A Bilingual Blogospheric Obama Endorsement

Liza Sabater, blogger extraordinaire at Culture Kitchen (among other places) has come out for Obama. Liza describes herself as "black Puerto Rican" and dropped a Spanish (Una carta abierta para Barack Obama) and English version.

Here's an excerpt from the English side:

I am not a poet by any stretch of the imagination. I just find it really interesting that the only way I could work through my ambivalence about Obama was through poetic prose and that I could only do so in Spanish.

Why have I been ambivalent? I actually believe he is going to be a great President, even better than what Hillary Clinton could be. I am just cautious because, he will be after all the first black president, and I do believe in such a thing as "the curse of the first one out".

Barack Obama Raises 32 Million in January

Hat tip: icebergslim over at DailyKos

From CNN.com:

Breaking: Obama raises $32 million in January
Posted: 11:55 AM ET

Obama has raised over $30 million in January.
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Democrat Barack Obama raised $32 million in the month of January alone for his presidential bid, CNN's Candy Crowley confirms.

That total roughly equals his previous best three-month fundraising haul.

The campaign would not divulge how much money it has on hand — a more accurate measure of a campaign's financial health going forward.

A campaign source also tells CNN the Illinois senator received contributions from 170,000 new donors in January.

The Clinton campaign would not indicate how much money it had raised in the same time period.

I think his fundraising abilities have helped him a great deal in this race.

Some Quick Thoughts - One Is Mean

cross-posted to goodCRIMETHINK

I'm in a California hotel after giving a talk to students at the Five Colleges consortium in Claremont. (great students BTW).

I turned on Anderson Cooper, and he had Claire McCaskill and Stephanie Tubbs Jones on talking about Obama and Clinton, respectively. Tubbs Jones tried to act like Florida was such a big deal, blah blah.

Then it occurred to me what really bothers me about her:

Stephanie Tubbs Jones doesn't close her mouth when she's not speaking. Look!

There's just something not right about that. That's all I have to say in the mean department.

Elsewhere in thought land, I kicked it with a group from the school for several hours, and someone mentioned an idea I hadn't even considered.

If Barack Obama used gender against Clinton in the way she used race against him, he'd be dead. Her folks calculated that you could dis black folks who stand at only 12 percent of the population. He can't rightly dis over 50 percent of the electorate. Nasty.

I'm gonna be on a TV-less plane during the one -on-one debate tonight, so yall have to watch and take good notes for me!

Alec Baldwin, Huffington Post and Bigots

I find it so interesting that Alec Baldwin got so much static for publishing this piece. I actually sort of enjoyed it. It's like a surreal, funhouse of mirrors walk inside a tightened, frightened mind. I've heard friends with racist parents, particularly their dads, describe their backwards-thinking parent affectionately as an "Archie Bunker".

Most white people in my experience -- conservative or liberal -- seem to respond positively to Barack Obama, even if they preferred another candidate. He's almost like the Lenny Kravitz or Darius Rucker (from Hootie and the Blowfish) or Wayne Brady of politics. I don't mean that in a bad way, either. Those men all broke down social barriers in their own way.

So it's fascinating to see what a white person who really doesn't like Obama is actually thinking. This piece is the naked truth of the savage racist mind. There's no filter from this "Archie Bunker". For those of you with Archie Bunkers for parents, only you can decide what level of ignorance and hatred you personally can tolerate from those in your life. And what you plan to do about it.

I also find it interesting that Baldwin had to explain (though probably not to his minority readers) why he posted it after the paper's weak apology.

I don't see how anyone can ask, "Why reprint this? They pulled it from their website." So, essentially, leave it alone? Well, why bother doing anything worthwhile? Why vote? Why go to church or school? Why learn the violin or read a book? We expose racism, real racism, because it is a worthwhile thing to do.

To those who believe hatred should be ignored, I give you the sad facts of what bigotry unconfronted tends to become over time. Violence, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Whether it's religious intolerance or racism, we turn away or wink at society's grave peril. Thank you, Alec for publishing this.

I'm tempted to go line-by-line and analyze this opinion piece. It's so rich with history, information, mis-information, confusion and ignorance. It's also pretty shake-your-head hilarious. Still, like any "work of art", perhaps the final impression is best left in the eye of the beholder. For the unenlightened though, I refer you to the Nobel Prize winners bio page for Dr. Martin Luther King which explains that he earned his doctorate from Boston University, completing his studies in 1955.

Let me know your favorite part....You can find the original here.

Spinning The Snub

The Washington Press Corps, watching the State of the Union Address like it was an episode of Saved By The Bell, decided that the big story of the SOTU wasn't the flagging economy, or the war in Iraq, but rather the fact that Zack Obama and Kelly Clinton didn't make out during the speech.

When members of the Senate entered the chamber, Obama came in before Clinton. He went out of his way to greet as many House members as possible and walked halfway across the chamber to greet members of the Supreme Court, the president's cabinet, the military joint chiefs.

That made what happened next even more striking. Obama returned to stand by his seat next to Sen. Edward Kennedy who endorsed Obama today in a widely watched event that reverberated across the political world.

As Clinton approached, Kennedy made sure to make eye contact and indicated he wanted to shake her hand. Clinton leaned towards Kennedy over a row of seats and Kennedy leaned in towards her. They shook hands.

Obama stood icily staring at Clinton during this, then turned his back and stepped a few feet away. Kennedy may've wanted to make peace with Clinton but Obama clearly wanted no part of that.

As president, Obama has said he would meet with the U.S.'s enemies without precondition. But making nice with Clinton apparently is another mattter after the increasingly angry fight the two have waged, with charges and countercharges, for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Can we trust Obama's promise to meet with leaders of rival states without possibly snubbing them by not buying them a milkshake and a slice of pizza at The Max?

The Snub, as this moment has been dubbed, will plod along for weeks and possibly become a part of the political vocabulary. The Clinton campaign was hoping a delegateless win in Florida would halt the momentum of Obama's win in South Carolina, but instead they've fallen ass-backwards into this story, which ultimately places Hillary in the only role in which she gets positive press: as a victim. It is the only role in which our sexist media has decided it is appropriate to treat her sympathetically.

The danger which Obama and Hillary face is in deviating from the script of their assigned roles based on race and gender. The problem is that for each of them, running in itself is deviating from accepted social norms.

The Snub is, like many other political flashpoints, (Dean Scream, Bush Poll Surge, Clinton Collapse, "This is Good For John McCain") a press fabrication.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, the Illinois senator said all the talk swirling around the moment the two crossed paths Monday night is much ado about nothing.

"I was surprised by sort of the reports this morning," Obama told reporters. "You know there was the photograph in the Times about, sort of, me turning away. I was turning away because [Sen.] Claire [McCaskill] asked me a question as Sen. [Ted] Kennedy was reaching for her."

"Sen. Clinton and I have very cordial relations off the floor and on the floor. I waved at her as we were coming into the Senate chamber before we walked over last night," he continued. "I think that there's just a lot more tea leaf reading going on here than I think people are suggesting."

How dare Obama tell the press what the story is! The Washington press as a group had already decided that The Snub was the big story of the evening. What else could possibly be as important?

The Chicago Tribune's transparent effort to turn the story to something substantive is reminiscent of the Right Wing talking points last spring regarding Fox News. But even the attempt to turn The Snub into a serious story with the question "If he can't shake Hillary's hand, how will he talk to Hugo Chavez?" is obscured by the candid admission in the lede:

So President Bush has delivered his last State of the Union. And what everyone in the House press gallery is talking about isn't the speech. Rather, it's the snub.

It's the story because that's what everyone in the press gallery wanted to talk about. Not because it's important, not because it even happened the way it's been written, but because it's all the cool kids in the press room wanted to talk about. Baseless speculation about the candidates' personal interaction is, after all, easier than writing about something that matters.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention