professor, I hope he has a plan.

The Real Reason Obama Won | November 5th, 2008

After all, what team beat the ‘Skins to continue the Washington pro football presidential-prediction index?

Truly the Steeler Nation has powers that cannot be comprehended by mere humans. A certain individual would be wise to switch over from the Chicago Bears.