The controversial Reverand Wright was uninvited on account of his inflammatory sermons.  Pam Spaulding wonders why Rick Warren won’t be:

So apparently Wright can be given the hook when Obama’s doing political risk assessment, but not Rick Warren. You can draw your own conclusions as to why it’s now possible, even in light of the incredible mother lode of evidence of the extreme anti-gay views of Rick Warren, that Barack Obama doesn’t feel politically inconvenienced enough to dump the Saddleback bigot.

Two reasons jump out at me.  One, that team Obama expects Warren to behave during the inauguration.  The idea is for a voice of the religious right to champion causes he shares with the incoming administration.  Obama is consensus building.  Which leads us into the second reason. Obama isn’t a liberal, no matter how fiercely he was championed by liberals (myself included) and vilified by conservatives.  He is a centrist (albeit an unusually pragmatic one with definite liberal leanings).  As such he has a much wider and more optimistic view of “his base”.  Barack Obama wants to bring evangelicals to the table.  By bringing one of their own to the stage and emphasizing where they are natural allies, perhaps he believes he’ll be able to bridge the many gaps between religious conservatives and the political mainstream.

Since there isn’t likely to be an uninvite with all that at stake, time will tell how well this move plays out.  From the painful experience of being a Democratic, Obama is supremely unlikely to mollify the religious conservative leadership no matter how much he reaches out.  But perhaps this one symbolic act in January will speak the rank and file faithful louder than their conservative religious leadership’s weekly sermons and daily rants.  Perhaps it will be worth the alienating the people who worked so hard to get him into office.

Posted under Politics, Religion

As I write this I can hear beeps from cars passing Obama volunteers with signs.  The response has been enormously positive, with only a stray middle finger or scowl from an old McCain/Palin supporter to suggest they even exist.  When I went to vote, I saw about 8 Obama volunteers next to one McCain/Palin volunteer.  Since I went at lunch, there was no line (although we did have a bit of confusion about where in the library to vote, at one point I joked perhaps either the nonfiction or the large print aisles were the spot to be).

While there was no line at my polling location, there was a line at Obama hq.  People were standing in line to volunteer!  Inside, they had us waiting in a room that was burning up from all the body heat.  Not because they didn’t have enough signs.  Because so many people were coming into help they were having trouble keeping up placing them where they were needed most.

Helping out with visibility was like yesterday.  People gave thumbs up, grinned, shouted “Go Obama!”, beeped (sometimes repeatedly), and pumped their fists.  One driver in an suv pulled up and handed me a water bottle!  Another woman crossing the street stopped by to offer to buy me a drink from Cosi.  We regularly got compliments and instructions to “keep up the good work” from passersby.  Two old ladies walking back from voting strolled past headed to starbucks for their free coffee.  One gave my shoulder a playful punch saying “We done voted, don’t get wet now!” with a big grin.  It was raining, and not a McCain/Palin volunteer in sight.  Just grins and Obama/Biden signs.

I didn’t see anywhere near this kind of enthusiasm or turnout in 2006.  Today Virginia feels blue.

Posted under News, Politics

I have the great fortune to be living in a swing state during a historic election.  This is the first in a series of observations from Northern Virginia.

At about 30 strong, the crowd of children gathered outside the metro entrance in Arlington were an overcrowded-classroom full of energy and enthusiasm.  A few parents waded through the Obama/Biden signs, yet this was all the work of one 11 year old student: Mariah Brescia-Weller.

Mariah had put together an impressive show of force.  I talked briefly with her about the rally (note to self: should have brought a tape recorder!  I will paraphrase from my notes).  As we glossed over initial motivations (Excitement about the election, and wanting to channel that excitement and energy into persuading people to vote for Obama), issues came up.  Education, Health Care, Woman’s Right’s, Taxes, Immigration.  I found that last one rather interesting coming from an eleven year old.  So I inquired further.  Mariah had friends who were in various stages of immigration, and it was very important to her that the next president be someone who would help them.  The idea of the personal driving the political occured again when another Obama supporter, Jeremy, chimed in.  He knew a 5th grader who broke her arm, and had no health insurance.

I spoke with one of the mothers, Sandra, about where political beliefs come from at such a young age.  She acknowledged that some were sure to come from parents, but kids have their own ideas on things.  Pressed further she shared that she’d noticed with her son this year, when they watched the debates, he’d become incredibly animated and engaged around the issues that struck him.

Two elections from now these children will be voting, and they are a part of Northern Virginia’s continuing journey to blue state status.  Its easy during an election to focus purely on those eligible to vote.  But an election is an opportunity to invite people into the process of active citizenship.  All of the kids at that rally have taken a wonderful step into a life of civic engagement.  In particular Mariah, who at 11 was articulate, to the point, and organized a political event.  Her mother is a wonderful person for encouraging and nurturing her daughter’s political expression.  She’s also wise.  We can all use this election to meet future senators, community organizers, and activists.  In 7 years children like Mariah will be voting.  Imagine where they will be in 27.

Posted under News, People, Politics

Revolutionary Act is proud to present our first guest post, from RickB of Ten Percent:

The level of discourse from McCain is truly awe inspiring, if by awe inspiring one means lower than whale shit.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it. “At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said in a radio address. “They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”

Now I don’t want to worry the passport averse US populace but erm Europe is not um ‘socialist‘ neither are any of its ‘leaders‘. Jeebus knows that if it was we would be in a lot less shit over the Neoliberal created crisis in global capital. Certainly there are remnants of social democracy still persisting in Europe against the free market onslaught by and for the wealthy, but socialist? Not even fucking close. And that’s another thing, McCarthyism may have done its job in the US but socialist is not a dirty word.

So what might the American record on poverty be? Has the ‘wealth creation‘ and ‘trickle down‘ of the Neoliberal policies of Reagan, Bush, Clinton & Bush (W) meant an equal society? The simplest measure is the Gini coefficient-

Click to enlarge

Yes you’re the yellow line, notice how it meandered along until 1980 then it began climbing steadily through both Republican and Democrat administrations. That is because all of them adhered to Neoliberal economic policy. Look at the climbs for other countries and they also coincide with the introduction of Neoliberal dogma. Or how about pay disparity as a rough guide-

In 2004, the ratio of average CEO pay to the average pay of a production (i.e., non-management) worker was 431-to-1, up from 301-to-1 in 2003, according to “Executive Excess,” an annual report released Tuesday by the liberal research groups United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies. That’s not the highest ever. In 2001, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay hit a peak of 525-to-1. Still, it’s quite a leap year over year, and it ranks on the high end historically. In 1990, for instance, CEOs made about 107 times more than the average worker, while in 1982, the average CEO made only 42 times more.

Obama’s plans are better than McCain’s who is using a straw man argument of an imaginary pinko Europe and thinks society is best served by growing inequality as the rich become richer than they have ever been. His preferred newspeak for this is ‘wealth creation‘ and his demonisation of even modest stabilising measures becomes ‘government giveaway‘ which tells you his attitude to democracy. Government is the one powerful institution the people have some control over, thus he wants to weaken that tiny speck of power redistribution, also perversely as the government is only spending the people’s money it is not a giveaway, it is returning capital to the populace. That it might in some small fashion do this in a way that does not amplify the growing inequality is what he objects to.

Much has been made of the racism, belligerence and ignorance of McCain supporters at rallies but this is only to be expected for a party that governs in the interests of a tiny elite of the very wealthy. They cannot rule on the votes of 1% of the nation so they very deliberately target the least informed, worst educated who will not be aware they are voting against their own best interests. Of course their polices, in a feedback loop, further create uninformed poorly educated people who cannot share in the wealth of the nation but have been convinced that government is bad and rich people are accorded godlike status. People are encouraged to look upon a billionaire’s wealth not as a theft from the public commons but a sign of achievement and probable moral superiority to the ‘undeserving poor’. It is also not unexpected that conservative religious charlatans have invented the ‘prosperity doctrine‘ which assigns divine right to the pursuit of riches in a remarkable reading of the bible that is akin to walking out of Star Wars with the impression the Empire is the good guy.

Read More…

Posted under Politics

Reject Subsidization of the Rich
The bailout plan, both Treasury Secretary Paulson’s original draft and the version Congress tried to pass yesterday, is a massive blank check to the wealthiest, privileged and non-productive members of our society.  It is corporate welfare at an unprecedented scale, effectively rewarding years of financial gambling and a housing bubble. Handing hundreds of billions of dollars to the same folks who have weakened our economy would be something bordering insanity, for the following reasons (and others).

Key problems with the bailout are:

• Despite rumors to the contrary, the revised bailout bill (which failed yesterday) does not put restrictions on CEO pay. And even if it did, restricting the salaries of a handful of executives in a handful of firms is not going to make this bill more accountable nor going to prevent any of this from happening again. (How much of a punishment is it to pay someone $400,000 a year?).
• Oversight of the bailout is unclear at best, and effectively absent at worst.
• Henry Paulson, the same man who insists that our economy is on the edge of collapse, whose plan included giving him unprecedented, non-reviewable power to distribute $700,000,000,000 with full immunity, was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs just a few years ago – one of the same institutions that he’s proposing giving billions of dollars to. Even if he has the best of intentions, despite having the very definition of a conflict of interests, he’s the same guy that said in early August that “We have the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime,” How is this not a case of the crazy people running the asylum?
• The drumbeat of disaster and economic ruin if we do not immediately give a third of the U.S. annual budget to banks is eerily reminiscent of the passage of the PATRIOT Act and the vote on the war on Iraq.
• There’s no guarantee that the huge bailout will actually fix the problem!
• In the past week, we’ve seen false reporting from NPR to the New York Times to columnists like David Brooks. It is not possible to make a rational, appropriate decision in such a short period of time in such a misleading and frenetic environment.
• There’s much more to comment on (keeping this short in the interest of getting this post published).

Where do the Democrats stand on this?
Obama, unbelievably, has privately urged the Democrats to not support bankruptcy reform. This is the most fundamental component of any economic stability package, would affect the folks trying to pay their mortgages, and according to Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat Presidential candidate is opposed to it. Given that Obama’s top contributor is Goldman Sachs, with JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley in his top 16, we should not be surprised.

Some folks are bringing some perspective and courage to the debate. Marcy Kaptur (D, Ohio) gave this revealing and measured response before she cast her “No” vote. Sheila Jackson also delivered some words of wisdom on the floor of the House: “America has been diagnosed, but we need a second opinion”. And recall it was mostly Republicans which stopped the bailout from being passed. What we’re witnessing is the tug of war on politicians between the people who fund them and the people who vote for them.

What to Do!
1.) Call Your Congressperson!
This is a list of how every House Representative voted for the bailout – how did yours vote? Call your House Representative (find them here) and tell them not to pass the bailout – tell them the current bailout bill is unacceptable, and anything that they pass to address the situation must include comprehensive and wide-ranging relief for those who are paying off home mortgages.
2.) Join organizations like CODEPINK and United for a Fair Economy in calling for alternatives to the bailout, like a Bailout for Main Street.
3.) Read more, get informed, know what’s going on. The greatest problem we have right now is a dearth of information and understanding. This is not a topic that’s going to go away soon, so we better know what we’re all getting (or are being put!) into.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman offered a framework to understand the current financial breakdown on Wall Street:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

Posted under Economy, Politics

Last Wednesday was my birthday. My roommate got me a bright yellow t-shirt with “VOTE FOR JESUS” in bright red “VOTE FOR PEDRO”-style lettering.

On Thursday. I wore it with pride. I was confronted by John, a white supremacist friend of mine. He told me he was offended by the shirt, because it mocked the majority Christian culture.

I told him, it’s not mockery. I genuinely support writing in Jesus for President as an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans.

As people who know me know, I never support Democrats or Republicans for the presidency, though I will often support Democrats for other positions. I am generally a Nader supporter.

This is not some form of anti-pragmatic political purism, as some have accused. Nader is not the candidate whose views I am most aligned with. If my support for a candidate had no pragmatic component, I would support Cynthia McKinney (of the Green Party) or Brian Moore (of the Socialist Party). In Canada, where I actually vote in elections, I vote for the New Democratic Party – the social democratic party that has traditionally been a third party, but is now poised to overtake the Liberal Party as one of the two frontrunning parties (the Liberals having abandoned liberal politics).

My support for Nader is based on the fact that his platform is much more popular than those of Obama, McCain, McKinney or Moore, and is progressive.

Friday night’s debate, which against my usual practice I watched, was a perfect illustration of just how indistinguishable Obama and McCain are, when viewed against a broader background. The candidates agreed on virtually everything.

Both of them thought the surge was a wild success, apparently based on the fact that there has been a lull in the level of violence since it started. As anyone with even limited analytic ability knows, this is poor reasoning. Those who are knowledgeable and thoughtful about the situation, like Juan Cole, are skeptical that the surge caused the lull in violence. Cole suggests in his debate debrief that the reduced levels of violence in Baghdad is the result of the successful cleansing of the cities of its Sunni residents, who have been either massacred or driven out of the city. In other words, it’s not the American surge but the Shia surge that’s responsible for the reduction in violence.

Both McCain and Obama appear to favor increasing the military budget.

Both candidates apparently buy into the lies that the right-wing Zionists concocted, and the Western media has repeated ad nauseam, about Ahmadinejad threatening to wipe Israel off the map. McCain repeated it several times, and Obama never disputed it.

Among the few differences of substance that the candidates emphasized concerned leaving Iraq. They tried to make it look like an big difference: McCain wants to stay in until victory, Obama wants a timetable for withdrawal. But if you look at Obama’s plan as he has consistently articulated it, he’s talking about redeployment rather than withdrawal. He basically favors pulling troops from Iraq and putting them in Afghanistan instead. Neither candidate favors doing what the law requires: ending the occupation of Iraq.

If I had to characterize the foreign policy differences between the two, I would do it this way: McCain prefers to focus on Iraq, while Obama prefers broader aggression including Afghanistan and possibly including Iran and Pakistan. It comes down not to any difference of principle, but to the tactical or strategic question of where the main battle against al-Qaeda is located. (After the debate, I don’t know what “tactics” or “strategy” mean anymore. Strategery, anyone?)

Both apparently support possibly bombing Pakistan, although McCain thinks it’s wrong to talk about it. I guess he thinks it’s better to sing about it.

Both support missile defense. Both support offshore drilling and nuclear power plants.

What are the real differences? Style. As Noam Chomsky says, the people marketing political campaigns are the same guys that market toothpaste. McCain was on the message that Obama isn’t ready to lead. Obama was trying to tie McCain to the Bush catastrophe.

Nader is highly distinguishable from BaJohn McBama/Jorack O’Cain. He favors a lawful foreign policy, including withdrawal from Iraq and refraining from acts of aggression against other countries. He’s against nuclear energy. For an overview on Nader on the issues, and a contrast with the Republicrats, see here: http://www.votenader.org/issues/

Posted under News, Politics

Lawmakers reached agreement on the 700 billion bailout.  Republicans held out for an the all impotent detail of insurance:

At the insistence of House Republicans, who threatened to sidetrack negotiations at midweek, the insurance provision was added as an alternative to having the government buy distressed securities. House Republicans say it will require less taxpayer spending for the bailout.

But the Treasury Department has said the insurance provision would not pump enough money into the financial sector to make credit sufficiently available. The department would decide how to structure the insurance provisions, said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., one of the negotiators.

The bailout bears the echoes of Iraq in its buildup.  Its being rushed through, with a Sunday vote by the House, and a Monday vote by the Senate.  700 Billion is a lot of debt to saddle us all with.  Especially with concern about the long term impact.  But what about the short term impact? (Angry Bear via Time Blog, Emphasis Mine):

[T]he problem is the price, in this case the premium. If it is vastly less than the probability of default, the House Republicans have found a way to throw money at bankers and financial arsonists instead of just bankers. If it is actuarily fair, it will force liquidity constrained firms to unload the securities — they could wait and hope for no default, but they can’t pay actuarily fair premiums. When you are insolvent, risk, variance, double or nothing is your only hope of survival. Thus aside from the contribution to financial arson (which I guess will be huge) the plan would also force distressed banks etc to unload mortgage backed securities at fire-sale prices. Now I don’t think the current problem is mainly due to systemic margin calls due to mark to market and capital requirements, but making that problem vastly worse would hasten the collapse of the US financial system even without financial arson.

Awesome.

Posted under Economy, Politics

When I heard McCain had suspended his campaign to work on the economic crisis, I thought he had made a brilliant move.  McCain is weak on the economy and needs to distinguish himself in a favorable light.  His suspension connected so well with his narrative of “country first” sacrifice, and reinforced his positions on the war and his delay of the convention in the face of hurricane Gustav.  I remember the conversation well.  I lamented Obama’s lack of aggression, and my co-worker agreed with me that the man needed to step things up.

Then he responded (Amanda, Think Progress, emphasis mine):

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) just gave a press conference responding to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) suggestion that they both suspend their campaigns, postpone Friday’s debate in Mississippi, and return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. Obama said that he would like to the debate to go forward as planned because “it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once”

That powerful and contained a statement deals a sharp blow to McCain’s sacrifice theme.  Sacrifice only works politically if you give up something important out of necessity.  It’ll backfire in a second if it looks like either the importance or the necessity aren’t genuine.

Which is why McCain’s stumble juggling David Letterman and Katie Couric is devastating (Amanda, Think Progress, emphasis mine):

As part of his plan to suspend his campaign activities, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) today decided to cancel his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. McCain’s campaign reportedly told Letterman that the senator was “racing back to Washington.” That, however, didn’t happen. In his show to air tonight, Letterman shows footage of McCain sitting down with CBS’s Katie Couric for an interview at the same time he was supposed to be on his show.

You couldn’t find a brighter color to paint McCain’s campaign politically opportunistic.

Obama’s counterpoint and McCain’s dishonesty play directly to McCain’s weakness and Obama’s opposing strength at the same time.  John McCain is increasingly viewed as the precise stripe of unethical politician he once fought against.  He’s a man who goes for political points at any cost.  Barack Obama is definining himself as a politician who tries to approach problems rationally and seriously, putting the demands of the problem at hand above the political cost of doing so.

A politician’s greatest responsibility alongside governance is maintaining a connection to the people he or she represents.  The debates this friday are a central part of that, and thanks to a quick and effective response, heading in its advantage Obama.

Posted under Economy, News, Politics

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell.

Its deliciously ironic that subtle variations of that quote can be found throughout the web.  Even when you’ve reached through the superficial and grabbed the spirit of the truth your hands have nothing tangible to close on.  Certainty feels increasingly academic the more closely you pay attention.

Orwell’s idea matches up stunningly with the essence of Gandhi’s Satyagraha.  It essentially means “truth power”.  But saying the truth is powerful doesn’t immediately reveal its effective usage.  Often compared to a double edged sword, it does share this in common: it has a point.  To use the truth well one must aim carefully.

NancyP over at Pam’s House Blend insightfully invites us to confront conservatives with their immediate truth, framed perfectly as the question: “Are YOU better off than you were 8 years ago?”.  Paraphrasing Altemeyer (an expert on analyzing authoritarianism, emphasis mine):

Cognitive dissonance has to be extreme, and personally very uncomfortable/painful, for authoritarian followers to abandon their Authority of the Hour. Some authoritarian followers will remain loyal to their Authority despite severe personal injury (pastor schtupps follower’s wife or minor daughter or son; leader loses follower’s life savings – see Bakker or Bush 43 for that). Even for the less injured followers, the tendency is to defend the old leader by blaming subordinates (“the Leader is wise but was misled by evil advisors”).  If the follower has finally decided that his Leader has damaged him intolerably, he will treat the situation as the breaking of an (often intimate) personal relationship – an individual moral failure of that Leader, having nothing to do with policies or competence of that Leader. Thus, the authoritarian follower can claim, without the least discomfort, that the New Leader is nothing like the (now discredited) Old Leader, even though New Leader voted with the Old Leader, continues the Old Leader’s policies, and uses the same advisors.

This immediately sets the game plan and the stakes.  We need to make this election about the immediate impact of the economy, and about the Democratic party’s fiscal prowess.  NancyP notes this:

I really think that the Dems are fools for not sticking to the “It’s the economy, stupid” campaign strategy. Eight years ago we had a budget SURPLUS. Now we are looking into a large black pit without a visible bottom.

The problem is that both McCain and Obama are being mushy centrists on the bailout.  (The Caucus, NYTimes, emphasis mine):

Senator Barack Obama this afternoon urged Treasury and Federal Reserve officials to include four conditions that he and other Democrats are seeking in the proposed $700 billion federal bailout for financial firms – though he stopped short of saying he would vote against the bailout if his terms were not met.

The pressure is building as the administration attempts to equate congressional delays directly with stock market dips and plunges.  Much of congress is taking the Democratic party’s standard operating procedure of the past 8 years to heart: equivocate and compromise till it hurts (Reuters, emphasis mine):

“What they have sent us is not acceptable,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said after a five-hour hearing on the plan. His Republican counterpart, Sen. Richard Shelby, also vowed not to “rubberstamp” the proposal.

That’s a very polite way of saying they’ll take a look at it, make very serious and thoughtful comments, and then pass it with minor modifications.  For agents of change, both Obama and McCain are surprisingly in step with the establishment when it comes to the bailout.  They are providing a united front (NYTimes, emphasis mine):

With pressure mounting on Congress to pass a $700 million bailout of financial firms, Senator John McCain struck a more urgent tone Tuesday on the need to act quickly, but he and Senator Barack Obama insisted on conditions that had to be met in the final plan.

This bill is going to pass.  Which brings us back to truth.  George Bush’s successor as “Dear Leader” is united with his opponent in supporting the most visible economic bill before the election.  Their opposition is purely superficial.  This idea of whipped supporters crawling back to their leader is one we might be tempted to cast purely on the conservatives.  But if we are honest with ourselves, and ask that very same question, we need to realize how sorely we’ve been hurting for an opposition party these past 8 years.

While the economic hardship more and more Americans face drags us all eagerly towards a cliff, asking directly “are you better off now than you were 8 years ago” is risky.  Canny Republicans can point to cringing Democratic officials and suggest they were all in it together, and gosh darn it we need a maverick.  Keep in mind that Democrats have been trying unsuccessfully to convince not-filthy-rich Republicans they are voting against their economic interests for decades.

Working with someone truly stuck in an authoritarian mindset is possible, but results won’t necessarily come quickly enough for November.  (For a start, read Cracks in the Wall parts One, Two, and Three).

If you want to effect the upcoming election (especially if you live in a swing state), your best bet is to reach out to Democrats and Independents and help them make it to the polls registered and ready November 4.

Posted under Economy, Politics