barack obama
I think it's great that the President sat down and had a beer with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley. Really. Nothing but good should come from this. Maybe they'll even learn a little something about beer in the process. The President will be drinking a Bud Lite - which either makes him a pantywaist watching his carbs, an uniformed beer drinker, or a member of the wine and cheese set. Dude! I'm a member of, among other drinking clubs, the wine and cheese set, but I know enough to not drink skunky, watered-down beer. Drink a real beer, not some beer that takes 15 minutes to make. 
Wouldn't Amber Wavers American Ale from Washington's own Capitol City Brewing be more appropriate for the White House than one brewed by a Belgian Company? The Belgians make some of the best beers in the world but Anheiser-Busch products aren't one of them. Or better yet, how about one of the Wild Dogs from the largest brewery in Maryland, Flying Dog. 
Cambridge Police Officer James Crowley, along with innumerable right-wing bloggers, are wrong when they insinuate that the arrest of anyone, black, white, red, or brown, who are attempting to enter their own home, "is a local issue". For those with shorter memories, institutional racism and Jim Crow laws were often justified based upon the idea that locals had the right to choose to associate with whomever they wished. That they do. They did not have the right to discriminate against or exclude them based on race - which was the common practice, and although less common today, is still a practice.
"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen." -Incumbent Presidential Candidate Ronald Reagan during a campaign stop in 1984.
People can complain all they want about things not being that different under President Obama, and I share part of their fear. But it's early yet, really early, and there's a whole lot of stuff that needs doing. But after all, let's face facts, he's the President, not all 535 members of Congress and if we really want change, most of those folks need to go because they spend too much time raising money and listening to lobbyists. m.o.i.
Last night, I addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time.
To confront the serious economic challenges our nation faces, I called for a new era of responsibility and cooperation. We need to look beyond short term political calculations and make vital investments in health care, energy, and education that will make America stronger and more prosperous well into the future.
...a few highlights from my address...
Central to this plan will be a renewed commitment to honesty and transparency in government. Restoring our country's economic health will only happen when ordinary citizens are given the opportunity to hold their representatives fully accountable for the decisions they make.
I look forward to continuing to work with you as we bring about the change you made possible.
Thank you,
President Barack Obama
Jackie Chalms reports in the NY Times that Barack Obama will unveil a plan on Thursday to cut the deficit in half by the year 2013. The plan will call for reductions even while the government spends trillions to bail out banks, lenders, and car companies. The reductions will come from a combination of higher taxes on the wealthy, eliminating the war in Iraq, and selling commemorative $5 bills with his image on them.
m.o.i has a long history of appropriation whereby the physicality of the original object is embedded within another, newer, work. This practice doesn't toy with the idea that art is informed by other art, it takes the idea to its literal conclusion. This retains the original intellectual property rights and yet lays a cloak of an entirely new one upon it. To compound the rights issue, the work is then sent to others gratis with an inherently embedded challenge, "who now owns the object? and what will you do with it? keep it as such? re-purpose it? who owns the ideas behind the object?" 
Secondly, any work that appropriates an iconic political image based upon a political photograph to create a new work is inherently political. It has to be. Propaganda begets propaganda art begets art about propaganda art. And political expression and art are uniquely guaranteed as a First Amendment right in this country.
Lastly. And we could go on but let's not and this may the most relevant of all the arguments. The images in m.o.i.'s work aren't even the same ones as originally appeared in the Manny Garcia image. They are images, produced at the request of the Obama campaign, to replace the Manny Garcia image. Given the thousands of time the public had seen the image, the actual gesture no longer mattered. All it took was a red and blue Russian Constructivist image to spring to mind the shibboleths of HOPE, CHANGE, and PROGRESS. 
The problem is that presidents, not just this president-elect, continue to be shielded farther and farther from the public they serve. This distance just builds during their tenure. Instead they are constantly surrounded by advisers, bodyguards, and the security-vetted elite. The interests of the People, for whom the President must swear allegiance to uphold, are then marginalized, pushed behind the barricades, and each face regarded as a potential threat. This prevents an open and transparent government of, and by the people, and leads to a culture of royalty. Even the most well-intentioned and grounded President can't escape this security-bubble because the secret service won't let them. The balance of power shifts slowly away from the electorate to the safety of the back room and the country suffers ill because of it.
One of the best things Obama could do is to insist, as Carter did, to walk down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and shake hangs with the people during his journey to the White House. (During his second inagural parade, Pres. Bush and the First Lady, briefly stepped from the motorcade to show America that the country was "safe from the terrorists" but the phlanx of secret service agents had grown considerably larger since the Carter days). The police state might not like it, but Obama was elected rather than appointed. We hope for a country where every man, woman, and child - be they black, white, brown or the President, feels safe enough to walk down the street unfettered from fear.
They're going to try to say, 'Well, you know, he's got a funny name, and he doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five-dollar bills.' --President-elect Barack Obama addressing a crowd in Union, MO, July 30th, 2008.
It's still the economy, stupid. It's what brought the O-man to the office and if we can right it fairly quickly, we can more easily solve the other issues. Closely tied to any economic fix is the health of the auto industry. But if renewed growth in the auto industry isn't greener, and much greener than past growth, we'll have squandered a huge opportunity. The new administration must require quick and forceful changes in production models and increased mileage-standards. We must quickly move to very efficient automobiles. This helps to reduce greenhouse gases, create jobs, and move the country away from dependence on the our elixir of death known as oil.
Having you been using the words unprecedented, historical, and ground-breaking a lot this week? Stop. I'm pretty sure that this won't be the first vice-President to take the train to work.
The political detritus from an election has never disappeared from the landscape faster. I'd heard rumors of Obama signs being lifted before the election; someone told me it was their second sign to be stolen from the front of their yard in a week - but I don't think the problem was widespread or endorsed by McGruff. At the time, I surmised that it could just as easily have been folks who were trying to grab history-in-a-sign.
