Love is Respect

Biden - Palin vs. McCain - Obama; Which Will Have Better Nielsen Ratings?

2008-10-14T00:15:00.000-07:00

Posted on 02 October 2008 by Robert Seidman

The first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain netted 52.4 million viewers and a 31.6 household rating. Tonight the candidates for vice president debated and many are speculating that the VP debate will out-rate the presidential debate.

It seems possible. For one, the presidential debate ran on a Friday when fewer people are typically home watching TV than Thursday. Plus, for reasons that aren’t really clear to me (and can’t be attributed entirely to Tina Fey!) Palin seems to have a lot of star power.

So who ya got? The presidential wannabes or the veep wannabes?

ON THE TRAIL; The Oprah-Obama Tour

2008-07-23T08:17:00.000-07:00

The highly anticipated combination of Oprah and Obama descends upon Des Moines this afternoon, and there are still tickets available for the rally. And they are free.

The event at the Hy-Vee Hall is Oprah Winfrey's first official stop on the trail for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in his bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Ms. Winfrey's four-stop tour begins at 2:30 p.m. She then heads to Cedar Rapids at 6 p.m. On Sunday, the tour goes to Columbia, S.C., for a 12:30 p.m. event and to Manchester, N.H., by 6 p.m.

The Obama campaign would not say how many tickets it had handed out in Des Moines. The hall can hold 8,700 -- and more, if needed. But Tommy Vietor, a spokesman, said the Cedar Rapids event at the U.S. Cellular Center, which can hold 10,000, was close to full.

On Wednesday, the campaign in South Carolina moved that event to a stadium that holds 80,000 from an arena that seats 18,000 because of high demand.

In Des Moines yesterday afternoon, as a steady trickle of Oprah fans and Obama supporters stopped by the campaign headquarters for tickets, workers were preparing the hall. The stage and press seating had been assembled and the bunting had been hung, though backward, on the risers.

Catherine Weaver, 59, a neurotechnician who was picking up her ticket, said she was thrilled that Ms. Winfrey was coming to her town. But while Ms. Weaver plans to caucus, she was cagey on whom she would support.

''I'm an Oprah supporter,'' she said.

CATE DOTY

Arabic and Islamic views

2008-07-10T08:03:00.001-07:00

In a sense, love does encompass the Islamic view of life as universal brotherhood which applies to all who hold the faith. There are no direct references stating that God is love, but amongst the 99 names of God (Allah), there is the name Al-Wadud or 'the Loving One', which is found in Surah 11:90 as well as Surah 85:14. It refers to God as being "full of loving kindness". All who hold the faith have God's love, but to what degree or effort he has pleased God depends on the individual itself.

Ishq, or divine love, is the emphasis of Sufism. Sufis believe that love is a projection of the essence of God to the universe. God desires to recognize beauty, and as if one looks at a mirror to see oneself, God "looks" at itself within the dynamics of nature. Since everything is a reflection of God, the school of Sufism practices to see the beauty inside the apparently ugly. Sufism is often referred to as the religion of Love. God in Sufism is referred to in three main terms which are the Lover, Loved, and Beloved with the last of these terms being often seen in Sufi poetry. A common viewpoint of Sufism is that through Love humankind can get back to its inherent purity and grace. The saints of Sufism are infamous for being "drunk" due to their Love of God hence the constant reference to wine in Sufi poetry and music.

Comparison of scientific models

2008-07-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst.[citation needed] Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin), neurotrophins (such as NGF), and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love — sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to its mother. The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate). Companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.

Studies have shown that brain scans of those infatuated by love display a resemblance to those with a mental illness. Love creates activity in the same area of the brain that hunger, thirst, and drug cravings create activity in. New love, therefore, could possibly be more physical than emotional. Over time, this reaction to love mellows, and different areas of the brain are activated, primarily ones involving long-term commitments. Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist, suggests that this reaction to love is so similar to that of drugs because without love, humanity would die out.

love

2008-07-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Love represents a range of human emotions and experiences related to the senses of affection and sexual attraction.[1] The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction. This diversity of meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.

As an abstract concept love usually refers to a strong, ineffable feeling towards another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.

Betrayed by Obama

2008-07-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

What an interesting week: I came back from vacation to find the two presumptive presidential nominees running away from their bases. Suddenly John McCain is evading, not embracing, the media, limiting access and getting testy with the very people whose formerly friendly coverage made him a popular "maverick." Meanwhile, Barack Obama is complaining that his "friends on the left" just don't understand him -- he's not moving to the center, he is "no doubt" a progressive, just one who now supports the scandalous FISA "compromise" and Antonin Scalia's views on gun rights and the death penalty, no longer plans to accept public campaign funding, and wants to make sure women aren't feigning mental distress to get a "partial-birth" abortion (the right's despicable term of choice; the correct phrase is either late-term or third-trimester abortion).

I actually have some sympathy for Obama. He was never the great progressive savior that his fans either thought he was, or peddled to their readers. While Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas and Tom Hayden were hyping him as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Obama was getting away with backing a healthcare bill less progressive than Clinton's, adopting GOP talking points on the Social Security "crisis" and double-talking on NAFTA. So why shouldn't he think his "friends on the left" will put up with his abandoning other progressive causes?

I've admired Obama, but I never confused him with a genuine progressive leader. Today I don't admire him at all. His collapse on FISA is unforgivable. The only thing Obama has going for him this week is that McCain is matching him misstep for misstep. While we're railing about Obama's craven vote on FISA -- rightfully; Glenn Greenwald is a hero for his work on this topic -- McCain was outdoing Dick Cheney with neocon crazy talk, warning that Iran's test of nine old missiles we already knew they had increases the chances of a "second Holocaust." Every time I wonder whether I can ultimately vote for Obama in November, given all of his political cave-ins, McCain does something new to make sure I have to.

But Obama needs to watch himself. Telling voters they have no place else to go, before he officially has the nomination, is not a winning strategy. That's what his people told Clinton voters. That's what they're saying about opponents of the FISA sellout. That's the line on those concerned about his "partial-birth" abortion remarks. It's arrogant -- up against the backdrop of Obama's big plans for an Invesco Field acceptance speech in Denver and a Brandenberg Gate extravaganza in Berlin, I'm starting to worry about grandiosity -- and it could backfire.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, voted against the FISA bill, but I think "what ifs" are unproductive. Matthew Yglesias' self-justifying fiction that, if she was the nominee, she'd have done what Obama did, is silly. But none of us can really know she'd have done the right thing in Obama's shoes. Since I believe Clinton's craven vote to authorize the Iraq war in 2002 cost her the Democratic nomination, I do find myself wondering whether she learned her lesson about caving in to GOP threats. It's funny how so many defeated Democrats -- Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and now Clinton -- seem to become more progressive after they learn that pandering can't protect them from the attacks of the GOP and its friends in the media. Let's hope Obama doesn't have to learn that lesson the same way.

Of course, the only thing more offensive than Obama's yes vote on FISA was McCain's decision to skip the vote entirely -- and then trash Obama for "flip-flopping" on FISA. Unfortunately, Obama did flip-flop on FISA, but McCain didn't bother to show up. So far, this has been a really dispiriting campaign. Part of the problem, I think, is that the two finalists are guys beloved by the media, who've had a fairly free ride to here. With their rivals out of the way, they're getting more scrutiny, and it's not all adoring. Having won impressive underdog victories, neither campaign seems ready for prime time. I know one thing, I'd really like to vote for the guy who said this:

"This Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. When I am president, there will be no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens; no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime; no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. Our Constitution works, and so does the FISA court."

Too bad Obama doesn't believe that anymore.
-- Joan Walsh

Obama and the Holocaust

2008-07-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

In remarks he made on Memorial Day, Sen. Barack Obama reached back to some old family history. "I had an uncle who was one of the, um -- who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps," Obama said. "The story in our family was that when he came home he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months." (Video follows at the bottom of this post.) There was just one problem with this story: American troops didn't liberate Auschwitz -- the Soviet Union's Red Army did.

The comments, and the mainstream media's treatment of them, sent conservative bloggers into a tizzy. The right has been focusing a lot of attention recently on alleged gaffes by Obama, and complaining that the media doesn't treat him the same way Republicans are treated in similar situations, and this added fuel to the fire. At the National Review's Campaign Spot blog, Jim Geraghty wrote, "Dan Quayle gets defined by one foolish moment where his (sic) misspells 'potato,' and George W. Bush is forever mocked as a dunce for his (admittedly classic) 'Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.'

"If the MSM would either A) be more forgiving of Republican officials who they don't like or B) be a little tougher on Democratic officials they do like, the world would be a better place."

Other bloggers attacked Obama directly. At Michelle Malkin's Web site, poster See-Dubya wrote, "Either Obama's uncle served in the Red Army, or he’s spinning Clintonesque lies about Auschwitz to sell his government programs. Hey, it's for a good cause ... but it's not enough for him. It has to be personal. It has to be all about him ... I think the Obamessiah just out Tuzla'd Hillary. The man is ... nefarious." (Emphasis in the original.) At Red State, editor Erick Erickson said, "Look, we all know Obama has a problem with Jewish voters and veterans, but trying to use the Holocaust for political gain is sickening -- especially when it is a bold faced lie ... Obama's uncle was either part of the Red Army or Obama is, again, lying for political advantage. Given what we know already about Obama, either option is plausible, but I'm going with this being another lie."

But according to the Obama campaign, all this outrage may have been just a little premature. It admits that the Auschwitz part of the story wasn't true, and that it was in fact Obama's great uncle he was referring to, not his uncle, but according to Obama spokesman Bill Burton, there's an innocent explanation. In a statement, Burton said, "Senator Obama's family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II -- especially the fact that his great uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald. Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically."

Burton also provided a link to the Web site of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has a page dedicated to the division the Obama camp claims Obama's great uncle belonged to, the 89th Infantry Division. That division is officially recognized as a liberating unit. In 1945, it liberated Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

I will give the conservative bloggers one thing. They're right that it was easy to check Obama's original story, and that the reporters who mentioned it in their stories on the speech could have -- and should have -- checked Google to see who liberated Auschwitz. But then, by the same token, conservative bloggers could have -- and should have -- seen if there was another explanation before they launched their accusations against Obama.

Obama hopes to go where JFK went before

2008-07-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

July 9, 2008 | Barack Obama wants to hold a keynote speech on transatlantic relations in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate during his visit later this month. Spiegel Online has learned that he plans to outline a new foreign policy that consults partners more, but also makes clear demands on Europe.

When is he coming, who will he meet and, more importantly, what will he say? For days now, Berlin has been abuzz with speculation over plans for Barack Obama's first trip to Europe as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. A July 24 date has been set by the campaign for a Berlin visit and more details are gradually emerging. During his visit to the German capital, Obama plans to hold a keynote address on transatlantic relations.

"During this campaign, Senator Obama has been criticized for his lack of interest in Europe," an Obama campaign advisor with knowledge of the planning for the trip told Spiegel. "This trip is partly a response to this, and I am sure he wants to address the issue of transatlantic relations." The possibility has not been ruled out that the speech could instead be given in Paris or London -- the other planned stops on Obama's short Europe trip. But Obama's team likes the location of Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate. "The setting would be great," the advisor said. "The memory of John F. Kennedy's famous Berlin speech is still alive. Berlin is a bridge between East and West, and the German-American relationship is very strong," said the advisor.

President Kennedy was given a rousing reception by the people of West Berlin during his visit in 1963, when he held his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in front of the town hall in Berlin's Schöneberg district -- which lies several miles from the Brandenburg Gate.

The German government has already announced that it would give Obama a warm welcome but has also voiced concern that an Obama speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate might be misinterpreted as German interference with the U.S. election campaign.

However, the decision on whether the Democratic candidate will be able to hold a speech at that location is up to the Berlin City Council, not the German government. "We hope it will work out," said the advisor.

So far only the outlines of Obama's speech have been decided. But it's clear that he will attempt a difficult balancing act between promising a new era of closer transatlantic ties while not appearing too "European" at the same time.

"Obama wants to signal to the Europeans that he will reach out much more to the transatlantic partners than George W. Bush did. You will hear the words 'I can listen' frequently in his speech," said the advisor.

The message will also be directed at voters back home because it will signal that America's reputation in Europe would improve drastically under a President Obama, the advisor said. "TV pictures of 100,000 cheering people in Berlin can drive home that point."

At the same time, the senator from Illinois must take care not to seem overly pro-European. Many Democrats still recall how presidential candidate John Kerry four years ago gushed about his good reputation in Europe only to be successfully and pejoratively labeled as "European" by the Republicans as a result.

"We are aware of that risk," said the advisor. "A voter in North Dakota doesn't care much for the transatlantic agenda. He would rather ask: What is Obama planning to do for me?"

It's therefore unlikely that Obama will wax lyrical about Europe's leadership on combating climate change or health insurance. But he won't shy away from some "tough love" in his speech, said the advisor, noting that he would spell out clearly that Europe needs to assume more international responsibility, especially in Afghanistan and perhaps in Iraq as well.

The Democrat may also urge the European Union not to get caught up in internal problems in the wake of Ireland's rejection of the E.U. reform treaty. Obama will spend one day in Berlin at the very most.