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Post by Jeff on Jun 3, 2008 20:58:47 GMT -5
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Post by David on Jun 5, 2008 19:37:49 GMT -5
Very cool! Now I just hope he wins the election. And I know some people wouldn't like it, but I think a ticket with Obama and Hillary would be VERY cool.
I just hope that he doesn't get assassinated (cuz I could SOOO see it, unfortunately). Too many racists in the world...especially in the US...8-(
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Post by Jeff on Jun 6, 2008 20:17:46 GMT -5
Yep. Thats the problem with us around here. We all hate anyone different than us. Go figure...
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Post by David on Jun 9, 2008 15:51:55 GMT -5
As Jarrod said, he didn't expect to see a black president in his lifetime. Personally, I think we're SOOO overdue! Hell, as I've said for years, my first choice would be for Oprah.
Think about it. She's amassed a very large fortune and successful business on her own (instead of blown daddy's money and driven his business into the ground -- plus, she's got a proven track-record for financial adroitness), she's a woman (so understands that whole half of the population better than any other pres we've ever had), she's black (so as a minority, gets that half of the population), knows the whole hollywood scene and media, and, oh, yes, is loved and respected by home-makers across the nation!
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Post by Jeff on Jun 12, 2008 15:06:22 GMT -5
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Post by Darya on Jun 13, 2008 12:30:57 GMT -5
Thought you might enjoy this article about Obama...
> June 11, 2008
> Obama on the Nile
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
>
> Cairo
>
> This column will probably get Barack Obama in trouble, but that’s
> not my problem. I cannot tell a lie: Many Egyptians and other Arab
> Muslims really like him and hope that he wins the presidency.
>
> I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad,
> but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein
> Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United
> States.
>
> While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring
> Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and
> agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was
> of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family
> tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being
> attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its
> president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a
> sea change in America-Muslim world relations.
>
> Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing
> asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they
> will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)
>
> It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’
> nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more
> to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war,
> President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib,
> Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World
> managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort
> for seven years.
>
> Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and
> will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few
> grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does
> something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old,
> encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could
> simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary
> “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or
> planned.
>
> I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian
> officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his
> children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in
> Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course,
> “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt
> become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the
> leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of
> Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not
> the other way around.
>
> These Egyptian officials were particularly excited about Obama’s
> nomination because it might mean that being labeled a “pro-American”
> reformer is no longer an insult here, as it has been in recent
> years. As one U.S. diplomat put it to me: Obama’s demeanor suggests
> to foreigners that he would not only listen to what they have to say
> but might even take it into account. They anticipate that a U.S.
> president who spent part of his life looking at America from the
> outside in — as John McCain did while a P.O.W. in Vietnam — will be
> much more attuned to global trends.
>
> My colleague Michael Slackman, The Times’s bureau chief in Cairo,
> told me about a recent encounter he had with a worker at Cairo’s
> famed Blue Mosque: “Gamal Abdul Halem was sitting on a green carpet.
> When he saw we were Americans, he said: ‘Hillary-Obama tied?’ in
> thick, broken English. He told me that he lived in the Nile Delta,
> traveling two hours one way everyday to get to work, and still he
> found time to keep up with the race. He didn’t have anything to say
> bad about Hillary but felt that Obama would be much better because
> he is dark-skinned, like him, and because he has Muslim heritage.
> ‘For me and my family and friends, we want Obama,’ he said. ‘We all
> like what he is saying.’ ”
>
> Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be
> punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls
> or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many
> foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger
> for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed,
> revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.
>
> In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,”
> Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting
> of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the
> country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects,
> of vast designs and expectations.”
>
> That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And
> it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether
> Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the
> mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve
> surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing,
> reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.
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