The other day, Michele came home from a visit with her family. While she was there, somehow, the subject of Obama came up – unusual because they are pretty conservative – and her mother said that Obama seems mean.
That surprises me because it is about the last attribute I would give to Obama. Cocky? Sometimes. Stubborn? Maybe. But, mean? Not in anything that I have seen. Maybe I am self-selecting away from stuff that would show his meanness, but I don’t think so.
Anyway, here is a bit of Obama being cocky, but not mean.
All posts by Steve Stern
The hills are alive with…
green. But only at this time of year, when the grasses are so green they look fake and the Oaks are leafing out with, psychedelic, leaves.
The picture above was taken on the way to the Carrizo Plain. The picture below was taken about 25 feet off of 280 between Sandhill and Alpine. Four miles from my home. Two hundred miles apart in the Coast Range.
When I walked up to the field to take the picture, above, I scared a bunch of
horses so much that one fell over as it tried to run away. It sort of
scared me – I had never actually seen a horse fall over before, except
in the movies – and, for a moment, I imagined that the horse was hurt.
Then he/she/or it jumped up and came over to investigate.
And I began to realize that the horses were what was happening and to take pictures of something else was foolish.
General David Petraeus touting General U.S. Grant as an intro to a rant against “Confederate History Month”
Recently, Tom Ricks, who has an excellent blog called The Best Defense on the Foreign Policy website, in an interview of David Petraeus, asked this question:
BD:
We do a lot of reading lists on my blog. What is one book
you’ve read lately that you think should be better known?
General Petraeus: Bruce Catton’s Grant Takes Command (and
Jean Edward
Smith’s Grant). Both support historian Sean Wilentz’ recent
assertion that Grant was a truly great commander and president, vastly
better than historians assessed some years back.
I am a big fan of General Ulysses S Grant and think that he is a greatly underappreciated American hero – in case, somehow, you didn’t know . I love that people are starting to relook at Grant and, in doing so, are seeing his humanity and greatness. But Grant being underappreciated is part of a bigger picture that includes Confederate History Month.
From – oh, say – the turn of the last century to the 1950s, the southern revisionists rewrote both slavery and the Civil War. The novel, Gone With the Wind, with its defense of the Ku Klux Klan and depiction of happy slaves was an example of this. The crux of the revision was that the war was not about slavery and that the North, lead by the inept butcher, Grant, only won because they out numbered and out resourced the noble South and because Grant was willing to lose more men than the superior man and general, Robert E Lee.
That is hooey. The war was clearly about slavery, the abomination that had been tearing at the fabric of the United States since the 3/5’s clause was put in the Constitution. South Carolina was the first state to secede and, following its secession, South Carolina requested the other southern states to join them in forming a southern Confederacy. It said We . . . [are] dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates and seeking a confederation with slaveholding states.
Mississippi became the second state to secede, and it said Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
The other states that followed had similar statements. Fifty years later, these statements transmogrified into the so-called virtuous goals of states rights, independence, and the protection of traditional values. But those traditional values and states rights were slavery.
The North won the Civil War for lots of reasons including that it outnumbered and out resourced the South but the South had the advantage of being on the defensive. It knew the ground it was defending and always had shorter lines of communication and supply. It is much easier to defend a position than take it it.
But the North had better generals in Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, among others. Especially Grant. The generals on the North were younger, they were more adaptive and more inventive, and they had a more compelling vision. As always happens – given enough time – the future won over the past.
So now I come to Confederate History Month – which I don’t understand any more than I understand displaying the confederate battle flag. As an aside. Often people who display the confederate battle flag have the common decency to also display the swastika so, at least, we know that they are just pissed at everybody. End aside.
But why Confederate History Month? What is it about a feudal society that supported itself by slavery that they find so compelling? The Virginia proclamation, which seems to have received the most PR, starts out WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse;
As Reagan once said There you go again…. Here we have the war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox. Concluded? As when Lee surrendered? So, I guess, it makes sense if the celebration is for a war of independence that was not lost, but just, you know, concluded. I think we should celebrate a North Kicked the South’s Ass Month to celebrate that the war concluded for Virginia when Bobbie Lee surrendered his sorry, whooped, ass to General Ulysses S Grant.
How does Apple get such great PR? iPad edition
I am constantly amazed at the great PR Apple gets: this week the iPad was on the cover of Newsweek, Steve Jobs was on the cover of Time and Stephen Colbert gave the iPad the best plug I have ever seen.
| Colbert Report Full Episodes | Political Humor | Health Care Reform |
Obama 24/7
I want to start with a quote from last weekend by Michael Scherer of Time's Swampland
About
20 hours ago, I was in Bagram Air Base, watching White House advance people
change the television station in a troop mess hall, so that NCAA basketball
would show in the background as President Obama shook hands, not motorcross,
which had been playing.
and then go on to the fact that Obama held a second – now annual – Whitehouse Seder last week. From the article in the NY Times, it seems like it was non-political act. Just a personal gesture that has become a tradition.
and finish with a reference to a story of one letter in an article in the Washington Post on the ten letters -that have been culled from hundreds – that Obama gets every day. The letter is tragic, touching, inspiring, you know – all that stuff.
If you haven't already, read these two articles. They are pretty short.
I am fascinated by Obama's attention to detail, the cautious consideration given to doing a good job, to doing things right – not just as president, but as a man, as a father, as a mensch. In Obama, it seems to be coming from the inside rather than from the outside to look good.