America, the literate!

I cannot disagree with the thesis of this essay more strongly than the preceding double negative implies.

The author - although he indirectly tosses in an attack on our most literate President of the past 100-years, Barack Obama - overlooks the explicit use by Obama of words to define himself as a candidate. True, for this he was derided by his opponents as "just offering words" or "just making speeches", but Obama showed that by being literate he could still communicate effectively with those who have the deepest and strongest ties to language - the literate class as defined by the author - as well as those who are less well read, even all the way across the spectrum to those defined as illiterate.

We know this is true by simple analysis of the almost 70 million votes received by Obama: he won over 95% of the voting eligible population (VEP) of African Americans; this is the same group that has an almost 50% drop-out rate from high school, a defining factor for illiteracy. Similarly, he won over two-thirds of the Latino VEP; again - another highly illiterate population. And Obama carried the white vote under the age of 45 - regardless of education levels; this includes a significant percentage of the white illiterate vote as well. I defy the author of this post to assess the reading level of Obama's A More Perfect Union speech, given this past March on perhaps the most dangerous of topics in America: race. Had the author chosen to step up to the plate and analyze this data point - as opposed to the sneer he included of "yes we can" reference - he might have realized just how transformative a candidate Obama is to our nation.

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A More Perfect Approach

Why do we act as though we are not sure what a President Obama will do with the ongoing conflict that is the Israel / Palestine issue?

He has said many times that he does not believe in doing the same thing and expecting different results; he will not merely pick up the template laid out by GWB or past Presidents.
He has said many times that people can disagree without being disagreeable; he will find those on both sides who trust in that principle and he will introduce them to the dialogue.
He has said many times that change happens from the ground up; he will seek to win over the hearts and minds of Israelites and Palestinians and mobilize them into a ground force for change.

It is almost as though - since we are still in the era of GWB - that people have forgotten the campaign we all witnessed. More than that, we participated in the election more passionately than many of us ever had before. We expressed that passion as Obama tapped into a groundswell flow of change that was roiling beneath the surface of American politics.

Now, I know what Obama will do less than almost anyone else, but I do recall the speech he gave at Constitution Hall - "A More Perfect Union". As I watched him deliver that speech from my perch at C-SPAN, I saw a man dance across the tightrope that is race in America. I sat in stunned amazement while he recognized the concerns of the descendants of slavery, while at the same time he acknowledged the fears of imminent violence that he has even heard within his own family.

I am not Barack Obama - this should hardly need stating - so please do not accept my short summary of the speech. Watch it for yourselves here - http://www.barackobama.com/tv/ - and then report on how these words affected you.

Can you not already picture Obama weaving together a speech that speaks to the aspirations of the people of both Israel and Palestine? Can you not imagine that just as Pastor Wright cast aside the olive branch created and offered by his own constituent, that there will be those on both sides - Israel and Palestine - who will reject the call to hew towards a spirit of common decency?

And just as it did not matter then, it will not matter for the people of Israel / Palestine.

For it was never about Wright, just as it was never about Obama. It was about us and our dreams.

So to will it be for the people of Israel and Palestine. Just as we were moved by his words to change our dialogue and expand our horizons, so too will the people of Israel / Palestine be changed.

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Here it is . . . BAM!

Back once again here is the rhyme animal, the un-can-able . . .

(un-cannibal?)

Have I mentioned lately that I love me some Chuck D? It is entirely possible that we would never have elected a Black President, without the presence of one Public Enemy. Oh sure, Bill Clinton may have thought he put an end to consciousness with his dis directed toward Sistah Souljah (who has had quite a career as an author), but the reality is that it was the cross-pollination (poly-nation?) accomplished by the vanguards of hip-hop that introduced white folks to black folks in ways that 400-years of living and working side-by-side had never before accomplished.

There are many ways to analyze the events of 4 November 2008 and surely one of those lenses is through the eyes of Gen X, those 45 and under denizens of the "we want no part in your foolishness" crowd. I choose to believe that this generation is going to leave our mark on this society in ways too numerous to count. While Boomers looked back at their parents and proclaimed them, "The Greatest Generation", we have been tasked with cleaning up from the excesses of the Boomers and recreating America once again.

Obama talked about, A New Dawn of American Leadership: as we march into 2009, lets get to work making that dawn one of the brightest ever.

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Letters to a young Republican

Or - "Why the Arizona Republic is the world's most asinine newspaper".

They endorsed John S. McCain III yesterday, with the most duplicitous commentary I have ever read published by a major paper. Oh sure, blogs can be silly to a degree of ridiculousness that would astound the average bear, but newspapers generally like to put their best face before the public. I would recommend against reading the drivel they published and to protect your from their mendacious meanderings, I have presented below - for your reading pleasure - a brief but deadly assault on their methodology.

Your "revived form of welfare" comment is as misleading as your professed confusion over those votes of "Present" Obama made as a state legislator. Since I have no hope of teaching you Robert's Rules of Order in the width and breath of this post, I will leave that to your further study.

To claim that Obama wants to give a tax credit to people who pay no federal income tax is accurate - albeit inauthentic. Since you are making this endorsement at the end of an almost two-year long campaign season, you have had ever opportunity to learn to be authentic, but I will endeavor once more in the hopes that you might still be encouraged to sip from the stream of knowledge.

This tax credit is going to go to 95% of working families; your attempt to tie it to welfare implies a subsidy to people who are home, sitting on couches, watching televisions and adding to the population more dependents as opposed to being productive citizens.

That is inauthentic on your part.

While it has been many years since my last trip to Arizona, I am sure you still have people who fall into the category commonly known as "the working poor". Furthermore, with the rise in food and energy prices, consumers of all economic categories are feeling the pinch at the pump - where they pay a federal gasoline tax - and at the store - where they pay state and local sales taxes. Additionally, with the economy slowing down, salaries are stagnate to in decline, so even the working middle class - and all of the money they pay in payroll taxes - are seeing their incomes squeezed.

So, you are wise enough to know that not every working family pays income tax, but that also means you are wise enough to know that every working family pays a multitude of other taxes - federal, state and local - all of which prevents them from having money at the end (or even the middle) of the month to use towards the other necessities of life. Presumably, you are also wise enough to know that 75% of our economic growth is based on the activities of consumers. Stop me if I am giving you too much credit for being wise.

Obama - unlike John McCain and George Bush before him - sees these hardworking families for whom they are. He knows they are in just as much - if not more - need for tax relief than the fat cat CEOs of the banks and the oil companies - who have availed themselves of billions of dollars of tax relief over the past eight years (and billions more taxpayer dollars for bailouts), while hardworking Americans "too poor to pay income tax" have received no relief at all.

Tell me, how well did those tax cuts for the people earning the most money go for the economy? Did the tax breaks they received trickle down to those of us below and raise us all up on a tide of prosperity?

No?

No - instead it led to an increase in income inequality in our nation, such that more and more wealth was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Tell me, how did that work for the investment banks, who grew fat serving their wealthy clientele? What's that? You say there are no more investment banks? You say they either plunged into bankruptcy or into the waiting arms of commercial banks or begged the Feds to come under the warm bosom of regulation that is a commercial bank directly?

The tax policies of George Bush - which John McCain proposes extending ad infinitium - have failed miserably, for themselves, their supporters and our nation. For you to endorse their continuation - and in such a snide manner - only reveals the piracy that lurks within your own heart.

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Smiles, everyone! Big Smiles!

I grind my teeth and clamp shut my jaws as Republicans and fawning members of the press exhort the mythical memory of Prince Valiant - in his modern-day guise as John McCain.

I squelch the urge to rail against the stories of McCain as the triumphant war hero and I douse the flames of rage which rise every time I hear the tale of how our hero was so callously attacked by racists in South Carolina (why is it white people can only see white victims of racism?).

I do all of that in the hope that the larger goal - electing Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America - will be more likely realized if I conceal the depths of my disregard for John McCain and his ilk: Republicans.

No, I try to hold fast to the spirit of positive energy that Obama has released upon the land and I know my bitter feelings are not the end to which he has called me. But they are there. They are real. I am looking for a 12-step program to help me move past them, as I know the challenges before us are so great that I will not make it over on my own or merely in the company of those with a higher degree of correlation of agreement with me. I know that they times they call for all shoulders to be pressed against the wheel; for all arms to be rowing in unison: I am thankful that there are election officials watching the process with the unblinking eyes of a hawk to ensure that no laws are broken and no voters are left with recourse in the safe and secure execution of their right to vote.  

If I can but just focus on all for which I am grateful, perhaps my bitter feelings will but fade away into nothingness.

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Mad as H-E-L-L

We need to be informed of the dirty-tricks the Republicans have in motion already to steal this election from us and we need to be prepared to act to prevent their tactics from stealing yet another election from the people. Read this article. Forward it onto your friends and neighbors. Contact your local election officials to ensure that they have not and will not countenance similar tactics in your district.

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What's In A Name, indeed?

Hmmmm . . . You mean to tell me that 72-year old John McCain, was totally flummoxed by the racism behind the question from an apparently equally old woman? It is almost as though McCain came of age in an era before black people were afforded many (much less all) of the same civil rights as white citizens of this country.  

Can we all not see the innate disdain - if not outright contempt - that McCain has for Obama, written all over his face whenever the two share the stage? It goes without saying - or at least, it should - that McCain has no respect for Obama at all. We could pretend it has to do with Obama's relative youth, but to do that we would have to overlook the fact that McCain is more than smitten with his even younger VP-selection.  

So, we all know that racism exists in America. But that does not change the question: will it have an effect on this election? Thankfully - if one can be ironically thankful to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - over the past 40-years, most of the racists have found a home in the Republican Party. Furthermore, while the country has been minting new voters daily - as they reach the age of 18 - the Republican Party finds itself stagnate to in decline, as more and more people tire of the outright and sub-rosa shout-outs to the racist hard-liners in the party. That is why both the Democratic Party and those registered as Independents are growing, along with increasing numbers of members for third-party groups. Ignoring for a moment the even more virulent racism of some third-party movements (Alaska Independence Party, are your ears burning?), we are without question in a period of American history over which racism has less sway than at any point in our short existence as a republic.

This election - if we work hard to turn out the vote of all those with any sympathies for liberals or progressives or merely simple thought - can produce the sort of political landslide not seen since the realignment Reagan created in 1980. Remember: that race was down to the wire and it was the final debate - days before the election - that sealed a shift across so many states from Carter to Reagan, so much so that Reagan eventually carried 44-states and received 489 EV. Those targets are within reach for Obama in this election, irrespective of the racists in our midst. There is a possibility that McCain will merely end up with UT, OK, ID and WY in his camp come Wednesday morn. It will take more work on our part to bring about a realignment this historic, but never before in our nation's history has the need for such a realignment been so great.

Ever - including the Civil War period and "the greatest generation" of WWII.

For we stand not just at the precipice of the end of the American Century, as we grow ever older and more indebted, but we stand on the edge of the end of the Carbon-Era and the end of all the energy we have extracted from the Earth as coal, oil and natural gas. Now we have legions of coal and we have natural gas reserves which are yet to be tapped, so perhaps only oil is becoming harder and more expensive to find. But what good is a resource if the very act of using it leads to our destruction? The miracle of economic growth - which is but a few minutes on the clock of human existence - stands mute before the progress of history and with but a few more years of burning carbon and expelling it into our atmosphere, our world could change irrevocably into one more hostile for our needs as a species.  

Could a small-mined racist like John McCain lead us out of the darkness and into the light?

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Decoy Effect

Twain perhaps captured the "art" of statistics better than any critic before or since, but how many psychologists did he know? Okay, that was harsh - but hear me out.

CBS primetime last week introduced me to a psych concept known as "decoy effect", whereby introducing a third option to a decision matrix can favor one of the other two choices. A quick internet search and I was reading this article - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040100973.html -
from last year in the Washington Post, that discussed ways for Obama and Clinton to parry the presence of Edwards to their benefit - individually - and it also included this throwaway line on Nader:

"Many people lavished hate on Ralph Nader for presumably taking votes away from the Democratic front-runner in the 2000 presidential election," said Scott Highhouse, who has studied the decoy effect at Bowling Green State University. "Research on the decoy effect suggests that Nader's presence, rather than taking votes away, probably increased the share of votes for the candidate he most resembled."

Intriguing concept. Ralph Nader actually increased voter support for Al Gore in the 2000 election. I certainly never looked at the world like that before, so I am going to spend some time mulling this one over.

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The Sisyphus Journals, 2008, Part I

Parlez-vous francais? Non!

First, I have to place fair - albeit garbled - warning upfront, to our most kind hostess: Mme de lis.

Second, I too share - in fact I think it is clear the world shares - in the anxiety about what will happen next in our credit and financial markets. The incompetence of the Bush Administration is legendary after eight years and the idea that any act they could take would "restore confidence" would be laughable - were the stakes not so high. We all hope for an emergency act of Congress that moves Inauguration Day a pres Thanksgiving Day, so that we might shuffle this insane and incompetent administration off its remaining bearings.

Baring that, I turn almost daily to the Center for American Progress, as these are the representatives of the "administration in waiting". Think tanks have proliferated in recent years as home away from home for politicians and policy apparatchiks, who are in disfavor with one administration or the other. Here is part of what CAP has to say on the bailout: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/10/rescue_package.html

Assuredly, it is not enough and more detailed pronouncements are presumably under development, but I was reassured by their commitment to Green Recovery and what I hope they will rename the Zero-Carbon Economy.

Mon amis.

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El Matador

So, I watched yet one more presidential debate last night. Not because I expected anything to happen that would change my mind on whom our next president should be, but because I do prefer to have my own base of knowledge - my own foundation - before the pundits and the press proceed to tell me what should be my takeaways from the event.

I can do my own takeaways, thank you very much.

So I will not pretend to proscribe for you - dear reader - what your takeaways should be either. What I will say is this: was it just me, or did McCain resemble a bull on stage last night? He paced restlessly around the arena - I keep seeing him appear and then disappear in the background of Obama's commentaries in response to questions - and even when he was answering questions, he paced relentlessly backwards and forwards, apparently in attempts to engage as many members of the hall as possible. And of course, he was constantly on the attack, always searching for an opening that could be used to gore Obama - like with that snarky and childish, "that One!" remark, which seemed to please him to no end.

But what I also saw, was a man so light of foot - so graceful - that these awkward advances were easily paried. I saw a man playfully - and without a hint of the anger that could clearly be seen in McCain - and professionally dance away from the charging bull, but always leaving the bull with a cut here, a stab there to remind him of the dangers of the charge.

Of course, the bull cannot help but to charge again, for that is what a bull does.

The matador, his job is to allow the bull to weaken himself, to expend his energy on foolish and costly charges back and forth across the arena, always being sure to bloody the bull for his efforts. Until - at last - the matador strikes the last blow, right to the heart of the bull.

Can't wait to see the third debate.

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A new day is dawning

The US needs to turn its attention to the South. It is the states of Brazil and India where some of the fastest economic growth is now occurring and even an African nation like South Africa too. Strengthening our alliances here - perhaps with a sister organization to NATO - would enable us to build the policy bridges we need to cross the challenges that lay before us. Furthermore, we should wipe away the debt of African nations and Caribbean nations like Haiti. It is unconscionable that the US finds itself as the collector of Haiti's international debt. This debt burden was applied by France initially, more than 200-years ago. Collecting this debt is akin to asking the sons and daughters of slaves to pay reparations to the sons and daughters of their former slave masters - for the loss of those slaves as a "business asset", no less! This is a crime. A crime that should no longer be tolerated. If we as a nation are going to stand forswear against paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, we must also stand forthwith against paying reparations to the descendants of former slave owners. Similarly, the debt of African nations was mostly incurred by dictators - empowered by our CIA - and party to our Cold War games against Russia. To ask the sons and daughters of people slain by dictators we installed to pay debt obligations on money stolen by those dictators, is unreasonable in the extreme. It is time for us to own up to our failures and not look for those whom we victimized to cover our tracks.

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October Surprise?

Lets see what we know:

1. There is absolutely no reason to trust any statement made by any Bush Administration official.
2. Corollary to Statement 1 - no reason to trust any statement made by any Bush Administration supporter.
3. Any McCain campaign staffer must be considered as equivalent to a Bush Administration official, as well for indeed, some of them are former Bush Administration officials.
4. McCain has at least one lobbyist on his campaign team, who "formerly" worked for Georgia.
5. Former Nixon aide and current VP Dick Cheney, is traveling to Georgia, weeks before the election.
6. Nixon created perhaps the first "October Surprise", with his back channel negotiations in Vietnam, to prevent Johnson from winding that war down in 1968 before the election and turning the tide toward the Democrats in that year, which - apropos of nothing - was the same year MLK and RFK were assassinated.

We also know that Reagan used a similar back channel negotiation with the Iranians - to encourage them to not release the hostages - much of which laid the ground work for arms sales to the Iranians through Israel as a cutout, with profits used to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Many of those officials involved in the Contra program - Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter - saw their political fortunes rise with the return of the son of the former CIA Director (GHWB), George W. Bush to the White House.

Everybody all set on the players?

Good.

What does this mean?

Anyone - and I mean anyone - who does not think more stuff will hit more fans over the next seven weeks is beyond a delusional state and should not be consulted on the weather, much less the el ection. I expect to witness no less than the most amazing, death-defying, dazzling display of election theft and vote rigging ever attempted by man, woman or child.

I am predicting some turbulence, as we seek to re-establish government of the people, by the people and for the people - to this nation and perhaps to the world. Everyone, please buckle your seat belts and know that our captain has a plan to bring this baby home in one piece. Near as I can read my from my safety page from the seat-back pocket in front of me, we are instructed to:

Call.
Canvass.
Contribute.
and Communicate across every hill, dale and yonder with your neighbors, colleagues, coworkers and friends about the importance of this election and why it is requisite upon us all to cast our votes - by any means necessary.

Encourage every sentient being with whom you come into contact, to vote for Senator Barack Obama.

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Lies, Damned Lies . . . and Pollsters?

I am certain of an Obama victory come this fall; I am just as certain that the pollsters are either unable or unwilling to accurately gauge the electorate this year. Their inability to poll accurately became legendary throughout the Democratic Primary process and the erratic nature of the polls since only tells us that they have not gotten a handle on what to do.

Regardless of their intentions, their daily, weekly and monthly polls do have an effect on the voting populace. In a very real sense, they do not just report on how the electorate is feeling - they shape how the electorate feels.

They know (this) http://books.google.com/books?id=DdSPsxHX5BQC&dq.

This tells us that their actions are in furtherance of whatever their goals are. While we are not privy to their internal discussions, we can know this much for certain: their goal - stated or unstated - seeks to reduce the enthusiasm of the Democrats and increase the enthusiasm of the Republicans, in a pathetic attempt to prevent the change we as a nation seek to make from coming to pass.

It will not work.

They will not succeed.

Their attempts are growing more patently obvious by the day.

But all of that is mere words and in truth, purely preamble. Here is the analysis that proves the above hypothetical statements true.

From the latest AP Poll (http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/), we see the following top-line numbers:

• McCain - 48%
• Obama - 44%

Looks bad for our hero, but those Hollywood serials would not have kept us on the edge of our seats if we could tell from jump that the good guy was going to win.

The first lie these numbers tell us is they are based on "likely voters". Now, every pollster has their own "secret sauce" for how they determine "likely voters", but suffice it to say for the external viewer that it consists of a formula based on previous voting experience; demographic data; and enthusiasm. Translated more directly (and we are family here, no?), that means newly registered voters have their responses discounted; impact of white voters is raised - due to their historically higher voting rate compared to other demographics; and adding Sarah Palin to the ticket has boosted Republican enthusiasm - which was beyond lackluster for John McCaain. Three debatable assumptions - as they look backward and not forward - that pollsters treat as gospel.

But there is more wrong with this poll:

View Picture 10 and you will see that the Democratic voters total out to 33% of the "likely voters" polled and Republican voters totaled out to 31% of the same population. Nationally, Democrats have a more than 11M - (according to the AP) http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iyCjg56QEYy3r8Gz2X09TnpaWOMwD9317JU00 - registered voter advantage over Republicans - and that is in states where registration also capture party affiliation. Other news sources (USA Today from 2004) http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/neuharth/2004-01-22-neuharth_x.htm say that the Democratic advantage is almost 20M - and that lead is only growing with each passing day, as the Obama campaign continues to press for new registrations. And as these folks are registering just for this campaign, they have to be considered more likely to vote! Any poll that does not show a Democratic lead in the poll responders, it flat out false.

But there is even more wrong with this poll:

View Picture 11 and you will see that of the likely voters questioned in this poll, a full 10% more voted for George Bush in 2004 than John Kerry! Now, we are all sad that Kerry lost, but he did not lose by 10%; in fact, his margin of defeat was a mere 2.4%. This means that what this poll is actually showing, is that some folks who voted for George Bush in 2004 are planning on voting for Barack Obama in 2008; I bet you did not see that in any headlines.

But there is still more wrong with this poll:

View Picture 12 and you will see that the pollster is once again forecasting 17% of the electorate will be in the under-30 voter group - which is what we saw in 2004. Ask yourself if you - the average observer of this year's political season - thinks that more, less or about the same number of voters in the under-30 demographic will hit the polls this November? You can take as much time as you like in answering this question and remember - this will count as 25% of your final score!

But there is yet one more thing wrong with this poll - and I am not even a statistician (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night):

View Picture 13; here you will see that the pollster is once again forecasting 7% of the electorate will be Hispanic/Latino, as it was in 2004. This almost goes without saying but the primary season alone showed a huge increase in the turnout of Hispanic voters. To believe that they have all decided to vote in the primaries - only to return to previous levels in the fall - is an assertion without evidence in support of it (others might call it an out and out lie, but I am too charitable for such strong language).

I hope this has shown that this latest poll from AP/GFK is more cotton candy than high cotton; I encourage everyone to go to the poll themselves and see just how many others holes are in this thing. All snapshots of poll data taken from the AP source data here: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/pdf/AP-GfK_Poll_91208_Topline_findings_final.pdf.

For comparison, you can find details on the 2004 election here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004.

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Methinks the lady doth protest too much

All of this analysis was merely preamble to this prescription:

"A good start would be for Obama to apologize to Clinton supporters for not coming to her defense during the primaries and helping her battle a torrent of sexist media criticism."

It seems that what has really gotten stuck in Ms. Urbe's craw is the thumpin' her candidate took at the hands of this impetuous upstart. You see, according to Ms. Urbe, it is not the voters who select presidential nominees, no - that prerogative belongs to the media elite. The fact that Senator Obama would deign to go over her head and speak directly to the people is - in her eyes - just more proof of his elitism!

"How dare he!, she cries, "How dare he!"

No, Ms. Urbe, how dare you.

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I Try Not to Think of Republicans

Mostly because, they certainly don't think about me.

But this VP selection by McCain does have me flummoxed.

I was certain that Rob Portman would be his choice: Portman is known as a budget hawk - so he plays into the "I am going to trim the federal budget meme; Portman is from Ohio - and that is a state McCain wants to attempt to win; and Portman may have had a role in the Bush Administration - but who holds the OMB Director accountable for the mistakes like Katrina?

When I heard the initial reports, I assumed it was some false fire being sent out to misdirect the media and keep everything secret until the announcement. Instead, the story I thought to be too crazy turned out to be true.

Never to old to learn a new trick, I guess.

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Respect Yourself

If you disrespect everybody that you run into - how in the world do you think anybody gonna respect you?

In this piece from Friday (still returning to normal; long trip back from the DNC in Denver), respected (?) journalist provides his analysis on the convention speeches - with his greatest focus on Obama's acceptance speech and the themes it contained. How does his analysis conclude? Well, like so many in the press, he has some advice for our young hero, so that the good ship Change - as navigated by Obama - does not run aground on the rocky shores of reality. The reality in this case being, attempts to portray this son of a single mom, raised by his grandparents will have a hard time convincing people he is not an elitist - given how thin he is and how "difficult it is to imagine Obama - so disciplined and imperially slim - wolfing down a Big Mac".

This qualifies as political analysis nowadays? One perhaps should not be surprised by this piece from this author and from this journal; after all - it was the National Journal who trumpeted to the world the very liberal status of this Senator from Illinois. Somewhat obviating the fact that his voting record - on which this claim was based - was necessarily impacted by his travel schedule for the 18 months of this presidential campaign. Regardless, let me keep my focus on that "difficult to imagine" line from this "analysis"; apparently - if you are black - you can be too rich and too thin. Sure, Obama is not as rich as John McCain - for all of her charms, Michelle Robinson Obama has never been described as an heiress - but his books have made him wealthy (damn those people who have the temerity to be good writers! John McCain knows that Senators are supposed to have their books ghost-written for them). And his tendency towards frequent exercise and healthy living has led him away from a fast food diet - two tendencies that are most certainly not shared by our increasingly overweight and diabetic society. So of course, it is entirely appropriate for an analysis of four days of convention speeches to zero in on the major problem Obama has: "imperially slimness" and an inability to credibly "[wolf] down a Big Mac".

And this man hopes to be taken seriously as a respected journalist.

Now, I know not what is in Ron Brownstein's heart; I only know the man by his actions. And for him to write that Obama cannot seriously be credited with humble beginnings because he is both now successful - usually a good trait in those we seek for our highest office - and disciplined (horror of horrors!) is to enact journalistic malpractice and or malfeasance. One has to wonder what crosses the mind of a man as he commits such words to electronic ink: do they cause his heart to fill with the simple pride of a job well-done? I know that much is made these days of how little esteem the public holds for the press: I say the press must first respect themselves to engender respect from the public.

When you put your name to a piece of analysis that proffers the difficulties a candidate would face in credibly downing a Big Mac, you disrespect yourself and your profession.

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The Greater Fool

This shouldn't bother me; its just a throw-away line mostly ancillary to the larger point the author is attempting to make: 

"Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them."

So says New York Times globalism columnist, Tom Friedman.  You see my problem, right?

"The African team all looks African" - just what team is he referring to here?  Teams at the Olympics are by country and my map has not a country called 'Africa'.  It has a very beautiful continent with that name, but try as I might, I cannot see the country to which he refers.

But isn't this was outsiders in general and white people in particular have always done?  It is interesting that the one place they actually concede the invisibility of political borders is when it comes to Africa.  Mention some small Georgian republic and white folks are up and arms about just where South Ossetia belongs, but they day in and day out express a disregard for whether or not Kenya, Ethiopia or Morocco exist as separate nations.

As I said before, this is nothing new - and in the whole scheme of things I should probably ignore this remark.

And yet, I can't.

Because there is a larger context here: what if there was a United Republic of Afrika?  The UAR could be a mighty force amongst the nations of the world and powerful enough to prevent the corporate looting of the natural resources of the first continent.  The UAR could be strong enough to protect its citizens and project a positive image of Afrikan ability across the world.

Perhaps Mr. Friedman has - accidentally, of course - provided us with a road map on how to make the 21st century an Afrikan century.

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Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest

In my Avis Rental car yesterday, I was treated to an XM Radio discussion on POTUS08 with the author of "The Faith of Barack Obama"; there were several misstatements of Black Liberation Theology as well as what Obama's faith means to him and although I do not have as large a podium as an internationally - indeed, intergalactic - broadcast radio program, I do want to address those with you here in this letter.

First, clearly Black Liberation Theology is too complex for someone such as the author to grasp in the one weekend he spent at Trinity United Church of Christ, so perhaps he is to be forgiven for the mistakes he made of mischaracterizing this theological viewpoint. Even so, his references to the church and its former pastor as "cult-like" are beyond insulting and are no doubt due to his ignorance, as opposed to any specific teaching he may have heard or read about. By example, let me delve into the author's statements that Dr. Cone's phraseology of equating "black" with oppressed and "white" with oppressor is a confusing construct, in that these theological terms of good and evil are not specifically mapped back to the equivalent racial terms; i.e. - being black racial does not equate to being automatically good spiritually and the same is true for white people in that they are not - by theological definition - automatically evil. What the author should have said is these terms were confusing to him - as someone not culturally educated with a view of the world through the eyes of a black man - and especially not the eyes of a black man in the 1960s when Black Liberation Theology was defined. Seemingly the task of attempting to understand the black experience is too difficult for the author, as he was manifestly unable to imagine just how a black man of the 1960s could have many examples in his life of white being equivalent to his oppressor and this makes the author unable to make the spiritual and theological leap that Dr. Cone was seeking to use as a pathway to open the heart of man to the Lord.

Second, the author describes how central doubt is to Obama's faith - and then he criticizes him for having the temerity to express doubt in an example given in his second book, when he was discussing the afterlife with his child. Whereas the author has certain faith, an unquestioning faith, Obama has a faith that says he believes - without requiring specific knowledge of the Lord's intention or his plans. Which one of these men has placed his trust in the Lord and which one has boxed the Lord into a position? More importantly, rather than attempting to gauge the quality of one's faith against another, Christians are called to welcome one another as brothers and not perform faith checks upon one another and call those out whom we find lacking according to a standard of man - and not a standard of God.

Let me close with one example of how the author substituted his own standard for faith: he praised McCain's swift and sure answer to the question: when does life begin? McCain answered immediately - conception - whereas Obama demurred and said that question was above his pay grade. The author criticized Obama for his answer - but provided no example text from the scripture to back up his criticism. This surely means the answer came from the word of the author and not the word of God.

Now, I know not the mind of God so I have no idea whether the author and John McCain are right when they posit that life begins at conception; what I do know is that for that to be the case, the number of abortions that pro-lifers like to put forth as having occurred since the advent of Roe v Wade is woefully inadequate. They are simply talking about doctor-aided abortions; the human female aborts embryos all of the time - we call these miscarriages in some instances. In other instances, a fertilized egg - meaning post conception - is simply allowed to exit the uterus as it occurred to late in the cycle to reach implantation in the uterine wall. As a lay person, I know not the word for this case, but here is the point: if life begins at conception - any fertilized egg that does not reach birth is an abortion - according to McCain, meaning that it is the taking of another human life. As a legislator, McCain has never sanctioned murder, so the logical conclusion of his position and the author's, is that every instance of a fertilized egg that does not result in a human birth must be investigated to determine if a murder has occurred. Does McCain really want to add to the trauma of a miscarriage with the trauma of a police investigation? And how would he even be made aware of the passage of an egg that was fertilized and not implanted? Would he mandate the collection of tampons and maxi-pads for forensic analysis? And would he then fill the jails with women who had sex too late in their cycle for implantation of the egg to take place? They would be knowingly risking the act of conception - creating a human life - with no hope of that life to continue living? Would McCain classify that as murder, manslaughter or criminally-negligent homicide?

Yes - McCain received a roar of adulation from the crowd for both his response and the author's, but this answer was as equally thoughtless as it was swift; perhaps the first response is not always the right response. Perhaps having a President who knows that is a good thing.

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It is possible for McCain to be worse than Bush

So, Russia is threatening Poland?  Why does this all so sound familiar? 

Remember this - http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/rec.bush.abm/ - back when Bush was still young (but apparently post his days of 'youthful indiscretion') and even more arrogant (did I just use the wrong adjective?) than he is these days (I know - sounds crazy, right?), he unceremoniously told the Russians that he was pulling the US out of the ABM Treaty.  He derided the 30-year old treaty as little more than an historical document on several occasions.

Brings his treatment of the US Constitution into bas-relief, no?

Any-hoo, were we to journey past 2002, even back unto those long-ago, halcyon days of yore - 1972 - we could witness some wild-eyed liberal by the name of RIchard Nixon, as he signed an agreement with another group of commie, pinko leftists; said agreement having as its underlying intent to weaken the US defense and . . . 

Wait - that doesn't sound right.

What is right is that this ABM Treaty was brought to us by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev and its actual intent was to free each nation - the US and the USSR - from the enormous expense of attempting to bring into life the missile defense systems that each nation had been pursuing for decades - unsuccessfully, as it turned out.  It was the advent of Multiple, Independent, Re-entry Vehicles - MIRV - that made previous attempts to create missile defense systems obsolete and so our defensive posture and the Soviets turned toward MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.  MAD worked for decades as no matter how insane each nations leaders appeared to be in order to gain power, no one was crazy enough to think they could get away with destroying an enemy with nuclear weapons and still escape retribution.

Until - a man, a plan, a canal - SDI: Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative - or 'Star Wars' to its detractors; Reagan promised to end MAD and provide the US with the ability to nuke half the world, while remaining securely ensconced within the warm, safe arms of space-based lasers.

Believe me: it is a much crazier plan than that last sentence made it appear.

I will not go into all of the reasons why that is to; some nice folks over at Wikipedia have given some interesting background information here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty - as what I really want to talk about today is Poland (aka, "New Europe").

Russia's invasion of Georgia was their way of announcing to the world that they are sick and tired of US poaching on states to close to the Russian border.  Call it a sphere of influence, call it a zone of security, call it what you will: Russia does not appreciate how the US and Europe extended the North Atlantic Treaty Organization right up to the Ural Mountains.  Note that Georgia was on the list of nations who have sought entrance into NATO.  Note also that Poland has been proceeding ahead with plans to allow the US to install interceptors for a missile shield on their territory.  And note, finally, that it was this week that Poland and the US moved to sign the paperwork on that missile shield.  At the same time as those discussions were taking place, not only was Russia letting the world see what it thought of Georgia's plans, they also had one of their generals announce - to the world - that the presence of these interceptors made Poland a target for nuclear attack.

Bush began his administration pulling out of the ABMT; he is ending his administration by placing missile interceptors in Poland; and in between, he has launched to wars: one in the former Soviet client state of Afghanistan and the other in the once and future (?) client state of Iraq.  Contemporaneously with these two wars, the US has gone from a massive budget surplus to an equally massive budget deficit; the price of oil - for our oil-based economy has risen more than ten-fold from $10 a barrel to $115 a barrel; and Russia has gone from an indebted nation unable to feed its own people into the worlds largest purveyor of oil and natural gas.  For God's sake - they have brought the word 'oligarch' back into existence! 

And these are the policies that John McCain wants to expand upon?

No thanks. 

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We do not have a divided electorate

We have an apathetic electorate.

There is a difference.

Most years, we struggle to reach 50% turnout of registered voters on election day; this is what we saw in 2000.  2004 saw almost 60% of registered voters turn out to vote and I predict this year we will cross over 70%.

What does that mean?

Well, first of all it means the polls do not matter.  Polls have a metric they call, "likely voters" and each pollster defines it differently - but the one thing they all agree on is that if you did not vote in the last election, you are not likely to vote in this one.

When you have the Obama campaign spreading out across neighborhoods across the nation and registering people to vote for the first time - what do you think happens when pollsters call them?

High Turnout + New Voters + Enthusiasm = Obama +20 in the popular vote and Obama over 350 in the electoral college. 

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