Matt Heerema

Obama: The Real Change

I could resist a post about politics. My apologies. Flame away. This one was just too good.

This last Saturday, SNL ran a hilarious opener skit spoofing Joe Biden who (say what you will about Palin) I believe to be the best material to come along for political humorists since… Dubya himself. The skit was Biden rambling inanely with various prophecies about the future. I’ve been in a bit of a cave the last two weeks but I knew this was too funny to be made up, had to come from somewhere. Here’s the skit.

I decided to look up a few sources about the speech referenced here. Whooooaaaa, whoa whoa. Did anyone read this or listen to it?

Here’s what he said…

“And here’s the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”

Umm…

“Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you, not financially to help him, we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they’re made if they work, then they weren’t viewed as a crisis. If they don’t work, it’s viewed as you didn’t make the right decision…”

Uhhh…

“We don’t need anybody denying us, this is gonna be tough. There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go ‘whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision.’ Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”

Wow. (My main thought about that last sentence was that Obama’s current platform is pretty darn popular right now… and McCain’s isn’t.)

Translation:

A major crisis going to happen. A world power is going to test us, and we’re going to respond in a way that…

Now I can go one of two ways with this.

1. That makes us look an awful lot like republicans.
2. Make us look like maaaybe WE might be the bad guy after all.

Either way, the real change we are going to see with Obama in office is not one of sudden peace, prosperity and hand-holding happiness.

Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said… The real change you will see with Obama is his stance on how to deal with foreign issues. When he really realizes that politics is, in fact, the art of the possible, as he so often says. And Eden, Utopia, Camelot, Shangri-la, call it what you will, is IMpossible in this world.

Will McCain do much better? Doubtful. My hope with McCain is actually that not much changes. History shows that the less the government interferes, the better. The sweeping changes we need in Washington are not simply an administrative change. We need to close down many many many departments, programs, bureaus. End many government jobs. Free up people’s money to invest in the market. Give people with a lot of money the freedom and ability to pump it into the economy (rather than stealing it from them to give to various programs to “help” the… less… able… to… buy stuff… you know, like, cell phones… (did you know you can get cell phones with Wellfare??))

A letter from myself, age 13

Today, I received a letter in the mail… from myself… age 13.

No time warp or weird movie premise. Our class president mailed us our letters that were written in 7th grade as part of a time capsule project. It was great fun to read. It was also a little eerie to read some of the things I was predicting. I’m curious where I got those ideas from, there’s no way they were original. I’m trying to remember what the tech and gaming landscape of Q1 1993 looked like… I had a Gateway 486 DX computer at home… probably not top of the line at the time, but pretty snappy. I’m fairly certain we didn’t have Internet (AOL!!) at home yet.

Below is the full text (typos and terrible grammar - which I still suffer - intact) of the letter. Check out scans of the letter here and here.

2-21-93

Dear Me,

When I read this I will be much older and different so some of this will sound crazy.

Right now I’m 13 years old. My voice is just starting to change. I about 5′4″ and weigh about 125 lbs. I like to play Dungeons & Dragons, read, play nintendo (which is probably obsolete when I read this.) work with computers. Right now I want to be a Genetic Engineer. Righ now this letter is beginning to sound alot like the song by Van Halen “Right Now” which reminds me I like to listen to music. Especially hard rock & heavy metal. School is switching over to outcome-based education. It sounds pretty neat. Right now by best friend is Ahren Grebner. Some of my other friends are, [long list of names....]. The last 4 of those are from my old school from where I just moved at the beginning of this school year. I like to write stories especially comedies. I haven’t writtin any recently because of lots of things that are going on. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor.

I don’t have many predictions for the future. I think I’ll have a pretty good job and a pretty nice house. I don’t know if I’ll be married or not I probably will be and I might even have a kid or two. I think most cars will run on alchohol or batteries if we even have cars. But I don’t want to make any guesses because they will most likely be way off. Every generation has a vision of the future with colonies on the moon and mars and flying cars and regular cruises through space. I don’t think it will be like that at all. If there is anything that I will guess it is that we will have such advanced technology that video games will come through radio waves allowing several people from all over the world to participate in the same tournaments. Also I think movies directors will shoot special footage just for video game graphics. Well that’s my letter Bye!

Things I was right about:

• Future vision of X-box live and Internet gaming ;-)
• No flying cars, commercial space flights, or moon colonies
• Video game cinematics and motion-capture CGI-type effects.

Partially right about

• Ethanol / Flex fuel cars
• I have a GREAT job
• I have a GREAT house
• I am definitely married
• I have one kid and another on the way :)

Adding Comments to Tumblr

You might have seen that I’ve been playing around with Tumblr at omni.mattheerema.com - using it to compile most of my different soc.net and blog feeds into one location. Not sure how useful it is, but it’s fun to play with. Tumblr has some great posting tools too. Maybe someday I’ll switch to it as a blogging platform entirely, it fits my style better. Short, media driven posts, rather than long articles (which I never write).

One major thing that has held me back from going all Tumblr is their lack of comments.

Disqus has fixed that problem for me. I hope they stick around.

iPhoned

I bought an iPhone 3g. So far it is amazing. Once the honeymoon is over I’ll snobbishly talk about all of its shortcomings, but until then I’ll just say it’s the most elegant piece of technology i’ve laid my hands on.

I’m typing this from the wordpress app. Very well put together.

My first Utter

Here is my first post using Utterz, a cool new service I picked up on at the SXSW Tradeshow. Many many cool things learned, new services discovered (including this one) and most importantly, new faces met. I will be posting about my experiences over the next couple days. Look forward to photos, a little video, and inane rambligs.
Mobile post sent by mattheerema using Utterz.  Replies.