Edie's Blog

YES WE DID!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:03:36 EST

I'm so incredibly proud of all of you on this website for helping the Obama campaign! YES WE DID!

Several have wondered why I haven't posted in a while...Well, in October I was fortunate enough to be offered a position as a deputy field organizer for the campaign in WA, for the final push of the campaign. I was incredibly busy, 24/7, with no time to tend to my blog here or to respond to group emails. Talk about exhaustion! But it was all SO worth it! Obama is now our President-Elect!

Thank you to everyone on this site for contributing to the success of the campaign!

YES WE DID!

Edie

Grab a Piece by Daniel Chun, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:27:08 EDT

Chun tells Obama supporters to volunteer...phone bank, canvass, raise funds or help to GOTV...it will make you feel even better if Obama wins!

Grab a Piece by Daniel Chun

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-chun/grab-a-piece_b_137155.html

Colin Powell Endorses Obama by Seth Colter Walls & Nico Pitney, Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:50:13 EDT

Excerpts from Colin Powell's statement on NBC's Meet the Press:

"I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities -- and you have to take that into account -- as well as his substance -- he has both style and substance," Powell said. "He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."

Powell also spoke passionately against the insinuations by some Republicans that Obama is a Muslim.

"Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian," he said. "But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Read the full article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-endorses-oba_n_135895.html

NYT Editorial Board Endorses Barack Obama for President, NYT-Editorial

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:39:53 EDT

The New York Times

Editorial: Barack Obama for President

Excerpt:

Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”

This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.

The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads. This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Read the full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The Moment by John Cory, TruthOut Perspective

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:34:58 EDT

Full Article:

The Moment

Monday 13 October 2008

http://www.truthout.org/101308J

by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Arizona Senator John McCain. (Photo: Gunby / AP)

    Senator McCain. Was this the moment? The epiphany? The realization that stoking the flames of bigotry and fear had come home to roost?

    As I watched your town hall gathering, I wondered what was going through your mind when you came face to face with the incendiary results of your campaign tactics. What did you see and feel when that elderly woman said Obama was an Arab? Or the man who said he feared an Obama presidency? And all the others?

    I saw your face. I watched your body language as you took the microphone and quickly distanced yourself from that one.

    At that moment, did you see your reflection in the mirror of her eyes? A reflection, not of a maverick, but a pariah? Did you see the decades of American scar tissue? Birmingham? Burning crosses? The noose? Did you see that awful year in American history when Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, cut down in the prime of their dreams for a better America?
    Did you hear the echo of Dr. King's words about being 'judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character,' and suddenly realize that it was not your opponent's character in question - but yours? Perhaps you heard the whisper of Langston Hughes when he asked, 'What happens to a dream deferred ...? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?'

    Did you suddenly smell the rot and fetid acrid aroma of fear and hate, the carcass of mendacious political tactics decaying at your feet? Or did you sniff the flop-sweat of your own campaign standing in a puddle of decimating poll numbers?

    I watched your mouth dry up and wondered if you could taste the bitter words like 'Arab,' 'terrorist,' 'treason,' 'kill him,' - all served up on the plate of red meat politics by your campaign. Did it make you choke and want to spit out the rancid flavor of ignorance and violence? Or did you want to savor the success of the politics of personal destruction?

    Did you feel the cold chill of defeat? Did your heart pound with the all-encompassing realization that you would never be president? Could you sense that the America you appeal to is stale and dying out and being replaced by the freshness of hope and tolerance and a rainbow of change?
    No doubt, the media will genuflect before your image and be pushed by your campaign spinners to reanoint you as a maverick and honorable man in rising to the defense of your opponent. But your ads still sully the airwaves. Your surrogates still spew their venom. After all, this is just politics. People need to understand that. Nothing personal - it is just politics.

    But here was this moment. And you know it, regardless of whether or not you were reading from cue cards or just looking down to avoid having to face the ugliness before you - you know.

    And when the crowd booed as you struggled to use words about decency and honorable character to defuse the situation you created, you must have recalled the words from Proverbs, 'He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind ...'

    This is not a moment for you to be proud of in this campaign. Garnering credit for coming to the defense of Senator Obama is like an arsonist claiming heroism for saving lives after having set fire to the building in the first place.

    It does not matter how the media or your advisers and consultants spin this moment because it can only reflect badly on you. If it is tossed off as politics as usual, your campaign appears shallow and less interested in what's best for America than what is best for John McCain. If it is said that there is no room for this kind of rhetoric in a presidential campaign, then you look weak and unable to control your own staff that continue to push these messages. If it is about leadership and going against the flow, then we see that a McCain presidency will be divisive and reinforce the meme of 'two Americas.' We have already had eight years of a divided country from the man who ran as a 'Uniter not a divider.'

    This was a defining moment.

    And you, sir, lost.

John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.

http://www.truthout.org/101308J

Issue of Race Creeps Into Campaign by Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:13:43 EDT

Issue of Race Creeps Into Campaign

By Anne E. Kornblut

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 12, 2008; A01

Excerpt:

In the first presidential campaign involving an African American nominee of a major party, both candidates have agreed on this much: They would rather not dwell on the subject of race.

But their allies have other ideas.

Read the full article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/11/AR2008101102216.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Do Polls Lie About Race? By Kate Zernike, NYT Op-Ed

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:00:26 EDT

Full Article:

The New York Times

October 12, 2008Funny NumbersDo Polls Lie About Race? By KATE ZERNIKE

THREE weeks to Election Day and polls project a victory, possibly a big one, for Barack Obama.

Yet everywhere, anxious Democrats wring their hands. They’ve seen this Lucy-and-the-football routine before, and they’re just waiting for their ball to be snatched away, the foiled Charlie Browns again. Remember how the exit polls in 2004 predicted President Kerry?

The anxiety is more acute this year, because Senator Obama is the first African-American major-party presidential nominee. And even pollsters say they can’t be sure how accurately polls capture people’s feelings about race, or how forthcoming Americans are in talking about a black candidate.

In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome. He is, of course, about six points ahead in current polls. See? He’s going to lose.

If he does, it wouldn’t be the first time that polls have overstated support for an African-American candidate. Since 1982, people have talked about the Bradley effect, where even last-minute polls predict a wide margin of victory, yet the black candidate goes on to lose, or win in a squeaker. (In the case that lent the phenomenon its name, Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, lost his race for governor, the assumption being that voters lied to pollsters about their support for an African-American.)

But pollsters and political scientists say concern about a Bradley effect — some call it a Wilder effect or a Dinkins effect, and plenty call it a theory in search of data — is misplaced. It obscures what they argue is the more important point: there are plenty of ways that race complicates polling. Considered alone or in combination, these factors could produce an unforeseen Obama landslide with surprise victories in the South, a stunningly large Obama loss, or a recount-thin margin. In a year that has already turned expectations upside down, it is hard to completely reassure the fretters.

Among the non-Bradley factors at the intersection of race and polling is something called the reverse Bradley (perhaps more prevalent than the Bradley), in which polls understate support for a black candidate, particularly in regions where it is socially acceptable to express distrust of blacks. Then there are the voters not captured by polls. Research shows that those who refuse to participate in surveys tend to be less likely to vote for a black candidate. The race of the questioner, too, affects a poll — but no one is sure whether people give more or less accurate answers when they’re interviewed by someone of their own race.

“How much we are under-representing people who are intolerant and therefore unlikely to vote for Obama is an open question,” said Andrew Kohut, the president of Pew Research Center. “I suspect not a great deal, but maybe some. And ‘maybe some’ could be crucial in a tight election.”

In 1982, exit polls had Mayor Bradley so likely to win that newspaper headlines called him the victor. Yet he lost, narrowly. There emerged what seemed like a pattern: a number of polls found more support than there actually was for Harold Washington in the 1983 Chicago mayoral race; for David N. Dinkins in the 1989 New York mayoral race; and for L. Douglas Wilder in the 1989 Virginia governor’s race.

Were people so afraid to appear bigoted that they lied to pollsters, thinking it more socially acceptable to support a black candidate? Pollsters and political scientists have long questioned that assumption because they do not believe people have an incentive to deceive unless they are explicitly asked, “Do you support the white guy or the black guy?”

“We have no evidence that people lie to us,” said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research, which conducts the exit polls the television networks use. He and others say that discrepancy in the polls has more to do with which people decline to participate, or say they are undecided.

Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at M.I.T. who has written about the “I don’t know” voters, points out that while polls overpredicted Mr. Dinkins’s support in 1989, they got it right in 1993, when he was running against the same opponent, Rudolph Giuliani. In 1989, Mr. Berinsky argues, people who feared being thought racist said “I don’t know.” By 1993, they could find things in Mr. Dinkins’s mayoral record to object to and so felt more free to express their opposition without fear of seeming racist.

Mr. Kohut conducted a study in 1997 looking at differences between people who readily agreed to be polled and those who agreed only after one or more callbacks. Reluctant participants were significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward blacks — 15 percent said they had a “very favorable” attitude toward them, as opposed to 24 percent of the ready respondents. “The kinds of people suspicious of surveys are also more intolerant,” Mr. Kohut said.

Scott Keeter, Pew’s director of survey research, said pollsters had a harder time reaching voters with lower levels of education. Less-educated whites are the kind Mr. Obama has had trouble winning over. Conversely, young people are more likely to answer surveys, and they tend to favor Mr. Obama.

There may be several factors at work: Michael Traugott, a University of Michigan professor who studies polling, argues that the Bradley effect was misnamed from the start; the problem with the polls in the 1982 race was not that they failed to capture latent racism but that they failed to account for the absentee ballots, which ultimately handed the election to the white Republican, George Deukmejian.

Whatever its causes, the Bradley gap seems to be disappearing.

In a new study, Daniel J. Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, considered 133 elections between 1989 and 2006 and found that blacks running for office before 1996 suffered a median Bradley effect of 3 percentage points. Blacks running after 1996, however, performed about 3 percentage points better than their polls predicted. Mr. Hopkins argues that the changes in the welfare laws in 1996 and the decline of violent crime took off the table issues that had aggravated racial animosity.

The Bradley effect in the 2006 vote was largely absent (and in some stances a reverse effect was seen by some pollsters). In Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., a black congressman, lost by six points. His pollster, Pete Brodnitz, said the campaign had been watching for a Bradley effect and screened carefully to make sure its own polls looked only at the people most likely to vote. Internal polls were largely correct, but some public polls, relying on a more general population, were wildly off. Mr. Brodnitz blamed bad polling, not lying.

In this year’s Democratic primaries, University of Washington researchers found a Bradley effect in three states, but a reverse Bradley effect in 12 (in the other 17, polls were within a seven-point margin of error).

The results tended to correlate with the black population in a state: blacks made up 15 percent or more of the population in almost all the states where the polls showed less support for Mr. Obama than there actually was; in the three states where polls showed more support than there was, less than 10 percent of the population is black.

The differences are too great to be explained by just high black turnout, said Anthony Greenwald, one of the researchers. Nor were people necessarily lying. Instead, he sees a cultural dynamic at work: the states where polls underpredicted support for Mr. Obama were generally in the Southeast, where the culture has more stubbornly favored whites, so the “right” answer there was to choose the white candidate. In the three states where polls in the study overpredicted support for Mr. Obama — Rhode Island, California and New Hampshire — “the desirable thing is to appear unbiased and unprejudiced,” Mr. Greenwald said. (Many polling experts also believe that Mr. Obama was benefiting from an Iowa bounce in the late New Hampshire polls, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had been ahead for months, and that therefore Mr. Obama’s loss there was not a true Bradley effect.)

The Bradley effect, Mr. Greenwald concluded, “has conceptually mutated.” “It’s not something that’s an absolute that we should generally expect, but something that will vary with the cultural context and the desirability of expressing pro-black attitudes.”

A further complication is the race of the person who asks the questions. Talking to a white interviewer, blacks or whites are more likely to say that they are supporting the white candidate; talking to a black interviewer, people are more likely to support the black candidate. This holds true whether the surveys are in person, or on the phone.

It could be that people worry about offending the interviewer by suggesting, “I wouldn’t vote for someone like you.” Or, researchers suggest, talking to a black polltaker who sounds energetic or professional might prime positive images of blacks, overwhelming any negative stereotypes.

The trouble is, “We don’t know that doing white-on-white interviews and black-on-black interviews would be more accurate,” said Jon Krosnick, a professor of psychology and political science at Stanford. “It is possible that right now the social norms within the African-American community are such that if you’re going to vote for McCain, it’s too embarrassing to admit, and if you’re not going to vote at all, it’s almost as embarrassing.”

The question of how race affects polling is of course different from the question of how it affects the vote. Many experts argue that race does not play a huge role in either this year, because the economy has emerged as such a dominant issue, and Mr. Obama is not primarily identified by his race.

But most of what they know, they know from polls. And even in the least complicated years, polling is a recipe with a good dash of “Who knows?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/weekinreview/12zernike.html

Congressman Says McCain 'Sowing Seeds of Hatred' by The Associated Press, NYT

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:40:50 EDT

Full Article:

The New York Times

Congressman Says McCain 'Sowing Seeds of Hatred'

Saturday 11 October 2008

by: The Associated Press

Congressman John Lewis has said that the negative rhetoric of the McCain-Palin campaign reminds him of the violent hatred during the 1960's. (Photo: Getty Images)

Washington - Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.

Republican candidate John McCain on Saturday called Lewis' remarks "shocking and beyond the pale."

The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator doesn't believe McCain or his policy criticism is at all comparable to Wallace and his segregationist policies.

In a statement issued Saturday, Lewis said McCain and running mate Sarah Palin were "sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse." He noted that Wallace also ran for president.

"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights," said Lewis, who is black. "Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

One of the seminal events of the civil rights movement was the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963. Four black girls died in the blast, which was linked to a Ku Klux Klan group.

Late Saturday, Lewis released another statement saying it was not his "intention or desire" to directly compare McCain or Palin to Wallace.

"My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior," he said. "I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation."

Lewis' comments follow widely reported examples of anger at McCain rallies that has been aimed at Obama, the first black man to be a major party's nominee for president. During some rallies featuring McCain and Palin, supporters have shouted "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar" and even "off with his head."

The outbursts came amid a harshly personal line of attack against Obama by the GOP campaign. McCain and Palin have said Obama failed to tell the truth about his ties to 1960s radical William Ayers, had a radical agenda on abortion, and wasn't really known to voters. Last weekend, Palin signaled the uptick in the criticism when she charged that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," a reference to Ayers, and that he didn't see the U.S. as others did.

McCain drew boos at a town-hall meeting Friday in Minnesota when he defended Obama after a supporter said he feared what would happen if Obama were elected president. He also cut short a woman who said Obama was an Arab, and he called his rival "a decent, family man."

On Saturday, McCain called on Obama to repudiate Lewis' remarks. While dismissing the comparison to Wallace, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Lewis was on target in other ways.

"John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists,"' Burton said in a statement.

In his remarks, Lewis also said: "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

McCain rejected any comparison to Wallace.

"I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track," McCain said.

In August, while appearing at a forum on faith, McCain was asked to name three "wise people" he would listen to. He cited Lewis as well as Gen. David Petreaus, head of U.S. troops in Iraq, and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a top adviser to his campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-McCain-Lewis.html

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire by Khaled Hosseini, The Washington Post Op

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:08:15 EDT

Full Article:

The Washington Post

Opinion

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire

By Khaled Hosseini
Sunday, October 12, 2008; B05

I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.

Never mind that this evokes -- and brazenly tries to resurrect -- the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama's middle name makes him someone to distrust -- and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?

But never mind any of that.

The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama's middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened. The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to "be respectful." Back in February, the Arizona senator apologized for the "disparaging remarks" from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about "Barack Hussein Obama" before a McCain rally. "We will have a respectful debate," McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.

What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words. They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.

Is inaction tantamount to consent? The McCain campaign certainly thinks so when it comes to Obama and incendiary remarks from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. By their own inaction, then, are McCain and Palin condoning these slurs? Or worse, are they willfully inciting the angry and venomous response that we have been witnessing at their rallies? If not, then what reaction are they hoping to evoke by their relentless public suggestions that Obama is basically an anti-American liar who won't put "country first" and has an affection for terrorists? Do they not understand the kind of fire they are playing with?

I -- and, I suspect, millions of Americans like me, Republicans and Democrats alike -- couldn't care less about Obama's middle name or the ridiculous six-degrees-of-separation game that is the William Ayers non-issue. The Taliban are clawing their way back in Afghanistan, the country that I hope many of my fellow Americans have come to understand better through my novels. People are losing their homes and their jobs and are watching the future slip away from them. But instead of addressing these problems, the McCain-Palin ticket is doing its best to distract Americans by provoking fear, anxiety and hatred. Country first? Hardly.

Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002456.html

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel, TruthOut.org

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:01:03 EDT

Full Article;

Opinion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

Thursday 09 October 2008

by: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Huffington Post

In 2004, America's malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry's genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush's shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season's Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as "detestable." Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees "America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama's relations with Ayers and CNN's Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama's patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man - her husband, actually - who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base - an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."

AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

So when Palin accuses Barack of "not seeing the same America as you and me," maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn't it time the media start giving equal time to Palin's buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates?

http://www.truthout.org/101208Z

Source article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/alaskan-independence-part_b_133261.html

VIDEO: Republicans and military men on John McCain

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:37:19 EDT

Watch this video and Pass It On! Then, work like crazy to elect Senator Barack Obama and Senator Joe Biden on November 4th!

Description: A Film by Aaron Hodgins Davis

"Some opinions of McCain from his own party and military "commrades"

The soundtrack is "lux aeterna" composed by Clint Mansell. It was originally composed for "Requiem for a Dream" but this version was remixed for the Lord of the Rings theatrical trailer."

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w

Flirting Her Way to Victory, by Michelle Goldberg, The Guardian

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:01:02 EDT

the guardian

Cif America

Flirting her way to victorySarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse

By Michelle Goldberg

- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday October 03 2008 18.30 BST

Sarah Palin winks during the vice-presidential debate on Thursday in St Louis, Missouri. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. 'I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also,' she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of 'average Americans' who they both venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her 'connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?'

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described 'fuckin' redneck'. Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/sarah.palin.debate.feminism

Meet Sarah Palin's Radical Right-Wing Pals by By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert, Salon.com

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:54:18 EDT

Meet Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing pals

Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin’s political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. “Her door was open,” says Chryson — and still is.

Editor’s note: Research support provided by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. For Salon’s complete coverage of Sarah Palin, click here.

By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert

Read the Full Article Here:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson

Cindy McCain Blames Vets for their PTSD! by DM, VetVoice.com

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:46:34 EDT

You Have PTSD Because You Are Immature and Poorly Trained by: dmThu Oct 09, 2008 at 17:45:25 PM EDT
At least, that's what Cindy McCain seems to think:

MC: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you - or is it a part of history?
CM: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that's in the past. Certainly it's a part of who he is, but he doesn't dwell on it. It's not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.
MC: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?
CM: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he'd be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.

I did not serve in combat, so I wouldn't presume to know why a certain person returns with problems or whether such problems can be predicted. I'm pretty sure, however, that Cindy McCain doesn't know either and shouldn't pretend to.

Note to Mrs. McCain: Associating yourself with military servicemembers for political gain does not make you an expert on these sorts of topics.

H/T to ThinkProgress.

dm :: You Have PTSD Because You Are Immature and Poorly Trained

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2019

Analysis: Palin's words may backfire on McCain by Douglass K. Daniel, AP

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:34:16 EDT

Full Article:

Analysis: Palin's words may backfire on McCain

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer 33 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

First, Palin's attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.

"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

Obama isn't above attacking McCain's character with loaded words, releasing an ad on Sunday that calls the Arizona Republican "erratic" — a hard-to miss suggestion that McCain's age, 71, might be an issue.

"Our financial system in turmoil," an announcer says in Obama's new ad. "And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy."

A harsh and plainly partisan judgment, certainly, but not on the level of suggesting that a fellow senator is un-American and even a friend of terrorists.

In her character attack, Palin questions Obama's association with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.

Obama, who was a child when the Weathermen were planting bombs, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions.

With her criticism, Palin is taking on the running mate's traditional role of attacker, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist.

"There appears to be a newfound sense of confidence in Sarah Palin as a candidate, given her performance the other night," Galen said. "I think that they are comfortable enough with her now that she's got the standing with the electorate to take off after Obama."

Second, Palin's incendiary charge draws media and voter attention away from the worsening economy. It also comes after McCain supported a pork-laden Wall Street bailout plan in spite of conservative anger and his own misgivings.

"It's a giant changing of the subject," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist. "The problem is the messenger. If you want to start throwing fire bombs, you don't send out the fluffy bunny to do it. I think people don't take Sarah Palin seriously."

The larger purpose behind Palin's broadside is to reintroduce the question of Obama's associations. Millions of voters, many of them open to being swayed to one side or the other, are starting to pay attention to an election a month away.

For the McCain campaign, that makes Obama's ties to Ayers as well as convicted felon Antoin "Tony" Rezko and the controversial minister Jeremiah Wright ripe for renewed criticism. And Palin brings a fresh voice to the argument.

Effective character attacks have come earlier in campaigns. In June 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush criticized Democrat Michael Dukakis over the furlough granted to Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who then raped a woman and stabbed her companion. Related TV ads followed in September and October.

The Vietnam-era Swift Boat veterans who attacked Democrat John Kerry's war record started in the spring of 2004 and gained traction in late summer.

"The four weeks that are left are an eternity. There's plenty of time in the campaign," said Republican strategist Joe Gaylord. "I think it is a legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with."

Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee "palling around" with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

The fact is that when racism creeps into the discussion serves a purpose for McCain. As the fallout from Wright's sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America's promise to treat all people equally.

John McCain occasionally says he looks back on decisions with regret. He has apologized for opposing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. He has apologized for refusing to call for the removal of a Confederate flag from South Carolina's Capitol.

When the 2008 campaign is over will McCain say he regrets appeals such as Palin's?

EDITOR'S NOTE — Douglass K. Daniel is a writer and editor with the Washington bureau of The Associated Press.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081005/ap_on_el_pr/palin_s_words_analysis

Biden Teaches Palin the Meaning of 'Maverick' by John Nichols, The Nation

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:19:15 EDT

Biden Teaches Palin the Meaning of 'Maverick' posted by John Nichols on 10/03/2008 @ 12:38am

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/367825/biden_teaches_palin_the_meaning_of_maverick

ST. LOUIS -- On the night after the U.S. Senate endorsed a $700 billion plan to bail out collapsing banks, and on the day before the U.S. House will be asked to do the same, the economy was going to be the central issue of the first and only vice presidential debate.

Neither Sarah Palin nor Joe Biden wanted to be on the wrong side of the divide between what a previous vice presidential contender famously -- and accurately -- described as "two Americas."
So it was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the sitting governor of the nation's physically-largest state spent the evening talking about buying gas "with a guy named Joe" and rallying "Joe Six Packs (and) hockey moms across the nation."

Biden and Palin both buffed their blue-collar credentials. They told stories of personal woe. Biden referenced tough times on streets of Scranton and Wilmington. Palin recalled going without health-care coverage. Biden's voice caught as he spoke of caring as a single parent for an injured child.
For the most part, however, the candidates eschewed personality profiling in favor of full-throated denunciations of all things Wall Street.

"If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now," griped Biden.

"Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that," grumbled Palin.
If they walked the same stylistic line when it came to trying to out-populist one another, however, the candidates divided on the issues.

And that is how Biden prevailed.

Let's be clear that Palin did not crash and burn as her most ardent detractors anticipated – or, at the least, hoped – she would. Yes, the governor rambled at times, and she had no comebacks at those moments when Biden directly challenged the validity of her over-the-top claims about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's Senate voting record. But Palin gave Republican spin doctors enough material – mainly in the form of folksy one-liners -- so that they could cheer her "success" without sounding entirely ridiculous.

The anticipated gravitas gap was on display, especially when the senior senator's encyclopedic knowledge of foreign and domestic policy – and of Republican presidential nominee John McCain's voting record – was contrasted with Palin's encyclopedic knowledge of tax codes in Wasilla, her desperate clinging to the word "maverick" and her line-of-the-night observation that unleashing "nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people and too many parts of our planet."

But Palin was not the moose-in-the-headlights that America saw talking with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. She was generally on message, and the message was "us-against-them" populism.
Asked by moderator Gwen Ifill about the condition of the economy, Palin responded, "You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?' And I'll bet you, you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market. Did we just take a major hit with those investments?"

That was suitably "of the people" – especially coming from a rather wealthy suburban Republican.
Unfortunately for Palin, Biden recognized an opening, and he took it.

"(It) was two Mondays ago (that) John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said… we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies," the senator began. "Nine o'clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago."

Again and again, when Palin went populist, Biden went after McCain.

Take the point at which Palin was ready to lead the rabble to the barricades.

"(Let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again," she announced. "Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars. We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our saving…"

Biden did not ridicule his opponent's pretense.

Rather, he suggested that, while Palin could talk all she liked about rallying the masses against Wall Street, she would have a hard time getting John McCain on board for the revolution.

"Two years ago, Barack Obama warned about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. John McCain said shortly after that in December he was surprised there was a sub-prime mortgage problem. John McCain, while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do, was literally giving an interview to The Wall Street Journal saying that ‘I'm always for cutting regulations.' We let Wall Street run wild. John McCain and he's a good man, but John McCain thought the answer is that tried and true Republican response: deregulate, deregulate," Biden told Palin, and America.

"So what you had is… overwhelming deregulation. You had actually the belief that Wall Street could self-regulate itself. And while Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation. As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry."

That was an ouch moment.

And it got more painful for Palin when, toward the end of the debate, Biden took the word the Republican clung to so fervently Thursday night – "maverick" – away from her, and from John McCain.

"Let's talk about the maverick John McCain is. And, again, I love him. He's been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people's lives," Biden carefully explained. "He voted four out of five times for George Bush's budget, which put us a half a trillion dollars in debt this year and over $3 trillion in debt since he's got there. He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against -- he voted including another 3.6 million children in coverage of the existing health care plan, when he voted in the United States Senate. He's not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college. He's not been a maverick on the war. He's not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table. Can we send -- can we get Mom's MRI? Can we send Mary back to school next semester? We can't -- we can't make it. How are we going to heat the … house this winter? He voted against even providing for what they call LIHEAP, for assistance to people, with oil prices going through the roof in the winter. So maverick he is not on the important, critical issues that affect people at that kitchen table."

A Republican named Sarah Palin tried to convince Americans that she was running on a populist ticket.

But Joe Biden reminded the voters sitting at those kitchen tables, in those small houses with big mortgages, that the man who heads that ticket, a Republican named John McCain, is not on their side.

And, in so doing, Biden did not merely score a debating point. He did what a vice presidential candidate is supposed to do. He helped the man who heads his ticket, a Democrat named Barack Obama, stake a significantly stronger claim on the presidency.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/367825/biden_teaches_palin_the_meaning_of_maverick

Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain by Frank Rich, NYT Op-Ed

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:13:36 EDT

Full Article:

The New York TimesOctober 5, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistPitbull Palin Mauls McCain By FRANK RICHSARAH PALIN’S post-Couric/Fey comeback at last week’s vice presidential debate was a turning point in the campaign. But if she “won,” as her indulgent partisans and press claque would have it, the loser was not Joe Biden. It was her running mate. With a month to go, the 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race — about “the future,” as Palin kept saying Thursday night — and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

To understand the meaning of Palin’s “victory,” it must be seen in the context of two ominous developments that directly preceded it. Just hours before the debate began, the McCain campaign pulled out of Michigan. That state is ground zero for the collapsed Main Street economy and for so-called Reagan Democrats, those white working-class voters who keep being told by the right that Barack Obama is a Muslim who hung with bomb-throwing radicals during his childhood in the late 1960s.

McCain surrendered Michigan despite having outspent his opponent on television advertising and despite Obama’s twin local handicaps, an unpopular Democratic governor and a felonious, now former, black Democratic Detroit mayor. If McCain can’t make it there, can he make it anywhere in the Rust Belt?

Not without an economic message. McCain’s most persistent attempt, his self-righteous crusade against earmarks, collapsed with his poll numbers. Next to a $700 billion bailout package, his incessant promise to eliminate all Washington pork — by comparison, a puny grand total of $16.5 billion in the 2008 federal budget — doesn’t bring home the bacon. Nor can McCain reconcile his I-will-veto-government-waste mantra with his support, however tardy, of the bailout bill. That bill’s $150 billion in fresh pork includes a boondoggle inserted by the Congressman Don Young, an Alaskan Republican no less.

The second bit of predebate news, percolating under the radar, involved the still-unanswered questions about McCain’s health. Back in May, you will recall, the McCain campaign allowed a select group of 20 reporters to spend a mere three hours examining (but not photocopying) 1,173 pages of the candidate’s health records on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Conspicuously uninvited was Lawrence Altman, a doctor who covers medicine for The New York Times. Altman instead canvassed melanoma experts to evaluate the sketchy data that did emerge. They found the information too “unclear” to determine McCain’s cancer prognosis.

There was, however, at least one doctor-journalist among those 20 reporters in May, the CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta. At the time, Gupta told Katie Couric on CBS that the medical records were “pretty comprehensive” and wrote on his CNN blog that he was “pretty convinced there was no ‘smoking gun’ about the senator’s health.” (Physical health, that is; Gupta wrote there was hardly any information on McCain’s mental health.)

That was then. Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky, whether he’s repeating his “Miss Congeniality” joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time (“The fundamentals of our economy are strong”) or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain). McCain’s “dismaying temperament,” as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.
Though CNN and MSNBC wouldn’t run a political ad with doctors questioning McCain’s medical status, Gupta revisited the issue in an interview published last Tuesday by The Huffington Post.

While maintaining a pretty upbeat take on the candidate’s health, the doctor-journalist told the reporter Sam Stein that he couldn’t vouch “by any means” for the completeness of the records the campaign showed him four months ago. “The pages weren’t numbered,” Gupta said, “so I had no way of knowing what was missing.” At least in Watergate we knew that the gap on Rose Mary Woods’s tape ran 18 and a half minutes.

It’s against this backdrop that Palin’s public pronouncements, culminating with her debate performance, have been so striking. The standard take has it that she’s either speaking utter ignorant gibberish (as to Couric) or reciting highly polished, campaign-written sound bites that she’s memorized (as at the convention and the debate). But there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.

This was first apparent when Palin extolled a “small town” vice president as a hero in her convention speech — and cited not one of the many Republican vice presidents who fit that bill but, bizarrely, Harry Truman, a Democrat who succeeded a president who died in office. A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks and sounds like a winner.

You can understand why they believe that. She has more testosterone than anyone else at the top of her party. McCain and his surrogates are forever blaming their travails on others, wailing about supposed sexist and journalistic biases around the clock. McCain even canceled an interview with Larry King, for heaven’s sake, in a fit of pique at a CNN anchor, Campbell Brown.

We are not a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm would have it, but the G.O.P. is now the party of whiners. That rebranding became official when Republican House leaders moaned that a routine partisan speech by Nancy Pelosi had turned their members against the bailout bill. As the stock market fell nearly 778 points, Barney Frank taunted his G.O.P. peers with pitch-perfect mockery: “Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country!”

Talk about the world coming full circle. This is the same Democrat who had been slurred as “Barney Fag” in the mid-1990s by Dick Armey, a House leader of the government-bashing Gingrich revolution that helped lower us into this debacle. Now Frank was ridiculing the House G.O.P. as a bunch of sulking teenage girls. His wisecrack stung — and stuck.

Palin is an antidote to the whiny Republican image that Frank nailed. Alaska’s self-styled embodiment of Joe Sixpack is not a sulker, but a pistol-packing fighter. That’s why she draws the crowds and (as she puts it) “energy” that otherwise elude the angry McCain. But she is still the candidate for vice president, not president. Americans do not vote for vice president.

So how can a desperate G.O.P. save itself? As McCain continues to fade into incoherence and irrelevance, the last hope is that he’ll come up with some new game-changing stunt to match his initial pick of Palin or his ill-fated campaign “suspension.” Until Thursday night, more than a few Republicans were fantasizing that his final Hail Mary pass would be to ditch Palin so she can “spend more time” with her ever-growing family. But the debate reminded Republicans once again that it’s Palin, not McCain, who is their last hope for victory.

You have to wonder how long it will be before they plead with him to think of his health, get out of the way and pull the ultimate stunt of flipping the ticket. Palin, we can be certain, wouldn’t even blink.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html?th&emc=th

The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for by Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:07:52 EDT

The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns forAn America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse

By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Excerpt:

"Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/uselections2008.barackobama

Swedish Spoken Here by Thomas L. Friedman, NYT Op-Ed

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:00:36 EDT

Full Article:

The New York TimesOctober 5, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistSwedish Spoken Here By THOMAS L. FRIEDMANI was talking to friend in New York City the other day about the current financial crisis, and she told me about a scene she had just witnessed in the lobby of the Warwick Hotel. Four Swedish tourists, who clearly had been on a shopping spree in Manhattan, fueled by the still cheap dollar, were trying to cram all their purchases into four suitcases. They had bought a hand-held scale — one of those you just grip onto the suitcase and lift — to make sure all their American goodies were not overweight for the flight home.

Another friend of mine in the ship-supply business in Baltimore, Alan Kotz, told me about a German customer who recently put in double his normal order. When Alan asked him if he was aware of how much he had ordered, the German brushed his question away and laughed: “Alan, nevermind, everything for us is half price.”

And a good thing it is. Even though the dollar has strengthened a bit lately, we are going to need foreigners and sovereign wealth funds from China, Asia, Europe and the Middle East more than ever to survive this crisis — and they are going to need us to be healthy as well. In the process, we are going to become even more intertwined and dependent on the rest of the world.

Sarah Palin won’t have to worry that she doesn’t know what the Bush doctrine is. No one really knew what it meant. But it had something to do with the unilateral exercise of American power, and the next president’s ability to act unilaterally on anything other than vital national security issues is going to be reduced. As the old saying goes: He who has the gold makes the rules. Well, we no longer have as much gold, and until we get some, we will have to pay more heed to the rules of those who lend us theirs.

At a time when the U.S. government gets half its borrowings from abroad, at a time when the U.S. household savings rate is hovering around zero and China alone is already holding around $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds — yes, that’s how you got that cheap subprime mortgage — it can’t be any other way.

Somebody better tell John McCain: We are all Swedes now. Forget about “Live Free or Die.” Until we get our financial act together, our motto is going to be: “Swedish spoken here — or Arabic or Chinese or German ...”

I would also bet that more and more of the foreign investors who come our way are going to want to buy hard, tangible assets — skyscrapers, real estate and real companies — not just mutual funds, T-bills, bank stocks or other equities. No problem. Americans own assets all over the world; foreigners have long owned substantial positions in U.S. companies. That’s globalization — and now you are going to see globalization and financial integration on steroids. It should help us, but also change us.

“The next round of capital that comes in from abroad is going to be much more demanding and move into real assets,” argued Jeffrey Garten, professor of trade and finance at the Yale School of Management. “Being a bigger debtor nation means losing even more of our sovereignty. It means conducting our economic policies with an eye toward whether others approve. It means bearing the advice and criticism that we have dispensed ad nauseam to other countries for over half a century. It means far more intensive consultations with other capitals on our fiscal policies and our monetary policies.”

At the same time, added Garten, “Corporate decisions will become more sensitive to international factors, in part because more non-Americans will be on the governing boards.” Ultimately, this could make American industry even more globally competitive — but for those who can’t pass global muster or enlist global collaborators, the consequences could be harsh.

Of course, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain dare talk about this now. They want to pretend nothing has really changed. The minute one of them steps into the Oval Office, they will tell us otherwise. That will be the January surprise.

There was a lot of talk after Russia invaded Georgia that globalization was over and we were seeing the return of “history” and the primacy of politics over economics. I think not. Politics and economics are always inextricably intertwined. History-making is rarely free. The Russian stock market has been hammered as a result of its invasion of Georgia, and the global slowdown has sunk Russian oil and gas earnings. No country is an island today.

Making history is not simply about the will to do so. It’s also about the way — the resources you have to achieve your ends. Whatever wills the next American president comes to office with, he is going to find that his ways have been diminished and restricted — until we roll up our sleeves and work our way out of this mess.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05friedman.html?th&emc=th

GREAT DEBATE, JOE!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:08:42 EDT

Senator Joe Biden hit the ball out of the park in tonight's debate! He was the CLEAR WINNER!

THANK YOU JOE!

OBAMA-BIDEN 2008!

YES WE CAN!

Palin Can Launch Us Back in Time by Former US Army Brigadier General [retired] Janis L. Karpinski, TruthOut OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:19:02 EDT

Full Article:

Palin Can Launch Us Back in Time

Friday 19 September 2008

by: Janis L. Karpinski, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

The author is former US Army Brigadier General (retired) Janis L. Karpinski.

"We shall never have rights until we take them, or respect until we command it," said Belva Lockwood, activist and the first female lawyer to argue before the United States Supreme Court.

Hmmmmm. My intuition is kicking into high gear on the nomination of Sarah Palin as vice president on the Republican ticket. Hmmmmm. It is haunting me. There is something sneaky behind her and methinks it is the devious orchestration of Karl Rove. Months of criticism for Barack Obama's allegedly short supply of expertise, then McCain selects a true novice as a partner on his ticket. Does this make any sense at all?

I'm afraid it does. Palin is bringing new life to the ticket. McCain was in dire straits and absolutely knew he was going to lose the election on his merits, so he pulled the proverbial bunny out of his hat - presto, Palin.

I know enough about Palin's character to assess her as ill-equipped, clueless and unprepared to take control of our nation in the event of McCain's early demise or incapacitation, much less qualified to serve as the commander in chief of all military forces. Unfortunately for Palin, leadership is not derived by a process of osmosis. She does not automatically qualify for commander in chief or get to check the "Military Service" block because she has a son in the Alaska National Guard who is deployed to Iraq, or because she dons a camouflage uniform and knows how to shoot straight. Military leadership develops with a true concern for the lives of soldiers and civilians placed under your command. Military leadership requires the leader to be ready, willing and able upon assuming command; to be able immediately to execute those responsibilities without hesitation, to have the tools and skills to command and lead. Leadership comes from experience of "walking the ground where your soldiers will fight" as opposed to working and planning in a vacuum with little regard for the soldiers serving on your watch. It means the commander in chief will never use military force and take the nation and the military to war until every other option is exhausted, and then only with the greatest intelligence information available to ensure a course leading to victory. If it isn't there, you aren't going to find it in a desk drawer or in the process of going to war.

Palin wants desperately to be accepted as tough and capable in the skills she sees as critical to being as tough as any man - tough talk, tough walk and tough as nails. Sarah Palin apparently thinks because she claims to have the skills, we must trust her and take her at her word. Note the absence of military leadership skills in the current administration, due largely to the sum total lack of military experience amongst the elected and appointed officials.

There is something almost sinister in Palin's attempts to seduce the voting public. She has a "come hither" look all of the time, and dares anyone, men or women, but especially men, to approach her or challenge her. Pay attention. Nobody believes qualifying as Miss Alaska in the Miss America Pageant really prepares you for service as the vice president of the United States, let alone as the president of the United States of America. Obama is right, although he may have chosen the wrong animal to use in the comparison - put lipstick on a soccer mom, as opposed to a pit bull, and you still have a soccer mom, not a pit bull. The fierceness of a pit bull, which Palin is trying to use as proof of her ability to serve as the vice president, is ridiculous at best and sadly ironic. Pit bulls are senseless and out of control when angry; they are certainly far from being of good mind, rationale, organized or focused. Her personal comparisons to Hillary Clinton are insulting to Clinton. Senator Clinton did not stoop to use of her sexuality as a means of attracting votes or attention. She is articulate and stays on message, whether in the primaries or campaigning for Obama. Hillary's supporters, men and women, accepted her for her experience, her credentials and her qualifications, deservedly so, unlike Palin who is trying to steal mileage on the shirttails of Hillary. You can easily recollect memorable events of Hillary's campaign, but you will not remember her parading about or flirting with her supporters or the media. She did not behave in such a manner. Her wardrobe aside, Hillary Clinton was competing on a level playing field and behaved accordingly, like an intelligent, confident and capable candidate. This is what women hope for and seek to achieve. Sarah Palin's behavior sets our progress back by decades and encourages the fashionable use of sexuality as the tool to measure success.

I spent more than 28 years in and around the military, mostly as a member of the Army Officer Corps. I saw what women think they must do in order to fit in with their male counterparts and feel a part of the male bastion of control. Sarah Palin is cut from the same mold as these women who were desperate to fit in with male colleagues - desperately trying to prove herself as tough as, or tougher than, "the boys" who are competing with her. Palin sets the stage with stories of her prowess in murdering wolves, moose and caribou from a helicopter platform vantage point, begging the question, "C'mon boys, don't you think I am tough enough?"

Men want to screw her, literally - it is a fantasy of many men, particularly those in the high power, high profile assignments, and she knows it. She uses her sexuality, and men's vulnerability, to intimidate them and expose their weaknesses. They imagine what she is like in bed; they fantasize about screwing the vice president of the United States because they have never had this chance. They imagine what she is like as a sex object and they drool over possibilities, not necessarily thinking the fantasies will come to fruition, instead focusing on four years of possibilities. She projects the willingness to let them fantasize. She is not businesslike, rather power hungry and control-like, offering, subtly and directly, suggestions of her feistiness and daring men to try and conquer her. Somewhere in the mix, she attempts to say something noteworthy to demonstrate her readiness and capabilities to serve as the vice president of the United States. She wants to be seen as a sexual object because she has a track record of success using the same techniques at increasing levels of responsibilities. Sarah Palin tried, unsuccessfully, to get credit for foreign affairs and international experience through three stopovers, and walkovers, involving Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. Many officers and soldiers found the same low road to "credible international and combat experience" by staying comfortably and safely, and often only occasionally, in Kuwait, while real soldiers, men and women, crossed the border into Iraq, and spent a year or longer in harm's way. The coveted "right shoulder patch," symbolizing combat duty, was awarded equally to any and all deployed officers and soldiers, those serving in Iraq as well as those serving in better and safer assignments anywhere but in Iraq. This may have inspired Palin to claim international experience involving Kuwait (short stopover) and Iraq (walked across the border into Iraq) and Germany (flight layover). This type of exaggeration migrates to the unimaginable - claiming some quasi-military experience because she stood near a soldier, or because her son is serving in Iraq or because she wore cammies while hunting. It is not beyond the thinkable.

Sarah Palin may be responsible for breaking through another level of the glass ceiling by being the vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket and she deserves credit for this.

Palin, however, is a dangerous choice and her style goes against the grain of feminists and women everywhere. We spent years seeking equality, and ask only for a level playing field where we can find credit for our accomplishments and capabilities and the opportunities to compete fairly. Sarah Palin can launch us back in time and remove years of progress, albeit slow and incomplete. She encourages men and women to be drawn first to the sexuality and beauty of a woman before making a decision about her credibility, intelligence and leadership. There is abundant truth in the age-old saying "beauty is only skin deep." We need and deserve a vice-presidential candidate who offers far more than "skin deep" - her absolute lack of substance on the issues; her lack of experience, particularly in the international and foreign affairs environment; her lack of a sound economic policy to regain control of our national treasure; and her insistence on propelling herself as tough and capable because she can murder wildlife when there is virtually no chance of missing, are the issues of substance. The fact she refuses to discuss any of the issues is troubling. Voters need to take a deep breath and return to reality in the aftermath of the hype created by Sarah Palin herself. Pay attention - she does not have international experience or foreign affairs capabilities simply because she can see Russia from her backyard in Alaska.

Sarah Palin is amazingly popular and she is dangerous. She is George Bush in disguise, in terms of policies and principles. Karl Rove is in the middle of this and we all know what Karl Rove did for President Bush and what he did to every American. Keep this in mind when throwing support to the ticket of McCain and Palin. The legitimate concerns about McCain being joined at the hip with the president and the potential for four (and potentially eight) more years of the same worthless policies of this administration seem to pale in comparison when considering the strong attachment, admiration and support Sarah Palin gives to this administration.

http://www.truthout.org/article/palin-can-launch-us-back-time

Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship, TruthOut Perspective

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:03:58 EDT

Full Article:

Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out

Friday 19 September 2008

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

If religion is no longer the soul of capitalism, as Max Weber once taught, we can travel just a few miles north of Wall Street to Yankee Stadium for a different metaphor to try to understand the continuing follies of the new gilded age.

From our offices in Manhattan, we look out on the tall, gleaming skyscrapers that are cathedrals of wealth and power - the Olympus ruled by the gods of finance, the temples of the mighty, the holy of holies, whose priests guard the sacred texts of salvation - the ones containing the secrets of subprime lending and derivatives as mysterious and elusive as the Grail itself.

This last couple of weeks, ordinary mortals below could almost hear the ripcords of golden parachutes being pulled as the divinities on high prepared for soft, safe landings - all this while tossing their workers like sacrificial lambs into the purgatory of unemployment.

During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an $8 billion loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns's Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his stake for more than $60 million.

Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - aka the gods who failed - are fighting to keep severance packages of close to $24 million combined - on top of the millions in salary each earned last year while slaughtering the golden calf. As it is written in the Gospel According to Me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

But let's change the metaphor for a moment and go to our sports desk, because if religion is no longer the soul of capitalism, as Max Weber once taught us it was, we have to venture somewhere else to try to understand the continuing follies of the new gilded age. And so, we travel just a few miles north of Wall Street to the House that Ruth Built. Babe Ruth - the Sultan of Swat - who ruled Yankee Stadium and sired generations of princes after him: DiMaggio and Gehrig, Mantle, Maris, Berra and Jackson. Yankee Stadium, as fabled a place to Americans as Ilium was to the ancient Greeks, is about to be demolished and replaced next year by a brand new stadium.

On Opening Day in 1923, New York Governor Al Smith threw out the first ball and John Philip Sousa led a big brass band playing his famous marches. It was the Roaring Twenties, when the money flowed like bootleg whiskey, the pride before the fall. In 1930, the year after the market crashed, as the Great Depression began, Babe Ruth was taking home $80,000 a year, more than the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover. "Why not?" Ruth asked. "I had a better year than he did."

Yankee star Alex Rodriguez had a better year than both of them. This season, A-Rod is making $28 million, just part of an annual Yankee payroll of $209 million, the richest in baseball. Their owner, George Steinbrenner, is among the Forbes 400, one of the country's richest tycoons.

But when it came to paying for the new, $1.3 billion pleasure dome, the millionaires on the field and King Midas in his skybox came up with some razzle-dazzle plays to finance their new wealth machine - tax-free bonds, requiring ordinary citizens to subsidize the construction, and hundreds of millions more for new parking garages, a train station and parks that supposedly will replace the ones seized by the city to make room for the new stadium. The Little League games that used to flourish on sandlots just outside the old ballpark have been moved miles away, sent down to the minors on a long road trip.

That's O.K., you may think; there will be plenty of room in the new stadium for the tax-paying public to come root, root, root for the home team - even the Coliseum in ancient Rome had bleachers for the commoners. But, in fact, there will be 5,000 fewer seats in the stands. And while the Yankees reportedly promise that half of what's left will cost $45 or less, those seats that used to cost $250, right behind the dugout, will now cost you $850. And if you want to be near home plate, you'll have to cough up $2,500 - per game.

Meanwhile, there will be more luxury suites and party rooms where fat cats can gather, safely removed from the sweaty masses. Corporations and wealthy individuals will be able to rent the luxury suites for anywhere from $600,000-$850,000 a year - tax deductible - assuming they haven't filed for bankruptcy this week.

Why aren't the fans and taxpayers giving the Yankees a Bronx cheer? They did, but city officials rolled over them while making sure local politicians stayed in the lineup. The politicians are getting their own luxury suite at the new stadium for free - and first shot at buying the best available seats.

The new colossus will cast its majestic shadow across the South Bronx, one of the nation's poorest neighborhoods. The residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of 9,000 new or refurbished parking spaces. Never mind all the exhaust, even though in this part of New York City respiratory disease is already so high they call it "Asthma Alley."

Not that the well-to-do in the infield seats will have to hear the wheezing. They'll have exclusive access to a private club, a private entrance and a private elevator, totems of this gilded age. Let the games begin.

-------

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

http://www.truthout.org/article/moguls-steal-home-while-companies-strike-out

Sarah Paliin's Dead Lake By David Talbot, Salon.com

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:56:06 EDT

Sarah Palin's Dead Lake

By promoting runaway development in her hometown, say locals, Palin has "fouled her own nest" -- and that goes for the lake where she lives.

By David Talbot

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/19/palin/print.html

Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama By Ron Fournier & Trevor Tompson, AP

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:52:06 EDT

Full Article:

Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama

By RON FOURNIER and TREVOR TOMPSON / Associated Press Writers

Published: September 20th, 2008 05:07 AM

Last Modified: September 20th, 2008 05:02 AM

WASHINGTON - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 - about two and one-half percentage points.

Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation's oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents - voters Obama can't win the White House without - agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey.

The pollsters set out to determine why Obama is locked in a close race with McCain even as the political landscape seems to favor Democrats. President Bush's unpopularity, the Iraq war and a national sense of economic hard times cut against GOP candidates, as does that fact that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans.

The findings suggest that Obama's problem is close to home - among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back McCain.

The survey also focused on the racial attitudes of independent voters because they are likely to decide the election.

Lots of Republicans harbor prejudices, too, but the survey found they weren't voting against Obama because of his race. Most Republicans wouldn't vote for any Democrat for president - white, black or brown.

Not all whites are prejudiced. Indeed, more whites say good things about blacks than say bad things, the poll shows. And many whites who see blacks in a negative light are still willing or even eager to vote for Obama.

On the other side of the racial question, the Illinois Democrat is drawing almost unanimous support from blacks, the poll shows, though that probably wouldn't be enough to counter the negative effect of some whites' views.

Race is not the biggest factor driving Democrats and independents away from Obama. Doubts about his competency loom even larger, the poll indicates. More than a quarter of all Democrats expressed doubt that Obama can bring about the change they want, and they are likely to vote against him because of that.

Three in 10 of those Democrats who don't trust Obama's change-making credentials say they plan to vote for McCain.

Still, the effects of whites' racial views are apparent in the polling.

Statistical models derived from the poll suggest that Obama's support would be as much as 6 percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice. But in an election without precedent, it's hard to know if such models take into account all the possible factors at play.

The AP-Yahoo poll used the unique methodology of Knowledge Networks, a Menlo Park, Calif., firm that interviews people online after randomly selecting and screening them over telephone. Numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to report embarrassing behavior and unpopular opinions when answering questions on a computer rather than talking to a stranger.

Other techniques used in the poll included recording people's responses to black or white faces flashed on a computer screen, asking participants to rate how well certain adjectives apply to blacks, measuring whether people believe blacks' troubles are their own fault, and simply asking people how much they like or dislike blacks.

"We still don't like black people," said John Clouse, 57, reflecting the sentiments of his pals gathered at a coffee shop in Somerset, Ohio.

Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20 percent of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22 percent agreed with "boastful," 29 percent "complaining," 13 percent "lazy" and 11 percent "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.

Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58 percent said they planned to back Obama.

The poll sought to measure latent prejudices among whites by asking about factors contributing to the state of black America. One finding: More than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites."

Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama than those who didn't.

Among white independents, racial stereotyping is not uncommon. For example, while about 20 percent of independent voters called blacks "intelligent" or "smart," more than one third latched on the adjective "complaining" and 24 percent said blacks were "violent."

Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they "try harder."

The survey broke ground by incorporating images of black and white faces to measure implicit racial attitudes, or prejudices that are so deeply rooted that people may not realize they have them. That test suggested the incidence of racial prejudice is even higher, with more than half of whites revealing more negative feelings toward blacks than whites.

Researchers used mathematical modeling to sort out the relative impact of a huge swath of variables that might have an impact on people's votes - including race, ideology, party identification, the hunger for change and the sentiments of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's backers.

Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backers plan to vote for McCain.

Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries - particularly whites with high school education or less - were motivated in part by racial attitudes.

The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13658.html

"Must-View" Keith Olbermann Video: How to Rig an Election

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:47:28 EDT

Olbermann discusses the GOP's current ploy to prevent MI [and other states] citizens, particularly minorities, whose homes have been foreclosed from voting. He also interviews a former Republican 'dirty tricks operative!

Pass this on to everyone!

How to Rig an Election!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPGJQ9x_Fgk&feature=related

"Must-View" VIDEO: Thank John McCain

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:40:13 EDT

Pass this video on!

Thank John McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJThPjvscFs

Remember Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent's Dinner in 2006!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:35:33 EDT

Don't let voters forget what this 2008 election is about -- Pass this on!

This FULL VERSION [24 min.] Includes a Colbert-produced "audition video" for White House Press Secretary for Bush -- This is simply a "MUST-SEE"!

Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879

Read here about the media, Bush White House, and public REACTION to Colbert's Presentation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents'_Association_Dinner

www.revolt.com [includes the short version of Colbert at the WH Correspondents Dinner w/o the Video]

VIDEO Webcast: Biden & Hillary on Women's Issues

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:12:22 EDT

Video: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/2008/09/biden_clinton_on_womens_issues.html

What Privileges Do McCain and Palin Receive Because They're White? By Tim Wise, AlterNet.org

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:06:59 EDT

Full Article:

What Privileges Do McCain and Palin Receive Because They're White?

By Tim Wise, BuzzFlash

Posted on September 18, 2008, Printed on September 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98915/

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 17 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-size 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 eight-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 United States 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 churchgoing 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 having 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 that 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 United States 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.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008) and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.

For more information on Tim Wise, go to: www.timwise.org

You Can't Fool All the People All the Time, by Jared Bernstein, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:45:47 EDT

Full Article:

The Huffington Post

Posted September 14, 2008 | 07:32 PM (EST)

You Can't Fool All the People All the Time

By Jared Bernstein

Truth appears to be on an extended holiday, but with about fifty days left in this election cycle, this isn't the time for handwringing.

What's the best strategy when your opponent lies? It's not a simple question. The obvious move is to call them on it, but analyses of viewers reveals that "he said, she said" arguments leave observers confused and apathetic. "There they go again," seems to be the reaction, and they tune out the substance of the debate. This hurts us a lot more than them, because we need the electorate to focus on substance; they need them to focus on nonsense.

It helps if there's a referee to cry foul when the lies are proffered, but the media has been inconsistent at best, compelled to feign "balance" even when doing so means implicitly endorsing the lies.

Like this Wednesday AM, when I made the mistake of turning on CNN, where I witnessed a series of intense arguments and interviews about lipstick-gate, including the clip from the speech in which Obama made the lipstick comment, with not a hint, of course, of what the speech was about.

Let's just pause for a moment here and look at this moment under a microscope. It is one of the best examples of Rovian politics I've ever witnessed. This is the sentence in question--the one that ended with the "lipstick on a pig" comment:

"John McCain says he's about change too. And so I guess his whole angle is: 'Watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington!'"

Now, it's clear that the McCain strategy has shifted from stressing "experience" and "country first"--both causalities of his choice of Palin for his running mate--to the old Rovian move of hitting your opponent where he's strongest, in this case co-opting Obama's message of change (re Kerry, they swift-boated his military cred, which should have been his critical advantage over GW Bush's chicken-hawk military "career").

Of course, the McCain agenda unequivocally contradicts their new message, which was Obama's point, but the opposition managed to completely avoid that part of the debate, while their dupes in the news media amplified their message by focusing exclusively on the lipstick smear. They took a potent attack on the hypocrisy of their agenda--McCain/Palin's plans on the war and the economy are, if anything, Bush on steroids (more war, no timetables, far more tax cuts for the wealthiest than even Bush has dared to propose)--and turned it to their advantage.

So how do you beat these folks? At times it seems like we're fighting the bad guys in a science fiction movie: "resistance is futile." But I don't think it is. In fact, I think they've exposed a weak flank, and while it's a race against time, the stakes are so high that we've got no choice but to devote all of our energies to establishing this simple meme:

They're telling lies, and liars make fatal leaders. I don't just mean fatal in terms of fiscal recklessness and more economic failure. I mean fatal in terms of decisions that could cost people their lives. Sound familiar?

It may also sound over the top, and there are caveats that I'll stress in a moment, but it's true. Krugman had this exactly right the other day:"...the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class..."

Palin didn't say "thanks, but no thanks" re the bridge to nowhere. Her state got and spent the federal money. On this point, the media's been pretty good, but she keeps repeating her mantra. Obama's tax plan provides a larger break to the middle class than McCain's--about $1,100 vs. $300--the polar opposite of what the McCain folks keep saying. Obama didn't promote sex-ed for kindergarteners. McCain's campaign is run by the very lobbyists he consistently inveighs against; Palin's aggressively and effectively pursued Congressional earmarks.

We all know presidential politics are a nasty business, but they've taken it to another level. The untruths we're used to are conceptual, fuzzier, more ambiguous, stuff you can't easily prove or disprove, like, "we'll pay for our tax cuts by cutting spending (and don't worry, we'll only cut the wasteful stuff that nobody outside of a few crooks really wants)." Or "by cutting taxes on the wealthy, we will free the invisible hand and unleash untold riches that will trickle down to all." Or the stuff about victory in Iraq, whatever that is.

The McCain squad touts this stuff too, of course, and we can and do have good arguments over their validity. But the lies they're telling now are different. As Krugman said, they're "making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again."

(The caveat I mentioned is that they're not all lying. Doug Holtz-Eakin, a leading McCain economic advisor and an acquaintance/fellow traveler for whom I've always had great respect, has a history of speaking truth to power. I suspect he's not too comfortable with a lot of the stuff he has to sell these days...see here for an example of what I mean.)

So why is resistance not futile? Because the lies could form their campaign and candidates' persona, and that could hurt them big-time. It's becoming a negative, mainstream theme. Jay Leno's making fun of it. The mainstream media is starting to come around. Obama's team is hitting back harder. You really can't fool all the people all the time.

The lying persona could become their 'Dukakis in the tank,' Papa Bush at the scanner, Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it"--the meme that defines a deep and fundamental weakness that reaches voters in their guts and just gives them a bad feeling about this ticket.

And given the last eight years, that may be enough to tip the scales. Not, of course, with the evangelicals allegedly charged up by the Palin pick, but with the independents in the swing states who will likely decide the outcome. They may be unfamiliar with someone like Obama, or too familiar with someone like Biden, or unable to sort through the fog of misinformation to assess with any clarity the campaigns' positions on the issues that matter to them. But if the truth about these naked lies is out there in a palatable way, they'll know they're being lied to, and they won't like it.

And then, they can honestly use that phrase that's been so misleading repeated over the last couple of weeks:

McCain/Palin? Thanks, But No Thanks.

Hey, that might be a neat bumper sticker, no?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/you-cant-fool-all-the-peo_b_126253.html

Obama and The Palin Effect by Deepak Chopra, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:49:19 EDT

The Huffington Post

Obama and The Palin Effect

By Deepak Chopra | Posted: Friday, September 5th, 2008

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche
even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the
rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention
in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President
Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in
the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000
residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running
one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering
international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her
forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his
idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological
terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight,
countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed
to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the
other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they
don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher
selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.
(Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact
that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his
arrival on the scene.)

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome
by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to
understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a
rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a
higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:

--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to
petty, small-minded parochialism.

--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to
repair America's image abroad.

--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for
social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be
heeded.

--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these
issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.

--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out
corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't
fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has
been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that
minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types,
can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a
foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all
right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of
course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time.
She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty
years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of
women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are
voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national
elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to
change, and narrow-mindedness.

Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The
shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a
shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces
of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive
appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin
is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate
honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona
was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the
demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without
disguise.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/obama-and-the-palin-effec_b_123943.html

She's Not Ready by Bob Herbert, NYT OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:39:40 EDT

Full Article:

The New York TimesSeptember 13, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistShe’s Not Ready By BOB HERBERTWhile watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism.

With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?”

She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”

Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into what they’re doing in Georgia?”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13herbert.html?th&emc=th

A Woman's Worth by Goldie Taylor

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 23:34:13 EDT

A powerful statement by a woman for Obama!

Full Post:

A Woman’s Worth

By Goldie Taylor

http://goldietaylor.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/a-womans-worth/

September 7, 2008

We’ve come a long way baby.

The good news is thanks to Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angela Davis, Condeleeza Rice, Anita Hill, Madeline Albright, Maxine Waters, Kathleen Sebulius, Hilary Rodham Clinton and a slew of others, there are 18 million proverbial cracks in the ceiling. Our collective political and economic power is due to the strides (and leaps) they, and others, took on my behalf.

I am grateful. I am deeply humbled to stand on the bricks they’d laid before me. Just as the “whites only” sign was ripped from the water fountains of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and other places where Jim Crow reared his ugly head, the “white-male-only” sign has been torn to shreds and burned in effigy for all to see. The struggle is not over but, because of strong, courageous women, we are seeing the final remnants of inequality cook in the cinders.

I have been a mother all of my adult life. A single working mother. I put off dating, took menial jobs far beneath my qualifications and baked my share of ginger bread cookies for PTA Night, all so that three incredible children could have better. I chose their lives over mine. I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t easy. Unfortunately, my story, our story, is not unique.

We slept in cars, bought groceries with foodstamps and prayed for a better day. When that wasn’t enough, I put myself through school at Emory University and took a part-time job as a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. That was over a decade ago.

Along the way, things got better. I’ve been an executive at two Fortune 500 companies and a practice director at two multination public relations firms. Today, I own an advertising agency and I’ve authored two novels. A third and fourth are on the way, God willing. All of this was possible because somebody laid a brick or two on the road for me.

A few weeks ago, I woke in tears. It was my 40th birthday and certainly not a time for sadness. Rather, I cried in joy because for the first time I realized and could embrace the value of the struggle. The bright little girl, who once cried in my arms because we didn’t know where we were going to live, was headed off to Brown University. The small boy who had been the “man of the house” far too soon was now truly a man. And the tiny, angelic baby who had come to this world precious and innocent just 15 months after him was now a 16 year old girl headed out to her first job interview.

They are because I am a woman every day.

For all of this, maybe I should be proud of a woman like Sarah Palin. Maybe, just maybe, I should be rejoicing in John McCain’s selected running mate.

But I’m not.

I’m not “bed wetting liberal” nor am I a “right-wing zealot.” What I am is a working mother. And I cry foul.

I won’t, for a moment, denigrate her experience or lob spit balls at her family. I will, though, take issue with what she knows. Or more succinctly, what she does not know. Living in Alaska, I’m not sure how much she knows about the people living in inner city Baltimore. I don’t know how much she cares about the 125 murders this summer in Chicago. I have no idea what she believes about HIV/ AIDS and the havoc it wrecks on Black women or the cancer rates in East St. Louis. She hasn’t said nary a word about Hurricane Katrina or the infant mortality rates in Appalachia.

I do know that she’s a life time member of the NRA, a proponent of individuals who wielded the very weapons that killed my father and brother. I do know that she lives really close to Russia, but I’m not so certain she is ready for Putin. I know she wanted to ban books for public libraries and sex education in schools, but that her 17 year old is pregnant and preparing for a shotgun wedding. I know that she loves her husband enough to allow him (and probably did herself) use her office to settle a personal score–one that the McCain campaign would now like to cover in under a blanket of Juneau snow. I know that the Alaska Independent Party, as its secessionist platform, was enticing enough for her to attend its conference (and for her husband to become a card carrying member). Does she love her country? I’m sure. Enough to support those who want to leave it.

But I have no earthly idea what she knows (or could possibly know) about national domestic policy or foreign diplomacy. For all of her working class values, she never once mentioned the Middle Class in her diatribe that mocked her opponent’s experience. Having been the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,000 at the time) and governor of Alaska (a state a smaller than the county I live in for a little over a year), she felt she was qualified to do that. And obviously, so did John McCain. If she’s qualified, then so am I.

But in this country I love, she has been afforded the ability to run. The very constitution she says doesn’t apply to the men at Guantanamo says she can. But this is about more than that.

As Gloria Steinem said in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, “Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.”

I want a new pie.

Whatever our struggle was (and is) that last thing I want is to be patronized. Just as I cannot support just any African American who decides to offer themselves up for public service, I will not toss my vote to someone just because we share the same chromosome mix. To do so would dishonor the vow I made to my children, to myself. I did not vote for Al Sharpton, wasn’t old enough (nor would I have) vote for Jesse Jackson and I certainly will not support Sarah Palin. Identity politics, especially in this case, are a sham in the worst order.

When I cast my vote, it will be for people who will lay more bricks for people like me. It will be for people who will put diplomacy before war, challenge us all to provide healthcare for the sick, help another child go to college, and check the special interests in Washington. This fall, I’m not looking for a woman.

I’m looking for a brick layer.

I could care less if that person hasn’t spent “enough” time in Washington or can “properly field dress a moose”. I could care less if that person likes hockey, soccer, football or table tennis. I could care less if they graduated from Harvard or the University of Iowa. I’m a Christian, but I could care less if they are down with Deuteronomy, Leviticus or Numbers. I want them to uphold the Constitution. So no, I will not sit idly by as they attempt suspend habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay, engage wiretaps on American citizens without a warrant and hide behind executive privilege when they are caught firing attorney generals based on how well they two the republican line. I won’t let them cost us $12 billion a month fighting a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged. Not while working people lose their homes to predatory lenders and watch as we bail out the financial institutions that created the housing crisis.

And here’s one more thing I won’t do.

I will not, in the name of history, vote for a woman like Sarah Palin who does not share my values.

But more importantly, here’s what I will do.

I will continue raising money for Barack Obama. I will get on the phone again and call people in distant states I’ve never met. I will e-mail, call, and knock on doors until the final vote is cast. I do this, not because he shares my skin, but because I admire his principals and he shares my values. I do this because Barack Obama is more than a community organizer, he is a brick layer. And he sees, just as he sees the light in Michelle’s eyes, my struggle–my worth as a woman.

http://goldietaylor.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/a-womans-worth/

McCain May Have Opened Door For Charges That He Is A Sexist‏ by Sam Stein, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:30:09 EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/10/mccain-may-have-open-door_n_125381.html

300 rabbis form group to support Obama -- The Jerusalem Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:26:10 EDT

300 rabbis form group to support Obama

Sep. 10, 2008
jta , THE JERUSALEM POST

More than 300 rabbis formed a group to support the presidential candidacy of US Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"The support of rabbis nationwide is a testament to Barack Obama's strong support in the Jewish Community, and demonstrates that he shares the values and principles so important to the American Jewish Community," said a statement Wednesday at the launch of the group founded Sam Gordon and Steven Bob, two rabbis from the Chicago area, Obama's home base.

The list of rabbis attached to the release spans the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox streams. "When 300 rabbis agree on anything, you know something is going on," says a headline on the groups website, rabbisforobama.com.

An open letter on the website says of Obama: "We recognize that he has been inspired by Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam and the pursuit of justice, and he is deeply committed as well to a civil discourse between opposing arguments."

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1220802301062&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Poll: US-Europe relations need Obama by Alexander Burns, POLITICO

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:21:30 EDT

Poll: US-Europe relations need Obama
By: Alexander Burns
September 10, 2008 02:32 PM EST

By significant margins, Europeans have high hopes for a potential Obama administration, according to a Transatlantic Trends poll of 12 European countries.

Forty-seven percent of Europeans believe an Obama victory in November would lead to a better relationship between the United States and Europe, versus just 5 percent who think Obama would weaken the trans-Atlantic relationship.

By comparison, only 11 percent think Sen. John McCain would strengthen European-American relations if he were elected president. More than half of respondents said a McCain administration would keep relations between the United States and Europe in roughly the condition they are now.

The poll, commissioned by the German Marshall Fund and conducted by the firm TNS Opinion from June 4-28, queried at least a thousand respondents in each of a dozen countries, including Germany, France, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey.

The survey’s release Wednesday follows the news of a BBC poll, conducted by the GlobeScan service and published Tuesday, showing that in 17 of 22 nations tested, respondents across the globe expected an Obama win would improve American relations with the rest of the world.

It also comes on the heels of a report Tuesday that Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, intends to publish a column praising Obama’s response to the troubled real estate market. In an unorthodox step for a foreign leader, Brown is expected to argue: “In the electrifying U.S. Presidential campaign, it is the Democrats who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.”

According to the Transatlantic Trends report, Brown’s upbeat assessment of the Democratic presidential nominee is shared by the majority of his country: 75 percent of British respondents said they had a favorable or very favorable opinion of Obama.

Among Europeans more generally, that number was only slightly lower: 69 percent said they had a favorable impression of the Illinois senator.

McCain’s favorability ratings are considerably lower, with just 26 percent of Europeans giving him the thumbs up. He is also significantly less well-known than Obama: 29 percent of respondents did not render an up-or-down judgment on the Republican nominee, compared with just 19 percent who had no impression of Obama.

It is hardly shocking that Obama would be better liked in Europe than his opponent, given that McCain is a member of the same political party as President Bush. The president has consistently received dismal poll ratings from abroad, and in 2004 a GlobeScan survey showed Europeans favored the election of Sen. John F. Kerry by similarly wide margins — 74 percent to 7 percent in Norway, 74 percent to 10 percent in Germany and 64 percent to 5 percent in France.

It is also no surprise that Europeans would be more familiar with Obama than with McCain. In late July, Obama toured several European nations as part of a weeklong trip abroad, giving a speech in Berlin that attracted an audience in the hundreds of thousands.

Yet even as the Transatlantic Trends poll highlights Obama’s popularity in Europe, it outlines some of the diplomatic hurdles that any American president will face, regardless of party.

While 80 percent of Americans call it very or somewhat desirable for the United States to “exert strong leadership in world affairs,” just 33 percent of Europeans say the same. A quarter of European respondents called an assertive United States “very undesirable.”

While a majority of Europeans — 55 percent — said the United States and the European Union have close enough values to make diplomatic cooperation possible, they’re still less confident about it than Americans, 67 percent of whom said the United States and the EU could tackle international issues together.

And some persistent diplomatic disagreements, such as resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also remain: Europeans expressed considerably less positive feelings about the state of Israel than did Americans.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13312.html

Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote by Eartha Jan Melzer, The Michigan Messenger

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:57:06 EDT

Are the Republicans messing with the MICHIGAN VOTE? Watch out if you've experience foreclosure on your home in MICHIGAN!

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

http://clintonistasforobama.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-is-this-not-story-of-year.html

McCain's Integrity by Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:42:33 EDT

McCain's Integrity by Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

'For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign? So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him.'

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/mccains-integri.html

Frightened by McCain's Post-Convention Bounce? Three Things You Can Do Personally To Affect the Outcome of the Election by Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:36:42 EDT

Full Article:

Frightened by McCain's Post-Convention Bounce? Three Things You Can Do Personally To Affect the Outcome of the Election

By Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post

Posted September 9, 2008 | 01:32 PM (EST)

Over the last couple of days I've received more calls and emails than I can count from people with fear in their voices. They want to know what to make of McCain's post- convention bounce in the polls. They want to know if Obama can still win. Most of all they want to know what they can do to help.

McCain's post-convention bounce resulted from two factors:

First, was three days of the Republican Convention, during which large numbers of viewers watched Republicans and fellow travelers like Joe Lieberman repeatedly deliver a carefully crafted message. They blasted Obama. They postured about change. Their kids looked adorable. Subject anyone to largely one-sided messaging for a week and some will be convinced. Some of that will stick; much will disappear as memories of that experience fades.

Second - and more importantly - McCain's pick of Sarah Palin moved a lot of white women. The Washington Post poll released today showed white women shifting from an eight-point pre-convention lead for Obama to a 12-point McCain advantage.

What does this mean for the outcome of the race?

The race today is about even, with McCain having a slight advantage in the popular vote, and Obama having an advantage in electoral votes. The effect of exposure to the convention itself will likely diminish over the next several weeks. In 2004, Bush moved to a nine-point lead after his convention and most of that gap disappeared within a few weeks.

The long-term effect of the Palin factor is less certain. Much depends on what all of us choose to do now.

There are about ten likely electoral vote scenarios that could develop in this race. In eight of them, Obama is the winner. The underlying desire for change, and the overall disgust with the Bush-Republican administration of the last eight years, is just as real as ever. The website www.Fivethirtyeight.com employs a sophisticated projection model to predict electoral outcomes, and it still gives 61.2% odds that Obama will win in November.

But this week's polling numbers have certainly given a wakeup call to lots of Progressives who might have become complacent in their views that Obama's victory was a lock.

What did we think - that the gang who has run this country for the last eight years would simply roll over and surrender without a fight? These guys are very good at running elections and they will bite and claw and gouge eyes to win.

Luckily, we don't have to just sit by and watch from the sidelines, and hope that someone else makes the right call or runs the right TV spots.

There are three steps that every one of us can take that will actually impact directly the ultimate outcome of this race.

1). Remember that you are Obama's best campaign commercial. Obama made a good deal of progress at his own convention in convincing swing voters he is not just an agent for change, but a 'safe' choice. But there are still a lot of voters who worry about Obama. They aren't really too worried if he is 'experienced' enough (though they may say so). The movement of white women to Sarah Palin should put an end to any thought that 'experience' is the main issue. They are worried if he will 'safely be on their side.'

The message that is most persuasive at convincing someone that Obama is 'safely on their side' is having someone who is like them talk to them about why they support Obama - and why they are against McCain-Palin. 'If Mary or Sarah likes Obama I guess he must be OK.'

If you want to help win this election, it means you might have to break the 'taboo's' about not talking about politics with your neighbor or your co-worker. It means you have to bring up the campaign over the lunch table or the backyard fence. It means you can't just go along when someone says something like 'Palin is such a breath of fresh air.' No, you must tell them, actually she's never been for 'reform' and she embraces all of the economic policies that allow big companies to make tons of money while incomes of people like us fall.

Want to make calls to swing voters like you in swing states? The Obama campaign can hook you up with lists to call and get a report from you on the outcome through their website, www.MyBarackObama.com. And don't feel like the conversations you have are just a drop in the bucket. There will be hundreds of thousands of other volunteers around America who will be doing the same thing.

2). Don't unwittingly contribute to their narrative. Most swing voters aren't excessively focused on 'experience.' They think the gang with lots of experience has done a pretty crummy job, at least for them. They want someone who is 'on their side.' One reason that many white women like and identify with Palin - at least at first blush - is because they think she identifies with them.

When Progressives make 'elitist' attacks on Palin, they just reinforce the right wing narrative that the 'Elitist Eastern Establishment' is the problem. Don't patronize the very people we are trying to convince.

From most people's points of view, the problem with the McCain-Palin ticket isn't so much that Palin is from a small town in rural Alaska and hasn't got the experience to run the country. The arguement that is convincing to normal people is that neither McCain nor Palin are what they claim to be - reformers or agents of change. Their campaign is being run by lobbyists for the biggest corporate interests in America--the same people who ran the Bush campaign. And they are committed to the economic policies that make average people's incomes drop and reward the very rich.

McCain and Palin act as though they identify with the interests of the guys in the NASCAR grandstand and the women at the PTA - but they are doing the bidding of the guys from Wall Street and the women wearing $4,500 outfits like the one Cindy McCain donned for the Republican Convention.

Our assault on McCain and Palin must never be done from an elitist perspective, but from a populist perspective.

3). Take personal responsibility to win this election. More than any election in modern political history, this election will be decided by the work of millions of people who talk to their neighbors, make small donations on the internet and - most importantly - demand that every voter go out to vote.

And I mean demand that every voter go to the polls. To win, we need to change the electorate. In this election, friends don't let friends not vote. There is too much at stake. The damage of another four years of Bush-McCain economic and foreign policy would be catastrophic for the future of our children, and children all over the world.

The key point is this: don't just whine to your friends about what the campaign should do, or the party should do, or the candidate should do. Take personal responsibility to do the two things that will win: persuade swing voters, and mobilize voters who won't vote unless they are motivated to do so.

The Obama campaign has the best field operation in the history of presidential politics. Join it. Take an assignment. Make contributions on the Internet. Hold a fundraiser. Write a letter to the editor. Most important: don't sit on the sidelines.

The recent polls should provide a call to arms to everyone who wants change in America or believes in progressive values.

Don't think what you do is inconsequential or can't affect the outcome. My firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, ran the field operation for a wonderful congressional candidate in south Florida in 2000. We did a great job. We knocked on every door. We pulled out lots of votes. But we lost by 550 votes. It was the same 550 votes that beat Al Gore and gave us George Bush.

If we had just dragged out one more Democrat per precinct in the closing hours of that Election Day, America would have been spared the nightmare of the last eight years. Each of us could decide the outcome of this election, too.

In 2008, Progressives in America are presented with an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally change the direction of American politics. As I argued in my book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, we could be on the verge of a new progressive era in America. If we win, progressives will be able to take the offensive and reshape the political and economic structures of our society for the first time in four decades. We can come out of our defensive crouch and help shape a democratic society infused with progressive values, with the fundamental principle that 'we're all in this together' not 'all in this alone.'

But to have that opportunity we have to win - and winning requires that we all stand up now and take the future into our own hands. The game is on. Get out of the stands and onto the field, into the arena. The work we do over the next 56 days could be the most important that any of us will do in our lives. Let's not miss this precious opportunity to make history.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/frightened-by-mccains-pos_b_125111.html

Music Videos: Latino/as Supporting Obama!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:27:40 EDT

Don't miss these great videos!

SI SE PUEDE!

http://www.dipdive.com/dip-approved/

Political Cartoon by Aislin, Montreal Gazette

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:15:28 EDT

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/aislin/index.html?pubdate=9%2f4%2f2008

VIDEO: Alaska Knows the Real Story of the Bridge to Nowhere

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:29:15 EDT

A local newscast on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3DZZNZFxeI

World wants Obama as president: poll -- Reuters

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:03:53 EDT

Full Article:

World Wants Obama as President: Poll

Posted Tue Sep 9, 2008 10:50pm AEST

ReutersUS Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain. In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.More than 22,000 people were questioned by pollster GlobeScan in countries ranging from Australia to India and across Africa, Europe and South America.The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view."Large numbers of people around the world clearly like what Barack Obama represents," GlobeScan chairman Doug Miller said."Given how negative America's international image is at present, it is quite striking that only one in five think a McCain presidency would improve on the Bush administration's relations with the world."In the United States, three polls taken since the Republican party convention ended on Thursday (local time) show Senator McCain with a lead of 1 to 4 percentage points - within the margin of error - and two others show the two neck-and-neck.The countries most optimistic that an Obama presidency would improve relations were America's NATO allies, including Australia (62 per cent).A similar BBC/Globescan poll conducted ahead of the 2004 U.S presidential election found that, of 35 countries polled, 30 would have preferred to see Democratic nominee John Kerry, rather than the incumbent George Bush, who was elected.A total of 23,531 people in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, the UAE, Britain and the United States were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone in July and August 2008 for the poll.

- Reuters

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/09/2360240.htm?section=world

Republicans, stop calling Obama elitist by Bill Maher, Salon.com

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:20:16 EDT

Republicans, stop calling Obama elitist

Because the real reason you don't like him is that he's smarter than you.

By Bill Maher

Sep. 05, 2008 | New Rule: Republicans need to stop saying Barack Obama is an elitist, or looks down on rural people, and just admit you don't like him because of something he can't help, something that's a result of the way he was born. Admit it, you're not voting for him because he's smarter than you.

In her acceptance speech, Gov. Sarah Palin accused Obama of using his run for the White House as a "journey of personal discovery" -- this from the lady who just spent 10 minutes of her speech introducing her family -- Track, Trig, Bristol, Piper -- for a minute there I thought she was calling in an airstrike.

Karl Rove described Obama as "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini, and making snide comments about everyone who passes by." Unlike George Bush, who's the guy at the country club who makes snide comments, and then passes out. Now this characterization, of course, was something Mr. Rove just completely pulled out of his bulbous, gelatinous ass, but remember this is America, a land where people believe anything they hear. One of McCain's ads casts Obama as "the one," implying he thinks he's the Messiah. Good, maybe he can raise McCain from the dead.

It doesn't matter to Karl Rove that his country club characterization is fictitious, it's the role that Obama must play if the party of plutocrats is going to win over the little guy. Over and over at this convention we heard about the new put-upon victim in our society, the person in America, like Sarah Palin, who's constantly mocked because they're from a ... small town! Governor Yup Yup's got 'em all riled up about being disrespected.

Barack Obama can't help it if he's a magna cum laude Harvard grad and you're a Wal-Mart shopper who resurfaces driveways with your brother-in-law. Americans are so narcissistic that our candidates have to be just like us. That's why George Bush is president. And that's where the McCain camp gets its campaign strategy: Paint Obama as cocky and arrogant and wait for America to vote him off, like the black guy in every reality show. A black president? Half of Pennsylvania isn't ready for black quarterbacks. Forget Obama, they think Will Smith needs to be taken down a peg.

And finally: As for "country first," you know who's putting country first? I am, by supporting Obama, because a victory this fall for the McCain-Mooseburger ticket would make my job in the next four years very, very easy.

-- By Bill Maher
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/09/05/maher_obama/index.html

A Few Facts about the Aerial Hunting of Wolves in Alaska

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:41:12 EDT

Palin not only condones the horrendous practice [frowned upon by most regular hunters] of aerial killing of adult wolves, but their surviving pups are shot as well?!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund Statement:

http://www.defendersactionfund.org/releases/090308.html

Sarah Palin and the Environment [Alaska]:

http://www.defendersactionfund.org/newsroom/sarah_palin.html

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund's VIDEOS [2]: Palin a Champion of Aerial Hunting

https://secure.defenders.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=c406_090308palinwolf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGPFPBmzRrQ

And from the Huffington Post:

"As if this wasn't enough, now Palin's administration is allowing its "Department of Wildlife Conservation" to enter into wolf dens and slaughter wolf pups; in July, her employees went to retrieve adult wolf carcasses they had shot a month earlier from a helicopter and then found the wolves' pups in their den and so dispatched them one-by-one with pistol shots to the head. They then tried to conceal their actions from the public. When they were exposed, they said they had tried to place the orphaned wolves with zoos. Then the zoos said no one had contacted them.
Meanwhile, Palin's government spent $400,000 in taxpayer money on an aerial wolf hunting "education" program to lobby for the program. This is the sort of thing you can expect from Sarah Palin if she gets to be a heartbeat away from the presidency."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-hurowitz/sarah-palins-cruel-streak_b_123388.html

VIDEO: Joe Biden on Fire in PA! GO JOE! Tear 'em apart!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:23:16 EDT

Video:

Joe Biden On Fire! Go Joe! Tear 'em apart!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955Y3NJTRIE&eurl=http://integritynowca.blogspot.com/

VIDEO: Obama Speaks at AARP Life @50+ Event in Washington, DC, Sept. 6th

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:13:17 EDT

Video:

Obama speaks at the AARP Life @50+ Event on Social Security, Medicare, the economy, etc.on September 6th, in Washington, DC.

http://assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/TopicAreas/Events/life-at-50/webstream/obama.html

VIDEO: Community Organizers: The Nation's Backbone

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:06:48 EDT

A wonderful video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpniuotfpR8

McCain Camp Misidentifies Walter Reed Army Medical Center?! -- Article: Mystery Solved! by Josh Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:46:00 EDT

Love the ed. note at the end of this article!

Full Article:

Mystery Solved!09.05.08 -- 2:39AM By Josh Marshall A lot of people were asking tonight: what the hell was that mansion up behind John McCain tonight during the first part of the speech? As I noted below, the TV close-ups only showed McCain's head against the grass in the picture, which made it look like he was reprising his famed green screen performance. And when they panned out, it looked like McCain was showing off one of his mansions.

Well, several readers have written in to tell me that the building is actually the main building on the campus of the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. And sure enough, this page on the school's website makes it pretty clear that they're correct.

You can compare below ...

So it's not a mansion, but a middle school. But that still doesn't answer the question of why they picked this picture to have him standing in front of -- when I would imagine that 99.9% of the US population would have no idea what they were looking at.

(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Readers JR and EK for cluing us in.)

Late Update: I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead. At first I thought, No, that's ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they're quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this school being behind McCain and the fact that it has 'Walter Reed' in its name, I'm really not sure you can discount this possibility.

(ed.note: Special bonus snark: That's not stock photo keyword searching we can believe in.)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/213806.php

Obama's Response to GOP Attacks -- Video

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:46:12 EDT

Video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22860339#26548013

On Community Organizing -- Barack Responds!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:41:13 EDT

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHv-slC8Vr8

VIDEO: Barack Obama on the Value of Community Organizing

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:37:20 EDT

Please watch this video and pass it on! How dare Palin, Giuliani, McCain and the GOP Convention attendees laugh at those who are Community Organizers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHv-slC8Vr8

YES WE CAN!

GO OBAMA-BIDEN '08!

Palin Fails by Her Own Standards by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:39:10 EDT

Full Article:

Palin Fails by Her Own StandardsBy Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on September 4, 2008, Printed on September 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/97529/

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nomination Wednesday night in a confident and insistent address that attacked members of the media and Washington "elites" who questioned her experience to be vice president and mocked Barack Obama for his qualifications, stances on issues and even his inspiring words.

After several days of silence, Palin introduced herself to America as the newest GOP attack dog. She alternately wrapped herself in what she described as all-American small-town values and engaged in nasty smear tactics -- belittling Democrats, mischaracterizing Obama and insulting Americans, who she and her campaign speechwriters must think will not have enough sense to see past such a thin veil.

Palin established the confrontation tone early in her speech by deriding "pollsters and pundits" who "wrote off" Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican nominee, early in his presidential campaign for supporting a troop surge in Iraq. She then introduced her family, praised her rural upbringing and experience in local and state government, and concluded -- in a departure from reality -- that her brief political resume qualified her to serve as vice president.

"And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said, comparing herself to Obama's community work after law school. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Then, as was typical of her speech, she broadened her political attack.

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," Palin said. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

Palin was referring to comments Obama made at a fundraiser that were controversial during the Democratic primaries when he was asked about why rural voters often vote for Republicans when the GOP did not advocate for their economic interests. She then drew a picture of life in small town America that was at least as divisive as Obama's remark was controversial, by suggesting rural America is where the country's truest patriots, hardest workers, and members of the military come from.

"I grew up with those people," she said. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town."

Vice-presidential candidates are often used by presidential campaigns to criticize the opposing ticket -- so the presidential nominee does not have to descend to the muddier side of politics. However, as Palin wrapped herself in a mythic version of small-town America to emphasize Republican values, she also presented a distorted picture of political realities in the country. Most notable in this regard was her criticism of the media and Washington "elites," even though her party has held the White House for seven-plus years and majorities in Congress until 2006.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin said. "And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

Palin portrayed herself as a reformer in Alaskan politics, although independent press accounts in recent days strongly suggest otherwise. Despite an ongoing investigation by Alaska's Legislature into Palin improperly using her office to pressure the state police to fire an officer who divorced her sister, and Palin heading a fundraising committee that accepted unlimited donations for Sen. Ted Stevens, now under federal indictment for corruption, Palin said that she fought and beat "special interests."

"We are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and a servant's heart," she said. "I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau; when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-old-boys network."

Palin's account of herself as an anti-corruption and anti-spending crusader also included her oft-repeated claim that she opposed building a bridge costing several hundred million dollars to a remote town of 14,000. Press accounts from Alaska note that she supported "the bridge to nowhere" for years, before finally canceling the project as governor.

Palin touted her efforts closing a deal to build a new major natural gas pipeline, saying efforts to drill for oil, natural gas and to build more nuclear power plants would be the cornerstone of the country's energy independence. Energy was the only domestic issue Palin discussed at length in her speech, which notably did not mention the economy, health care, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, immigration, family planning, appointing Supreme Court judges or the relation of church and state -- she is an evangelical. She dismissed Democratic priorities such as global warming and civil liberties.

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already," Palin said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all."

Palin's harshest attack concerned the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama's qualifications to lead the military.

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word victory except when he's talking about his own campaign," she said, speaking of Obama. "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Notably, the only foreign policy issues raised by Palin concerned using U.S. troops to ensure the country had an ample supply of oil from the world's trouble spots. If anything, these remarks suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would continue the current White House policy of deploying troops overseas to ensure oil imports.

"Families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil," she said. "With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries, we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas," she continued. "And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

Palin also attacked Obama for saying he planned to raise taxes on the top 5 percent of American income earners, which the Democratic nominee has said was necessitated by a federal deficit that has ballooned since the Bush administration needlessly invaded Iraq.

Palin's attacks undoubtedly previewed those the McCain campaign will use in the final two months of the campaign, as Republicans try to convince Americans that a candidate who did not wear a military or law enforcement uniform as a younger person is unfit to be president.

"Though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, 'fighting for you,' let us face the matter squarely," Palin said. "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain."

Of course, Palin did not hold herself to those same standards, which many newspaper editorial writers have said is the most important consideration for the running mate of a candidate who would be the oldest American ever to enter office as president. Instead, she joked that the only different between a "hockey mom" -- her role prior to government service -- and "a pit bull" was lipstick. Indeed, her introduction to America and national politics was as the GOP's newest attack dog.

Steven Rosenfeld is a Senior Fellow at AlterNet.org, where he reports on elections from a voting rights perspective. His books include Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008), What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (The New Press, 2006), and Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress (Hollowbrook Publishing, 1992). An award-winning journalist, he has been a staff reporter at National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, TomPaine.com, and at daily and weekly newspapers in Vermont.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/97529/palin_fails_by_her_own_standards/

Candidate McCain’s Big Decision -- Opinion, NYT

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:49:31 EDT

Full Article:

Opinion

The New York Times

September 3, 2008

Candidate McCain’s Big Decision

More often than not, the role of a vice president is a minor one, unless some tragedy occurs. But a presidential nominee’s choice of a running mate is vitally important. It is his first executive decision and offers an important insight into how that nominee would lead the nation.

If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Mr. McCain’s supporters are valiantly trying to argue that the selection was a bold stroke that shows their candidate is a risk-taking maverick who — we can believe — will change Washington. (Mr. Obama’s call for change — now “the change we need” — has become all the rage in St. Paul.)

To us, it says the opposite. Mr. McCain’s snap choice of Ms. Palin reflects his impulsive streak: a wild play that he made after conservative activists warned him that he would face an all-out revolt in the party if he chose who he really wanted — Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Why Mr. McCain would want to pander to right-wing activists — who helped George W. Bush kill off his candidacy in the 2000 primaries in a particularly ugly way — is baffling. Frankly, they have no place to go. Mr. McCain would have a lot more success demonstrating his independence, and his courage, if he stood up to them the way he did in 2000.

As far as we can tell, Mr. McCain and his aides did almost no due diligence before choosing Ms. Palin, raising serious questions about his management skills. The fact that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant is irrelevant to her candidacy. There are, however, very serious questions about her political past and her ideology.

If Mr. McCain wanted to break with his party’s past and choose the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate, there a number of politicians out there with far greater experience and stature than Ms. Palin, who has been in Alaska’s Statehouse for less than two years.

Before she was elected governor, she was mayor of a tiny Anchorage suburb, where her greatest accomplishment was raising the sales tax to build a hockey rink. According to Time magazine, she also sought to have books banned from the local library and threatened to fire the librarian.

For Mr. McCain to go on claiming that Mr. Obama has too little experience to be president after almost three years in the United States Senate is laughable now that he has announced that someone with no national or foreign policy experience is qualified to replace him, if necessary.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been one of Mr. McCain’s most loyal friends, said Tuesday that he was certain that Ms. Palin would take the right positions on issues like Iraq, Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. That seemed based largely on his repeated assertion that Ms. Palin would be tended by Mr. McCain’s foreign policy advisers. That was not much of an endorsement.

Some of the things Ms. Palin has had to say in the recent past about foreign policy are especially worrisome. In a speech last June to her former church in Wasilla, Ms. Palin said the war in Iraq was “a task that is from God.” Mr. Bush made similar claims as he rejected all sound mortal advice on how to conduct the war.

Mr. McCain, Mr. Graham and others also claim that Ms. Palin is a fearless reformer who is committed to fighting waste, fraud and earmarks. Ms. Palin did show courage taking on some of the Alaska Republican Party’s most sleazy politicians. But she also was an eager recipient of earmarked money as a mayor and governor.

Mayor Palin gathered up $27 million in subsidies from Washington, $15 million of it for a railroad from her town to the ski resort hometown of Senator Ted Stevens, now under indictment for failing to report gifts.

The Republicans are presenting Ms. Palin as a crusader against Mr. Stevens’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The record says otherwise; she initially supported Mr. Stevens’s boondoggle, diverting the money to other projects when the bridge became a political disaster. In her speech to the Wasilla Assembly of God in June, Ms. Palin said it was “God’s will” that the federal government contribute to a $30 billion gas pipeline she wants built in Alaska.

Mr. McCain will make his acceptance speech on Thursday, and Ms. Palin will speak on Wednesday. Those two appearances will go a long way to forming voters’ views of this Republican ticket.

As Senator Graham noted, Mr. McCain has to reach out beyond the party’s loyal base. “We’re going to have to win this thing,” he said. “This is not our race to lose.”

Mr. McCain’s hurdles are substantial. To start, he has to overcome Mr. Bush’s record of failures. (The president addressed the convention Tuesday night and now, McCain strategists fervently hope, will retire quietly to the Rose Garden.) That record includes the disastrous war in Iraq, a ballooning deficit, the mortgage crisis — and the list goes on.

To address those many problems, this country needs a leader with sound judgment and strong leadership skills. Choosing Ms. Palin raises serious questions about Mr. McCain’s qualifications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/opinion/03wed1.html?th&emc=th

And Then There Was One by Thomas L. Friedman, NYT OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:42:54 EDT

Friedman explains that McCain is not "green" at all, particularly with Palin at his side, but "big oil"!

Full Article:

The New York Times

September 3, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

And Then There Was One

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates. That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

“One of McCain’s last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” added Pope, “yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, ‘The jury is still out on global warming.’ She’s the one hanging the jury — and John McCain is going to let her.”

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.

I am not against a limited expansion of off-shore drilling now. But it is a complete sideshow. By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to “drill, drill, drill,” McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.

Why? Because renewable energy technologies — what I call “E.T.” — are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass “I.T.” — information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.

Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”

So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/opinion/03friedman.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC by Marjorie Cohn, TruthOut.org

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:51:52 EDT

Marjorie Cohn | Pre-Emptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC

Marjorie Cohn, Truthout: "In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called 'Moles Wanted.' Law enforcement sought to pre-empt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention."

http://www.truthout.org/article/pre-emptive-strikes-against-protest-rnc

Head for the High Road by Bob Herbert, NYT OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:41:56 EDT

Full Article:

The New York TimesOp-Ed ColumnistHead for the High Road By BOB HERBERT

Published: September 1, 2008

The Democrats need to be careful about the intensity of their criticism of Sarah Palin.

She may look like an easy target, an appalling lightweight who will send serious voters scurrying to the more substantive Obama-Biden ticket. And the temptation to get on her case probably became greater with Ms. Palin’s disclosure Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

But the Democrats should not push this stuff too far. Ms. Palin is a lot more appealing personally than the often testy guy at the top of her ticket. And the inescapable reality is that there are millions of voters who identify with her, and may be quick to resent attacks that they perceive as bullying or overkill.

Here’s the deal: Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction. She’s meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign — the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions. Willie Horton was a distraction. The chatter about gays, guns and God has been a long-running distraction. And we all remember the Swift-boat campaign.

If you want a real issue, forget all of the above and revisit Monday’s front page of The New York Times. Hundreds of families are being forced out of their homes each month in Louisville, Ky., because of mortgage foreclosures. With record numbers of poor and homeless students, the public schools are struggling.

The crisis has only been made worse by fiscal difficulties facing the schools. Higher energy and other costs, combined with a $43 million cut in state aid, have left the school system in a sorry state.

The reason this should be high on the presidential campaign agendas is that the problems in Louisville are widespread. As Sam Dillon of The Times reported: “As 50 million children return to classes across the nation, crippling increases in the price of fuel and food, coupled with the economic downturn, have left schools from California to Florida to Maine cutting costs.”

Even as these districts are cutting back, wrote Mr. Dillon, “the number of poor and homeless children is rising.”

That is the kind of substantive issue the Democrats should be focused on: how to educate America’s children and improve the quality of their lives; how to bring health care to those going without; how to put America back to work.

To their credit, Senators Obama and Biden seem unwilling to jump aboard the bash-Ms.-Palin bandwagon. Both have been exceedingly mild in their comments about the Alaska governor.

Last week’s Democratic convention dramatically illustrated the most effective approach available to the party. The convention built in intensity night by night with featured speakers who focused powerfully on substantive matters.

Bill Clinton may be wildly unpredictable, but last Wednesday he was magnificent, laying out the challenges that will face the next administration.

Listen:

“Our nation is in trouble on two fronts. The American dream is under siege at home, and America’s leadership in the world has been weakened. Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting — with incomes declining; job losses, poverty and inequality rising; mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing; health care coverage disappearing; and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities and gasoline.

“And our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation, by a perilous dependence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warming, by a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders, by a severely burdened military, by a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements, and by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.”

Respectful criticism of Sarah Palin is fine. But the great issues of this campaign loom like giant redwoods over the pathetic weeds of politics as usual and the myriad distractions that have turned one presidential election after another into a national embarrassment.

Seventy-two years ago, in his renomination acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia (before more than 100,000 people gathered in Franklin Field), Franklin D. Roosevelt rose above the boiler-plate rhetoric of political speeches and spoke of his generation’s “rendezvous with destiny.”

He warned of the perils to the nation of economic inequality. “Liberty,” he said, “requires opportunity to make a living, a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”

Roosevelt’s words echo across the decades because they resonate with the very meaning of America, a meaning that is so much deeper than what our politics have become. “We are fighting,” he told his audience, “to save a great and precious form of government, for ourselves and for the world.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02herbert.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Palin: Anti Choice, Anti Birth Control -- DailyKos

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:05:12 EDT

Palin: Anti Choice, Anti Birth Control by chrisblask Sun Aug 31, 2008 at 10:39:59 AM PDT

"Gov. Palin is a prominent member of Feminists For Life, a fundamentalist group advocating prison for doctors who perform abortions under any circumstances. FFL also opposes birth control, even for married couples."

Read the Full Article: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/31/13384/5484/470/581256

The Hollow Man by William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.org

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:54:46 EDT

Wonderful Article -- Touché!

Full Article:

The Hollow Man

Sunday 31 August 2008

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist

US Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain walks on stage at the Civil Forum on the Presidency at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. (REUTERS/Mark Avery)

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. - H. L. Mencken

In this election, it is the character of the candidate that will matter the most.

That, and pretty much that alone, has been the core campaign message Republican candidate John McCain has been peddling to all and sundry for nearly two years. His devotion to this particular talking point has come to resemble the kind of passionate zeal rarely seen beyond the compound walls of survivalist militia groups; and the slavish dedication he has displayed in tolerating the mindless monotony of such endless repetition is matched only by the muddy mooing of sacred cows along the shores of the Ganges River in India.

Clearly, Mr. McCain has become deeply invested in trying to keep the entire presidential campaign conversation focused only on this mantra regarding "Character." To be sure, he has definitely put in the work. He began his second, and presumably final presidential campaign on the second Friday in November of 2006; in the six hundred and sixty one days that have passed since he became a candidate again, his maximum efforts have been focused on flogging the "Character" theme every step of the way.

Presidential races being what they are, it was simply impossible for McCain to remain totally focused on this one-liner sloganeering project. Every rare now and infrequent then, something would come along with enough juice to merit the creation and release of a new statement. The campaign message machine would suddenly swerve out of the "Character counts" slow lane and merge itself into the heavier traffic, passenger-side turn signal blinking away for no good reason as usual, but only for a few miles.

Sooner or later, the bus always veered back into that slow lane, those newer messages eventually died of neglect, and would go floating up to whatever Heaven there may be for topics that were either too hot for a compromised candidate to handle, or were too detailed for a stupid candidate to comprehend. Mr. McCain has evinced both facets of this particular phenomenon on more than a few occasions, most notably during the recent Russia-Georgia crisis. Beyond that, almost every single time some reporter posited queries about Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the entire African continent, or basically anything else pertaining to issues of national security, McCain wound up dropping the informational ball.

There are several very good reasons why McCain would like to keep all debate and discussion in this presidential race right there with him in that slow lane. First and foremost is the simple truth that the man basically has nowhere else to go. His dilemma brings to mind that old maxim trial lawyers have lived and died by since time out of mind: when the law is with you, pound on the law; when the facts are with you, pound on the facts; if neither the facts nor the law are with you, pound on the table. That is John McCain's entire political reality in a nutshell.

The facts reveal that Mr. McCain has thrown his support behind just about every asinine and idiotic decision made by the single most unpopular and unsuccessful American president there ever was and, God willing, ever will be. The facts reveal that he has boomeranged away from so many policy positions he once espoused, going so far as to denounce a whole sheaf of legislation he had personally authored, because the Republican base despised those issues; but since he needed their support if he ever wanted to have a chance of winning, it was whiplash be damned and the Devil take the hindmost.

The facts, along with plenty of photographic evidence, reveal that while the city of New Orleans drowned beneath the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, McCain was snuggling with George W. Bush beneath the very same blanket of willful ignorance and sadistic indifference that has defined this administration. By a horrifying coincidence, the city of New Orleans now finds itself in the crosshairs of yet another deadly hurricane, not only on the anniversary of Katrina's destruction, but also on the eve of the Republican National Convention that will officially nominate Mr. McCain as the GOP's candidate.

Before the end of the week, no matter what happens with Hurricane Gustav, smart money says those pictures of McCain yukking it up with Bush while New Orleans was washed into the sea are going to make another appearance in the mainstream news media. In the interim, do please offer all manner of prayers and positive thoughts, in the name and for the sake of every living soul facing the hammer of one more terrible storm.

The facts reveal that Mr. McCain risked the lives of more than one hundred American soldiers by dragging them through a dangerous Baghdad marketplace for a campaign photo-op, all because he was taking heat in the American press for claiming that Baghdad was a perfectly safe town to take a stroll through, and hoped some pictures of him doing exactly that might bat down the criticism. The day after he pulled this little stunt, an Iraqi militia came through that same marketplace and massacred more than twenty innocent civilians to show McCain the difference between a safe neighborhood and where they live.

The law is hardly worth mentioning at this point when it comes to Mr. McCain. Nothing much can be said about a man who once opposed the use of torture by the American military, but began waffling on the issue almost immediately after deciding to run for president. While it cannot be said that McCain is now an active supporter of torture in all its forms, he won't be getting any thank-you notes from anyone unfortunate enough to experience the waterboarding technique he recently chose to endorse. One might define this as hair-splitting, unless one happens to be getting wet in that very unhappy fashion, and it should not be forgotten that Mr. McCain probably knows more about the realities of torture than just about any living American today. The contradiction here is, quite frankly, unspeakably chilling, and does him no favors regarding his "Character" fixation.

Nothing much can be said about a man who now supports the repeal of Roe v. Wade, a repeal he once opposed." Nothing much can be said about a man who opposed the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and then decided he actually supported the policy, and then went on to publicly denounce a Supreme Court ruling on the matter that was exactly in line with his prior opinion. He used to support diplomatic engagement with Hamas, but not any more. He used to support diplomatic engagement with Syria, but not anymore. He used to believe the NRA should not be allowed to play a role in the setting of GOP party policy, but not anymore.

Nothing much can be said about a man who has given his support to the NSA's warrantless wiretapping surveillance program which was initiated by the Bush administration, which has violated the Constitutional rights of millions of American citizens, and which McCain once believed was entirely illegal. This man helped to establish the legal legitimization of torture, and looked on mutely while Mr. Bush and his people not only ravaged the entire Department of Justice in the name of politics and personal protection, but went further into the realm of abject criminal corruption by refusing to honor every legally issued subpoena they were served with.

All that holds this idea that is America together, at bottom, is the good will of people in power and their deliberate subservience to the rule of law. When subpoenas are ignored by the arrogance of the powerful, the rule of law is over and the country is all but gone. McCain not only chose to be lumped in with these wretched practitioners of serial treason, but bestowed his blanket approval upon their patently illegal policy of spying on every American with a phone and the power of speech, perhaps because he actually convinced himself they had earned such additional legal largesse. Or maybe he just didn't give a damn about anything other than keeping himself on the good side of people like Bush, because he knew he was going to need their help to raise money for his presidential run, and nothing else mattered more than this.

The facts are not with Mr. McCain, nor is the law, so all he has been able to do is pound the table with the mythology of his so-called "Character." The whole POW thing is about all he has left. His "maverick" reputation was already a threadbare and pitiful thing before Hillary Clinton became a Senator, so there isn't much there for him, either. It all sounds like what Politician Hell might be like: damnation down there means running for office on a platform made out of thirty-year-old horror stories everyone has heard a thousand times already, and a bunch of baloney about being an "outsider" that nobody really believes anymore. Have fun with that.

There is no joy in Mudville following the Sarah Palin VP selection, for that matter. This big to-do was supposed to highlight whatever remains of his "maverick" image. The last, best club he had in his campaign bag was the line of attack against Barack Obama's lack of executive and foreign policy experience. By choosing Palin to be his running mate, McCain stapled his entire campaign to a woman whose shiny right-wing Christian credentials cannot obscure the fact that she has slightly less foreign policy or executive experience than a ham sandwich in the pantry of Air Force One. In other words, that one good club might as well have been thrown into a furnace six hundred and sixty one days ago for all the good it will do him now. Bluntly, this Palin choice not only failed to prop up his outsider credentials, but has also raised serious concerns about whether his basic judgment and understanding of simple reality can be relied on under any circumstances.

This ugly reality is McCain's well-earned, supremely deserved reward for deciding to abandon any pretense of character or integrity, with deliberation and intent, while crowing to all within hearing about the importance of character and integrity. Everything he abandoned had nothing at all to do with what he believes or doesn't believe as an American or as an elected representative. He abandoned these things because he wants to live in the White House, period. He wants this with every dirty, immoral, shiftless, unprincipled fiber of his being; and through this has become a living, pathetic, abhorrent example of the damage to heart and soul such lust for personal gain can cause.

For men who have neither character, nor integrity, nor honor, nor shame, for men like John McCain, that kind of wanting is all that remains in their heart, and is all that really matters to them anymore. Men like this, men like John McCain, are entirely hollow inside, empty, and truly dead in every way that once counted them human. They are skin, bones, emptiness, and nothing else besides.

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-hollow-man

2 Top Alaska Newspapers Question Palin's Fitness by Greg Mitchell, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:39:59 EDT

Full Article:

2 Top Alaska Newspapers Question Palin's Fitness

By Greg Mitchell, The Huffington Post

Since yesterday's shocking arrival of Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate there has been the usual cable news and print blathering about the pick from those who know little about her. But what about the journalists close to home -- in Alaska -- who know her best and have followed her career for years?

For the past 24 hours, the pages and web sites of the two leading papers up there have raised all sorts of issues surrounding Palin, from her ethics problems to general lack of readiness for this big step up. Right now the top story on the Anchorage Daily News web site looks at new info in what it calls "troopergate" and opens: "Alaska's former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick to be vice president, personally talked him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor's sister.

"In a phone conversation Friday night, Walt Monegan, who was Alaska's top cop until Palin fired him July 11, told the Daily News that the governor also had e-mailed him two or three times about her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten, though the e-mails didn't mention Wooten by name. Monegan claims his refusal to fire Wooten was a major reason that Palin dismissed him. Wooten had been suspended for five days previously, based largely on complaints that Palin's family had initiated before Palin was governor."

A reporter for the Anchorage daily, Gregg Erickson, even did an online chat with the Washington Post, in which he revealed that Palin's approval rating in the state was not the much-touted 80%, but 65% and sinking -- and that among journalists who followed her it might be in the "teens." He added: "I have a hard time seeing how her qualifications stack up against the duties and responsibilities of being president.... I expect her to stick with simple truths. When asked about continued American troop presence in Iraq, she said she knows only one thing about that (I paraphrase): no one has attacked the American homeland since George Bush took the war to Iraq."

His paper found a number of leading Republican officeholders in the state who mocked Palin's qualifications. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Lyda Green, the president of the State Senate, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Another top Republican, John Harris, the speaker of the House, when asked about her qualifications for Veep, replied with this: "She's old enough. She's a U.S. citizen."

Here are excerpts from the editorials in the two leading papers.
From the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks:

Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was a stunning decision that should make Alaskans proud, even while we wonder about the actual merits of the choice.... Alaskans and Americans must ask, though, whether she should become vice president and, more importantly, be placed first in line to become president.

In fact, as the governor herself acknowledged in her acceptance speech, she never set out to be involved in public affairs. She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. Republicans rightfully have criticized the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, for his lack of experience, but Palin is a neophyte in comparison; how will Republicans reconcile the criticism of Obama with the obligatory cheering for Palin?

Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation's when he created the possibility that she might fill it.

And from the Anchorage Daily News:

It's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.

Gov. Palin is a classic Alaska story. She is an example of the opportunity our state offers to those with talent, initiative and determination...

McCain picked Palin despite a recent blemish on her ethically pure resume. While she was governor, members of her family and staff tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Her public safety commissioner would not do so; she forced him out, supposedly for other reasons. While she runs for vice-president, the Legislature has an investigator on the case.

For all those advantages, Palin joins the ticket with one huge weakness: She's a total beginner on national and international issues.

Gov. Palin will have to spend the next two months convincing Americans that she's ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency....

Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. He is editor of Editor & Publisher. His email is: gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/2-top-alaska-newspapers-q_b_122625.html

Wexler: Palin a 'far-right, pro-life zealot' -- Ben Smith's Blog, Politico.com

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:23:33 EDT

Full Article:

Wexler: Palin a 'far-right, pro-life zealot'

Obama has distanced himself from his own campaign's scorching attack on Palin this morning, but prominent surrogates are still going at her hard.

[T]he fact is Sarah Palin is a far right, pro-life zealot who can not hold a candle to Hillary Clinton's lifelong fight to better the lives of women everywhere," said Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida in a statement (after the jump). "Americans should be alarmed that the former mayor of a town of 9,000 people with zero foreign policy credentials could be a heartbeat away from assuming the role of Commander in Chief."

The "zealot" line is apparently a reference to Palin's position that women who are victims of rape and incest should be required to bring their pregnancies to term.

Wexler is one of many surrogates who, taking their cues from Obama's first statement, are attacking Palin's record and her qualifications sharply. It's unclear whether the campaign is now aiming to reel them in, having moderated its own tone.

An Obama spokesman didn't immediately comment on Wexler's statement.

Wexler has been a key liaison to the Jewish community for Obama, but he didn't raise something that's been gaining some traction in Democratic Jewish circles: Palin's active support for the presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan, who was viewed as hostile to Israel by many Jewish groups. That association is going to bring a presumption of guilt with some Jewish voters.

Wexler on Palin:

"Today, John McCain proved he is a complete and utter hypocrite. This past week we saw the first test of judgment and leadership from America's presidential nominees. Barack Obama made the outstanding choice of Joe Biden. John McCain made a sad political choice by picking Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.

"In doing so John McCain has failed both the test of leadership and judgment. John McCain has been unable to generate any genuine excitement with his tired campaign and his selection of Palin as his running mate is a desperate attempt to distract Americans from the fact he lacks any new ideas worthy of their excitement.

"John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin is clearly a political ploy aimed at the capturing votes of women who formerly supported Senator Hillary Clinton. But the fact is Sarah Palin is a far right, pro-life zealot who can not hold a candle to Hillary Clinton's lifelong fight to better the lives of women everywhere. Americans should be alarmed that the former mayor of a town of 9,000 people with zero foreign policy credentials could be a heartbeat away from assuming the role of Commander in Chief."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Wexler_Palin_a_farright_prolife_zealot.html

VIDEO: Governor Sarah Palin Asks "What is it that a VP does?"

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:39:06 EDT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA

The Hail Sarah Pass Open Thread

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:34:06 EDT

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/08/hail-sarah-pass-open-thread.html

Baracky II: Chapter 3 of the Obamacles

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:13:21 EDT

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fNgA5xLxao

Jumping Ship: Citing social issues, local GOP officials are abandoning their party in droves by Hans Johnson, In These Times

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:57:49 EDT

Do you know any Democrats who say they're going to either not vote or vote for McSame? Tell them to read this article -- it should help to change their mind!

We need UNITY at our convention this week, and all the way through the November election!

Read the full article here:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3866/jumping_ship/

As Democrats Gather, Liberal Positions Gaining in Popularity by Steven Thomas, McClatchy Newspapers

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:44:43 EDT

As Democrats Gather, Liberal Positions Gaining in Popularity

Steven Thomas declares:

"As they meet for their national convention Monday through Thursday, Democrats are poised to shift their party's course — and the country's.

They're turning to the left — deeply against the war in Iraq, ready to use tax policy to take from the rich and give to the poor and middle class, and growing hungry, after years of centrist politics, for big-government solutions, such as a health-care overhaul, to steer the nation through a time of sweeping economic change.

They are, in short, more liberal than at any time in a generation and eager to end the Reagan era, which dominated not just the other party, but also their own, for nearly three decades."

Read the full text of the article at: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/50009.html

Latin America Needs Better Than a Wall By Oscar Arias Sanchez, The Washington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:24:43 EDT

Full Article Below:

The Washington Post

Latin America Needs Better Than a Wall

By Óscar Arias Sánchez
Saturday, August 16, 2008; A15

The designation this summer of $465 million in U.S. aid to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America -- along with the valuable cross-border dialogue that helped bring about this Merida Initiative -- is a step in the right direction. With certain notable exceptions, the United States has largely ignored its southern neighbors, and signs of new cooperation are welcome.

But given the urgency of the problems we face, this step is disappointingly small. A long road lies ahead. We in the Americas have an unprecedented opportunity to create a better, safer hemisphere, but only if each country contributes all that it can. It is high time for the United States to redefine its approach to regional aid, not merely in the name of friendship but also in its own interest.

The Merida Initiative is stingy by any standard but especially by U.S. standards. Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are allocated only $65 million -- one-sixth the amount that legislators initially deemed necessary. Mexico receives $400 million a year, a comparatively princely sum but the same amount that the United States spends in Iraq in a single day. With such expensive enemies, there is apparently little room for friends.

A government, of course, is free to allocate its funds as it sees fit, especially where foreign aid is concerned. Yet support for the war on drugs is an investment in a shared problem, one that is largely fed by the enormous demand for drugs in the United States. Fighting drug traffickers is not only a Latin American responsibility, it is also an American responsibility, in the hemispheric sense, and the Merida package only begins to fulfill the United States' share.

The amount of money is part of the issue. The choice of areas to fund is more important. The foremost responsibility of national leaders is to protect their citizens. To this end, the United States must broaden its definition of national security. Like all developed nations, it must confront the fact that no country can be safe while poverty, illiteracy, violence, preventable diseases and environmental destruction wreak havoc on others. Any foreign policy that views these issues as someone else's problems is doomed.

The primary U.S. concerns regarding Latin America are drugs and illegal immigration. Yet these are symptoms, not diseases. The disease itself, the cause of these visible effects, is poverty in the Western Hemisphere's developing nations. It is poverty that creates fertile ground for drug trafficking. It is poverty that sends so many legal and illegal immigrants over U.S. borders. Poverty needs no passport to travel and cannot be detained by walls.

This disease could be countered by investing in education, the only tool that can lift Latin Americans out of poverty for good. The United States could make a tremendous difference by making education a priority. According to recent estimates, the country is spending $3 million per mile to build a fence along its border with Mexico designed to keep out illegal immigrants seeking opportunities they cannot find at home. But for every mile of that fence, 2,500 young Latin Americans could receive monthly $100 grants to cover the costs of staying in school so they can get good jobs. For every mile of that fence, 15,000 children could receive Internet-capable laptop computers from MIT's Media Lab, enabling them to join the globalized world rather than falling behind. The possibilities go on and on.

These are the investments that could keep Latin Americans from risking their lives to enter the United States anyway they can. These investments would be good for all our countries.

These are exciting times in the Americas. The United States has new leadership on the horizon and a chance to reexamine its foreign policy. Latin America has never been more democratic or better equipped to spend aid money effectively and transparently. If the United States were to extend its generosity to us, I am confident that the results would be extraordinary. After all, a more prosperous Latin America benefits not only its own people but the United States' as well.

The writer, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, is serving his second term as president of Costa Rica.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081502826.html?wpisrc=newsletter

The Focus of the International Diversity News Forum Group

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:15:50 EDT

As the administrator of our group, International Diversity News Forum, I'm sending out this quick update regarding blog posts. Frankly, I wanted to send this out a couple of weeks ago, but have been so busy on the home and work front that I haven't had a moment until today.

Thank you for your time here.

I appreciate everyone's participation on the International Diversity News Forum group Blog, but I feel that we need to stay more closely aligned with the original intention of the group, by focusing on the media's [MSM] treatment of diversity [ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, economic, gender, etc.] during the campaign.

This is not to say that group members can't post on other topics beyond diversity -- we are all aware that the issue of diversity is often related to other topics. However, the group's primary topic [it's intention] is not "international policy & foreign relations", as that is not our focus.

Please keep in mind that there are several MyBO groups that focus exclusively on "international policy & foreign relations" for which posts that are related to those subjects are better suited.

Please continue to post on the International Diversity News Forum blog -- let's continue to keep watch, and report on, the MSM's misguided portrayals of diversity in the U.S. and abroad!

Your comments are welcomed!

Thank you!

YES WE CAN!

A Path to Peace in the Caucasus by Mikhail Gorbachev, The Washington Post/Editorial

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:36:16 EDT

Full Article Below:

The Washington Post

A Path to Peace in the Caucasus

By Mikhail Gorbachev
Tuesday, August 12, 2008; A13

MOSCOW -- The past week's events in South Ossetia are bound to shock and pain anyone. Already, thousands of people have died, tens of thousands have been turned into refugees, and towns and villages lie in ruins. Nothing can justify this loss of life and destruction. It is a warning to all.

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. This turned out to be a time bomb for Georgia's territorial integrity. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force -- both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar -- it only made the situation worse. New wounds aggravated old injuries.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. For some time, relative calm was maintained in South Ossetia. The peacekeeping force composed of Russians, Georgians and Ossetians fulfilled its mission, and ordinary Ossetians and Georgians, who live close to each other, found at least some common ground.

Through all these years, Russia has continued to recognize Georgia's territorial integrity. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. Indeed, in a civilized world, there is no other way.

The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against "small, defenseless Georgia" is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity.

Mounting a military assault against innocents was a reckless decision whose tragic consequences, for thousands of people of different nationalities, are now clear. The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force. Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors, and its sophisticated military equipment was bought in a number of countries. This, coupled with the promise of NATO membership, emboldened Georgian leaders into thinking that they could get away with a "blitzkrieg" in South Ossetia.

In other words, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was expecting unconditional support from the West, and the West had given him reason to think he would have it. Now that the Georgian military assault has been routed, both the Georgian government and its supporters should rethink their position.

Hostilities must cease as soon as possible, and urgent steps must be taken to help the victims -- the humanitarian catastrophe, regretfully, received very little coverage in Western media this weekend -- and to rebuild the devastated towns and villages. It is equally important to start thinking about ways to solve the underlying problem, which is among the most painful and challenging issues in the Caucasus -- a region that should be approached with the greatest care.

When the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia first flared up, I proposed that they be settled through a federation that would grant broad autonomy to the two republics. This idea was dismissed, particularly by the Georgians. Attitudes gradually shifted, but after last week, it will be much more difficult to strike a deal even on such a basis.

Old grievances are a heavy burden. Healing is a long process that requires patience and dialogue, with non-use of force an indispensable precondition. It took decades to bring to an end similar conflicts in Europe and elsewhere, and other long-standing issues are still smoldering. In addition to patience, this situation requires wisdom.

Small nations of the Caucasus do have a history of living together. It has been demonstrated that a lasting peace is possible, that tolerance and cooperation can create conditions for normal life and development. Nothing is more important than that.

The region's political leaders need to realize this. Instead of flexing military muscle, they should devote their efforts to building the groundwork for durable peace.

Over the past few days, some Western nations have taken positions, particularly in the U.N. Security Council, that have been far from balanced. As a result, the Security Council was not able to act effectively from the very start of this conflict. By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its "national interest," the United States made a serious blunder. Of course, peace in the Caucasus is in everyone's interest. But it is simply common sense to recognize that Russia is rooted there by common geography and centuries of history. Russia is not seeking territorial expansion, but it has legitimate interests in this region.

The international community's long-term aim could be to create a sub-regional system of security and cooperation that would make any provocation, and the very possibility of crises such as this one, impossible. Building this type of system would be challenging and could only be accomplished with the cooperation of the region's countries themselves. Nations outside the region could perhaps help, too -- but only if they take a fair and objective stance. A lesson from recent events is that geopolitical games are dangerous anywhere, not just in the Caucasus.

The writer was the last president of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and is president of the Gorbachev Foundation, a Moscow think tank. A version of this article, in Russian, will be published in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper tomorrow.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081101372.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Big Bad Russkies and Nasty Neocons by Steve Weissman, TruthOut/Perspective

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:02:51 EDT

A "must-read" article!

Weissman writes:

"It's déjà vu all over again, and none have taken greater comfort in the still-escalating crisis than John McCain, his foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (whose firm lobbied for the Georgians) and the same neoconservatives who pushed Americans to flex our great power muscles in Iraq in even more disgusting ways than Vladimir Putin has done in Georgia. Robert Kagan set the tone in The Washington Post, charging that Putin had "reestablished a virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to restore the country to its once-dominant role in Eurasia and the world."

"Wholeheartedly siding with "my friend Misha Saakashvili," McCain then announced on behalf of every American, "We are all Georgians now" and called for NATO to step in to "stabilize this dangerous situation." He also repeated his long-standing demand to bring Georgia into NATO, a position that the less bellicose Obama is also taking. NATO membership would commit the United States and its allies to defend the Georgians against Russia with military force. This is a life-and-death commitment few Americans would want to make if anyone took the time to explain it to them."

Read the Full Article here: http://www.truthout.org/article/big-bad-russkies-and-nasty-neocons

2008's First Disenfranchised Voters: Injured and Homeless Veterans By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:47:28 EDT

Full Article Below:

2008's First Disenfranchised Voters: Injured and Homeless VeteransBy Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on August 11, 2008, Printed on August 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/94541/

The first large block of voters to be disenfranchised in 2008 are the wounded warriors from recent wars and homeless veterans living at hundreds of Department of Veterans Affairs facilities across the country, according to veterans and voting rights activists.

"President Bush and Karl Rove are attempting to block voter registration of at least 200,000 and possibly as much as 400,000 veterans," said Paul Sullivan, president of Veterans for Common Sense, referring to injured former soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in various VA treatment facilities, veterans living in the VA's nursing homes, and homeless veterans living in VA shelters.

"We may have all kinds of hurdles," Sullivan said. "We may have the clock running out on us, but we will not give up. This needs to be shoved in the face of every single elected official in the country. We can fix this in a second We are talking about two or three sentences in legislation. We are talking about the integrity of our democracy."

In recent months, the Department of Veterans Affairs has resisted efforts by U.S. senators and top state election officials to allow voter registration drives in its facilities. Just last month, the VA issued new rules that banned election officials -- whether local registrars or secretaries of state -- from registering voters, saying it was a partisan activity that interfered with its medical mission. In most states, any time a person changes their residence they must update their voter registration in order to vote.

The VA's ban on registration drives, even by state constitutional officers, provoked a rebuke from the National Association of Secretaries of State -- a resolution urging the VA to rescind its policy -- and revived the issue in Congress, where separate House and Senate bills would force the VA to become a voter registration agency like state motor vehicle departments, where people are proactively given an opportunity to register to vote. Under the VA's current policy, any resident in its facilities must seek help with voter registration and voting.

The problem with the congressional efforts, according to Sullivan and others following this issue, is that the VA appears to be on course to run out the clock before meaningful voter registration drives could be undertaken for this year's presidential election.

Under the most optimistic scenario, even if the Congress passed legislation within a week of reconvening, which would be mid-September, the president would have two weeks to sign it into law. That timeline places the bill's potential adoption very close to the first week in October, when voter registration closes for the November election in 27 states. Moreover, at that time, state election officials would have little time to organize and implement voter registration drives, voting rights activists said.

"This is a bill you can't vote against," said Scott Rafferty, who sued the VA in 2004 when the agency blocked voter registration efforts by Democrats at its campus in Menlo Park, California, but allowed the Republican Party onto the campus to register voters. "But it is almost physically impossible to get it passed and implemented in time."

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Menlo Park appeal, upholding the VA's right to regulate voter registration activities at its facilities. The court said the agency could bar anyone from its grounds because of a presumed affiliation with a political party, Rafferty said.

The Appeals Court ruling means only Congress can change the VA policy.

"There may be one ace in the hole," Veteran for Common Sense's Sullivan said, "and that is a funding bill. If we can get any of this legislation tacked onto a funding bill, the president has to sign it."

Congressional staffers said the issue was a priority and would see action after Congress reconvenes in September. Yet there is little evidence to suggest the VA would abide by such a law before the presidential election. VA officials have stated in recent forums that the agency was opposed to allowing voter registration drives, even by election officials. Its lawyers said so much before the Ninth Circuit in June during a hearing on the Menlo Park litigation, and more recently at the secretaries of states' conference in late July. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit ruling fortifies the agency's stance.

In fact, just last week in Connecticut, where the Secretary of State, Susan Bysiewicz, was allowed into a VA facility to register voters after threatening to sue the agency -- after Bysiewicz and the state's attorney general were turned away in July -- VA officials sought to limit her efforts to register VA staff or outpatients, her staff said, saying that could be construed as a voter registration drive. Those VA officials also resisted her request to return this fall to show residents how new voting machines worked.

"This is not a solution," said Av Harris, her spokesman, saying the VA simply made enough concessions to blunt the threatened suit. "If the other secretaries of state are not as active as we are, the VA will not do anything for them."

The most pragmatic assessment for action on the voter registration issue suggests a new policy will only come in 2009, after the presidential election, when Congress can look at several voting rights laws that guarantee access to the ballot, regardless of the political implications for the party holding the presidency or a congressional majority.

"While the hope for 2009 is a real one, the practical effect now is that the first voters who have been suppressed by the GOP in 2008 are the wounded warriors living in the government's own facilities," Rafferty said.

Steven Rosenfeld is a Senior Fellow at AlterNet.org, where he reports on elections from a voting rights perspective. Previously, he was executive producer of RadioNation with Laura Flanders, a progressive talk show heard on more than 100 Air America Radio and public radio stations.
He is co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (The New Press, 2006), and Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress (Hollowbrook Publishing, 1992). An award-winning journalist, he has been a staff reporter at National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, TomPaine.com and at daily and weekly newspapers in Vermont.
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94541/

Erasing the Race Factor by Peter Beinart, The Washington Post/Opinion

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:58:48 EDT

Full Article:

Erasing the Race Factor

Obama's Best Hope is to Face the Issue Directly

By Peter Beinart, The Washington Post

Barack Obama has a problem. He really, really doesn't want this campaign to be about race. He wants it to be about change, President Bush, the economy, gas prices, Iraq, Afghanistan -- almost anything else. But it is going to be about race, at least in part. That's the lesson of recent weeks, when the McCain campaign brought up race (on the pretext that Obama had brought it up first). The Obama campaign tried desperately to change the subject but couldn't. Once the chum was in the water, the media sharks went wild.

Obama should take that as a warning. Race will be central to this campaign because McCain needs it to be. He simply doesn't have many other cards to play. And it will be central because every time Republicans light the match, the press will create a forest fire. Race is just too titillating to ignore. The history of post-Vietnam presidential elections is littered with Democratic nominees who thought they could run on policy and ignore symbolism. This year, the symbolism will be largely racial. Obama can't avoid that. He needs to control the race debate instead.

Already, there is reason to believe that race is weighing Obama down. A survey this year by CBS and the New York Times found that 94 percent of respondents would vote for a black presidential candidate. But when asked if "most people" would, the number dropped to 71 percent. Notre Dame political scientist David Leege estimates that 17 to 19 percent of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will resist voting for Obama because he is black. That's far more than the percentage of Republicans who may vote for Obama because he is black. And it's a major reason that this election -- despite Obama's myriad advantages -- remains close.

To blow it open, Obama needs to bring Leege's number down. That may be possible, because even racists can be wooed. Think about it this way: Many of the voters who right now won't vote for Obama because he's black would probably vote for Colin Powell even though he's black. That's because they don't see Powell as a racial redistributionist, a guy who would favor his community at their expense. There's no rational reason to believe Obama would, either. But because, unlike Powell, Obama is a liberal Democrat who enjoys overwhelming black support, that's what many racially hostile white voters assume.

For these voters, Obama can't make race go away by ignoring it, especially because the GOP and the media won't. He needs to acknowledge their fears and do something dramatic to assuage them. Paradoxically, his best shot at deracializing the campaign is to explicitly make race an issue.

He can do that with a high-profile speech -- and maybe a TV ad -- calling for the replacement of race-based preferences with class-based ones. That would confront head-on white fears that an Obama administration would favor minorities at whites' expense. It would be a sharper, more dramatic, way of making the point that Obama has made ever since he took the national stage (but which some whites still refuse to believe): that he represents not racial division but national unity.

On the merits, there's a lot to say for class-based affirmative action. Over the decades, racial preferences have played a vital role in creating a black middle class, but that middle class is now large and self-perpetuating. It is the multi-generational poor -- whether urban and black or Appalachian and white -- who truly need a boost today. And that's what Obama himself seems to believe. Arguing that his own daughters shouldn't benefit from affirmative action, he told the Chronicle of Higher Education last year that "we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed." Some of the parents of those white kids fear voting for Obama because they think they'll lose out. If they knew Obama's views, they might change their mind.

Race isn't going away as a factor in American life, of course. But the defining American problem of the 21st century may not be the "color line," as W.E.B. Du Bois suggested about the 20th. In an age of growing multiculturalism and growing economic inequality, it may be the class line instead. By calling for a different kind of affirmative action, Obama could acknowledge that profound change -- and help propel himself to the White House at the same time.

Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a monthly column for The Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202827.html

"Media Matters" by Jamison Foser, MediaMatters.org

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:53:44 EDT

Foser takes a very close look at the type of media coverage Obama has been receiving by the MSM -- a must read article!

Full Article Below:

"Media Matters" by Jamison Foser

MediaMatters.org

Obama coverage finds dark lining around silver clouds

Looking at recent media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama, it's hard not to be a bit amused at the contortions reporters have gone through to portray the Democratic presidential candidate in a negative light. News organizations that know Sen. John McCain's campaign is lying about Obama adopt those lies as the framework for their coverage. Reports on campaign polling obsess over Obama's inability to garner the support of more than 50 percent of the public -- all the while McCain struggles to stay above 40. And, increasingly, reporters and pundits have taken to describing Obama's seemingly positive qualities as fraught with electoral peril.

None of this is particularly surprising. Two years ago, I wrote:

No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in.

The eagerness with which the media have spread some truly bizarre criticisms of Obama confirms this theory. Just think about some of the things Obama has seen the media portray as weaknesses. He's too popular and respected. He's too well-educated. His great speeches are attended by many enthusiastic people -- just like Hitler! He's too fit.

Yes: The Wall Street Journal would have you believe that Barack Obama faces an uphill electoral climb because he may be "Too Fit to Be President." Journal reporter Amy Chozick devoted more than 1,300 words to exploring this pressing topic:

[I]n a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

Just for good measure, the Journal included a graphic depicting Obama, McCain, and five presidents. For four of the five presidents, along with McCain, the Journal respectfully chose photos in which the men were wearing suits (though Taft was without his jacket.) In the photo the Journal chose for Bill Clinton, he was in mid-jog, in shorts, T-shirt, and a baseball cap; Obama was in exercise garb, with a basketball in his hand.

Chozick apparently had some trouble finding people to support the crackpot premise that Obama's physical fitness might cause voters to question his fitness for office, so she turned to trolling Internet message boards in desperate search of someone -- anyone -- she could quote. As the blog Sadly, No! revealed, Chozick posted a Yahoo! Message Board thread on July 15, asking, "Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his 'no excess body fat'? Please let me know. Thanks!"

About three-and-a-half hours later, Chozick got her first response -- a post ridiculing her for her focus on "totally meaningless drivel." Nearly an hour after that, Chozick finally got the response she was looking for. A user posting under the name "onlinebeerbellygirl" wrote, "Yes I think He [sic] is to [sic] skinny to be President. ... I won't vote for any beanpole guy." Chozick quoted the post in her article -- one of only two quotes agreeing with the premise of the article. She did not, however, disclose that the quote had come only after she started a thread encouraging people to make such comments. After she got caught, the Journal acknowledged: "The article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the comment."

There may be more to it than that. A post in a subsequent Yahoo! Message Board discussion thread devoted to Chozick's article noted that "[n]either Chozick nor 'onlinebeerbellygirl' has made any other posts on Yahoo before or since, and both profiles appear to have been created on 7/15, the day Chozick started the topics. It certainly looks like Amy Chozick constructed the whole thing."

Another post wondered: "Do WSJ reporters make up fake IDs and make up fake quotes?"

Chozick's original thread has been deleted (a cached copy is available here). Even more curiously, a search of the Yahoo! message boards for "onlinebeerbellygirl" comes up empty. Whether "onlinebeerbellygirl" ever really existed at all or was a Chozick invention, running a 1,300-word article suggesting Obama is too skinny to be president, based upon a random Internet message board post, is insane. As Slate.com's Tim Noah noted, "In the vastness of cyberspace, you can always find somebody who will say whatever you want."

You might think that The Wall Street Journal's speculation that Obama's failure to be overweight might cost him the presidency was so inane and baseless that no other journalist could possibly repeat this nonsense. You might think that, if you haven't been reading Maureen Dowd. Sure enough, Dowd raced to quote the Journal article in her Sunday New York Times column:

In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters -- who loved their heroine's admission that she was on Weight Watchers -- were put off by Obama's svelte, zero-body-fat figure.
"He needs to put some meat on his bones," said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: "I won't vote for any beanpole guy."

It's a good thing The New York Times keeps Maureen Dowd around. How else would their readers be exposed to crackpot theories found in ethically questionable Wall Street Journal articles?

But the most cynical assault on Obama has been the suggestion that he's "too presidential." That's what much of the media criticism of Obama's recent trip abroad boiled down to, James Rainey explained in the Los Angeles Times:

The candidate's crowning demonstrations of hubris, according to those building a case, came during his extended trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe. Recall the pundits demanding the freshman Illinois senator prove he could be presidential in the foreign arena?
So he appeared at ease with world leaders, talked animatedly with beaming American troops and drew huge civilian crowds. Then the pundits -- who had been taking a round of bashing for supposedly going easy on Obama -- told Obama he needed to beware of appearing too presidential.

What makes this criticism so distasteful is that throughout the primaries, the media kept saying various candidates looked "presidential" or "like a president." The pundits rarely explained what it means to "look[] like a president," but those candidates had at least two things in common: They were white, and they were men. I don't remember Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) being described that way. So, after excluding Barack Obama from their lists of candidates who "look presidential," the media have moved on to suggesting he looks too presidential.

Too popular. Too well-educated. Too fit. Too presidential. The guy doesn't stand a chance. No wonder media coverage of poll results that show Obama beating McCain makes it sound like McCain is winning.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200808080014?f=h_latest

Running While Black by Bob Herbert, New York Times OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:19:50 EDT

Bob Herbert puts it all in perspective -- and correctly!

Full Article Below:

The New York Times

August 2, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistRunning While Black By BOB HERBERT

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he’s not some kind of unpatriotic ogre.

Mr. Obama told them: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation.

Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

Gail Collins is off today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/opinion/02herbert.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1217700019-AOzTRNfc1c0J1oRRACPUlA

English Lessons for McCain, by E. J. Dionne, Jr., Washington Post OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:44:24 EDT

Dionne states: "McCain, on the other hand, is running a campaign straight out of the playbook that lost the Conservative Party the last three British elections. The old Conservatives thought that if they just kept attacking Labor, the citizens would see the error of their ways...It didn't work, and it's hard to imagine the American electorate buying McCain's new advertising effort to undermine Obama by accusing him of being a "celebrity" and comparing him -- OMG! -- to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. McCain has made matters worse by falsely accusing Obama of wanting to raise taxes on electricity and by offering a phony account of why Obama decided not to visit wounded American soldiers in Europe."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/31/AR2008073102821.html?wpisrc=newsletter

So Much for St. John by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:37:28 EDT

OpEd by Euguen Robinson, The Washington Post

Full Article:

So Much for St. John

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 1, 2008; A17

It's awfully early for John McCain to be running such a desperate, ugly campaign against Barack Obama. But I guess it's useful for Democrats to get a reminder that the Republican Party plays presidential politics by the same moral code that guided the bad-boy Oakland Raiders in their heyday: "Just win, baby."

The latest bit of snarling, mean-spirited nonsense to come out of the McCain camp was the accusation, leveled by campaign manager Rick Davis, that Obama had "played the race card." He did so, apparently, by being black.

On Wednesday, at a campaign stop in Missouri, Obama had predicted that Republicans would try to "make you scared of me. You know, 'He's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, 'he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.' " So what does Davis do? He promptly tries to make voters scared of Obama by feigning outrage over the presumptive Democratic nominee's "divisive, negative, shameful and wrong" remarks.

Of course the McCain campaign isn't really offended that the first black major-party candidate for president in American history might mention this distinction from time to time. The idea is to slow Obama down before he runs away with this thing, and the weapon of choice is handfuls of mud.

Remember St. John the Reformer, who promised a high-minded campaign and said he wouldn't question his opponent's patriotism? Clearly, he's been replaced by an evil twin. The switch seems to have taken place during his opponent's world tour, when Obama's prescriptions for Iraq and Afghanistan began to look prescient -- and McCain's began to look irrelevant.

McCain kept saying that Obama "doesn't understand" the war zones -- even though the president of Afghanistan, the prime minister of Iraq and even U.S. military officials on the ground seemed to think Obama understood both situations quite well. McCain then resorted to the outrageous charge that Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." I think that qualifies as an allegation that Obama is "not patriotic enough," don't you?

Since then the McCain campaign has sharply escalated its rhetorical attacks -- making blatantly false claims, for example, about a canceled visit with injured troops in Germany. The blitz has been successful in one of its aims, which is to drive the news cycle and thus focus attention on McCain. Much less clear is whether voters really want to elect Don Rickles as president.

The low point so far is McCain's bizarre ad that flashes images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears before showing Obama in Berlin addressing the multitudes. In what promises to be a major attack theme, the ad derides Obama as "the biggest celebrity in the world" -- an attempt to turn Obama's popularity into some kind of fatal flaw.

In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Davis and campaign senior adviser Steve Schmidt -- a veteran of George W. Bush's 2004 campaign -- kept returning to the word "celebrity" in describing Obama. It's a classic attempt to take a positive and turn it into a negative, as was done with John Kerry's heroic service in Vietnam by the odious Swift boat campaign.

The McCain campaign's excursion into popular culture has been so aggressive that the Obama campaign felt obliged to promptly denounce a new song by Ludacris that criticizes both McCain and Hillary Clinton in crude terms. Never mind that the rapper has no association with Obama's candidacy, and never mind that McCain is probably not intimately familiar with the Ludacris oeuvre. All this gnashing and flailing would be laughable if it weren't so purposeful. The aim is to cast an aura of doubt around Obama -- to portray him as handsome and popular but insubstantial, as a "celebrity" who's not really up to the job. Oh, and not that we would ever mention such a thing, but did you notice that Obama had the audacity to mention that he's African American?

The Obama campaign has been quick to respond with new television ads accusing McCain of practicing the "old politics." Kerry's unhappy experience showed that this kind of define-your-opponent blitzkrieg, however ridiculous the attacks may be, has to be answered immediately -- and in kind.

Negative campaigning is not a pretty thing, and it should be beneath John McCain to stoop so low. But Democrats would be foolish to forget that sometimes it works.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/31/AR2008073102820.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Take Action with the FEMINIST MAJORITY Re: the New Yorker Cover

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:14:59 EDT

Sign the message here:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1269/t/3076/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2243

Deceptive Questioning in Washington Post's McCain-Friendly Poll on Iraq by FAIR

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:06:18 EDT

"The corporate media keeps giving McCain cover on his unpopular Iraq position...The Washington Post reported on July 15 that the public is evenly split between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama's positions on ending the Iraq War. But the paper arrived at that conclusion based on a deceptively worded poll question."

Full Article Here:

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91644/

Media Coverage of Obama and McCain: "Nuts" or a "Disgrace"? by Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:58:03 EDT

A great article on media ineptness!

Here's a portion of the article:

Boehlert writes:

"...the Beltway press corps has become so borderline dysfunctional that even the simplest tasks, such as selecting which stories to cover -- such as using common sense -- now escape most of the major players at the mainstream news organizations.

Two events in recent days reaffirmed that sad conclusion, when entire news organizations opted to throw all sorts of time and attention at what was essentially a pointless campaign-related sideshow, while simultaneously displaying blanket indifference to what should have been the campaign story of the week, if not the month or possibly the entire summer.

Last week, after being hyped by Matt Drudge and Fox News, the Beltway press unanimously decided that Rev. Jesse Jackson's whispered comments, picked up on a live television set mic, in which he expressed anger with Sen. Barack Obama and used some crude language to convey his sentiments (i.e. he wanted to cut off Obama's "nuts"), represented a hugely important event. It was the most-covered campaign story of the week.

By contrast, McCain said at a campaign appearance in Denver on July 7 that the Social Security system as structured in America, in which younger people pay taxes to support the benefits of retirees, is an "absolute disgrace" -- but his proclamation was mostly passed over as being irrelevant. The disconnect between the coverage was astounding.

Read the Full Article Here:

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91776/

The Bad Frame: Why are the New Yorker, Salon and Other Liberal Media Doing the Right's Dirty Work? by Don Hazen, AlterNet

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:48:46 EDT

This article, in response to the New Yorker cover, is not to be missed -- it's a "must-read"!

Here's a small portion of a very long article on the controversy and, in my opinion, it is the most comprehensive review of the matter yet written.

P.S. I don't find Remnick's explanation of his decision to run the cover satisfactory -- but, then, how could any explanation be?

Hazen writes:

"Unfortunately the impact of this image will extend far beyond the reading audience of the New Yorker; cable news and the right-wing media noise machine will amplify the derogatory image to millions more. And the New Yorker of course will reap enormous publicity, clearly translating to increased sales and notoriety for the brand, and for corporate owner Conde Nast -- one of the largest and most powerful media companies in America.

But the publicity could very well backfire. Editor David Remnick and artist Barry Blitt's attempt at satire seems so arrogant and indulgent in its insensitivity, and so out of touch with political and media dynamics of tabloid TV and blogs, that it just might make a lot of people angry, including some subscribers. The cover turns the magazine into a potential Molotov cocktail, to be gleefully tossed by Fox News and the conservative blogs, into the already combustible tinderbox of race and Muslim stereotypes just below the surface of America's public discourse. (Remnick has since done an interview about his decision to run the cover.)"

Read the Full Article Here:

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/91355/

Racial rifts: Obama's candidacy a Rorschach test for nation's minorities by Angie Chuang/Guest Columnist, The Seattle Times

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:40:42 EDT

An intriguing look at the views of various minority groups on Obama...some views, seemingly, wholly dependent on generational perspective.

Angies Chuang writes:

"After Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed out, Barack Obama could finally say he was capturing the all-important Latino vote. In the first post-Hillary poll matching Obama against John McCain, 62 percent of NBC/Wall Street Journal's relatively small sampling of Hispanic voters threw their support behind Obama...Anecdotal evidence suggests Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are following suit, as ethnic newspapers run headlines noting Obama's childhood in Hawaii and his ties to Indonesia. But an uncomfortable thing happened on the way to the nomination."

Full Article Here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008053408_raceriffop16.html

When Satire Goes Haywire by Lynne Varner/Editorial Columnist, The Seattle Times

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:30:17 EDT

In response to the New Yorker cover, Lynne Varner gets it right. She writes:

"I feel sorry for the editors at The New Yorker. They tried to poke fun at the Great Unwashed and hit Obama instead. They thought they were preaching to the choir, but congregants aren't happy with the tune...The New Yorker's caricature and accompanying article, "The Politics of Fear," would have been strong cover for Obama. But it backfired, scattering buckshot everywhere, including all over the candidate."

Read the Full Article Here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008053412_lynne16.html

Outsourcing the Iraq War: Mercenary Recruiters Turn to Latin America by Eric Stoner, North American Congress on Latin America

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:06:29 EDT

An intriguing story in which everyone should have an interest!

Stoner writes:

"One of the first people to recognize the role that Latin America could play in the booming new mercenary industry was José Miguel Pizarro Ovalle, a former arms broker. Indeed, it was Pizarro who “opened the door” for these firms to recruit in the region, as José Luis Gómez del Prado, head of the United Nations Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, told Mother Jones magazine. A dual citizen of Chile and the United States, Pizarro served in the militaries of both countries and to this day defends the Pinochet dictatorship. After leaving the Marines as a translator for the U.S. Southern Command in 1999, Pizarro decided to cash in on his unique connections and began facilitating arms deals between Latin American militaries and U.S. manufacturers. Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, he set his eyes on a new lucrative business opportunity: the provision of Chileans to mercenary companies...In October 2003, Pizarro traveled to Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, to pitch the idea. Prince was receptive during their meeting and gave him the go-ahead. Pizarro returned immediately to Chile and placed a discreet ad in El Mercurio, the Santiago daily, looking for former military officers for “work abroad.” More than 1,000 applicants quickly responded, and by February 2004, Blackwater’s first batch of Chilean commandos, 77 of them, was on its way to Iraq."

Eric Stoner is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and Yahoo News. He recently served as a researcher on the revised, updated version of Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, 2008).

Full Article Here:

http://nacla.org/node/4805

It's Funny How Humor Is So Ticklish by Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:43:39 EDT

Confirming the feelings of many regarding the cover of The New Yorker, Kennicott writes: "Call it the attack of the Jonathan Swiftboaters. A New Yorker cover illustration, showing Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim fist-bumping his gun-toting wife, fell afoul of the humor police yesterday. To some, it was satire. To others, it was aid and comfort to the malice mongers who hide under the rocks of American politics. In the end, it was both."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071402445.html

In Virginia, Thawing a Map by E. J. Dionne, Jr., The Washington Post OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:30:00 EDT

Dionne writes:

"If the 2008 election is destined to break up a frozen electoral map, Virginia is one of the most likely venues for the great political thaw.

The state has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years, yet the trends are decidedly in the party's favor. Demographic change, often a driver of realignment, is occurring at a furious clip."

Full Article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071401847.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Mortgage Crisis Hits 2 Million U.S. Children by Caitlin G. Johnson, OneWorld US

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:16:15 EDT

By Caitlin G. Johnson, OneWorld US

NEW YORK, Jul 8 (OneWorld) - Children's advocates say the impacts of the housing and foreclosure crisis are being felt in K-12 classrooms and communities across the country.

Foreclosed © spankyblu1 (flickr)

The United States' current record-breaking rates of mortgage foreclosure will directly impact 2 million children this year and next, according to a recent report from First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy organization.

"Our homeless education liaisons are noticing increases in the number of students who are homeless, not just in high-poverty families but also those who have typically been middle class and facing this for the first time," says Patricia Popp, state coordinator for homeless education in Virginia.

Under federal law, school districts are required to have homeless education liaisons to identify and assist homeless students.

Full Article Here:

http://us.oneworld.net/article/mortgage-crisis-hits-2-million-us-children

Top Senator And 10 States Attack VA for Banning Voter Registration Drives by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:09:45 EDT

Rosenfeld writes: "The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), has called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to reverse its new policy barring voting rights groups, "partisan or otherwise," from holding voter registration drives on campuses where injured veterans are living or receiving medical care..."Veterans receiving care at VA facilities risked life and limb to defend the freedoms we enjoy, including the right to vote," Akaka said in a July 10 letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake. "Current VA policy makes it unnecessarily difficult for some veterans to participate in the electoral process." Akaka said the VA's most recent explanation for barring registration drives -- that they would violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities on official time or federal property -- made no sense."

Full Article:

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/91128/

US Environmental Agency Lowers Value of a Human Life by Elana Schor, The Guardian/UK

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:03:43 EDT

Schor writes: "It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1m under George Bush's administration.

The EPA's estimate of the "value of a statistical life" was $6.9m as of this May – down from $7.8m five years ago – according to an Associated Press study released today."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/11/usa.epa

The Kirkland, WA 4th of July Parade Obama Supporters!

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:37:02 EDT

Karen, Leslie and Yours Truly!

Karen, Venus and Leslie

One of the three Obama Dogs!

More photos to come soon...

My Position on FISA by Barack Obama, The Huffington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:30:36 EDT

From The Huffington Post on July 3rd, Senator Obama said: "I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise."

Read his full message here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barack-obama/my-position-on-fisa_b_110789.html

Real change happens off-line: Millennials need to be activists face to face by Sally Kohn, The Christian Science Monitor

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:04:11 EDT

Kohn's observations are correct: "To avoid eroding the values Millennials so appreciate, and to truly influence the world around them, they must transform their online activism into off-line communities and build an effective movement for change. From church basements to campus meetings to voters' doors, Millennials need to add face-to-face action to their innate sense of community."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0630/p09s01-coop.html

Bush's Parting Shots? by Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:34:39 EDT

Robinson states: "But if Bush is chastened by failure or troubled by doubt, he doesn't show it. He has said that he expects to be vindicated by history. The danger is that he will decide to give historians more fodder by taking care of unfinished business -- especially business that the next president might want no part of...The biggest question is whether Bush will do what John McCain, to the tune of an old Beach Boys hit, once jokingly suggested: "Bomb Iran, bomb bomb bomb."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/30/AR2008063001903.html

Obama's FISA Opportunity by Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown [Video & Transcript]

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:28:16 EDT

Olbermann offers up a FISA Opportunity to Obama. Do you agree?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25463360/opportunity

Oliver Stone and 'W.,' a story of President Bush by John Horn, LA Times

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:19:17 EDT

Oliver Stone's latest intriguing film, due to be released in October, is titled "W" -- a political/psychological background piece on our current president. I know we'll all be anxious to see how Stone reveals W's true nature!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-w29-2008jun29,0,4135766.story

Lack of money hobbling 'Republican attack machine' by Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:05:35 EDT

Thomma writes: "there's no 2008 equivalent to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent $22 million attacking Democrat John Kerry. Prominent groups and donors that played key roles in independent conservative 527 groups four years ago say they're sitting out this election. And while they've raised more than they did at this point four years ago, the independent pro-Republican groups still lag more than $50 million behind pro-Democratic groups... Why? Analysts and Republican insiders point to several reasons..."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/42490.html

Video: Bill Moyers Interviews Author of 'Slavery by Another Name'

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:59:12 EDT

A must-see PBS film, Traces of the Trade [documenting the triangular slave trade led by the DeWolfe family from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba], is highlighted here, along with Bill Moyers' interview with Slavery by Another Name author Douglas Blackmon. Don't miss this!

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

More Phony Myths by Maureen Dowd, NYT OpEd

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:44:46 EDT

Dowd 'hits the nail on the head' with this observation: "Conservatives love playing this little game, acting as if the “elite” Democratic candidates are not in touch with people like themselves, even though the guys doing the attacking — like Rove, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity — are wealthy and cosseted."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/opinion/25dowd.html?th&emc=th

A Government of Law, Not Fear By Stanley Kutler, Truthdig

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:37:27 EDT

Full Article Below:

A Government of Law, Not Fear

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080619_a_government_of_law_not_fear/Posted on Jun 19, 2008

By Stanley Kutler

The Constitution holds, albeit by a slender thread. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled unconstitutional a 2006 law barring enemy combatants held at Guantanamo from seeking writs of habeas corpus. For now, we are not under Chief Justice John Roberts’ or Justice Antonin Scalia’s constitution. Fear reigns in their dissent amid Cassandra-like threats that we are doomed unless we scrap our constitutional protections for the duration of that never-ending and nebulous “war on terror.”

Perhaps we will have a bit of relief from President George W. Bush’s fear-mongering, which has run through our political bloodstream for the past seven years.

Justice Anthony Kennedy categorically rejected the Bush administration’s defenses, saying they failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.” In words and ideas similar to those of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, Kennedy asserted that “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force in extraordinary times.” Scalia lamented that the ruling would “almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed,” and he added: “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.” Ironically, the justice who helped to override precedent and principle by handing George Bush the disputed election of 2000 railed against “judicial supremacy.”

The decision is most welcome, but also welcome is that a presidential candidate bluntly and eloquently has endorsed it and the principle of habeas corpus. No, not “Straight Talking” John McCain, who predictably pandered to his right-wing chorus and denounced the decision. “The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country,” former prisoner of war McCain said. He quoted red-meat sound bites from the chief justice’s dissent, and attacked “unaccountable judges” who would allow detainees to “flood” the courts.

The other candidate, Barack Obama, the former constitutional law teacher, knows his stuff, saying that the “state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process.” That, he flatly said, is “the essence of who we are.”

And the presumptive Democratic nominee had a little bit more history for his audience in Wayne, Pa.: “I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court. And that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”

He took nothing back in a more carefully prepared statement for his Web site. He praised the court’s protection of “our core values,” and noted it had rejected the Bush administration’s attempt to create a “legal black hole” in Guantanamo—a policy already endorsed by McCain. The Illinois senator boldly rejected Bush’s reliance on a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting our concepts of rule of law. Bush’s policy has yet to secure a conviction resulting from any terrorist act in the past seven years. We should remember that our legal system coped fairly and efficiently, entirely within the parameters of our rule of law, to gain convictions of the World Trade Center bombing perpetrators of 1993.

Obama voted against the Military Commissions Act two years ago. That law, which the Boumediene case overturned, was passed by a supine Congress, terrorized and at the mercy of Bush’s weapons of mass fear. Obama’s vote is a preface to his ringing endorsement of the Boumediene ruling. He has turned the administration’s position on its head, challenging Bush’s policy as “not tough on terrorism, and it undermines the very values that we are fighting to defend."

It would be foolhardy to predict that the court will now reinvigorate the panoply of civil liberties so twisted in the past seven years. At best, the Boumediene ruling offers a faint glimmer of hope. With the proper cases, the justices might decide to correct other constitutional travesties, such as torture, rendition and warrantless wiretaps. We can applaud the court’s majority and a scholarly presidential candidate who spoke so eloquently and affirmatively in defense of our “core values.” A rare political moment for our times.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, McCain’s close ally and sometime spokesman, has called for a constitutional amendment to keep the Supreme Court from conducting war. Ridiculous, if not ludicrous. What posturing! Meanwhile, right-wing blogs have marched in lock step, calling for McCain to make this one of his causes. Fine.

For now, the Supreme Court—well, at least a majority of it—has reminded us we have a government of laws, not men. And maybe this time, when we get around to debates or town meetings, perhaps Sens. McCain and Obama will engage each other—and us—on these vital matters of who and what we are. That would be nothing less than audacious.

Stanley Kutler is the author of “Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes” and numerous other writings on American constitutional law and the presidency.

AP photo / Brennan Linsley

The U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, includes this maximum-security lockup, where many detainees have been held without charge since 2002.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080619_a_government_of_law_not_fear/

John McCain's Chilling Project for America by Elliot Cohen, Truthdig

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:22:42 EDT

Cohen states: "John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. The credo of this group is “the end justifies the means,” and the end of establishing the United States as the world’s sole superpower justifies, in its estimation, anything from military control over the information on the Internet to the use of genocidal biological weapons. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080612_john_mccains_chilling_project_for_america/

Bill Moyers Journal: Racial Inequality, TruthOut

Edie "Hussein" M. Ph.D. — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:13:43 EDT

Full Article Below:

Racial Inequality

Thursday 19 June 2008

by: Bill Moyers Journal, t r u t h o u t | Programming Note

Airdate: Friday, June 20, 2008, at 9:00 p.m. EDT on PBS. (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html.)

This week, as many Americans celebrate "Juneteenth," a special day of recognition commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, Bill Moyers Journal examines racial inequality in America through the prisms of the legacy of slavery and the current socioeconomic landscape. Bill Moyers interviews Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, about his latest book, "Slavery by Another Name," which looks at an "age of neoslavery" that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. And Moyers gets perspective from historical and cultural sociologist Orlando Patterson and Glenn C. Loury, an economist and expert on race and social division.

http://www.truthout.org/article/bill-moyers-journal-racial-inequality