"Abortion" is not a fruitful search.

If you can't overturn Roe v. Wade, why not just put out an all encompassing health services search engine that simply pretends abortion doesn't exist? Again, if you don't know it's there, you can't even think of doing it.

I think we need something like the Washington Post fact checker's Pinocchio rating, but rather an Orwell rating to grade each event's relation to our slow slide into 1984. This would maybe be a Orwell rating of 2 (out of four, since I'm using the Pinocchio scale). Not sure what exactly this rating means - perhaps I need to flesh it out more. But 2 sounds about right.

UPDATE: They apparently reversed the censorship the same day. At least someone had some common sense.

Resumé embellishment is so last election cycle.

This is really the year of the YouTube campaign. Key insight:

What makes this a YouTube campaign moment isn't that someone caught Hillary Clinton in an unguarded or reckless moment and posted the video on YouTube for all to see. No, what makes this a YouTube campaign moment is that the video from 12 years ago has ended up on YouTube to show that Clinton is completely wrong in almost every one of her assertions about that visit to Tuzla.

Maybe we'd move into New Politics even without Barack Obama. Maybe it was the times and political environment that demanded a new kind of politican. Transparency, thy name is YouTube.

Love him or hate him, Obama's not just another politician.

I'm not sure how many times I've had to say it, but a lot of people not in Obama's camp seem to feel one thing about Obama that I'd argue is just wrong - that he is just another politician, and can't mean what he says. And to suggest otherwise is to be naive. But maybe Charles Murray, a conservative over at the National Review of all places, can convince someone, since he's caught on to this. He won't vote for Obama on ideological grounds, but he at least realizes he's the real thing.

The thing is, it takes a certain circularity to believe that he's just lying about all of this. If you assume Obama is just another politician, then anything he does can easily be doubted, and that conclusion is used as proof that he is, as one friend remarked, a "Teflon-coated hypocrite". His race speech is a perfect example. "Of course he is hiding his real views and agrees with Wright" , you might say. "How conveniently timed," you might say, while sweeping away the whole point of the speech because it served a political purpose. Yes, it was given because race had gotten out of hand in the campaign, and was going to be damaging. But it would damage not only to the campaign, but also national public discourse. Obama wanted to correct both problems, and I'd say the second more than the first. The speech may have hurt him in the general election, and he's all but wrapped up the nomination, but he had to give it because it was right. Of course, if it works out, it could have also just been a really good political move, according to the cynics.

Other examples come from the times he has to play defense in the campaign. The negative ads, the delaying in Michigan to enforce the rules. But he didn't start the negative ads, and he's damned either way with them. If he responds, he's "just as bad". If he doesn't, he can't answer the phone at 3AM. With MI, he is playing politics by delaying, but it is because he played by the rules before, and Clinton completely did an about-face when it seemed she was going to lose.

He's not perfect (he seems to be either misguided or pandering on ethanol subsidies). And since he has to fight back on Clinton's negative attacks, it's easy for those who assume he's just as slimy as she is to point out one or two things and take is as equivalence. But he's a lot better than the alternatives (he's really the only one trying to be honest), and again it's circular to believe otherwise. The assumption of his hypocrisy is the only basis that hasn't been proven false by facts. Whereas there is real, hard evidence that other candidates are just willing to lie to get your votes.

Guilt by association is Old Politics.

I keep referencing this post in real life discussions, and the follow up is here. In them David Schraub gives an excellent framework for understanding how Obama's politics differ from his pastor, Rev. Wright's. Once you consider that this framework already exists, it is easy to see that Obama hears Wright's views as a familiar refrain, and can group them as a general viewpoint he does not agree with. Another, lighter, example would be if two friends agreed on most everything, but one was a vegetarian and one was not. In this case, one friend will hear the arguments for being a vegetarian (killing animals, environment), and nod and say "I know", but I just don't agree. Both examples involve a familiar refrain, and can thus be categorized as an opposing view that a friend holds, one on race, and one on vegetarianism.

More generally, one of Obama's persistent themes to his actions is the dismissal of the notion of guilt by association. He believes, and I agree completely, that everyone has something good to bring to the table, and a person can associate with others for that good, while not absorbing the bad. We've seen this repeatedly throughout the campaign, with "gaffes" such as hiring Donnie McClurkin, the "ex-gay," homophobic gospel singer, Tony Rezko, who he was never even accused of wrongdoing with, but went with him on a land deal, and now his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Senator Obama feels he can associate with these people freely for their good attributes (being a good singer, giving him a good deal, or being a spiritual leader, etc.), as any person not in the public sphere would do. The reason for this is not naiveté, as some people would have us believe, but it is tied into his idea of rising above the old politics. He certainly knows that people see things differently and expect different things out of leaders and icons, but at the same time, his ideas of openness of government and honestly in politics suggest to us that he believes America is ready to accept that its leaders are human and have foibles. Moreover, he believes that we should all be able to see the good in each other and come together to solve problems despite our differences. His speech on race suggests the same thing - he's trusting in America to look at the actual issues that are important, and to believe that he will tell you his views, because he believes that he finally can.

Transparency, rising above the old politics, elimination of guilt by association, and voting on the issues rather than sound bytes are all tied together, and together they make up the message that Obama has been speaking about the entire campaign. His campaign is not primarily about any one traditional issue, but rather about rising above the old politics, and bringing public discourse to a new, more mature level. This is what he means.

Murdoch owns the entire Fourth Estate

The MSM is basically one unit, and its smears start with Fox. I'd say Fox needs to be shut down, but in reality, at this point, the virus has spread, and the MSM just needs to be ignored.

Transparency in action

He released his tax returns, unlike other candidates. He released all his earmark requests, unlike a certain other Democratic candidate, and now he's explained the questionable associations he's had, even with a land developer in connection with he was never even accused of any wrongdoing. Most remarkable about the last interview is that he went in to answer all the questions he would be asked, and he did exactly that. When Obama talks about the need for transparency, he is showing it by not hiding from the truth in this campaign.