I concur. I saw this last night and, like another poster said, it sent chills up my spine. I was also struck by the fact that Keith really seemed to be barely contained with his emotions during the course of it. Not that that's a bad thing by a long shot, I think he cares very deeply about the country and that what's happened has been so offensive to his sensibilities that it was all he could do to not outright snap.
I tell ya. The absolute best hope that we've got for this country is always questioning our government, our "leaders". It is my sincere belief and hope that this continues in the blogosphere and in the news after this election.
Actually, that's kind of a stupid thing for me to say. The mainstream media will of course question everything Obama does every day, with the same obnoxious punditry that's been cheerleading Dubya, and that's been wrong about everything. They'll still be playing their little Go Team! games, when we've got a damn country to fix.
That's why we can't count on the mainstream media for things like that. We have to look to one another to ask these questions. That's one reason why the political blogs have become so popular.
1) It was a deliberate joke, exaggerating the lengths he's traveled.
2) He misspoke and meant to say "FORTY-seven states." Grammatically, we're talking about the difference between "for" (four) and "fif" (five). So, only ONE off. A verbal typoo.
(edited) Right. "Nu-cu-ler" is the only verbal gaffe Dubya has ever made.
It isn't as if he's talked about people who "misunderestimate" (http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp) him. And he hasn't referred to himself as "the master of low expectations" (http://www.allgreatquotes.com/george_w_bush_quotes5.shtml). And he certainly hasn't told a crowd of Yale graduates, "To the 'C' students, I say, 'You, too, can be president of the United States'" (http://www.time.com/time/columnist/carney/article/0,9565,127630,00.html), right?
He was trying to remember the SPECIFIC number of states he'd visited, before arriving at SEVEN. That pause was for counting purposes, not necessarily for looking back to make sure he'd said FORTY instead of FIFTY.
And he probably said fifty in the first place because it's easier to count DOWN to 47 from 50 than UP to 47 from 40, especially since there's ONLY FIFTY STATES. So in his mind, he considered ALL FIFTY states, then subtracted. He was THINKING fifty instead of forty, so he accidentally SAID fifty instead of forty.
Dude, every human who has ever existed HAS MADE AT LEAST ONE VERBAL GAFFE PUBLICLY, and the odds go up when said human has been publicly speaking as much as Obama has, and probably hasn't had an ideal amount of sleep. If Bush had said "nuke-u-lar" ONCE and never made a verbal gaffe again, I would have forgiven him for misspeaking, respected his intelligence, and still disagreed with EVERY GODDAMN POLICY HE'S EVER MADE. And if my uncle had ovaries he'd be my aunt. As it IS, I have no choice but to consider Bush a spoiled, pampered idiot, elected at least half the time by a nation of far poorer idiots (or not elected at all, depending on your conspiratorial subscription). It's not a double-standard, it's a STANDARD.
Obama is many things, but he's not an idiot. No idiot could rise from where he was to where he is. If nothing else, I admire him for his evolved, unprecedented disdain for distractions and non-issues that don't matter at all at the end of the day, like for example the gaffe you've been bitching about.
The Carl's Jr. chain has made a selling point of the sloppiness of their sandwiches. Other fast food chains talk about quality or low price, but all Carl's can boast about is messiness.
Dubya has made his folksiness, his linguistic clumsiness, his no-better-than-you-ness, into a selling point.
No, I think we grasp the point quite keenly. The difference is how and where you apply it, and it's not ideology.
Obama made a gaffe. I've seen the video, I heard the words. You can chalk it up to his being tired, his trying to make a joke, and I even granted the possibility that, having decided to campaign in all fifty states, he somehow thought there were more.
The point is that, in trying to make this one harmless misstatement an issue, you are behaving exactly like the pundits you supposedly decry below.
My problem with, for instance, Bush's verbal gaffes is that they are [a] habitual and [b] correctable -- at least one would think someone has told him that, for instance, the weapons under his command are not referred to as "nucular" (or, FSM help us, "tacular nucular") by anyone besides himself, but he just keeps right on going, and now there are pundits (and, I fear, advisors) who call them "nucular" weapons. His messing up the word now and then is harmless; his staff enabling him to deliberately continue mispronouncing it is unnerving.
Even you made a mistake, in commenting to my message below rather than fredhuggins. I presume that was a perfectly innocent mistake, one I know I've made a number of times ("Dang! No, you stupid LJ, not that one -- I didn't mean -- crap, [delete], start again...."). I do not think less of you for having made it, and wasn't planning to hold it against you and call you a moron for doing it. This stuff happens. Now, if it happens again and again and again, we have to wonder, at least a little.
The reason Bush critics -- certainly me -- think Bush is a moron is because he has made such misstatements and manglings of the language not once, but hundreds of times. The two I will never forget were just before the 2000 election. He had a rally the Thursday before, in which he derided Al Gore for treating Social Security like some kinda federal program. And he had a stump speech element in which he promised to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by working with Mexico.
What am I supposed to think?
If Obama had said he musta been in... eighty-seven states, or said that he felt as if he's been in fifty-seven states and then asked if we'd added some when he wasn't looking, would you acknowledge that as a misstatement or a joke, or continue to take it as serious proof that Obama was "another moron"?
You've washed your brain and I can't do a thing with it.
I will point out two little details of your interpretation of Mr. Obama's words: One, the argument that "you can't raise capital gains/any tax on the wealthy because they'll find all the loopholes and pay less" is one of the oldest, most obnoxious tricks in the book. By that "logic", we might as well all become serfs now and save our new feudal overlords the trouble, because, gosh darn it, they're just too crafty for us.
Two, Obama also wants to -- lessee, what was that? Oh, yeah. GET THE FUCK OUT OF IRAQ. Which possibly might play into his calculations for paying for shit.
Whatever (http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/2/13/81426/9950). You, ah, do realize that, even though the "military actions are not paid for out of the general budget... purely deficit spending and external borrowing", the money that will cover that deficit spending and external borrowing has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is going to be... a future general budget?
Here, I'll make you happy. He fucked up, okay? Maybe he was counting protectorates like Puerto Rico and Guam, maybe he was tired, maybe he didn't fucking know. You get that point.
Now. Compare that with the lies, idiocy, and sheer lack of knowledge at any given press conference by the Chimp In Charge. Or Cheney. Or Rove. Or McSame, who couldn't tell you the difference between Sunni and Shia even after being corrected multiple times. Or Powell at the UN. Or a random five minutes from Rush, or Hannity, or Wiener/Savage, or O'Lielly, or Coulter, or William The Bloody, or Feith, or, or, or, or, or....
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 11:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-19 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 03:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 03:20 pm (UTC)Actually, that's kind of a stupid thing for me to say. The mainstream media will of course question everything Obama does every day, with the same obnoxious punditry that's been cheerleading Dubya, and that's been wrong about everything. They'll still be playing their little Go Team! games, when we've got a damn country to fix.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 03:31 pm (UTC)Reminds me of Clinton's victory in 1992. My grandfather, whom no one could describe as anywhere left of Limbaugh, was railing and gnashing his teeth.
My father, even farther to the left than I, smirked and replied, "Are you gonna be like this all eight years?"
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 07:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-15 09:21 pm (UTC)1) It was a deliberate joke, exaggerating the lengths he's traveled.
2) He misspoke and meant to say "FORTY-seven states." Grammatically, we're talking about the difference between "for" (four) and "fif" (five). So, only ONE off. A verbal typoo.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-16 03:41 pm (UTC)Right. "Nu-cu-ler" is the only verbal gaffe Dubya has ever made.
It isn't as if he's talked about people who "misunderestimate" (http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp) him. And he hasn't referred to himself as "the master of low expectations" (http://www.allgreatquotes.com/george_w_bush_quotes5.shtml). And he certainly hasn't told a crowd of Yale graduates, "To the 'C' students, I say, 'You, too, can be president of the United States'" (http://www.time.com/time/columnist/carney/article/0,9565,127630,00.html), right?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-16 09:36 pm (UTC)And he probably said fifty in the first place because it's easier to count DOWN to 47 from 50 than UP to 47 from 40, especially since there's ONLY FIFTY STATES. So in his mind, he considered ALL FIFTY states, then subtracted. He was THINKING fifty instead of forty, so he accidentally SAID fifty instead of forty.
Fucking think before you call the kettle black.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-17 06:31 am (UTC)Obama is many things, but he's not an idiot. No idiot could rise from where he was to where he is. If nothing else, I admire him for his evolved, unprecedented disdain for distractions and non-issues that don't matter at all at the end of the day, like for example the gaffe you've been bitching about.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-17 03:58 pm (UTC)Dubya has made his folksiness, his linguistic clumsiness, his no-better-than-you-ness, into a selling point.
Dubya is the Carl's Jr. of presidents.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-18 12:04 pm (UTC)Obama made a gaffe. I've seen the video, I heard the words. You can chalk it up to his being tired, his trying to make a joke, and I even granted the possibility that, having decided to campaign in all fifty states, he somehow thought there were more.
The point is that, in trying to make this one harmless misstatement an issue, you are behaving exactly like the pundits you supposedly decry below.
My problem with, for instance, Bush's verbal gaffes is that they are [a] habitual and [b] correctable -- at least one would think someone has told him that, for instance, the weapons under his command are not referred to as "nucular" (or, FSM help us, "tacular nucular") by anyone besides himself, but he just keeps right on going, and now there are pundits (and, I fear, advisors) who call them "nucular" weapons. His messing up the word now and then is harmless; his staff enabling him to deliberately continue mispronouncing it is unnerving.
Even you made a mistake, in commenting to my message below rather than
The reason Bush critics -- certainly me -- think Bush is a moron is because he has made such misstatements and manglings of the language not once, but hundreds of times. The two I will never forget were just before the 2000 election. He had a rally the Thursday before, in which he derided Al Gore for treating Social Security like some kinda federal program. And he had a stump speech element in which he promised to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by working with Mexico.
What am I supposed to think?
If Obama had said he musta been in... eighty-seven states, or said that he felt as if he's been in fifty-seven states and then asked if we'd added some when he wasn't looking, would you acknowledge that as a misstatement or a joke, or continue to take it as serious proof that Obama was "another moron"?
Does this make things any clearer?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-19 01:52 am (UTC)You've washed your brain and I can't do a thing with it.
I will point out two little details of your interpretation of Mr. Obama's words: One, the argument that "you can't raise capital gains/any tax on the wealthy because they'll find all the loopholes and pay less" is one of the oldest, most obnoxious tricks in the book. By that "logic", we might as well all become serfs now and save our new feudal overlords the trouble, because, gosh darn it, they're just too crafty for us.
Two, Obama also wants to -- lessee, what was that? Oh, yeah. GET THE FUCK OUT OF IRAQ. Which possibly might play into his calculations for paying for shit.
And, having said that, Tom moved on.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-19 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-17 01:05 pm (UTC)Now. Compare that with the lies, idiocy, and sheer lack of knowledge at any given press conference by the Chimp In Charge. Or Cheney. Or Rove. Or McSame, who couldn't tell you the difference between Sunni and Shia even after being corrected multiple times. Or Powell at the UN. Or a random five minutes from Rush, or Hannity, or Wiener/Savage, or O'Lielly, or Coulter, or William The Bloody, or Feith, or, or, or, or, or....
Perspective, please.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-18 11:50 am (UTC)