Thursday, November 6, 2008

About the President-Elect

Several people have asked me how to learn more about Barack Obama, both here and via email. Here's sort of my pitch:

1. Read Audacity of Hope. Obama wrote it while he was in the US Senate, but before he announced he would run for president. I had to skip the first chapter, it was WAY over my head. He's a very intelligent man. The first chapter is about the history of politics, and I didn't understand most of it. The rest of it is brilliant. He talks about the challenges he sees in America and why we can still have hope.

2. Don't read email smears. Period. I usually defer to www.snopes.com and www.factcheck.org to debunk rumors. They are both non-partisan sites that break down what is said and reveal the truth.

3. Pick up a US News and World Report, TIME, or NEWSWEEK once a week. At first the information might seem overwhelming, but as you learn more about it, it will become more familiar. It's important to keep up on current events now more than ever. I am NO expert, but I have learned a lot since I balanced out my US Weekly subscription with my NEWSWEEK subscription (blush).

4. Check peoples' facts. How many of my friends have been annoyed with me when I've said, "Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?" I'm a stickler for backing up your argument. If you hear something that sounds hokey, it probably is. And I likely won't make an argument with you, either, without being able to cite my source.

Any other good ideas, friends...a lot of intelligent people out there!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually Lenny, my mom told me, and maybe its a rumor, that snopes is a liberal left leaning site.. who knows.. I like your truth or fiction suggestion thou ..

Leanne said...

Okay, so use more than one. Check snopes, factcheck.org, whatever other sites you can find. I've always found them to be truthful.

MindiJo said...

Politics are a hard thing to discuss. Because rarely can you make someone of opposing views see your point. Which makes it look like they have no compassion, like they don't know the facts, they don't understand, etc. But it takes all kinds to make the world go round, doesn't it? I felt very badly about anon. comment, because it felt like someone was attacking you. And I didn't like that. It should have been said in a gentler way. Because I understood the basic point.

Elizabeth Halt said...

If I had a dollar for every time I sent someone to snopes, LOL .. if I could set a rule up, I wouldn't allow anyone to forward me anything - ever - without checking for it on snopes first. I think in 8 years I have found 1 thing to be semi-true, and I get a lot of idiotic forwards, political and otherwise.

politifact.org is another good site to check facts

please don't get all your information about the opposing candidate from "your side". Try to get info from somewhere else too. For a Rep, this means you should not get all your info from Rush or Hannity or Coulter or FreeRepublic or .. For a Dem, this would be Air America or .. I listen to Michael Savage occasionally, because I liked his dog stories, and because it gives me another perspective.

You can always look at what someone has done - voting records, work history, legislation ..