Actor, William Sadler will also be joining us at both Beacon locations for phonebanking and greeting our volunteers! (See details below)
Please join us in the final four days of this campaign as we bring in the vote for the Obama/Biden campaign and make history together! This will most likely be the most important presidential election of our lifetime. There is so much at stake. You are needed now more than ever. Sign up today. Together, we will make a difference! YES WE CAN! Angela anvalles01@aol.com <mailto:anvalles01@aol.com> 845-797-9810 cell **It is important to sign-up for shifts so that we know how many call sheets we will need! Please sign up for as many shifts/days that you are available! Thank you for your help.** Two Phonebanking Locations: CSEA Union Hall 568 State Route 52 Beacon, NY Sign up at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsx775 <http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsx775> Martin Luther King Cultural Center (behind the Muddy Cup in Beacon) 19 South Avenue Beacon, NY Sign up at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsxxsx <http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsxxsx> The Call Centers in Beacon will be open as follows: Saturday, Nov 1st: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Sunday, Nov. 2nd: 12:00PM - 8:00PM Monday, Nov. 3rd: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Election Day! Tuesday, Nov. 4th: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Phonebank Captains Needed! f you are able to lead a group of phonebankers through a 4 hour shift (minimum), please contact Moira Kelly, Field Organizer for the Obama Campaign at 917-273-2837 or email: mkelley@barackobama.com <mailto:mkelley@barackobama.com> . Your leadership skills will be greatly appreciated! Special Celebrity Guest: We are happy to announce that actor, William Sadler will be joining us at our phonebanks in Beacon to greet volunteers and make calls for the Obama campaign. You will recognize him from his roles in "Eagle Eyes", "The Mist", and "August Rush" or his previous roles as Heywood in "The Shawshank Redemption", Klaus Detterick in "The Green Mile", or John McClane's nemesis Colonel Stuart in "Die Hard 2". Supporters and Friends,
Please join us in the final four days of this campaign as we bring in the vote for the Obama/Biden campaign and make history together! This will most likely be the most important presidential election of our lifetime. There is so much at stake. You are needed now more than ever. Sign up today. Together, we will make a difference! YES WE CAN! Angela anvalles01@aol.com <mailto:anvalles01@aol.com> 845-797-9810 cell **It is important to sign-up for shifts so that we know how many call sheets we will need! Please sign up for as many shifts/days that you are available! Thank you for your help.** Two Phonebanking Locations: CSEA Union Hall 568 State Route 52 Beacon, NY Sign up at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsx775 <http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsx775> Martin Luther King Cultural Center (behind the Muddy Cup in Beacon) 19 South Avenue Beacon, NY Sign up at: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsxxsx <http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/lastcallforchange/gsxxsx> The Call Centers in Beacon will be open as follows: Saturday, Nov 1st: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Sunday, Nov. 2nd: 12:00PM - 8:00PM Monday, Nov. 3rd: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Election Day! Tuesday, Nov. 4th: 10:00AM - 9:00PM Phonebank Captains Needed! f you are able to lead a group of phonebankers through a 4 hour shift (minimum), please contact Moira Kelly, Field Organizer for the Obama Campaign at 917-273-2837 or email: mkelley@barackobama.com <mailto:mkelley@barackobama.com> . Your leadership skills will be greatly appreciated! Special Celebrity Guest: We are happy to announce that actor, William Sadler will be joining us at our phonebanks in Beacon to greet volunteers and make calls for the Obama campaign. You will recognize him from his roles in "Eagle Eyes", "The Mist", and "August Rush" or his previous roles as Heywood in "The Shawshank Redemption", Klaus Detterick in "The Green Mile", or John McClane's nemesis Colonel Stuart in "Die Hard 2".
Republican strategist Kevin Madden just said on MSNBC that what Sarah Palin did in last night's debate is return to the "authentic" Sarah Palin that "people were first introduced to at the Republican Convention", and that having done this she could return to the campaign trail as an asset for the remaining weeks.
Huh?
The "authentic" Sarah is the one that has her statements written for her, rather than the Sarah who has to come up with her own answers in interviews as she did with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson?
It is well known that Palin's speech for the convention was scripted for her, and well-rehearsed. If not, then we should rightfully demand her to answer for the presence of quotes in her speech that were taken from a fascist writer who had openly called for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. That Palin's answers in the debate were also scripted for her was almost equally apparent, since her statements were delivered with classic signs of having been memorized statements on topics, and were of course crafted in the weeks of debate preparation she underwent with McCain and Bush advisors. Less smooth were the debate moments where she had to craft transitional phrases to attach the prepared statements to one another. The delivery of prepared statements was no doubt the strategy embodied in her claim that she "might not answer the questions as asked by the moderator" but wanted to talk directly to the American public.
It offends me as someone who has spent some time thinking about the ethics of "authenticity" as advanced by existentialists, Charles Taylor (the philosopher, not the dictator), and numerous other thinkers in moral history, that "authenticity" is being ascribed to the least authentic moments of Palin's public showing. Her moments of what rational people (as opposed to campaign strategists) would call "authenticity"--responses in impromtu settings where all she can draw on is her own mind and personality--are written off as the fake aberrations, deviations from the "authentic" identity conveyed in her reading of sentences crafted for Palin by someone else.
This is nothing short of the "identity" equivalent of saying that "the false is the true". Perhaps I'm a little oversensitive since I am currently reading a paper on Plato's dialogue, "The Sophist", but the substitution of illusion for reality by the McCain campaign has, to my mind, now been made complete. Not only are statements to be twisted into "truth" despite their obvious, established, verified, proven falsehood, but identity itself is now most authentic when in fact most driven by the thinking of other people. Does this betoken simply the evacuation of rational criteria by politics? Is this a sad sexism, where a woman concedes the definition of her authentic being to the male power-brokers who script her public persona? Is it the first salvo in the authoritarian/totalitarian mind-control of a McCain/Palin administration? Who knows? The twisting of truth and identity in such a profound way opens doors to wild speculations like the latter.
Perhaps the "authentic/scripted" Sarah Palin should change her name to "Haras Nilap".
Baked Alaska (Debate Watch Party) Come to the Poughkeepsie Headquarters to watch the Biden/Palin debate. We have cable,a comfortable couch, chairs, and plenty of great conversation (until the debate starts). We'll have pizza and you bring a dish/dessert and we will watch together! Time:Thursday, October 2 at 8:00 PMDuration:3 hoursHost:Wendy WilliamsContact Phone:8453804810Location:PK Obama Headquarters (Poughkeepsie, NY)320 Main StreetPoughkeepsie, NY 12601Please RSVP: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/debatewatchparty/gshyqs
Alternatively for those in Beacon: Biden Debates Palin (Debate Watch Party)Come watch Biden Debate Palin. This should be a lot of laughs. Meet Obama supports and become a volunteer. Time:Thursday, October 2 at 7:00 PMDuration:3 hoursHost:Tracy GivensContact Phone:845-238-7592Location:Beacon Muddy Cup (Beacon, NY)Main StreetBeacon, NY 12508 Please RSVP: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/debatewatchparty/gshfhf
Then on Friday you can kick back and relax at Amici's in Poughkeepsie with Congressman John Hall scheduled to appear: Young Dems After Dark- Dutchess (Meeting)Come out and network with Obama supporters, elected officials, candidates, and like-minded individuals. Special Guests: U.S. Congressman John Hall from New York's 19th District Matthew Silverstein- NYS Young Dems President Candidates for State Senate, Assembly, and other local offices Food by Amici's Cash Bar Time:Friday, October 3 at 7:00 PMDuration:3 hoursHost:Ira MarguliesLocation:Amici's Restuarant & Lounge (Poughkeepsie, NY)35 Main StDooley SquarePoughkeepsie, NY 12601 Please RSVP: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/meeting/gs75k9--
John McCain has mastered audacity this week, while losing himself more or less completely. Let's review!
Exploiting 9/11 for political gain: The film at the RNC was inexcusably vile and inappropriate when all decent outlets had self-imposed a moratorium on such painful and traumatic footage. But since pain and trauma are now campaign strategies of the RNC, it is to be expected of them. Still makes us want to vomit, but to be expected. Kind of like spoiled seafood.
Stolen Message: Absent any ideas of his own, John McCain has now coopted the "change" message of Barack Obama. That's pretty audacious and then some. And quite unbelievable. Hey, there's his slogan: "Change That Is Unbelievable". Listen John, if you haven't managed more than one or two pieces of major legislation in 30 years, and Obama passed one like yours in his first term, I think it's pretty clear who's the change agent in this race. Changing your positions and your moral believability is not the change WE need, though it may have been the change McCain needed to try and win. Maybe a better slogan would be, " A Changed Man :( ".
Lies, big lies, and outrageous lie-bombs: The "Bridge To Nowhere" queen, who kept the money despite her current "no thanks" message about it, has now lied seven times about that boondoggle, five of the lies coming after the debunking of the lie. McCain falsely claims that Obama has never faced his own party on anything, when in fact he confronted both parties with effective ethics legislation, akin to Mccain's ONLY senatorial achievement on campaign finance. The campaign of Mccain keeps falsely claiming that Obama will raise taxes despite the truth being that 95% of Americans will get tax breaks (and despite the tax that McCain will impose on our health care benefits from our employers even as he refuses to extend healthcare in a civilized way). That's pretty audacious, I'd say! Hair-blowing-back audacious. I just change the channel now every time Nancy "Lobbyist-cum-spokesliar" Pfotenhauer comes on the t.v. Oh, there's another lie: the plan to come down on lobbyists when in fact the whole campaign is being run by them. Wooey, thats AUdacious (in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way...).
The new ad on "education": Claiming that Obama's only accomplishment is passing a bill to provide sex education to kindergarteners when in fact that bill was to protect kids from predators is about as politically vile as one can get, and truly marks McCain's departure from the sphere of decency. By the way, I thought his only accomplishment was being a community organizer (say it with a sneer)? McCain can't even keep his lies straight anymore I guess. This ad--exploiting children's protection for political gamesmanship--is such a thick pool of vileness that I lost that last little tiny sliver of respect I used to have for the former hero. Oh yeah, he sacrificed that label this week. Heros don't need to play cynic, and shouldn't. Play cynic, and you are not a hero anymore, sorry.
Cease and Desist? Not!: By my count, McCain has now OFFICIALLY stolen the use of four songs and been asked to cease and desist by all four copyright holders. This week his answer was to just keep using one of them. If he can't be trusted with intellectual property rights, how on earth can he be trusted with our government? It was more important to celebrate the meanness of SP than to abide by the law. But that, truly, is symbolic of the woman, I suppose, as she bent and manipulated whatever laws were inconvenient to her in Alaska.
The Audacity of Soullessness
Barack has conveyed the audacity of hope to many of us over the past few years, but the new audacity is really all McCain's (another theft, I suppose)--the audacity of being a lying, politically savage dishonorable man whose soul is now permanently tarnished. I don't use "soul" language or moral recrimination lightly--I really mean it when I say it. This will be the week we all remember how good a time John McCain had out on the trail with Sarah, selling his soul to Karl Rove for the enjoyment of saddling our country with another four years of war, and a 25% chance (those are the mathematics of VP succession) of being governed by a bigger liar and more mean-spirited person than himself.
McCain/Bush Morph
The audacity of all this is such as to leave our jaws dropped. How...on...earth....could....he.....?? we might say. But McCain has learned the lesson of his master, GWBush: you can because you CAN and because you DO. It's a particularly vile example of the Jesuit maxim, "Better to ask forgiveness than permission". Except the Bush--Rove--McCain strategy is "Better to do the unpermitted and unforgiveable" and thumb your nose at those who might morally balk at the strategy. I think even the press is stunned, but since they've been semi-neutered for years by the emergence of the reality-challenged right-wing alter-press, they barely know what to do. Asking some real questions would be a start, thnx.
John McCain (really, Karl Rove is behind this, but it's YOUR campaign, John), you have sacrificed your manhood, nay your very humanity, this week. It's a tragic fall story about a former hero. It's ugly, it's vile, and it excites people who are moved by the lizard brain. Congratulations, Mr. McCain, for exciting your "base". How base.
I think we saw in Obama's speech why he actually beats John McCain in polls concerning leadership, which is pretty remarkable given all of McCain's claims about "experience". In the acceptance speech that marks a real transition in our national history, we saw a man who knows how to LEAD. That is doubtless why the official talking points of the conservative blogosphere and talk radio are aimed at making us Obama supporters into a bunch of lemmings and Obama into some latter-day Caesar. Leadership frightens those who would rather preserve the current authoritarian system. Authoritarians don't lead, they dictate. Leaders frighten them. But let them wail on--it tells us over and over again how empty their prospects are and how dangerous their power is.
Leadership means getting people around you ready and willing and able to work to bring about the policies and initiatives that need our country's attention.
Leadership is getting systems to work.
Leadership is understanding systems in relation to the people who will make them work and who need them to work.
That's leadership.
I went to John McCain's website, and looked around for what leadership I could find there. Under the "About" tab, we find the encapsulated case for "Why McCain"--so I clicked on that to find out why McCain should be "leader" of the free world. I was surprised to not even find the words 'leadership,' 'leader,' or 'lead' anywhere in the discussion. There are many statements about what will be accomplished in McCain's presidency, but not a clue about just how except his promise to listen to anyone with a good idea and to work with anyone. I came away not knowing how on earth a man who has been so at odds with his own party for so long and who has now completely alienated everyone in the other party expects to have any substantive policy initiatives brought into being. And I don't see how the American people are part of that model of government, especially given how much we know about the role of lobbyists in McCain's life, legislative history, and campaign, and especially given our exclusion from our government for the past eight years of rule by Bush/Cheney (who also promised to listen to all good ideas and proved unable to do so). It sounded, from McCain's own "Why" statement, more like policy would be somehow "authorized" into being. More of the same?
We have been told again and again by the McCain campaign that he is a "maverick", but that maverick has managed to actually "lead" very little in his legislative life. Standing up to your party is admirable, but it doesn't tell us how someone will actually get something done. Defiance of party ideology is not leadership--it's defiance. Defiance can be important, but it's just NOT leadership. McCain showed leadership in getting McCain-Feingold into law despite the tricky terrain of campaign finance. But really leading on the issue of campaign finance ethics and law would have generated a public initiative and broad finance policy that would not have allowed clever 527s and loophole exploiters to continue to corrupt our electoral process. What kind of "leader" has a convention that ten of 40-something Republican Senators decide not to even attend? What kind of "leader" inspires one of the loudest, shrillest people in his own party (Anne Coulter) to promise to campaign for democrats if he is the nominee? Maverick status seems to have eaten way into McCain's capacity for 'leader' status.
Then there's the timing issue. Being on "the right side of history" and of facts on the ground is important. That Obama is more on the right side of history than McCain is evident. Basic political and social temperaments show them to be rooted in forms of thinking that represent the stark contrast between the 20th and 21st centuries. But there's also the fact that a leader needs to be on the right side of facts on the ground--people have to be willing to be called to act by a leader. Enthusiasm and initiative in Republican quarters is at a low I've not seen in my life-time, with the exception of an elite few who take it upon themselves to make the rounds of media appearances--but given what we know, their enthusiasm can't help but sound forced and blustery; and their recourse to mockery of all things Democratic pretty much proves the emptiness of inherent Republican enthusiasm. Whose energy can McCain tap into right away to start getting things done in the one term he is likely to be able to do? The political physics of this just don't add up.
The Presidency is fundamentally a leadership position. It is clear who is more ready to lead in the way that our country needs leadership right now, and that is Barack Obama. A leader needs an energy base to tap into as he undertakes reforming our broken and hijacked systems--Obama has that fanning out across the country right now, while McCain doesn't even have a ground-campaign, much less an energy base in the public to get things done nationally. A leader needs managament skills that hearken to inclusivity and wise organization--Obama has assembled extraordinary bi-partisan advisory teams tasked to build a government of competence and effective meeting of the needs of people, while McCain has managed to assemble a campaign of exactly the people who brought us Bush/Cheney twice, complete with organizational initiatives with the same brutality and cheapness as the Rove era and an economic advisor that considers the rest of us to be "whiners".
I want to stand up and work for my government behind a leader who has shown me that standing up and working for my government is his plan. That man is Barack Obama.
In the aftermath of Rick Warren's forum last night, it sounds like the narrative the media is gearing up to run with is the "audible gasp" that is reported to have occured when Obama did not answer the quesiton of "When Life Begins". Obama said answering that question is "above his pay grade". The gasp--and the narrative--betray the obtuseness embedded in our national discussion of abortion.
Everyone in the audience last night knew that Obama supports Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade was decided on the basis of the court's reasoning that it cannot be determined with constitutional precision when constutionally relevant and protected human life begins. So, Obama gave the answer that is utterly consistent with the constitutional argument that he supports.
Basically, the audience gasped at the fact that Obama's christianity did not override his constitutional reasoning. They gasped, in other words, that he did not invite incoherence into his legislative thinking on this. That the audience gasped indicates that they expected him to be incoherent, by saying life begins at conception (as the alleged 'christian' position maintains), while constitutionally eschewing such a decision. They fully expected him to say "I believe X" and "I don't believe X". That is the scope of unreason we have become used to. Enough to 'gasp audibly' when the unreason does not come.
And this morning the media is poking around at the "buzz" around this answer. They seem poised to dig in and and drive home the invitation to incoherence, since they fail to look at this issue in anything like a nuanced way. Maybe they'll back off this emerging narrative. Unless something newsworthy happens, tho, I wouldn't count on it.
Constitutionally protected human life is hardly as obvious as the "at conception" argument would have it. The justices who decided Roe v. Wade had the humility and scientific honesty to admit that, and so does Obama. The presumption that a multicellular organism has equal constitutional weight as a fully functional adult human female is a remarkable piece of certainty, and the one I am more apt to "Gasp" at.
Politics is traditionally referred to as the "art of the impossible". John McCain has apparently taken the "impossible" in hand, but has lost touch with the "art" part along the way.
The headline promises and objectives of the McCain campaign have congealed around several things that can reasonably be called "impossible".
1. Summer gas tax holiday: While the call for this is waning, the fact that ANY strategists still put this out there (and they do) indicates just how profoundly attached to impossibility the campaign is. Labor Day is almost here, and this is STILL on the agenda? But worse, it was NEVER possible. It would have had to be voted into play by those who would never do it. NO proposal for summer gimmicks is based in reality in a presidential campaign year, as no such proposal could be voted on. Especially one that was, from the outset, economically undesirable as assessed by most experts. So on this one, McCain is guilty of a triple commitment to the impossible.
2. New Nuclear Power Plants--43 of them--will help solve our energy problem and the economic woes those entail. Considering the fact that we would be starting from "zero construction plans" and aiming at "43 construction projects", there is a baseline impossibility factor attached to this proposal in terms of the simple inertia of current processes. Beyond that, there is the astronomical cost involved not only in the construction of each plant (many billions per plant in raw capital expenditures), but in the preparatory studies required, land acquisitions, legal costs of fighting the challenges that would almost definitely arise, costs of disposal, evacuation planning in the event of catastrophe, etc., as well as of course the ongoing cost of maintaining the plants. While nuclear power may be economical once under way per kilowatt hour, that McCain thinks the kind of outlay 43 plants would entail makes for a good strategy for an economy that is at present drained by war and the basic underlying debt of consumers and government alike is a sure sign of his commitment to impossibility as a political strategy.
3. Drill Here Drill Now! The oil industry has busily been closing refineries for over a decade now, opting for greater efficiency in remaining refineries and opting for the deliberate restriction of supply in order to keep prices at a profitable level (tho of course there are other factors in current price rises). While refineries have some current wiggle room to take on new crude, it is in no way the case that refineries exist or are even proposed or wanted by the oil industry in the U.S. Now, factor in the enormous expense and risk associated with building new offshore platforms, and it is truly unlikely that the oil companies who would have to build these platforms (but don't seem to want to, since they haven't built them on their existing lease spaces) will in fact go ahead and construct them, no matter how favorable tax policy may be for them.
To these three embraces of the impossible as potential policy we can add the mounting pile of untruths the McCain campaign has emitted about the Obama campaigns policy proposals. When you substitute a lie for the truth, you are in fact embracing the "impossible". For example, when you KNOW that Obama has put out a multi-dimensional energy policy, and then put out a tire-pressure-gauge and describe it as the whole of that energy policy, you are embracing a contradiction: A & not-A. That's impossible. The logic of this campaign has come to be the logic of impossibility.
Finally, when you embrace the non-sequitur you are also thumbing your nose at the possible or the likely. When strategists are sent out, as they have been this week, to repeat a non-sequitur as your official campaign argument (it is official because McCain himself said it too), you are embracing the illogic of impossibility: McCain and the "strategists" (there are other words for what it means to misrepresent and spread illogic on the air, but let's go with their official label for now) are spouting essentially the following when the issue of negative campaigning comes up this week: "We would not have had to campaign negatively [let's call this 'A'] if only Obama had acccepted the invitation to do town halls [let's call this 'B']." The "if" implies a connection between A and B, and yet there is absolutely none, except perhaps spite. Negative campaigning in no way follows from Obama's decision not to do Town Halls with McCain. And yet, that's the line of the week in defense of the indefensible, which is the character-assailing, lie-promulgating and generally trivializing string of ads McCain and his party have released in the past two weeks.
Finally, we barely need to mention the inartfulness of McCain's recent conduct of his campaign (with the exception of the polish and humor of their bad ads themselves). The flat-footed and confused look of many of McCain's campaign stops would never evoke the appellation 'art' from an objective observer. That they (the McCain team) have been politically artful in the character assassination campaign may be argued, but I would be inclined to refuse the term "art" to the enterprise of base behavior that is called negative campaigning. Not all clever conniving is "artful". It's just clever and conniving.
It is my hope that the sensibilities of the public have not been so twisted in the direction of the "impossible" as represented by this kind of politics as to not be able to see through it. The jury is out on that. It is certainly my hope that the kind of aspiration towards the seemingly impossible human aspirations embraced by the Obama campaign will outstrip, in the imaginations of the public, the gross economic and logical impossibilities embedded at every level of the McCain campaign. I really did expect better from McCain once he got his chance, but sometimes our expectations turn out to also have been based on impossibilities unbeknownst to us.
Joe Scarborough just confronted Charlie Crist with John McCain's lie about Obama, "willing to lose a war to win an election". Pushed again and again to deal with the lie, Crist said that it's a close race and there's only 100 days before people go to the polls, so we need to get the word out to them. So, essentially that means he's saying "It's important that we manipulate people with lies as soon as possible because the election is soon." oh god is that ugly.
Pushed further by Scarborough, asking if "You,Charlie Crist, really believe that Obama wants to lose the war?" and Crist gave the "I don't know, I hope not" answer. Oh....my.....god.......what garbage. More or less the same as "Is he a Muslim?" "Not as far as I know......"
So Crist just proved his lying politician bones for VP. Nice, congratulations Mr. Crist. I hope your voters realize you just endorsed lying to them in desperation. That is the basest cycnicism, to say nothing of undermining the cognitive basis of democracy.
Even Scarborough expressed astonishment at what Crist said, emitting a "WHOA!" with a look of disbelief as they went to commercial.
So, just to be clear: Crist is willing to sell out the environmental well-being and tourist appeal of Florida (shelf drilling, on which he changed his mind because gas is $4, which is nonsense in itself), lie to the public for political gain, and use innuendo about Obama's motives as a means of dodging a question.
Looks like his chances for VP may have been boosted.
Chuck Todd just said, nearly verbatim: "If Obama loses this race, he did something wrong" because all he has to really do is cash in the general favoring of democrats in the current climate. "All he has to do is reach out and grab the brass ring, as it is his to grab" or words to that effect.
I love Chuck, but I think he is suffering from a little tunnel-vision of political analysis, particularly on polling and quantitative analysis.
If Obama loses, it will also have a lot to do with the Right tapping into the same old well of race. It's almost silly that Todd would not see that as a significant obstacle in the way of Obama going over the top in terms of polling and voting. So I can only attribute it to tunnell-vision.
The character-assassination, over lying, and raising of unwarranted suspicion by the right and by McCain himself always go a long way to swing elections. And the race thing is the great tool, the great weapon, that has always been in their arsenal. I am convinced that Paul Krugman is right in his analysis of this in Conscience of a Liberal. The coded speech, the whisper-campaigns, the inflaming of local populations around issues, histories, and words that are never met in the mainstream national media--this is their stock in trade.
I can see the press not wanting to make the race about 'race', but truth is truth.
On "Verdict" with Dan Abrams just now, republican operative Brad Blakeman admitted that the "facts don't matter!". The topic was the issue of media coverage and McCain's complaints that it is skewed in Obama's favor. The panel was rehashing the George Mason U study that showed that while the AMOUNT of coverage of Obama exceeded that of McCain, but it was negative in proportions much higher than the proportions of negative commentary on McCain. Blakeman kept pointing to the Rasmussen poll that shows that the majority of Americans believe that the press favors Obama. When it was again pointed out that this is factually inaccurate as far as coverage goes, Blakeman said, very animatedly, "FACTS DON'T MATTER!" (add haughty arrogance he uses with comments like this).
Blakeman is always a dervish-like spinner, but at least this time he told the truth as he sees it. The truth does not matter, all that really matters is the perception of Americans. When it was pointed out that part of the cause of this perception is the multi-decade crusade of the right to describe a "liberal media" he bristled.
But his own behavior betokens the latter reaction as dishonest. If Blakeman knows so clearly that all that matters is perception--if this is what his years as an operative have taught him--he has in fact been living a life dedicated to the manipulation and monitoring of public opinion. His anger at being accused of what he was doing is indication of guilt on this, in my book--but we don't even need behavioral analysis, as his own statement and manner of making a living show that he knows he manipulates public perception as a matter of lifestyle.
Each day I worry more that the American mind has become hopelessly muddled. That's no new insight, and I don't mean it as an assault on intelligence. I think Americans are smart, but they have been shaped in a media and political culture that assail the rational organization of intelligence at nearly every turn. Obama said in Britain that he wants to institute time to think carefully when he is in the Whitehouse. I think maybe it should be an initiative for all of us, as compulsory as income tax.* It may be the only thing that can save American democracy in the long run.
I'd like to challenge Abrams and others to think about "multi-perspective" debates as something other than getting talking-point spinners to 'argue' with one another, because this is not the model we need in this country. We need to debate in a fact-rich, code-word-thin manner about what is actually important, rather than what campaign operatives want us to think is important, on both sides.
* = I mean that as a joke, but I think it is more important than prayer in schools or reciting a pledge of allegiance. It's certainly more important than watching FOX news.
Premise: This is a very disciplined campaign.
Fact 1: McCain is running ads faulting Obama for going to the gym instead of visiting wounded troops, in which they show video of Obama playing basketball (with troops!).
Fact 2: Obama visited an orthopedic doctor last night and it was stated that his hip was sore from playing basketball.
Question: Is the campaign doing a little psy-ops here?
On the surface, it would like like it is foolishly playing into the McCain attack: "Basketball is more important to this guy than the troops! Look, he played so much basketball he's SORE from it!" Why not just go to the doctor and say, "His hip is sore", period?
So, there must be something deliberate here. Of course it is always helpful for the public to see how vital and athletic Obama is, and basketball is hugely popular. But I suspect it is more than that, given the timing. I think they may be operating in such manner as to help McCain's own campaign be its own worst enemy. "Want to talk basketball? OK, we'll not only talk basketball, we'll let our guy be seen going to a doctor for how much basketball he's playing (even as he tours two continents and does amazing things there)" Bait them, and let the public see how (a) silly the McCain stuff is, and (b) find themselves LIKING Obama for the very thing McCain is advertising about him. In addition, and perhaps most fundamentally, it leaves the McCain camp wondering, again, how the heck they are supposed to attack this guy, and having to flail in the attempt to do so.
Nice, if so. Or maybe it's all just an accident....
OK, so it seems from the various interviews I've watched or read transcripts of, the campaign appearance speeches I've seen or read, and media reporting on these, it seems that John McCain's "words of the week" are that Barack Obama "doesn't understand...." this or that.
What are we to make of his meaning here? What does everyone think he really is conveying through the repetition of this catch-phrase?
On the surface, the phrase is certainly meant to capture the difference in experience between McCain and Obama. McCain has been around long enough to "understand" and "know" things, while Obama is a newbie who could not possibly "understand" and "know" what McCain knows. To the extent that this is the meaning, it conflates time-around with "understanding" in a manner that I think is cognitively a disservice to voters. Time-around (I won't concede the use of the word 'experience' for this) is very definitely not 'understanding',and yet McCain is trying to collapse the two in voters minds, which undermines the very essence of 'understanding' per se. Understanding is a complex cognitive process, not the mere accumulation of time-served in a given arena, tho understanding CAN accrue through long-term experiential processing of information.
Surely McCain can't mean that Obama lacks the cognitive resources to process the information relevant to, say, Iraq.
So he must mean that Obama is not properly processing the information. But if he thinks Obama is not digesting information properly, then the burden of proof is on him to explain just what the error of processing is that he is accusing Obama of. But he generally does not offer any detailed account of where exactly the error is (note, this is a distinct discussion from his accusations regarding what Obama should or should not admit about the surge--this charge is about understanding, not admitting).
I cannot help but suspect that when John McCain says, "Obama does not understand what is at stake" in the Iraq situation, he is using "does not understand" as a subtle cover for "does not care" or "is naive about". The former is simply a new formulation of "he'd rather lose a war", and the latter is a charge that, once again, requires explanation. The former is reprehensible, while the latter requires elaboration.
If you accuse someone of not understanding something, but don't explain what is to be understood, you have not effectively made any case. Which leaves open the question of whether in fact the phrase is coded speech for yet another attack on Obama's patriotism or something else.
But maybe McCain either thinks--or wants others to think--that Obama DOES lack the cognitive resources to properly process information. Why might he want to promote that subtle implication? Well, what is one of the fundamental elements of racist thinking? "People of race x are not as human as the rest of us because they lack appropriate intelligence levels"--that is a classical element of the history and justification of racism and colonialism. I don't think for a minute that McCain believes this, but he is not talking to himself but to the electorate. And some in that electorate (enough to carry Movement Conservatism along these many years) harbor these subtle (and in some cases quite explicit) beliefs about racial inferiority among blacks and others.
Political campaigns are psychologically savvy things. No phrase achieves official repetition status unless it is believed that it will root itself effectively in the minds of listeners. And given both the psychology and history of this, the RNC operatives know about the associations of cognitive inferiority and racism. McCain's seeming utter reluctance to explain what he means when he makes this accusation raises a legitimate concern that it is meant to be vague enough to do its subtle bigotry-inflaming duty. As undefined, in other words, the officially repeated phrase must be assumed to be doing double and triple duty, and may reasonably be assumed to be doing bigot duty until proven otherwise.
If anyone can supply an adequate explanation of what McCain really means by the phrase, I will back off this suspicion, and I welcome evidence/links. If not, then I think we have another instance of stooping to the basest of right-wing campaign techniques.
The media has now spent much of its access to Obama asking why he doesn't just admit "the surge worked", often framing questions in terms of the seemingly torturous route he's taking to admit the reduction in violence without agreeing that "the surge worked". At the minority journalist event just now in Chicago, on Meet the Press this morning, in interviews from all over Europe, the question is framed this way:
1. It is clear that the surge has worked
2. Why can't/don't you admit that?
Time to dismantle this extremely crafty and disingenuous framing.
1. Obama has been arguing that "the surge" is not the only factor in changed conditions in Iraq, tho he has admitted that the troop increase did reduce violence. He does not concede to this premise its assumption of the same old simplistic notion of "the surge" as some kind of freestanding unitary simple thing. Even John McCain has now admitted that it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that has changed Iraq. Moreover, it is unclear what is meant by "worked". Reduced violence? Yes, Obama has said that quite clearly. Made political change? Other things have helped that as much as the increased military presence. So, it is not at all clear that "the surge has worked"--on the contrary, it is vague as to what has 'worked', and why, and how.
2. Obama cannot/will not admit #1 because it is incoherent, as he would be admitting as true something he has claimed is not a true statement. "Why can't you admit...." frames the question as already a concession of the description of the overall Iraq situation, which, as know, Obama disagrees with in principle.
Now, the press's insistence that he is not answering the question when he gives his answer indicates clearly that in their mind, the only "answer" that can properly qualify as such would be to admit #1. Unless someone admits the incoherence embodied in #1, they have not given an answer. What does this mean? That the press's objective is primarily driven by the political process of getting a candidate to concede the terms of debate set by the other side, and thereby to watch the hooplah that could ensue. It is not, as they are making it seem, simply to get information from the candidate, because they are GETTING information from the candidate. They are just not getting the phraseology that they want to run with from the candidate.
This works the other way, too--McCain is sometimes presented with terms of debate of Obama-side origin/framing, and for the same reason. But let's face it, it happens alot more to Obama because the press has had eight years of being trained to ask questions in terms set by the RNC when it comes to questioning their challengers. The authoritarianism of the right, and the influence of right-wing media and media critiqe, has intimidated the press into functioning this way without really realizing it.
I for one am glad Barack is resisting so assiduously and starting to joke back about the frame of the question. He has a long haul to retrain them, and it would not be a GOOD thing to concede the question's framing. He's exercising a 'tough-love' strategy, at the risk of looking evasive. That's courageous. Good job! We may finally get a liberated media that is free to actually think about good interesting questions, rather than politically framed sound-bite questions. I won't hold my breath, but it would be nice and I think they might enjoy being independent again. We certainly need them to be.
Chris Matthews appeared on Morning Joe today, saying that based on his observations in LA this week, the Democratic Party has serious problems, is not united, the Hillary people are not on board, etc.
Now, granted this campaign is not the same old democratic campaign, and the need for the standard story to play out is less definitive than in other years. But because this campaign IS so unusual, I think there is a useful reality check to be had via Matthews energetic pronouncement--we cannot count on the 'unusualness' of this campaign to compensate for the considerable problems, when the perceived 'unusualness' of the candidate is also a hurdle to be surmounted (race, identity, etc.). So, WE MUST REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS TO MAXIMIZE THE EFFECTS OF THE POSITIVE ELECTORAL UNUSUALNESS: the 50 state strategy in all its dimensions, the online initiative, fundraising, etc.
Matthews and Scarborough also played up the narrative of Hillary having been the 'candidate of middle america' and McCain being able to exploit that space more effectively than Obama because he does not, as Barack does, seem "above it all" (Matthews' words). Expect Hardball to be all about this stuff tonite. Anyhow, while I think these comments underestimate the extent to which Americans (especially the unpolled and uncounted) no longer want a candidate to have a beer with, but one who will govern competently so that we don't wind up in a depression after this recession, nonetheless they capture something that needs concrete combatting. And while I think the comments also make it sound like the main part of the campaign has already happened when in fact the conventions haven't even happened yet, and Obama has much time to connect with voters (he sure connected with Europe, didn't he?), still: people's sensibilities are being shaped and exploited NOW--Republicans DEFINE THEIR OPPONENTS long before elections occur, and as ridiculous as they seem to be being about it, they are nonetheless doing it now, defining Barack. So, I think we need simple and straightforward campaign materials that tell people how ordinary Barack really is. If we can subtly show them, at the same time, how truly elite McCain is, all the better. Flyers: "Barack Obama: Faced real challenges growing up; Worked his way through college and with hard-won scholarships; father of two wonderful little girls he intends to fight for and protect" etc etc--simple stuff, personal reassurances that show how much more similar to most of America his narrative really is, compared to McCain's.
The cheese aisle images were funny, a bit sad, and we know they were last minute. But remember the commercial: "never underestimate the power of cheese!" Everybody eats cheese, none of us know what it's like to talk to 200,000 people. While we all know why those 200,000 were so important, we nonethless cannot afford to assume everyone else will.
WORK WORK WORK--do something this weekend that will get votes!
My thoughts upon on returning home from a Grassroots Platform Meeting held on the day of the Berlin speech, thoughts designed to take an accounting, to purge years of anger, and to refresh:
As the RNC cynicism machine gears up to drag out the tired old yawn of how democrats lack sufficient commitment to 'America' we ask, laughing: What America are you talking about??!
As Rush Limbaugh steels himself to dishonestly screech into the void on behalf of a candidate he admits he'd rather not support, we ask: Who cares what you think?
As Movement Conservatives, who want to conserve little and own much, and destroy much more worry that their empire is crumbling, we real and true Americans--have never stood so strong and so ready to look them in the eye, laugh at their moral impotence and false sense of outrage and say, "No more!"
Today, Barack Obama gave the cynicism of the right-wing noise machine and the cynical usurpers of American democracy their walking papers. He served them notice that THE REAL AMERICA is ready, again, to take up the mantle of hope and true courage. In light of that great urgency and moral force that is the real America, we say: With all due respect, GET OUT OF THE WAY, Mr. Bush....GET OUT OF THE WAY, Mr. Cheney. And oh, yes--GET OUT OF THE WAY, MR ROVE!! We, the real America--yes, an imperfect America (for a perfect being cannot be loved, only idolized)...we will no longer be defiled--and allow the world to be defiled--by your actions.
"What this shows is that the world is hungry....for American leadership," said Barack Obama to Brian Williams when asked what the 200,000 cheering Germans might mean back home.
What this shows is that Barack Obama has scored us an invitation to be the America we love and that the world loves and which, more importantly, loves the world. I don't know about you, Messrs Bush, Cheney and Rove and company, but that's the party I want to be part of.
Oh, we are READY!
YOU HAVE BEEN SERVED, Noise Machine!
YOU HAVE BEEN SERVED, those who would defile our government in order to make us cease to respect it and to ask it or--god forbid--expect it--to respect us with real care!
YOU HAVE BEEN SERVED, industry of liars and cheats leveraging the whole world for---for what? wealth? for what? FOR WHAT?
These are things Barack would never say, but those of us who are parts of the loyal dog of America who have been wagged too long by the morally impotent tail can and must say it, purge it, cast it off, cast off the chains of despair and the crust of disillusionment, and accept the invitation Barack has delivered to us all from a welcoming and thankfully patient world--
THIS IS OUR MOMENT INDEED!!
RSVP to the World: Yes, The Real America Is Coming to Celebrate With You!
No starry-eyed idolatry here, of an imperfect future president....no pollyanna expectation of miracles or salvation....no false hope for fulfillment of empty ideals....like Ingrid Betancourt finding out she is free after years of captivity, this is just an outburst of shocked joy....just a sudden and somewhat shameless release of some walled off but utterly genuine patriotism.
:D
It occurs to me, listening to Barack's amazing speech in Berlin, that the one possibility the press ignored completely about why he chose to speak there is that it simply is an important city historically, period. Where ELSE would such a speech be more appropriate? The press has been caught up only in the iconography of previous American speech-making there, as if the city were always and only a backdrop. But Barack makes it clear, as usual, that history matters, that details are real, and that speeches matter because of the long march of history in which they occur.
Thank you Barack for representing us so well.
Yesterday I posted a blog of outrage at John McCain's campaign for using Obama's Holocaust museum trip as fodder to score cheap political points. I stand by that, and have seen that sentiment in most sane people commenting on the issue in media. But I decided to do a little research, to see where John McCain stood in terms of current genocide affairs, voting, etc. What I found really shook me out of any simple desire to footnote the hypocrisy of his campaign, and into a much broader revulsion at the American political system.
Now, just as I teach a good deal about the Holocaust, I also frequently teach materials on the genocidal elimination of Native Americans on our own continent. So I am no newcomer to the issue of our domestic history of genocide. But I was not aware through previous research on the current situation facing the specific populations of Navajo/Dine peoples in Arizona. We tend to think of mass relocation of people, and revocation of even reservation lands, as phenomena of the past, but this is very much not the case.
Thanks to the powerful position of Peabody Energy Corporation, whose coal supplies 10% of the American power supply, the violation and cultural murder of the Navajo people continues today. And John McCain himself introduced the legislation designed to move them off their lands to make way for the ever-broadening reach of big coal (Senate Bill 1003). Interestingly, a representative of Peabody appeared as a key figure in one of McCain's campaign Energy Roundtables, now in the guise of "CLEAN coal" (Peabody seeks to position itself in this lucrative future incarnation of an intrinsically filthy power source). There is evidence that diversion of resources to the lucrative Nevada gaming industry is part of McCain's political motive for participating in the current three-step (Peabody, Gaming, Politics) that is forcing peoples off their lands and ruining lives.
Granted, McCain obscenely introduced the bill that would forcibly relocate native peoples (alongside a number of other shenanigans like setting up fake tribal councils to whitewash the whole thing). But this abuse, which has been investigated by NGO human rights organizations and deemed a serious human rights violation, extends across the political spectrum. According to the sources I have been looking at, McCain received strong support from Kennedy, Kerry, and others (here's one kind of bi-partisanship we can do without; one source even named Gore--all of this needs more research/documentation). And the fact of the matter is that the Peabody Energy footprint is all over the political spectrum in terms of campaign contributions, including Claire McCaskill, the latter of which just shocked me.
So, not as a Native-American (which I am not), nor as a "blue" American and certainly not as a "red" American, but simply as an AMERICAN (there is but ONE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA), I think we must demand that THIS presidential campaign be one in which we face up to and demand the end of our domestic genocide and continuing abuse of Native American peoples. I have been blinded by my own hopeful endorsement of the flourishing and hopeful possibilities of Native populations being part of the clean-energy revolution in the northern plains (see the Intertribal Council on Energy Policy) that I allowed myself to miss this specific, ongoing, archaic-style abuse of Native-peoples.
I hope that Barack will, in this campaign, demand the extension of JUSTICE to the native peoples who suffer a present and continuing genocide on our own soil. "Our own soil"---god, that sounds sort of ugly in this light, doesn't it? We have to call this what it is, and do what can be done to remedy it.
There's little use or grace in politically squabbling over the evils in history, when that blinds us to the fact that those kinds of evils are also today's news. And today's heartache.
Has anyone visited the John McCain official website today? If you do, you find the homepage screen bearing the ridiculous, "Dating-Game" looking pink graphic:
Watch & Vote TodayIt's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair. We want you to be the judge. Click here to watch the new video and vote today!
Once you stop laughing, please read on: Here's my point--doesn't putting this on the home/welcome page of your OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN WEBSITE mean that YOU (McCain camp) have some "bizarre fascination with Barack Obama"?
Isn't it some kind of Lewis-Carroll kind of inversion that the candidate who talks a blue streak about "courage" and "honor" has such a tremendously unprofessional website? You'd expect something a little more statesmanly to represent the face of McCain to newcomers to the website. But on his own website, the "welcome to McCain" is a pink heart graphic of Obama, smacking the media. McCain is selling himself as senior statesman, but his website shows the opposite.
That is a perfect metaphor for a certain reality of the campaign: that it has no real face, that it has become empty of almost anything besides the desperate attempt to mock Obama and the media. In some sense, that should make those of us on the Obama side a little happy. But it doesn't, because it is such a sad sign for our democracy. When a hero like McCain can fall so hard and so far as to be a faceless entity--a mirror that reflects only a mockery of its opponent while criticizing its friend (media)--we should despair of the quality of all subsequent elections. If THIS republican can't run a straightforward campaign (after calling itself "the straight-talk express"), I can't see how any will be able to. I realize McCain does not run his website, because he can't even get there on his own to see it, but as his face to the electronic public, it is really a sad indictment of the political process. It was meant to be funny, but is really only sad.
Nancy (still can't find her last name), a McCain spokesperson just spoke on MSNBC continuing the spin and misrepresentation of McCain's erroneous statements about the timeline of the Anbar Awakening and the Surge.
Asked about this, she said she stands by McCain's statement and its ongoing defense by campaign representatives, quoting Petraeus's comment that the surge "allowed for the SUCCESS of the Awakening." Call me picky, but that's simply unresponsive to the question, which was about McCain's explicit comment about what HE HIMSELF called "a matter of historical fact" regarding the sequence of events. If he was talking about historical facts, then the statement was wrong and has nothing to do with the later issues about what may have supported the Awakening once it was underway. His comment was about timeline, the spin is about after-effects.
Here's the description of the Awakening at The Weekly Standard's site (presumably McCain-friendly, no?): "The process in standing up the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of local tribes and former insurgents opposed to al Qaeda's harsh brand of Taliban-like sharia law, has been ongoing since the summer of 2006." The surge was announced in January 2007. In McCain's words, this means a "remarkable failure" of McCain's KNOWLEDGE of the HISTORY he was talking so confidently about.
Of course Nancy (can someone give me her name?!) could not get off the air without adding the lie that Obama "advocates defeat" in Iraq.
She needs to be called on those comments, not thanked for her appearance while they cut to breaking news about the same hurricane details that have been playing all day.
And McCain needs to let some people into his "town halls" that are not really "town halls" to question him about his claims that Obama wants to lose the war.
If you missed it and can find it online, I suggest rooting out the conversation between Andrea Mitchell and Richard Holbrook that just aired on MSNBC.
Mitchell asked Holbrook what he thought of Obama's alleged change of rhetoric about Iran that seemed clear to her, but he came back to her poised and said something to the effect that he'd rather not respond to such a question based on a mere soundbite (implying she WAS!) and that he first wanted to ask her a question, which is whether he said something specifically at odds with his former position. To this she stammered out an answer about a shift in his emphasis regarding Iran, a backing off of his claim to be ready to negotiate with Iran. I don't know what press conference she was listening to, but everything he's said on this trip has been predicated on negotiation with all players. Holbrook wouldn't bite, bless him! He repeated again that he would want to see full transcripts rather than sound bites.
I respect his efforts at precision and clarity and not biting the spin-bait despite not having been taken on as official foreign policy advisor by the campaign. One wonders if that not-being-on the show was the reason he was picked for the interview? Doubtless whoever made that decision was disappointed at his reasonableness and grace.
