{"id":283,"date":"2008-04-30T09:22:47","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T14:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/30\/fight-the-power\/"},"modified":"2008-06-19T12:16:25","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T17:16:25","slug":"fight-the-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2008\/fight-the-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight The Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

The only thing Barack Obama has going for him these days is us. You and me.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, we saw him yesterday, and he looked tired. 15 months of nonstop campaigning. I really feel for the guy. He’s trying to take on The System. But The System is a well-tuned machine that’s been honed and tested and tweaked for maximum efficiency. It’s tuned in to exploit people’s most primal nature, using fear and mudslinging and doubt.<\/p>\n

John McCain offers a hack fix (a temporary gas tax break) that sounds great to everyone but accomplishes nothing, then turns on Obama because Obama doesn’t support it – he’s after bigger fish – and then McCain makes claims that Obama doesn’t support poor people. We’ve heard this type of Orwellian language (aka lies) for 8 years now. AND IT STICKS. Maybe not entirely, but it’s there, in the back of Joe America’s subconscious, rolling around. The machine works.<\/p>\n

The current Newsweek cover has a picture of arugula on the left and beer on the right, with the words “Obama’s Bubba Gap” in between. More Orwellian bullshit. With 3am phone calls and Pastor Wright and lapel pins and bubba gaps saturating the primary information streams we receive in our living rooms, the signal is almost impossible to discern from the noise. But it’s there<\/a>. Listen up, you’ll hear it too.<\/p>\n

George F. Will provided a mostly-thoughtful set of questions from the conservative perspective in his article in the current Newsweek. The sarcasm sneaks in, as well as the distortion by using several quotes from Obama’s wife, but generally, he’s trying to stay on the issues. To sum up, the questions for Obama centered on the economy, taxes and corporate interests. Poor fiscal conservatives, they seem to have no one representing their interests these days. The closest was Bill Clinton and his balanced budget. The furthest is George “can’t add” Bush. Cross-reference George Will’s questions with Obama’s objectives, and Obama’s answers<\/a> include ending the war in Iraq (where all our money is currently going), investment in research and development, moving further towards energy independence, simplifying the tax code (while keeping it progressive), and focusing on keeping jobs in America and increasing exports. Sign me up.<\/p>\n

I still believe in “us”. We can do it, with a little effort. Dare to dig in and climb the mountain of hope. It’s the toughest job you may ever have, but it’s the only way out of the valley of corruption in which we’re currently mired. Peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only thing Barack Obama has going for him these days is us. You and me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-life","category-global-issues","category-rants-and-raves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9M0Zg-4z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":317,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2008\/we-ran-hard-for-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":0},"title":"We ran hard for Obama","author":"m","date":"November 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The whole family dug in and ran hard to help get Obama elected. Weekend before last: knocked on 90 doors, called 50 Saturday: knocked on 81 doors Tuesday: knocked on 50+ doors, called 25 Great job crew! I am TIRED. :P The Dobbs are coming over soon. Time to relax\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All My Rowdy Friends"","block_context":{"text":"All My Rowdy Friends","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/all-my-rowdy-friends\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1398,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2011\/easy-to-destroy-hard-to-build\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":1},"title":"Easy to destroy, hard to build","author":"m","date":"July 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"My brother Dan and I had a spirited debate as I drove back from Winston-Salem today. He started off with a conspiracy theory (here we go...) that Obama was \"briefed\" for two days shortly after being elected, and was somehow influenced to do a 180 on all his campaign promises.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All My Rowdy Friends"","block_context":{"text":"All My Rowdy Friends","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/all-my-rowdy-friends\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2008\/obama-in-the-house\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":2},"title":"Obama in the house","author":"m","date":"April 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrea and I headed to Chapel Hill\/Carrboro (what a great place) to hear Obama speak on the UNC campus. We headed out right from work at 5pm, and easily made the drive in under an hour. We had dinner at one of the three restaurants Heather recommended - the Mediterranean\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All My Rowdy Friends"","block_context":{"text":"All My Rowdy Friends","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/all-my-rowdy-friends\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":854,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2010\/an-ode-to-bro\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":3},"title":"An ode to bro","author":"m","date":"May 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My bro is constantly trying to fight the right-wing hate machine that lives and breathes through all the bitter old people that use the internet (read: forward junk mail).\u00a0 He does a beautiful job of debunking the bs, but it always falls on deaf ears (and minds). So... I am\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All My Rowdy Friends"","block_context":{"text":"All My Rowdy Friends","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/all-my-rowdy-friends\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1660,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2012\/motley-fool-economic-data-on-presidents-of-the-united-states\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":4},"title":"Motley Fool economic data on Presidents of the United States","author":"m","date":"November 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Motley Fool is pretty good at being pragmatic, and continues that trend with this report on economic data under past POTUSes. \u00a0It's very very simple, very concrete data in a few categories. \u00a0As with most real data, it's not going to give you a single clean answer. \u00a0But if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Issues"","block_context":{"text":"Global Issues","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/daily-life\/global-issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":284,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2008\/oh-happy-day-blog-spaz\/","url_meta":{"origin":283,"position":5},"title":"Oh Happy Day blog spaz!","author":"m","date":"May 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it is centered around the fact that I just got a haircut - a real haircut - in a salon and everything - for the first time in months. But I'm having a really good moment! I gave a good presentation and then got a quality award at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Daily Life"","block_context":{"text":"Daily Life","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/daily-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}