OBAMARAMA

Michelle Obama had a great appearance on Good Morning America yesterday.  Have a look:

A CNN report on presidential candidates’ financial holdings — which notes that “Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported assets ranging from $457,000 to $1.14 million — far more modest than most of the other leading presidential candidates” — noted an interesting fact about the Obama’s portfolio:

The Obama campaign announced Wednesday that the couple this year transferred about $180,000 in assets they held in the Vanguard Wellington Fund to Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund after discovering that a small amount of the Vanguard Wellington Fund is invested in an oil-field services company active in Sudan.

This sort of socially-conscious investing and spending exemplifies how regular Americans can make a concrete difference on pressing global issues like the genocide in Darfur. It’s inspiring to see a major presidential candidate leading the way.

For more information about how you can have an impact in Darfur, check out the Save Darfur Coalition’s Divest for Darfur campaign website.

UPDATE: Tipster Stacy points us toward a Chicago Tribune article on the disclosures that labels Sen. Obama “The poor man among the top tier of presidential candidates,” adding, “It’s no wonder none of them wanted to disclose this information! Obama comes closest to the common man.”

Here’s the headline of an AP story out today:

“Obama’s Wife Says Supporters to Bring Energy to Presidential Campaign.”

And another, from the Post:

“Wife Touts Obama’s ‘Moral Compass.’“

And how about one more, from the Nashua Telegraph:

“Michelle Obama says husband has experience that counts.”

Media coverage in the run-up to the campaign suggested that it was Michelle Obama, the professional, intelligent and classy wife of Sen. Barack Obama, who harbored the most qualms about her husband’s potential run. But now that he’s in, he couldn’t hope for a more ardent, devoted and compelling advocate.

Michelle Obama has been on the campaign trail since February, and everywhere she goes she draws large, interested crowds, engaging them with funny anecdotes about her husband and ultimately inspiring them with testimony about his commitment to justice and public service. Once the campaign skeptic, Michelle Obama is quickly becoming one of its biggest assets.

I’ve long believed that as the public comes to know Michelle Obama, they will see in her the sort of strong, independent but deeply supportive woman they want standing alongside their president. To help in that process, here is a great video of her speech to the Women for Obama group, where she discusses balancing her different roles during the campaign:

And here is another short video that profiles Michelle Obama’s life:

Sen. Obama appears to be taking the bull by the horns in addressing critics of his experience, suggesting not only that he has the experience necessary to be president, but that his particular brand of experience makes him uniquely capable of taking on that role.

Here’s what he said to Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network civil rights group yesterday:

“I’ve said to Rev. Sharpton and I’ll say it today: If there is somebody - I don’t care whether they are white or black or they are male or female - if there is somebody who has been more on the forefront on behalf of the issues you care about and has more concrete accomplishments on behalf of the things you’re concerned about, I’m happy to see you endorse them. But I am absolutely confident you will not find that,” he said.

‘Atta boy.  We’ve long advocated touting Sen. Obama’s distinctive and diverse experience as an asset to the campaign, as it includes more years as a legislator than either Sen. Clinton or John Edwards, as well as service as a community organizer, civil rights litigator, and law school professor.

Following an April 12 Media Matters for America item on a troubling CBS News segment that mischaracterized Sen. Obama’s educational and religious background, the network has corrected the record, noting that the rumors Couric rehashed in the segment were effectively debunked.

From the Media Matters piece (with video):

Couric claimed that Obama’s “background sparked rumors that he had studied at a radical madrassa, or Quranic school — rumors his campaign denied, declaring that Obama is now a practicing Christian.” However, in noting simply that Obama’s campaign “denied” the rumors that he attended a madrassa, Couric ignored the fact that these allegations have been thoroughly debunked.

The next day, CBS’s Brian Montopoli noted in a blog post that “Media Matters is making a fair point here: To bring up the madrassa rumor and note only that ‘his campaign denied’ it leaves open the possibility that the claim is true. Since we know that it is not, Couric would have been well served to have pointed out as much.” The original report has since been edited to reflect this acknowledgment — though to my knowledge no correction has been made on-air.

Kudos to Media Matters for this victory. These are the sorts of subtle inaccuracies that weave their way into the public understanding of a candidate, and must be corrected wherever possible.

In response to a Los Angeles Times article that “makes some provocative points this morning about a five-year old Sen. Barack Obama ‘bow[ing] to Allah,’ about how, though his mother went to Church, “Barry Obama” would often choose to attend mosque, about how he was registered as a Muslim at school,” the Hotline asks a worthy question:” [H]ow many young children have fully formed religious identities — especially young children in mixed religion families?”

Editor Marc Ambinder goes further, too, inserting a candid editorial note that touches precisely on the heart of the matter:

I attended a small high school affiliated with the Episcopal Church. Every Wednesday, all students attended a mandatory prayer service. When the students stood, I stood. When they bowed their heads, mine inched down. You might have even caught me mouthing of a few of the hymns. But I was Jewish, as were about fifteen percent of my classmates. We weren’t Christians. We didn’t become Christians because we sat through the services. Attendence was required; it was a prerequisite — a community standard.

An article appearing on the website of the American Conservative magazine and titled “Obama’s Identity Crisis” gives a skewed and racially-charged analysis of Sen. Obama’s personal history, calling him “an updated Black Pride version of the old ‘tragic mulatto’ stereotype” and asserting (without support, obviously) that “He wouldn’t be a serious candidate for president at age 45 if he weren’t part black.” The author is Steve Sailer, a columnist for the xenophobic VDARE website.

The article, which focuses primarily on Sen. Obama’s recounting of his life in his autobiography Dreams From My Father, accomplishes little more than presenting excerpts from the book in negative, racially-loaded terms. For instance, Sailer suggests that Sen. Obama’s father “added two more wives to his collection” and refers to him as his “polygamous pop.” He also claims that Sen. Obama’s “overwhelmingly white upbringing is apparent in his coolly analytical depiction of his mother” — suggesting that only a white upbringing could yield “cool analysis” — and asks rhetorically, “Why was Obama so insistent upon rejecting the white race?”

As for Sen. Obama’s supporters, Sailer claims (once again, without support) that “The message much of white America hopes to send to black America by electing Obama is: Don’t Be So Black. Act More Barack.” Sailer’s misconception is not unlike that of many in the traditional media, who assume all African Americans will support Sen. Obama based on his race. Similarly, Sailer seems to think all Sen. Obama’s white supporters are doing the same, apparently in a bizarre attempt to send a message to the black community.

What unites both misinterpretations is their failure to account for the possibility that Sen. Obama’s supporters back him because of his values, his character, and his policies.

(Read more after the jump…)

On CBS’s “Sunday Morning” yesterday, essayist and actress Nancy Giles presented her answer to the ubiquitous media-generated question about Sen. Obama’s race: Is he “black enough”?

Pundits take note — this storyline has run its course:

(Thanks to Stacy for pointing us to the video.)

Sen. Obama’s wife Michelle kept her husband’s supporters in stitches at a recent event by takling candidly about her husband:

Speaking for nearly as long as her husband, Michelle Obama told roaring audience members she sometimes wishes she could live with the same character she sees on TV and hears about in the media, calling that man “Barack Obama the phenomenon.”

“Then there’s the Barack Obama who lives in my house,” she said. “That guy’s not as impressive. He still has trouble…putting his socks actually in the dirty clothes, and he still doesn’t do a better job than our 5-year-old daughter Sasha at making his bed, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little stunned at this whole Barack Obama thing.”

With March Madness in the air, it’s no wonder more than a few journalists are devoting ink to the skills of the only presidential contender with any real game, Sen. Obama.

The AP recently sat down with Craig Robinson, Brown University’s coach who also happens to be Sen. Obama’s brother-in-law. Robinson recalled a pickup game they played together shortly after they met:

Robinson remembers that Obama was confident in his game without being arrogant. He took shots when he was open, but wasn’t overly selfish. And he didn’t show off his Harvard Law School pedigree.

“He never wore that on his sleeve, and you can tell the camaraderie that he’d have on the court with people who he didn’t even know,” Robinson said. “You knew that this guy had the ability to win people over.”

The article also includes this great tidbit:

Obama was always clear that politics inspired him, even more than law, Robinson said. He even hinted at his ambition at a family gathering early in the relationship.

“He said, you know, it’d be great one day if I could run for president. And I made a comment like, yeah, yeah that would be great — come on over here and meet my Aunt Gracie,” Robinson said.

…”This is one of those things that’s more important than the individuals involved,” Robinson said. “This is the ultimate team assignment. So everybody has to give up something to make this work.”

Over at the New York Times blogs, Pete Thamel puts left-hander Obama’s game in an historical context in a post titled “Obama, not surprisingly, goes left“:

While we’ve had plenty of presidents who golf (Eisenhower has a tree named after him at Augusta) and President Bush jogs and cycles plenty. But wouldn’t it be interesting to have a president playing noon pick-up games with his cabinet? Shirts and skins at the Rose Garden? The possibilities are endless.

In the seventh paragraph of its article about investments in two companies that were made on behalf of Sen. Obama in a blind trust he set up, the New York Times notes that “There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.”

If you only read the first six paragraphs, however, you would get a distinctly different impression. According to the article, the purchases “raise questions” about how Sen. Obama came to invest in the companies — Skyterra and AVI BioPharma — which work with the federal government and whose stockholders include major donors to Sen. Obama’s campaign.

Sadly, the article does not elaborate on what these “questions” are. Nor does it point out that wealthy political donors also tend to be major stockholders in many companies, making the possibility that a senator will wind up investing in some of the same companies as people who contribute to his campaign practically an inevitability.

Instead, the Times opts to “raise questions,” and then proceeds chart the feeble connections between Sen. Obama’s purchases and his legislative priorities in order to suggest some wrongdoing it has already acknowledged isn’t there. These connections include his push for an avian flu vaccine and his investment in AVI (though, as the article notes in its 24th paragraph, this company “has not received any federal money for its avian flu research”).

Further undercutting the article’s suggestion of impropriety and insider dealing is the disclosure in the article’s 11th paragraph that Sen. Obama lost $15,000 on his investment in Skyterra, bringing his net profit on these “questionable” investments to a scandalous NEGATIVE $13,000. It seems to me the only questions this story raises are about the stock-picking aptitude of the people who manage Sen. Obama’s blind trust.

Fortunately, he’s not running for investor-in-chief.

UPDATE: Media Matters points us toward a breathless MSNBC report on “Sen. Obama’s first scandal.” Watch the video and see if you can identify exactly where the scandal is. Even the guest suggests there’s no “there” there.

UPDATE 2: When asked about the subject, Sen. McCain called Sen. Obama “a very honest and fine person.”

The Wall Street Journal reports today on a new biography about Sen. Obama’s life, which it suggests is the first to be written about him, rather than by him. Amazingly, the book — Hopes and Dreams: The Story of Barack Obama — was written by freelance writer Steve Dougherty in only two weeks.

Dougherty’s book is reportedly “a straight-ahead account of Mr. Obama’s life that includes the opinions of admirers and critics.” The author is quoted as saying, “I didn’t have an ax to grind either way.”

Read it? Post your reactions and thoughts in the comments section if you have a chance.

Edward W. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts, was the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate, winning election all the way back in 1966. At a recent book signing for his new memoir, “Bridging the Divide,” the New York Times reports that Brooke discussed parallels between his experience and that of Sen. Obama, who had just announced his presidential candidacy that morning in Springfield:

“I turned on the television this morning,” said Mr. Brooke, still dapper at 87, “and there stood a young man in Illinois.” Mr. Brooke praised Mr. Obama’s “gold résumé” and challenged questions about the senator’s experience, saying he possessed “better qualifications than many people who have run for that office and some who have won that office.”

An Associated Press article out today takes a close look at Miner Barnhill & Galland, the Chicago civil rights law firm where Sen. Obama worked for nine years after graduating
from law school:

As the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had his pick of top law firms. He chose Miner’s Chicago civil rights firm, where he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries.

…The firm of Miner Barnhill & Galland, many of whose members have Harvard and Yale law degrees, has a reputation that fits nicely into the resume of a future presidential candidate.

“It’s a real do-good firm,” says Fay Clayton, lead counsel for the National Organization for Women in a landmark lawsuit aimed at stopping abortion clinic violence. “Barack and that firm were a perfect fit. He wasn’t going to make as much money there as he would at a LaSalle Street firm or in New York, but money was never Barack’s first priority anyway.”

In terms of his work there, the article notes that he “wrote a major portion of an appeals brief on behalf of a whistleblower who exposed waste and corruption in a research project involving Cook County Hospital and the Hektoen Institute for Medical Research and alleged that she was fired in retaliation.”  Additionally:

Obama was part of a team of lawyers representing black voters and aldermen that forced Chicago to redraw ward boundaries that the City Council drew up after the 1990 census. They said the boundaries were discriminatory.

After an appeals court ruled the map violated the federal Voting Rights Act, attorneys for both sides drew up a new set of ward boundaries.

The Washington Post’s political blog “The Sleuth” offers a unique portrait of Sen. Obama, martial artist:

The Illinois senator…took taekwondo classes in the early 2000s at the schwanky East Bank Club, whose membership includes everyone who’s anyone in the Windy City.

We tracked down Obama’s former instructor, David Posner, a financial capital planner who taught taekwondo at East Bank for eight years and still practices and teaches classes at another “dojang.” He remembers his famous student as “very disciplined, very diligent.”

…Posner couldn’t remember exactly which color belt Obama attained, but said it was a mid-level ranking — either white, yellow, purple or green. High enough, in other words, to pull the old beakya chagi (slap kick) on Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the gotjang chirugi (fist punch) on John Edwards, or maybe the doo bun chirugi (double punch) on Joe Biden.

…”I hope he becomes president so when I go to Washington and visit him, he can still call me sir,” Posner daydreamed. Plus, he said, “It’d be nice to have a president who can kick some ass.”

“Hi-YA!”