Obamaism, the 1st 100 days and taiji

I really think this short article clearly sums up what a president Obama will be in the days ahead. He said :

But he said what makes the country “so special” is that Americans are willing to uphold their own values even when it is difficult to do so.

In that one sentence, he has described what America seems to have lost under the Bush years. Under Bush, America has chosen to trade off precious human lives, Americans and Iraqis with dubious geopolitical gains by going to a ill-conceived and reckless war in Iraq. They have chosen to trade off human rights ideals enshrined in the constitution in favor of torture to extract intelligence from terrorists. They have chosen to trade off intensifying cooperation with the rest of the world with I-don’t-give-a-shit go it alone cowboy attitude. They have chosen to trade off long term sensible economic growth in favor of policies that let laissez-faire, get-rich-quick schemes run amok without supervision so as to spur the virtual prosperity that makes those in power look good. They have chosen to trade off the necessary infrastructure investments to the nation’s health care system with the unhealthy preoccupation on the Iraq war. They have chosen to trade off addressing climate change, which will be the greatest peril to mother earth in this century with short sighted concern about protecting the economy and the oil industry. In short, they have already sold America out and have done more damage than good.

Here, Obama’s approach is refreshingly different. During this time, he has shown that he’s trying to tackle problems at the root instead of just snuffing out fires only to let it reignite again elsewhere. This is what impress me most about him. He’s less inclined to be shy about telling it to our faces what we must do and what we must be for our own sakes instead of dressing it up to please us. He is committed in doing what is necessary to get the nation back on track rather than for political expediency. He is not afraid to be conciliatory to foreign countries not simply because he’s out to please them, but it will help us push for bigger things later. He’s a president with a long term vision. He is firmly rooted and he knows where he’s going.

The conservative forces are clearly missing a point here. Media like Fox News, Republicans, evangelists, fundamentalists are setting themselves up for failure if they are to be taken as blocking Obama’s stewardship instead of complementing it. They are probing for chinks in his armor but what they will probably find is strength and resilience to their attacks. John McCain had a taste of it during the elections. McCain is everywhere but in fact, nowhere. This is what is happening now with the conservatives. They are clearly lost and instead of finding their own root by offering constructive contributions to the nation’s needs for the next decade, they are wasting resources picking on piecemeal issues to attack Obama. This type of hit and run will not work against a skilled opponent like Obama.

Obama is the quintessential taiji exponent who also happen to be well-versed in the fine art of war. He clearly knows where his root is and, at the same time, flexible enough in dealing with opponents who only understand the language of stupid brute force. He is the right kind of 21st century president America needs now to deal with the complex economy, domestic unseen enemies, hit and run terrorists in Pakistan, emerging powers in China and Russia, rogue states like Iran and North Korea. I would dare predict the golden age of revitalization of America in the next decade under his leadership.

The Economist endorses Obama

A sober and balanced endorsement by a magazine for Obama. The Economist has been pretty critical of Obama but it has turned around and endorsed him instead after weighing all the factors. It says that if McCain had been running based on his usual self instead of pandering to the Republican far right, it would have been a very different story. Obama is still untested and that would already have been enough to nail his presidency hopes. But

There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and out-fought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

This feat alone shows he is far more competent than so-called old hands in politics. In a way, I think being experienced in Washington’s ways is a baggage in this election because of how Obama has defined the battle. Obama refused to let his campaign be defined by those of the past which is based largely on character assassination, mud-slinging and pandering to the electorate. Instead, he chose to run a very different campaign strategy and it takes a lot of courage to do that. He stood his ground staking his campaign on his message around ordinary Americans and their aspirations, their frustrations. He skilfully deflects all the smears and barbs thrown at him by chiding them of resorting to low-handed tactics instead of trying to address the fundamental problems faced by the country. It is simply brilliant the way he and his team has conducted his campaign which has moved even the skeptical Economist’s editors him to throw in their support .

As the election looms near, here’s some Matrix nostalgia :

Agent Smith: You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Anderson…
Neo: My name… is Barack Hussein Obama.

Yes, the sound has changed since 2 years ago and we all know which way the sound is going now, the only question is how loud will it be.

Polls versus putting money where the mouth is

Came across this interesting site, InTrade Prediction Market. It currently predicts Obama will win 375 electoral votes versus 163 for McCain. If you don’t trust the election polls, this is one alternative. In my opinion, it reflects a better picture of the election because of the following assumptions :

• It is based more on informed decision-making and minimizes the biases in some polls. But bear in mind that traders will still base their decisions on what they get in the news and the media being skewed in this election does affect the market results.
• Of course, putting the money where your mouth is, traders want to bet on the right outcome because they don’t want to lose money.
• Aggregation power of informed traders. They represent the aggregated perceptions and information available at the current moment.

The Obama administration

Here’s the political editor of Huffington Post already talking about who’s gonna be in an Obama administration. Forget the polls, forget the election, it’s over for McCain, no doubt, unless some big external event were to occur between now and Nov. 4.

The McCain campaign implosion

We’re starting to hear more about the inevitable impending implosion of the McCain campaign. According to wikipedia, the media endorsements now stands at 127-46 in favor of Obama. What’s more interesting is the growing landslide of endorsements for Obama’s as compared to McCain’s. See for yourself. This is in contrast to years ago when the situation is the exact opposite. Here in the Wall Street Journal, we have the defections of Republicans to the Democratic ticket. On Karl Rove’s, the architect of the Bush presidency, site, see his electoral map. The blame game is already starting in the McCain camp, with finger-pointing, ass-covering and resignation starting to snowball. What’s worse, the McCain camp has to defend negativity generated by the press for the ridiculous amounts of money spent on Palin’s wardrobe and the mutilation hoax perpetrated by a McCain campaign worker. Then he is forced to blast Bush for the current situation without mentioning the fact that he supported Bush 90% of the time. That is all not good news in McCain-land. The implosion has begun and Obama’s campaign does not even need to lift a finger.  It will just snowball from now on to it’s foregone conclusion, an earthquake election.

What’s happening ? McCain could have been one up against Obama at any time in this campaign. Now why does Obama seem to be so impervious to any move made by McCain ? Obama’s black and that’s supposed to be a big advantage to McCain and still is. Obama is inexperienced, not very well known and an idealist which can be a double-edged sword. Every which way you dissect the 2 candidates, McCain will always start out the stronger party and Obama the weaker one. But in this case, Obama has managed to minimize his own weaknesses and maximize his opponent’s. It never cease to impress me that Obama’s team is disciplined, principled and steadfast irregardless of anything that’s thrown at them. Every move McCain makes end up backfiring. The lesson here is that the most important thing about winning is to put your own house in order first. It’s like a tree firmly anchored to the ground but adapting by swaying with the force of the wind. No matter which direction or how strong the wind blows, the tree is till standing. In my opinion, McCain has already lost from the beginning because :

1. His world view and value systems does not exactly align with the Republican’s more extreme positions. He is more centrist and moderate. This causes conflicts and infighting which is already happening.
2. There’s no central overarching moral theme of his campaign. It’s just throwing everything at the wall at any moment to see what sticks. They are too quick to abandon their main message with too much attacking and too little in solidifying their core theme.
3. He’s too much inside Washington that he’s just out of touch.

Obama’s camp is the exact opposite. In a fight, the loser always blames the opponent for being the stronger, faster, more skiIled, the weather, whatever. The perspective of the loser is never the fact that there’s something wrong with himself in the first place and needs to keep his own house in order above all else. The martial art taiji teaches us to first and foremost find our root, to be introspective, to know ourselves before we learn how to fight others. There is no firm root in McCain’s campaign. I am impressed with Obama’s campaign who seemed to have mastered this basic truth so obvious but yet so elusive to a war veteran like McCain.

Why are McCain supporters so angry ?

There are increasing news reports about McCain’s campaigns getting more heated and angry. Why are McCain voters so angry ? They aren’t even losing yet. Obama’s supporters should be the ones crying foul of all the attacks coming from McCain’s camp but they are surprisingly quiet. Why the difference ? The McCain camp is saying the press is unfairly giving preferential treatment, yeah maybe. Remember the times when the press didn’t even blow a nose when Bush went to war in Iraq. Well, what comes around, goes around. The press this time is taking the Obama side because :

• The national mood has changed after 7 years and Obama has simply tapped into this changing mood. People are asking what went wrong and they are figuring out the answers.
• Obama’s momentum has increased to the point of overwhelming force when Colin Powell started to endorse him and the press is not one to lose an opportunity to align with the winner.
• There really is not much dirt to pick on Obama anyway, yawn…

It all boils down again to the genetic makeup of the Republicans. They chose the strategy of divide and conquer. They chose to make use of the festering anger and swelling pro-conservative emotions caused by 9/11 to get a mandate. Their power base now consists of the extreme segments of the population and their angry ideology is seeping into the mainstream. They have chosen to make a deal with the devil. Now, the devil is starting to consume them. It’s payback time. It can also be a dangerous time if the Republicans were to lose. When the devil knows it’s losing, it’s not going to quietly go away. It’s really up to McCain and those in charge of the Republican party to purge the devils, to unambiguously and publicly, without any preconditions, denounce and reject the worst and the extreme of the conservative ideology. They have a critical responsibility and a choice, purge the devil and embark on a new spiritual path, one that unites rather than divides or continue embracing the devil till all hell breaks lose.

McCain’s riches

McCain is a very rich man. Now of course, it does not mean that rich men can’t be presidents and whether a person is rich or not have nothing to do with being a good president. But from how McCain and Obama have each conducted themselves so far, Obama is just the obvious choice.

Where’s the Joe the plumber logic

So what’s this hoopla surrounding Joe the plumber anyway ? Another 1 of McCain’s aimless roundhouse punches again at Obama. McCain’s tactic here is basically devoid of any purpose but to paint the image of a fight-for-the-ordinary-guy in our minds. There’s a complete lack of mojo in this Joe the plumber caricature. Now Obama didn’t make Joe famous, McCain did and he has the bloody cheek to apologize to Joe for bringing him overnite fame and Joe the man is probably already busy milking his newfound fame. Now what’s all this fuss about Joe anyway. He’s far from being in the $250k bracket, so what’s the big deal ? I would dare say that most plumbers are unlike Joe, making less than $250k but maybe McCain’s own plumber is different. There is just no message here, nothing, nada, except for the fact that McCain wants to stick his face on Joe’s body so that we see him as our plumber next door who’ll save the country’s economy. Maybe McCain has a fetish of being a plumber ? Who knows ?

Now unless the conservatives want to make the case that progressive taxation doesn’t work, I can’t see where they’re going with Joe the plumber. Progressive taxation has been with us since time began. The poor will always pay less taxes than the rich. Under Obama, the rich will probably be asked to fork out more. Well call it socialism or communism or whatever, in times of need, it only makes sense that those with the means be asked to bear more of the burden. Good times will generally benefit the rich as the saying goes, “the rich gets richer” but in bad times, the poor and not-so-well-off is harder hit than the rich. The rich can ride it out but the poor suffers more. Now taxing the rich more does not call for the dismantling of the free market nor is it that we become a welfare state or even changing the current status quo much. Here’s why from a snippet in wikipedia :

In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.

In describing tax systems, it is important to distinguish between the percent of taxes paid on a given income, and the percent of taxes paid by a person with a given income. For example, if a person earns $1,000,000 and is taxed at a rate of 10%, they will owe $100,000 in taxes. On the other hand, if a person earns $10,000 and is taxed at a rate of 20%, they will owe $2000 in taxes. The person with the greater income is taxed at a lower rate but pays a higher tax. The person with the lesser income is taxed at a higher rate but pays a lower tax. The United States has a tax system which is a mixture of progressive taxation and regressive taxation. The income tax is progressive, capital gains tax, at a lower rate than the income tax, is regressive, as is the sales tax, since the less wealthy spend a greater percentage of their income. In 2003, the one percent with the highest salaries paid more than 34% of the nation’s federal income tax; the ten percent with the highest salaries paid more than 66% of the total income tax; the top 25% of paid 84% of the income taxes; and the upper half accounted for virtually the entire U.S. income tax revenue (nearly 97%). This is an inevitable consequence of the concentration of wealth. People who do not have much money cannot pay high taxes, even when they pay a greater percentage of their earnings in taxes.

Now 40% of population owns less than 1% of nation’s wealth. Yes, 40%, holy shmokes ! Raising or lowering taxes for this group has no effect at all on tax revenues. The top 10% accounts for 66% of tax revenues. So now, who are you going to collect more in taxes to make any difference at all ? The top 10% of course. So Obama’s plan is not changing anything at all except collect more tax money from the top 5-10% of the population who can afford it. So I don’t see where Joe & McCain is going with all this sand being kicked in our faces.

Obama’s uninspiring performance

Obama didn’t quite seal the deal in my opinion. No punches and he looks a bit more uninspiring than the last. Nope, Obama’s poll numbers could have pulled away if he’s put up a more solid performance. By solid I mean he should try to appear to be more assertive and aggressive. The pro-McCain voter loves hard-talking and a fight. They understand strength and force more than logic and reason. I think McCain also stole the initiative by bringing in the “Joe the plumber” tactic. That tactic is very effective in dumbing down the message and the rhectoric to the man-in-the-street. That’s where Obama is weak in. He needs to learn to sometimes talk in non-Harvard, man-in-the-street, Joe-six-pack language, boxer language. That’s what McCain is doing, drawing Obama into an area which he’s not strong at. Kudos to McCain for doing that, it’s a smart move. Obama now either can carry on waiting for McCain to make a few more mistakes and commit kamikaze or start figuring how to land a few hard ones into McCain’s camp. I think Obama can afford to do that without losing much ground by baiting McCain to make a few more mistakes.

McCain is a frustrated old man

I think John McCain is a frustrated man. Why ? Because for the last 8 years, he has been trying to portray himself as a maverick in Washington, trying to do things “his” way rather than toe the party or Bush’s line all the time. After the 2000 election when he lost to Bush, he has been trying hard to lay a path for himself for the presidency in 2008. During this time, he has carefully modelled himself as a political maverick, as the alternative to Bush. I think he sees the falling popularity of Bush and he knows that the fall of Bush means the rise of him. Time is not on McCain’s side and he really need to be president now if not ever. That’s why I said he’s frustrated, he’s frustrated at Obama for having come out of nowhere with the possibility to grab it all away from him. His frustrations shows in how he is campaigning. It is eating into his persona, his principles and his decency and it shows. He’s running his campaign in a take no prisoners, win at all costs fashion without due consideration of the consequences. He is now not aversed to using the same kind of tactics used on him by Bush/Karl Rove during the 2000 elections that he so disliked himself. He has allowed his desperation of being a president to overshadow the decent man and all the ideals that he stands for. That’s why I think within him, he carries a certain disdain for Obama. His not looking at Obama during the first debate and his “That One” slip shows his anger & frustration at Obama.