The attacks on recently-nominated Elena Kagan (for the Supreme Court) – and many more – are to be expected from the right.  In fact, it’s safe and predictable to say that even if Obama had nominated a second iteration of Scalia, there’d be scorn and calls for someone “less liberal”.  Which is why Obama should have nominated a replacement for Stevens who was at or to the left of him on the ideological spectrum.  But that Obama did not indicates yet again, among other things, that Obama himself is not a terribly liberal liberal.

Kagan not being a trial lawyer isn’t much of a concern.  And certainly her arguments as Solicitor General should not reflect upon her own personal views (but, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out, her arguments for good things should be taken with the same salt as her arguments for bad things).  However, Kagan should be held accountable while in her role as a White House advisor – her (freely given) advice urging a ban on late-term abortions should be attributed to her.

However, the tendency for progressives to compromise on the Obama administration’s conservative actions is exactly the wrong thing to do.  The right is much more disciplined (and consequently much more successful, albeit for other reasons as well) in this regard – take Harriet Miers, for instance.  Bush came out with a less-than-stellar conservative pick, and he was embarrassed into withdrawing her nomination by the right – correctly so.

If Obama was widely panned and embarrassed for choosing a moderate, unknown nominee to replace the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, then he would be less (not more) inclined to be moderate.  While progressives/liberals/people allow their values to be compromised by the guy elected (largely by left or left-leaning activists) without protest, Obama will just continue making the same, conservative moves.

If the standard-bearer of the Democrat party, the “most liberal” president, is someone who would pass healthcare reform without actually regulating insurance companies while at the same time mandating all U.S. citizens buy into a broken system of for-profit healthcare, run by the largest corporations in the world, then that demonstrates a pretty sorry state of liberalism (never mind real progressive change).  For some myth-debunking (for those who think it’s truly transformative) about the healthcare bill, see Jane Hamsher’s Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill.

An even greater indication of Obama’s failure to live up to the promise of his presidency is that he came out immediately in support of the Schumer-Graham immigration  bill, which is a draconian framework for immigration reform that entails all citizens to get an identification card with biometric information on it as well as further militarizing the U.S./Mexico border (among other things).

Tack on top of that an escalation of the Afghanistan war (whose surge of 30,000 troops alone costs $30 billion), the bailout of Wall Street, and so on … is this the best candidate that “progressives” can get?

The scary thing is that supposedly “liberal/progressive” organizations, like Planned Parenthood and the Reform Immigration for America have come out SUPPORTING passage of both of these extremely problematic pieces of legislation.  Despite Obama creating a signing statement to deny federal funds for abortion, Planned Parenthood has declared the passage of the healthcare bill in the House to be a “Victory!”, describing it as a “huge victory for women’s health”.

It appears (perhaps unsurprisingly) that organizations that are so desperate for any sort of victory that they’ll accept anything that even addresses their agenda.  That, or these institutions have such a craving to be associated with those with real power that they’ll carry all sorts of water.  In any case, real reform has gotten that much harder to reach.

Victory at what cost?

Sotomayor

The buzz around Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s recent nomination, as well as the ongoing hearings, has brought to the forefront the issue of gender and race in the currently U.S. Supreme Court, which does not appear terribly representative of the country it deigns to serve.  But critics and journalists are missing the boat with respect to a determinant factor of identity, going beyond race and gender.  There’s a glaring omission from this debate.

While the racial milestone that will be made with her appointment to the court will certainly be significant, an important trend (perhaps the most important trend) in the court itself will be broken by her ascendancy. That is, she will be the first Catholic on the Court who is not a conservative.

(from: Southern Appeal)

While every is scrutinizing the race, gender, and whiteness of the Court, and how it affects the decisions that it makes, the religious denominational breakdown of the Court has been the leading (and perhaps sole) indicator based on identity as to how the Court has voted.  That is to say: All the Roman Catholic Justices are conservative (from moderately-tempered Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, to the barking mad Scalia), whereas all the other non-Catholic Justices (Ginsburg, Stephens, Breyer, and the now-departed Souter) are more liberal in their decisions.

Since the end of the Rehnquist Court in 2005, the the sides in decisions of the Court could be nearly always determined by Catholic affiliation (or non-affiliation).  For instance, Justice Kennedy is occasionally a “swing vote” between the liberal and conservatives of the court, but almost always sides with his Catholic buddies.  A few exceptions have occurred, such as Kelo v. City of New London, but such exceptions largely prove the rule.

With Sotomayor on the Court, all that will change!  LIberal Catholics around the country can rejoice that finally a non-conservative Catholic will represent and advocate their ideological perspective in the future.  A wall will be broken, a stereotyping of Catholics as socially backwards, intolerant curmudgeons will end, and “progress” will be upon the U.S. Supreme Court.

Question: Should liberals now fear that Sotomayor will abandon her hitherto liberal instincts, and start taking orders from the Vatican? (See B.E. Howard’s question to Kennedy)

The upshot is that a reform-minded president supported by labor unions and social organizations is now pitted against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite that is accustomed to controlling the Supreme Court, as well as congress and the presidency. It is a story often repeated elsewhere in Latin America, with the United States almost always weighing in on the side of the established, entrenched interests.

The Honduran elites were outraged that a member of their class would carry out even modest reforms. They began to portray Zelaya as a demagogue, and demonized Hugo Chavez as trying to take over the country. When Zelaya announced that he would hold a plebiscite on June 28 to see if the country wanted to have the option in the upcoming November presidential elections to vote for the convening of a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, the political establishment would have none of it. They incorrectly claimed that Zelaya was trying to stand for re-election. In fact the possibility that a president might serve a second term could only emerge in a new constitution that would not be drafted until well after Zelaya left office in January, 2010. The elites did however have reason to fear a new magna carta, since this is the path that Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have used to draft new constitutions to begin transforming their countries political, social and economic structures.

No doubt, Karzai has been little more than a pawn to make the Bush administration look like it was doing something, but as Obama plans on escalating the war in the country, he seems to be looking for a more competent ringleader.  In any case, Karzai’s days are numbered as Afghan head of state.

Mr. Obama is preparing to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan over the next two years, perhaps to more than 60,000 from about 34,000 now… He [Gates] outlined plans for an increase of about 12,000 troops by midsummer but cautioned that any decision on more troops beyond that might have to wait until late 2009, given the need for barracks and other infrastructure.

So one campaign promise that Obama is living up to is upping the ass-whooping on Afghanistan.  I hate to bring up inconvenient lessons in history, but didn’t yet another superpower put all its eggs in the Afghan basket (while experiencing severe economic strains) and end up becoming a moot point?

Mr. Gates added that the United States should focus on limited goals. “My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and our allies, and whatever else we need to do flows from that objective,” he said.

Here’s a good thought experiment – did Gates make the above statement 6 years ago, or yesterday?  (Hint: We’ve seen this foreign policy already, and it hasn’t turned out so good).

Obama also persuaded House Democrats to remove provisions related to family-planning from the stimulus and — over the objections of many Democrats — inserted large tax cuts for businesses that Republicans wanted.

… and still no Republicans voted for it.  One wonders what the hell the Republican party, as a whole, would actually do if they had the agency or inclination to deal with the current economic crisis.  And one can’t help but be angry with them – not so much for opposing the stimulus package, but for setting the bar so low that they make the Democrats look responsible.

• The state of Israel has lost its moral standing for its existence.  The original Zionist concept of a collaborative, diverse haven for an oppressed class of people has mutated into an ultra-militaristic state which has violently oppressed the people whose land was taken for that purpose.  No state has an inherent right to exist (did the Soviet Union?  Do countries whose borders have been drawn by occupying forces?), and for many well outside of the Middle East, Israel is losing any legitimacy it may have possessed.
• The perpetrators of this 40 year-long genocide – Israel and the United States – have increasingly backed themselves into a very small corner in the public opinion of the world.  Given the U.S.’ unparalleled economic and military power in the 70s, 80s, and even the 90s, it could afford to overlook the destruction of a small population with little possibility of a threat to its own power.  But economic spheres have and are arising in South America, East Asia, and even Western Europe, and its military force is not as singularly persuasive as it once was.  Empires can crumble, and while the U.S. is currently the only superpower, that can change.  Especially with the whole world against it, minus its client state.

Donate to the Middle East Children's Alliance

• We should fear for our lives.  Violence begets violence, and between Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, the U.S. is responsible for more violence now than before the attacks of 9/11.  A future in the United States without some form of violent retaliation is not likely.  However critical one might be of those in the anti-war movement, an implicit aim in every protest and petition is to make the people of this country (and others) safer.  The legacy of our government, on the other hand, is to make us less safe, regardless of the number of times we might have to take off our shoes at the airport or how many Muslims we imprison at Guantanamo.

Why shouldn’t we think that we might be next?  What makes our lives – our children’s lives – less important than that of those children who hear the whirring of planes overhead, followed by the silence of death?  If they can be exterminated, what moral claim to life do we have?

• Apologists for the violence cannot be taken seriously.  At current count, the death toll of Israelis to Palestinians is 5 to 530.  One country is the occupier of the other.  One country has an arsenal greater than any member of NATO (save the U.S.).  One country has a blockade of food and medical supplies of the other.  There is no such thing as parity in this situation.  Any sentence that begins, “Israel has the right to defend itself …” does not merit being finished.  Occupying countries have no rights; they simply have responsibilities.

Apologists include not only those who defend Israeli violence, but those who defend whatever diminutive forces are still launching rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel.  This has nothing to with the right of an occupied people to resist – such rocket attacks are not resistance.  The rocket attacks from Gaza have no logical basis.  Engaging in war, engaging in violence, should at the least have a rational basis in the expectation that it will improve one’s situation.  However, it is abundantly clear (and has been for some time) that not only are such attacks not improving the plight of Gazans, but with a grand total of 5 fatalities, while providing a pretext for Israel to respond, are almost completely ineffective while increasingly contributing to the decimation of the civilian population of Gaza.  One might even suggest that those behind the rocket attacks are in collusion with Israeli military planners, so ineffective are such tactics.

For those of us who live in the countries of Israel and the U.S., both alleged democracies, the responsibilities of our governments are that much more heavy.  We are supposed to have a degree of control over the actions of our leaders.  Our “freedom” and “democracy” are touted as admirable and prominent aspects of our countries.  If we do not use our freedom and democracy to bring an end to the homicidal inclinations of our governments, who can fault the acts of revenge on us by the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles of the innocent who have perished?  After all this bloodshed in a world where violence has become the new universal language, who doubts it is coming?

UPDATE (Thursday, January 8): Apparently Avi Shlaim, who wrote in the Guardian on January 7, also came to the same conclusion regarding Israel’s “right to exist”:

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

Banner: Stop Watching, Get Out Into the Streets

The riots and protests that started almost two weeks ago in Greece are not only persisting, but intensifying.  In addition, there doesn’t seem to be any particular organization or political figure leading the protests – it appears that the resistance is non-hierarchal (thus causing news organizations to term what’s happening as “anarchy”).  Information (at least in the English press) is not very prolific, but of note are the following:

• After breaking into the state TV studio (NET), protestors blocked the broadcast of a speech by the prime minister, unfurled a banner (seen above).  They released a statement:
  

  “Our action is the result of an accumulated pressure which is robbing us of our lives, and not only an emotional explosion based on the murder of Alexis Grigoropulos by the police. We are one more collective, a piece of the revolt which is taking place.

  Against pacification by the mass media, we are carrying out an intervention-interjection in the flow of the program of ERT [state television]. It’s our view that the mass media systematically cultivates fear. Rather than informing, they misinform. They are presenting a multifaceted revolt as a blind release.

  They are explaining the social explosion in penal rather than political terms. They are selectively concealing the actual facts. They are representing a revolt as another spectacle which we should simply follow until the next soap opera begins. The mass media is daily turned into a means of suppressing free and public thought.

  Let’s organize ourselves. No authority can offer solutions to our problems. We need to meet with other human beings. To turn our public places, the streets, the squares, the parks, the schools, into places of unmediated expression. To find ourselves face to face so that we can transform together our thought and actions.

  
  Let’s not be afraid. Let’s turn off our televisions, go out of our houses, continue to lay claim to our life, to take it into our hands.

  We condemn the police violence, immediate release of the arrested demonstrators. For human emancipation and freedom.” (translation by Amee Chew from Dollars and Sense)

• This is not confined to one area – clashes with police are taking place in Athens, Thessaloniki, and other parts of the country.  Banks are being targeted with gas bombs, as well as government property and offices.
• Political figures seem eager to attribute this to a small segment of society:

(Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis): I expected something like this would happen sooner or later. We have a group of people with ultra-leftist ideologies, the active Black Bloc anarchists. There have recently been repeated clashes with them. As of late, their organization has been improving and becoming more flexible, they are using the Internet and text messages. At the same time, we have to weather difficult reforms. That is the deeper reason for the protests, this is why the anarchists have suddenly been joined by disgruntled young people. (Speigel, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,596439,00.html)

• Major sectors of society have been brought to a standstill by the people working in them.  Not only are many universities and high schools occupied and closed, but radio stations are being taken over, air traffic controllers are on strike, and so on.
  

One shared misconception by many media sources is the “spontaneous” nature of the protests.  But after the conviction of 8 police officers for abusing a youth a few years ago, combined with rising discontent about the ordering of Greek society in general, previous roadblocks by farmers, protests by dockworkers, it appears this is a long time coming.  The key question is – what will be shaped from all of this foment?

I am proud to live in Obama’s America too. Long time coming. Let’s work together now to bring us back into the international fold.

- Steve, November 4, 2008

There are many lessons to be learned from the recent U.S. Presidential election – but many more lessons commentators claim we have learned.  It’s been a month since the election, and it’s time to look back with some perspective.

• It was a historic election – this should not be understated.  A Black man was elected to the highest office in a country where 2nd-class citizenship and economic inequality was written into our laws just 55 years ago.  A woman was a serious competitor for the candidacy of one of two major parties in a country where gender inequality is still rampant and largely unaddressed.  This represents progress along racial and gender lines.
• It was a historic election – but this should not be overstated.  Despite the competitive candidacies of a person of color and a woman, racial and gender disparities are real and ongoing.  They are not merely anecdotal, but devastatingly economic.  The average white household made $48k last year; the average Black household made $30k.  The fact of Obama as president is not going to close that gap.
• Symbolism is real, and has very real effects. Cornel West on CNN:

In a sense it ["post-racialism"] doesn’t exist – it just means that white fellow citizens are more likely to vote for a black candidate who has qualifications rather than be preoccupied with his pigmentation.  “Post-racial” means less racism on behalf of white voters – and that’s progress, but “post racial” ought not to mean “black” people disappearing, as if there’s no such thing as “black” people anymore.

… As we see the glass ceiling actually pierced at the highest level, and the symbolic impact – My god, the impact on children … it makes a *big* difference.  That means the sky is the limit for them.  And of course the impact on white children as well, they understand that the sky is the limit for children across the board.

The challenge now is from moving from symbol to substance.  What kind of policies?  Will you accent working people?  Will you accent poor people?  Who will be your advisors?  What will your cabinet look like?  Symbols matter – but then we move to substance.

• “Progress” is only superficially defined by “more black faces in higher places” – yes, folks of color in positions of power is a part of moving forward, but that’s just the surface of progress.  In fact, having people of color in positions of power should be one of the last achievements in a democratic society in breaking down racism and building up a more equitable society.  The real achievement is when persistent and brutal conditions for everyday folks are addressed and resolved.  We are a long, long way from that, and it is entirely unclear whether Obama has the will or desire to “cash the check” he was given, as put by Bruce Dixon from the Black Agenda Report:

The day Obama takes office, there will be an incredible 1.1 million African Americans behind bars, a proportion eight times that of whites. Before the mortgage market meltdown the wealth of black families was about one eleventh that of whites. Since then, it’s fallen off a cliff. Whether we look at education, at wages, at morbidity, mortality, unemployment or mass incarceration the gaps between whites and blacks in the US are wide and still growing. With the nation’s First Black President installed, many whites will solemnly assure us that the US is not now, if it ever was, a racist society. The First Black President-elect seems to agree with them, having told us all a year before electing him that we were “90% of the way” to a non-racist society.

Will the First Black President be of any use cashing the check for real racial justice, not just for black faces in high places? The clock is already ticking, and every day is an opportunity to lead lost.

The day the First Black President is sworn in the US economy will still be, in the words of economist Michael Hudson a polite fiction, based on phantom assets, phony profits, inflated valuations, and outright fraud, a house of marked cards where even the bankers know not to trust each other. Millions of families will still face foreclosure, eviction and bankruptcy. Tens of millions more are in debt up to their necks, afflicted with ever-rising interest rates thanks to the tireless efforts of Obama’s running mate Joe Biden, sometimes known as the Senator from MasterCard.

In his first true test of presidential leadership, while still a candidate the First Black President lobbied reluctant Democrats and urged them to pass the Bush-Cheney trillion dollar no-strings-attached parting gift to Wall Street, money that could have been used to fund education, jobs, infrastructure, human needs, and debt relief for ordinary families.

• This was not a landslide victory. It was clearly an electoral landslide, with a projected 365 to 173 vote difference.  But the popular vote was 53% to 46% – a difference of 7%.  McCain was dealt a hand of 8 years of Bush, embarrassing responses to 9/11, the largest Wall Street disaster in a lifetime, the ruins of Katrina, Republican corruption after corruption, an incompetent campaign with incompetent vice president, without a real message of substance to people who work for a living, and a sitting president who might be the worst president in the history of history, whose very name he could not freely speak aloud.  Ignoring everything about the Democrat’s candidate – MIckey Mouse should have handily beat the Republican party by 20 points.  That this was settled by a difference of 9 out of 129 million voters says quite a bit about the Obama victory.  That the Obama campaign spent 3/4 of $1 billion dollars to get such a margin of victory indicates something very wrong with our political system.
• As for that $750,000,000 spent by the Obama campaign, Noam Chomsky points out:

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: “The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington.” Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama’s campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.

• The victory of Obama over McCain means that we have a little more time than we otherwise would have. A McCain victory would have meant continued economic disaster, a greater pace towards environmental ruin, slightly more lethal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a tremendous blow to a great deal of (if not misplaced) hope for those millions of people, particularly youth and folks of color, which would make re-mobilization difficult and done from a less positive place.

UMass Amherst Green Energy Conference

I’m at the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, MA, attending the “Clean Energy Connections” Conference, put together by the University of Massachusetts Amherst (my school). The topic is the new “green economy” – what it is, why we need it, and examples of what it will look like in the future.

The introductory talk was given by Bracken Hendricks, from the Center for American Progress (a Washington Think Tank) and also an advisor to Prez-Elect Obama.  He made some good (and by now, obvious) points, but as he went through the list of economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy, rewiring the grid, building insulation, the crux of what he was saying (that he outright came to in his conclusion) is that the primary reason that our species (and many others) face extinction is the failure of political leadership.  No doubt he’s correct – the effect of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere has been understood by chemists since the early twentieth century, creation of cars with much higher fuel efficiency has been around for at least 40 years, and basic technology to insulate housing has been around since, well, since people used mud to keep the heat in their huts.

What has quickly become a cliche, Hendricks slapped the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama with the subtitle “HOPE” and “PROGRESS” on the screen, and proceeded to talk about how the country is “turning a new corner”, how the new president allows a “window to the future”, and generally how hopeful he was about the future.  But although he is likely unrealistic about Obama’s capacity to bring sufficient change, he did repeat what I’ve heard (thankfully) from many folks on the left side of the spectrum: We must “hold him [Obama] accountable” to the change that’s contained in the promise of his campaign.  I’m not sure who “we” is, and I’m not sure by what mechanism we have the ability to hold him accountable, but I’m grateful for this small bit of healthy cynicism when referring to the next president.

Other notes of interest from the conference:

• There’s no such thing as “green job” – building and installing wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, solar hot water heaters, installing insulation, and the many other direct and indirect forms of energy conservation and renewability needs accountants, secretaries, IT professionals, managers, and everything else we currently have.  The folks involved in installing and manufacturing might need some training or retraining, but moving to a greener economy does not mean a revolution in how we “do” stuff.  It’s just about changing the impact of what we do.
• The coming greening of the economy – that is, making energy consumption cleaner, more efficient, and utilizing renewable energy – is inevitable.  As one of the speakers mentioned, there’s too much money to be made in the private sector, particularly given the rising price of petroleum and the risks associated with it, to stop investment and innovation in better energy.  The more important question is: Are we going to green our lifestyles just enough to improve the traditional economy, or are we going to green our world enough to prevent the longer term devastation of global warming?
• Growth DOES NOT EQUAL prosperity.  As one of the speakers on a financial panel pointed out, “growing” does not mean we’re going to be better off, it just means that someone, somewhere, is reaping higher profits.  The type of growth that we do, as a country, is important – and the type of growth that has been aspired to has brought us to a dead-end, time and time again.  We need a shift in how we gain wealth, work, and spend money.
• The question of the daunting costs of installing solar panels and other technology came up in the financial panel, and the prospect of taking on debt to facilitate such an investment.  While solar panels are likely still beyond the capacity of many folks, it was pointed out that there are two types of debt: (1) consumer debt that’s used to buy stuff, and (2) self-liquidating debt, that is used to invest in something that will eventually give you a return on an investment.  The debt of type (1) is “bad” debt, which has unfortunately been keeping our economy afloat more and more, whereas debt of type (2) is “good” debt – debt that in the long run produces wealth, returns the cost of the investment, and largely benefits society overall.  Debt of type (2) are things like college loans, home equity loans, and so forth.  Moving from type (1) to type (2) is going to be essential for any sustainable economy.

That’s it for now!

Claudia Lorena Castillo Sánchez, a successful trachea transplant patient

A transplant operation has been conducted (and successfully) in Spain that solely uses a person’s own stem cells. That means never having to worry about a match for tissue or organs, and never having to go on immunosuppressive drugs (which is often not part of the discussion about transplants, but are a permanent and precarious part of life currently after transplants). This has overwhelming implications for the future of medicine and the quality of life.

The folks at the University of Italy took a donor trachea, took off all the cells, and then used the patient’s own stem cells (taken from her own bone marrow, where our stem cells reside) to “coat” the trachea with the stem cells. And those stem cells, being the “Jack’s magical beans” of the biological universe, grew onto the trachea in exactly the way necessary to recreate a living, viable trachea.

Such technology means … we can live forever. Or at least for a mighty long time – whenever a part of us goes bad (i.e. cancer, from burns, even old age) – we just scoop out some of our bone marrow and grow us a new part. Welcome to the future! [Credit: Time/AP]

At the risk of appearing cynical, the election of any U.S. President (or any election) has never ensured a prosperous future.  On the contrary, politicians (and people in general) tend to do what they’re paid to do – and Obama’s $640,000,000 bankroll from the campaign means that there’s some rich folks who are expecting him to do things that will help them out.  Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Time Warner were not in the Top 10 of  Obama’s contributors because they believed that he would redistribute their wealth or give alms to the poor.  This is not a surprising expectation.  After all, sister Goldman once remarked, “Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.”

Even if Obama were an anti-war socialist with an agenda of ending world hunger (he’s not, and he doesn’t), he still faces a rather conservative Democrat majority and a reactionary Republican minority.  The machinations of the U.S. government are not easily pushed in the direction of change – even the tepid and abstract changes to which Obama has alluded.  The status quo tends to remain the status quo – and that does not bode well for most of the folks in the country (and the world).  For instance, even after populist uproar over the Wall-Street bailout/giveaway, AIG is getting another bailout of an additional $40 billion ($40,000,000,000) and this has evoked little response from Washington.

The fundamental question is whether we believe that we are sheep to be herded by a shepherd, or whether we are all shepherds of our own future.  Is what “democracy” means that once in a few years we choose one of two narrowly-chosen candidates and expect him to lead us to redemption?  Is being a citizen a spectator sport, in other words?  Or are we to understand that if we wish to control our own destiny, that we will have to get up and do just that?

What the Obama victory means, among other things, is that unlike a McCain/Palin administration, the new president might be responsive to popular organizations and movements calling for reform.  Real change (i.e. revolution) is not likely an option.  The problems that face us are unparalleled in human history: climate change, ongoing war and occupation, nuclear proliferation – the list goes on.  Despite the accolades on Obama, the belief that he’s “going to cure everything, make everything perfect“, it is going to take a great gathering of the people of good will and intention of this country to sway him.  He’s not (and maybe cannot) do it by himself.

I’ll leave readers to suggest the other 7, but I think deserving to be in at least three spots are the following:

(1 of 10)
The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), “Road I Must Travel”:

(2 of 10)
Against Me!, “Baby, I’m an Anarchist”:

(3 of 10)
Immortal Technique, “Point of No Return”:

Others? State Radio’s “Gang of Thieves”? Dead Prez’s “Hip Hop”? If you’ve got a suggestion, leave it in the comments.

In a very, desparate, last-minute appeal to the most stereotypically knee-jerk issue of Cuban Americans, John McCain is making robo-calls that suggest insist that Castro has endorsed Barack Obama in the election.  The content of the call has a misleading tone of “breaking news” to it, in which a slew of Latin American pariahs (supposedly in the eyes of Cuban-Americans) are associated with Obama.  Perhaps most ludicrous of all is the appeal:

Don’t give Castro what he wants. Go vote right now for John McCain and avoid establishing in the United States political policies like those of Cuba.

“Don’t give Castro what he wants”?  Are they serious? Do they truly believe the people they are targeting are idiots?  After calling Obama a left-wing radical (he isn’t, unfortunately), a socialist (nope, sorry), a “redistributionist” (we wish!) and a host of other presumed political epithets, this is what’s thrown at Obama in the final hour of the campaign?  Message to the GOP: McCarthyism is so 1950′s.

The McCain/Palin camp has spent the last 2-3 months making Barack Obama look good – which, as he is a lukewarm, center-right candidate, is pretty hard to do – because Obama has insisted on talking about actual “issues”, even if it is in the non-specific, abstract fashion that has made him famous.  And Obama’s vague politicking, in comparison with a GOP ticket that does virtually nothing other than mud-slinging, has won the day (barring a massive election theft) in this climate of extraordinary political and economic peril.

Cornel West put it quite succinctly in the below recent clip from the show “Real Time with Bill Maher” (minute 0:50)

Well, for me, it’s just an exciting moment to be alive, when you see that kind of desperation.  It really is.  That’s what it is – it’s the last gasp of the conservative era where the economics of greed, the culture of indifference, and the politics of fear have been brought together in such a way that it hides and conceals the plight of poor people and working people.

Now, Brother West suggests that Barack Obama is at the heart of reversing this trend, which is an extraordinary exaggeration – if not wishful thinking.  Obama has ignored the mudslinging, to his credit and to his advantage.  But just as West tells us that popular movements have to come together to compel Obama to live up to much of his rhetoric (a non-trivial task, to be sure) let us not forget that Senator/President-elect Obama is not a champion of the poor nor the working-class. If there is one glimmer of hope in the future of an Obama presidency, it is that perhaps he can be pushed in that direction.

Vote No on Prop 8!

Political battles are often nuanced fights, in which an issue is wrapped up with personal history, racism, sexism, mysterious backstories, internal power struggles, party politics, and more.  “Sides” are seldom clearly distinguishable as purely right or wrong, true or false.  Politics is a muddled business in this way.

But one fight going on in the U.S. – most notably in California – is really quite simple.

Proposition 8 is a constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that, if passed, “eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry”.  Voters of that state will cast ballots on November 4th to determine whether they wish to revoke a right for a segment of the population.

There is little nuanced about California’s Proposition 8 (and Florida’s Proposition 2 and Arizona’s Proposition 102).  These are refreshingly clear fights for full human rights of folks who happen to belong to the GLBTQ community.

The fight is about whether fear is going to continue to drive how we live, how we see each other, how we interact as a people.

The fight is about whether hatred is going to be the lesson taught to our youth, whether we’re going to teach them how to shun, whether we’re going to instill injustice in their hearts.

The fight is about whether religion will again be used, in an all-too-familiar way, to create an “other” who we can point our fingers at.  Christians will have to demonstrate whether they actually have read and understand the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, whether they accept or reject spiritual decay.

The fight is about whether the United States is a place where there exists a separation of church and state, whether we wish to become a theocracy, or whether our values truly are better than the foreign religious fundamentalists so often decried.

The fight is about whether citizens who proclaim the virtue of “small government” will actually realize that principle, whether they will respect a person’s right to privacy, or whether they will thrust a lengthened arm of the law into their own bedrooms.

Write to Marry Day!

The fight is about whether we will maintain the bondage on the dignity of each individual, whether we will repudiate our own civil rights, or whether liberty for one means liberty for all.

In essence, the fight is about whether we will be a civilized people, that uses our institutions to learn how to live together in peace, or use those institutions to create divisions and foster discrimination.  Rarely are people given such clear choices in the voting booth that will declare their equitableness, or their iniquity.  There is no nuance here, only the opportunity to embrace our own humanity.

If Things Were Switched …

What if Obama hadn’t supported immunity for the Bush administration?

What if Nader’s top contributors had been Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Microsoft, JP Morgan, General Electric, and others?

What if Obama supported equal rights, instead of opposing gay marriage?

What if Nader proposed escalating U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan?

What if Obama was demonized and criticized for demanding that the country could do better than George Bush and Al Gore?

What if Nader claimed to be a liberal while at the same time embracing the death penalty – even for those not guilty of murder?

What if Obama was a crusader against nuclear power and the corporate welfare nuclear energy industry?

What if Nader supported environmental degradation, such as the fallacious “Clean Coal” campaign?

What if Obama were white and had declared in a Black church, “Too many fathers also are missing… they have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men… You and I know how true this is in the African-American community.”

What if Nader had called for increasing George Bush’s federal faith-based funding, in violation of the separation of Church and State?

What if Obama wasn’t as eloquent, as good-looking, as athletic?

What if Nader had been allowed on the debate stage, alone – no wife, no children – a picture of professionalism and dedication to his life’s work that precluded having a family?

What if Obama had spent his life challenging, instead of joining, the political establishment in the U.S.?

What if Nader had used his office to support Joe Lieberman over anti-war Ned Lamont in 2006?

What if Obama was responsible for establishing standards for consumer protection, environmentalism, and civic life for the last 40+ years?

What if Nader’s political career was bolstered by folks like Tony Rezko and Richard Daley?

What if Obama had started the Citizen Advocacy Center, Citizens Utility Boards, Congress Accountability Project, Corporate Accountability Research Project, Disability Rights Center, Equal Justice Foundation, Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights, Center for Women’s Policy Studies, Clean Water Action Project, and many more?

What if Nader had broken a promise to reject private donors and campaign on public funding based on campaign finance reform?

What if Obama had taken on corporate interests in Washington,  and acknowledged the “one-sided class war” in this country, instead of being funded by huge corporate powers?

You could easily add to this list.  If this were a real democracy, do you really believe that the only two valid candidates would be members of the Democrat and Republican parties?

Racism is very real and degrades the fabric of our society.  But if racism was the only barrier to democratic leadership, surely Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney would be a much preferable candidate for progressive voters.  When our only real choice on election day is a candidate who embraces the escalation of foreign war and occupation, who has been bought and sold by corporations his entire career, who supports widespread use of the death penalty, who refuses to impeach or hold the Bush administration accountable; then maybe racism isn’t the biggest problem we face in this country today.

Educational Background:

Barack Obama:
Columbia University – B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard Law School- Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

vs.

Ralph Nader:
Princeton University – Magna Cum Laude in Public and International Affairs
Harvard Law School – Juris Doctor (J.D.)
University of Hartford - Professor of History and Government
American University Washington College of Law – Faculty Member
(Served in the U.S. Army)

Education isn’t everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world.

There has to be a reason that, in spite of the above, we are where we are today.  Racism is one of the keys.  Another is the fact that our politicians are bought and sold by corporate power, and money is everything.  Our government is up for grabs by the best spokesman who can convince us they offer change while maintaining the status quo at the same time.  Of course, there is a generous dosage of country-wide stupidity too.