“The absurdity of this entire affair was best illustrated when John McCain called for coastal oil-drilling and was cheered for it by his Christian-conservative audience. For the most part, this is an audience which believes that the earth is 6,000 years old, yet it applauded plans to look for resources that exist due to the organic remnants of prehistoric organisms that took millions of years to accrue … The fact that a future U.S. President has to suck up at this kind of a forum really gives global politics a surrealistic undertone.”
– ‘his campaign’s lack of any tangible racially-based resentment.’
– ‘the fact that Reagan assured the United States a spectacular economic recovery, but nevertheless, paid for it with social inequalities that little-by-little have surpassed by way of inconvenience the advantages brought by free markets.’
– ‘the sometimes incredible stagnation of all public facilities in a country where the pressure for lower taxes has kept railroads, airports and sometimes roads at the technological level of the 1970s.’
– ‘the generation of children of humiliated communists and progressives, who are today rich and in power, and who are tempted to inflict a spectacular defeat on the American right.’
And what hope do U.S. Republicans have of beating Obama?
Read on at WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. election.
The Obama attacks may be damaging the John McCain “brand” in the long run, according to a growing chorus of Republican supporters and admirers, including McCain’s mother who calls one of the ads “stupid.”
But the candidate himself isn’t backing off. On radio yesterday, he compared an Obama speech to “watching a big summer blockbuster, and an hour in realizing that all the best scenes were in the trailer you saw last fall.”
Long-time McCain watchers see ventriloquism in all this by Karl Rove protégés who have taken him over. McCain’s 2000 campaign manager calls the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears commercial “clumsy, juvenile, and a mistake” while David Gergen parses the Charlton Heston ad calling Obama “The One” as “code for ‘he’s uppity, he ought to stay in his place.’ Everybody gets that who is from a southern background.”
There are some people in this world who think President Bush has been a great president - even in France. One such person is French historian Alexandre Adler - also known as France’s foremost neocon. In this article, Adler makes a very convincing case for President Bush’s legacy and his ‘unparalleled service to Europe.’
“At a time when “Obamania” is in full swing, why not say all the good things we can about George W. Bush, if not about the eight years he spent battling terrorism? Indeed, a certain amount of false evidence has been laid at the doorstep of the current U.S. president. … The first such item is in the process of crumbling before our eyes: not only was the destruction of the Baathist regime in Iraq not a failure for the United States, but it’s now turning into a genuine success. First of all, because indeed, Saddam Hussein did a good job organizing what was left of Iraq’s state apparatus into an unwavering support system for terrorist operations that America found intolerable. Then, because the current transformation of Iraq has had a considerable medium-term impact: Iraqis have voted freely three times since 2003, although to be sure, these free elections are not yet entirely pluralist. Nevertheless, they have played a role in helping assess the actual size of the three major communities in the country [Sunni, Shiite and Kurd] and have also allowed the real political majority to emerge in Iraq [Shiites rather than Sunnis].”
“We now see that by maintaining strong growth, and even at this moment, by keeping America from entering a recession that the bursting of the subprime bubble clearly provoked, George Bush, helped mightily by [FED Chairman] Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, his remarkable treasury secretary, has done unparalleled service to the whole of Europe.
Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the already-mentioned Hank Paulson, and General Petraeus in Baghdad, as well as Zalmay Khalilzad, ambassador and a veritable patron of Afghanistan, will in time come to be seen as true statesmen whose achievements are simply impressive.”
Adler also looks at the situation in the wider Middle East, Latin America, China and North Korea - and although significant blunders are mentioned, he gives President Bush high marks.
As the short list dwindles down and Republican attacks heat up, the arguments for Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate strengthen.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is the flavor of the week in the media frenzy, but with less than three years in the position and no international experience, his choice would only underscore voter doubts about Obama’s readiness to be president.
It is more than Biden’s years in the Senate that recommend him. During the Democratic primary debates, the phrase “Joe is right” was heard so often that it became the theme of his ultimately failed campaign.
Since he entered the Senate in 1973 at the age of 30, Biden has embodied the kind of brains, character and compassion that national politics should have but rarely gets. Now, at 65, he would bring to Obama’s ticket the good judgment and experience a change candidate needs to persuade wary voters that the best of the past would not be swept away in enthusiasm for the new.
Read the rest of this entry.
In unearthing the syllabus and assignments for his seminar in “Current Issues in Racism and the Law” during 12 years of teaching at the University of Chicago, the New York Times offers a preview of how Barack Obama’s mind might work in the Oval Office.
For that complex and controversial subject, Obama improvised his own textbook, with key cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois and Malcolm X as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.
Amid the historical horrors of slavery and lynchings, students recall, Obama made room for discussing the values and culture that Americans of all races grow up sharing, citing his wife, Michelle, a black woman, who loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening scenes.
But perhaps most to the point of how a President Obama would conduct his administration’s approach to problem solving may be found in his instructions to students for preparing their term papers.
“There is something hypocritical in the ‘Obamania’ that is sweeping France: Obama, Black, young and un-cunning, is the archetype of that which the French political class invariably fails to produce. This is typical for France, where one likes to extol the merits of recipes from abroad without doing anything to concoct them ‘at home.’
So how poorly represented is France’s minority population?
“How to explain that a ‘phenomena’ like Obama still hasn’t occurred in our country? It’s been 160 years since France definitely abolished slavery, and yet one must note that the effective integration of “minorities” in the economic and political sphere is infinitesimal. In the National Assembly, the large majority of Black members represent the overseas territories. Out of the 577 elected MPs, there is just a single exception: George Pau-Langevin [She is the MP for 21st district of Paris].”
“With the Victory Column, another good place has been found for his appearance. Obama need only characterize this in the proper light. First - the Column represents victory - and that’s not a bad omen for someone in the midst of an election battle.”
“And there’s plenty of room for an audience around the Victory Column, for it stands in the midst of the Tiergarten [the park in the center of Berlin]. Obama should be a somewhat grateful to Adolf Hitler for this. He had the Victory Column brought there in the context of his plans to rearrange Berlin as the world capital of Germania. To be precise, the monument stood in front of the Reich building [the Reichstag - or Parliament]. There, the America candidate would have had to battle the central district’s Urban Green Space Planning Office, which is even more stubborn than Angela Merkel.”
“This capacity to restore the image of an America that wants so badly to be loved is an electoral asset. Provided, however, that is doesn’t go too far: criticizing his country at home is one thing, doing so from abroad is another.”
“Paradoxically, the improvement on the ground benefits the Democratic candidate, since there are fewer issues in dispute. An early redeployment is no longer possible in Iraq, and everyone agrees that it’s on Afghanistan that America will have to focus - it is there that the war against terrorism will be won or lost.
On Iran, the same phenomenon occurs: Barack Obama didn’t have it wrong when he advocated dialogue, since even Bush has decided to send a senior envoy [William Burns] to the Geneva meeting [with Iran] today.”
Trot out the clichés about closing the barn door for news today that the Federal Reserve is cracking down on shady lending practices to home buyers and President Bush is fighting high gas prices by lifting a ban on offshore drilling for oil.
As Americans drown in bad economic news, these daring rescue moves are the equivalent of throwing them concrete life preservers.
The Fed’s new rules to protect the public against predatory lenders of subprime mortgages are too little for future home buyers and too late for the millions who are losing their homes at the highest rate in history.
His dramatic return this week to cast the deciding vote for a crucial Medicare bill brought tears and cheers in the US Senate, even as some medical ethicists question Ted Kennedy’s decision to undergo life-prolonging (and expensive) surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
On the New York Times Freakonomics blog, an internist involved in public health issues suggests Sen. Kennedy might have issued this statement instead:
“Because I am not a young man, the cancer in my brain will progress rapidly and is likely to incapacitate me in the near future. I trust that my doctors will do everything they can to prevent further seizures and to keep me in comfort. I will not endure extraordinary excess pain and suffering, while hundreds of thousand of dollars will not be spent on surgical debulking, radiation, and chemotherapeutic regimens which do not work.
“Modern medicine cannot cure my cancer, but it can keep me comfortable and free of pain. I have already contacted the Massachusetts General Hospital Hospice program.”
If such a suggestion seems heartless, it nonetheless reflects a crucial debate that has started about end-of-life care, which accounts for a significant percentage of Medicare expenditures.
“Confronted with skyrocketing oil prices, the rising cost of food, the financial crisis, chaos in the money markets and finally, global warming, the powerful have no convincing response to provide the world.
On all of these issues - and without forgetting the Iranian nuclear threat, the G-8 Summit in Japan has illustrated the impotence of the major industrialized nations which, until recently, were able to impose their views to the rest of the planet.”
“The absence of vision is largely the result of the now-concluding American administration, which only recently recognized the existence of the problem.”
Now that Jesse Jackson has reassured us about Barack Obama’s genitals, it’s time to consider what prompted the Reverend’s rage–the candidate’s criticism of African-American fathers for failing their children–as part of a larger subtext of this election.
On all sides, it involves issues about American manhood in the 21st century and the troubling rites of passage from one generation to the next.
Start with George W. Bush who was moved to take up a war left unfinished by paternal prudence and turned toward “a higher Father” for guidance.
Enter John McCain, son and grandson of Admirals who, after writing “Faith of My Fathers,” is campaigning for the White House based on the premise that the Head of State in an age of terror should be a reassuring paterfamilias.
Then there is Obama, searching for a father he never knew in “Dreams from My Father” and, in his presidential campaign, calling out men who aren’t there for their children and challenging them to take up their responsibilities.
This piece of legislation — and what Congress has done to the fourth amendment—which protects the privacy of ordinary citizens from unreasonable invasion by the government — matters.
Those who defended the telecoms for breaking federal law at the request of the Bush administration kept talking about the telecoms’ subjection to ‘the heavy hand of government.’ This was always spurious argument in the case of the telecoms, who had no more obligation than you or I to comply with an unlawful demand to break the law (none) and the same obligation as you or I would have to refuse to comply. And in fact, not all telecoms chose to go along with the demand.
FISA, on the other hand, unleashes ‘the heavy hand of government’ against ordinary citizens.
Was Hillary badly treated by America’s male dominated media elite? That debate is not only an American one. In fact, it’s apparently a debate that has been sanctioned by China’s Communist Party.
“Looking at how newspapers and TV networks commented on Hillary’s looks, her voice and her emotional life, we can see the kind of criticism and humiliation she has suffered. ‘Hating Hillary’ has even become a kind of national sport or entertainment. … The path of her struggle in seeking to make a breakthrough may not have met with the approval of all women. But in her own words, the 18 million voters who supported her have made “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.”
As anyone who regularly visits the Moderate Voice or WORLDMEETS.US knows by now, the world’s attention is riveted on the U.S. election campaign. And in every nation, different lessons - some of them cautionary - are being drawn.
Writing for Brazil’s Estadao, Lourdes Sola explains why American election campaigns - particularly this one - create so much emotion in the ‘other three corners of the world’ and how the way Americans choose their leaders proves the resiliency and health of U.S. democracy. Sola then outlines the lessons that people in other nations, particularly Brazilians, should glean from the U.S. presidential race.
“American democracy shows the enormous capacity of institutions to absorb and filter change in society without resulting challenges to the law. The dispute in the Democratic Party between ‘a woman’ and ‘a Black,’ leads to an institutional question: Why and by what mechanisms were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chosen as the most competitive electoral candidates? The same question can be posed about the nomination of John McCain since it also reflects a shift in the value system of the Republican Party on immigration, the environment and secularism. Taken together, this is a “change in season” in the sphere of politics and reflects a profound transformation in that society’s system of values and criteria for political legitimacy.”
“Societies today are exposed to global processes of political interaction and a dissemination of values over which nations and party leaders have little control. Apart from changes in the axis of global power and the role of the major emerging countries, it is the force and vitality of American democratic institutions - and not its economy - that the election campaign brings to the fore of the international debate. Confronting the successive “shocks of reality” to which U.S. society has been subject - from the losses associated with the war in Iraq to the subprime crisis - the process of regenerating American social life has begun in the political realm rather than through any particular policies. This will now play out in the contest between Obama vs. McCain.”
“If for political and tactical reasons, the American administration won’t announce the terms of the Convention; if some of the terms of the deal adversely affect Iraqi “sovereignty and dignity”; and if as Nouri al-Maliki has said, talks are at a standstill, then why doesn’t the Iraqi government or it’s representatives at the talks reveal to the Iraqi people the items that they say so detrimentally affect Iraqi sovereignty and dignity, to help win popular support for the government’s position so that all can understand how the government defines its “sovereignty and dignity”? … Do we truly live in the era of transparency and democracy, as our esteemed government leaders, members of Parliament and party leaders claim? Or is this only talk - the sowing of seeds of illusion within the minds of this pitiful people, whose field of dreams is desolate and barren, and for whom the hoped-for heaven is instead a living hell?”
“Someone should explain the meaning of the absolute secrecy that has surrounded the draft Convention - and the meaning of the non-disclosure of the names of those on the negotiating team … Are negotiators afraid to shoulder the blame, or are they concerned they can’t stand up to the Arabic or Iranian backlash? The legs of the negotiators tremble when it comes to accepting responsibility for their actions.”
“… not only to repel the conflicting ambitions of Arabs, Turks and Iranians, but also to prevent a civil war, the flame of which has yet to be extinguished. For there are thousands who continue to blow on the embers - embers that are mainly due to the presence of political Islam at the head of the state and the spread of sectarian thinking in politics, culture and different types of Arab media.”
“That attitude of some parties, politicians and religious authorities are just an echo of the sectarian forces outside of Iraq, that don’t care about Iraq nor the people of Iraq, except to the extent that it’s in harmony with their wasteful, selfish interests. Hence we can understand why so many are opposed to the Iraqi-American agreement, because their opposition isn’t based on the national interest. Rather, they oppose it on the basis of sectarian motivations, decided by people outside of Iraq.”
The too-muchness was overwhelming–too many smiles and hugs, too much arm-waving, too much cheering–above all, too much calculated color in a sequence out of a 1930s’ movie in the early days of Technicolor.
For Gail Collins, it evoked her generation’s “Field of Dreams”: “The symbolism was obviously supposed to stretch way, way beyond mere unity. Think the signing of the Magna Carta. Or that baseball movie with Kevin Costner. If you concede it, they will come.”
After a year and a half of sturm und drang, Democrats can be forgiven for crass celebration, but the aftertaste is that of an over-planned children’s party with nervous parents providing too much sweets, too many balloons, too many games.
After an overdose of clichés and platitudes, now comes the grownup part–inducing Hillary diehards to sign on and really mean it, coming to terms with the political Obama who is emerging from behind the Great Oz screen.
For a reality check on the former, try clicking on the justsaynodeal and hillaryis44 web sites. No smiles, balloons or cheering there.
More critical is how fast and how far will Obama enthusiasts go in accepting the fact that he is no longer a visionary figure but a practical politician who will disappoint some of them by negotiating his way through campaign finance, FISA, gun control and other minefields on the path to the presidency.
It was a great children’s party, but from now to November, it’s going to be grownup time.
As a follow-up to some deeply cynical speculation about the 94 Dems who 180′d on FISA, I’d like to add that some Democrats in Congress can apparently still find their spines. That’s cheering, right?
Senator Harry Reid is supportive of efforts to strip the retro-active immunity from the new FISA bill. This won’t keep it from shredding the fourth amendment, but it’s a step in the right direction. Senators Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd have promised to do all they can to block it, including a filibuster. They released a statement explaining their opposition to the current bill. Via HuffPost:
This is a deeply flawed bill, which does nothing more than offer retroactive immunity by another name. We strongly urge our colleagues to reject this so-called ‘compromise’ legislation and oppose any efforts to consider this bill in its current form. We will oppose efforts to end debate on this bill as long as it provides retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that may have participated in the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and as long as it fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
The good news is that roadside bomb fatalities last month were down by almost 90 percent from the last year, largely as a result of almost 7,000 heavily armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles being rushed to Iraq since then.
The sad news is that four months ago members of Congress were seeking whistle-blower protection for a Pentagon analyst who claimed that hundreds of lives could have been saved if military paper pushers hadn’t obstructed delivery of those vehicles three years earlier.
In February, a former Marine official named Franz J. Gayl went public with a report accusing the Corps of “gross mismanagement” in delaying deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years because MRAPs, which cost $1 million each, were a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years away from being fielded.
Hundreds of lives were lost, Gayl asserted, as requests of field commanders were buried in bureaucratic paperwork until Defense Secretary Robert Gates made them the No. 1 priority in 2007 after he replaced Donald Rumsfeld.
Gayl’s revelations were greeted with Marine Corps denials. quibbles and promises of investigation.
