Monsoon Martin Announces Endorsement in 2008 Presidential Race
I think anyone who knows me at all understands implicitly that none of the Republican candidates is in danger of receiving my endorsement, so at this point it’s rather obviously a matter of choosing between Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY).
(Speaking of the Republicans, though, it is amusing to watch them implode after enjoying roughly 14 years of power in national government, foisting their closed-minded, pro-corporate, and jingoistic policies on the country. Soulless right-wing pundit Ann Coulter has said of the insufficiently conservative senator John McCain (R-AZ) that if he wins the Republican nomination for President—which seems more and more likely with every passing primary—she will actually campaign for Hillary Clinton!)
To date in the Democratic Presidential primary, Obama has racked up endorsements from The Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Los Angeles Times, as well as Caroline Kennedy, The Oprah, MoveOn.org, author Toni Morrison, George Clooney and Matt Damon; Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by TheNew York Times, Kansas City Star, Denver Post, along with the National Organization for Women (NOW), Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Ed Rendell, Maya Angelou, and Billie Jean King. When it comes to endorsements, though, none is more coveted, more ballyhooed, than the Monsoon Martin weblog endorsement.
Before I get to the endorsement, I’ll dispense with the historical platitudes: the election for the 44th President will mark the first time either an African American or female candidate has secured the nomination of a major party in this country. It is certainly noteworthy that for the first time in history, there is a really good chance that the United States will have a President that is not white and male.
But to take a step back from all this barrier-breaking delirium: it will be a hollow victory indeed for feminists and/or people of color if the person elected to the White House does not faithfully represent the views and needs of all of his or her constituents. A perfect case in point is Condoleezza Rice, who is the first African American woman to hold the post of United States Secretary of State. This would seem to be cause for celebration, if not for the fact that she is a truth-muddying Bush sycophant whose stints as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State have advanced some of the most wrongheaded, brutal, and hawkish foreign policies this country has even seen. William Fletcher of the TransAfrica Forum once famously called Rice “very cold and distant and only black by accident,” and she has been accused by Rep. Nancy Pelosi and many others of being a master of obfuscation and misdirection in her servile allegiance to the Bush administration’s policies. In short, despite having secured her status an a “first,” will not be mentioned with the likes of Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Shirley Chisolm, and Marian Wright Edelman in the pantheon of great African American female leaders.
The point of such a long digression is simply to assert that, as much as the sexism and racism of those on the right who oppose these candidates is repugnant and makes us feel like leaping to their defense, we have just a deep a responsibility to evaluate them on their merits, their opinions, and their records.
It is with this in mind that I hereby endorse Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
I believe he has the vision, the experience, and the conviction to breathe new life into the executive branch of our government. I will try to be as succinct as possible in laying out my reasons for supporting him, but those of you who have been reading my work for some time now realize what an empty promise that could turn out to be. And finally, all of the information about candidates Obama and Clinton I have included here is correct to the best of my knowledge. I have included citations where possible, but much of the information comes from television reports, newspaper articles, and other sources that are now lost to me. I very much welcome corrections and rebuttals to my ideas; use the “post a comment” feature below this post to record your thoughts.
First, the positive aspects of Obama and his candidacy:
Having worked as a community organizer, he has shown an ability to build a coalition that would include progressives, moderates, and even conservatives in the national conversation about how to progress beyond the tired, old political games.
He worked a civil rights attorney, so he is attuned to the problems of discrimination, inequitable opportunities, and workers’ rights.
He is strongly against the failed, ridiculous, and dangerous policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” regarding homosexuals in the military.
He was against the Iraq invasion from before the United States waged unprovoked war on that sovereign nation; he spoke at a massive anti-war rally in Chicago in March 2003 well before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Obama states that upon entering office he’ll establish a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops within 16 months.
He has stated unequivocally that a new era of corporate responsibility is desperately needed, focusing on the issues of exorbitant CEO pay, living wages, union busting, curtailing of outsourcing, and environmental stewardship.
Obama’s stance on the oft-criticized and underfunded educational initiative known as “No Child Left Behind” is generally amenable to the problems teachers have long had with the legislation. He says it needs to be completely reevaluated (though it would be more comforting to hear that he wants to scrap it altogether and start over), and that any initiatives need to be fully funded. Also on education, he wants to raise teacher salaries—which would seem like a difficult task, since they are set by individual school districts—and help defray some of the costs of student loans, since many college students graduate having incurred mountains of debt.
I like the fact that he’s lived many places and gathered many experiences, increasing the likelihood that he can be genuinely empathetic about global crises and foreign policy. I also can’t deny that the prospect of someone who has had the experienced of being a Black man in American occupying the Oval Office is thrilling. (Of course, he’s no Angela Davis, who would be my all-time first choice for President, but it’s exciting nonetheless.)
Obama has an encouragingly progressive record in the Illinois legislature—which includes introducing bills monitoring racial profiling, ensuring a living wage for workers, and child care.
There are a few negatives in evaluating Obama that I’d be remiss if I glossed over:
Though he stood firmly against the war in 2003 and his initial Senate votes reflected this, by 2005 and 2006 he supported unconditional funding for the ongoing military action.
Though he took a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earlier in his career, in recent years he has been moving toward nearly unreserved support of the hard-line Israeli government’s often brutal policies.
Obama supports same-sex unions with all the rights of traditional marriage, but does not believe that individuals of the same gender should be allowed to marry (he thinks it should be left up to the individual houses of worship whether to sanction such unions).
An optimistic view of Obama’s drift toward the center since 2005 would posit that he was playing down his progressivism a bit to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters, but will return to his core values when he becomes President.
My decision to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination has mostly to do with my belief that he will be a good President, but also has a bit to do with what I see as serious weaknesses in his opponent’s record.
There are positives in Hillary’s campaign, to be sure, and I wholly agree with some of her statements and stances; for example, Hillary has been stronger in saying NCLB relies too heavily on testing, and wants a “student borrowers’ bill of rights” to keep interest rates under control and eliminate predatory lending, and favors universal preschool. And some of her policies have similarities to Obama’s. But there are lots of negatives that make me ultimately unable to offer her my support:
She is divisive, having long been hated by lots of conservatives—though for mostly sexist and invalid reasons.
Hillary Clinton introduced a bill in 2005 that would have banned flag burning; this move was an obvious pander to the right-wing patriotic types she knew she’d need to court in her Presidential bid. As a member of the ACLU, I value my First Amendment rights rather highly.
She is extremely hawkish on foreign policy, having voted for the initial Iraq war authorization and all subsequent funding packages; she still refuses to acknowledge her initial vote as a mistake, saying that flawed intelligence and poor planning led to the Iraq quagmire. But plenty of people—including Obama, though perhaps not in these terms—saw Iraq for what it was from the beginning: a dishonest, cruel and criminal undertaking perpetrated against the world which has taken hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and killed nearly 4,000 US servicemembers.
Clinton has said she will “immediately” convene the Joint Chiefs to begin withdrawing the troops, but has set no timetable for actual withdrawal.
Clinton served on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart (pictured below) for six years prior to her husband’s run for the presidency. Despite reports that she tried to get the retail behemoth to hire more women in management positions, all evidence points to the fact that she had no effect on this corporation and its anti-union, immigrant labor-exploiting, sexist and bullying tactics. In addition, she worked for the Rose Law Firm, a prestigious gang of corporate lawyers that specialized in union-busting. There was also a scandal in which she allegedly overbilled clients and continued working for the firm (of which the state of Arkansas was a client) while her husband was the state’s governor, raising questions of impropriety.
Clinton has shown an eagerness to engage in sleazy tactics. Of the many extant examples already is a New Hampshire mailing prior to the primary implying that Obama would not be a friend to pro-choice activists because he’d voted “present” on some legislative issues relating to reproductive rights. But the fact that this had been part of a Planned Parenthood legislative strategy—an organization he strongly supports—was never mentioned.
She supports Israel’s military assaults in the region and the nation’s primacy in the Middle East unquestioningly.
Hillary Clinton, in sum, is the establishment candidate. Her centrist tendencies are well-documented, while Obama’s progressive history at least leaves room for hope.
Much has been made of Obama’s purported lack of experience, or “electability,” but as one of the articles below illustrates, it all depends on how one quantifies “experience” and what kind of experience is important. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the past, reflecting the supremacy of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and of government through equivocation. After eight years of disastrous consequences courtesy of the Bush administration, do we really want to return to the previous eight years of the Clinton administration’s betrayals, unfulfilled promises, and duplicity?
Barack Obama is the candidate of the future, and even if some of his rhetoric turns out to be overblown, I think we’ll be in far better shape as a country under his leadership.
Monsoon
More here on Obama and the evolution of his policy on the Middle East:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/11/6312/
More here on Hillary Clinton’s pandering flag burning bill: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121401887.html
More here on Hillary Clinton’s propensity for dirty campaign tactics: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/18/6468/
More here on Hillary Clinton and Wal-Mart: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0207-34.htm
More here on the supposed gulf between Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s experience: http://doubledemon.newsvine.com/_news/2008/02/06/1282777-obamas-experience-vs-clintons-experience
Monsoon Martin's "Open MRI," My Fifth Vertebra Forecast
Weather-friends,
First, I want to say regarding Sunday night into Monday that there is still the potential for snowfall and the slight chance it could accumulate, but I’m leaning heavily toward a storm track that will miss us altogether, bringing only snow and rain showers to our area during that time. I will post an update in this space if the situation changes dramatically over the weekend.
Second, I’d like to submit “Open MRI” to the pantheon of particularly cruel or egregious oxymorons, or contradictions in terms, of which some of the most famous and appropriate are “jumbo shrimp,” “open secret,” “peacekeeper missile,” and “military intelligence.”
Why? Because yesterday, I became the victim of a medical bait-and-switch of the cruelest sort. I was sent for an MRI by my doctor to take a look at my lower back, which as many of you know has been hobbling me for some weeks now. Knowing of my claustrophobic tendencies, not to mention my … generously apportioned physical stature, my doc sent me to Ephrata Open MRI. Open MRI, I thought. Sweet. In a regular MRI, in case you’ve never had the pleasure, the patient is loaded onto a slab and shoehorned into a massive structure like a round peg in a square hole—where the patient must stay, unmoving and unable to move any part of the body, for up to an hour. (I had an MRI way back in high school when I was getting severe migraines but was somehow not all that affected by it then.)
An Open MRI, I imagined, would be an absolute dream. There would be no shoving my immobilized self into a space no bigger than a morgue drawer. Surely in an Open MRI I would be free to move about gaily as I wished. I would be forced to sit (or perhaps lie) still for a short, pleasant enough period, during which time some sort of machine would take some sort of picture of my lower back. It would all be over in mercifully brief fashion, and I would experience none of the claustrophobia associated with the typical MRI experience.
My people, what followed instead at Ephrata Open MRI was 50 minutes of meta-claustrophobic torment. (For those of you who are new to the Monsoon weather list and/or weblog, it should be noted that my accounts of personal turmoil and inconvenience are not without their liberal pepperings of hyperbole and histrionics. I admit this now, only in a moment of weakness, and will never do so again.)
I was told to “gown up” and led into the MRI room by a technician who was, to her credit, extremely patient and understanding. I was laid on a table, facing feet first into a gargantuan, ringed structure that resembled a sort of brick oven (like at Carrabba’s in Lancaster, which is totally good) but instead of creating scrumptious northern Italian cuisine, it created only vise-like pressure and shrieking terror. (I told you: hyperbole.)
The technician (I forgot or blocked her name; let’s call her Hazel) then told me I had an array of music choices to accompany my ordeal. A few radio stations came in fine, she said, though two—94.5 (the evangelical Christian station) and a country music station—came in best. Need it be said here that I declined to listen to either station? She also said she had a few CDs to choose from: Enya, some philharmonic thing, and a Sting CD which she said was called All the Hits. Now, Enya takes me back to the days at Albright when my roommate would play the purportedly soothing—but actually numbingly bland—music of Enya and Yanni (I am dead serious) and make me want to jam hot knives into my earholes. I typically shun classical music as aggressively European and staid; it’s the white man’s music. And I used to be quite a Police fan, and Sting’s early solo work was quite good (the later period, when he was doing guest vox on vapid hip hop tunes, not so much). So yes, I said, let’s crank up the Sting!
Soon my torso was swathed in some sort of heavy wrap and I was then inserted, like a tongue depressor, into the gaping maw of the Open MRI machine, forcing the air out of me like I was a sad Tupperware container. I stared up at the ceiling of the “Open” MRI machine, which was about an inch and a half from my face and ended at about eye level (the top was open, so I could look up, to the side and out, and my feet were hanging out the other end, which mattered not at all, though I suspected contributed to their being able to use the meaningless term “open” in describing the MRI).
I began to wonder if I was going to make it through this—laying there uncomfortably for the better part of an hour, unable to take a full breath, the world closing in on me. Hazel observed that I was getting a little “wigged” and said gently, “This isn’t supposed to be stressful, you know?” to which I responded with a weak chuckle. Hazel handed me a small, rubber ball connected to a wire that looked like the end of a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure taker); I was told to squeeze it if I needed anything. This offered me little solace.
As the machine began its work, a few realities quickly became apparent: first, that my mild claustrophobia had evolved considerably; second, that the machine makes an irregular, intervallic death rattle that sounds like an excavator is operating on top of me, or some sort of undulating Lex Luthor death contraption; and third, that the Sting CD was one of the most wretched collections of aural ineptness ever put to record. The fact is that Sting had dramatically reworked many of his most well-known songs (including “Fragile,” “When We Dance,” and “Fields of Gold”) and performed them in front of an exclusive audience in Tuscany for an album that was actually called All This Time. His arrangements are whitebreadedly affected and ponderous, his delivery sloppy, the instrumentation languorous. The overall effect of listening to this was infuriating: snippets of the work sounded familiar, refrains seemed nearly recognizable, and yet it was all so foreign, so poorly executed…so icky. Sting even—unforgivably—included the (wreckage of the) song “Dienda,” with lyrics inexplicably added, on his CD. “Dienda,” composed by the late Kenny Kirkland and included on Branford Marsalis’ seminal Royal Garden Blues, is an evocative, gorgeous gem—probably my favorite song of all time.
The ensuing 40 minutes or so are a blur of near-panic, existential crisis, and strange, maniacal thoughts. A sampling:
What in the hell is that picture supposed to be?
One, two, three, four, Mary at the kitchen door…
Breathe…breathe…whew…haa…whew…haa…
I’m gonna lose my shit…I’m gonna lose my shit and eject myself out this bitch.
Keep it together keep it together keep it together.
Maybe I’ll try a little visualization…I can visualize my ass right the hell out of here…yeah, I’m not in this machine; I’m in a happy place. A…happy…place. Where’s my happy place? Hoff, are you there? OK. Yeah, a real happy place. Oh, this would be good: I’m back in Rhode Island, it’s last Christmas, and I’m walking with my lovely wife on the Cliff Walk. That was a happy time, and it’s a nice, open vista…yep, I’m on the Cliff Walk. No, I’m still here in Ephrata. I can’t visualize a god damned thing. Jeez, maybe I should take up yoga or something.
I wonder how much time is left?
What does MRI stand for? Oh, that’s right: Magnetic Resonance Imaging. I wish it had taken me longer to figure that out. M…R…I. Am, are, I? Oh, holy crap it’s an existential puzzle. Am, are, I? If I am not, how can I be? And if I be not, am not, whither me? What the hell am I saying?
Why, oh why, did Sting sully his songs so?
How much time could really be left? Oh damn, I wonder if it just seems like a half-hour has passed but in reality it’s only been three! Nah, that’s not possible…
They make bombs that can be programmed to fall on a postage stamp but I have to lay my ass here for an hour and wait for this machine to do its work. Isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?
“The Wire” soundtrack is really good…oh, I know…I’ll think about my favorite songs on it. That’ll get my mind off things…well, the dialogue snippets are great, especially the Snotboogie material and the “Omar comin’!” piece. The songs are a mixed bag… “Ayo” and “My Life Extra” from the B-more hip hop scene are strong, really hypnotic…and it’s nice to see Michael Franti on there…the Solomon Burke song is outstanding, and I like the “Gilded Splinters” song…I even like the Greek song…The Pogues and Tom Waits, not so much. OK, that’s it. What’d it take, two minutes?
How much longer??
Finally I couldn’t resist any longer and squeezed my little rubber doober to summon Hazel. She came in: “Yes?”
“Oh, hi! Liiiiisten…I was just wondering how much more time?”
“You said hi…that’s cute! Most people don't bother saying hello. No, we haven’t got much more time. One more vertebra, so another nine minutes.”
[long exhale] “Whew. Thanks…I needed to hear that.”
[leaving] “You’re welcome…not much longer!”
“Oh…and could you turn off the music? It is so, so horrible.”
[sniggering] “Sure.”
After this, there’s not much to tell. The end of the test went off without a hitch, as I spent the last nine minutes counting. When it ended, I extricated myself from the machine and happily made my way out of the room. I had one final question for Hazel:
“Why would Sting ruin his music like that?”
“I know, right?”
Monsoon
Welcome to Monsoon Martin's brand new weblog!
Weather-Friends,
I am pleased and excited to introduce my very own weblog! I will be working out some of the technical issues here at first, as I'm not sure I even have a complete handle on how this works. Your input and suggestions are vital and well appreciated!
I thought I'd present a vintage Monsoon piece as my first post; it's actually the first "themed" forecast I wrote, way back in January 2005 after I'd predicted a coating of snow and several inches had fallen. Only a handful of you have seen this, because at that time I was only sending reports out to members of the Governor Mifflin English Department. Now my mailing list has grown to a glorious 90 members; those who would like to be added to the list and notified when a new post is...posted, email me at monsoonmartin@gmail.com and let me know.
Without further ado...
Stuart Smalley’s A Daily Affirmation Forecast
25 January 2005
I am an awful human being. I am incompetent at meteorology. I was trying to help people, and I only succeeded in putting peoples’ lives in danger. I’m going to die homeless and penniless, and no one will ever love me.
OK, that’s stinkin’ thinkin’, and I shouldn’t do that to myself. I also should have known that in a moisture-saturated upper atmosphere, the snow totals for last night were bound to be greater than the coating I’d predicted. I should have known I’d be shoveling two inches of snow in my driveway on Monday night. I should have foreseen the treacherous roads this morning and the two-hour delay. I should have been the forecaster you all have come to rely on.
But…now I’m shoulding all over myself. And that’s…OK. Well, no it’s not. It’s not OK to should all over myself, but it is OK to forgive myself for doing so. I own my shoulding. Oh, I’m a mess. I feel myself going into a shame spiral. Where’s the Entenmann’s?
Let me start over. It’s time to let all the regret go and be in the moment. As my Al-Anon sponsor says, I am a human being, not a human doing.
The forecast: snow tonight. Now, now…I know that’s not what any of us wants to hear, but it’s not going to help anything to bury our heads in the sand. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Partly cloudy today with a high of 33. Snow developing late, but mainly after midnight. Low tonight 21. Accumulations by daybreak ranging from 1 to 3 inches.
Wednesday: light snow showers may appear in the morning and early afternoon, but will not produce any appreciable accumulation. What these snow showers will produce, however, is whining from our students, who will want to be sent home early. And as we all know, whining is just anger coming through a very small opening.
High Wednesday, 33; low, 10. I do not feel any of the precipitation Tuesday night or Wednesday will be “mixed”…it should be all snow.
Chance of delay Wednesday, 55%; chance of cancellation, 10%.
Becoming much colder Wednesday night as the skies clear.
Thursday: mostly sunny; high 20, low 3.
Friday: mostly sunny; high 24, low 12.
Saturday: clouds developing, but that’s…OK. Clouds are not bad or good. They just are. High 33, low 25.
Sunday: precipitation moves into the area in the morning, potentially continuing into Monday. At this point, it appears that at least some of this will be “mixed”—rain, snow, and sleet. Conditions Monday could be a bit tricky. It’s difficult to pinpoint amounts and precipitation type this far ahead of the storm. (And that’s…OK. Sometimes we have to put on our fuzzy slippers, curl up on the couch, and pour ourselves a cup of uncertain-tea.)
Whew. This has been a fantastic forecast. And do you know why I was able to produce such a fantastic forecast? Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough…and doggone it, I can prognosticate super well.
Stuart “Monsoon” Smalley