Please go to http://my.barackobama.com/page/votercontact/overview and help get the vote out for the GA Democratic candidate for Senator. Make at least 15 calls to rid the senate of a member who, during his last race, accused his opponent of being unamerican and perhaps a traitor to this country. This is a man with triple amputees suffered during the Vietnam war.
Make 15 calls at least and lets get more support for the Obama program in the Senate. Thanks.
Watching John McCain attack our veterans has become the norm these past few years, with his status as a symbol for the American veteran merely a weird plot twist in his history; We have watched him stand on the Senate floor for five-and-a-half hours, leading the fight against the dwell time amendment that would give our troops more time between tours. We have seen him speak out against the 21st Century GI Bill that would expand education benefits for our troops for the first time since the Senator himself used them to pay for college. Like a bizarro-world version of Mark Foley ruthlessly fighting pedophiles while being one himself, so goes McCain's inexplicable record on veterans issues. But finally, he's put his mouth where his money is. McCain and Palin, who both have children in the Armed Forces, have declared Ohio troops and hospitalized vets unqualified voters. I get emails from McCain's Ohio arm to try to keep an eye on what they're doing there, since the state will probably decide the election, but happens to have a Republican party establishment that would purge every voter without a butler from the rolls if it had the chance. This is what they sent out after the debate last night under Palin's name: The Obama-Biden Democrats and their allies are exploiting loopholes in Ohio election laws that we fear may result in unqualified voters casting ballots. The "loophole in Ohio election laws" that Palin is talking about is not a loophole at all, just a very sensible premise that is standard for absentee ballots -- that a vote is not technically cast until it is tabulated. Republican groups cited a rule that requires 30 days between registration and voting and sought to disqualify absentee ballots that were filled out on the same day as registration. Same-day registration and filling out of absentee ballots is the best option available to unregistered troops abroad and hospitalized vets in VA facilities. The "Obama-Biden Democrats and their allies" are non-partisan veterans advocacy groups like Veterans For America and IAVA that fought tooth and nail to defeat a lawsuit that challenged this very sensible notion to protect thousands of troops and vets from disenfranchisement. With deployed troops donating 6:1 in favor of Obama, the cynic in me can see why the GOP doesn't want their votes to count. Then the decent person in me chimes in and says, "I can't see how anyone could try to block a deployed soldier's right to vote and be able to live with themselves." Despite Gov. Palin's strange relationship with colloquialism ("Hockey Moms across America," anyone? How many are there?), the use of the term "unqualified voters" in a country that generally lets citizens over the age of 18 vote is the kind of phrase that should've been phased out long before the word "email" was phased in. With regards to the only American citizens who don't get to vote, felons, that's left up to the states. In Ohio, felons are only disqualified from voting while incarcerated, and I'm pretty sure she isn't talking about prison visitors stuffing stacks of voter registration forms and absentee ballots into God-knows-where in the name of democracy, though that would be quite the heist. That leaves the troops and hospitalized veterans, the target of this power-grab. Nope, don't want those dangerously unqualified voters pulling the levers at all...
What follows is of key interest and of serious importance. If you find this article of interest, I suggest a short book entitled, the Limits of Power, by Andrew Bacevich, a conservative historian of Boston University.
WE HAVE THE MONEY
IF ONLY WE DIDN'T WASTE IT ON THE DEFENSE BUDGET
By Chalmers Johnson
There has been much moaning, air-sucking, and outrage about the $700 billion that the U.S. government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.
On Wednesday, September 24th, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)
The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down-payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9% pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or the secretary of defense. It also fully funds the Pentagon's request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, a hare-brained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392-39 and will fly through the Senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.
This is pure waste. Our annual spending on "national security" -- meaning the defense budget plus all military expenditures hidden in the budgets for the departments of Energy, State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the CIA, and numerous other places in the executive branch -- already exceeds a trillion dollars, an amount larger than that of all other national defense budgets combined. Not only was there no significant media coverage of this latest appropriation, there have been no signs of even the slightest urge to inquire into the relationship between our bloated military, our staggering weapons expenditures, our extravagantly expensive failed wars abroad, and the financial catastrophe on Wall Street.
The only Congressional "commentary" on the size of our military outlay was the usual pompous drivel about how a failure to vote for the defense authorization bill would betray our troops. The aged Senator John Warner (R-Va), former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, implored his Republican colleagues to vote for the bill "out of respect for military personnel." He seems to be unaware that these troops are actually volunteers, not draftees, and that they joined the armed forces as a matter of career choice, rather than because the nation demanded such a sacrifice from them.
We would better respect our armed forces by bringing the futile and misbegotten wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end. A relative degree of peace and order has returned to Iraq not because of President Bush's belated reinforcement of our expeditionary army there (the so-called surge), but thanks to shifting internal dynamics within Iraq and in the Middle East region generally. Such shifts include a growing awareness among Iraq's Sunni population of the need to restore law and order, a growing confidence among Iraqi Shiites of their nearly unassailable position of political influence in the country, and a growing awareness among Sunni nations that the ill-informed war of aggression the Bush administration waged against Iraq has vastly increased the influence of Shiism and Iran in the region.
The continued presence of American troops and their heavily reinforced bases in Iraq threaten this return to relative stability. The refusal of the Shia government of Iraq to agree to an American Status of Forces Agreement -- much desired by the Bush administration -- that would exempt off-duty American troops from Iraqi law is actually a good sign for the future of Iraq.
In Afghanistan, our historically deaf generals and civilian strategists do not seem to understand that our defeat by the Afghan insurgents is inevitable. Since the time of Alexander the Great, no foreign intruder has ever prevailed over Afghan guerrillas defending their home turf. The first Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) marked a particularly humiliating defeat of British imperialism at the very height of English military power in the Victorian era. The Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) resulted in a Russian defeat so demoralizing that it contributed significantly to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991. We are now on track to repeat virtually all the errors committed by previous invaders of Afghanistan over the centuries.
In the past year, perhaps most disastrously, we have carried our Afghan war into Pakistan, a relatively wealthy and sophisticated nuclear power that has long cooperated with us militarily. Our recent bungling brutality along the Afghan-Pakistan border threatens to radicalize the Pashtuns in both countries and advance the interests of radical Islam throughout the region. The United States is now identified in each country mainly with Hellfire missiles, unmanned drones, special operations raids, and repeated incidents of the killing of innocent bystanders.
The brutal bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, on September 20, 2008, was a powerful indicator of the spreading strength of virulent anti-American sentiment in the area. The hotel was a well-known watering hole for American Marines, Special Forces troops, and CIA agents. Our military activities in Pakistan have been as misguided as the Nixon-Kissinger invasion of Cambodia in 1970. The end result will almost surely be the same.
We should begin our disengagement from Afghanistan at once. We dislike the Taliban's fundamentalist religious values, but the Afghan public, with its desperate desire for a return of law and order and the curbing of corruption, knows that the Taliban is the only political force in the country that has ever brought the opium trade under control. The Pakistanis and their effective army can defend their country from Taliban domination so long as we abandon the activities that are causing both Afghans and Pakistanis to see the Taliban as a lesser evil.
One of America's greatest authorities on the defense budget, Winslow Wheeler, worked for 31 years for Republican members of the Senate and for the General Accounting Office on military expenditures. His conclusion, when it comes to the fiscal sanity of our military spending, is devastating:
"America's defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period; our Navy has fewer combat ships; and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for these major forces are older on average than any point since 1946 -- or in some cases, in our entire history."
This in itself is a national disgrace. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on present and future wars that have nothing to do with our national security is simply obscene. And yet Congress has been corrupted by the military-industrial complex into believing that, by voting for more defense spending, they are supplying "jobs" for the economy. In fact, they are only diverting scarce resources from the desperately needed rebuilding of the American infrastructure and other crucial spending necessities into utterly wasteful munitions. If we cannot cut back our longstanding, ever increasing military spending in a major way, then the bankruptcy of the United States is inevitable. As the current Wall Street meltdown has demonstrated, that is no longer an abstract possibility but a growing likelihood. We do not have much time left.
It is written by Tim Wise, whom you can easily google. Mr. Wise is a white man from a border state, Tennessee, who has dedicated great effort over many years to sensitizing his fellow American whites concerning the nature of White Privilege. Here, Mr. Wise casts his analysis in a way relevant to Sarah Palin and her current candidacy for Vice President.
BY TIM WISE:
This is Your Nation on White Privilege Sep 13, 2008 By Tim Wise Tim Wise's ZSpace Page / Zspace.
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office -- since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s -- while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do -- like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor -- and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in
college -- you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
In today’s Times Union you report on a CBS-CNN poll that reports that most people are not voting primarily on race. The article offers analysis that for whites the issue is experience and not race. This might be so but I would like to offer a challenge question. Arguably the most experienced person for the White House over the next four years is Vice President Chaney, but no one is pushing his name forward. Most Americans have little faith in neither his judgment nor his honesty.
If current candidate comparisons revolved around judgment, years in the Senate would become unimportant and how they react to difficult situations and apply their ideological bias would become paramount. During the current financial crisis, Obama certainly appears to have the better judgment and clarity of his positions.
But is race really unimportant? The poll numbers suggest not: 92% of blacks for Obama, 57% of Hispanics for Obama, and 56 % of whites for McCain. The verbal responses seem to have the Bradley effect buried in them.
The policies that brought this on are the ones McCain wants to continue and fits into his ideology.
The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.
The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney.
These are Bush type appointees and we can assume they would stay in place with McCain.
Good morning all. The Democrats are focusing too much on Palin (Not Obama and Biden) but many of the rest of us. Let’s remember that Obama can win only with a majority of the electorial college. Arguably, that means a narrative that resonates (and is real and not rhetoric) around the issues of key concern to American workers, whatever gender and class. From other blogs I have tried to show a side by side comparison of McCain and Obama. McCain for the wealthy and Obama for the rest of us. A further step is that we must influence and win in states that will provide a majority of electors.
Case in point for the above:
It is possible to come up with a scenario in which Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama can win the White House if he fails to carry Michigan. But it would surely be a tough assignment.
If he were to carry all of the states that Kerry won in 2004, but were to lose Michigan, then Obama would have to add to his column five closely watched states that President Bush won in 2004: Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, and Virginia.
Veteran Michigan political analyst Bill Ballenger, editor of the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter, said that Palin “is still a work in progress,” but said it was noteworthy that “they took her into Sterling Heights the first day.”
As Democrats we cannot cede areas like these to the Republicans. So, we must suspend judgment and listen to them and fit their concerns into the narrative that will provide better answers to issues of concern. That does not mean cultural pandering – that DOES NOT WORK. Rather it means staying with the bread and butter issues that will get us out of the mess that the Republicans have put us in. Learn McCain’s positions and those of Obama and start the education process.
