For My Federalist AncestorsBlog

Karl Rove comes to Alaska

Kaye — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:39:56 EDT

I'm reposting a blog from an Alaskan. His blog is mudflats.wordpress.com

Karl Rove Comes to Alaska… 12 09 2008

Les Gara and his entourage on Primary Night at Election Central in Anchorage.

Please give a big Mudflats welcome to our guest poster for the evening, Les Gara. Les is a Democratic State Representative from Anchorage. He’s also a former Assistant Attorney General (Exxon Valdez Litigation Section), and has been in office since 2003.

I took that photo of Les at the Primary Night festivities at the Egan Convention Center in downtown Anchorage. That’s him being interviewed for a local news cast. He had the best signs, I thought. You can only do so much with red, white, and blue.

Here’s Rep. Gara’s take on McCain’s spin and interference with the bi-partisan “Troopergate” Investigation.

Politicians are good at spin. The McCain camp has brought a whole new level of it to our small state - in what looks like an effort to show they can play the same Karl Rove-like political games that have haunted this country for the last 8 years. I like Governor Palin on a personal level. But I don’t like what the McCain campaign is doing to our state. I don’t like deception. And I don’t like politics as usual.

Alaskans are starting to see evidence of a Karl Rove-like effort to stonewall what started as a non-controversial, bi-partisan ”Troopergate” investigation. A little deception here. A few personal attacks there. And the kind of spin you see at an amusement park tilt-a-whirl station.

This investigation was started by a Republican-dominated Alaska Legislature to look into Governor Palin’s conduct in seeking the termination of a State Trooper, once married to the Governor’s sister, Trooper Michael Wooten. The McCain camp wants to stop it by saying it’s a “democratic” investigation. Apart from facts, and the reputations the McCain folks don’t mind destroying, there’s not a lot standing in the way of this strategy.

Until August 29 “Troopergate” was a small state investigation Governor Palin, and every Republican and Democrat in a Republican-led Legislature had agreed was appropriate. But things changed the day Governor Palin joined the McCain ticket. His handlers went ballistic that the Governor agreed to an investigation they now needed to stop.

I know Senator McCain is now running on a political platform of ”change.” Leave aside how he’ll fight to change what he’s voted to do to this country for the last 8 years. If you ask me, the only thing he’s changed so far is Governor Palin’s position - her decision to cooperate with this once-small investigation.

This is one of those cases where there’s a clear truth. It’s a clear truth - about a bi-partisan investigation - that I hope McCain’s operatives will ultimately fail at spinning into a “partisan” plot against his running mate.

To get their way, and prevent sworn testimony from leaking out on what I suspect was probably a minor breach by Governor Palin, McCain’s operatives have come to Alaska to add invective in a state where people generally get along. They’ve chosen to vilify: 1) one of the state’s most respected public officials, Senator Hollis French; 2) the state’s most respected law enforcement official, Walt Monegan; and 3) a highly respected former DA and Victims Rights advocate a legislative committee voted 12 - 0 to hire to conduct the investigation, Steve Branchflower.

It’s the ghost of Karl Rove. Say something untrue enough times - like that Al Qaida is training with Saddam Hussein’s help - and people will believe it. Not this time. I’m not sure if I mentioned a few important facts.

Did I mention that no one ever attacked the Troopergate investigation by Alaska’s Legislature - started long before Governor Palin was placed on McCain’s ticket - until August 29? That was the day Governor Palin joined the McCain bid for the White House.

Did I mention that before the McCain camp got involved, the Governor stated of the Legislative investigation: “That being the route they choose, so be it. I’m happy to comply, to cooperate.” (KTUU.com, July 24, 2008). She repeatedly stated she’d comply, and that it was the right thing to do.

Did I mention the personal attacks against our local public officials only started after Sen. McCain sent his flacks up to our small state on August 29? They came with a mission to make America believe a Republican-initiated investigation, started with a unanimous committee vote of 8 Republicans and 4 Democrats, was a “partisan” plot. That’s only a tough sell if people know the facts.

Did I mention they now claim the Legislature cannot legally proceed with an investigation into government misconduct (I thought Republicans didn’t like attorneys who made frivolous arguments), and that they are threatening to to go to court to stop it? The Governor’s attorneys started writing those letters on - you guessed it - August 29. Before then they agreed the investigation was proper.

Oh, and what about this. Last week the McCain camp put our Governor in a bizarre position. They told her to file an ethics complaint against herself! Yup, again after her VP nomination. Too weird? What’s behind this move? You guessed it. Lawyers.

To create the legal argument that the Legislature cannot investigate government misconduct, the McCain team has had her file a complaint against herself before something called the State Personnel Board. That’s a 3 member group of Republican Gubernatorial appointees - that, if it started this week, wouldn’t get an investigation done, and reported to the public, until after the November election. Convenient.

Hmmm. The Legislature has announced they’d have their investigation done - if witnesses would cooperate like they were until August 29 - by October 10. I can’t imagine why the McCain camp would prefer an investigation that doesn’t get finished until after November. Any ideas?

So what about the claim that this investigation is some sort of partisan plot against a Republican ticket? A legislative committee of 8 Republicans and 4 democrats asked former Assistant District Attorney Hollis French, a Democrat - to hire a legislative investigator in July. He did. He’s not doing the investigation. So the complaint that he’s a Democrat who supports Barack Obama is, well, weak. He’s a Democrat who supports Barack Obama, who was appointed before Governor Palin was a VP candidate. More importantly, he’s a Senator who has the confidence of a majority Republican Senate.

He once said to the press the results of the investigation are likely to be troubling. He shouldn’t have said that. But the Governor’s said it too. The newspapers have said it. We all know it. The public record already contains evidence that the Department of Public Safety was contacted roughly 20 times by Palin senior staff, and her husband Todd, about firing Trooper Wooten. The Governor has conceded that based on this evidence, the public could conclude the Department could have felt pressure from above to fire Trooper Wooten.

The investigator, Steve Branchflower, is a former DA and Office of Victims Rights head (a job he was appointed to by a Republican Legislature). He’s actually conducting the investigation. Attacking Senator French doesn’t really work if he’s not investigating the case, or making any findings. So the McCain folks have attacked Mr. Branchflower. And they’ve tried to stop him from issuing subpoenas to the witnesses now directed not to talk. Today the McCain folks suffered a setback. A bi-partisan committee of Republicans and Democrats authorized Mr. Branchflower to move ahead to subpoena those witnesses.

And for good measure - the McCain folks are attacking Walt Monegan - the Public Safety Commissioner Governor Palin fired. The Troopergate investigation involves claims that Monegan was fired for not agreeing to fire Trooper Wooten, the Governor’s brother in law involved in a very ugly custody dispute with the Governor’s sister.

I don’t begrudge the Governor for not liking her brother-in-law. I don’t really like him either, from what I’ve read. I do begrudge those who’d attack Commissioner Monegan, a quintessential public servant who’s worked for both Republican and Democratic heads on the state and local level.

These three public servants deserve better. What they’ve received so far, is a little dose of ugly Washington politics in a state where we don’t see that stuff too often.

I stood on the sidelines when this investigation started. When Governor Palin fired Commissioner Monegan, my advice was to end the flap and just hire him back. He does good work. He’s well respected. Unfortunately, my advice sometimes isn’t that good, and the Governor didn’t agree.

Then McCain’s staff of outsiders came to town. And they began to launch personal attacks on people I respect. They started proving that the same old politics that have caused dissatisfaction with Washington insiders these past 8 years are going to be the bread and butter of the McCain campaign.

So - here I am today. I support an Obama presidency because he shares a vision I believe in. I’ve publicly supported him since the race started last year. I also think Governor Palin originally did the right thing in agreeing to take some small lumps by proceeding with a legislative investigation Republicans and Democrats, and much of the public asked for.

But unfortunately Alaska is the bull’s eye in a national presidential race today. When told by the McCain folks that she needed to change her position, she did, as a loyal running mate. I understand that.

As an Alaskan I’m not really angry at our Governor for this mess. I do blame John McCain for the ugliness he’s brought to our state this week. His folks have come to my small state to attack my friends, and people I respect, for political gain. In my book, that’s not OK. We all mess up time to time. But this crosses the line.

In small states, like small towns, people who act like the McCain folks apologize. Until that happens, I’ll keep defending 3 public servants who deserve better.

Rebuild America

Kaye — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:23:32 EDT

The following is borrowed from Jon Taplin's Blog on Wordpress. Jonathan Taplin is a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

The following is a speech Professor Taplin wrote on his blog for Obama. I found it inspiring and wanted to share it with the rest of the community.

How can McCain be a change agent when his party created the mess the country is in? What has he done in the last eight years to stop running up the bills on your national credit card? He has supported George Bush’s tax cuts for millionaires, draining billions from the Treasury that could have been used to pay down your children’s debt. He has championed a War in Iraq that costs us $12 billion a month and for which you will be paying for years as we absorb the costs of caring for the tens of thousands of brave men and women who were maimed in that conflict and will live for years with prosthetic limbs and glass eyes. Think of where we might have spent that $2 trillion that might have improved the schools your children attend or the failing bridges in your towns. But John McCain has promised to continue George Bush’s War and George Bush’s tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. By that definition it would be insane to believe that McCain and Palin are going to change Washington.

I have said this is a national crisis. But I think you already know that. The respected pollster John Zogby recently reported that one quarter of you listening to me now are earning less than you once earned. Is this the American Dream–to go backwards? Is this the American dream to go from earning $19 an hour to earning $12 an hour? Joe Biden and I promise you that we are here to stop this 30 year Republican regime of decline. But not everyone has gone backward in the last eight years. The executives at Exxon Mobil who support John McCain have earned hundreds of millions. The stockholders of Halliburton like Dick Cheney have earned billions. McCain and Palin boast about how they are all for the free markets and against government regulation, but here’s what Professor Nouriel Roubini says about the pretend free market advocates like Bush and McCain.

But these laissez faire voodoo-economics zealots in charge of the USA have now caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the nastiest economic crisis in decades. So let them be shamed in public for their hypocrisy and zealotry that has caused so much financial and economic damage.

So I am going to ask you to join with Joe Biden and myself in a campaign to rebuild America. The Republicans have had their turn at the wheel and before they run the ship of state into the rocks, we ask you to give us control of the tiller. We know that some of the proposals we have made will be resisted by our own party as well. We cannot promise you that getting our country back on course will be easy. It will take real commitment from each of you and real sacrifice. For the last eight years the President has told you that your responsibility is to “go out and shop”. Well guess what? That fantasy is over if you elect us. For thirty years we have let our infrastructure crumble. Our bridges collapse, our schools are second rate, and even our broadband capacity is 16th in the world. We are going to embark on the most important national project since John Kennedy said we were going to the moon. We promise to make America the leader in Clean Tech, producing millions of new high paying jobs which will get our economy rolling again. And these new companies will attract capital and the best and brightest minds to our shores and at the same reduce our dependence on oil from the Arab and Russian state monopolies.

If you believe, like Joe and I do, that these issues matter, I ask you to join with us and Rebuild America.

McCAIN- THE SPEECH

Kaye — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:54:13 EDT

As we all know, Sen. McCain is not a charismatic person, particularly on camera. Otherwise, Bush would not have won their last Presidential competition. McCain doesn’t come off as the guy next door whom you want to invite to your backyard barbeque the way Bush did for his party. That’s unfortunate: McCain would have been a much better Commander-In-Chief. However, their appeals are vastly different.

How did he do?

I have to admit I don’t have a laptop so I couldn’t watch him on the TV while putting my online comments together. I kept running up and down the stairs, attempting to get his broadcast on my computer. Damn, I hate all the many different apps necessary to listen to and watch broadcast videos on a Mac!

Nevertheless, I have a few cogent comments:

First, Cindy McCain’s comments about Sarah Palin made Sarah sound like a redneck caricature rather than a real human being. As a female, I was quite offended by that characterization. She’s hardly a cartoon. She may not be my ideal for a VP based on her views, beliefs, and knowledge base, but she’s certainly no redneck cartoon.

Second, when John McCain talked about his domestic policy plans I got the distinct impression that he usurped his ideas from Barack Obama. Sure, they were packaged differently, but the essential message was the same. The problem is that McCain’s voting record in the Senate belies what he said tonight.

Third, the portion of his speech having to do with foreign affairs spoke of being strong and standing by our allies. The problem is that his own foreign policy position paper illuminates his ideology of vastly increasing the military (and military spending) and sending them everywhere in the world. His idea of a strong America is having American military forces deployed everywhere…in virtually every country. His position is not to use Foreign Service staff to discuss and negotiate and build relations with the people, but to expand the military to take on the many roles previously dedicated to the Foreign Service. Furthermore, when he spoke about Georgia, he failed to mention that Georgia started the conflict and that one of his main advisers is a lobbyist for the Georgian government.

So my conclusion?

I was not impressed either by his domestic policy agenda which seems stolen from Obama and repackaged for his audience or his foreign policy agenda. His foreign policies appear to be taken directly from Cold War “Reagan” politics regarding Russia (which today is definitely not the old Soviet Union ) and expanded to include Islamists who really are a major and definable threat. For example, McCain has advocated that Russia be excluded from the G8. Fareed Zakaria, internationally renowned foreign affairs specialist, author, and host of Sunday morning’s CNN’s GPS, explains very clearly why eliminating Russia’s G8 membership would be a major mistake.

One of McCain’s main foreign policy advisers, Ralph Peters, stated on C-SPAN Book Notes that the over-riding challenge of the 21st Century is radical Islamism. How many times have we heard McCain parrot those words? While I don’t doubt that radical Islamism potentially may be the greatest challenge we face in the 21st Century (reminder: the 21st century is still very young), my guess is that McCain has taken much of his ideology from that retired Marine Lt. Colonel and his other neo-con advisers, and added his own Cold War ideology. What everyone must remember about McCain is that, above and beyond everything else, McCain is a warrior. His real interest is not in fiscal matters or in making the country economically strong or in adding jobs for the middle class or in building new industries. His real interest is not in economics. His overriding interest is in foreign policy as it relates to the military. He is, above all else, still, foremost, a Naval Officer. Unlike Eisenhower when he presided in the White House, McCain sees a world dominated by the US…and in particular dominated by the US military.

My Dad was career Air Force. He flew bombers over Africa during WWII and was a life long Republican from Missouri. I suspect, were he still living, he would be appalled by McCain’s foreign policy plans and his position paper as posted on Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.org). Dad was a tough, very smart military guy.

Pardon me, but what?

Lastly, shortly after McCain began to speak, he praised Palin. The problem with what he said was that it sounded like he was running for VP and she the President.

Huh?

I guess she’s going to be responsible for all domestic policy issues while McCain sticks to foreign policy/military issues. But what is her real background in domestic policy? Does she know how to negotiate with a Chinese government that has a 5,000 year history of winning on trade policies? Does she know enough about green technology to advocate for its growth, investment credits, and R & D tax credits? Does she know enough to really lend intelligence to America’s new growth and manufacturing industries that could put all manufacturing workers back to work? Does she know enough to discuss long term energy policies with Silicon Valley CEO’s who are demanding a long term, modern, upgraded Marshall-style, Manhattan-project energy plan. Does she know enough about fiscal policies to discuss finances with Wall Street and the Fed?

So why should I vote for him?

All in all, I thought his speech lacked a whole lot in originality. In researching his life and political ideas, though, I’ve reached the conclusion that McCain does not hold many original views on US economics and that his foreign policy views are defined by the Cold War and his military experience. At heart, McCain is a Naval Officer…that is what defines and interests him.

But is that enough to become the next President of the United States?

An Alaskan's view of Palin

Kaye — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:47:13 EDT

I don't normally link to another blog, but this time I can't help myself. Even after researching Sarah Palin all afternoon, there's a whole lot of information that is just not available about her. But this blog from a fellow Alaskan provides so much non-published information about her background and the political environment in Alaska. http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/what-is-mccain-thinking-one-alaskans-perspective/

McCain chooses Palin as VP

Kaye — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:38:52 EDT

When I woke up this morning and learned of McCain choosing Palin, my first thought was, "Who?" It took me few minutes, and a news report, for me to remember who she is. Most Americans will feel the same.

Then, I became insulted. Choosing Palin is a cynical ploy on the part of the Republicans to sway women to voting for McCain. No other reason.

Do the Republicans and McCain really think that women are that stupid? Do they really think that women will vote for him just because he put a female on the slate?

Obviously, he and the Republicans have no respect for women and their intelligence...and no understanding of women's issues.

First day of the Democratic Convention

Kaye — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:07:43 EDT

Today I watched the first day Democratic Convention in Denver. While CNN and MSNBC spent much of the day and evening blustering with analysis, C-SPAN televised all speeches, without word-by-word, meaningless analysis or commercials. Hail C-SPAN!

I was particularly taken by long time Republican Jim Leach's as well as by Michelle Obama’s speech.

Jim Leach is a retired 20-year Republican veteran of the House and still a Republican. But he spoke at the Democratic Convention to give his support to Barack Obama because, in his own words, this country is not only going in the wrong direction under the current Republican administration, but that the Republican party itself has gone in the wrong direction. His party, he said, has lost its way, and Obama was the best presidential hope for this country at this juncture in our history. Obama, he said, would bring this country back to his party's original values which it has lost over the course of the last eight years or more. He spoke the indictment that many true Republicans fear to speak but think nonetheless.

What is especially significant about Leach’s speech to an all-Democratic convention is that he confirmed for the viewing audience that even long time Republicans see that this country is derailed...and that McCain will not get it back on track.

The major networks failed to cover his speech, so busy were they in talking and analyzing amongst themselves, that they failed to recognize the significance of who he is and what he said. When a major career Republican endorses a Democratic Presidential candidate because he believes that opposition party candidate embodies the best views, beliefs, character, ability, knowledge, and intellectual substance, you have to know that something is significantly wrong with the Republican candidate and the Republican Party as a whole as well as its policies.

Michelle Obama’s speech too affected me. I’m not one who tears easily, but I found myself emotionally affected by her speech. She spoke to my heart as well as my mind. She spoke to my own travails and triumphs as well as those of my brothers and parents. She spoke to me of the all I thought and believed as an American who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s. I recognized myself and my family in her middle class, blue-collar story, even though I came from a white, middle class, military family. Regardless of the exterior, even racial, differences, I saw myself and my family in her stories. I saw my own parents hopes that my brothers and I would achieve college educations and make more of our lives than they had. I also saw my hopes and my fears and my desires for a better world...for a better America. An America where not only the ultra rich succeed, but an America in which everyone, even the most modest or poor, can make his or her dreams come true. An America where any boy or girl can dream of becoming President and succeed. That is the America in which I became an adult. That is the America I again long for and dream about.

As I watched the audience respond to her, I saw more than one person sniff back or wipe tears from their cheeks. I wasn’t alone in that emotional lump in my chest. However, it wasn’t just what she said, it was how she said it: her belief in what she said. I don’t think anyone could have watched her give her opening day, keynote speech without being affected…and believing that Barack Obama is the best candidate for the office of President. If they did watch unaffected, they must have stones in place of hearts.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow...and what comes next!

McCain and the Republicans today

Kaye — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:14:43 EDT

Clipped from Frank Rich, on 8/23:

Economic anxiety is the new terrorism. This is why the most relevant snapshot of voters’ concerns was not to be found at Saddleback Church but at the Olympics last Saturday. For all the political press’s hype, only some 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the Rev. Rick Warren’s show in Orange County, Calif. Roughly three-quarters of them were over 50 — in other words, the McCain base. By contrast, a diverse audience of 32 million Americans tuned in to Beijing that night to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal.

This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country. But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

From Conservative Andrew Sullivan, on 8/23:

McCain is a far more mercurial, emotional and volatile character than Obama. Despite being a generation older - he will be 72 on Friday - he is temperamentally much younger than his rival. There is a lot of Churchill in McCain: the melodrama and the sanctimony, the mawkishness and the sincerity, the big heart and sometimes faulty judgment.

And on 8/24:

"I am grateful for the fact that I have a wonderful life," McCain said. "I spent some years without a kitchen table, without a chair, and I know what it's like to be blessed by the opportunities of this great nation."

Jeez. This is clinical. He's responding to middle class economic anxiety by referring to the Hanoi Hilton?

Clipped from Tom Friedman, on 7/30:

Sometimes in politics, particularly in campaigns, parties get wedded to slogans — so wedded that no one stops to think about what they’re saying, whether the reality has changed and what the implications would be if their bumper stickers really guided policy when they took office. Today, we have two examples of that: “Democrats for Afghanistan” and “Republicans for offshore drilling.”

Republicans have become so obsessed with the notion that we can drill our way out of our current energy crisis that re-opening our coastal waters to offshore drilling has become their answer for every energy question.

Let’s face it, everyone, the U.S. has serious economic problems, from a deficit in the billions that we will end up leaving to our grandchildren, to a middle class that is shrinking into poverty and obscurity. By all independent sources, the middle class is not succeeding under current economic policies as put forth by the Republicans. The middle class is, in fact, losing its economic power as wages have stabilized or regressed during the last eight years. However, the rich have grown even richer.

Phil Graham may be right when he said Americans are whiners—I remember a time when a 6% unemployment rate was considered normal—but try telling that to someone who’s lost his job or cannot groceries. Those people are not whining; they’re crying!

Don’t let anyone fool you. We are in economic class warfare. And the Republicans, backed by their wealthy contributors and corporate sponsors, intend to keep you fooled, blind and dumb.

During the Irish Potato Famine, the English Parliament discussed providing aid to the starving and dying Irish. But the wealthy MPs argued against it, stating that it might harm the English budget, or increase the costs to English business, or at the very least take money out of English pockets. In other words, those wealthy MPs cared more for their wealth than for the starving Irish. Let the Irish starve was their unspoken mantra. Well, today, we have the same kind of political rhetoric, only couched in more modern, socially acceptable terms. But it is, nonetheless, the same: take care of the wealthy and ignore the ones who are suffering or falling behind the wage gap.

Even our federal government has been affected by neo-conservative economic policies: don’t hire, just outsource! According to Thomas Frank, the author of “What’s the matter with Kansas”, that while the budget has grown over the last eight years to pay for the various government programs and operations, government staff has not grown. He states that the so-called Conservatives in the Administration have just outsourced those jobs to corporations—for big bucks. While the root of this idea goes back to Reagan and Nixon, it blossomed into a fully-grown tree under this Administration.

I am constantly amazed by the numbers of middle class citizens who continue to fall for the “elitist” propaganda put out by the Republican Party. To anyone who believes the Republicans still represent the beliefs of the party of Lincoln or Jefferson, I suggest you look again. Ever since segregation became enforced in the South, the tenets of the Republican Party have changed. Being a Republican no longer means a small, effective government; keeping the government out of one’s home (and bedroom) and communications; securing the country against foreign and domestic harm (including self created environmental harm); and growing economic and educational opportunities of everyone. Neither Jefferson nor Lincoln would recognize the Republican Party today…because it is no longer their party! It does not speak to their views or beliefs.

It has been co-opted by the wealthy and the neo-cons. It is engaged in maintaining a wealthy, elite oligarchy; creating an American (U.S.) empire; eliminating any and all domestic opposition to their authority; destroying many of the Constitutional guarantees that give average citizens any rights (civil rights) that do not suit their particular desires or wants; and maintaining a tax code that permits them to avoid paying any taxes. One of the greatest proponents of this kind of new Republican philosophy is multi-millionaire Steven Forbes, who inherited his father’s publishing business, Forbes Magazine. Ever since Steven took over the Magazine, he’s been pushing the government and the Republican Party towards more economic and social benefits for wealthy elitists.

The neo-cons fit right in with those oligarchical elitists. Neo-cons are disenchanted liberals who seek an Imperial United States. And an Imperial U.S. means more money…more profit…for U.S. corporations and the wealthy. These two groups don’t care about average U.S. citizens or how its citizens are fairing economically. What they care about is world domination--economic and political. They’re perfect bed-partners.

So, what they’ve done is to combine their “wares” to convince average Americans that they are right. They developed a highly researched, rhetorically convincing public relations campaign to convince Americans that they are right.

When anyone dared to say there is a class warfare going on against the middle class, that oligarchical-neo-con coalition immediately screamed, “No so.” They retorted that it is all in our collective imaginations. They said it was only free market forces at work. Funny thing is that a free market no longer exists in this country as of this date. Where is true industry competition? It was swallowed up in M & Es. How many industry competitors can you name within any industry sector? Two? Three? Where is free market competition when only two or three competitors exist within any industry sector? Or they say it’s the only way to stay competitive in a world economy. Of course, they don’t mention that their senior execs are making 2 to 300 percent more than their average worker, or that those differentials outstrip any wage difference percentages prior to the 80s.

Why do we have trade agreements which permit tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs? Why do we continue to negotiate trade agreements that penalize American workers and degrade the environment? Why do we agree with trade agreements that agree to import quotes and taxes of our imports but not of theirs? Is this kind of policy meant to boost the wages and opportunities of average American workers? Or is it meant to boost the income of the elitist oligarchs who have politicians slavering at their doors, willing to trade not only their consciences but their political power for financial benefits?

The American middle class, the largest voting block in the country, has been asleep at the wheels. They’ve allowed themselves to be successively misled by parochial issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with their economic priorities or their family’s welfare. The last two Rove-led campaigns are perfect examples of this premise. Yet, far too many in the middle class are setting themselves up for the same kind of diversions and misleading statements that ending up taking away their jobs, decreasing their wages, and, essentially, told them, “Tough luck! Gee, I’m sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do.”

All the while, those same politicians who had fallen into bed with elite American oligarchs were counting the dollar bills, since their last election, that they continually accumulated from those oligarchs for their next election cycle. And more than a few used their political office to become wealthy: case in point, Denny Hastert. Here was a guy who was a high school gym teacher before going to the House of Representatives. When he retired from the House, he was a millionaire. He didn’t make his millions from his salary; he made it through influence pedaling and self-aggrandizing earmarks. Did he care about the middle class while he enriching himself? I leave it to you to decide.

The new Republican Party, sponsored by elitist oligarchs, loudly declares any Democrat with a college education is an elitist. I say they’re wrong. I say they are the elitists. After all, for the most part, they are the only ones who can afford the Ivy League schools, gaining entrance for their middling to average children when greatly intellectually superior students cannot gain entrance. They are the ones who can purchase and maintain numerous multi-million dollar homes when the rest of the country is having trouble hanging onto one home…or even purchasing one. They are the ones who diamond-studded lives with their self-indulgent consumerism. They are the ones who have the resources to claim the many income deductions on their taxes that the average person cannot afford.

What has the average American got: Debt. Fear of the future. Envying the Lives of the Rich and Famous.

Is this the country Jefferson spoke and wrote of? Is this the Republican Party legacy that Lincoln would be proud of?

Please don’t tell me that McCain is better for this country than his opponent. He’s voted almost in lock step with an Administration that has ripped the middle class apart and planned an Imperial America, regardless of how many young American (unimportant, non-elitist family) lives were lost in the effort. Even when he had the chance to do what was right for non-wealthy Americans, in so many areas, he chose not to do so. He is still a man fighting the Cold war and cannot get past his perception that the U.S. lost in Vietnam. He is a man who will lead this country into innumerable wars to prove American superiority. At the same time, he will permit ultra-rich elitists to destroy the rest of us for their own economic gain. That is the devil’s bargain McCain has made to secure his ideology of a supreme United States…to relieve his conscience of Vietnam.

Energy policy - McCain v Obama

Kaye — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:36:38 EDT

I've not kept track of McCain's Senate proposals of the last year. When looking at this voting record over the last two years, it's a bit blank. Mostly NV because he was out on the road campaigning. (I'm not faulting him the way many far right wing commentators fault Obama for the same thing. Just stating the facts.)

So, based on what McCain has said this summer, he's changed his position on drilling. But he's not said anything about the already 78 million acres of leases that have not been explored or drilled on. Nor has he commented on the fact that the oil industry says it doesn't have enough equipment to drill on what they do hold.

You see here is where I'm having trouble with this whole plan to lease more territory:

--The industry trade organization spokesmen say the industry didn't explore and drill earlier because oil prices were too low. It was cheaper to import than to drill domestically.

--That all oil, from whatever source, basically goes into one big barrel and is distributed to whatever country is willing to pay the price. So, for example, Alaskan oil is shipping to China.

--The industry needs more leases even though they've not explored or drilled on their existing leases.

--The industry doesn't have enough equipment to expand their exploration and drilling.

Then, the Republicans refuse to okay the idea of forcing the industry into exploring on existing leases before getting any new leases (the use it or lose it idea) that would gain Democratic support for opening up additional leasing areas. The Republicans, too, refuse to support tax breaks emerging new energy sources. No tax breaks for R & D, etc. Yet, they voted to continue the tax breaks for oil companies. Like Exxon-Mobil needs more money!!!!!

It seems to me that we grant welfare to the wealthy while telling the non-wealthy that we're free enterprise.

As a country we need to invest in alternative sources of energy. Staying on fossil-based fuels is a losing proposition. A few days ago, the leading CEOs of Silicon Valley called on the government for a "Marshall style" plan on energy. These guys aren't dumb. Nor are they career politicians, seeking favor with their base. They're concerned with economics and their businesses. If we don't develop alternative sources of energy, their companies are going to be dramatically hurt for obvious reasons.

By the way, a small Silicon Valley company has developed a way to create usable oil from non-toxic e. coli. Imagine how much more creativity could be unleashed in this country if little firms like these were helped, instead of just helping the very rich oil companies?

In the short term, we do need more domestic oil production--which must stay here in the U.S., regardless of where the oil companies want to ship it--because so many of our energy plants and most of our cars only consume oil. But we have to remember that every expert says that from the day drilling begins to the day a barrel of oil ships, it will take 10 years. So, there is no immediate solution for our energy woes. However, if we use those 10 years to also invest in alternative energy, by the time those ten years are up, we could be very close to ending our oil addiction.

Right now, so much of this argument is "either - or". It should be both. But a realistic, honest, non-partisan discussion of "both." I've not seen Sen. McCain push his party towards developing both. His current position appears to be the party line.

Obama, on the other hand, has talked a great deal about developing alternative energy sources, upgrading our national electrical grid (which SV CEOs enthusiastically support), and drilling first on existing leases for oil, expanding leasing for natural gas, and working with the auto companies to not only increase cafe standards but to develop autos that don't use oil.

What is democracy?

Kaye — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:23:40 EDT

Recently I was asked what I thought about democracy and would I die for it. It took me a while to consider what I thought democaracy meant and the struggles of our ancestories to acheive this great nation. Aflter much thought, I decided on this:

Democracy is an elusive concept. It means many things to many people in today’s world.

But let’s go back to our founding fathers. In developing their concept for this new country, they took first Anglo-Saxon law (http://www.regia.org/law.htm), then most notably the Magna Carta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta) and English Common Law. These were the concepts most common to our founding fathers. Next they added ideas found in the Humanism concepts that had swept throughout Europe from the late 1400s through the 1600s including religion as a choice of conscious rather than a state dictated mandate. Then, as a surprise to many U.S. citizens today, they added many of the concepts from the Iroquois Confederation.

Let’s start with the Magna Carta. In 1215, the English barons rose up against King John, demanding their rights to be heard and be part of decision-making process. In their words, the King was not above the law and did not have unlimited powers. That agreement primarily took its values from earlier Anglo-Saxon law, adding the legal requirement that no King was above the law and that the Barons were to be allowed the right of dissent/discussion of any King’s policies. Anglo-Saxon law (http://www.regia.org/law.htm) had previously given all people, from whatever class, the right to discuss and dissent any policy of the King. King John’s barons established that right in law with the Magna Carta.

Thus the beginning of the modern Parliament, made up of two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Lords is equivalent to our modern Senate while the Commons is equivalent to the House of Representatives. But within that framework was the embedded idea that any free person could sue the government, even the King, for redress of rights.

Our own founding fathers were highly affected by English Parliamentary and Common Law. This was the legal system into which they had grown and developed. Added to those principles of English Parliamentary and Common Law were the principles of Humanism. Humanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism) swept throughout Europe, beginning probably in the late 13th Century. By the time Humanism arrived in England, the 15th Century had arrived. Humanism can be considered the process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. This kind of thinking greatly affected our founding fathers, particularly where law and religion were concerned.

Next came the concepts of the Iroquois Confederation (http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CULAMRCA/IRLEAGUE.HTM) which in many ways mimicked English Common Law but expanded the law to include groups not previously considered in English law, including the rights of females which were largely ignored by the Constitutional committee (see the letters of Abigail Adams).

All of these concepts and ideas led to our Constitution…a Constitution that upheld the rule of law, the right of dissent, and the rights of all individuals to be heard in a court of law (habeas corpus).

Our founding fathers were all aware of and learned in these ideas as they were all highly educated (most college educated) men of their time. Together they pounded out an idea of Democracy that has yet to be duplicated in any other country. To them, democracy was more than the ability to vote, it was an ideal. An ideal founded on the rights of each and every man to determine his own future and that no government entity has the right to deprive him of his legal self-conscious (i.e. self aware) liberty.

So, when we speak of democracy today, we must be aware of the many great decisions and concepts of the past to which we owe our idea of democracy. We need to understand what it means.

NY Times 2007 Article on Sen. Obama

Kaye — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:11:48 EDT

As most of us across this country know, we are short on facts to support our claim of Senator Obama's ability to work in a bipatisan setting to accomplish major goals and of his forsight and knowledge that will lead our country forward. Short on the facts to support our claim that Obama is the better candidate. Having listened closely to everything he has said, we all know he has the intelligence to move our country forward, but we need to be able to counter arguments about his experience and abilities which the McCain campaign and the Republican party will be generating ad infinitum until election day.

We need the ammunition to support the view that Obama has the intellect, ability and pragmatism to work towards a goal while making others feel their opinions are important and their ideas are valued as opposed to the strict, cowboy [...you're either with us or against us and thus our enemy] ideology of the Bush Admin.

The following is an article I discovered on another web site. It's from the NY Times in 2007. Like most of us outside of the NY area, I had not seen this article. While not everything in this article seemingly favors Sen. Obama, we need to remember that Illinois politics is probably the toughest proving ground in the country of any politician. In other words, if you can make it in Illinois you can make it anywhere. Illinois politics is governed by hard driven political machines, a la Tamminy Hall. Yet, Obama navigated his way through the Illinois political machinery to accomplish major state goals and win his party's nomination for the US Senate, without any corruption smears on his reputation.

Having lived in Chicago prior to and during Sen. Obama's run for the US Senate, when each and every week it seemed yet another Illinois politician was being indicted or investigated for political corruption, I believe this is an important report on Obama. It goes to show how he works across the aisle to accomplish goals, his pragmatism--rather than his Bushian dogmatism, and how he seeks to influence people towards his views. And he did it honorably.

Yes, he is a smart, collaborative, astute, pragmatic politician. But after eight years of Bush, it's about time we had someone in the White House who knows how to get things done; to lead the country forward out of our decline into third world status; and to regain our pre-eminent status among the world's nations.

By JANNY SCOTT

There was something improbable about the new guy from Chicago via Honolulu and Jakarta, Indonesia, the one with the Harvard law degree and the job teaching constitutional law, turning up in Springfield, Ill., in January 1997 among the housewives, ex-mayors and occasional soybean farmer serving in the State Senate.

The new senator, Barack Obama, was a progressive Democrat in a time of tight Republican control. He was a former community organizer in a place where power is famously held by a few. He was a neophyte promising reform in a culture that a University of Illinois political studies professor describes as “really tough and, frankly, still quite corrupt.”

“One of my first comments to Barack was, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ ” said Denny Jacobs, a former senator and self-described “backroom politician, not one of those do-gooders that stands up front and says we got to make changes.”

Senator Obama’s answer? “He looked at me sort of strange.”

Mr. Obama did not bring revolution to Springfield in his eight years in the Senate, the longest chapter in his short public life. But he turned out to be practical and shrewd, a politician capable of playing hardball to win election (he squeezed every opponent out of his first race), a legislator with a sharp eye for an opportunity, a strategist willing to compromise to accomplish things.

He positioned himself early on as a protégé of the powerful Democratic leader, Senator Emil Jones, a beneficiary of the Chicago political machine. He courted collaboration with Republicans. He endured hazing from a few black colleagues, played poker with lobbyists, studiously took up golf. (“An awful lot happens on the golf course,” a friend, Jean Rudd, says he told her.)

By the time he left Springfield in 2004, he had built not only the connections necessary to win election to the United States Senate but a record not inconsistent with his lofty rhetoric of consensus building and bipartisanship.

“He came with a huge dose of practicality,” said Paul L. Williams, a lobbyist in Springfield and former state representative who is a supporter of Mr. Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Williams characterized Mr. Obama’s attitude as, “O.K., that makes sense and sounds great, as I’d like to go to the moon, but right now I’ve only got enough gas to go this far.”

With the assistance of Senator Jones, Mr. Obama helped deliver what is said to have been the first significant campaign finance reform law in Illinois in 25 years. He brought law enforcement groups around to back legislation requiring that homicide interrogations be taped and helped bring about passage of the state’s first racial-profiling law. He was a chief sponsor of a law enhancing tax credits for the working poor, played a central role in negotiations over welfare reform and successfully pushed for increasing child care subsidies.

“I learned that if you’re willing to listen to people, it’s possible to bridge a lot of the differences that dominate the national political debate,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on Friday. “I pretty quickly got to form relationships with Republicans, with individuals from rural parts of the state, and we had a lot in common.”

Not everyone was impressed, at least initially. His “pedigree,” as Mr. Jones calls it with a chuckle, evoked some skepticism. Two black, Democratic state senators from Chicago, Donne E. Trotter and Rickey R. Hendon, who both now say they are Obama supporters, caricatured him as a privileged, know-it-all greenhorn. At times, they seemed to call into question his black credentials, foreshadowing complaints from some African-Americans today that Mr. Obama is “not black enough” because of his biracial heritage and his class.

“We could barely have meetings in caucus because Donne and Rickey would give him hell,” said State Senator Kimberly A. Lightford, a Democrat and former chairwoman of the Senate’s black caucus. “Donne would be, ‘Just because you’re from Harvard, you think you know everything.’ Barack was like the new kid on the block. He was handsome and he was mild mannered and he was well liked. Sometimes there was a little ‘Who’s this? He coming here, he don’t know anything.’ ”

In a Hurry?

His critics say Mr. Obama could have accomplished much more if he had been in less of a hurry to leave the Statehouse behind. Steven J. Rauschenberger, a longtime Republican senator who stepped down this year, said: “He is a very bright but very ambitious person who has always had his eyes on the prize, and it wasn’t Springfield. If he deserves to be president, it is not because he was a great legislator.”

Within three years of his arrival, Mr. Obama ran for Congress, a race he lost. When the Democrats took control of the State Senate in 2003 — and Mr. Jones replaced James Philip, known as Pate, a retired Pepperidge Farm district manager who served as president of the Senate — Mr. Obama made his next move.

“He said to me, ‘You’re now the Senate president,’ ” Mr. Jones recalled. “ ‘You have a lot of power.’ I said, ‘I do?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Tell me what kind of power I have.’ He said, ‘You have the power to make a U.S. senator.’ I said, ‘I do?’ He said, ‘You do.’ I said, ‘If I’ve got that kind of power, do you know of anyone that I can make?’ He said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ ”

The route that had brought Mr. Obama to Springfield was far from typical. Born in Hawaii and raised for a while in Indonesia, he had worked as a community organizer in Chicago after graduating from Columbia College in 1983. Returning from Harvard to practice law and later teach at the University of Chicago, he had run a voter registration drive in the 1992 election.

Three years later, a congressman from the South Side of Chicago was convicted of having sex with a minor. A Democratic state senator from his district, Alice L. Palmer, decided to run for the seat. Carol Anne Harwell, Mr. Obama’s first campaign manager, said Ms. Palmer invited Mr. Obama, then 35, to run for her seat.

But after losing in the primary, Ms. Palmer had second thoughts. A delegation of her supporters asked Mr. Obama to step aside. He not only declined, but his campaign staff challenged the signatures on Ms. Palmer’s campaign petitions and kept her off the ballot. It was nothing personal: They did the same thing to every other Democrat in the race.

“He knocked off the incumbent, so that right there gave him some notoriety,” said Ron Davis, who served as Mr. Obama’s precinct coordinator. “And he ran unopposed — which for a rookie is unheard of.”

He added, “Barack is a quick learner.”

At the time, Mr. Obama said he was running to mobilize people to work for change. He wanted to apply techniques of community organizing to elected office. In a 1995 profile in The Chicago Reader, he said, “What if a politician were to see his job as an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?”

But Springfield was not ideally suited for such an approach. Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 37 to 32 in the Senate when Mr. Obama arrived. Power resided almost exclusively with the “Four Tops” — the Senate president, the House speaker and the minority leaders in each chamber. They controlled committee assignments, the legislative agenda, the staff. They even disbursed campaign money.

“It’s power politics, and it’s politics as a business, and it’s winning and control,” said Kent Redfield, the political studies professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “The mind-set is, it is not the public’s business. That’s part of the culture: It’s about the politicians, and the politicians own the company.”

Asked why he ran for the Senate in a state where rank-and-file lawmakers have been called “mushrooms” (because they are kept in the dark and fed, uh, manure), Mr. Obama said: “Part of it was that the seat opened up. I was living in the district, and the state legislature was a part-time position. It allowed me to get my feet wet in politics and test out whether I could get something done.”

Forming Relationships

From his days as an organizer, Mr. Obama already knew the Democratic leader, Mr. Jones, who had come up through the Democratic organization in Chicago. He had helped Mr. Obama’s group acquire state money for a dropout prevention program that still operates today.

“Well, when he came here, first got elected, he came to me,” Mr. Jones said, ensconced in his corner office in the Statehouse, his head wreathed in a swirl of cigarette smoke. “And he said to me, ‘You know me, you know me quite well.’ He said: ‘You know I like to work hard. So feel free in giving me any tough assignments and everything.’ I said, ‘Good.’ ”

One of the first was campaign finance reform. Illinois had one of the least regulated campaign finance systems in the country and a history of corruption. Paul Simon, the former United States senator, was running a public policy institute at Southern Illinois University and asked each of the four legislative leaders to name a trusted lawmaker to work on a bipartisan ethics bill.

Mr. Jones recalls receiving a call from Abner J. Mikva, a former Chicago congressman, federal judge and friend of Mr. Simon. Judge Mikva, who had once tried to hire Mr. Obama as a law clerk, suggested him for the job. Mr. Jones says he knew that the new senator was hard-working and bright and that few others would want the assignment.

“He caught pure hell,” Mr. Jones said of Mr. Obama. “I actually felt sorry for him at times.”

The job required negotiating across party lines to come up with reform proposals, then presenting them to the Democratic caucus. Senator Kirk Dillard, the Republican Senate president’s appointee, said, “Barack was literally hooted and catcalled in his caucus.” On the Senate floor, Mr. Dillard said, “They would bark their displeasure at me, and then they’d unload on Obama.”

Mr. Obama entered the discussions favoring contribution limits, said Mike Lawrence, now director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. But he realized they had no chance of passing. So the legislation, passed in 1998, banned most gifts by lobbyists, prohibited spending campaign money for legislators’ personal use and required electronic filing of campaign disclosure reports.

“I know he wanted to limit contributions by corporations or labor unions, and he certainly wanted to stop the transfers of huge amounts of money from the four legislative caucus leaders into rank-and-file members’ campaigns,” Mr. Dillard said. “But he knew that would never happen. So he got off that kick and thought disclosure was a more practical way to shine sunlight on what sometimes are unsavory practices.”

The disclosure requirement “revolutionized Illinois’s system,” said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. By giving journalists immediate access to a database of expenditures and contributions, it transformed political reporting. It also, she said, “put Senator Obama on a launching pad and put the mantle of ethics legislator on his crown.”

His role, though, did not endear Mr. Obama to everyone.

Racial Friction Early On

By many accounts, there was already friction between him and Mr. Hendon, whose West Side Chicago district is among the poorest in the state, and Mr. Trotter. When Mr. Trotter and Mr. Obama both ran for Congress two years later — unsuccessfully, it turned out — Mr. Trotter told a reporter that Mr. Obama was viewed in part as “the white man in blackface in our community.”

Mr. Dillard said, “I remember Rickey chiding Obama that, ‘What do you know, Barack? You grew up in Hawaii and you live in Hyde Park. What do you know about the street?’ To which Obama shot back: ‘I know a lot. I didn’t exactly have a rosy childhood. I’m a street organizer by profession and a lot of my area, once you get outside the University of Chicago neighborhoods, is just as tough as your West Side, Rickey.’ ”

In an interview, Mr. Trotter said Mr. Obama had arrived “wanting to change things immediately,” as though he intended “to straighten out all these folks because they’re crooks.” But Mr. Trotter credited Mr. Obama with later “trying to make himself more regular” and “taking himself out of his cocoon, his comfort zone” and “not just pontificating through the press.”

Mr. Hendon, who says he is writing a book on electoral politics called “Backstabbers,” said ethics reform would have passed with or without Mr. Obama because of scandals that preceded it. He said the sponsors of ethics bills tended to be “wealthy kind of people, the same kind of people who vote against pay raises, who don’t need $5,000 a year. Whereas senators like me from poorer communities, we could use that $5,000.”

Mr. Hendon praised Mr. Obama, however, for later winning passage of what some in Springfield called “the driving-while-black bill,” which required the police to collect data on the race of drivers they stopped as a way to monitor racial profiling. Law enforcement groups had repeatedly blocked earlier versions while the Republicans were in control; when the Democrats took over, Mr. Obama brokered a compromise between the police groups and the A.C.L.U.

Mr. Hendon, sponsor of a previous bill, said Mr. Obama had “made some compromises that other members of the black caucus just weren’t willing to bend on” — perhaps, he said, because Senator Obama had never been abused by the police. But he added, “I’m not saying he gave up too much. In hindsight, it was best to go ahead with the weaker version because a lot of police attitudes changed when we passed it.”

Mr. Obama worked hard at building connections. Aside from taking up golf he joined a weekly poker game. One lobbyist said Mr. Obama played poker well, but “with more skill than luck,” adding, “It’s certainly not instinctive with him; it’s cerebral.”

In Springfield, Mr. Obama said, he learned early “that forming relationships a lot of times was more important than having all the policy talking points in your arsenal. That most of the time people at the state level — and in the U.S. Senate — are moved as much by whether or not they trust you and whether or not they think your values are sound as they are by graphs and charts and numbers on a page.”

Many of those relationships have proved helpful since. As Mr. Jones tells it, when Mr. Obama asked him to support his run for the United States Senate, the younger man had already figured out that the Senate president’s early backing could “checkmate” the mayor, the governor and organized labor.

Senator Terry Link, a forklift business owner who golfed and played poker with Mr. Obama, also provided assistance. Chairman of the Lake County Democratic organization, he informed the group that it would be backing the long shot, Mr. Obama, in the Senate primary.

“They all thought I’d lost my marbles,” said Mr. Link. “ ‘You’re nuts! We can’t support him.’ I said, ‘When you know him like I know him, you’ll all support him.’ The largest percentage in the primary came from my county. He carried every precinct.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Regarding Iraq

Kaye — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:53:36 EDT

The media is all over Obama's comments today regarding his stance on pulling the troops out of Iraq. Over the course of the last year, I've paid very close attention to what Senator Obama has said regarding pulling out of Iraq. And yes, he has said he will pull the troops out in 16 months, at a rate of one or two troops per month. But he has also stated continuously that the rate of pullout per month would depend upon the conditions on the ground. Maybe some people failed to hear that specificity.

While we all want the troops to leave Iraq a quickly as possible and to invest our main efforts against the real target enemies, Al Qaeda, leaving Iraq too abruptly may cause security problems for our own forces. In addition, to paraphrase Colin Powell, we broke the store, it's up to us to fix it. Imagine if you will that your kids and their friends enter your house and proceed to make a big mess. They break your furnishings and destroy your household. Would you hold them unaccountable or would you want them to fix the mess they've created? Is this mess really any different?

That said it does not in any way relieve or eliminate the responsibility of the Iraqi government to fix or eliminate the problems existing within their own country. To my thinking as long as we continue to take the primary responsibility for their security, they will continue to prolong the need to take care of themselves and work out their own problems. Imagine your own family or workplace. If you're always there to solve the problems, what need is there of the participants to solve the problems for themselves. All they have to do is to continue to play innocent, blame the other, and complain about the other. They have no need to solve their own problems. After all, they have you to do that for them. We must force the Iraqi government to take care of the people of Iraq and the country. We cannot fix their problems. Only they can do that.

We've given them five years to solve their problems, and we cannot continue to be their buffer forever. Leaving responsibly is our only choice. But leaving responsibly means we do it in a way that protects our military men and women. I'm old enough to remember the evacuation of Saigon. I don't want that same kind of chaos again.

But unlike Sen. McCain, I do not believe we need to stay in Iraq forever if needed to insure we win. McCain, I believe, is still caught in the Vietnam era. I suspect that he sees Iraq in terms of Vietnam: the US has to indisputably win, as in WWII, or we've lost. It's a psychological problem for Sen. McCain, perhaps because he was a prisoner of war. Unfortunately, Sen. McCain, like many military men, cannot accept anything but an all out, declared victory that vindicates for all time, past, present and future, the US military.

This is not a slam on Sen. McCain. I grew up in a military family. My father was Master Sergeant, Flight Engineer in the Air Force for over 20 years. My ex-husband was stationed in 'Nam as a radio operator with the Army. I know the military. I understand the military. I love the fact that I'm a military brat. I've always loved the guys and gals proudly serving in our Armed Forces. When I was a small kid, those GIs treated my brothers and me as their own kid brothers and sister. They watched out for us and took care of us. They made sure we were safe and even let us win at poker. They were the best of the best. I love them dearly. And I am extraordinarily proud of each and every person serving in uniform today. As a matter of fact, my experience has been that those serving in uniform are the best citizens we have, and certainly the senior officers are among the most intelligent and most well educated we have. Nevertheless, Sen. McCain, I believe, has allowed his own deep-seated feelings over what finally occurred in Vietnam color his views on Iraq. To put it simply, it's an "honor" thing with him: the honor of the US military forces as the best and only undefeated military, after Vietnam, must be vindicated. Unfortunately, he is wrong. This is not Vietnam. And if he had taken the time and effort to learn the totality of the Vietnam conflict, perhaps he would not now be so adamant about our military forces staying in Iraq forever until total peace as occurred at the end of WWII.

Regardless of the McCain campaign's message today, I believe Sen. Obama has not changed his views on Iraq. Obama is a pragmatic man. He will do what appears to be the right thing for the time in which a decision is necessary. I believe that like Pres. Kennedy he will face with a stern force those challenges that require sternness and he will negotiate peace whenever possible. One thing I learned from my Air Force Dad was to stand up for what you believed was right, even if it meant armed conflict, but always be willing to talk and negotiate before putting anyone, including GIs, in harms way. This is the kind of person we need in the White House, one who will face the challenges of the future, including Iraq, and will not shy away from what is right for the US. Obama does not bring with him the psychological failures of Vietnam. He does not bring with him the sense of failing and loss that Vietnam caused amongst so many of his compatriots. He can see clearly what is necessary for the US and respond pragmatically to what needs to be done. He can reason out the outcomes of any decision and choose a path that best protects all our very young people in uniform while forcing the Iraqi government to stand on it's own two feet and defend itself and solve its own internal secular problems.

We cannot fix Iraq. Only Iraq can do that. But we can announce to Iraq that it must solve its own problems for itself and that we will not stay there forever to enable an inept government incapable of or unwilling to bring together its own people. No Civil War can be solved by a third party military. Just read history.

So, back to my main point: Obama has not changed his position on Iraq. He has always stated that he will move the troops out of Iraq within 16 months, but that he will rely upon the commanders in the field to assist him in making the decision as to how many troops are removed at any specific time.

Obama has not flip-flopped as the McCain campaign has decreed. This flip-flop claim is yet another Republican scare tactic…a tactic at which they are past masters. The Republicans are relying upon Americans to not remember what Obama has always said. They are relying upon your lack of memory, your laziness in not learning the facts for yourself, and in your inability to think about what is in your own self-interest if they apply enough fear tactics.

I refuse to submit to their fear tactics. I refuse to follow blindly what anyone says. I choose to think for myself. I've waited fifty years, since JFK and RFK, for a presidential candidate to inspire me as much Obama has. I believe he has the right stuff for this moment in history. And I believe that, more than nearly any president in recent history, he will tell us the truth.